Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (27 page)

“You working today, Dad?”

The paper twitched. “No. I just want to relax. Can I do that, Margaritte? Can you please be quiet?”

“Yes, Dad. Sorry,” I said, thinking that he was probably hungover as shit. I looked over at Mom, but she was grading, and seemed to be trying to ignore us both.

The paper twitched again, and I shook my head. I went and got a bowl of cereal and sat down.

The paper came down, and Dad looked into my eyes angrily, his light brown hair ruffled in such a way as to make him look like a big, brown peacock.

“What?” I asked, the spoon halfway to my mouth, the milk dripping into the bowl.

“Could you not chew so loudly?” he asked.

“Sorry.
Jesus
,” I said, trying to chew quietly, the paper going back up again. How the fuck Mom had put up with this shit for years and years was beyond me. I was going to raise my child without this fucked up shit, without some giant, angry, red motherfucker telling her to chew quietly for fuck's sake. I looked over at Mom again, but she still had her head down, her pen in her hand.

I got up from the table nosily, and walked over to the TV to sit with the twins, their funky haircut Barbies settled in their chubby, sticky yellowy-brown fists, their mouths open, eyes affixed to the TV. I reached over and patted Carrie's head and then Mary's. Mary turned and smiled at me briefly, but Carrie just squiggled in irritation and scooted further towards the TV.

“No, Carrie, not that close,” I said, pulling her back. She scooted back up towards the TV again as soon as my hands had left her stubborn little body, and I had to pull her back again. She was set to move forward yet again when I told her that if she did it one more time, I was gonna turn the TV off.

“No!” Mary whined.

“Margaritte!” Carrie said, “No!”

“Well, stop trying to scoot closer. You know it's bad for you.”

“I'm tireda doing things good for me!” She yelled.

I looked at her and then laughed. “Yeah. I know. Me too.”

She narrowed her eyes in anger and frustration but stayed put and I shook my head at her and smiled and patted her head. She ducked pissily as soon as my fingertips hit her hair and I laughed again, making her madder. I understood why she was like she was, I really did. But that was another thing; I was not gonna let my kid watch TV all fucking day. I understood why my mom felt she had to let them do it, with me, Dad, work, the fact that she had two little kids, but I was gonna have one job and one kid and I was gonna put all of my energy into just that.

I sat with the twins for an hour, watching
Sesame Street
and then
Electric Company
propped out on the floor, my head against the couch and a cup of watery black coffee on my stomach. Carrie looked over at me occasionally, clearly hoping that I'd leave so that she could get eye-shatteringly close to the TV. When the credits started to roll I got up from the floor and headed for the bathroom for a long, hot shower, telling the twins to behave as I got up to go. Carrie made an angry, muffled gummmpph noise and I laughed yet again. She was a kid after my own heart. Stubborn. Good. She'd need to be, in this life.

Dad had retreated into his office and Mom was at the table, still grading. I swear to God, if Mom ever murdered some poor fucker, and the crazy Christians like my uncle and auntie were right, and there really was some cheesy place like hell, she'd end up eternally grading. She looked down at the infinite pile of papers and then scribbled, squinting. She scribbled again and then set her pen down to the side of the pile and pulled one off the top of the stack and put it on the bottom.

I opened the door to the bathroom and shut it, locking it behind me before I took off my pajamas. I turned the shower on and stepped in, the water on my body giving me the shivers. I looked down at my stomach and wondered when I was going to start showing. The idea that there was another person growing in me fully, finally hit me and I shivered again. All of the horrible stories about young moms in my town came flooding in, like lightning in the dark. The tall, skinny fifteen-year-old girl who'd told me without expression that since she couldn't afford an abortion, she'd had her boyfriend beat her until it came out. The silent, tiny, eternally black t-shirt clad fourteen-year-old with the face full of cystic acne who'd been pregnant for nine months, whose parents had not bothered to notice, who'd left her baby on her own doorstep early the next morning when she gave birth to it in her room alone one night.

I finished and dried myself off with one of the black and gold towels Mom and Dad had gotten on their wedding day. I held the towel out in front of me thoughtfully, thinking about my dad's mom. How she drank too. About her thick, white legs squeezed into a pair of pantyhose every day of her life. Her lamé sandals with fake jewels. Her shaking white face. Her sweating hand around her glass of scotch.

I walked down the stairs and changed into my uniform, a white wife-b and jeans. I painted long brown lines on my eyelids in the mirror. I combed my hair slowly. I walked up the stairs and told Mom I was going for a walk. I opened the door and went a few blocks, over to one of my regulars. They were a bunch of guys who lived in a house together. Sometimes I would see one of them working as a busboy in a restaurant, or behind the register in a gas station, their long, greasy hair hiding their eyes, hungover, high, smiling at me funny. I knocked. No one answered. I looked down at my hands and sighed impatiently. And then knocked again. A few minutes later, a shuffling noise, the sound of someone tripping over something that made a tinny noise,
shit
muttered unhappily. Then a messy, sleepy looking white dude finally answered.

“Hey. Sorry. I was sleeping.”

“S'cool.” I walked in and he shut the door. The house was gross as hell, so I always stood. There were wrappers from every fast food place in town all over the floor and trash of every kind everywhere. I could see the kitchen from the living room and it was in even worse shape. The dude and his roommates were the guys you went to for fake IDs, license plates, all that kind of shit.

“So, the usual?” I asked and the dude nodded, handed me the money, and I handed him his baggie.

“You like, want anything to drink?” he asked me.

“Uh, no thanks. I'm supposed to meet someone in a few minutes.”

“That's cool,” he said, looking at me. “Hey. Are you like, Italian?”

“Indian.”

“Really? Cool,” he said, opening his bag and rolling a joint. “You wanna hit?”

“No thanks.”

“Yeah, I was telling my roommate I thought you were Italian but he was saying that you looked white. I was like, white? What, bro? No way, maybe like a half Mexican, but not white. Or maybe Italian, but anyway, you're like really young to be a drug dealer, you know that?”

“Yeah.” I was really trying to keep up with him.

He took a giant hit and then coughed like hell.

“Good one,” he said. He looked up at me in his faded black and white striped bathrobe and scratched at his chest, thick, wiry hair poking out through the center of the robe.

“You should really try to get out of your line of work.”

I thought about how to answer him, but he switched subject matter in true pothead style. “Yeah. This town blows. I've lived in it my whole life. I mean, screw the mountains. People are always talking about how pretty the mountains are but what good have they ever done me, you know?”

“I guess that's true.”

I wondered what he thought the mountains were supposed to do for him.

He looked around and then back up at me. “What was I saying?” He asked and then burst out laughing. “This is good shit!”

“I gotta go. Good talking with you though.”

“Oh, sure, anytime. Same time next week?”

“Sure,” I said, and went over to the door and opened it. “See you.” I looked back. I could see he was taking another hit. He waved and I closed the door and started walking down the cement stairs that led up to his faded, white house. What a fucking life. I probably did need to quit dealing, once I had the baby. Too risky. Too fucked up.

I walked back home, enjoying the sun and thinking about how I should break the news to Mom. Maybe I could tell her that I'd really loved the boy I'd been with. She would understand that. She had loved, and did love, Dad very much. I would tell her that she wouldn't have to support me in any way, that I could get on welfare but that I didn't plan on staying on it. She talked shit about kids with kids on welfare, but she'd have to understand. I mean, we barely got by as it was. There was no way that I was gonna be able to do it without welfare.

I was working it all out in my head, mapping it out, but when it came to thinking about what Dad would say, what he would do, I had nothing.

I went over to a rock that was a few feet over from the cracked and shitty sidewalk and sat down, tracing the delicate, lacy growth of moss on the edge. I thought about how he'd been during the accident, about when he'd held us at gunpoint. I shuddered and pulled my arms around me.

I sat there for a while. And then I thought about Mike. And something broke, turned in me, like a key in a lock. I still loved him. Where was he? It occurred to me that he didn't know that I was keeping the baby. I wondered what he would think about that. I shook my head. I couldn't go there. This wasn't about him. He had acted like a douche, treated me like shit. I was having the baby because that's what
I
wanted.

I sat for a bit, thinking, until I couldn't take anymore. I stood up and started walking home, puzzling over how I could get around Dad, how I could deal with what he would do and how he would live with me pregnant. I could think of nothing. He was going to blow the fuck up. Maybe this would make Mom finally leave him. Maybe she and I could get a place together, or somehow make Dad leave, get an apartment on his own so he could finish drinking himself to death. That was an ugly thought. I felt a twinge of guilt. But he wasn't going to change. And maybe Mom could finally have a decent life.

I walked up the drive. I noticed Dad's car was gone. I hurried my pace. This was my chance to talk to her, while the big, hulking, sweating shadow that my father had become was out of the house. My heart hammered in my chest as I opened the door.

“Mom?” I called.

“In here,” she said from the kitchen. I walked in, my heart clanking like a hard, angry machine.

“Keep it down. I finally got the twins down for a nap.”

“Actually, that's perfect,” I said, coming around the corner and into the kitchen. Mom was at the table, grading. I sat down at the table next to her.

“Perfect?” she asked, her head still down, her pen still in her hand.

“Yeah. 'Cause I need to talk.”

The pen stopped moving and her head came up.

“About what?” she asked, setting the pen down. “Your grades? Margaritte, don't tell me you're going to have to repeat the eleventh grade, for God's sake.”

“No, that's not it,” I said. I felt lightheaded. This was going to be hard. But I needed to be brave.

“What then?”

“Well, you're not going to like it.”

“What am I not going to like? You're starting to scare me,” she said, lifting her short, shapely hand to her chest. “What am I not going to like Margaritte? You're not… ”

I was silent.

“No! You're not! You didn't! How could you! Tell me I'm wrong.”

“No, you're not wrong. I'm pregnant.”

She got up, sharply, the chair falling back and onto the linoleum floor. She ignored it and began to pace, looking up at me occasionally, one hand still over her heart, the other on her forehead.

“I could kill you! What's wrong with you!”

“I—”

“Quiet! Let me think.”

“But Mom—”

“I said, let me think!”

I was silent while she paced. She stopped. “OK, I know there's a clinic in Denver because Murna's kid went there last year. I can call her and get their number.”

“Mom, I already know about that clinic. I was there.”

She looked at me like I'd just told her that I'd grown another, funkier, head.

“What do you mean you've already been there?” She said, her brows knitting together.

“I went there a week ago. I couldn't go through with it.”

Mom blinked a few times, staring at me uncomprehendingly. “You… ”

“Mom, I couldn't go through with it. I broke up with Mike over this. I was sure that I was going to do it and he didn't want me to. But when it came time, I couldn't.”

Mom came over to me and slapped me, hard. I squealed and put my hand to my face, feeling the sting of her slap resonate throughout my body.

“What is wrong with you! You think that boy is going to come around just because you're having his baby? Are you crazy?”