Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  Is she really the right girl for you? I ask. For real, for real?

  Always has been, he says. Cross my heart and hope to die.

  It smells different up in Tampa, on the other side of the state. Swampier, I think. Billboards with goopy fetuses on them dash by. Alien-looking creatures that I want to squeeze in my hands like putty. I have a heartbeat, they read. Do the right thing.

  When do we get to go on our date? I ask. It’s getting dark, and the mere fact of evening makes my body buzz with current.

  Lacey hasn’t come through yet, he says, so let’s hit up some grub.

  Uncle Whack drives us to a freight train, plugged right into the ground.

  I used to come here all the time, he says. Choo choo! He pulls his arm like he’s a conductor, but I don’t laugh. He opens the door for me. M’lady.

  We sit facing each other in a small booth on the train. White tablecloths. A single rose in a plastic vase. Older couples sit around us in baseball caps—the Dolphins, the Canes, the Heat.

  You ever try a steak before? Uncle Whack asks me. Filet mignon? Best of the best?

  I don’t think so, I say. Mostly I eat a lot of pigs. And Campbell’s soup. And lobster.

  Well, tonight’s the night, he says, clapping his palms and rubbing them together. I got the Mad Man’s cash, and a hot date!

  We’ll share a filet, he tells a waitress. Rare.

  When the steak comes, I watch Uncle Whack slice it and fork a cube on his tongue. I watch him chew with his mouth open, the way I am always told not to do, with fleshy fibers of red flashing between his teeth. A pool of oily blood shines around the meat, and I slice off a piece of my own. I take it between my teeth, then into my mouth. I suck the juices, bite. The saltiness sticks in my molars as I grind my jaw and slice some more.

  This is the best moment of my life, I say, looking at him. I mean it.

  After dinner, Uncle Whack pulls us into a Red Roof Inn. The red neon letters look like cartoon daggers. Can we stay somewhere else? I want to know. I don’t think I like it here.

  We’re not rolling up to the Ritz, ma, he says. You’re not with mommy and daddy.

  There are two beds inside the room. A brown, sticky carpet between them. When I sit on the foot of the bed, I feel the other half of the mattress rise up. The ceiling is covered in a popcorn plaster, and I imagine a chunk of it falling into my mouth in the middle of the night, choking me. I do not want to die in a Red Roof Inn.

  Look, a TV, says Uncle Whack. You’re used to those. He flips through the channels—a rainbow of static, a weather report, Nickelodeon, a lion tearing up a zebra. Fun! he says. Make yourself comfortable so you can sleep, okay ma?

  I go into the bathroom to change into my lavender silk pajama set. I look in the mirror, examine my crooked bangs, the holes in my ears pierced too high up, the hair sprouting between my eyebrows. My buckteeth peek out so far from between my lips that it’s difficult to close them. I do not want to look like a baby anymore. I do not want to die in a Red Roof Inn.

  When I walk back into the bedroom, Uncle Whack is counting the wad of cash on his bed.

  Listen to me, he says, sitting down. I’ve got to go find Lacey now. That cool?

  That is not cool, I say. That is definitely not cool.

  I won’t be long, he says. You’ll fall asleep and I’ll be back. You’ll wake up tomorrow and Uncle Whack’ll be right here, ready for the roller coasters, okay? You like that Kumba ride, don’t you? That big blue?

  I feel it in my throat first. The tight knot that always unfurls itself into a shakiness all over my face. From there I can never stop the tears from coming, and I hate myself for it. I slam my fists into the mattress.

  Don’t leave me, I wail. Please, I love you, don’t leave me.

  It’s okay, ma, he says. He moves over to my bed to hug me. He pulls my face into his chest. Shhhhh, it’s okay, girl. Damn, damn, you’re just a kid.

  I kick myself under the covers and tell him I’ll never speak to him again. I’ll tell my parents that he kidnapped me for ransom as soon as I can find a phone. I’ll run away. I’ll drown myself, facedown, in the motel bathtub. La la la, I sing. I’m not even listening to you. The thought of him leaving feels worse than any other time I’ve ever been left; I didn’t know this one was coming.

  I’ll be back soon, he says, promise, and the door slams before I can take any of it back.

  The next morning, I wake up to Uncle Whack smoking in the corner of the room. His eyes are swollen, staring out the window, and his skunk stripe is dangling down on the side of his head. His beeper is on the coffee table in front of him, dark and still.

  How was Lacey? I ask.

  She didn’t come through, he says. He won’t look at me. Maybe today. Maybe at the park. Come on, get dressed.

  Uncle Whack delivers on exactly what he promised. He lets me ride all the roller coasters I want to ride—the Kumba, the Montu—twice, and then three times, over and over again. I hold his hand in the line for every ride, and stand next to the wooden height requirement signs to show him that I’m okay. On the Congo River Rapids ride, we get so drenched our shirts suction our bodies. Uncle Whack checks his beeper constantly, but it’s not hooked on his belt loop anymore; it’s tucked away in his pocket.

  So where’s the famous Lacey? I ask.

  She’s caught up, he says.

  We stop at a concession stand. Uncle Whack buys me a turkey leg and a pack of Sour Punch Straws that I zip up in my fanny pack. We sit down at a picnic table under an umbrella, and I gnaw the meat off the bone, offer him a bite.

  Can we see the giraffes? I say. I hear they have purple tongues.

  Sure ma, he says.

  I had a good time on this trip with you, Wendall, I say.

  I’m your Uncle Whack; don’t forget it. He looks more serious now, his eyes covered by thin, black glasses. I can tell by the shade of his nose that he’s been crying under there.

  Okay, Wendall, I say.

  This’ll stay a secret between us, right ma? he says. Tampa and all.

  Yes, Wendall.

  Listen, I love this girl.

  It’s true that I’ll keep this secret, always, until now. Secrets are the only kind of love I know. It’s also true that my parents will never ask much about what we did. Years from now, I’ll ask whatever happened to Uncle Whack, and my mother will say, I remember him. The nicest boy.

  I open my fanny pack and take out a Sour Punch Straw. I bite into it again and again until the foot-long candy is just a few inches of gritty sugar hanging out of my mouth.

  You can’t eat strawberry flavored shit if you’re Lil Kiwi, he says. That ain’t right.

  I don’t want to be Lil Kiwi anymore, I say.

  Oh yeah? Then who?

  Call me Sandy, I say. It’s my show name.

  The next week, as promised, my father takes me to Las Vegas. Our connecting flight is in St. Louis, and we’re delayed; there’s a storm coming through. My father is irritable in the airport, shaking his foot, tapping his pinky ring against the armrest. He points over to the smoking lounge. It looks like a giant ice cube from across the terminal—a glass square with eerie cloudiness. You can handle it, right? says my father. You’re a big girl now.

  I clamp my mouth closed as we walk into the room. I do not want to be poisoned to death in the St. Louis airport. I sit next to my father on a bench, and we’re surrounded by other people with their own brands of smokes, their own newspapers and headlines. I want to talk to each and every person, ask where they’re going, but everyone, including my father, is quiet. They puff. They read. The streams of smoke break, then lift. It looks like ballet—this evidence of adulthood. My father wraps his arm around me like he’s proud, and I rest my head in his armpit, open my mouth, breathe in the gray air as deeply as I can. I hold it. Breathe out.

  There are old, splintered, wooden seats back at our boarding gate. The wood is soft; it gives way to my thumbnail. The wood is scattered with initials and drawings—hear
ts, stars, and forevers—and when my father goes to the bathroom, I sneak the keys to his Jaguar out of his sports jacket pocket for my own message. I want to carve my name into the armrest to honor this day, the day I was woman enough to sit inside the smoking room, but I’m afraid to get caught before our flight; I’m afraid of proof; I think someone might arrest me.

  I grip the keys in a fist and bring it down. Push and drag it.

  CRY BABY

  His name is Quince Pearson. Quince has black hair, expressive hands, an infomercial smile I will never have. He’s the star basketball player, but we share an Honors history class because Quince is not afraid to be smart, to crinkle up his forehead and consider the past. My heart burst last week when Quincy did a presentation on Euripides. He unzipped his khaki uniform shorts at the front of the classroom, scissor kicked them off his ankles till his belt buckle clacked against the wall. We all stared at Quince’s Abercrombie boxers, his pale, hairless legs, as he said, Eu-rip-a-dese-pants-off! That’s how you wanna remember this dude! I think Quince is the most creative person I’ve ever met. He is eleven going on twenty.

  Today, my homeroom teacher, Mrs. McBoner, wheels over our classroom television and fumbles to click it on for the morning announcements. Her name is really Mrs. McBride, but we’ve renamed each of our teachers and given them upgrades—Ms. Clit, Mrs. Tear-My-Condom, Dr. Gooch, Ms. Dyke-Hoochie. The TV snaps on and off, switches channels, because some kids in class installed computer programming into their wristwatches and this allows them to control the TV. Sometimes, during a test, one of them will turn the TV on mute, raise the volume to the max, then unmute so the speakers blare some kind of Days of Our Lives romance scene. This made Mrs. Tear-My-Condom cry on behalf of Mr. Tear-My-Condom being dead, and her suspicion that he was reaching out to her in this small, tacky way.

  I’m in middle school now, and my best friend’s name is Clarissa Donoto. She’s in the seat next to me, taking notes on the morning announcements. We’re best friends because Clarissa is also tormented and, together, we torment other losers. She’s got a scraped-off dinner plate kind of face—round, blemished, pale—but she’s the smartest girl in school with the bubbliest handwriting. Today a boy named Harry sits behind her bouncing his sneakers on her metal desk basket until her double-chin jiggles. Fat Fuck! Fat Fuck! Fat Fuck! he whispers, leaning his lumpy, pink face into the back of her hair, but Clarissa is used to this by now—a pro—she never cries; her eyes don’t even leave the TV screen.

  The high schoolers on television read from a sheet of paper. They make stupid jokes and talk about Dan Marino’s legacy and how he will build us a new football field made of state-of-the-art Astroturf. His son attends our school, but he doesn’t even play football—he’s into drama.

  Surprise, surprise, the high schoolers say on the screen, a middle school dance this weekend! No uniforms necessary. It’s goin’ down in the gym!

  I reach over to grab Clarissa by the shoulder, but she gives me a look like, Ugh, Stop. Clarissa is my only friend, but she is also trying to move up. Outside school, we sing every word of Rent, tell secrets, and look up pictures of Bonsai Kittens with the bedroom lights off; her mom makes us baked ziti and classic Italian desserts; I attend Clarissa’s soccer games. But in school, our friendship is cautionary. Clarissa grew up with members of the A-crowd, the most popular, and when they start on me she’s allowed to join in on the chanting, Your underwear is showing, Queera. Get bent! I know where I stand: I wear a soup thermos with a strap around my neck, a back brace; I have an imaginary boyfriend named Brahman; I roll a suitcase filled with books because my equestrian posture is still considered precious and can’t handle any excess weight. My nose bleeds onto my desk at least twice a day. I want Clarissa to move up, and I’m no good for that. It’s an arrangement I understand—a deal I would, and eventually will, gladly take for myself.

  It’s 1999 and our prep school is one of the first in the country to issue mandatory laptops to every student. They’re called Study-Pros, and they’re wired to a group of men in the library called the Tech-Center who observe and control how we use them. If we get distracted in class, clicking around on Napster, a member of the Tech-Center will often move the arrow of our mouse directly to the “X” like some phantom conscience. Recently, a member of the Tech-Center called my father to tell him I had downloaded porn videos onto my Study-Pro after school hours, when I didn’t think it counted. My father told him to go fuck right off.

  We call the Study-Pros Craptops. They look like baby tombstones, cold to the touch, a gritty silver with blue rubber bumpers and handles. Because the school says they are indestructible, each class has made it their mission to destroy them. There’s nothing more thrilling than watching the A-crowd hurl their computers into the school lake and then onto the asphalt of the pickup loop, where high schoolers run them over in BMWs. The only way they stop is if the president’s Maybach creeps up. The president of our school—a huge, booming man with pants too short—has a chauffeur drive him from building to building in order to keep us in line. He’ll be investigated for fraud and money laundering just after we graduate, claims he will deny, but right now, this is still his school, his ways.

  Clarissa and I are waiting outside the drama building for our moms to pick us up. She’s just finished a Key Club meeting, and I’ve just exercised one of the school horses, an asshole gelding named Kale, who lives here on campus.

  Do you think I could e-mail Quince? I ask her. About the school dance? I step on top of my Craptop in my riding boots and jump a little. This is about as much as I can do without feeling guilty.

  You’re loco, she says. We’re not even supposed to go to this thing. Dances like this are not for people like us.

  Maybe I should just tell him how I feel, I say.

  What about Brahman? she laughs.

  Get out with that.

  Boys are supposed to ask girls. Don’t be desperate.

  It could go good with Quince. I can write a good e-mail.

  I can’t do this right now, says Clarissa. The girls are coming soon. Clarissa promised her psych homework to the A-crowd, typed papers on the groupthink in 12 Angry Men.

  My parents say I should always express myself, I say.

  Do not touch your Craptop, says Clarissa. That would be so fucking embarrassing.

  The A-girls trickle out of the building across from us. They gather under a palm tree, unbutton their skirts and let them drop to the grass like dead birds. Beneath their uniform skirts, the girls all wear tight, cotton shorts with slits up the sides. The shorts are called Soffes, and my mother won’t buy them for me because everybody else wears them. She says they look cheap, and why would you want to wear the same shorts as these skank-ass white brats? Clarissa swings her pink JanSport backpack over one shoulder (two shoulders would be social suicide) and waves me off. Do not! she says, between her teeth, as she smiles and skips toward the girls.

  Years later, my mother will tell me that she prayed to a higher power every day that maybe, just once, she might find me standing with the other girls at the school pickup loop, laughing. Don’t be alone, she would repeat in the car. For once, don’t be alone. Let those girls talk to her. Let her act like a skank-ass Boca bitch if that’s what it takes, just don’t be alone.

  The next morning, before school, my Study-Pro lights up with an e-mail from QPearson88. B my date 2 the dance? it says. 2 shy 2 ask. Meet U there.

  I have a date to the middle school dance, I tell my parents. My father is lying on the living room couch, propped on an elbow. He drops his roll of newspaper on the floor, his sports bets scrawled over it in blue and red smears. He says, Who? I mean, who’s the lucky guy? I mean, I’ll chop his balls off.

  I love when this happens in the movies, on TV, in the books I read: a boy comes for a girl and then the father suddenly loves the girl more, steps up, becomes protective. No boys or men have ever desired a fatherless girl. I have always wanted this complication.

  Don’t say that! I l
augh, swatting him in the arm. He takes me down to the couch with him in one swift yank. On my father’s four TVs, four different announcers give us some stats. Dad says the Raiders will pay my college tuition one day if we play our cards right.

  What’s this? What’re you saying? My mother’s sitting on the floor in the corner of our living room, next to the television pyramid, organizing stacks of CDs for her new catalog-ordered player.

  Mom, you won’t believe it.

  Believe this, she says. Watch! She punches in a number—57—and the player glows blue, spins all the glittering CDs around like a fan. Michael Bolton’s voice seeps out of the speakers. Like magic! she says. It’s like a goddamn computer, this thing!

  Enough with the Michael Bolton! screams my father.

  And Rich Gannon passes, it’s the Raiders! screams an announcer.

  I have a date to the middle school dance! screams me.

  Wait for another! screams my mother, punching in a new number.

  Enough with the Wilson Phillips!

  My mother stands up and grabs hold of my hands. We dance to our song—Some day somebody’s gonna make you wanna turn around and say good-bye!—in front of the televisions.

  Where’d you two even come from? says my father. He can’t help but smile. Not from me.

  My mother wants to dress me for the middle school dance. She drives me to the Boca Raton Town Center mall, pulls our car up to valet. Limited Too? or dELiA*s? she asks, giving me a nudge, because these are the stores of my dreams, the stores I haven’t been old enough to shop in yet. These stores sell Spice Girl lollipops and the lowest pants and the finest glitters that don’t rain off.

  Inside Limited Too, my mother chooses a baby-blue tank top with clouds on it. She holds it up between her fingers—the V-neck cutout, a white sparkling shoelace that ties the V tight. She walks me to a dressing room and hands me a black miniskirt with two baby slits up the sides. It’s too tight on me, and too short, but my mother says, Celebrate those legs! as she pulls me out from behind the dressing room curtain. I can barely move my thighs in the skirt, so I shuffle my feet. You don’t ride horses for nothing!