Sister Golden Hair: A Novel

by Darcey Steinke

  In mid-February, Julie dragged the cardboard box out of her office and passed out our costumes. I held the bag on my lap as we drove home after class. Julie didn’t want to chat; she was preoccupied. During class she’d gotten one of the older girls to lead while she retreated into her office to talk on the phone and sip wine from her thermos.

  “Tell your mother I can’t make it tonight,” Julie said as she dropped me off. As I walked up the sidewalk to our front door, Julie turned the car around in a wide, jerky U-turn and headed back out of Bent Tree.

  Inside, my mom was all set up as usual with her cheese plate, The Music Man on the stereo, wearing her best fifties shirtwaist dress. When I told her, her eyes filled up with water. She was a 4 going down into a 3. Maybe I should make an excuse for Julie to comfort my mom, but I was sick of her misery being at the center of every moment. I was well on my way now to making my own glittery and glamorous life.

  I ran upstairs into the bathroom, locked the door, and tore the plastic off my costume. The color was neon red with one long sleeve sewn with navy sequins. The other side was sleeveless, a daring design but one I considered fantastic. I pulled down the leotard I’d worn to class. I had hairs now down there but I was still so skinny my ribs stuck out. I pulled on my costume, and I have to admit I was starstruck. I’d had Halloween costumes, the bumblebee hand-me-down from a girl at church and a princess one my mom had made for me. But this was my first for the stage. My exposed arm looked pale against the red, but I hoped that, like a space suit, the Lycra would propel me into another dimension.

  I looked at my reflection carefully. Did this girl have that special something? Was this girl ready to begin her slow climb to stardom? I adored the way the girl in the mirror did the snake, jerked forward into a lunge, checked her watch a few times, and then froze, grinning into her reflection like her life depended on it.

  Usually Julie had left for her studio by the time I got home from school, but one day I came in the door to see her and my mom on the couch together, two bottles of wine on the coffee table between them, both flushed and serious. Julie’s eyes were red and she held a clump of tissues in her hand.

  “Is jazz canceled?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer me, just put her hands over her face and gave a loud, dramatic sob.

  Phillip stood in the kitchen with the fridge door wide open. My mom had promised to go to the store while we were at school and get chips and Little Debbie cakes.

  “Is there anything to eat?” he asked, slamming the door and opening the cupboards.

  “How should I know?” my mother said.

  We glanced at each other. It was like he’d asked for food from a stranger who happened to be visiting our house.

  Phillip rolled his eyes, grabbed a can of Coke, and went up to his bedroom. I got out the cocktail crackers. There were a few at the bottom; I decided to eat them with margarine, preparing them slowly as if I were the queen and the crackers my subjects.

  “My life is shit,” Julie said, struggling to get the words over her tongue and out of her mouth.

  “That’s not true,” my mother said, grabbing her hand.

  “I lost my house!” Julie said. “And look at my daughter!”

  Julie picked up the bottle of wine and poured what was left into her own mug. I opened a kitchen drawer and they both looked up at me with the same distant, loony expression.

  “Don’t you have homework?” my mom said.

  I nodded and started up the stairs, the crackers on a Pyrex plate and a jelly glass of cold milk in my hand. I set the plate and the milk on the top step and walked down the hall to my parents’ room where Phillip was lying on the bed watching the small black-and-white TV that sat on the dresser. I opened my bedroom door and slammed it hard so they would think I was inside.

  I sat in my usual eavesdropping spot at the top of the stairs. All I heard was Julie crying softly over the noise of the needle hitting the end of the record. Julie told my mom how the school had called to say that Kira had fallen while carrying her tray in the cafeteria. When Julie picked her up Kira was fine but had food all over her dress, even in her hair. I put a cracker in my mouth, let the margarine melt against my tongue.

  “How will she ever make it?” Julie said. “Every girl needs a certain amount of grace.”

  “She’s just in an awkward phase,” my mom said.

  “You really think so?”

  “With your genes she’s bound to snap right out of it.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Julie said. “It’s not like your daughter has much to work with either.”

  I set the milk down on the carpet and looked very hard at the strands moving this way and that around the base of the jelly glass.

  My mom laughed. She laughed. And said if they ran out right that minute they could get to the Hunting Hills open house and see both the one with the cathedral ceilings and the one with the veranda off the master bedroom. I walked into my room, threw myself down on the bed, and lay there with my face pushed into the quilt.

  I’d never claimed to be beautiful. I wasn’t stupid enough not to see that my arms and neck were much too long for my body. My head seemed to hang over my shoulders like a wobbly marionette. My eyes were gray-blue. Unremarkable. Dirty-blonde hair. There was nothing about me you could really call attractive. I had always known this in a vague way. But now I knew for sure.

  That night I slept in my clothes, and in the morning I didn’t change or shower. I just got on the bus wearing the same outfit. This was a sort of small-time suicide. “Didn’t you wear that same thing yesterday?” Sheila asked me in homeroom. Rather than answer I grabbed her wrist and twisted her skin into an Indian handshake. Sheila’s face got red and she called me a stupid bitch. My English teacher’s reading of an Emily Dickinson poem made me sick. The way she overarticulated each word felt like a knife stabbing me in the eye. I called the Belle of Amherst a morbid bitch under my breath and got sent to the principal. Lucky for me he wasn’t there; he was probably off at the smorgasbord restaurant in Salem eating a huge plate of potato salad.

  I just sat in a chair, waiting and watching the secretaries move around the office like fish in an aquarium. The dark-haired one answered the phone and told parents about teacher conferences. The red-haired one told the others about a burger, fries, and soda special at McDonald’s, and the oldest lady, with the bouffant, said, “I don’t know how you girls keep your figures.” The principal called to say he was held up. The gray-haired secretary told me it was my lucky day, I was free to go.

  I didn’t go back to class. I wandered out to the smoking block. Dwayne leaned against the building with the heel of his Dingo boot propped up against the brick wall. He was talking to one of the dirtbag girls.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in!” he said.

  Through the oblong window I saw a teacher with a terrible haircut standing in front of his class. I saw the backs of kids’ heads. Round my feet were cigarette butts and in the sky a warmthless sun. I watched a small beetle crawl over the asphalt and when it got near me I reached my leg out and killed it with my tennis shoe.

  That night my mom set out the cheese and crackers and was dressed as usual. I went right to my room. Now I was giving her the silent treatment. She didn’t notice. She just ran to the door whenever she heard a car on the street.

  It wasn’t until late in the night that Julie finally came back. I watched her from my bedroom window, falling out of her car and wobbling down the stairs of her duplex on her high heels. When she got to her front door she rooted around in her pocketbook for keys. I heard our door slam and saw my mom run over to Julie.

  Julie looked at my mom like she did not know her, then her face twisted up and she must have said something mean, because my mom spun around, ran across the dirt, and came back to our house.

  I heard her crying in the bathroom. But really, why should I feel sorry for her? She was a 3 moving to a 2. I was fed up with her. I’d spent most of my childhood trying to
cheer her up, and now I was exhausted. So exhausted I could not sleep. No matter which way I turned, my back was stiff and my eyes speedy and wide open.

  I heard my mother go into the bedroom and yell at my dad, who was in bed, as usual, reading. My mother screamed at him and my father came rushing out of the bedroom, ran down the stairs, and walked over to Julie’s duplex. I ran out onto the front yard, barefoot in my long T-shirt. The grass was cold under my feet and the stars above were like specks of ice.

  Julie swung open her door wearing a pale-pink nightgown and holding a glass of white wine.

  “How dare you talk to my wife like that?”

  “This is between the two of us, pastor.”

  She spit out the last word, as if it were a curse.

  “You’re a wreck,” my dad said, grabbing her glass and flinging the wine out on the sidewalk.

  “You’re the wreck,” Julie said, furious now, coming at my dad and pointing her finger into his chest, “with your dream-therapy bullshit.”

  My father’s face stilled; my mother must have told Julie, complained to her, about his spiritual floundering.

  She put her hands on her hips.

  “Clean up your own mess, pastor,” Julie said, “before you tell me to clean up mine.”

  My dad swung back around toward our duplex.

  “In the house, Jesse,” he said to me. “Now!”

  My dad was downstairs smoking his pipe; I could smell the sweet tobacco. He didn’t want to talk. He’d told me to go to my room where I now lay staring up at the ugly overhead lampshade with the black dots of dead bugs. I felt like I was in a fairy tale that was running backward, like in school when the teacher wound the film strips the wrong way. The church with the eternal light on the dark altar, the expanse of grass between the church and rectory, my room with the diamond-pane window, and the deep organ chords moving into my room and around my bed, that place and time was a sort of heaven—the end, not the beginning, of the fairy tale. Ever since we’d been thrown out, our life held no purpose; it was like riding in a driverless bus, careening ever closer to the guardrail. I’d had enough. I was getting off.

  I loaded a pair of corduroys, my smiley face T-shirt, a sweater, several pairs of underwear, and the Big Book of Burial Rites all in my black patent-leather suitcase.

  This wasn’t the first time I’d run off.

  At six, when I’d heard we had to leave our first rectory, I’d packed up my dolls in this same suitcase and run to an old barn on the church property. At eight, after hearing we had to move again, I’d run to my friend’s house. Even though her family was not home, I spent six hours waiting in their backyard. In Philadelphia, when my dad first told us we were moving to Virginia, I’d set out with my school backpack full of apples to the graveyard at the end of our block. I planned to wait until my parents and brother moved, and then I would sneak back into the house and sleep on the wicker furniture on the side porch.

  The other times I didn’t have a plan, but this time I intended to hitchhike to New York City. If I couldn’t find any other job, I figured I could always work as a prostitute. Maybe I wasn’t beautiful, but I was young, and I knew that, as sick as it was, creepy guys liked young girls to tickle them with feathers.

  I dropped my suitcase out the window. Unfortunately the lock gave and my clothes scattered over the grass. I crept down the stairs. Phillip stood in the kitchen in his pajamas staring into the fridge. In the dark, the radiating light made him look divine.

  “Where are you going?” he said, letting the door suck shut; the light extinguished and he was my brother again.

  “For a walk,” I said. I wanted to be candid with him, but it was too risky. Nothing would sabotage my freedom.

  “Now?”

  “I need some air.”

  “Can I come?”

  “You go back to bed.”

  “What about the guy who eats little kids’ fingers?”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “Remember you promised if you ever ran away you’d take me with you.”

  “I’m just going out for a walk.”

  He headed up the stairs with his handful of Oreos. I felt bad about lying to him now, but I’d come back and break him out too once I got settled someplace.

  Outside it was chilly, the grass crosshatched with frost. Light moved at a slower pace at night, outlined objects in silver-lavender. I ran around the side of the house and gathered my clothes back into my suitcase. A dog slept on an old ski jacket behind 2A, and Mr. Ananais’s cat, Hector, looked up at me briefly, then put his head back on his paws on the window ledge.

  I was trying to figure out what my new Social Security number should be; I knew I had to keep the first three digits the same, but I intended to change the rest and my name too. I was thinking of Veronica or Agnes. To be honest, I didn’t want a name but a number, like 99 on Get Smart. I liked the sound of 72 and also 68. When I got to my crash pad in New York I would dye my blonde hair jet-black, like Cher’s.

  I wanted to run out of Bent Tree, but I knew that would look even more suspicious than the already suspicious fact that I was walking around at 2:00 AM. So I walked fast down the incline toward the highway saying good-bye. Good-bye, mountain with your dark pine trees and white-ridged mushrooms growing on dead trees in a way that was both cool and creepy. Good-bye, luna moth with the Mardi Gras–mask wings. Good-bye, Sandy’s underwear drawer with the zebra-skin panties and blood-red lace bra. Good-bye, Snowball. Good-bye, Dwayne. Good-bye, Dwayne’s chewing tobacco. Good-bye, fat lady in 15A who exercised in front of the TV on a bath towel. Good-bye, hoarding guy in 5B with newspapers piled up to the second-floor windows.

  Hello, adventure!

  I would have to walk along 419 for a while before I got to the 81 ramp. I’d decided it was too risky to catch a ride from anybody on that strip. How terrible would it be if my principal picked me up? Or Dwayne’s dad on his way back from the bar? Not that many cars passed anyway.

  When I finally heard an engine, I ran and hid behind the bushes on the little woodchip island in front of the Texaco gas station. I worried it was my dad driving around looking for me or, worse, the police. I decided to get off 419 and walk lot to lot.

  First I crossed the lot in front of the Allstate Insurance building. It was like running up onto an empty stage. The asphalt glittered under the lights. Then a few yards of bare trees and on to another lot in front of the courthouse, then the lot in front of the post office. All the buildings, private or municipal, looked pretty much the same: two-story, nondescript structures in brick and glass. In the black glass I looked like a girl made of smoke. I would slip into the night and become one with everything, like my dad was always talking about. I’d be the same as a fern frond or a Styrofoam cup on the side of the highway.

  I moved through another patch of woods into the lot of the Hardee’s; then the Long John Silver’s; then the McDonald’s, almost to the highway ramp. The shining yellow-and-red building looked like a piece broken off from the sun. When I was five, a McDonald’s had opened down the street from our rectory, and for a long time I thought it was the best place God had created, with the sweet fries and the strawberry milkshakes. I’d included it in my prayers, after my immediate family and before my grandparents.

  When I was almost across the lot I heard a car moving behind me and ran for a bush in another woodchip island floating between the highway and the lot. The car slowed and turned. I was afraid it was my dad, his overcoat pulled over his pajamas. But as the car moved past, and I saw the teenagers in the front seat, I remembered that behind the McDonald’s Dumpster was a path that led to a spot where kids laid down blankets and had sex. I clenched my fists and stuck my fingernails into the palms of my hands. The slight prick of pain reminded me that I was substantial, that I wasn’t blowing away into the dark.

  Finally I walked up the ramp.

  Part of me wished my dad would come get me, but he was too preoccupied with whether the snake in his dream meant
renewal because it shed its skin, or whether it meant he needed to face the evil side of his personality. Maybe I could run to Jill, we could paint our toenails, regroup, and then set off together. But though I wanted to see her, I had no idea where to find my friend. My dad had told me not to worry, that the universe would care for Jill, but I’d found, so far anyway, that the universe was not so reliable. We are as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean, my dad read out to me. But I wanted to love Jill and have her love me back. I wanted people to love me and I wanted to love them back. I didn’t want to give Jill over to the universe. I wanted to love her myself.

  I looked down the highway, hoping that before too long a car filled with flower-power hippies would pick me up. They’d be long-haired, smiley, wearing floppy hats and love beads. They’d have names from nature, like Snapdragon, Leaf, Bear. They’d drop me off in New York City before heading upstate to their goat farm. I’d seen a lot of hippies on television but only a handful in Roanoke. When you did see them, because they were so rare, they looked out of place, as if you were hallucinating. Once I’d seen two girls playing tennis topless, hitting back and forth and laughing, their long hair swinging as they lunged for the ball.

  But no hippies came. Only a few trucks and a white Cadillac. Out here, kudzu covered the trees and the air was cold. Nobody stopped. I sat on the guardrail and ate a few of my Fig Newtons, looking up at the tent caterpillar’s old nests, spread gauzy white all over the trees. I thought of my family sleeping in their beds in the dark duplex. Phillip slept in the small room off my parents’, a walk-in closet really, with just enough space for his twin bed. He slept sprawled out in his toolbox pajamas like a drunken sailor. My parents had spooned in the old days, my dad wrapped around my mom, but now they each stuck to opposite sides of the bed. My dad slept on his back, his head propped up with pillows in a way that seemed baronial. My mom slept on her side, her arms around a pillow, her face taut; even in sleep she was a 5 moving toward a 4. I thought of Kira and Snowball, of Julie in her silk sleeping mask and how Sandy slept with Noxema on her face. I even thought of my old unicorn girl, up above Bent Tree, curled on a soft patch of moss.