Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  Now, though, you are the saddest you have ever been in your life. Your father is dead. Your mother is off the wagon again. You can’t finish anything. Just last week, your childhood house burned down with everything in it. You wonder when the world will stop hurting you.

  You respond.

  Chad is my boyfriend, Beth tells you on the phone. I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want your hopes and dreams to be, like, totally crushed. I liked that you liked that he liked you, she says. It was cute.

  But Chad is my secret boyfriend, and it’s serious, she says. Maybe even love, she says.

  She says, You need to move on.

  Clarissa can’t believe it. You’re sitting in the school locker room, straddling a bench, snapping Bubblicious gum. Yesterday, you decided to dye your hair back to black, your natural color. You want to look sad all the time, and you think this will help. Your ears are stained gray from the dripping chemicals.

  That bitch! says Clarissa. Who does she think she is? She’s probably making it up because she’s crazy jealous of you.

  You both allow the lie to sit between you, to swell there.

  But Chad doesn’t stop messaging. In fact, he messages you more. He is sorry, just so sorry, that he never told you about Beth. He didn’t want to break up your best friendship.

  Do u have a private line? he asks you. 2 talk like adults?

  If I get off AOL I can free up the line, yah, you say.

  It’s the first time you’ve ever heard his voice. At school, he has only ever looked at you—through the classroom windows, from inside his car, across a swarm of students moving through the bells. He has never once even waved. His voice on the phone does not match what you’d imagined. It’s high-pitched, ragged as puberty. His laugh sounds like Pee-wee Herman crying, you later tell Clarissa.

  Are you in bed? asks Chad. I wanna talk you to sleep like I’m tucking you in.

  Chad wants to know what you’re wearing under the covers, if you know what sex is, if you’ve ever given a blow job, and if so, to whom.

  Aren’t these questions you should be asking your GIRLFRIEND, you say.

  What I have with Beth doesn’t change the way I feel about you, says Chad.

  I can’t even talk to her anymore, you say. It’s too painful for me.

  I have another friend who thinks you’re cute. We both beat off to you, he says. Maybe if you like him we could go on double dates. The four of us could always be together in secret. That way I can still be close to you, because I think I might love you, he says.

  I love you, too, you say. You like the gravity of that word. You feel sure inside of it.

  Instead of calling Beth every night, you start calling Chad. Beth thinks she’s too good for you and Clarissa. She’s becoming a real snob, a bitch, you tell yourself.

  That friend I told you about, says Chad. I really think you would like him. I’ll be so jealous but I really hope you can go out, so I can be around you in real life without getting in trouble.

  I don’t even know who he is! you say. He could be a creep!

  He’s my best friend, Cherry Top.

  I’m not even a Cherry Top anymore, thanks for NOTICING.

  Talk to him … for me.

  It doesn’t take long for Gil to message you. Gil is another senior, and he seems nice enough, but maybe a little boring. You have similar interests. He sends you song lyrics from emo bands: Your taste still lingers on my lips like I just placed them upon yours and I starve, I starve for you!, and you tell him about your obsession with Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional—He just gets me!—how you recently had him autograph your Charlie Brown T-shirt at a concert while your mom waited in the car.

  Do you ever feel SO alone? asks Gil.

  All the time, you say. I want to kill myself almost every day. My mom is SO embarrassing and my dad’s been drunk my whole life and I have NOBODY who gets what it’s like.

  That was before me lol.

  Gil is a good listener. Sensitive, sweet. You think he might be a long-term friend or maybe husband material one day. You plan to meet him the next day between C and D periods, just a wave in the hall, so you can find out who he is. You don’t look him up in the yearbook because the suspense gets your blood pumping.

  The next day, you wear your mom’s bra under your school uniform. You stuff it with cloudy silicone pads shaped like chicken cutlets. You and Clarissa bought a whole pack at the mall last month, felt each other’s double push-up bra padding as if you were lovers, Oh yeah, baby, that feels soooo good. The cutlets feel most like the real thing.

  After C period, you stand by the door of your history class. Middle and high schoolers rush by, Eat shit, Queera. Go kill yourself already. You respond by holding up your pentacle necklace; you’ve recently promised that you are casting hair-loss spells.

  You look for somebody cute, somebody you must have missed all this time. And then somebody approaches you and says, Hey, I’m Gil, and everything inside your body crumples. This man looks old old, like, thirty. He’s over six feet tall and wears a ponytail—tinted, square, transition glasses, purpled by the sun. He breathes through his mouth, and it hangs open, underbitten, the smell of clogged dishwater. Most striking are his teeth, narrow and long as piano keys, the gumline black.

  He leans in to hug you and you scrunch your face into a walnut—disgusting.

  You ignore all messages from Gil after that.

  Chad looks older now in his online picture. His face is bloated, hairy. The whites of his eyes have gone red. The picture is one he took of himself on a phone in a splattered bathroom mirror.

  You respond to his message.

  You say, Why do you want my forgiveness?

  I dunno, I guess I just feel bad, he says. About the way things happened.

  Why? you say again.

  I didn’t know if I should act on the feels of love for you, he says, and I chose wrong. Anyway, I can’t believe you would still be that mad about it now, after all this time. Beth didn’t care.

  He’s lonely, you think. Or maybe desperate. He only wants a way back in. You’ve heard rumors about his life after high school. Everyone has.

  I was twelve, you say. Those things don’t go away.

  In my defense, he says, I thought you were thirteen.

  Let’s put all this bullshit behind us, Chad says in an instant message. It’s a Friday night, and you’re alone, as usual. Clarissa is always babysitting. You refuse to speak to Beth, even though she tries.

  I feel bad we’ve never actually hung out. Not very nice of me, says Chad. Why don’t we go 2 the mall this wknd? Buy sum presents?

  Just us? you ask. Really 4 real?

  Just us, he says.

  Why don’t u pick me up tom morn round 10?

  U shitting me? he says. Not lookin 2 get arrested. Get dropped off @ the mall. Noon.

  You call Clarissa. You will NEVER guess what I’m doing tomorrow. Clarissa screams. You both scream. You father opens your door again. When did it become always scream, scream, scream? he says. You shuffle through your drawers, try to find the perfect outfit. Your school uniform consists of sweater vests, long khaki skirts, starched collars that cut. This is your chance, you think, to look like a sultry island princess, to embrace where you came from, to show off the exotic woman you could one day be.

  You go through every outfit with Clarissa on the phone and decide on the perfect one: shredded bellbottoms, purple satin flip-flops with beaded flowers, a matching purple T-shirt that says HAWAIIAN GURL in silver glitter across the chest. You use your new Sapphire flat iron to press your hair straight. You light incense under your vanity mirror and practice applying your makeup through the snaking smoke. You blast Boyz II Men and sway your hips in the mirror like a woman. You decide to wear a bra, one that fits. Your mother bought it for you recently, a training piece. It’s pink with red flowers, a little embarrassing, too cute, but the T-shirt covers the straps. You like the way it feels, tight across your chest.

>   You don’t sleep that night. In bed, you read Little Girl Lost for the one hundredth time, trying to distract yourself. On the cover, Drew’s hair is frizzed and lit from behind. Her lipstick is dark. Drew’s life was so hard, you think. You used to relate to this book. Fucked-up parents; a choking loneliness. Her only friend was the robot of E.T. and your only friend was this book version of Drew. But that was the old you. That was before men. Look at you now.

  It is difficult to find the twenty-eight-year-old Beth. Years ago, you looked her up online. You had exchanged a few words, casual niceties, but now that account and address are gone. Vanished. Her old number is disconnected; it’s as if she doesn’t exist. Your remaining high school friends haven’t thought of her in years.

  There is one person who knows where she is. The friend whose friend’s brother’s cousin’s babysitter helped make it all happen. You still don’t know the story. She hands over Beth’s e-mail address, wishes you well.

  You write an e-mail with the subject line: Difficult. You divide this e-mail into two parts. Part one explains that you miss her. Part two explains that you’re sorry.

  You were such a huge part of my life, you write, through those achey, formative years. But we are also connected in a way we never fully addressed.

  Your mother drives you to the mall before a hair appointment. When she asks who you are meeting, you tell her it’s Beth. She’s too close with Clarissa’s mom for the lie.

  That’s good, sweetie. I thought you had a falling out or something. I haven’t seen her around lately. I’ve always liked Beth. A good best friend to have.

  I’m sure you did, you say, rolling your eyes.

  Daddy and I will pick you up at four. We’ll go to Sushi Ray.

  Whatever, you say.

  Pick me out something good! she says.

  Chad told you to meet him in the department store Burdines. Of course, you are early. You stand near the top of the escalator, knotting and unknotting your puka-shell choker. You want to look busy when he shows up, so you pretend the cord is broken, bothering you. You feel like annoyed is your most mature look.

  Hey, he says, from behind you. You had expected to see him on the escalator, but he must have been here all this time, waiting.

  Hey you, you say.

  You hug an awkward hug. A few hard pats on the back. You wonder if, by the end of the day, you will kiss good-bye. If the hug will be tighter by four o’clock. If he might even slip you some tongue. If, by then, it would feel natural.

  So I, ummm, I left something in my car, he says, and it almost sounds like a question. He smiles at you as he says it. His teeth are so wet and perfect. They glow under the fluorescent lights. He repeats himself, Left something in my car?, and looks at you as if you should know what this means, as if you should have expected this.

  And shopping? you say.

  It won’t take long, he says. Will you walk with me to the car?

  You could stop here. You could ask, What exactly did you leave? You could say, No thanks, but meet me back here when you’re done—I’ll wait. You know the kinds of things he has told you about—the kinds of things that happen in cars, in his car—the words that make him breathe so heavily into the phone you can feel the heat of each syllable in your ear. You could walk away right now and buy your presents. You could change the story.

  But Yes is what you say. Sure.

  Chad holds your hand as you walk out the exit, over to the covered parking lot. Nobody has ever held your hand before, not in this way, and it feels damp, uncomfortable. You feel self-conscious that he’ll see your fingers in the daylight—the wet open wounds around your nails where you gnaw the skin off, where you’ve been cutting with safety pins at night. You always carry yourself with fists, your thumbs tucked in. Sometimes, when it’s worse, you wrap each fingertip in bandages for school. Your mother says you look like a serial killer that way, and this only makes you do it more.

  This is me, he says, motioning to the blue car you already know is his.

  He opens the rear-left door and asks you to slide in. He slides in after you. It’s dark in the car in this covered lot, but right away you see a figure in the driver’s seat, the side of a face—it’s Gil. Hey princess, he says, but he doesn’t turn his head around. He doesn’t even look at you. He smacks a button that locks all the doors in a quick thwack. He moves his right hand around the seat, toward Chad. Chad gives him five.

  You say nothing.

  Chad leans in with his eyes open, staring at you. You can’t believe a man is this close to your face. He tells you to open your mouth. You do. You feel his tongue on your tongue, and you feel like you might choke. You like this feeling. So this is a kiss. You don’t know what to do with your hands, so you sit on them. Chad moans as he circles his tongue—it’s that same laugh-cry sound from the phone. He pulls away. Show me, he says, as he lifts your T-shirt to your neck. Flowers, how cute, he says, as he yanks down the cup of your bra. In this moment, you are humiliated. Your bra has shape, but your breasts do not. Your breasts are nothing but swollen, sore nipples—puffed and pink as erasers. There is nothing else but that. Still, he takes them into his mouth, the left and then the right, and calls you so sweet, sexy, and says, Is that what you’ve been keeping from me?

  You say nothing.

  Chad pulls your shaking hand out from under your jeans. For a moment, you consider reaching for the handle of the door, but he catches your hand in his, wraps your raw fingers around his cock. You don’t know when he unzipped his pants, when it appeared, but it’s there, twitching. You have never seen anything like it before, this strange organ, the palest skin. He moves his hand and your hand with it. You are surprised that the skin moves, that it’s not a solid thing. With his other hand, he takes your hair in his fist, pushes your head down, tells you to be good. You have no idea what you’re doing, but you do your best to breathe. He says, Cut that shit with the teeth. Open up. You do your best to be good. He pushes your head all the way down to finish, and tears splash from your eyes onto his boxers. He opens the car door, says, I’m going shopping, and Gil gets out of the front seat, comes to meet you in the back. You had forgotten he was even there all this time; you had forgotten the world. His cock is already out, there is no kissing or touching; there are no words. It is larger than Chad’s, the size of your forearm. It smells like chlorine. He is more forceful with you, squeezing your wrists in his big hands, clearing your pulse. He pushes and pulls your hair like a fast, violent knock on a door until the rot of him glugs down your throat, until you are coughing, crying, until you have bitten your lip so hard it’s bleeding.

  He calls Chad on his flip phone. Come back to the car, he says, and snaps it shut.

  Chad opens the driver seat door. He turns the music up. Chris Carrabba.

  They high-five again.

  You can’t just get out of the car like this, Princess, says Chad. It’ll look weird.

  They drive you around the loop of the mall, drop you off on the side of the road. Thanks, Cherry Top! says Chad.

  You say nothing.

  You don’t for years.

  In the fifteen years since high school, Chad has been arrested for petit theft, grand theft, drug possession, assault, simple battery, battery of a law enforcement officer, burglary with assault, battery with prior offenses, multiple violations of parole, and has been declared a “Habitual Felony Offender” by Broward County. He has attempted suicide three times, overdosed twice, and spent three and a half years in state prison. He spent years in a homeless shelter. Once, in prison, he was strapped naked to a steel bunk and shit himself. The correctional officers dragged his soiled body around the grounds of the prison, hosing him off, humiliating him, scraping his body pink as a gumdrop.

  Gil is an attorney in Boca Raton. He represents victims of sexual violence and harassment. He married his high school sweetheart—the eighteen-year-old classmate and girlfriend, you learn, that he’d had the whole time.

  These are some of the things
Chad is telling you now, on the Internet. They all check out. With a simple Google search, you’re able to scroll through Chad’s mug shots over the years. You find his Twitter, his dating profile, the racial slurs and flat-Earth conspiracy theories he has posted online. Still, it is difficult to think about him as more than a ghost, as a real person in the present world.

  He has two injunctions of protection against him—one for stalking, one for repeated violence—but you don’t know that yet. Just last year, after he was released from prison, Beth filed the first restraining order against him. He reached out to her for forgiveness, she will later confirm, and things got ugly from there. Another girl, a minor, filed an injunction soon after. When this essay is published one year after you write it in that New Hampshire artist colony, you will file the third.

  You walk along the side of the road, back toward the mall. Maybe, you think, this is what adults do when they feel the feels of love. Maybe they share their girls; maybe it’s quick, forceful; maybe it happens just like that.

  It’s not even one o’clock. Winter in Florida. You push open the mall door and feel the suck of the air conditioner. You are nervous to be seen—you are absolutely not allowed to be inside a mall, or anywhere, alone.

  You walk in and out of cosmetic stores. In the track-lit mirror, you look different. Your eye makeup is smudged like a bruise; your cheeks are flushed; your hair is no longer straight or smooth. Worst of all, your lips. Your lips are at least three times their regular size, raw and shiny, purple and inflamed from the teeth. Whose teeth? Whose bite marks? You can’t be sure now.

  In the mirror you think: I don’t look like a girl anymore.

  And then: I look like such a pathetic little girl.

  And then: maybe this is what a woman looks like.

  And then: I look sexy like this. Beaten. Theirs.