Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (5 page)

“OK, you're right, I was. Then you up and disappeared,” Julia said, running her hands through her thick, chestnut brown hair. She had beautiful hair, highlighted by a friend of hers who used to live in one of the foster homes with her.

“But you met him through track?” I asked Julia. She was looking out the window, her wide, slanted eyes cloudy.

“What? Oh. Yeah. But then we saw him at Java Mountain Roasters today,” she said, and I nodded. I pictured it, the one downtown that had been newly renovated. It had been a grungy thrift store, one that smelled of old, wet, moldy wood and suddenly it had become a wooden bar and metal ceiling masterpiece. I was sure the tourists practically came all over themselves when they saw it was there on their way home.

“Well, I figured you wanted to be alone with him,” Treena said, sniffing and slouching. I shook my head.

“Like I was gonna fuck him right there!”

“Well, I don't know,” Treena said grumpily, shoving more chips in her mouth.

“Anyway, he's some kinda Colombian tribe,” Julia said and then sat back, looking thoughtful. She put one of her slender, silver ringed fingers up to her lip and rubbed it thoughtfully. “And he said something odd.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well… he said, some people think I'm white,” she said, putting her hand in her lap.

“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Treena said, laughing. “That was dumb. I mean, I'm part Indian, but he's like, gotta be almost completely.”

“He said some people think he's white?” Jake asked.

“What, blind people?” I said, incredulous.

“No joke. I mean, you and me can pass for Italian, but him, no way,” Julia said.

“That's just some dumb shit his parents probably laid on him,” I said.

“Yeah. That's what I thought, too. In any case, he likes you, Margaritte.”

“Maybe,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows.

“He's totally got the hots for you cuz, you betta watch it,” Jake said happily, making one of his goofy, faux-sophisticated facial expressions.

Julia looked over at me. “You bitch!”

“What?”

“You stole my man! I should kick you in your ass!”

“Do it,” I said, stoically. “Then, like, tear my hair out.”

“I will!” she said, laughing. “Watch your back, hooker.”

“I could take you. Besides, you have a boyfriend, idn't it?” Julia was crazy that way. She always had one dude signed on for life, or at least a year, and four dudes playing backup, in case player #1 had to be cut.

“Yeah,” she said, sighing and looking over at the TV, its blackness and the faint light coming from the windows creating a mirror. She looked at her own reflection cynically, then back over at me.

I shook my head. I admired Julia, I really did. She didn't take any shit seriously; boys, this town, anything. It was all about getting out. But I wasn't like her. I told her about our plans for the night and she and Treena got up and left, Julia telling us that if she was going to party, she needed to study. Jake left soon after. I worried about him.

The thing was, Jake stole cars. He never sold them, but he loved to joyride. He was lucky that he was seventeen, for the next few months anyway, or his ass would already be in jail instead of just the brief stints he did at juvie. The other shit he did was break into buildings at night, sometimes with other guys, sometimes alone, and sometimes with me. In fact, that's what we were thinking about after we'd sold some weed, after I'd crawled out of my window like I always did, once everything was nice and dark and quiet on the streets. Jake had been eyeing an old, abandoned apartment complex that someone had told him was haunted, one that was on the edge of town. He wanted to see what was inside and he'd called a bunch of friends and told them we should party there. Jake always wanted to know what was inside of things, but he was never prepared for the consequences once he found out.

I lay on my bed, thinking about Mike. After a while, I got up, the bedsprings squeaking, and walked upstairs to help Mom with dinner. She was already in the kitchen. I walked in and leaned against the wall, her back to me. She was at the sink.

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi.”

“Mom! Look! Look!” Carrie was yelling, trying to get Mom to look at her drawing. She was standing at her leg, pulling on her pants urgently.

“Carrie, I told you later!” Mom looked down at her and she stomped her feet angrily. Mom looked over at me. “Dinner's almost done,” she said. “Could you take over? I gotta go to the bathroom.” Her curls were in a massive state of disarray.

“Sure,” I said, walking up to the counter.

By the time she came back, the spaghetti was almost done. Mary ran over and started clinging to her, her Barbie plastered into the hand that was wrapped around her leg. Carrie was sitting on the floor, drawing in the corner of the kitchen, holding her Barbie by her upturned arms and singing something about bears.

Mary was crying. “Margaritte, do something about this,” Mom said without turning around. I sighed and walked over to Mary and pulled her off of Mom's leg. She screamed and cried and finally buried her head into my chest. I patted her head and set her down.

“They need a bath. There's just enough time to give them one before I'm finished making dinner.”

“Nooooooo!” Carrie wailed. She hated baths.

“You let your sister bathe you!” Mom yelled.

“But I ain't dirty!” Carrie said, and Mary shook her head, walking up to Mom and re-attaching herself to Mom's leg.

“Yes, you are! And no more fussing!”

I plucked Mary off of Mom's leg which was quite a feat, considering that she was doing her damnedest to stay attached to Mom like she had suckers growing out of her dirty little paws, picked Carrie up and dragged them into the bathroom, which kind of made my side hurt. Mary dropped from me halfway there, but as she usually went wherever Carrie was going, she began following me.

I let Carrie down once Mary had gotten past the bathroom door, and then shut and locked it before Carrie could run up to it and out, which she tried anyway.

“No!” I said, and began taking off her clothes while she wailed and screamed. “Stop scratching me!” Once I'd gotten her clothes off, I turned to Mary and got hers off. I went over to the old green tub and started running the water, testing it to make sure it wasn't too hot. I placed Mary in the tub and turned to Carrie, who was sitting on the toilet, crying.

“Carrie, c'mon, not this again, hey?”

“Have to pee, Margaritte! Have to pee!” She did this every time. It killed me.

"No you don't, Carrie. I'm not falling for it this time," I said, laughing a little. I waited a few seconds to make sure she didn't have to pee for real, and then peeled her off of the toilet and set her crying and scratching into the tub. Sometimes she tried bolting, but this time, she just turned her head up to the ceiling and wailed. Mary looked at her curiously for a minute and then turned to her Barbie and started whispering into its ear.

I located Carrie's Barbie, which miraculously had been dragged in with her and dropped it into the tub. Carrie cried for a few more minutes and then looked over at her Barbie, angrily at me, sniffed a few times, and then started washing her Barbie with bathwater. I washed them while they played with their Barbies, and then pulled them out, dried them and took them over to their bedroom and got them into their pajamas.

I got the twins at the table, their Barbies in front of them, and then set the table with silverware and napkins. I asked Mom if there was anything else I could do.

“Nope. It's almost done.”

“Cool,” I said, and sat down.

I could hear the door open and close. We tensed.

“Hi girls!” we heard from the living room and we relaxed. He was in a good mood. Dad came into the kitchen, up to Mom and then kissed her on the cheek.

“Smells good. I stopped over at the grocery store for some bread.” He set a few paper bags down on the counter. He began pulling items out, including the bread, and a large bottle of scotch. He set the scotch down on the table, opened a cabinet door and pulled a glass out. He poured himself a good amount, and sat down at the table with it.

Carrie looked over at the brown liquid and then up at Dad. “Can I have some?”

“Maybe someday,” he said, laughing. I said a silent prayer that that day would never come for either one of the twins. I wondered if he was gonna start in on me about last night, but he just sipped at his scotch and poured himself another once the first was done. I walked over to the bread, pulled it out of the paper sleeve and began cutting it into slices. I buttered the slices and then placed them on a metal tray, turned the oven on and set the tray into it. I went downstairs to read while the bread was baking. When I came back up, Dad was already somehow on his third scotch and looking over at the twins.

“They sure do love those Barbies.”

“No joke,” I said, “they're freaking in love with them.” He laughed loudly, too loudly, and Mary joined in. She loved to laugh, even if she didn't know what anybody was laughing about.

“Your Barbies don't have any hair,” Dad said and I closed my eyes.

“That's Mary's fault!” Carrie yelled.

“No, it's Carrie's fault!” Mary yelled back.

“It's both of their faults,” I said. “Well, Carrie gave her own Barbie a haircut today, this morning actually, before Mom took them to daycare, and then decided to give Mary's Barbie a haircut too. But only because Mary kept making fun of Carrie's Barbie.”

“Nuh-uh!” Mary said. She began whispering in her Barbie's ear.

“Girls,” Dad said, slurring, “you have to be good to each other.”

“I am good!” Carrie said.

“No, no. You really really have to be good to each other. When I was a kid, my sister wasn't very nice to me and now well, now I hardly see her. Though that's not because I hate her, it's because she's so far away.”

I could practically feel Mom rolling her eyes, but the twins just looked at him like he was making sense. They were used to his drunken rambling by now. Most of the time they would stare at him for a few seconds and then return to playing with their Barbies. Their favorite game was Barbie's been captured by a mean guy who wants to kiss her and Ken has to rescue her. Though it was somewhat funky-looking, now that both of their Barbies were completely bald.

“How is Kimberly?” Mom asked, stirring the pot of spaghetti.

“Good, I guess,” Dad said, shrugging and pouring himself another scotch.

“Doug… you've had enough, idn't it?” She hadn't even turned around. She had a sixth sense for it.

“No.” I could feel his anger rising. “And don't you tell me what to do, Christine.”

“You can be a real jerk,” she said.

“And you can be a real bitch,” he said. She went silent and Dad walked into the living room to turn the TV on, returning quickly to the kitchen to sit down at the table. When the spaghetti was done, Mom poured it into the strainer, back into the pot, took the jar of sauce and poured it into the pot and stirred. She set the whole thing down on the table and I went to retrieve the bread from the oven.

We all sat down and ate in silence, Dad drinking scotch after scotch and finally retiring to the living room, to watch the
MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour
, which he loved. The TV had already been on all through dinner, and we had learned to be quiet while Dad watched.

After a while, he called the twins to him. He would sit them on his lap almost every night and read them a bedtime story, one apiece. That was the thing about Dad. He occasionally did terrifyingly redeemable things.

After he was done reading to them, I put them to bed and then went into my parent's bedroom to say goodnight to Mom.

“Did you do your homework?” She was flipping through channels, finally settling on
Quincy
.

“Yes,” I lied.

“Good.”

I got up. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“What was it like when you first met Dad?”

Mom muted the TV, put the remote down. “Wonderful. He was always buying me little things. He wanted to know what I thought. We talked all the time.”

“Oh.”

“Margaritte, come here,” she said, opening her arms. I came over, leaned down. She patted me on the back. “I love your Dad. But he drinks. That's what's wrong with him. I can't make him stop. And I got pregnant before I was old enough to understand that.”

She held me for a while and then I stood up.

“Goodnight,” I said.

“
'
Night,” she said, and turned the sound on again.

I walked downstairs and turned on the TV. I was ready to go out, I had to go. I loved Mom, but I just couldn't be in that house, with Mom and Dad, with the twins, with the stupidity of it, the futility all around me. Futility. I had just learned that word in school.