He started cutting the paper, put the scissors down, and sat on a tiny round stool near my leg. He grabbed a spray bottle (filled with battery acid, surely) and started spraying it on my ankle.
“What is that?!” I squeaked. I already knew that there wasn’t going to be much fanfare around this particular kind of deflowering, but I thought he would at least warn me before he got to work.
He stared at me again, the spray bottle hovering over my toes. “It’s water.” He wiggled the piece of paper in his hand. “So I can put the design on yer ankle.”
He shook his head so hard that the long part of his mullet bounced over one of his shoulders. Sunglasses still on, he affixed the paper to my ankle and slowly peeled it back. A light purple outline of the design showed faintly on my skin.
“That look about where you want it?”
I glanced at my leg quickly. “Yes,” I said, with more confidence than I actually possessed.
“You have to actually look at it. Make sure it’s straight. No do-overs with tattoos,” he grumbled.
I was grateful for this moment of what felt like kindness, even if it was probably his wanting to avoid a lawsuit. I stared at my ankle, twisting it left and right, more enamored of the fact that this piece of skin would never be blank again than the placement of the tattoo. It looked great.
“Yes, this is very fine,” I said, sounding like a farmer examining a prize cow.
He spun around on his stool, his legs under a small table, and squeezed a bottle of black ink into a tiny plastic cup. He pulled a pair of light blue plastic gloves over his nubby fingers. I tried to peek over his shoulder as he snapped rubber bands to get the tattoo gun ready. I felt confident enough to speak when he reached for the needle package.
“Is that clean?”
Having been raised in the age of AIDS, I knew that needles were a great way to transmit the disease. Even though I saw the fresh needle in the sterile package, my mind went to the most anxious place: What if he just put it in there every night to pretend he was using fresh needles? Like it was his own private joke how many people he was giving AIDS to without their knowing? How much did needles cost, anyway?
“You’re watching me open the package. It’s clean.”
“Okay.” My heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
“You know,” he said, finally raising his sunglasses to reveal his ice-blue eyes, “I’m going to be dragging this needle around your bloody leg and I don’t know anything about yer life. You might give me AIDS—ever think of that?” His lips rested into a tense line across his face as he narrowed his eyes. “How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m eighteen,” I lied through my sixteen-year-old teeth. I eyed the gun again. Was it possible to annoy someone so much that they just shot you? It didn’t matter; I was in the middle of trying and failing to forget the phrase “dragging this needle around your bloody leg.” He could have shot me through the heart and I would have survived on the amount of adrenaline already coursing through my body.
He shook his head again and put the sunglasses down on the table. “It’s a clean needle,” he said again, without looking at me. For some reason, he took three paper towels off a roll, folded them into a long rectangle, and wrapped it around his fist.
I looked at Leslie. She smiled and said, “It’s totally fine.” I didn’t believe her, but I also didn’t have a choice, as the tattoo gun vibrated to life.
“Is this going to hurt?” I asked in a tone five octaves higher than my regular speaking voice.
He looked up at me, tattoo gun hovering centimeters above my ankle. “Yeah. It’s definitely going to hurt.” For the first time, he smiled.
* * *
—
My tattoo was almost healed by the time Grandma got back from California. I let her get settled for a minute before I put my foot on the couch and showed her my leg.
“I thought you were getting a needle and thread? And get your foot off my couch.”
“I know,” I said, putting my foot on the ground. “But then I picked this.”
She squinted her eyes at my leg and leaned in to get a better look. “What is it? It’s big.”
“It’s tribal. It’s just . . . a design.”
Grandma sat back and sighed. In my fervor to show her how cool and unique I was now, I wasn’t paying attention to what she had just endured. Sweetie Pie had full dementia now. The trip couldn’t have been easy. She looked exhausted.
“Well, I don’t understand why you wanted to do that, but you’re an adult now, I guess.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
I went upstairs and lay on my bed, lifting my leg up to admire the art and think about what Grandma had just said, wondering why, if I was an adult now, I felt like I had just been dismissed as if I were a child.
21.
I was becoming obsessed with the notion of college. It felt like the final step of an independence I had been reaching toward for years. I fantasized about living in a dorm with no one around to make me turn off the light if I was reading past my bedtime, because I had no bedtime. My job would be to take classes and learn, which sounded like a dream come true. But more than anything, college was freedom—getting out of Warwick, surrounding myself with people who could value me in a way no one there ever could.
Aside from the year Aunt Rene spent at OCCC, no one in my immediate family had ever gone to college. Cory had no plans post–high school. Most parents were excited to think of their children fulfilling their potential, going out in the world on their own and trying to get a degree that would land them a career. Grandma thought it was a waste of time and money.
“You don’t need a piece of paper to get a job, Dani.”
“You do for some careers.”
“Not for making clothes. I could make clothes right here,” she said, gesturing around the living room.
“You don’t understand,” I huffed.
“I’ve been alive longer than you, honey—I understand more than you think.”
* * *
—
It was the fall of senior year, and college was all anyone could think about. We were sitting around our lunch table, and I was pumping Alexis for information about how to apply. Vicki, Shimbi, and Misato were listening in. We were lunch friends; none of us really hung out outside of school. Shimbi and Misato were identical twins who had moved to Warwick from the city when we were in middle school. Misato wore heavy metal T-shirts and head-to-toe black; Shimbi was the only high schooler I’d ever known to be able to pull off a scarf without looking like someone in an Ann Taylor ad. Vicki was a boisterous Italian girl who lived in Pine Island. They were all applying to college; I was the only one who seemed to be doing it on my own, without the help of my parents, and the only one not entirely sure that going to college was a foregone conclusion.
“Shouldn’t Dave be able to help with this?” Alexis knew that our guidance counselor was useless ever since he tried to dissuade her from thinking about Ivy League schools in ninth grade. I was contractually obligated to go to his office twice a year and never left feeling any more secure about my life or options.
“He thinks I should go to OCCC,” I said. “Community college is all he pushes at me.”
“He’s a fucking asshole,” Alexis said. “You’re smart. You can get into a million other colleges. What are your extracurriculars?”
“My almost full-time job,” I deadpanned.
Alexis rolled her eyes. “How are your grades?”
“I don’t know. I failed Regents math and I hate everything except English.”
“Well, just find a school that emphasizes the arts more than grades. You want to be a fashion designer, so none of that other stuff matters.”
I both admired and feared Alexis’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward life. Her confidence was rooted in her intelligence; she had honors classes bo
ok smarts but also a preternatural ability to figure out when adults were lying to her. She didn’t suffer fools and knew she couldn’t count on anyone but herself to get what she wanted in life. Instead of flowery signoffs about seeing each other in school, she simply said, “Goodbye,” and hung up when she wanted to end a phone call. I would not have been surprised to find out she had a full-time job as a stockbroker on the side.
She’d also been planning her escape from Warwick for so long that I had no choice but to believe her when she said I could do it, too. Alexis was the only person in my life who told me that college was possible for me, a place where I might belong. And I believed her for two reasons: we had the same desire to get out, and her bossy mode was even more terrifying than my grandma’s.
Years later, when I came home to visit from California, Alaska, Wisconsin, or England, when I had not just my bachelor’s degree but my master’s, I would always go to see Grandma at work. Her big smile from behind the desk at Mount Alverno instantly washed away my fears that this would be the visit when she started to resent me for leaving. Through the chorus of nuns in the lobby reciting details of my own life back to me, as told to them by Grandma, I realized that day would never come. She was proud of me, and she let everyone in her world know.
Eventually I would understand that she became uncharacteristically conservative about my going to college because she didn’t have any experience there. All of her advice, both outrageous and helpful, was rooted in her ability to tell me what worked for her. How could she help me if she didn’t understand the world I lived in? When I moved home for six months in order to save money for my cross-country trip to Alaska, Grandma made endless fun of me for wanting to make such a big move. One day, I saw an issue of Alaska magazine on the coffee table, with the telltale white address label that indicated a subscription—she was coming to terms with it by learning something about the place. Every few days, she would concede that it looked nice and that I should call her as soon as I saw my first moose.
Though maybe she simply thought college was a waste of money that she would never have and I should never borrow.
I went to the library during study hall and searched the card catalog for the big books about college that I’d seen for sale in B. Dalton at the mall. I pulled one of the huge reference tomes from the shelf and felt instantly overwhelmed. I had no idea there were so many colleges, and no idea which one was best for me. All I knew was that I wanted to make clothes for a living. Pen in hand, I started making a list on some loose-leaf paper, narrowing my choices down by program, then by state. I tried not to look at the cost.
“You’ll get scholarships,” Alexis said the next day at lunch. “Everyone does.”
“But how do you apply?”
“You can apply to the school directly, but there are also national ones that you can use for any school.”
Of course she knew about scholarships. She always figured out any information she was lacking, whether it was how to dissect a frog or how to apply to a summer soccer program in Ireland.
“But there are deadlines, so figure it out fast.” She took a bite out of the lunch she made for herself every morning.
When I wasn’t working, I was researching colleges. I kept a meticulous list of due dates for applications, as well as pros and cons lists for anywhere I might end up. Pro: it’s in New York City. Con: if I live in the city, I might run into Mom and Luke.
I bought a book of stamps and sent letters to the ones I found interesting, asking them to mail me their catalogs and admission materials. All the stuff that showed up had white kids on the cover, but I tried not to let that psych me out. I sat at the kitchen table and filled out the applications, inevitably reaching the same stopping point for each one.
“Grandma,” I called into the living room, “what’s your social security number?”
“Who the fuck wants to know?” I could tell from the theme music that she was playing Marble Madness.
“It’s for my college applications!”
“Stop yelling and come in here, for fuck’s sake!”
I walked into the living room, holding one of my applications as proof. “They need your social security number and bank account stuff.” She didn’t look up from the game. “Because I’m a minor,” I added for emphasis, “and you’re my guardian.”
“I’m not paying for it, so why do they need my private information?” She jerked the controller to the left as she tried to move the marble on the TV in the same direction.
“I think it’s so that they can figure out how much financial aid I need?”
“All of it. Tell them you need all the financial aid they have to offer.” Grandma laughed. I failed to see the humor in her being so uncooperative.
“I can’t send these in without that information, Grandma.”
“Well, do you have to send them this minute? I’m busy, ask me later.”
A few days later, I hit up Grandma again. “I really need your social security number. I don’t want to miss my deadlines.”
“For what?” She was sitting on the couch, watching the news, which was as close to not busy as she was able to get.
“For my college applications!” I was about to lose my mind.
“All right! Calm down! Here, give me that,” she said, gesturing to the stack of applications in my hand. “Let me look.”
She lowered her glasses and looked at the tiny type over the rims. “Where do you need me to put it? I can’t read any of this.”
“There.” I pointed.
“Here, I’ll write it down on this piece of paper and you can just fill it in. Jesus.”
She flipped open the Mead tablet she kept near the phone and wrote it down.
“I also need to know how much money you have in your savings account.”
Grandma looked at me like I had just asked her to saw off her leg, baste it in honey, and throw it in the oven. “Are you fucking kidding me, child?”
“They want to know!” Secretly, so did I. Grandma constantly told us she didn’t have money for anything, and she never missed an opportunity to tell me that she had excellent credit and no credit cards, but I really didn’t have any idea where we stood financially. I knew that we weren’t rich, but it was possible we were poorer than I thought.
“Just say two thousand dollars.”
“Is that the truth? Because they’re going to check, I think.”
“Dani, I swear to god . . .”
“Okay, okay, I’ll write two thousand dollars.”
“Anything else?” She was peeved, staring at me over her glasses with a look that said, “There better not be anything else or I will have to end your life.”
“Um, there’s an application fee? It’s like a hundred dollars?” I knew I was walking on thin ice here, but I had to try. Even Alexis’s parents paid for her applications; most parents did.
Grandma let out a singular, rough cough. “That’s why you have a job. Now get the fuck out of here.”
I had a small savings account at the Bank of New York in town. Grandma didn’t use checks, and I wasn’t legally allowed to have any, so I withdrew some money and took the envelope to the post office to buy money orders.
“Hello,” I said brightly. The employee behind the counter didn’t crack a smile but looked at me expectantly. “I need five money orders. But for different amounts. The first one is for the Fashion Institute of—”
“Just tell me how much they are, and then you have to fill out the rest.”
“Oh. Okay.” I rattled off the application costs and grabbed the stack of money orders. I walked home and filled them out on the floor of my bedroom while watching The Young Ones. My applications were fanned out in front of me; I double-checked that I had all the right payments with all the right schools, put the paperwork in the envelopes they provided, and sealed them shut. Would this work? They’d
probably take one look at my paltry extracurriculars and sharply declining grades and throw me right on the reject pile. I imagined that pile looked like the garbage pile from Fraggle Rock, except it would be the size of a mountain and on fire.
I didn’t have any safety schools. I only applied for fashion design programs. There was no guarantee anyone would give me financial aid or even tell me what to do with it if I got it. All I had was a head full of desperation dressed up as hope.
The next day, I walked my applications to the post office. There was a slot on the outside of the building, but I wanted to make sure my applications were housed and protected until they were sent off. I went inside and, one by one, dropped each envelope in the Out of Town slot.
* * *
—
My senior year rituals revolved around the fact that I had wheels. At least three out of five days per week, I would pick up my friend Jayne at 7:00 a.m. Jayne was the third of four sisters; her dad was dead, so her mom was raising them on her own in a pretty Victorian house in town. She had a funny, deadpan sense of humor and weirdly sophisticated tastes; she lived for the J.Crew catalog and listened to Yaz.
Before I pulled out of the driveway, we’d look at each other.
“Do you feel like going today?” one of us would always ask immediately.
“No.”
“Do you have any tests?”
“I have to turn in a journalism project, but I don’t have that until almost last period.”
“Friendly’s?”
“Friendly’s.”
We’d watched enough teen movies to know that you never skip school in your own town; there are far too many chances to be caught. Instead, I drove us to the Friendly’s in Goshen, about twenty minutes away.
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