The Nowhere Girls

  So Erin will not think about the events that followed her father’s leaving, not the handful of visits to the extended-stay hotel room that he absurdly called an apartment, prefurnished in durable beige fabrics, which takeout meals and late-night tears could not stain. She will not think about nights alone in the house with Mom’s endless crying, how it made studying or reading nearly impossible, how the house was filled with it, so thick Erin had a hard time breathing. Of course she knew that wasn’t possible—that her mother’s emotions could have an effect on the actual consistency of air—but regardless, Erin avoided the house as much as possible. She walked the whole length of Alki Beach as many times as it took to fill her pockets with shells whose species she practiced identifying by touch in the darkness, long enough to kill enough time so that Mom would probably be asleep when she got home. She checked the tidal charts each morning so she would know what to expect. The sea’s rhythms were constants, predictable and comforting, while everything else was changing in the life of a girl who abhorred change.

  Erin won’t think about eighth grade. She certainly won’t think about Casper Pennington. Not how he stared at her from the high school side of her private school’s small auditorium every morning during announcements. How it made her body feel hot and good and a little bit scared. How it made her forget about the mess at home. How he walked by her one day in the hallway and told her she was beautiful. How she simultaneously didn’t like his proximity to her but also wanted him closer. How his eyelashes were so long. How his blond hair was so blond. How his confidence and attention made her wonder if he could teach her how to be strong and not care about the world changing.

  So what if she was only thirteen. So what if he was three years older than her. So what if she couldn’t look people in the eye and didn’t like to be touched most of the time and had an army full of specialists trying to teach her how to be normal. So what if her dad was gone and this Casper guy showed up telling her she was beautiful. You can always cram the wrong piece into the puzzle hole if you push hard enough and limit your definition of “fitting.”

  No, Erin will not think about these things. These are the kind of memories that serve no logical purpose; they do not contain useful knowledge or skills. Erin theorizes that sadness and regret are maladaptive features of the human brain, something the species will eventually evolve out of. We will ultimately merge with computers and never have to feel again.

  Remembering is not on Erin’s schedule. It has no place on her lists. If she let the memories in, they’d scramble all the order she’s worked so tirelessly to create; they’d throw her back to the chaos. Better to keep things predictable, stable, simple. Peaceful.

  That’s all Erin wants: peace.

  There is something soothing about doing homework at exactly the same time every day and having dinner at exactly 7:00 p.m. every night (the table almost always just set for two). But before dinner is the best time of day—time to watch Erin’s one daily episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when she can travel light-years away and explore the unknown expanses of the universe with Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the whole crew’s father figure (especially Data’s, whose own father/inventor, Dr. Noonien Soong, was murdered by Data’s brother, Lore, who turned defective and dangerous after being programmed with the emotion chip intended for Data).

  Except today’s episode is not one of Erin’s favorites. Not only is the whole crew of the Enterprise inebriated and acting foolish because of the Tsiolkovsky virus, this is also the episode where Data has sex with Tasha Yar. Even though he’s an android, he still caught the carbon-based virus (a plot inconsistency that, Erin notes with displeasure, has never been fully explained; she concedes that her beloved show is not perfect). Even though Data had direct orders to take Yar to sick bay, he fell under the spell of her seduction.

  Data made a mistake. Data is not supposed to make mistakes. His logical android brain failed him and he became too human, too animal.

  When Tasha Yar asked him if he was “fully functional,” he said yes. Even Erin knew what she meant by “fully functional.”

  Casper Pennington never asked Erin if she was fully functional. Maybe if he had asked, Erin would have had a chance to think about it. Maybe she would have realized her answer was no.

  After Data’s romantic interlude (which, thankfully, the viewer does not have to witness), after Dr. Crusher gives the crew of the Enterprise the antidote to the virus and everyone sobers up, Tasha Yar is embarrassed. She tells Data it never happened, then gets back to work. Is this the normal reaction after someone has sex with an android? To not want to speak to them ever again? To ignore them the next day? At least Tasha Yar didn’t go bragging about it to her friends while simultaneously acting like Data didn’t exist. At least Data couldn’t feel the pain of rejection. He could process what happened as part of his ongoing anthropological research of the behavior of the human species. He could file it away in his android brain, and move on.

  It is never clear if Data enjoyed it. He told Tasha Yar that he was programmed in many “techniques.” He was born knowing how to give pleasure. But did he know how to feel it?

  Was he programmed to feel fear? To feel the merging of these two opposite emotions until there was no more pleasure left, until it was just a body on top of him, holding him down, grunting into his ear, pushing and pushing, again and again and again as he waited for it to end, as he prayed to a god he didn’t even believe in to please make it stop, please make Casper stop, this is not what I wanted, I don’t know what I wanted, but this isn’t it, this is definitely not it.

  Silence does not mean yes. No can be thought and felt but never said. It can be screamed silently on the inside. It can be in the wordless stone of a clenched fist, fingernails digging into palm. Her lips sealed. Her eyes closed. His body just taking, never asking, never taught to question silence.

  Data’s mind is a computer. He can wipe entire memories out if he wants to. Mistakes don’t follow him, don’t lodge themselves in his synapses and travel with him wherever he goes. His mistakes don’t involve parents and school and courts. His mistakes don’t make him stop talking for two weeks. They don’t live in his body. Nobody has to call Data a victim. No one needs to place blame. That does not have to be a part of his story.

  But it is part of Erin’s story. Before she finally convinced her parents to drop the charges against Casper, the courts were ready to make the labels official, to proclaim her passive, a victim; to define her as powerless, unable to consent. Because of her age. Because of her Asperger’s. Even though she is a sentient being. Even though she had wanted something, at some time, whatever it was. Even though she can’t remember when she stopped wanting it. Even though she can’t remember telling him one way or the other. It’s true, he never asked. But is that job really his? Is it hers? And if the court says she was incapable of saying no, what does that mean for her capacity to say yes? Who makes these decisions? Who writes these rules and defines words like “consent”? Who decides what makes something a “rape”?

  She cannot say the word: Rape.

  That word does not sound true. It wasn’t rape, but it was something.

  Unlike Data, Erin’s emotion chip is not missing. Sometimes it feels like she was accidentally programmed with ten emotion chips, and they’re all constantly malfunctioning.

  There is no word for what happened with Casper Pennington. Erin has not been programmed with this knowledge. She does not know the word for what she is supposed to feel.

  ROSINA.

  “Erwin told me you have a new friend at school,” Rosina’s mother says as she scoops a cup of oil into a giant pan. “He says she’s a white gordita.” The oil sizzles with tiny bubbles.

  “What, you have Erwin spying on me now?” Rosina says. Even at school, Mami has her in her clutches. It’s like her family has invisible chains attached to Rosina; as soon as she figures out how to break one, another shows up.

  “Is this new girl strange like your skinny fr
iend?” Mami grabs a handful of gelatinous raw pink chicken out of a plastic bucket and throws it into the pan.

  “You don’t even know Erin,” Rosina says.

  “I know enough to know she’s strange.”

  Rosina tries to think of a witty defense, but Mami interrupts her thought process: “Stack those glasses,” she orders.

  “Grace’s mom’s a priest. That should make you happy, right? She’ll be a good influence on me and you can stop getting Erwin to spy on me at school.”

  “Women can’t be priests.”

  “Pastor, minister. Whatever. Her family’s a bunch of Christians.”

  “Christian is not the same as Catholic.” Mami squints at Rosina, suspicion and grease smoke in her eyes. “What is her church?”

  “That big brick one on Oak Street. Grace’s mom is, like, the boss of it or something.”

  “The Congregationalist Church?” Mami’s laugh hurts Rosina’s ears almost as bad as the tinny music that pumps through her neighborhood out of cheap radios. “That place is not even a real church,” Mami says. “Full of communists and homos.”

  “No one says ‘homo,’ Mom.”

  “Whatever,” Mami says, her favorite Americanism. “Venga. You need to learn how to cook. A woman must know how to cook.”

  “You’ve made your opinion abundantly clear,” Rosina says. “But like I’ve told you five million times already, I don’t want to know how to cook.”

  “But one day you will have your own family. You will need to feed them. No one will marry you if you can’t cook.”

  “Do you even realize how horrible that sounds? You are so oppressed,” Rosina says, her voice rising above the sizzle of the frying chicken. “I don’t even like Mexican food.”

  “Oh, you think you’re so much better than me? You’re so much better than your family?” Mami says, her eyes squinting the way they do right before she blows up. “If you’re so sick of us, why don’t you just leave? One less big mouth to feed.”

  “Then you might have to actually pay someone to do all the shit I do for free.”

  Mami takes a step forward but knocks her metal tongs on the floor in the process. As she leans over to pick them up, she shudders and lets out a tight squeal. Rosina rushes to her side.

  “¡Chinga!” Mami curses between clenched teeth, holding her back as Rosina helps her slowly stand up.

  “Your back again?” Rosina says, arm around Mami’s shoulders.

  “It’s nothing,” she says, cringing.

  “You have to see a doctor,” Rosina says.

  “I did,” Mami says, turning back to the stove, fishing a new pair of tongs out of a tray of clean cooking utensils. “All he did was give me a prescription for pain pills. He wants to make me a drug addict.”

  Rosina sighs. How is it possible to love and hate someone so much at the same time?

  The restaurant’s front door chimes. The frying chicken smokes. Mami flips the chicken, lips tight, blinking back tears of pain.

  “You have a customer,” Mami says without looking up from the stove.

  “Are you okay?” Rosina says.

  “Get out of here.”

  What if I just left? Rosina thinks. What if I took my apron off and just walked out the door?

  But where could she go? With what money? With what skills?

  All Rosina can think to do is go back to work.

  * * *

  “Surprise” is not the right word to describe Rosina’s feeling when Eric Jordan and his family walk into the restaurant. Neither is “shock.” It’s more like surreal disbelief. If she was anyone besides Rosina, perhaps even a little bit of fear. Is it possible for this night to get any worse?

  “Hey, can we get some service over here?” the father says as the family crams itself into a booth without waiting to be seated. Eric hasn’t noticed Rosina yet. He’s busy, facedown in his phone, ignoring his mother’s pleas to please-put-that-down-we’re-having-a-nice-family-dinner. It’s hard to hear her over the identical twin younger brothers’ screams and yelps as they take turns punching each other in the shoulder. The men and boys wear crew cuts; the mother’s hair is a mess of old perm and surrender.

  Rosina takes a deep breath, grabs a stack of foggy plastic-coated menus from the front counter, and reminds herself she is the girl no one can shake.

  “Hi there,” she says as she approaches the table and hands out the menus. “Can I get you anything to drink while you look at the menu?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say hola or something?” Eric says, leaning back that way young men do when they feel entitled to take up as much space as possible.

  “Hola,” Rosina says flatly.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Eric says. He looks at Rosina like she’s already naked, like she’s already caught.

  “Oh, are you a friend from school?” his mom asks.

  “Something like that,” Rosina says.

  “I’d love to be your friend,” Eric says. “I can be a really good friend.”

  His mother is oblivious, haggard and worn. Father and son have the same animal eyes, like everything is a potential meal. They both stare at Rosina, partners in the hunt. The longer Rosina stands there, the smaller she feels. The more like meat.

  “What’s all this stuff on here?” the dad says, looking at the menu.

  “Traditional Oaxacan cuisine,” Rosina says. How many times has she had to explain this? “It’s our specialty. We have seven different type of moles.”

  “I thought this was a Mexican restaurant,” he says. “I just want some tacos.”

  “The more familiar Mexican dishes are on the next page,” Rosina says.

  One of the young boys says, “I want pizza.”

  For once, Rosina wishes they served chapulines. Grasshoppers. She would recommend they order that. “Would you like something to drink?” she asks again.

  “I’ll have a beer,” the father says. “Whatever’s cheap and in a can.”

  “Boys, do you want Cokes?” the mother asks. They ignore her. “Boys? Do you want Sprite? Root beer?”

  “Just order them something,” the father says.

  “Two Sprites,” the woman squeaks.

  “I’ll have a Coke,” Eric says. “One of those fancy Mexican ones in the glass bottle.” Rosina doesn’t look up as she writes down the drink orders, but she can feel his eyes like sharp teeth tearing into her breasts.

  As she walks away, she can hear father say to son, “That one’s pretty cute, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Eric says. “Too bad she’s into chicks.”

  “Maybe she just hasn’t met the right guy yet.”

  Rosina rushes into the walk-in fridge. She pauses after she grabs the family’s drinks, looks out the fridge door’s narrow window into the kitchen, where her mom is sweat-drenched and in pain, slaving away at the hot stove, cooking her sweat and anger and years of disappointment into the food she makes every night. Mami is the head cook, manages the kitchen, and even does the bookkeeping, in addition to housing and taking care of Abuelita, but still it is called José’s restaurant. Still, he controls the money. Still, Rosina’s mother is the daughter in a family with two sons.

  “I fucking hate people,” Rosina announces to a crateful of cabbage.

  She returns to the table with the heavy tray of drinks and a basket of chips and salsa. The family ignores her as she places the items on the table. “Boys, let’s go wash your hands, okay?” the mom says to the feral creatures, but they are too busy seeing how far they can bend each other’s fingers back before they cry.

  “You’re such a girl,” one of them says as the other withdraws his hand in pain.

  “Boys?” Mom says. “Did you hear me? Time to wash your hands.” But they act like she’s not even there.

  “Rob, can you help me here?” she implores her husband.

  “Calm down,” he says. “They’re fine.”

  Rosina fights the urge to strangle the little shits. “Are you ready to order?” sh
e says between clenched teeth.

  “I want a number fourteen with beef,” Dad says.

  “Number eighteen,” says Eric. “Pork.” Rosina does not look up, but the tone in his voice as he said “pork” suggested he was going for a double meaning.

  “The boys will both have the kids’ tacos, with beef, please,” says the mother. “I’ll have the taco salad with chicken. But just on a regular plate, not that fried tortilla bowl. And no cheese or sour cream or guacamole. And dressing on the side.”

  Rosina heads to the kitchen as fast as she can without running. She is relieved when two more parties enter the restaurant, even though they look like assholes too. Everyone around here looks like an asshole to Rosina. But there are gradations of assholes, and the new customers couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as Eric’s family.

  As she seats the first new group, she can hear Eric and his father whispering. She can feel their eyes on her.

  What can Rosina do? Storm over there and give them a piece of her mind? Make a scene? They’d just laugh at her. The other customers would freak out. Mami would freak out. It’d be bad for business. And if something’s bad for business, the whole family suffers, the whole damn stupid family. The customer’s always right, isn’t he?

  Rosina is immobilized, powerless. She is nobody, nothing. A waitress, a daughter, a body, a girl.

  One of the twins knocks the basket of chips on the floor.

  “Can we get some more chips over here?” the father says.

  Just say yes. It’s her job to always say yes.

  She sweeps up the mess. She brings over a new basket of chips. She pretends not to notice the boys stabbing holes into the pleather booth with their forks. She pretends not to notice the fire in Eric’s eyes as he looks at her, a mix of desire and violence, a sense of entitlement that Rosina will never come close to knowing, an entitlement so effortless these men don’t even know it’s there. The privilege of always getting away with it. The privilege of getting to raise more sons just like them.

  But worse, worse than anything, is the fact that Rosina, outspoken bitch extraordinaire, does nothing to stop them.