Towelhead (31 page)

“No,” I said. “It's not.”

She noticed the garbage bag on the floor beside my legs. “What's that?” she said. “Is that the bag from your house?”

I nodded.

She put her hands on her back for support. “What are you doing with that?”

Before I could answer, Gil said, “When I came home, I ran into Jasira coming out of the house. She was thinking she was ready to go back to her father's.”

“No,” Melina said, looking at me. “What are you talking about? Absolutely not.”

“If she wants to go back, she can go back, Mel,” Gil said.

“You're serious?” Melina said. “You really want to go back?”

“I don't want to be any trouble,” I said.

“Give me the cat,” she said.

I opened the bag and took Snowball out and brought her over to Melina. As she headed for the kitchen, she said, “I want you to take those clothes up to the linen closet and put them away.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You have to let her go home if that's what she wants,” Gil called after Melina.

“That's not what she wants!” Melina called back.

Gil watched as I picked up the garbage bag and headed upstairs. I thought it was nice of him to try to stick up for me, which was why I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him that Melina had been right: I really didn't want to go home.

The dinner Melina made that night was called chicken tetrazzini. It was chicken in a sauce that you poured over rice. It was really good. We all said so. After dinner, Gil did the dishes, and Melina asked me to come upstairs with her. She sounded serious, which made me think she wanted to look at my bruise again, but that wasn't it. Instead, she took me in her room and told me to sit down on her bed. Then she pulled my
Playboy
from her bedside drawer and sat down next to me. “Where'd you get this thing?” she asked.

I didn't answer. I knew she wouldn't hit me like Daddy had. I was just too ashamed.

After a moment, she opened up the magazine and flipped through a couple of pages. “I wouldn't mind this stuff so much if it wasn't for the airbrushing. If it was just plain old women without airbrushing, I could probably handle that.”

“What's airbrushing?” I asked.

She flipped a couple more pages, then turned the magazine around to show me a picture of a lady in a horse stable leaning forward with her hands on a saddle so that her butt stuck out. “See how smooth her skin is right here?” Melina said, pointing to the backs of her thighs.

I nodded.

“She probably has cellulite. But they painted over it so that her skin looks perfect, and now men look at these pictures and think that's how women should look. And women look at these pictures and think that's how they should look.”

“Women look at these pictures?” I asked, remembering how Daddy had said that they didn't.

“Sure they do,” Melina said. “Why shouldn't they?”

I shrugged.

“They look at these pictures and feel bad about themselves.”

“Oh.” I thought for a second, then said, “Do some women look at the pictures and feel good?”

“Maybe,” Melina said. “Is that how you feel?”

I didn't answer.

“I mean, they're sexy pictures.”

“I guess so,” I said.

“The thing is,” she said, closing the magazine, “how anyone feels when they look at the pictures—it doesn't matter. It's private.”

I nodded.

“But how a kid your age has a magazine like this isn't private. You see what I'm saying?”

I nodded again.

“This is a magazine for adults only.”

Now she sounded like Daddy.

“If you found this magazine, that's one thing. But if an adult gave it to you, that's different.” She paused. “Did an adult give it to you?”

“Yes.”

“Was the adult your father?”

“No.”

She sighed.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“For reading an adult magazine.”

“Don't worry about it,” she said, and she reached over and put it back in the drawer.

Later, when we were all watching TV in the living room, there was a knock at the front door. Gil got up out of his chair to answer it. He usually got up and did everything after dinner, since that was when Melina was tired. “Oh, hi,” he said. “C'mon in.” I braced myself to see Daddy, but that wasn't who it was. It was Mr. Vuoso. He was dressed in a lightweight jacket and a baseball cap, and he carried some envelopes in his hand. When he stepped into the foyer, he took his cap off. As soon as Melina saw him, she hit the Mute button on the remote control. Mr. Vuoso heard the silence and turned to look at us.

“Hi,” Melina said.

Mr. Vuoso opened his mouth to say hi back, but then he saw me and didn't say anything.

“What's up?” Melina asked him.

“Oh,” Mr. Vuoso said. He held up the envelopes in his hand. “I just—we got some of your mail today. Mrs. Vuoso asked me to bring it over.”

“Thanks,” Gil said, taking the envelopes from him.

“That mailman sucks,” Melina said. “I mean, there's hardly any of us on the damn street, right?”

Mr. Vuoso seemed confused, like he wasn't sure if Melina was trying to be friendly or not. “Yeah,” he said. “He's pretty careless.”

Melina nodded.

“Hello, Jasira,” Mr. Vuoso said finally. He didn't say it in a mean way, but like he wanted Melina and Gil to think we were friends.

I didn't answer. I didn't want to talk to him. If Daddy had been there, he would've forced me to say hello since Mr. Vuoso was an adult before he was someone Daddy hated. But Melina and Gil didn't seem to care. They didn't tell me to do anything.

Mr. Vuoso wouldn't leave. He just stood there, holding his hat. Maybe he was waiting for Melina to explain what I was doing there. She didn't, though. She said, “Actually, I think we have something of yours, too.”

“Oh really?”

“What is it?” Gil asked.

“It's in my bedside drawer,” Melina told him. “Would you mind going up and getting it?”

He didn't move right away, but then Melina gave him a look that I'd seen a few times since I'd started staying with them. It was a look that said he should do what she wanted without talking about it anymore.

“Sure,” Gil said now. “Hang on.”

We all watched him climb the stairs. While he was gone, I stared at Melina, Melina stared at Mr. Vuoso, and I was pretty sure I felt Mr. Vuoso staring at me. “So, Jasira,” he said. “I didn't know you spent time over here.”

I didn't say anything, just kept looking at Melina. “Here's Gil,” she said a few seconds later. We all turned to look at him. He was holding the
Playboy
. He came downstairs and handed it to Mr. Vuoso, who waited a moment before taking it. He looked so shocked that I had to work hard not to feel sorry for him.

“That's yours, right?” Melina asked.

It seemed like he nodded, but I wasn't sure.

“Good,” she said.

Mr. Vuoso looked at me, and I quickly looked down at my lap. I wished he would go. I wished it weren't so hard not to feel guilty.

“Well,” Gil said, and I heard the front door opening. “Good night.”

Soon the door closed. I looked up. Gil turned the deadbolt. He sighed and said he was going up to bed. Melina told him she'd be there in a little while. After he'd climbed the stairs and rounded the corner, she turned to me and said, “Did he do anything else to you?”

I thought about what Gil had told me earlier, that Melina wasn't supposed to get upset. That I wasn't supposed to tell her things that would upset her, since it could hurt the baby. Part of me still wanted to hurt the baby a little, like I always had. But then part of me didn't. I didn't really like the baby, but I knew Melina did, and I knew that if I wanted her to keep liking me, I would have to like the baby, too. Or at least pretend that I did. “No,” I said. “He didn't.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I don't want you ever speaking to him again, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And don't you dare feel sorry for him.”

I didn't ask her how she knew I felt that way. I just nodded. She picked up the brush then, which we now kept downstairs on the coffee table, and started brushing my hair. After a moment, I said, “Let me do yours,” and she said okay. The brush slipped through her straight hair easily. There were no catches or tangles to work through, no strands of ripped-out hair to shake off my hand. She never once said ouch. Dorrie would have this kind of hair, too, I thought. If the three of us ever walked down the street together, everyone would know who the real daughter was.

I
waited all week for Daddy to come to get me, but he didn't. And since Melina was always driving me to school, I never saw him out on the street in the mornings. When he got home at night, I was eating dinner with Melina and Gil. It wasn't that I wanted to see him, really. But I did wonder about him sometimes: what he was doing or eating; what shows he was watching on TV; whether Grandma still thought Saddam was going to bomb her. My mother called once more, but it was at the same time of day when Gil wasn't home and Melina was taking a nap. This time I went and stood by the machine and almost picked up. But then I didn't. I was too afraid she would tell me I had to go back to Daddy's. When she hung up, I erased the message.

All that week, waiting for Daddy to come, I had strange dreams. I couldn't remember what they were about, but they always woke me up because of something I was doing in real life, like holding my breath or yelling. Melina came in my room and turned on the light whenever I yelled, but when I woke up holding my breath, I was by myself. Sometimes I thought about making a fake yell so she would come, but that didn't seem very nice.

When I yelled and she came in my room, she told me it was just a bad dream, then she lay down beside me in bed and went to sleep. In the morning, when she woke up, she said she had no idea how I could stand that bar underneath me. She asked me to rub the spots on her back where the bar had hurt her, and when I did, she said I had the magic fingers.

I began to think that with each day that passed, the end of my life was coming. Not the end of my real life, but the end of my good life. I knew that once Dorrie got here, Melina would go to her room in the middle of the night, and not mine. Probably I wouldn't even have a room. I would be back living with Daddy, or in Syracuse with my mother. On those nights when Melina came to stay in my bed, I didn't sleep. I stayed awake and watched her sleep. I tried to be awake as much as possible while the thing I liked best was happening to me.

“You look tired,” Thomas said to me in school on Friday.

“I do?” I had just sat down at the cafeteria table and was opening up the lunch Melina had packed for me.

“You have circles under your eyes.”

“Oh.” I unwrapped the aluminum foil around my sandwich. Melina never asked me what I liked to eat. She just packed the food and I was surprised by it. I preferred that to actually liking the food. Today it looked like egg salad.

“Aren't you getting enough sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you have dark circles?”

I shrugged and bit into my sandwich.

“I'm coming home with you after school today,” Thomas said. “We can take a nap.”

“You can't,” I told him.

“Why not?” He watched egg salad squeeze out the sides of my sandwich, then, when it landed on the foil, he reached over with his plastic fork and scooped it up.

“Because,” I said. “I don't live there anymore.”

“What?”

“I live with Melina.”

“That pregnant lady?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

“Daddy was hitting me too much.”

Thomas didn't say anything. Some more of my egg salad squeezed out, but he didn't pick it up. “Why did he hit you?”

“He found my
Playboy
.”

“Just for that?”

“He said it was a magazine for men and I shouldn't be reading it.”

Thomas thought for a second, then said, “Let's take a nap.”

“I can't,” I said. “Not at Melina's.”

“Then come to my house.”

I shook my head. “Melina likes me to stay with her.”

Thomas walked outside with me after school and waited for Melina to come. When she pulled up, he opened the passenger door of the Toyota and stuck his head in. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Melina said. “Thomas, right?”

He nodded.

“You need a ride somewhere?”

“Can I come over to your house and hang out with Jasira for a while?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. Then she leaned forward and looked at me on the sidewalk. “Is that what you want to do?”

I nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “Get in.”

Thomas pulled the front seat forward and climbed in back. When I got in front, I could feel his knee against my spine. “Want me to pull the seat forward?” I asked, but he said no, he was good.

Melina pulled away from the curb and followed the circular drive that led off from school property. She asked us if we wanted to rent a video or something, and Thomas said no. He said, “Hey, Melina, does Jasira look tired to you?”

She took a quick glance at me as she drove. “I don't know. Maybe. Are you tired?”

“Not really,” I said.

“She has dark circles,” Thomas said.

“Well,” Melina said, “she's sleeping on this crappy hideaway bed we have. That's probably the problem. She's just too polite to say it sucks.”

“It doesn't suck,” I said.

“Jasira is the most polite person I know,” Thomas said, which embarrassed me since he didn't laugh afterward like he was making a joke.

We stopped at the supermarket and Melina gave us twenty dollars to go in and buy milk, bread, and some snacks for ourselves. When we got in the store, Thomas went straight to the pharmacy section and got a small package of condoms. “I can't do that at Melina's,” I said.

“Why not?” he asked. “What's the difference between taking a nap and having sex? We'll close the door either way.”

“I already told you,” I said. “I can't take a nap.”

“She won't care,” Thomas said. “She's cool.”

Thomas had his own money and paid for the rubbers separately. I worried that the checkout lady would say we were too young to have them, but she didn't. She just looked at us like she was thinking that—especially when Thomas took the rubbers out of the bag with the food and stuck them in his backpack.

Melina had fallen asleep by the time we returned to the parking lot. Her head was leaning against the window, and her mouth was a little bit open. “Home, James,” Thomas said, climbing into the backseat, and that woke her up.

We passed Mr. Vuoso's copy shop on the way, and I didn't say anything. Neither did Melina. Ever since she had given him back his
Playboy,
it was like he didn't exist anymore. Only I knew it wasn't true. He did exist. So did Daddy. Just because I didn't see them didn't mean they weren't there. They would stay afraid of Melina and Gil for only so long. I had an idea that they were both just waiting for Melina to go to the hospital to have her baby so that they could come over and get me.

When we walked into Melina's house, Thomas said, “Man, this place is nice. Really modern.”

“Thanks,” Melina said, dropping her purse onto a chair.

“Hey, Lawrence of Arabia,” Thomas said. He set the bag of groceries on the coffee table and walked over to the wall with all of Gil's desert pictures.

“My husband was in the Peace Corps,” Melina said.

“He dug toilets in Yemen,” I added.

“He's a white guy?” Thomas asked.

“Yup,” Melina said.

Thomas nodded. “That's cool.”

“Listen, you guys,” Melina said, “I need to take a nap for a while. Feel free to watch TV or whatever. Just give me an hour or so.”

“Sure,” Thomas said.

“Just hang around the house if you go outside, okay Jasira?”

I nodded.

“Thanks for the food,” Thomas said.

“You're welcome,” Melina said, and she turned and went upstairs.

After she left, we went in the kitchen to unpack the groceries. “We can eat later,” Thomas said, laying a couple of bags of chips on the counter. “We should take a nap now, while she's taking a nap.”

“But I'm hungry,” I said.

“You can wait.”

“I always have a snack after school.”

“Don't you want to have sex with me?” he asked, lowering his voice.

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, “this is a really good chance. Right now.”

“If Melina finds out, she'll send me back to Daddy's.”

“No way,” Thomas said. “She's not going to send you back to someone who hits you.”

“Then she'll send me to my mother's.”

Thomas didn't say anything, just folded the paper grocery bag.

“I don't want to live with my mother,” I said.

“Where do you want to live?” he asked.

I thought for a second, then said, “Here.”

He laughed. “You can't live here. You can't just move in with the neighbors.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You just can't. It doesn't happen.”

It made me feel really bad to hear this. Especially since Thomas sounded so sure of himself.

“C'mon,” he said. “Let's go upstairs.”

I didn't get up from my chair.

“C'mon,” he said again, walking over to me. He took my hand and laid it on the front of his pants. “See how excited you make me?”

I nodded.

“Nobody makes me that excited. You're the only one.”

I let him move my hand across his pants a little.

“Don't you want to be the only one?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, because I did. It was the main thing I ever wanted, with anyone.

Thomas got a rubber from his backpack, then we took our shoes off and walked upstairs. This time I was glad that Melina had shut her bedroom door all the way. “There's the bathroom,” I whispered as we passed it.

When we got to Gil's office, I motioned for Thomas to come in, then shut the door. “Let's still whisper,” I said, and he nodded. He sat down on the bed to test it out. “Damn,” he said. “This really does suck.”

“It's not so bad,” I said.

He took his jacket off, draping it over an arm of the couch. Then he lay back on the foldout bed, slipping his hands between his head and my pillow. “Suck my dick,” he whispered.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and unbuckled his pants. I liked how they always got tight across the front when he had an erection. When I finally unzipped him and pulled his shorts down a little, his penis sprang out. Mostly, I liked how he was lying there with his hands behind his head. He was telling me what to do, but he wasn't forcing me. It was only the way he was acting, but it made me feel more excited than anything.

“That's good,” Thomas whispered when I was crouched over him. He did put his hand on my head then, not to move me up and down, but to touch my hair. “That's good,” he kept saying. After a while, he said, “I want to eat your pussy.”

I stopped sucking on his penis and waited for him to move over so I could lie down beside him. Once I had, Thomas knelt in front of me and pulled off my jeans and my underwear, then pushed my legs apart and held them like that, in the stretched-out way he liked. He stared for a while, then put his mouth there, and I touched his hair.

It felt really good, what he was doing. I didn't say anything, but I tried to touch his hair very softly, so he would know. I thought maybe I was going to have an orgasm this way, but then Thomas decided to stop to put his rubber on. He told me to get on top, and I did, and that was very different from when he was on top. I could feel everything a lot more, even too much. Thomas reached up and held on to my breasts, and it was like every part of me that knew how to feel good was being touched at the same time. I had an orgasm very quickly, but it wasn't the same kind I was used to. It felt like it came not from the outside of me, but from the inside, where Thomas's penis was. It felt like it started very deep, then traveled to the surface. Like it began earlier than ever and ended way past when it was supposed to. I couldn't help it. I yelled.

Immediately Thomas and I both stopped moving against each other and listened. “I don't think she heard anything,” he said.

“No,” I said. “She did.”

“How do you know?” he said. “C'mon, keep going.”

He started to move again, but I got off him. “She hears everything,” I said, reaching for my clothes.

“What about me?” Thomas said. He looked down at his penis, which was still hard inside the rubber.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You have to get dressed.”

Just then I heard Melina's door open. “Jasira?” she called from down the hall.

“Hurry up!” I whispered to Thomas.

“Oh shit,” he said, and he hopped up and started pulling his shorts on over the condom.