Ugly Girls: A Novel (13 page)

He pulled in at the courthouse. The last time he’d been here was to marry Myra. Perry in ruffled socks. Myra holding a bouquet of silk flowers she’d bought at the Walmart, arranged herself. The lady judge jowly as a bulldog. Afterward they’d gone to the steakhouse for lunch, and together they’d decided to allow Perry to have as many bowls of ice cream as she could eat. Their first decision as parents was to let Perry do exactly as she wanted. And now look where she was. Jim tried to laugh, shook his head. It struck him that it was easy, back then, to keep his back straight. Like he was crafted from cement. Now it felt like a burden, rolling his shoulders back, making sure his weight was distributed properly. Easier these days just to lean into the world.

Did Perry remember that day? That must have been the last time she was here, too. But maybe they brought criminals in through a different entrance, maybe she had no clue this was the same place. She had called him Dad for a few years, but then one day it was Jim again. And if Jim was honest with himself he’d admit that it was a relief, that answering to that word had never felt natural.

Inside, a woman behind the front desk told him where to go. Had seemed disappointed in him, to be here on a weekday morning to see about someone who’d been arrested. She had a slur, her words coming out wet and slow, and Jim decided he couldn’t be sure if it was disappointment with him or with how her own words landed.

Down two flights of stairs, the windows disappearing, the lights getting dimmer and dimmer. Through a metal detector and two sets of swinging doors. Into a waiting room where a Hispanic man and a woman in a head scarf sat rows apart. He walked up to the counter. A woman sat behind the Plexiglas on a stool set too low, scratching her head with a pencil.

“When was your loved one arrested?” she asked, moving the tip of the pencil to the back of her head.

“There’s two of them,” Jim said.

The woman pursed her lips, arched her eyebrows. Tapped her pencil on the glass. “When. Was. They. Arrested?”

“Just this morning,” Jim answered. “About two hours ago.”

“Oh,” the woman said, “you can’t do nothing until bail has been set. And I doubt bail has been set. You can sit here and wait or you can go home and wait, your choice.”

Jim had his prison guard ID in his pocket, had planned to pull it out, slide it across, ask for a favor.

But now more than anything he wanted to get away from this woman, get away from the two people waiting, the woman in the scarf knitting and humming to herself, the Hispanic man sitting with his chest out, ankles crossed, doing nothing. Myra had said to leave her. It suddenly felt like the best thing for her, the best thing for the whole family. Certainly the best thing for Jim. He could come and get her in the morning. He could use the money hidden in an old box of Honey Smacks on top of the fridge to bail her and Dayna out. He could feel more prepared to look angry, to look like he cared.

EVERYONE HAD HER OWN SMELL
in this cell. The hookers smelled like sex, like buttery sex threaded with fruity lotion. The homeless thing in the corner smelled like dirt, and like butt crack. Perry could smell herself, too: sweat and shampoo. And Baby Girl smelled the strongest, maybe because of how close she was sitting to Perry, but also maybe because she was losing her shit, and it was coming off her in acid waves. Like she was curdling.

Baby Girl looked like one sick bitch. Looked like she should be the mean one, but Perry could tell she was terrified. Like shaving off the rest of her hair had left her too exposed, all that armor fallen away, and now anyone could get at her. It was disappointing.

The cell was quiet now, the hooker without no panties had her arm back over her face, the standing one braiding her hair again. Baby Girl was cracking and recracking her knuckles. A guard had come by and told them they’d have their bail set in the afternoon.

Sometimes Perry looked around and saw she was somewhere she didn’t want to be. Sometimes it was sudden and sometimes it was because she’d done shit to make it so. She could count on two fingers the number of times she was happy to end up in some backseat, but she couldn’t say that she hadn’t done everything she could to end up there. And like now. She hadn’t meant for it to turn out the way it did. She’d wanted to go to school, even. But here she was. And when Perry found herself somewhere she didn’t want to be, she rode it out until it was done, because it was the only thing to do. She felt the crying from before in her throat. If she started up again they’d eat her alive. Had to remember how if she was a wounded zebra, she wouldn’t limp for shit. She’d carry on like all her legs still worked just fine. Kick another zebra’s leg to shit, leave the animal there as an offering.
Her instead of me.

“Hey,” Perry whispered. “I seen who you were texting with the other day.”

Baby Girl cracked her thumb. “So?” she whispered back.

“I’m just saying, he’s been texting me, too. Talking to me online and shit. So it ain’t like you’re the only one.”

Baby Girl cracked her wrist, said nothing.

“I think he’s trying to get with me,” Perry said. “Just based on how he talks to me. Does he say shit like that to you?”

“We talk about all kinds of shit, I don’t know,” Baby Girl said, and Perry knew by the way she said it that he had never texted
Oooh baby
to Baby Girl.

“Maybe we should both watch our asses,” Perry said.

“Whatever. I got other friends aside from you.”

Perry felt a tingling in her gut. Like she was winning at something. “So you’re just friends?”

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” Baby Girl said. She whipped her head from shoulder to shoulder, working at cracking her neck.

“I might meet up with him one day,” Perry said. “Unless you say you don’t want me to.”

“Y’all definitely ain’t whores,” the woman on the floor said. “Fighting over some boy? Y’all is just joyriders, am I right? Or what, you steal a lip gloss from the store?”

“Do whatever you want,” Baby Girl said. She moved her hands to her head, kept them there like she was holding her scalp in place. Like that might disappear, too. Was she regretting it? The thought was enough to make Perry feel tender toward her.

“What’s that feel like?” Perry asked. She reached up to touch for herself, but Baby Girl moved quick, slapped her hand away. The woman on the floor snickered. Perry’s face felt hot; Baby Girl had embarrassed her in front of these women, made her seem like the one who wasn’t in control.

“You know what?” Perry asked, putting a hand on Baby Girl’s leg, as friendly as an aunt, holding firm so she couldn’t be slapped away this time. “As your friend it’s my duty to let you know that you look like a fucking retard.”

Baby Girl’s head snapped up, and Perry saw how quickly this brought tears to her eyes. She knew
retard
would do the trick.
Good
, she thought.
Maybe it’ll wake her up
. The women laughed, and Perry felt a stitch of pride. She wanted Baby Girl to know she looked like someone to avoid, someone to back away from, and then from the safety of distance to feel sorry for. Like Charles.

Baby Girl yanked her leg free, still staring at Perry like she had three heads. A fat tear slid down her cheek. “You wrong,” Baby Girl said, her voice loud. She was talking to the woman on the floor. “One of us
is
a whore.”

The women laughed again. Perry joined along. “Yeah,” she said, “and one of us just wishes she was.” She almost felt closer to Baby Girl than ever, seeing her like this. Still, she moved away, crawled to the opposite corner. Left Baby Girl there to get ate up by whatever hungry animal, if that’s how she wanted it.

LATELY IT WAS
like evenings could get dark on you before you knew it. Blink and the sky had pulled up its denim blanket. It wouldn’t get fully dark for a long time, that denim deepening slowly into navy, and Jamey hated the wait. Reminded him of the time between dinner and lights out, when there wasn’t nothing to do but choose between boredom and trouble. And some nights you’d be elated to taste your own blood, nights when a bloody nose was better than one more night of writing letters or staring at the walls or rubbing yourself raw, pretending you didn’t know your cellmate was watching.

And lately, what with his momma on the couch and Perry not two trailers over, it was getting harder and harder to choose boredom.

He’d waited for Jim to leave. He knew Myra was home. He’d gone around back so he could see through her kitchen window, and after a bit she appeared. Went to the fridge just like Jamey knew she would.
Like a moth to a flame
was what his momma always said about drunks, and about his own affliction.

Another shade of blue had appeared over the sky. Soon he’d go knock at the door, walk in before she could say otherwise. Visit a while. Wait for her head to bob. Then get what he came for. If he couldn’t be with Perry tonight, he could be in her room instead, he could be among her things, he could leave something of himself behind. The thought of it was so real that it was almost like he was in her room already, not standing in the shadows outside an old man’s trailer, looking in at Myra. He felt impatient for it, pushed himself into the light and around to the front of the trailer. Knocked two quick times.

“Come in,” she called. Didn’t even come to the door. Jamey smiled, knew the beer he’d watched her fetch hadn’t been her first of the night.

“Why were you lurking out back?” she asked him once he’d stepped inside. The trailer felt warm and sticky, like it was a body that sweated.

“You must have mistook me for someone else, Miss Tipton,” Jamey said. He put his hands in his pockets so she wouldn’t see the shaking.

“No, it was you,” she said. She held her bottle out to him. “Take this or get yourself a fresh one. If you take this one you got to get me a fresh one, so either way you’ll find yourself in the kitchen.” She laughed. The lights in the trailer making her skin as yellow as beer. Jamey felt a surge of hatred for her, giving into her nasty like that. Just like his own momma.

Another thing he had in common with Perry.

He waved her off. “You finish that one,” he said. “I’ll get me a fresh one and when you’re done I’ll get you a fresh one, too.” He could hear himself starting to talk like her, could hear how he was even running his words together, like he was as drunk as she was. It was something he did when he wanted people to feel comfortable around him, to feel like they were just talking at themselves in a friendly mirror.

“You still didn’t say why you were lurking outside, watching me get messed,” she said to him once he sat down. “You scared of me?”

“A little,” he told her. This was a woman who liked to get flirted with. Her hair had flattened since he’d last seen her at the truck stop, her lipstick was dry, caught in the lines of her lips, but she still expected to hear about herself. He could see where Perry got it from, this sloppy vanity. Only Perry deserved to be vain.

“I ain’t attracted to you,” she told him. She put a hand through her hair, made it worse. “And plus I’m married.”

“Yeah?” Jamey said. “Then why you letting me in at all hours?”

“Something to do,” she said. She finished her beer in two big swallows, waggled the empty bottle at him. “Next,” she said. Jamey handed her his own beer. She took it from him with one hand, using her fingers to hold his hand still. She looked at him, her eyes glittery and drunken, her eyebrow raised. “Next?” she said, and Jamey knew she’d probably used this line before, when she was younger, getting the boys at the bar to buy her drink after drink, thrilling them with her touch.

“You tell me,” Jamey said.

She laughed, the same loud caw she’d let loose at the truck stop. Her skin gathered at her neck. Jamey wanted to tell her what she looked like to him, which was old. He craved the sharp lines of Perry’s chin and neck, no skin to gather at all. Even so, he hadn’t been touched by any female aside from his mother in a long while, and he could feel parts of himself starting to pay attention.

Myra let him go. “I’m a very sexual person,” she said, putting up her hand to catch a burp. “It just oozes out of me, I can’t help it. In case you got the wrong idea.”

“I understand,” Jamey said. “But I still think you’re a liar.” He knew women like this needed to be challenged. Corrected. Seen through.

This seemed to delight her. “A liar, huh? Maybe you got me. But I still don’t want nothing to do with you. I can flirt if I want to, no harm done there.”

“That’s okay, Miss Tipton,” he said. His hands suddenly felt empty, purposeless, without a beer to hold on to. He leaned over, took Myra’s foot in his hands, began rubbing her ankle the way his momma liked. Myra stiffened at first, but soon she melted back into the couch, closing her eyes, saying
Mmm
. Myra had bony ankles, creamy and smooth. Jamey wondered if Perry had the same ones. Jamey looked down the short hallway, toward the door he knew led to Perry’s room, wondered how much longer.

“You ever been arrested?” she asked him.

Jamey stopped what he was doing. “What? Why you asking me that?” He almost yelled it. He’d been lulled into thinking she’d been lulled. He’d been nearly enjoying rubbing the ankles of a woman that wasn’t his momma. Why wouldn’t she just drop off?

Myra sat up, planting her feet on the carpet, rolling her shoulders like she was trying to wake her body up. “My daughter got arrested today,” she said. “Oh, I told you that, right? When you just
happened
to stop by the truck stop. You see what I mean? You’re like a bee in my bonnet. You want something, I just know it. And to be honest with you I’m nearly too tired to fight you off.”

Now Jamey was the one who felt challenged, seen through. He put his hand on the knobby robe over her knee, pushed a little. If he said anything, tried to deny that he was always hanging around,
lurking
as she’d called it, he knew she’d have him, she’d know it was true. “I’m sorry to hear that about your daughter,” he said. “Your daughter a bad seed or something?”