Break the Skin (9 page)

This was what she did from time to time, called me up just to stick in the knife. If she couldn’t find Pablo, she’d turn her temper on me. Who was I, anyway? That’s what she was really saying whenever she called.
Who are you, Betty Ruiz?

I wasn’t anything that amounted to shit to hear her tell it. If I stayed on the phone, she’d list every reason in the world no man would ever have me: too nutty—what was the deal with all that fairy crap, anyway?; too bossy—look what I’d pushed Pablo into with Slam Dent; too this; too that. My butt was too big, my arms too hairy, my hands always stained with ink. What kind of man would want a woman with tattoos, and in places best left private. “That’s skanky,” she said. “And you’re old, Baby. You’re just too damned old.”

The truth was, despite what people like Carolyn believed, I had no tats. Lordy Magordy. I’d be afraid to let someone punch me with an iron. I got started in the tattoo business because I could draw, and Mami, who’d owned the shop before me, taught me how to drill the ink. She always wanted me to let her give me a tat, but I wouldn’t go for it. No sir. No one, not even her, was ever going to brand me. I see these kids come into the shop, some of them on a dare, and if they’re underage, I turn
them away. “Come back when you’re eighteen,” I tell them. If someone of age wants a tat, it’s just commerce as far as I’m concerned. But if you’re too young, or too drunk, or not in your right mind for whatever reason, then it’s on my head, and I’m not going to have that.

And sure, there’s the rub. I know it. I’m not stupid. There I was, all holier than thou about not taking money from someone who didn’t have sense when it came to getting a tat, but I was more than willing to take advantage of this man in my bed, this Lester Stipp, to invent a life for him, all for what I could get from the deal. It goes to show you, doesn’t it—who we are under our skin? Ask any tat artist and they’ll tell you about the people who come in and have to talk themselves into going through with the deal. Sometimes we tell them what we know they want to hear:
Yes, I’ve done it myself. It won’t hurt
 … not much.
You’ll love it
 … once it’s done.
It won’t get infected
 … if you care for it right. And finally they say yes. They give themselves over. Who knows, I told myself that night as I watched Donnie, awakened for the briefest moment by the ringing phone, roll over and go back to sleep, maybe it was me who was saving him.

“I’m not going to listen to you,” I interrupted Carolyn. “No more.”

“You have to listen to me, Baby, because you know it’s true.”

“No,” I told her. “You listen to me.” I told her what it was like to be me in a world of pretty people like her. Pretty blond girl with the creamy skin. Skinny little girl with all the curves in the right places. “You’re like a Barbie doll,” I told her. “You’re blond and white and slim and pretty, and we all want to be you. Even I want to be you, and if you want the whole truth, I can barely stand to look at you because you’ve got everything a woman could want.”

For a good while, she didn’t say anything, and I thought maybe she’d hung up. I was about to say her name, when I heard her take a long breath. Then she said, “I don’t have Pablo,” and her voice was all washed out. I understood then that she was more sad than anything and she’d trade all the Hearts on Fire diamonds in the world if she and Pablo could go back to where they started and stay that way the rest of their lives.

I wanted to tell her he wasn’t worth it, but I could see she thought he was, and who was I to argue with the private yearning of her heart?

“Baby?” She wasn’t angry now or upset. She was calm the way folks can be when they run out of ways to bend the world to fit their needs and just give in to the facts of the matter. “That man, that Slam Dent, he came to see me tonight.”

The way she said it, I knew she was scared of him. By all rights, I should have been, too, but there’s this thing about me—some folks call it spunk, others call it stupid—that won’t let the scared show through. I just knuckle down and bare my teeth. If I could have gotten away with it that day in my shop when he said those ugly things to me and then forced his finger into my mouth, I would’ve scratched Slam Dent’s eyes out.

Carolyn could put on the spit and sand for a little while. She got her back up with people she thought of as family—the ones who had to take it—and, for better or worse, that’s what we were, former sisters-in-law. I didn’t have to take it, though, and I was just about to tell her that when she began to cry. I could hear her sniffling and boo-hooing, and it should have made me laugh or else given me a high horse I could use to ride roughshod over her sniveling little candy-ass ways, but what it really did, to my surprise and dismay, was make my heart go out to her. I understood that now the tables had turned and I was the one with a man and she was all alone. What’s more, I felt certain that Slam Dent had been more than just inquiring when he paid her his call.

“Carolyn, did he hurt you?”

“He made me take off my clothes. He had a gun. He made me stand there while he looked at me. Said he wanted to see what Pablo had walked away from. That’s all he did. He just looked. I was naked, and he looked at me. I never felt so ugly.”

She was crying hard now, not those little sniffles and boo-hoos, but throat-scraping, shoulder-shaking sobs. I let her go on awhile. Then I said, “He had no right to do that. You should call the police.”

“Baby, I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t tell them what he did.”

I knew then she was leaving space for me to say that I’d make the call and take care of everything. But I was scared. If the police started poking around, what would they find out about this man in my bed?

“Maybe he won’t come back,” I said.

“He doesn’t have to,” said Carolyn. “He’s already done me in. Shame, Baby. That’s what he left behind. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror.”

So there it was, the way one look could make us feel ugly the rest of our lives.

“Do you want …” I meant to change my mind and ask whether she wanted me to call the police for her, but before I could finish, she took my first words as an invitation.

“Oh, yes, Baby. Thank you. I can’t bear to be alone tonight. I’ll be right there.”

MY
MAMI
USED TO SAY
,
Cada corazón tiene un hogar
. Each heart has a home. That’s what I thought about as I waited for Carolyn—how there were places in the world we were meant to walk, and if we were lucky, we found them. We had people we were meant to be with, and again, if the stars lined up just right, we put on the lives we were intended to have.

I left Donnie sleeping in the bedroom, and I eased the door closed behind me, not wanting to wake him. How would I explain him to Carolyn? I sat down in the living room, in the soft glow of a fairy night-light, and I waited for her, remembering the night Pablo came to live with me. She stood on my porch that night and pounded on the door. She called his name over and over, and the name got all mixed up with her crying, and before long she was hoarse with the effort, and, finally, she did the only thing she could. She went away.

With Pablo gone, her rage built, and more often than not, I was the easy target for it. Then Slam Dent came along and showed her no one was safe. No matter how pretty you were. No matter how blessed, you
were the same as the next person, even someone like me, the one Carolyn blamed for the trouble Pablo was in. Under our skins, in the echoes of our heartbeats, we were both afraid of being alone.

So she came to me. I let her into my house, and for a moment, neither of us said a word. She was at the end of things. I could see that right away. Her face was the one God had given her—the first time I’d seen her without makeup—and she’d drawn her hair back into a bun, as if she’d done everything she could to make herself plain. It was odd seeing her without lipstick and rouge and eyeliner and those false eyelashes she always wore. If I’d seen her on the street, I’m not sure I would have known her. For just a moment, I might have wondered who that Plain Jane white girl was and why she looked so washed out and down in the mouth.

“Baby,” she said, in such a wretched voice, “oh, Baby,” and then she told me the story again of how Slam Dent had held a gun on her, had made her strip down, had told her to turn this way and that, had watched her as cool as could be. Then, when he’d seen enough, he said to her, “I can do this to you.” He used the barrel of his revolver to brush her hair back from her face. “Look at me,” he said. “I can find you, and I can do this to you anytime I want.”

That’s what sent her to me, scared to death.

“If we call the police,” she said, “I’ll have to tell them all of that.”

So it was “we.”
We
were in this together, and yet she was giving me the chance to let it go, to not say a word on her behalf, to tell her Slam was all blow, and odds were he wouldn’t bother her again. But I knew better. I knew he wasn’t going to stop until he had what he wanted, and that was Pablo. He’d do whatever he had to in order to find him and get his money.

“Do you want me to call?” I asked Carolyn.

“Baby,” she said, her hands trembling. “I expect you should.”

A POLICE OFFICER CAME
, and keep in mind, when he stepped into my house, Donnie was still sleeping in my bed.

Carolyn told her story. She told what Slam had made her do. It was a hard thing to say, but she did it. She kept her voice as steady as she could. She sat on the edge of my couch, hands clasped between her knees, her torso rocking back and forth ever so slightly, and she said it all. When she was done, she kept looking at the floor, unable to lift her head and face the police officer, a bug-eyed man with a red mustache. Although it was hidden beneath his blue uniform shirt, I knew his chest was hairless and that he had a tat in the middle of it: a big Valentine’s heart, the kind that comes up on the screen at the end of that old TV show
I Love Lucy
. Inside the heart was the outline of the state of Texas, and the words, in a flowing script,
Deep in the Heart
. I knew it to be so because I was the one who’d put it there one night in my shop.

He took notes while Carolyn told her story, and when she was done, he slapped his little steno notebook closed and he said to me, “Miss Baby, I suppose this is about Pablo.” I told him it was, and he nodded. “I don’t suppose you’re ready to tell us where he is. You know the Rangers are on this rustling case. We’re all looking for Pablo and this …” He flipped his notebook open again and found the page he was looking for. “This Virgil Dent.”

“He calls sometimes,” I told the police officer. “Pablo, I mean.” I’d never known the officer’s name. I’d spent all that time staring at his chest, listening to the little whistle of breath through his nose, smelling the sweet mint of his chewing gum, but I’d never had reason to ask who he was. He paid me with cash, and then he was gone. “He doesn’t tell me where he is,” I said. “That’s all I know. But Slam Dent—that’s his ridiculous nickname. Virgil Dent, as you’ve just heard, is still in the area. Maybe you’d have a good chance of finding him.”

Just then the bedroom door opened, and Donnie took a few shuffling steps into the living room. He was bare-chested, wearing only his boxers. His hair was mussed from sleep, and he had this dazed look on
his face, like he’d just woke up in the Otherworld and was trying to get his bearings.

Carolyn said, “Oh,” with a gasp, and then covered her face with her hands.

“Hold it.” The police officer drew his service revolver and pointed it at Donnie. “Stay where you are.”

I was already moving, not even thinking whether it was a stupid thing to do, only knowing I didn’t want that gun aimed at Donnie. I stepped between him and the police officer. I said that silly thing I always say when I don’t have words. “Lordy Magordy.”

It worked like some sort of incantation, a little hocus-pocus. “Lordy Magordy,” I said, and the police officer lowered his revolver.

He gave me a sheepish grin. “I thought at first it was Pablo.”

I couldn’t help but tease him. “You had your eyes checked recently?” I stepped aside so he could get a good look at Donnie. “Does that look like a Mexican man to you?”

The officer jammed the revolver back into its holster. He leaned into the dim light to study Donnie. “Who are you, mister?” he asked.

Carolyn uncovered her eyes and took a look herself. She glanced at me, her eyebrows raised as if to say,
What in the world?

I cleared my throat. Then Donnie, bless him, said, “I’m Donnie. Donnie True. What’s the trouble?”

“Do you live here?” the officer said.

Donnie chuckled. “You think I’d traipse around like this in a stranger’s house? Of course I live here.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “This is my wife.”

I didn’t think anything at the time about how easy it was for him to say this and everything that followed. I just fell into the gentle tone of his voice, gave thanks for his story. Somehow in his sleep he’d dreamed it all, or else he’d carried the truth of his real life into the one he was now making with me. I didn’t care which it was. It all sounded fine, even the things I couldn’t have imagined—the part about how we liked to watch
old Marx Brothers movies and eat Greek food. He just yakked on and on, until the police officer held up his hand to stop him. “All right, cowboy,” he said. “You’re not Pablo. I got that much.”