Sister Golden Hair: A Novel (30 page)

“No,” I said.

“I’m going to walk down to the Hop-In,” she said. “Want anything?”

“Let me out,” I said. “I want to walk with you.”

“I’m sending him in now,” Sheila said, “and he’s going to fuck you really good.”

I sat down again on the shoes, my head sandwiched between the hems of her dresses.

“Say you want to be fucked really good.”

“I want to be fucked really good.”

“I knew it,” she said. “You act so sweet and innocent, but I knew you wanted it.”

When I got home my face was pink in the bathroom mirror and I was sweaty under my clothes. I lay on my bed for a while, trying to calm down and waiting for a good song to come on the radio. No good songs came so I turned on my cassette player. I’d taped my favorite Bowie song, “Starman,” every time I heard it come on the radio, so I could listen to it over and over. The first few notes were cut off, but the fact that it sounded scratchy made it seem like Bowie actually was up on the moon.

I liked how he said
boogie
; people used the word all the time in a stupid way, but Bowie said it like a little prayer. The way he said it reminded me of Jill. I jumped up off my bed and decided to call child protection again and see if they’d tell me where I could find her.

The lady told me that Jill was no longer in their system.

I took the phone book on my lap and looked up the number of Woolworth’s and asked for the Pet Department. I knew her grandmother had worked there, but the guy who picked up said he’d never heard of a Brendy Minkler.

I walked down to Dwayne’s duplex and knocked on the door.

“What do you want?” he said, stepping out on the slab of concrete.

“Do you know where Jill is?”

He looked at me. I could see that his little mind was moving but whether he was building up a lie or telling the truth was impossible to tell.

“Actually I just heard from her.”

“Are you bullshitting me?”

“She called in the middle of the night. Said she was living out in Bedford with her grandmother.”

“Did she give you a number?”

“No,” he said, “but she was shit-faced drunk. She said all kinds of crazy stuff.”

I ran all the way up the hill and into my duplex, throwing myself at the wall phone in the kitchen. I called information and asked for the number for Brendy Minkler and then dialed. I listened to a few rings until a message came on saying the phone had been disconnected.

One afternoon, after school, while I was in the closet, Sheila said she’d let me out only if we could show my dad our Playboy outfits.

“You mean just the leotards?”

“No,” Sheila said, “I want him to judge us like Walt did, to see if we’re doing a good job.”

I wanted to get out of the closet but I knew that my dad did not want to see me dressed as a Playboy Bunny.

“He’ll get mad,” I said, “and I won’t be able to come here anymore.”

Sheila just turned on the radio and sang to a Carpenters song. I could tell by the way the light was fading at the bottom of the door that it was getting late.

“Let me out!”

“Promise.”

“OK.”

Sheila made me call my dad and arrange for him to come over to her duplex after work. I told him we had a surprise for him. I knew he figured we’d drawn a forest scene on poster board or set up a science experiment.

We got into our outfits and practiced a few Bunny dips. Sheila wanted to grade my performance, but I kept slumping my shoulders. I heard our car pull into the driveway and my dad open the car door. I pulled
my sweater over my leotard and put on my painter pants.

“What are you doing?” Sheila said.

“I can’t go through with this.”

The doorbell rang and Sheila ran down the stairs with me following behind.

“Pastor,” she said, “thanks for coming”

She said the word with a sort of giddy respect as she grabbed his arm and pulled him into the living room. My father didn’t want to minister to the people of Bent Tree, he didn’t feel qualified anymore, but once again he was being forced into it. He stood in the white living room, trying not to stare at Sheila’s outfit, staring instead at the conch shell on the glass coffee table.

“What’s this about?” he said to me.

“We need your advice,” Sheila said.

“For what?” my dad said, taking off his jacket and handing it to Sheila.

“For God’s sake, cover yourself up!”

“No thanks,” Sheila said, trying to Bunny-dip away from him.

“I insist,” he said, throwing the blazer over her shoulders.

Sheila’s face got red.

“We want you to judge us on how we walk.”

“You walk fine,” my dad said. “What’s all this about?”

“Nothing,” I said, pulling him out the front door and toward his car.

I convinced my dad that Sheila was trying out a Halloween costume. He didn’t buy it completely but it settled him down. She called me after dinner desperate to go to the Coffee Pot where Mr. Ramin’s band, Earth Tone, was playing. I lied to my mom and we walked down the highway, arriving as it was getting dark. Sheila flitted around the back door trying to get somebody to tell Mr. Ramin she was waiting outside. I hung around the parking lot. The neon beer sign shone red against the asphalt. The Coffee Pot was a log cabin with a giant red coffeepot balanced on the top as if God’s hand might reach down, pick it up, and pour a gigantic mug of steaming coffee. Inside Mr. Ramin beat on the drums and the singer wailed as if he were trapped inside a wet mitten. When the door opened a puff of smoke escaped and the music flamed up like a fire encouraged by gasoline.

I leaned against the side of a pickup truck and looked over the parking lot at the strip mall across the street. The moon was full and, because we were down in the valley, mist rose up off the ground. I moved outside the oval of entrance light. Winter had morphed into spring. The bugs were loud. In a truck a few parking spots away, a man handed a joint to a girl in a flannel shirt with the sleeves cut off. At the other end of the parking lot, a group of men passed a flask around and smoked cigarettes.

I walked to the back door and watched Sheila talking to an older man in a leather vest. Near my feet
was a patch of moving jagged-leaf light. Mr. Ramin came out and he and Sheila walked to the other side of the building and went behind the Dumpster. I watched the patch of light so long I convinced myself it was a soul trying to get my attention. How could I help the poor soul? I laid gravel in the shape of a cross and repeated some words my dad had taught me three times. I thought of going over to Sheila and Mr. Ramin, pulling her away from him or maybe just standing near them as if I were part of whatever they were doing. This would be creepy but undeniably exciting.

Sheila yelled my name and I popped up from where I sat. She was running toward the road.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, moving between cars and then onto a block of tiny white houses, all glowing pale purple in the dark.

“What happened?” I said, running after her.

She wiped her eyes against the back of her hand.

“Did he do something to you?”

“Yeah,” she said, stretching the neckline of her shirt to show a dark spot.

The skin was unbroken and I knew it was a hickey. Deep purple marks I’d seen all over the necks of what my mother called the trampy girls who worked at fast-food restaurants. A girl at Hardee’s had linked mouth marks that ran like a choker around her neck.

We walked toward Bent Tree, into a subdivision of ranches with lawn jockeys painted white, past
the donkey pulling the cart filled with plastic flowers, the miniature windmill, and the cast-iron teddy bears. Our shadows stretched out in front of us and the moon was large and bright.

When we finally got to Sheila’s duplex, where I was supposed to be spending the night, I saw that her mom’s car was gone. It was not unusual for her to stay overnight with Walt. Across the street was a Pacer. Mr. Ramin was sitting inside smoking a cigarette. Sheila told me to go on inside.

I walked into the dark duplex and stood for a minute by the front window. I could see that Sheila had gotten into the passenger side of the car, and in the moonlight I saw Mr. Ramin’s profile.

While I waited, I perched on the side of the sofa. I had on the T-shirt with the Bunny logo Sheila had lent me. I saw that the light was on in our living room and that my father was reading by the lamp. I knew he would not approve of my Bunny lifestyle.

I didn’t care. I was a Bunny in training, like a ninja but with a better outfit. As I waited for Sheila to come back, I practiced my Bunny dip and imagined having a long conversation with Hugh Hefner about which drink was better, an old-fashioned or a martini. After about an hour, I decided to check on Sheila. I pulled the curtain back and looked out the window. The moon had disappeared behind clouds and I couldn’t see what was happening in the Pacer. I wanted to sleep in my own bed but if I came home in the middle of the night
I knew my father would be suspicious about why the sleepover hadn’t worked out. I thought about going out and interrupting whatever Sheila and Mr. Ramin were doing so that maybe Sheila would come inside. But I knew she’d be furious if I did that. I got the metal tray from the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and practiced the high-carry back and forth across the living room. I did this for so long my arm got sore and I had to rest.

The day of Walt’s surprise party, I got down to Sheila’s duplex hours early, at eleven. We were going to lie out in the sun before we started our beauty ritual. The big news was that Sheila’s mom had agreed to do my makeup. She had brought home her kit from the department store.

We stretched out in the sun, turning over every half hour and pushing our straps down so we would not have any pale marks. She told me how she and her friends had once hiked up the hill so they could see the porno movie at the 220 Drive-In. She’d seen on the shining screen a penis the size of a tree trunk hovering over a woman’s gigantic mouth. The mouth was open and black and the monster penis had disappeared slowly inside.

Ever since Sheila had started to lock me in the closet, she’d begun acknowledging me at school. Most
days after
General Hospital
, she’d open her closet door and without a word I would get in and sit on her shoes. She’d close the door, not even bothering to put the chair under the knob, while she did her homework or painted her nails.