Beautiful

  Yes, I am a little girl. I am nothing you want. I am leaving. I am walking out the sliding glass door that doesn’t slide so well and across the dirt yard, down the hill, and across the train tracks, to the marina and through the shadows of masts of sailboats. The bench isn’t comfortable. The bathroom is closed. There is nowhere to hide and stop and breathe. The lake is pockmarked with little tsunamis. Bells ring. Seagulls sleep.

  I run up the hill away from the lake, past the rows of three-car garages, past the restaurant with the fifteen-dollar salads, past so many red and green lights. I run home to the apartment by the train tracks, darker even than the mansion by the lake. There are no leather couches, no smelly cheeses, no kitchens from magazines, no Ping-Pong tables, no Pink Floyd or expensive wall paintings. There is only black air and black shapes that make no sound. There is only my room and everything put exactly where it’s supposed to be. There is my bed and my desk and my clothes and my books and a note from Alex still creased from elaborate foldings.

  I will not sleep. I will sit here biting my nails until they bleed. I will look out the window at the black trees that used to be green. I will listen to the sounds the ghosts make. I will sit here in this dark and not remember anything. This is my place. Dark. A cave. Not a square house at the end of a gravel driveway. Not an island, rain-drenched, clouded with green. Those are not the skyscraper trees that talked behind my back. They do not whisper about the barefoot girl who is always alone. I am not the girl. She does not have a plastic shovel. It is not the weekend and my father is not home and my parents are not outside tearing up the earth and pretending to grow things. I am not wearing rubber boots or carrying a plastic shovel or asking Mom how to grow things, asking Dad how to grow things. No one is saying “Not now.” No one is tearing up the earth. The trees aren’t laughing.

  I am not trying to sink in mud puddles. I am not telling the earth, “Take me.” I am not dreaming of quicksand and earthquakes and monsters that steal me in the night. I am too old for pretend games, too old for Barbies, too old to take them into the forest and drown them in the stream, too old to tell them there is no one to save them and watch their still, serene faces covered with water, not scared, not fighting back, no screams coming out of their little painted mouths. There are no dolls. There is no girl. There are no parents building bonfires to destroy the things they uncover, no roots, no weeds, no blackberry bushes, no things with thorns, not left to burn, not left to grow unattended. I am not the girl with the fire or the shovel. This is not my forest. These are not my doll parts burning, not my legs, my arms, my head, my smooth pink torso. I am not watching them melt, not watching their perfect plastic faces turn grotesque. Smoke is not chasing me and making my eyes sweat. My eyes are not burning. I am not crying. I am not standing behind my mother and she is not facing the wall and she is not saying, “Smoke follows beauty.”

  Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty. Smoke follows beauty.

  (FOUR)

  “You’re beautiful,” Alex says. It’s Friday night and we’re in my bathroom. It’s been a week since the disaster at James’s house and, for some reason, she doesn’t hate me. He thinks I’m a joke, but Alex says there’s more where he came from. I don’t know why she’s being so nice to me. She is standing behind me in the bathroom and we are looking in the mirror. The fluorescent light reflects off the puke-green walls and makes us look like we’re dead.

  “I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known,” she says.

  I can see myself blush even through the thick foundation and powder I’m wearing. My eyes are lined in black and my lips are the color of blood. Alex showed me how to put on makeup and now I don’t recognize myself.

  “You really think I look good?” I say.

  “You look hot. Fuck James. You could get a high schooler.”

  “Fuck James,” I say, even though I felt like crying every time I saw him at school this week, with that other girl on his arm and that look on his face like, “Look what you’re missing.” It was only bearable because I had Alex, because she kept reminding the lunch-table boys how hot I am and, no, I am not a tease and, yes, I’m available.

  “You should have stayed.” She runs her fingers through my hair.

  “I know,” I say. If I had stayed, James wouldn’t have had to invite over that other girl, the tall blond slut in ninth grade, the one with bigger boobs than me. She wouldn’t have been the one to spend the night. She wouldn’t have been the one to give him what he wanted. It was supposed to be me who did that. It was supposed to be me on his arm at school.

  “We should move to Portland,” she says as she pulls my hair back tight. I feel my whole face lift.

  “Ouch,” I say.

  “Shut up,” she says. “This looks good.”

  I look like I’m twenty-five.

  “Why should we move to Portland?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Because it’s somewhere else. It’s away from our parents. My brother’s there. He’s cool. You’d like him.”

  “My dad says the best bookstore in the world is in Portland.”

  “You are such a fucking nerd,” she says.

  “Your brother’s in a gang against fat people,” I respond, thinking it a witty comeback, but she grabs my hair even tighter and pulls my head back and looks at me in the mirror with a look on her face I have never seen.

  “No he’s not,” she says slowly, her jaws clenched. “Don’t ever say anything about my brother again.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She loosens her grip on my hair. “You know why he’s in Portland?” she says.

  “Why?”

  “He left after he found my dad hanging in the basement.”

  I expect her to say more, to tell me that she’s joking, but she just pulls my hair into a rubber band and it feels like my scalp is tearing off. “I’m sorry,” I say again, but she looks like she didn’t hear me. I don’t say anything else because I don’t want to make her mad again, but there’s a picture in my head of a pale man with green hair and a rope around his neck.

  “We should go soon,” she says.

  “Go where?” I ask.

  “Portland. As soon as we get some money. What you have to do is steal a little out of your parents’ wallets every day, not too much or they’ll notice.”

  “What’ll we do for money when we get there?”

  “I don’t know. My brother makes a lot of money. I could help him.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Sells drugs.”

  “Oh,” I say. She keeps pulling my hair tighter.

  “He has a friend who could get you a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Giving blow jobs.”

  I don’t tell her I still don’t know exactly what that is.

  “You don’t have to have sex with them,” she explains.

  “That way, you keep your self-respect.”

  “What if I’m not good at it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Old guys would pay a fortune to have you just look at their dick.”

  I don’t want to look at an old guy’s dick. I don’t want to look at anyone’s dick.

  “I’m a genius,” Alex says, and she takes her hands off my head. I look in the mirror. My hair is pulled back and gelled flat on my scalp. My face is a flat, uniform white, my eyes lined in thick black, my eyelids a dark purple. My lips are slimy, wet, and red.

  There’s a knock and I can smell my mom’s cigarette even though there’s a door between us. “Girls, are you ready for dinner?” she says.

  “Yeah, Mom.” I hear her feet shuffling away. “Do you want to stay for dinner?” I ask Alex. She looks at me like I’m an idiot.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “My mom made spaghetti. Her spaghetti’s pretty good.”

  “My mom made spaghetti,” Alex mimics.

  “She’s making us have family night.”

  “Have fun with that,” she sa
ys, and starts packing up her things.

  “We could rent a movie and get some ice cream or something.”

  “Hell no,” she says. “I want to get fucked up. I don’t want to hang out with your parents in your shitty-ass apartment like a fucking baby. And neither should you.”

  “I have to.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  She throws her backpack over her shoulder and walks out of the bathroom. I follow her to the front door. “Call me later,” I say.

  “Maybe,” she says, and I would do anything to make her stay, to take back my stupid “I have to.” I would walk out the door and go with her but my mom’s standing in the living room and can see me, would follow me, would ask me where I’m going and why, and I wouldn’t be able to tell her. I can’t go. I have to stay, and my chest feels pulled apart so tight that there’s nothing left in the middle. There’s a hollow place where my heart should be, gutted and scraped and thrown out the door. I cannot breathe to fill it up. The emptiness feels like lead, like the heaviest thing in the world.

  Alex doesn’t look at me, just walks out the door without saying good-bye. I stand there looking at the door and trying to not pound my head against it, to not smash my fists into the hard wood until I bleed, until I crush my knuckles and the pain in my chest goes away.

  “She’s not staying for dinner?” Mom says from the living room.

  I must act normal. I must pretend like everything’s okay. “She had to go home and have dinner with her parents,” I lie, even though all I know about her parents is that one of them is dead.

  “Well, come on,” says my mother, and I turn around. She has changed out of the sweatpants she always wears. We’re just eating at home tonight, but she’s wearing makeup and a skirt and a ruffly blouse that’s too small. Seeing her standing there like that, all dressed up in clothes that don’t fit, makes me want to cry.

  “Do you want help setting the table?” I say for some reason. She looks at me like I just gave her diamonds or a puppy.

  “Yes,” she says. “That would be nice.”

  As I set the table, I can see Dad on the porch through the sliding glass doors, still in his suit from work. He is standing with his leg propped up on one of the plastic chairs, looking out at Seattle. He started smoking cigars when we moved here, standing out on the porch with his chin in the air like he’s posing for a magazine about rich businessmen.

  “Get your father,” my mom says.

  “You do it.”

  “Cassie, just knock on the window.”

  I knock on the window and he doesn’t hear, just keeps standing there like he’s the king of the world. I knock harder and he turns around with smoke coming out of his face and I think this is what demons must look like. But he waves and puts out the cigar, and I think maybe tonight won’t be totally awful. Maybe we’ll actually act like a family. Maybe he won’t hate us and maybe moving here was a good idea like Mom said.

  The smell of cigar smoke follows Dad inside and makes everything taste like it. I can tell Mom’s been drinking because she’s talking too much, something about the talk show lady she watches every day and bulimic girls whose teeth fall out. “Jesus, Olivia,” Dad says. “I’m trying to eat.”

  She stays quiet for about two seconds, then says, “How was school, Cassie?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “It’s so nice that you’ve made friends so quickly.”

  “Friend, singular,” I say.

  “Be patient,” she says. “You’re just a little bit shy. But you’re so pretty now, soon you’ll have more friends than you know what to do with.”

  “The spaghetti’s good, Mom,” I say, even though it’s cold and too salty.

  Dad’s looking at me with squinty eyes and a tight jaw and I try to ignore it and focus on eating, but the noodles won’t stay on my fork and I’m just waiting for him to say something, to throw one of his temper tantrums that make us all shut up.

  “What did you do to your face?” he says slowly. This is how it starts.

  “Cassie and her new friend were just playing around with makeup,” Mom says.

  “Do you think that actually looks good?” he asks me with his eyebrows, which means I’m the stupidest piece of shit that ever lived.

  “I don’t know,” I say to my plate of spaghetti.

  “You are so naturally beautiful,” says my mother. “You’re so lucky not to need makeup like other girls.”

  “You look like a slut,” says my dad.

  “Honey,” says my mom, picking up her drink, trying to suck out the little liquid that is left.

  “What?” says my dad. “She does. What am I supposed to do, just pretend I don’t see her face all painted up like a piece of cheap white trash?”

  “It just sounds a little mean, is all,” Mom says, looking at her drink like it let her down.

  “Mean is not the same as honest, dear.” He hates her.

  Mom gets up to make another drink. I’m staring at my plate, trying to make the spaghetti move with the power of my mind. I want the noodles to tie themselves into knots, the intricate kind Boy Scouts know. I can see them moving, slithering around and making slurping noises, becoming bows, braids, nooses.

  “Did you hear me?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Do you have anything to say?”

  “No.” I have nothing to say. I can barely hear him. I am making spaghetti move.

  “How was work today, honey?” Mom says, and that is the cue to ignore me. Dad says, “Fine,” and Mom says, “Don’t be so modest, honey. You know all that hard work’s going to pay off soon,” and he’s chewing like he wants to kill her. She starts talking about how we’re going to have a big house and a swimming pool and a maid and now I want to kill her, too.

  “How’s that sound, Cassie?” Mom says, and I say, “Great,” even though all I want is a small place where I can be alone and no one will look at me or talk to me or touch me. A tree house. A cave.

  Everyone is chewing and not talking and the ice in Mom’s glass clinks when she drinks and for some reason I think about how my dad and I have the same IQ, how I had to take that test answering stupid questions and putting triangles together, how Mom’s always telling me, “You and your dad have the exact same IQ,” like it’s magic, like it’s something to be proud of even though I did nothing to earn it. “It’s hard work that gets you somewhere, not your IQ,” Dad always says. “See where smarts got the rest of my family. A goddamned trailer park.”

  Mom’s looking back and forth at me and Dad with this hopeful look on her face, waiting for some sign that this dinner is working, that it was worth her changing out of her sweatpants and doing her hair.

  I say, “Excuse me,” and go to the bathroom because I have to get out of the room with the silence and the spaghetti and the smell of cigars and the sound of Mom’s ice cubes. I lock the door and look in the mirror and the green light brings out the bags under my eyes, makes my cheekbones look sharper. I don’t look like a slut. That’s not it. I look tough. I look like I could do anything. I could hurt people.

  When I come out, Mom’s standing outside of the bathroom door real close. She looks sad and I’m thinking maybe she’s come to make me feel better. Maybe she’s going to tell me to pack our things, we’re leaving. Maybe she’s finally had it. It can be just her and me. Somewhere new. Somewhere no one knows us.

  “What?” I say.

  “Your dad’s going to do some work in the bedroom.”

  “So?” I say, trying to sound like I don’t care, like I don’t want her to do something like ask me how I feel.

  She looks nervous and doesn’t say anything. “What, Mom?”

  “I just wanted to make sure . . . Well, you always seem to go to the bathroom after you eat. And the doctor on the talk show said—”

  “Jesus, Mom, I’m not bulimic.” That’s what she’s worried about. That’s the only thing she’s worried about.

  She looks embarr
assed, like she wishes she had said nothing, had just stayed sitting at the kitchen table all by herself with her drink and her ashtray and the remote control. All of a sudden, I am exhausted. I don’t even care that it’s Friday night and the only friend I have is mad at me, that I’m stuck at home with parents who think I’m a bulimic slut.

  “Do you have plans for tonight?” my mom asks.

  “No.”

  “Do you want to watch A Chorus Line with me?”

  “Whatever,” I say. I try to sound tough, but my voice cracks. When I think about it, watching cheesy musicals with my mom doesn’t sound so bad. When I was little we used to choose characters out of movies and do all their parts. Sometimes I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. The trick is being quiet enough so Dad doesn’t get pissed off and tell us to shut up.

  “I’ll be Morales,” I tell my mother.

  “Who am I going to be?” she says. She always wants to be Morales, too. Because Morales is tough. Because she doesn’t take shit from anyone.

  “You can be that gay guy who breaks his ankle,” I say.

  “He doesn’t have any good songs.”

  “Be the girl who sings ‘Tits and Ass,’” I tell her.

  “Me? No way,” she says, but she seems flattered.

  We stand there for a second, trying to not look at each other. “Mom?” I say, almost whispering, like I’m afraid someone will hear me, like Alex will hear me, even though I know she’s already downtown by now, somewhere better with a cooler friend than me.