Authors: Lindsay Hunter
Daddy's (10 page)
On the highway Daddy drifted off, his snores like a clogged chainsaw. I held my breath in the dark spots between streetlights. Daddy woke when I took the exit ramp, twitching hard and rubbing his nose. You notice how things that’s ugly look pretty when it’s nighttime? He pointed at a gas station as we passed. Like look how gorgeous that is, that white light through them windows and that solitary Indian clerk just existing inside. It probably smells like donuts and hot dongs in there and I’d like to go in and talk with him, Daddy said. I wish I could talk to everyone on this earth. Suddenly he put his hand up on his mouth and held it there a minute, and when he took it away he whispered You cain’t hold your liquor down, you don’t deserve to drank it.
I pulled up to Daddy’s apartment. The lights were off and I wondered did that make it ugly to him. Here we are, Daddy, I said, and Daddy snorted, said Here ain’t it, girlie. We there, we not here. This is there. You get me? I helped him to the door, him putting all his weight on me and smelling good, like aftershave, and bad, like something pickled in sweat and rubbing alcohol. When we got inside Daddy lurched head first and landed on the couch, rasped Happy Day of Birth girlie, you suck a gopher’s asshole at pool and just ‘cause you sixteen don’t mean you can get to going around with any boys. I flipped the lights on as I left, Daddy’s mouth slack and his nose letting fly a meek whistling, then before the door met the jamb Daddy put up his head and called out I could just crush you to death with love, sweetness.
I walked to the bus stop on the corner, thinking about the scuffs on his shoes and how there was still nothing on his walls and how if you’re lonely and drunken I guess it makes sense that you’d be finding meanings everywhere your eyes fell and believing with your whole body in some hillbilly song about the greener side of a hill. But see then when the bus come I seen what Daddy meant about things at night looking different, to look at it the bus some kind of miracle box of light trundling toward me with an offering of strangers and a lungful of air conditioning and a bell I could ring any time I wanted to, to make it stop, but I guess that’s not how no tough bitch would talk.
TUESDAY
I came home to my sister pounding on the sliding glass doors. Technically she didn’t live there anymore. Technically my dad had thrown her out the night before when she came home at midnight with eyes hard and fogged as marbles and the bitter smell of pot clouding out from her.
I felt bad for her. Her fists up above her head, pounding away. Her spiky black hair. Her shirt bunched up and her belly showing, Such lovely olive skin, our mom used to say, such lovely olive skin threaded with stretch marks and fat now, rippling and rippling like her belly button was the coin dropped in the water. I felt bad for her.
Let. Me.
In
. Behind her the sky was so blue it could’ve stained your finger. I turned the TV on.
In
. Behind her the sky was so blue it could’ve stained your finger. I turned the TV on.
At the commercials I realized she’d been quiet, and when I looked at her I saw her watching me like I’d been watching the TV. I just need my clothes, she said. I walked over to the door and pushed my forehead against it. Did you see the sky, I asked her. Of course, she said. I let her in.
Cunt, she said. In the kitchen she stuck her head in the freezer and sucked at a bottle of vodka. The cold air billowed white around her. Our mom had paid a man to paint angels in my sister’s bedroom. They floated in white air.
Want me to help you, I asked her.
Go fuck yourself, she said. Someone on TV started screaming. Here, she said, and handed me the empty bottle. Fill this up with water and put it back in the freezer.
I let the water run and run. I let it fill the bottle and cascade over my hands and fall down the drain. I imagined time slowing until it was nothing, until it dripped like water.
In the freezer I touched my wet finger to a piece of ice and it stuck and my finger got numb. I can endure pain, I wanted to tell her. Better than you.
Hey, she said, and when I turned she was holding our mom’s economy-sized bottle of Tylenol. She was chewing. White powder clung to her lips and shirt. Hey, remember when I pierced your ear and we used ice to numb it? She tipped her head back, poured more pills in. You bled like a motherfucker. She coughed and a pill flew out of her mouth and hit my shoulder. She picked it up and wiped it on my shirt. Popping it back in her mouth, she said, Come outside and sit with me.
We sat on the porch and stared at the yard. Her lips were chalked with Tylenol. Light this, she said, handing me a cigarette. Don’t inhale or you’ll turn evil. She blew smoke rings. Look, she said, halos. She said, you’re really annoying, you know that? Good grades and virginity don’t count for shit.
Her words were slurring. She held the cigarette up and missed her mouth.
I’m sending up a flare, she said. She pointed at the sky. You see that? I’m sending up a flare. Here I am. Here I am. Here I am.
Her head drooped, her chin touched her chest. Here I am, she said. You don’t even have to look to find me.
Evening was coming on. The sky turned pale and the sun was orange and smeared.
When Dad gets home, she said, make him count to ten before he looks for me. No, she said, make it twenty.
KID
Kid was reading his devotional. Then his father came in. His father dragged a chair behind him and it made an embarrassed, resentful sound across the wood floor. His father set the chair under the ceiling fan. Kid read the sentence, Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. He read it over and over. His father swiped at the fan’s blades with an old dirty rag. Kid read plans in a man’s heart plans in a man’s plans mans plan man, but he was really wondering what it would be like to fuck a girl in the guts, like right through the belly button. Kid’s father said, It makes me so proud to watch you reading your devotionals like that and Kid nodded, thinking girlguts bloodballs. Kid was pretty sure he was some kind of sicko, but at this point he couldn’t help it. He made up for his thoughts by being lazy. Like right then he put down his devotional and went into the kitchen and melted some Velveeta over a row of Oreos instead of going down the road to Jenny Bickson’s house to see what her innards would feel like on his man place.
Kid’s father put on the television. A whole audience of women was screaming mad and Kid imagined their heads in loaf pans in the oven, slices of their doughy faces with butter and jam. On the couch his father had his hand down the front of his pants but Kid knew he was just feeling it, just letting his hand and his balls remember each other. His father put his hand on Kid’s head every once in a while in a pride sort of way and it always smelled sour. It always smelled like balls.
His father put his weight on his right leg, farted. His bra strap was hanging down his arm and Kid adjusted it for him as he walked past. Kid’s father had titties, said that’s what a lifetime of beer and chips did to a man, said a real man dealt with the situation at hand and didn’t let his titties flop around like a whore or a fat toddler.
Kid’s father said, Walk to the 7-Eleven and get us some dinner, like burritos or cereal or what have you. Hot dogs. Pretzels? Or like Spaghetti-O’s or something. Peanut butter and jelly. Frozen pizza. You have choices. I’ll pay you back. Oatmeal. Or Creama Wheat. Whatever. You have choices.
Many are the plans. Kid thought, Many are the plans, yo. Many are the pussies fuckbed lipslits pleasure parade cookie kissnuts. He had seventy-three dollars in the toe of his house slipper. He was thinking Krispy Kremes strawberry milk and pretzel Combos for dinner. Purpose that prevails.
The neighbor had his sprinklers going and the lawn looked like it had been sprinkled with bits of glass. Kid had a stiffy (fuckbed lipslits) and it donged up and down in his pants like a punching clown. He presented it to the late afternoon like Welcome, here is my crotch area, here is what you are seeing, golldang right it’s a chub, I am fifteen years old after all. His neighbor was watching a game show, the word Prizes! flashed onscreen. Kid had once watched the neighbor’s wife undress, had seen the rolls that bunched at her abdomen when she bent to work off her socks, had lost interest when she started picking at her teeth.
At the 7-Eleven Kid went to the magazine rack and looked at the brides. Some brides had shorter hairstyles and Kid averted his eyes, thinking Nope, that ain’t it. Thinking carpets match the drapes? Thinking slut bouquets.
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