“Do you ever bring male parolees in?”
“No,” Abe answered, “just the gals. We got another one due out in a few days. This one was in for kidnapping. She kidnapped two women.”
“How come?”
Charlene dropped another pit in the sink, and shook her head. “Terrible—”
Abe interrupted. “Wasn’t there a baby involved?”
“A video,” she mumbled.
“What kind of video?” I asked, hoping for espionage.
“It was of her. She was a—” Charlene unscrewed the rum bottle and dumped some in. An inch left, she splashed in the rest. “You know. She—” Her face reddened as she punched the blender into action. Crunching ice and the roar of the motor took up the room as I looked at Abe, who had turned to watch the darkening sky. A vague haze of pink still lay on the horizon.
She was a …? My mind blinked then suddenly green apples fell on the supermarket floor and seven-year-old me yelled, “A lesbian?” just as Charlene flicked off the blender.
She started at the word. “Yes. She thought those two women had a video of her and—”
“Her lover?”
“Yes.” Charlene looked as though she was about to cry but pulled herself together and poured peach daiquiris. “Oh, that whole lifestyle, it’s just so—I’m hoping this girl will find her way out. No good comes of it.”
She picked up two glasses, handed one to me and the other to Abe who said, “Well, there’s a lot of homosexuality in prison. And a lot of hatred and anger. When y’got all that hatred, s’no longer the person talking, it’s the anger. What I’ve found over the years is that God never lets you down if you just give it …”
I was agitated now, feeling the fluster of Mum’s hands in the supermarket, hearing the candied threat in our neighbour’s voice. I took a slug of peach daiquiri.
“So, Vivian, I have to ask you this,” said Abe. “Have you had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”
My head swivelled. “My mother was a lesbian.” Abe winced. Charlene put a hand over her eyes. “She died a week ago,” I said.
Abe nodded gravely and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m deeply sorry for you, Vivian. It must have been difficult for you.”
A tear sprang from Charlene’s eye and she wiped it away. I looked back at the dirty dishes and empty rum bottle.
“Vivian,” Abe said, “do you ever wonder what your world woulda been like had y’brought Jesus in, if you’d given all your troubles to Him?” Voice low and warm, he watched me with concern.
I was suddenly aware of my breathing. Abe looked deeply and steadily into my eyes and something in me slipped. Maybe they weren’t being judgmental. Maybe it was the kidnapping lifestyle that upset her. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”
“I think you’re quite a girl,” Abe said. “A passionate girl who probably didn’t have a daddy around to look after her and help her up when she fell down.”
Nerves jumped in my neck. My head shook no and I looked past him to the sky outside. No pink left. We were turning into shadows.
“Ever’body,” Abe drawled, “needs a daddy ’round to hold her and listen to her when she’s troubled. Or where does she end up?”
My limbs had gone heavy and the shrug I managed took everything I had.
“Lookin’ for boys and men,” Abe told me, “to try and fill that void and all of ’em disappoin’er in the end, don’t they?”
This was that Southern voodoo shit I was worried about. I was suddenly a swallowed lamb before him. He was a storybook woodsman ready to slit the belly of the wolf and pull me free.
Glass to my mouth, I sipped to hide my face. I folded my arms and tried to balance the drink casually against my elbow. “‘Jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam,’” I said.
Abe cocked his head.
“I just—it’s a song. Nirvana.”
Abe smiled knowingly. “Jesus does want you, Vivian. He brought you to us. He brought us to you. He took our motorhome away so we would have no choice but to find you—t’show you His face not the face that some snake in the grass showed you. You’re one’a God’s masterpieces, Vivian.” Abe clapped hard at the air and shouted, “You’re his baby-girl and He ain’t never gonna let you fall!”
The corners of my mouth rose.
“Hallelujah,” Abe shouted, grinning, and I wrapped my arms a little tighter.
The cold floor reminded me that I was barefoot. I need my boots. I really need my boots. The clang of the words in my head was unbearably loud.
The next thing I knew, Charlene was wrapped around me, pinning my arms, her forehead buried in my shoulder. Weeping, she squeezed and trilled Hallelujah! into my neck and the glass dropped from my hand.
“Shi—d—darn. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I shook her off and swooped to the floor. “Oh, it’s all over everywhere. Look what I did.”
“Sh-sh-sh, it doesn’t matter. You’re with family now,” Charlene whispered.
Tears dribbled down my own face. “I’m so clumsy. I broke my mother’s Christmas ball. I just dropped it like that. I didn’t mean to.”
“Sh-sh-sh, now-now, it’s okay.”
“Vivian,” Abe murmured, “why don’t you come beside me and we’ll pray together.”
Charlene guided me to Abe. “Good girl, let’s just sit here now,” she said and set me down between her and her husband. “Let’s bring you to Jesus, honey.” She palmed my back.
Somewhere between the dropping and the sitting, I had begun to sob. “I’m sorry. I miss my mother.”
“Sweetheart, your mamma’s passed but you can talk to Jesus.”
Charlene took one of my hands and Abe took the other. Each of them rubbed my back.
“Let Jesus have it.” Abe pulled me tighter to his side. “Let’s pray together now.”
Charlene inched in, pressing closer.
“Lord, we bring to you one of your beautiful children, one of your lost children.” Abe’s face looked pained with concentration. “She has been set afloat on the river like baby Moses and like Moses, Lord, you are going to find her, pluck her from the bullrushes and hold her tight. Jesus, she comes to you now, she lays herself bare at your feet.”
His splayed hand moved up and down my rib cage. “She loves you, Jesus,” he moaned, “and she is ready.”
Noises came out of Charlene that sounded like Arabic mixed with bits that hissed like something hairless.
“Hear me, sweet Jesus,” Abe called at the ceiling. “I bring this child unto you. I am your servant, Lord. I live to serve you, Master.”
Charlene’s head lolled back and her face waved side to side as if she was having a nightmare. Babble spilled and her free arm swayed high in the air.
I had to get up.
Abe’s hand moved higher against the side of my breast, coming round. “Take her Lord, take her Lord, take her Lord.” Moulding and rubbing.
If he realized, he’d be embarrassed; it would ruin everything if he knew where he was touching. I tried to maneuver his fingers back with my arm. Both his hands jumped to my shoulders, buffing and kneading, encircling my neck then back down. “A lost child, naked in the street, Lord, take her, make her your own.”
You’re not wearing a bra, my brain commented. Slutty. I panicked. They think I’m slutty.
One of Abe’s hands grabbed my inner thigh just under the hem of my shorts. Brain stunned into silence, my insides teeter-tottered. His chest behind my shoulder, Abe kept one palm on my thigh, the other firmly against my ribs, fingertips kneading my breast. His voice reverberated through my bones.
I needed to stand up.
Charlene’s jabbering stopped abruptly. I turned my head to her. She frowned at her husband’s hand inside my thigh, massaging my shorts higher. Her hand dropped and hovered in confusion above my other leg.
Abe hollered ceilingward once more: “Say it, Vivian! Say, take me Lord! Say it!”
I opened my mouth, “Ohgod—” turned my head and puked orange
and red across Abe’s lap.
Abe leapt off the bed.
“Oh fuck. Oh god! I’m—” On my feet, I pulled my shorts straight.
Only Charlene sat now, stupefied in the dark.
We were all mute.
The room felt like a stranger’s dirty finger wiggling in my ear. Snake-green numbers glowed on the clock radio. Charlene stared hard. When she spoke, it was English but slurred. “Why dit you have hizzand ondu like that?”
I froze, trying to understand, when suddenly it dawned on me: I’ve been tricked. I couldn’t understand when she spoke in tongues—because it was the devil talking through her. The hair on my arms bristled and goosebumps ran up my thighs—They made me throw up.
I whispered, “Don’t touch me.” The lanterns outside pulled my gaze. I made a stumbling dash toward the open door.
Tripping over my threshold, I fell into my room and turned the lock. My heart thrashed.
I flicked the light on, staggered backward against the wall and leaned there panting. My feet were filthy and there was something wet on my toes. As I reached forward, I caught sight of the orange and red slime on my arm.
A knock at the door. I jumped, falling back a step.
Not my door. It was the next door. Abe knocked and murmured at the room between mine and theirs. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. Don’t be embarrassed. You just had too much to drink. It’s okay. Let me in, sweetheart.”
I flicked my light off, and stood still. Fuck, how did I get this drunk? I held a hand over my mouth, scared he’d hear me breathe. I put my ear against the door.
“Vivian, honey, lemme in. We love you. Jesus loves you.”
Picking the curtain away from the window, I could see his back and sleeve, my vomit on his leg.
Jesus-people don’t make those lizard sounds, I thought. It all made sense now. I sat down in the dark.
“Lemme in, sweetheart. Let me wash you. I’ll wash you clean, honey.”
Then Charlene’s howl. “Abe, what’re you doing? That’s not even her room. Abe?”
“Charlene, simmer down. Y’had too much drink.”
“A-a-be! She doesn’t … Abe. I’m sick too and your place is with me, looking after me.”
My stomach lurched and I hurled myself toward the bathroom.
7:00 a.m. The desk from under the window was pushed against the door with the television on top. My mouth was thick and sticky. Crawling out of bed, I went to the bathroom. What time did I go to bed? Couldn’t’ve been later than eleven or so. The memory of throwing up in Abe and Charlene’s room hit me hard and I dropped to my knees, face over the clean shiny toilet. One small dry heave. I rested my forehead on the seat.
Did that fucker really grab my tit whilst leading me to God?
Raising my head, I opened my mouth and stretched it wide, as if trying to pop my ears on a plane. The last thing I remembered with any clarity was the manager, someone called the manager on them. I rummaged until I found my makeup bag with the Ativan and Gravol, dumped one of each in my palm and tossed them into my mouth. Never drinking again. My lips pushed under the tap and I sucked back cold water until I remembered something more beautiful than the sound of a motel manager telling off vomit-covered Christians.
I trudged back toward the bed saying a prayer for peace and tranquility and rooted in my bag until I came to a thin lump on the bottom covered by black electrician’s tape. Peeling it off, I opened a gnarled bit of Cellophane and plucked out the Holy Spirit: a slightly squashed joint. I climbed back under the bedcovers. As I kissed the joint, I grabbed my purse, flashed The Flames of Celia Dare and knew that Jesus still loved me.
It was 11:00 a.m. when I woke again, drowsy but not queasy. When I opened the door, the sun was high and the heat hugged just tight enough to make me feel wanted. Only the cleaning women were out there now. One of them picked up a lone chicken-greased plate as she straightened out the lounge chairs.
Eight
NO TOWN IS TOO SMALL FOR A STARBUCKS, IT SEEMS, SO I headed for the familiar and picked myself up some breakfast to go. Cigarette, coffee and muffin in hand, I took a wander through the short slim core of Danaville, trying to psyche myself up. I was determined to go back to Annie’s but nothing about a hangover engenders confidence in a woman.
I paused in the window of a clothing shop and, shifting from boot to boot, remembered I’d vowed to get a sundress today. A couple bright-but-dull little jersey numbers hung on the mannequins in front of me. Taking a drag off my smoke, I caught the reflection of a young man strolling down the sidewalk behind me. Conservatively dressed, the woman with him had salt-and-pepper hair and an earthy aristocratic face. They turned their heads in unison to take in the sight of me and exchanged glances. Mother and son. I looked back at my own reflection: a mop of stale-popcorn yellow draped around my sunglasses, straggling in a serpentine orgy. Smoke curled up past my eyes and over my head; my Indian Motorcycle T-shirt sat a couple inches over my silver belt buckle. There’s this bitch who’s just a fuck machine and she can’t get enough. I had showered for half an hour before I left the motel but I couldn’t get the feel of his fingers off my breast. Fuck y’all, I thought and chomped the last of the muffin, throwing the wrapper in a trash bin by the curb. The alcohol remorse I had this morning was worse than any I could remember in some time. You didn’t do anything, I reminded myself, they did.
Inside I grabbed two T-shirt dresses and a couple of pairs of non-buttfloss underwear. The store clerk asked if I’d mind putting my cigarette out. I flicked it out the door and she looked vaguely appalled, but said nothing as she hung the dresses up in a change room. She glanced at the stretch of skin between my baby tee and jeans. “That’s quite a belt buckle,” she commented. “What does it say?”
I looked down. “Lick.”
“Oh.” Tan cotton trousers and collared blouse aside, she was likely only twenty-five or so. “No point leaving them guessing, I suppose.” She held the curtain open.
Inside the dressing room, I realized I’d forgotten to put on makeup. A bit of dark smudge from last night’s mascara was about all that remained since my shower. Opening my purse, I put on some lipstick but the face on me looked worse with it than without. I grabbed a tissue from the box sitting on the stubby stool in the corner and blotted my lips a little before I pulled off my clothes. I replaced my sunglasses so that neither the outside world nor I would have to suffer.
The yellow dress hung lank and straight at the sides, almost to my knees. It was sized small but sacklike nonetheless. Gathering material at the waist, I sighed. “Who do you need to impress? Old Bat Annie?”
“What’s that?” the clerk inquired, primly helpful.
I pulled the curtain aside. “Kinda looks like shit on me.”
Everything about me caused a slight recoil in the store clerk. Maybe the whole town. “I think it looks quite elegant,” she said.
Elegant. Who in god’s name would look at me and say elegant.
I glanced back over my shoulder, pushed my sunglasses up a second, dropped them back down my nose. “Haven’t you got anything more … oh, forget it. I’ll get the blue one too.” The idea of putting my jeans back on made me claustrophobic.
“We’re having a bit of early heat right now. You don’t want anything too clingy.”
“Uh-huh.” I pulled the curtain and tried the bikini undies on over my thong. Hauling the dress up, I took a gander at them. Kind of cute, baby blue. They didn’t show through the dress. “I’ll get the underwear too. And have you got any thongs? I mean, ah, like the foot kind? Flip-flops or sandals or whatever?”
Hair balled up in the scrunchy again, old clothes stuffed in the bag with the blue version of the dress and undies, I wandered down the sidewalk in my new red flip-flops and yellow dress, and found myself stopped in front of a hairdresser’s. I gazed at the posters of sleek-haired models covering the lower half of the window and tried to remember if I ever looked like that even in Tokyo before I’d started into bleach. Maybe I’d feel bet
ter if I got my roots done by a pro. Maybe this is what a girl should do the morning after: get her hair done and buy new clothes.
Inside the salon, Barry Manilow’s voice sidled through the air. Not a soul inhabited the chairs. No one was in view anywhere until a redhead walked out from behind a back curtain.
“Got time for a trim?” I asked.
“Sure, what the heck.” She looked at her watch. “Don’t have anything else till two.”
“Maybe a root job?”
She patted a chair and handed me a magazine. Her own hair was verging on fuchsia, up and back in a French roll. No point in judging a stylist by her lid, I supposed. They all have lab fur: too much experimentation.
Overhead, Manilow began to moan at Mandy. “Snazzy tunes,” I said into the mirror as I opened the limp-paged hair magazine.
“My twelve o’clock cancelled. She likes Barry.” The stylist peered down at my hair part as she reached into her apron. “Whoa, Nelly, those are some dark roots. Explains the rest of it.” Sticking a mint in her mouth, she sucked without offering one.
Fingers into my crown, she raised the roots. “Must have to do a touch-up every week or something. Though, some girls like that punky style with the black striping in the under layers. Doesn’t seem as if that’s what you’re goin’ for.” Then she took hold of the ends and bunched it up to my shoulders. “Would you hate my guts if I said you need more than a trim?”
Looking in the mirror, I mechanically flipped pages and said, “Looks like shit, doesn’t it?” I guess this was presumed a rhetorical question because I got no response.
A brunette with jaw-length shiny tresses shot me a smug look from the magazine. I sighed, suddenly exhausted at the thought of my hair, my clothes, myself. I felt as if I were my own cage today, and without bringing my eyes up said, “Ah, fuck it.”
She crunched her mint.
Back out on the sidewalk, my head felt inhumanly light, as though it had been transplanted with a hamster’s. I may as well have been naked for the sense of security I was left with. Bag on one wrist, I pushed the fingers of my free hand back and through my hair, hands dropping off the ends with a start. I turned my head, phantom strands catching in my armpit. Nothing. Shaking my head, the hairs moved individually, wiggly on my scalp. It felt as though I were doing something obscene in public.
Cease to Blush Page 15
