Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

by T Kira Madden

  That’s kind of sad.

  Can I tell you a secret? I say.

  Anything.

  I used to—I think I once saw you on the Internet. When I was some dumb kid. You had a webpage, right? Pictures, diary entries?

  Yes, oh my god. Her face scrunches. That is so embarrassing!

  Yeah, I saw you there. Maybe I did love you a little, yeah.

  That’s so cute, she says.

  I scoot closer to her. I look at her, steady, really try to see her. I don’t laugh this moment off. I want her to see me, too.

  And by cute, I mean creep, she says, pinching my nose.

  Careful, I’m a bleeder.

  The bartender says our last round is on the house. I can tell Lennox is used to this. He pushes over a receipt on which he’s drawn a sketch of Lennox—square jaw, apostrophe eyes—a ballpoint pen masterpiece in which she looks perfect, alone.

  Once, I did mention it. To Clarissa. My favorite specials on the black box. Misty’s dance teacher, Jaqueline. Ren Stevens on the Disney Channel. Winnie Cooper in her cat-eye glasses. Every girl who’s ever worked her hair into a pencil twist. Ms. Dyke Hoochie. Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Linda Perry. Leonardo DiCaprio just before he freezes to death; the way he looks like he’s wearing lipstick.

  That would change if you ever had sex with one, she said. And, like, how do you even have sex with one?

  It’s a nickel-slapping kind of rain, a silver bounce to it. It is not cold enough to snow. Outside the bar, under the awning, we shiver. I rub my gloved hands up and down Lennox’s arms.

  Call me a cab? Can you call cabs in Brooklyn? she asks.

  Would you come home with me? I say. Even five drinks in, I don’t know how I possibly say it.

  Okay, she says. Sure.

  I’m close.

  I start to run. Slowly at first, and then faster. A neck-throbbing run. We run from the sharp pings of freezing rain and we run to keep our blood from freezing. We run for Lennox’s hair. I run to keep my hands from trembling. She runs to show me how well she can run in heels. I run because I don’t want the time to talk, for her to take back what she’s just said, or for me to do the same.

  We run under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a relief from the rain. We run beneath that hollow ribbon of orange light, the echo-swish sound of cars; we run around skateboard ramps made of milk crates, crookedly parked cars, browned, dimpled mattresses. We run past the people who live under here—gimme some sugar!—we run wet and dizzy until my breathing can’t keep up, until I barely know where I live, until I round a corner and find the doorway of my gate and push in the key, lean into it, release. We run up the stairs, into my living room, where we shake our clothes off. They slop on the wooden floor—the garments pooling out with a steam to them. I push her onto my bed and run my fingers through the hair by her ear, and she’s moaning before I even kiss her.

  You know what you’re doing? she asks.

  I think so, I say.

  You think so?

  I think I can manage.

  Have you fucked a woman before?

  No. I regret the truth as soon as it comes.

  Lennox is silent. She stares at my ceiling, covers her face with her hands. She laughs a little, the sound muffled.

  Sweetheart, you’re sweet. But I can’t be with someone who’s never fucked before. Are you for real?

  I mean. I—

  I’ve fucked at least four of my friends. You haven’t?

  No. I shake my head. I don’t have friends like that.

  Whatever’s happening here, she says. Let’s pretend it’s not happening.

  In the Keys, my parents take me deep-sea fishing. I drug myself with Dramamine, because I know how this will go. I always get seasick, but my father is a fan of exposure therapy, excess of anything until the fear passes. I have used wristbands, medicines, oils, the horizon. Still, I am sick for days.

  Back in the condo, my father watches the Sunday game. The rest of the family is back out on the boat, but I can’t move.

  I thought it’d be different by now, he says, shaking his head. Sorry, Kira Kukamonga. He calls his bookie, and I rest my head in his lap. The shoulder pads on television spiral in and out of my vision. The noise is too much for me. This is MadMan46, let’s go two-thou on the Steelers, he says into the phone. He strokes my hair. Hangs up and slams the cellphone into the table.

  I stare at the hammerhead shark mounted above the TV. The eyes are bulging; the mouth looks like it was painted with birthday cake frosting. It’s the same shark David has mounted to the wall in his apartment, the shark he swore he once caught.

  Daddy, I want to tell you something, I say.

  This quarter’s almost over, he says.

  I’m dating a girl, I say.

  What’s that? he stares into the television. His knees bouncing under my head. He leans with the play. Go baby, go!

  I’m dating a girl, I say. She’s coming to town for New Year’s—she’s from here. Maybe you could meet her.

  What’s that? he says.

  I want you to meet her, this girl I am dating. She’s coming to town.

  She hot? he asks.

  She is.

  She can come around then, he says, eyes still on the screen. But I wouldn’t mention this to your mother.

  For my tenth birthday, my mother bought me a Barbie doll who could talk. All I had to do was type her dialogue into a computer program, plug Barbie in, and on she went. I typed and typed.

  Leonardo, baby, take me to dinner?

  Yes, anything, I said, stroking her ponytail with my thumb.

  Leonardo, be my man?

  It’s because of that boy in Titanic, my mother explained to my father, smiling. She loves him.

  Leonardo. Leonardo. Leonardo. Leonardo. Sometimes I didn’t feed Barbie any questions. Sometimes I just wanted to look at her while she called me that.

  I’m finally picking up the rest of my things from David’s West Village home; it’s been five months since our breakup. David is ten years older than me, but he has never used the kitchen of his studio apartment, he never learned to cook, so he uses this area for extra coat racks and shoe storage. I open his oven to look for my clothes. His sink is clogged, full of bong water.

  On the counter, next to a sock, two wine glasses. Lipstick prints. I smudge the color with my finger and rub the waxy red on my own lips. My clothes are scattered around the apartment, and I’m surprised by how little I feel. I feel distant, like I’m observing the artifacts, the evidence, of somebody else’s relationship, somebody else’s life.

  Downstairs, I wobble with the bags of clothing, my purse, a backpack full of toiletries. I drop everything into the snow and hail a cab. I tell the driver to take me to my parents’ apartment on Mercer Street.

  In the cab, I call Lennox. I did it, I say. Finally. Nothing left.

  I hope they’re happy together, she says.

  I’m laughing about this. About the years I wasted on David and David’s cocaine habit. David’s bad spelling, and his job as a “Gentlemen’s Club” director. David’s secret JDate account and fetish chatrooms, the way he sang Bowie’s Oh, oh, my little China Girl into my ear when he first picked me up, at eighteen, outside a nightclub in the Meatpacking District. I am laughing into the phone until there’s a screaming of tires, a horn, then another, the driver’s voice—Please don’t, I can’t get in trouble, Here, Go, Stay—a hospital, a nurse—hit the glass divider, you’re at St. Vincent’s, you’re okay—and my father’s voice and my mother’s voice—You didn’t get his cab number?—and my suede boots, freckled bloody, they look so filthy against the sheets, a wheelchair, a flashlight in the eyes—The driver, he dropped her and fled—Where are my bags? Where are my things?—The driver—do you remember his name?—my bags in the hospital trashcans. What about my phone? I just want Lennox there, on the other end.

  My mother stays with me in the hospital. She wheels me around each floor. She takes me into the hospital cathedral because the lights aren�
��t as bright in there. She massages my neck.

  Daddy and I have that big trip to China, she says. Do you want us to cancel?

  I’m okay, I say.

  Can any of your friends come over, take care of you? Why were you leaving David’s apartment?

  I’m okay.

  We’ll see you for Christmas, she says. That’ll be nice, huh? Florida sun? David-free? No fishing?

  Lennox shows up to my parents’ apartment with soup and cartons of juice. She calls herself my nurse. We spoon mint ice cream into each other’s mouths in bed. We watch movies but face each other the whole time as the television light flicks the walls—What did it feel like to almost die? / You are the most interesting person I’ve ever met—I ask her to read pages of Frank O’Hara aloud; we take my painkillers with large bulbs of red wine. We clasp hands under the blankets. I rest my head on her bare stomach, kiss her rib cage, her belly button, but never her lips.

  I always want to kiss you, I say.

  Then kiss me. Anywhere.

  The truth: when I’m around Lennox, when our noses come too close, I fear that she’ll feel my weakness right through my shirt, the same weakness that makes me say good-bye early each night I see her, that brings me straight home or into a stall of the closest public bathroom where I will jerk my hand down the front of my pants, give in to that knot inside me that only loosens when I think of her long enough to make myself come, the knot that tightens back up as soon as it’s finished, as soon as the tears come in hiccups. But what I say is, Let’s just take it slow, okay? We don’t leave bed for days.

  I tell my college roommate, Karolina, a Romanian ballerina with the personality of a nubbed crayon. This is later, the aftermath. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other. Gay is the word that I use.

  While you were with David?

  Sometimes.

  I thought that was a phase. That sad crush on your writing teacher.

  It wasn’t.

  And then you had a—girlfriend?

  I did. Her name was Lennox.

  Karolina zipped her purse just then. She wiped nonexistent crumbs from her lipstick with a napkin. She cleared her throat once, twice, three times, tilted her small head as she looked at me. Her hair, gelled slick into a bun, shone under the lights like a chess pawn.

  I lived with you, she says. This bitch, she started crying. I changed my clothes in front of you.

  So you eat pussy now, is that what you’re saying? Addison Katz French inhales a Marlboro. It looks like gray tapeworms are winding from her mouth into her nostrils.

  I guess you could say that.

  Lennox Price. Really?

  I nod.

  Figured you would, you always had it in you, says Claudia.

  We’re having a small high school reunion at Dani’s mom’s mansion. We wear black paper top hats with gold, mirrored lettering, NEW YEARS 2009, cardboard noisemakers piled on the patio table like Chinese finger traps. Dani’s mom bought us these accessories—Let me take a picture, the girls back together again!—before locking herself in her room with a romance novel, a glass of champagne, and their dachshund.

  It’s not like I was always—it just happened to me, I say. But leave it, she’ll be here soon.

  The four of us have nothing in common—we were barely friends in the first place—but we are the only people back home in Boca for the holidays. We reach for conversation from every corner of the room—Addison’s new haircut, Dani’s ailing dog, Claudia’s new gig at a makeup stand in the mall—but the conversation always circles back to Lennox Price, the girl she once was in her pictures, the woman she is now.

  So what’re you lesbos doing tonight? asks Addison. Besides eating pussy?

  Going to the beach, I say, because this is our plan: Lennox is picking me up after her family reunion, just before midnight. She wants to kiss me just then, she said, on the dot, as the ball plummets in Times Square, as people recite wishes and resolutions, as fireworks trail the sky like chalk. A new beginning—she and I. We’ll go to the beach, whip open the bedsheet I packed, let champagne dribble down our chins and into our shirts. We could be the better, truer version of us going forward, now that we are telling people, now that we’re ready.

  Well what time’s she coming? Because it’s almost here, says Dani, lighting another smoke from one of the packs on the table. Her hair keeps sticking to her lip gloss, so she lumps it together at the top of her forehead, snaps a rubber band. There is a way in which Dani has always looked older, over it, ready to retire to Palm Beach.

  Lennox hasn’t called yet. Rumor has it that the cell towers are down. That’s what I tell them, anyway, these girls. The lines are busy. Too much traffic. Too many calls.

  Once my head is healed from the accident, Lennox takes me out for dinner and drinks on St. Mark’s Place. She wants me to meet an old friend of hers, a childhood neighbor. His name is Thomas, and he carves ice sculptures. Thomas does not acknowledge me; he does not shake my hand. The three of us sit. We sip Manhattans, poke at a limping salad.

  I didn’t know you were this way, Louisa, I didn’t. What about your parents?

  Thomas, she laughs. Come on, stop.

  It’s not right, he says.

  It’s nothing, she says.

  So what’s it like, I ask him. To spend so much time making art that disappears?

  These drinks are strong, says Lennox.

  You’re a child of His, don’t forget. Thomas excuses himself to the bathroom.

  This is fun, I say.

  I think he’s always liked me, she says. It’s nothing personal.

  Everyone likes you. That’s not an excuse.

  Do you want to just, go? she asks.

  While he’s in there?

  Yeah.

  We don’t say another word before standing up and shoving our chairs under the table. Before I have time to think about it, I take her face in my hands and kiss her.

  I kiss Lennox every five feet of our walk. I kiss her on every corner. Against every building. I kiss her in front of every person we pass. If someone says something about it, I kiss her harder. If they say nothing, I kiss her harder. I kiss her for every girl I have ever not kissed.

  I kiss her against the door of my parents’ empty apartment, and against the kitchen sink, and then in bed. Let me fuck you, I say. I want to love you.

  She takes her top off, nodding. I unhook her bra, easy. I’m relieved to manage this part. She unbuttons my shirt, unhooks me. We press chest to chest and I have never felt this naked in my life. Her breasts are large, shining, firm.

  You ever feel these before?

  I press my hands over them—up, down, left, right, like a Hail Mary—unsure of what to do. I lick. I suck. I crunch my hips against her, but I’m not sure what kind of contact I’m making, or where. I move my hands down between her legs, under the lace, fumbling for something familiar. It must feel familiar right? Nothing feels familiar. I am shaking and circling my hands, grinding my torso against her leg like a newly neutered dog. She is sucking on my neck, moaning, Oh yeah, that’s right, but I know this is an act of kindness. Of mercy.

  It is true, when I say that I am always about to cry.

  By two thirty A.M., Addison, Dani, and Claudia are packing bulbs of purple haze into a glass pipe shaped like an elephant.

  Let’s call this pipe Anne Bowl’leyn, I say, but nobody gets it.

  The girls speak with flat, croaked voices as we swat smoke and mosquitos.

  Sorry, dude. Maybe the lines really are tied up, says Dani.

  Or maybe she drives really, really slow, says Addison, chuckling to herself until she forgets what it is she’s chuckling about. We are high.

  My phone is in the middle of the table, between the ashtrays. A dead, blank face to it. Nothing. Claudia’s inside, shouting the contents of Dani’s refrigerator as we scream yes or no. Addison pulls on a lace bodysuit she plans on wearing to a Lady Gaga concert. Her nipple rings glitter here, in the dark.

  I don’t
smoke grass, I say, sucking from the trunk of the elephant.

  Yeah, it doesn’t look like it, says Dani.

  Remember when you used to bug out? says Addison. You always thought you were dying.

  We’re all always dying, I say.

  You’re so full of shit, Addison goes on. You don’t smoke grass like you never drank, like you never sucked dudes off in the school parking lot. You always deny everything you want. Addison, always a philosopher when high.

  True, I say. But that’s not the same as not wanting it.

  What the fuck are we talking about? asks Dani. Like, what?

  In middle school, Clarissa and I went to Disney with our friend Geri. In the Universal Studios bathroom, Geri leaned back on the stall door, Manic Panic green bangs sweat-smeared across her forehead, and she laced her fingers behind my neck, said, Practice. Why don’t we practice for the real thing? She opened her mouth for me, just like that, the O of her choir face, and so I leaned into it. Let me in on the practice, Clarissa said, and the three of us kissed one another—1-2-3, you go left, I go right—tongues sloppy, braces clicking. Later that night, we met some boys near the hotel pool. Clarissa kissed someone in the dark as I watched the blue glow on Geri’s bare stomach. Geri’s pruned feet. One of the boys leading Geri away as she let go of my hand, laughing, saying, I’ll be right back.

  We all take the stairs to Dani’s bedroom. It’s still pink, lacy as a tablecloth, unchanged since high school. The lavender sachets in her pajama drawers are brown by now. The sheets, too starched.

  The girls fall asleep with their clothes on. I curl up on the carpeted floor, watch the lights of passing cars slash up and down the walls. My phone does not buzz in my hand. I check and recheck to make sure it’s on, charged. Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting.

  Louisa. Lennox Price.

  Her name drags me down the stairs, out the door, to my car, where I drive home along the beach. The sun lifts and bleeds out along the ocean. It’s a new year, and the air is already warm. Louisa. I walk barefoot into my house, bury myself under my childhood covers, and sleep.