Pizza Girl

by Jean Kyoung Frazier

  I stood up and headed for the door, thinking it might be nice to sit on the couch, just the two of us, and watch TV together, something light and funny. I had always enjoyed hearing Mom laugh. She grabbed my arm and stopped me before I reached the door. “Wait, look in the mirror. See how much better you look.”

  Her grip was insistent and I couldn’t explain, tell her that staring into mirrors left me feeling weak, my insides scooped out, I hated seeing my own eyes staring back at me. I let her pull me to the mirror, and when I no longer could avoid it, I looked up.

  In the mothers’ support-group meeting, several pregnant women had complained about the distortion of their bodies. They moaned about how they couldn’t recognize themselves anymore, so much extra skin and fat, their faces puffy and foreign. One woman had gotten up from her seat and lifted up her shirt, grabbed a chunk of her side, and waved it at everyone, shouting, “This is not my body.”

  In the mirror I saw the same girl I’d always seen. Her face was slightly rounded and there were bags under her eyes that seemed darker and deeper than before, but everything else was the same. Same nose, ears, forehead, mouth, the chin Dad always said was from his side of the family, a strong chin that had been passed down for generations and proved I was destined for greatness. Those women talked about how terrible it was to feel like they’d lost themselves, that they felt unrecognizable. None of that sounded too bad to me, being someone new, looking in a mirror and not recognizing the person staring back at you.

  “Much better,” Mom said. She stood behind me; her chin was softer than mine, and she barely reached my shoulder. “I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful daughter.”

  Are there other things you would’ve asked for? If you had the chance, if there was a way to go back, to be that girl in the convenience store knowing everything you know now, would you still greet Dad with a smile? Would you still say yes when he asked you to share a forty with him out in the parking lot? Yes to Los Angeles? Yes to me? What would I be like if you could’ve asked for everything you would’ve wanted for me? Do I look like him? Do you miss him at night? What is it like sleeping in a bed without him in it?

  There were also questions I had about how she felt about me. I was so mad at her, and mostly I wondered why wasn’t she mad at me when I told her I was pregnant. Why did she cry tears of joy when I told her I was pregnant and not tell me that I was making a mistake, tell me I should’ve used a condom, and I was too young to be having a child? Did she think that I couldn’t be anything but a mother? That I was too stupid, too dull, to have a life for myself without a lovely man like Billy to provide for me? What would she think of Jenny?

  I kept my eyes on my reflection. “Mom, I don’t feel good. I haven’t felt good for a really long time.”

  She turned me around to face her, mercifully pulling me away from my reflection. “Oh, honey.” She stroked my face. I leaned into her palm, her warmth. “Are you having stomach pains? Or just body aches in general? Pregnancy really is rough on the body.”

  “No, I’m fine. I mean—”

  “Do you want some tea?” She moved her hands from my face to my stomach. “Dad used to make me tea at night during the pregnancy whenever I was feeling sick.”

  “Really?” I removed her hands from my stomach. “He did that?”

  “Yup. He even bought me a bunch of different flavors so I wouldn’t get bored with any of them. He’d bring me a steaming cup in bed and tell me to close my eyes, see if I could guess the flavor.”

  It was hard to picture this. Him putting water in a pot, boiling it, steeping a mug with Earl Grey, English Breakfast, chamomile. I couldn’t even picture him in the checkout lane at the grocery store with anything other than Miller Lite and jelly beans. That man bringing tea to his pregnant wife wasn’t the same as the one who once picked me up from school two hours late, with crushed Miller Lite cans and gum wrappers covering the floor of his car, the front of his gray gym shorts soaked in piss, shouting over and over, “Get in, we’re going to Disneyland.”

  I thought about telling Mom this memory, reminding her of that other man.

  “Or is it something else?” she asked. “What can I do?”

  She would never be able to help me. Her loyalties would always lie with him, this dead man who showed her sides he never showed to me. “Tea actually sounds nice,” I said.

  She went downstairs to make me tea and I swept all my little hairs out of the bathtub, dumped them in the toilet, but didn’t flush, just watched them float and clump together. Downstairs, we finally sat on the couch and turned on the TV, to a sitcom that filled all the pauses with the reactions you were supposed to exhibit—laughter, gasps, “awws.” She gave me a mug of tea and told me to close my eyes and guess. I peeked, saw the green-tea label, and burned my tongue on the first sip. Took another, burned it further, and said, “I taste ginger.”

  * * *

  —

  DAD AND I didn’t end up at Disneyland that day.

  “You’re twelve and you’ve never been to Disneyland,” Dad said, trying to buckle his seat belt, failing. I reached over and buckled it for him. “How is that possible? Remember when we googled all those pictures of Mickey and Minnie? But not Donald, you don’t like Donald.” He slammed his fists on the steering wheel and the car felt smaller, his smell filling every corner of it. “We live an hour away. This has to be fixed today.”

  “I’m thirteen,” I said.

  He started the car and pulled out of the school parking lot. I didn’t think I’d ever been in a car with him when he was sober, so nothing about his driving was out of the ordinary—some swerving, lots of honking, mumbles under his breath about how no one in this city knew how to drive a goddamn car.

  We’d been on the freeway heading south for about five minutes before he turned to me, his face pale, his eyes glassy, staring at me like I was hardly even there. “I need my bed.” His foot was barely pressed on the accelerator and we cruised down to sixty-five, forty-five….When the car hit thirty, the honks started being directed at us. I put my hands over his and steered us to the shoulder. I pulled him out of the car, struggled under his weight. His full body pressed against mine, and I knew my T-shirt would stink of whiskey and sweat for hours after. Once he was curled up in the back, I hopped into the driver’s seat, flipped on the turn signal, and eased back into traffic—I’d been doing this since I was ten, his designated driver before I learned the times tables.

  We didn’t go to Disneyland, but on the way home, I saw a sign for a Burger King drive-thru. I ordered three Whoppers and four large fries, extra sides of ranch. When it was time to pay, I smiled at the lady in the window and she either didn’t notice or didn’t care how old I was. She accepted the damp bills I fished out of my father’s shorts pockets, handed me my bags without looking at me.

  I parked in front of the house and ate two of the burgers and a fistful of fries before I went inside, dropped the rest of the food on the kitchen table for Mom. I left the keys in the ignition and him snoring in the back seat. I hoped he would take the hint and in the morning I’d look out my window and both he and his car would be gone.

  Billy came home from Semi’s party at 11:59 p.m. I wondered if the party was boring or if he really just wanted to honor his word and be back before midnight. I lay in bed, listening to the front door open and close, his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He entered the room and I quickly shut my eyes, mimicked sleep breathing—slower, heavier, relieved of the burden of being awake and conscious. He crawled into bed next to me and wrapped his arms around my waist, buried himself in the space where shoulder became neck. Once I was sure he was asleep, his breathing so easily what I was trying to make mine, I got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs to Dad’s shed.

  I stayed longer than I should have, flipping back and forth between infomercials and a Discovery Channel special about butterflies, tossing Dad’s foam foo
tball against the wall, catching and squeezing it between my hands so tight it disappeared beneath my fingers before I released and threw again. I opened a fourth beer around 5:00 a.m. The first sip of it, I knew I’d made a mistake. I drank the whole can, but made myself throw it up on the grass outside after. I washed my mouth out in the kitchen sink and splashed water on my face twice, thought about how I’d still never been to Disneyland.

  I ran up the stairs, two at a time, and threw open the door to my room, shook Billy awake. “Billy, Billy, you need to wake up.”

  He woke immediately, shooting up straight in bed like he’d been waiting for this moment. “What’s wrong? Is the baby okay? What can I do?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I just wanted to tell you that once the baby’s born we’re taking him to Disneyland. Like, every year we’re going to bring him at least once and take lots of pictures—physical proof, so he’ll never forget.”

  8

  WEDNESDAY CAME. I was in the last couple hours of my shift and Jenny still hadn’t called in.

  I kept glancing from the clock to the phone, hoping. Every time it rang, my heart twitched and started pounding—it’s her, it’s her, it’s her—but then Darryl would hang up and scribble down an order, I’d peek over his shoulder, and there’d be every order except the one I wanted, the names all wrong.

  “Dude, what gives?” Darryl asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you on my ass? And you’re jumpy. It’s tiring me out.”

  Darryl had been in a bad mood the entire shift. He’d walked in that morning wearing sunglasses and mumbled a greeting, sat on the stool behind the register and filled up a soda cup halfway, pulled a new bottle of Bacardi out of his pocket and filled the other half with it. I figured it must’ve been about Carl. He’d taken the sunglasses off, but was still moping.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll try and back off.”

  I couldn’t stop, though. The phone rang again a moment later and I was back out of my seat, looking over Darryl’s shoulder. “Bitch, I swear, I’m going to slap you.”

  The orders rolled in, and at each stop I said a fuck-you in my head to the person I handed the pizza to. I shoved a box roughly into the hands of a guy with face tattoos, flowers in place of his left eyebrow, the name Madison in place of his right. He laughed and said, “Damn, girl. Who pissed in your Cheerios?” A woman whose glasses made her eyes huge and buglike told me that I clearly needed to get right with God, the dark cloud surrounding me would kill me.

  I worried about Jenny. My mind twisted itself into tight pretzel-shapes as I wondered where she was, what had happened to her that was preventing her from calling, what were she and Adam eating without their Wednesday pizza?

  My shift ended and Jenny still hadn’t called. I was tempted to hang around Eddie’s and wait to see if she would, but Darryl’s bad mood had only worsened. He yelled at another delivery driver, who changed the station on the boom box. “What the fuck, Stan? It was just about to reach the chorus.” I didn’t want to see what Darryl would shout at me. I avoided him until my shift ended and was out the door at 7:00 p.m. on the dot.

  There’s nothing wrong with driving by her house, I told myself. I wouldn’t stay long or get out of my car, I just wanted to make sure she was okay. Her car wasn’t in the driveway, and my mind felt so tangled I was afraid what it would look like once I unraveled it, if the knots were even untie-able. I pictured her car at the bottom of a cliff, even though I didn’t know where she would find a cliff in this area. Men with vacant eyes and a dead-end alleyway. Tripping on a sidewalk crack, her head slamming open onto the pavement, red ribbons of her brain leaking out. Who would be at her hospital bedside?

  I was seeing Jenny’s body floating in the Pacific Ocean when her car pulled into the driveway. The car had barely stopped when she opened her door and jumped out, ran to the passenger side, and dragged Adam out. They walked two steps together hand in hand before he stopped, pulled his hand from hers. He stomped his foot on the ground, yelled something I couldn’t hear. It was the most emotion I’d seen out of him. Jenny bent down and tried to take his hands back in hers and he ripped them away again, crossed his arms. She looked panicked, agitated, mostly scared. They both started to cry.

  I was out of my car and moving quickly toward them before Jenny could wipe the tears from her face. I’d never been much of a runner, had moved even less since I got pregnant. The short sprint to them left me winded, a pounding in the space below my lungs, above my stomach. I stood panting within touching, tear-wiping distance of her before I fully realized the decision I had made, the choice to insert myself when I could’ve easily started up my car and pulled away, or even slumped down in my seat and watched quietly over my dashboard.

  We all stood frozen, an awkward triangle. Jenny blinked twice, a tear dripped down her chin into her open mouth. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, which only succeeded in making her face wet and shiny, the moisture emphasizing every line on her forehead, cheeks, the dimple in her chin. She looked cartoonish, a drawing of a starving, cave-dwelling creature. Adam made no effort to stop crying or wipe his tears, just centered his big eyes on me and waited.

  “You didn’t order a pizza,” I said. “I was worried something was wrong.”

  Jenny stiffened. “Nothing’s wrong.” There was a sharpness, a tone I had never heard her use before. It hurt having it directed at me, the edges of those two words cutting, making it hard for me to swallow. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  “Wait.” She grabbed my wrist before I could turn. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Words were funny like that. One moment they could wound you, turn into bricks that would sink to the bottom of your stomach. The next moment those bricks were transforming into butterflies, eagles, pterodactyls, Frisbees, various flying objects rising to your chest and nesting in the spaces between your ribs. I smiled at her, relieved that we were all good. Her fingers felt warm around my wrist.

  “I could use your help, actually.” Her grip on my wrist tightened. She stopped and let go of me and I grabbed her wrist back, tried to send a message through eyes and touch: Ask me anything, I can help with anything. “Could you watch Adam for a bit? I won’t be gone long. I just need—”

  “No.” Our gaze broke and we looked down low to see Adam with his arms crossed, shaking his head. “I won’t stay with her. You can’t leave again.”

  Jenny crouched down to his level, pushed his hair back, and kissed his forehead. “I’m not leaving. I’ll just be gone for a little while.” She kissed his forehead twice more and it seemed almost like a routine, as if she knew every step she had to take in order to calm him down. I tried not to think about how many times she’d done this before, how many times she would do this again. Another forehead kiss. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  “I notice,” he said.

  I put my hand on Adam’s shoulder, kept my eyes on Jenny. “I’ll watch him. Go, do whatever you have to do.”

  My hand felt awkward on Adam’s shoulder as Jenny thanked me, handed me the house key, and told me just to let him watch TV, there was money for takeout in the left-most kitchen drawer, the one with all the batteries. She gave him one last forehead kiss before she turned and got into her car, pulled out of the driveway without looking at us.

  We watched her car disappear around the bend. I was thinking about how I didn’t have Jenny’s cell-phone number, didn’t know how Adam liked his sandwiches, crust on or off. “So,” he said, tugging on my sleeve until I looked away from the spot where Jenny’s car had been and at him. He was no longer crying. “What do we do now?”

  * * *

  —

  ADAM HAD THREE stuffed animals he was on speaking terms with—Mr. Fuzzmister, King Cotton Candy, and Eric. I gestured to the rest of th
e stuffed animals that crowded his bed, were crammed on his shelves. “What about all these guys?” He shoved the chosen three into my arms. “They’re not important.”

  He insisted on showing me every inch of the house. He gave anecdotes as he pointed out landmarks—“And this is the hallway where I tripped once. This is the wall I drew on and Mom yelled at me. I like the color green and I want to grow up and own a store that sells large plants in tiny pots.” He delivered all of these stories flatly, without looking at me. I carried the stuffed animals and nodded at everything he said and tried to ask good questions: “What shade of green and what type of plants?”

  We ended the tour sitting on the living-room carpet. He made me smell a section of the carpet, didn’t tell me until my nose was buried deep in the fibers that he’d peed there once because his friend Stevie double-doggy-dared him. I jerked my head up and fell onto my back, and he laughed. I thought that maybe we were friends now, that I would become one of the stories he told as he showed new people around the house, someone he told Stevie about, would beg Jenny to let me come over and watch him. This is why Jenny trusted me to watch him, I thought. She knew that Adam and I would get along, that if we were birds we’d be flying in the same flock. I started laughing along with him, and then he stopped, stood up, and said, “Okay, I want to be alone now.”

  He walked out a sliding door that led to the backyard, closing it a little more than halfway, just open enough to let a light breeze in. I stayed lying down, turned my face toward the sliding door so the breeze hit my face. I felt something that looked and tasted like rejection, but was deeper, more acidic, and I wondered if this was the feeling that parents got when their children slipped from their grasp, their gaze, and went somewhere they could not, a place where their voices became static and their hands lay stupidly at their sides—what do you do when you know you can do nothing?