Because She Is Beautiful

by Cameron Dougan

  Butch lay on the ground. Everyone could hear that he was crying. The older kids began to laugh. Then Butch jumped up and ran away. It all happened so quickly. No one seemed to notice that it was Kim who'd thrown the rock.

  But someone had. That evening Kim heard a knock at the door from her bedroom. Her mom called to her dad to see who it was. Footsteps moved through the house. The front door rattled. Kim stepped from her room to hear muffled voices on the stoop. Then: "Kim, get out here. Kim!"

  She could see his dark form through the screen, standing on the step. The aluminum door squeaked when she pushed it open and stepped out. Her father waited with his arms crossed tightly as though holding himself back, struggling to swallow his rage. Mr. Sullivan was taller than her father, but not as well proportioned, a wide trunk of a torso sitting atop two toothpicks. He was a larger version of his son, with a round veiny nose and shiny cheeks, and he put a hand on Butch's shoulder. Butch had a bag of ice strapped to his head.

  Her father's glare bored into him.

  "You got nerve coming here to accuse a girl," he said.

  Mr. Sullivan leaned forward, his shoulders rising and falling, deep barrel-chested breaths.

  "Some girl," he huffed.

  Her father's hand smacked Mr. Sullivan's cheek. Butch jumped.

  "Don't ever talk like that about my daughter again," her father said.

  "Dad," Butch whined. Dazed, Mr. Sullivan turned slowly and headed down the walk, Butch in tow.

  Her father watched them go.

  "Rotten apples grow on rotten trees," he said. "Dick Sullivan's a little man."

  He looked at Kim.

  "Did you throw that stone?"

  "Yes."

  "That was a hell of a bump."

  He poured himself a drink, then another, never fully emptying the glass, each refill more generous. The neck of the scotch bottle knocked the glass rim as he poured, wobbled, then dinged it again. He touched Kim's nose. His finger was sticky. He settled into the leather armchair in the living room, and she crouched at his feet, leaning her chin on his knee as she spoke. He laughed, and the more he laughed, the more animated she became in her telling, jumping up, holding her hands out as though gripping handlebars. Her father called her mom out to listen and made Kim repeat the story. She tried to get Butch's look of surprise right—that moment the rock hit him.

  "And he was moving," her dad said, gulping his scotch.

  Kim didn't correct him.

  "Not an easy shot."

  "You shouldn't throw stones," her mother said.

  "That boy had it coming." He got up to fill his glass. "The father too," he said, coming back, dropping into the chair. "You should have seen Sullivan's face. You saw it, Kim. Was that the face Butch made?"

  Kim nodded. Her father laughed. Her mother didn't smile.

  "Imagine, a girl standing up to that bully."

  "Charlie—"

  He pulled Kim to his knee and ran a hand through her hair.

  "Your mother's right. We don't throw stones. Understand?"

  Kim looked at her mom, who was frowning.

  He put a finger under Kim's chin, coaxing her to turn back. He was all smiles and glassy eyes.

  "This other boy, Jason," he said. "Was he worth it?"

  He grabbed her mother's hand and pulled her onto his lap, nuzzling her hair.

  "You're worth it, Charlie," she said.

  Kim looked at her. "We're talking about Jason Cooney, Mom."

  Her dad laughed.

  Kim wished his good moods could go on forever. He walked her to her room and set his drink down on the dresser. He tossed her, giggling, onto the bed. She crawled back to the edge where he stood and jumped up, throwing her arms about his neck, dangling like a monkey. He backed away from the bed, turning so that her feet swung out and the room whirled.

  "You're getting heavy," he said. "Okay, okay."

  He kissed her on the forehead.

  "Sleep tight, Princess," he said, his finger grazing the tip of her nose, and left.

  She sat staring at nothing. What she'd done had made her father so happy, and she pictured his eyes when he raised his voice to her, acting like she was in trouble. She lifted her shirt over her head. She wrapped it around her fist and stared down at her white stomach, ran a hand over her ribs, counting them, two, three on one side, three on the other, more. She touched her nipples, the skin around them all twisty. She wrapped her shirt around her fist again, tight like a thick plaster cast, and thought how she'd never seen her father hit anyone else besides her mom. How strange it looked—the shock on the man's face, the sudden turn of expression. Was he scared? She hugged herself and glanced over her shoulder. Her father was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. He straightened quickly.

  "Forgot my drink," he mumbled, then stepped over to the dresser.

  "Look, Dad." She held up her tightly bound hand. "Someone shot my paw."

  He smiled and left.

  She lay awake, the covers pulled up to her chin. She could hear her parents talking, her father's voice a warm hum. And she thought she heard her mother laugh. She listened, fighting to keep her eyes open, not wanting the night to end.

  Bobby Streeber was older. He lived in the house across the street. Her father didn't like him. He had a motorcycle, and she'd sit and watch him working on it in the driveway. His hair was black and cut so short she could see his tanned scalp. He always had grease under his fingernails and a cigarette pack rolled into the sleeve of his T-shirt. "Just like the old son-of-a-bitch," he'd say. That was what he called Bobby's father.

  Sometimes Bobby would give her a stick of gum. Sometimes he'd let her fetch him a tool from his tray. He'd ask her questions about her parents, and if she answered him honestly he'd get mad. When he saw bruises on her arm, he would kick the curb or throw a stone or spit. "Next time he does that, give me a holler," he said. "I'll nail the son-of-a-bitch." One time he was so mad he wheeled around and shattered his soda bottle off the side of a passing jeep. It screeched to a halt and the men who jumped out hauled him like a prisoner up his walk and rang the bell. He turned to see her before the door swung open. The mother stepped aside for the men to drag him in. Another time he put his hand on her back and took her hand and spun her. He winked as he backed away, cocking his thumb and firing his pointer finger.

  The boys her age made fun of her bony legs and pudgy cheeks. Bobby never did. "Hey, Big Eyes," he'd call her, because big eyes were rare and big eyes were beautiful, and big eyes had brought down countries, he said.

  "Mommy, how come I don't have a brother?" Kim said.

  "You want a brother?"

  Kim watched her mother at the sink. She finished the dishes and dried her hands on a rag and folded it over the handle of the stove.

  "Maybe because you're everything we ever wanted," she said, coming over.

  "If I had a brother, he'd stick up for me."

  "You never need anyone to do that. Don't ever think you do."

  "But he would. A brother would."

  Bobby Streeber's mother was not his real mother, and his little brother was not his real brother. Their yard was always littered with toys. Kim heard Bobby's father yelling at him one time, screaming at him to clean up the lawn. It wasn't his mess, she thought. The mother never seemed to do anything. Supposedly she was pregnant. Kim wondered if Bobby ever hit his father back.

  One afternoon he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took out a narrow strip of paper. He flipped it over to reveal three tiny photographs of him in a row.

  "I thought you might like one," he said. "Which one do you want? You want all three?"

  She nodded, and he gave her the strip. It smelled like vinegar.

  "If anyone ever bothers you, tell 'em to quit or else. Then show 'em the pictures."

  He stared at her, then slipped a pale blue card from an inside pocket of his wallet. He held it a moment.

  "I want you to have this too. It'll help," he said, and handed it to her.
"It's okay. I got a new one."

  The card had his name and address on it, and a long number with letters mixed in that didn't spell anything. There were smaller numbers and scattered letters typed in a series of boxes.

  "Someone bothers you, show 'em this. Say I'll track 'em down. Okay? 'Cause you know me. The number's the same. That's proof."

  When she went in for dinner, she hid the pictures and the card under her pillow.

  The night Bobby Streeber's motorcycle went off a bridge, police cars and military jeeps lined up in front of the house. Kim watched from her living room. The red lights of the sirens went round and round. A small plastic wheelbarrow sat on the lawn in the flashing light. A woman began to wail.

  "I knew something was wrong with that boy," Kim's father said.

  Her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

  "When the soul goes out of the body," she said, "it leaves behind a shell."

  "The temple," said Kim.

  "Sometimes a temple is just stone."

  Kim went to the bridge the next day and stared at the dent in the rail. There was no skid mark. A leftover piece of police tape fluttered in the breeze. She tried to imagine the impact—those few seconds that he must have been in the air and what he was thinking. The authorities hadn't taken the motorcycle away. She could see it sticking out of the water. It had landed so far from the bridge.

  The older boys started gathering, standing in circles, smoking and drinking, staring at the bike as if it were a monument. Beer cans began piling on the sandy bank. One boy called up to her and pointed to his beer. She turned and ran until she couldn't hear their laughter. She dropped to the curb and hugged her bony knees to her face, to her eye sockets, squeezing until she saw color, not letting go.

  A week later the motorcycle disappeared and the boys stopped coming. She kept Bobby's pictures and the card taped to the bottom of her dresser so her father wouldn't find them. When he wasn't home, she'd take them out and stare at the card, trying to memorize the long number, saying it over and over in her head because she knew it stood for something.

  Midway through her high school, Kim's family was moved to West Germany. Kim and a handful of other Americans attended a tiny school on the base. The town was named Wildflecken. Wild fuckin', the students called it. Everyone smoked. She was skinnier than most of the girls, bony where they were not and smaller in the chest—cursed, she thought. She knew it was a gradual process, the growing there, but she'd never witnessed it in anyone but herself. She'd never known anyone long enough. Here everyone seemed finished. One girl had gigantic breasts. They were all the boys talked about. Another had no breasts at all. They were all the boys talked about. No one paid attention to Kim's.

  Classes were harder, the teachers more strict. Their English teacher was a Frenchman who rolled his sweater sleeves up around his biceps like doughnuts. He made everyone write their essays on graph paper and criticized Kim if her handwriting got sloppy. They read Othello, and the teacher constantly referred to "green-eyed" this and "green-eyed" that, only it sounded like he was saying "grenade," and one of the boys, Vincent, would imitate him after class, saying, "Othello got blinded by a grenade."

  They spent a whole class discussing the character Iago, breaking down his speeches, trying to identify his motives: hate, jealousy, evil. "Who is this man?" the teacher kept asking. Several of the students seemed to agree that he was the devil, manipulating everything to a destructive end. "Heaven is the judge," the play read. "I am not what I am." What was he then? An illusion? Nothing?

  It was one of the only times Kim ever spoke out in class. "What if he's trying to say he feels like nothing?" she said.

  The teacher turned to her.

  When she spoke, her voice cracked. "Maybe he's trying to tell us that he's full of hate and jealousy because he feels like nothing."

  A girl coughed. A boy in the back row laughed. The teacher moved on with the discussion.

  After class, Kim heard a girl making fun of her comment. Vincent told the girl to go sit on a grenade. It didn't make Kim feel any better.

  Those days her mother was always tired. Kim did most of the cleaning and cooking. Her mother would fuss with the pots and Kim would take them from her.

  It was Kim who found her on the bathroom floor one night, the shower curtain pulled down around her. She had a cut above one eye. Blood had dried on her cheek, dripped from her chin, sluicing through folds of the plastic curtain to the white tile.

  "Mother," she said, squeezing her until her eyes opened. Kim helped her into the bedroom and folded a wet washcloth over her forehead.

  "My bicycle—" her mother said.

  Kim went to the kitchen for ice and knotted the cubes into plastic bags and came back with towels and packed the bags around her mother's head and body.

  "You're burning up, Mom."

  "I fell and cut myself." Her eyes widened suddenly. "I thought you were my mother," she said.

  Instead of calling an ambulance, Kim waited for her father. Long after midnight, headlights veered across the living room ceiling and a motor cut off. She opened the door for two men who shouldered her father into the living room and laid him on the sofa. His uniform was soaked. Theirs were unbuttoned at the necks and stained. One of them kept smiling at Kim. He wanted to say something, but his friend grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the door. She could hear them snorting and laughing out on the street.

  "You get a load of the daughter? What a knockout."

  "Don't even think about it."

  Kim dialed the operator and asked in English for the emergency number and waited to be connected. She told her mother that help was on the way and changed her washcloth and sat by the bed. When the EMTs arrived, she let them in and started for the bedroom. She got to the door and looked back. One of them had put his kit down and was leaning over her father.

  "No, in here," she said.

  The men glanced at each other and followed.

  No one could say how long her mother had endured pain without telling anyone. Cancer had spread from her breast through her body.

  Every day Kim rode a bus to the hospital. The buildings she passed had none of the quaint sloping roofs and crisscrossing beams she used to associate with that part of the world. They were factories, mostly, hulking brick structures with small dark windows, some of them broken, and inactive smokestacks. The hospital looked the same.

  She would do her homework in a wooden chair by the bed. Chemotherapy pumped into her mother's arms, swelling her face to twice its size. If she rolled onto one side, she could not see the clumps of hair that remained on the pillow. Kim would brush the locks to the floor.

  Each afternoon a nurse untied her mother's gown and sponged her flaking skin. She handled her mother too forcefully, Kim thought at first. But the nurse's hands moved with such confidence. There was a gentleness to her strength. Thin bits of rolled-up skin gathered on the sponge, and the nurse brushed them away, humming as she worked. This was her job, tending to the afflicted. How strange to see anyone taking care of her mother.

  The nurse helped with the bedpan too, if needed, easing it beneath the dead weight of her mother's legs, then waiting, lifting the covers to check. After, she would empty the pan and replace it with a new one, setting it on the nightstand by the bed. Kim's mother stared into the metal basin long after the nurse had left. There were no mirrors in the room.

  How different this person in the bed looked. Could her mother even recognize herself in the warped metal reflection of the pan? How beautiful she used to be, standing at the sink with a tube of lipstick, hair falling to her shoulders, skin so soft in the white light: the unspoken ideal of softness. Kim wondered about the time her father had been watching too. Why had she run back to bed? Perhaps his sudden intrusion had made her forget something important, like the answer to an exam that she knew but couldn't remember. That was a long time ago.

  "Has he come once this week?" Kim asked.

  "Yesterday," her mother said
.

  How could she forgive him?

  Kim pored over the book in her lap. She enjoyed history. She imagined distant times and places. She remembered feelings. The pages transported her. She was studying the French Revolution, the passionate words of Thomas Paine, who supported the revolt, and the staying view of Edmund Burke, who felt the French had prostituted their past. He sounded stuffy, afraid. She was sad, though, that so many lives had been taken, even in the name of freedom. Somewhere she'd read that Marie Antoinette and Louis really loved each other and that, unlike many royals, they'd always been faithful. She wished they'd been spared.

  "Kim," her mother said, "do you remember how you used to sit on the kneeler next to me when I'd pray?"

  There would be droughts of silence, then questions, stories cascading like rain.

  "Why don't you pray anymore?"

  "I do, Mother."

  "You're always so angry."

  Kim closed the book and picked up a magazine that she'd bought at a kiosk outside the hospital. The ones she chose were usually Italian or French, filled with fairy-tale pictures, women wearing clothes that didn't seem to exist in real life. Her father called the magazines trash. She would leave them on the bus.

  "What a marvelous dancer," her mother said. "He was so . . . I'd wait at the landing, listening to him answer all your grandfather's questions. Then I'd come down the stairs and Charlie would be holding his hat, like he was pushing a shopping cart."

  "When's he coming next, Mother?"

  "There were things he held sacred," she said, closing her eyes.

  "What about Grandma and Grandpa? Have they even called once?"

  Kim left the room and wandered down the long tiled hall, past the nurses' station, past vacant wheelchairs and open doors and the hard sounds of German. She took the elevator to the first floor and found the chapel, empty and quiet. A metal-lipped dais projected from the wall. On it stood a silver cross. Its facade was scratched, as though polished with a rough cloth, and she imagined the arm movements of the cleaning person that made them. A bucket and mop sat in the corner. Even here in this room removed she could smell antiseptic. Kim stretched her sweater neck up over her nose and covered her ears and tried to think of songs her mother used to sing as they walked home from Mass: "And little lambs eat ivy, a diddledy divey do, wouldn't you?"