I felt as if I’d been stabbed through the heart as I recognized Hardy, his arms around a long-limbed blond girl. She was riding one of his thighs, her upper back and shoulders revealed by a black velvet bustier top. One of his fists was closed in her hair, holding it back as he dragged his mouth slowly along the side of her throat.
Pain, desire, jealousy…I hadn’t known it was possible to feel so many things so strongly, all at once. It took every ounce of will I possessed to ignore them and keep going. My steps faltered, but I didn’t stop. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hardy’s head lift. I wanted to die as I realized he’d seen me. My hand shook as I grasped the cold brass doorknob and let myself outside.
I knew he wouldn’t come after me, but my pace quickened until I was half running to the patio. The breath shot from my lungs in hard bursts. I longed to forget what I had just seen, but the image of Hardy with the blond girl was permanently seared in my memory. It shocked me, the fury I felt toward him, the white heat of betrayal. It didn’t matter that he’d promised nothing, owed nothing to me. He was mine. I felt it in every cell of my body.
Somehow I managed to find Luke in the crowd on the patio, and he looked at me with a questioning smile. He could hardly fail to notice the burning color of my cheeks. “What’s the matter, baby doll?”
“I dropped my drink,” I said thickly.
He laughed and laid a heavy arm around my shoulders. “I’ll get you another one.”
“No, I…” I stood on my toes to whisper in his ear. “Would you mind if we left now?”
“Now? We just got here.”
“I want to be alone with you,” I whispered desperately. “Please, Luke. Take me somewhere. Anywhere.”
His expression changed. I knew he was wondering if my sudden desire to be alone with him could mean what he thought it meant.
And the answer was yes. I wanted to kiss him, hold him, do everything Hardy was doing at that exact moment with another girl. Not out of desire, but furious grief. There was no one I could go to. My mother would dismiss my feelings as childish. Maybe they were, but I didn’t care. I had never felt this kind of consuming anger before. My only anchor was the weight of Luke’s arm.
Luke took me to the public park, which contained a man-made lake and several wooded copses. At the side of the lake there was a ramshackle open-sided gazebo lined with splintery wood benches. Families went there to picnic in the daytime. Now the gazebo was empty and dark. The air rustled with night sounds, an orchestra of frogs croaking among the cattails, a mockingbird’s song, the flap of herons’ wings.
Just before we had left the party, I had chugged the rest of Luke’s tequila sunrise. My head was spinning, and I reeled between waves of giddiness and nausea. Luke laid his jacket on the gazebo bench and pulled me onto his lap. He kissed me, his mouth wet and searching. I tasted the purpose in his kiss, the message that tonight he would go as far as I would let him.
His smooth-skinned hand slipped beneath my shirt, over my back, plucking at the clasp of my bra. The underwire garment loosened across my chest. Immediately he reached around to my front, finding the tender curve of a breast, capturing it in a rough squeeze. I winced, and he loosened his grip a little, saying with a shaky laugh, “Sorry, baby doll. It just…you’re so beautiful, you make me crazy…” His thumb rubbed over the hardening tip of my breast. He pinched and chafed my nipples insistently, while our mouths moved together in long unbroken kisses. Soon my breasts were raw and sore. I gave up any hope of feeling pleasure and tried instead to simulate it. If something was wrong, it was my fault, because Luke was experienced.
It must have been the tequila that gave me the sense of being an outside observer as Luke pushed me off his lap and onto the jacket-covered bench. The impact of the wood against my shoulders struck a flare of panic in my midsection, but I ignored it and lay back.
Luke tugged at the fastenings of my jeans and pushed them down over my hips and off one leg. I saw a section of sky from beneath the gazebo roof. It was a misty night with no stars or moon. The only light came from the distant blue glow of a street lamp, flickering from a moth storm.
Like any average teenage boy, Luke understood next to nothing about the more subtle erogenous areas on a woman’s body. I knew even less than he, and being too timid to volunteer what I did or didn’t like, I passively let him do what he would. I had no idea where to put my hands. I felt him reach beneath my panties, where the hair was warm and flattened. More rubbing, a few times roughly grazing the sensitive place that made me jump. He gave an excited half-laugh, mistaking my discomfort for enjoyment.
Luke’s body was broad and heavy as he lowered himself until my legs stiffly bracketed his. He groped between us, unzipping his jeans, using both hands to accomplish some hurried task. I heard the sound of crackling plastic, and felt him pulling at something, arranging it, and then there was the unfamiliar taut, bobbing length of him against my inner thigh.
He pushed my shirt and bra up higher, bunching them beneath my chin. His mouth was at my breast, pulling tightly. I thought we had probably gone too far to stop, that I had no right to say no at this point. I wished it was over, that he would finish soon. Even as that thought crossed my mind, the pressure between my legs became bruising. I tensed and gritted my teeth, and looked up at Luke’s face. He didn’t look back at me. He was focused on the act itself, not on me. I had become nothing more than the instrument by which he would gain relief. He shoved harder, harder into my resistant flesh, and a pained sound broke from my lips.
It only took a few searing thrusts, the condom turning slick from blood, and then he was shuddering against me, groaning in his throat.
“Oh, baby, that was so good.”
I kept my arms around him. A ripple of revulsion ran through me as I felt him kiss my neck, his breath like steam on my skin. It was enough—he’d had enough of me—I needed to belong to myself again. I was relieved beyond measure when he lifted away, my flesh raw and hurting.
We dressed ourselves silently. I had held all my muscles so tightly that when I finally relaxed, they began to tremble from the strain. I trembled all over until even my teeth chattered.
Luke drew me against him, patting my back. “Are you sorry?” he asked, his voice low.
He didn’t expect me to say yes, and I wouldn’t. It seemed bad manners somehow, and it wouldn’t change anything. What was done was done. But I wanted to go home. I wanted to be alone. Only then could I start to catalog the changes that had occurred in me.
“No,” I mumbled against his shoulder.
He patted my back some more. “It’ll be better for you the next time. I promise. My last girlfriend was a virgin, and it took a few times before she started to like it.”
I stiffened a little. No girl wanted to hear about a previous girlfriend at such a time. And although I wasn’t surprised that Luke had had sex with a virgin before, it rankled. It seemed to lessen the value of what I’d given him. As if being someone’s first lover was a commonplace occurrence for him, Luke, the kind of boy virgins threw themselves at.
“Please,” I said, “take me home. I’m so tired…”
“Of course, baby.”
On the way back to Bluebonnet Ranch, Luke drove with one hand and held mine with the other, often giving it a small squeeze. I wasn’t sure whether he was offering reassurance or asking for it, but I squeezed back every time. He asked if I wanted to go out to eat tomorrow night, and I automatically said yes.
We made some conversation. I was too dazed to know what I was saying. Random thoughts went through my mind in the darting, irregular patterns of mourning doves. I was worried about how bad I was going to feel when the numbness wore off, and trying silently to convince myself there was no reason to feel bad. Other girls my age slept with their boyfriends…Lucy had, and Moody was seriously considering it. So what if I had? I was still me. I kept repeating that to myself. Still me.
Now that we had done it once, was it going to happen all the time? Would Luke
expect every date to end with sex? I literally cringed at the thought. I felt stings and twitches in unexpected places, and the pinch of strained muscles in my thighs. It would have been no different with Hardy, I told myself. The pain, the smells, the physical functions would have been the same.
We pulled up to the trailer, and Luke walked me to the front steps. He seemed inclined to linger. Desperate to get rid of him, I put on a show of affection, hugging him hard, kissing his lips and chin and cheek. The display seemed to restore his confidence. He grinned and let me go inside.
“Bye, baby doll.”
“Bye, Luke.”
A lamp in the main room had been left on, but Mama and the baby were asleep. Thankfully I went to get my pajamas, carried them to the bathroom, and ran the hottest shower I could tolerate. Standing in the near-scalding water, I scrubbed hard at the rusty smears on my legs. The heat eased the clustering aches, water pouring over me until my skin no longer seemed imprinted with the feel of Luke. By the time I stepped from the shower, I was parboiled.
I dressed in my pajamas and went to my room, where Carrington was beginning to wriggle in her crib. Wincing at the soreness between my legs, I hurried to get a bottle ready. She was awake by the time I came back to her, but for once she wasn’t screaming. She was waiting patiently, as if she knew I needed some forbearance. She reached for me with chubby arms and clung to my neck as I brought her to the rocker.
Carrington smelled like baby shampoo and diaper cream. She smelled like innocence. Her small body conformed to mine exactly, and she patted my hand as I held the bottle for her. Her blue-green eyes stared into mine. I rocked in the languid motion she liked best. With each soft forward pitch, the tightness in my chest and throat and head disintegrated until tears began to leak from the outward corners of my eyes. No one on earth, not Mama, not even Hardy, could have consoled me as Carrington did. Grateful for the relief of tears, I continued to cry silently as I fed and burped the baby.
Instead of putting Carrington back in her crib, I took her in bed with me, putting her on the side against the wall. It was something Miss Marva had advised me never to do. She had said the baby would never willingly go back in her crib alone again.
As usual, Miss Marva was right. From that night on Carrington insisted on sleeping with me, erupting in coyote howls if I ever tried to ignore her upraised arms. And the truth was, I loved sleeping with her, the two of us snuggled together beneath the rose-patterned duvet. I figured if I needed her, and she needed me, it was our right as sisters to comfort each other.
Chapter 9
Luke and I did not sleep together often, both from lack of opportunity—neither of us had our own place—and because it was obvious that no matter how I pretended to enjoy it, I didn’t. We never discussed the situation directly. Whenever we did go to bed together, Luke would try this or that, but nothing he did seemed to matter. I couldn’t explain to him or myself why I was a failure in bed.
“Funny,” Luke commented one afternoon, lying with me in his bedroom after school. His parents had gone to San Antonio for the day, and the house was empty. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever been with, and the sexiest. I don’t understand why you can’t…” He paused, cupping his hand over my naked hip.
I knew what he meant.
“That’s what you get for dating a Mexican Baptist,” I said. His chest moved beneath my ear as he chuckled.
I had confided my problem to Lucy, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend and was now going with the assistant manager at the cafeteria. “You need to date older boys,” she had told me authoritatively. “High school boys have no idea what they’re doing. You know why I broke up with Tommy?…He always twirled my nipples like he was trying to find a good radio station. Talk about bad in bed! Tell Luke you want to start seeing other people.”
“I won’t have to. He’s leaving for Baylor in two weeks.” Luke and I had both agreed that it would be impractical to continue dating exclusively while he was at college. It wasn’t a breakup exactly—we had agreed that he could come see me when he was home on break.
I had mixed feelings about Luke’s departure. Part of me looked forward to the freedom I would regain. The weekends would belong to me again, and there would be no more necessity of sleeping with him. But I would be lonely without him too.
I decided I was going to pour all my attention and energy into Carrington, and into my schoolwork. I was going to be the best sister, daughter, friend, student, the perfect example of a responsible young woman.
Labor Day was humid, the afternoon sky pale with visible steam rising from the broiled earth. But the heat didn’t hinder the turnout at the annual Redneck Roundup, the county rodeo and livestock show. The fairgrounds were filled to capacity, with a kaleidoscope of arts and crafts booths and tables of guns and knives for sale. There were pony rides, horse pulls, tractor exhibits, and endless rows of food stalls. The rodeo would be held at eight in an open arena.
Mama and Carrington and I arrived at seven. We planned to have dinner and visit Miss Marva, who had rented a booth to sell her work. As I pushed the stroller across the dusty broken ground, I laughed at the way Carrington’s head swiveled from side to side, her gaze following the strings of colored lights that webbed the interior of the central food court.
The fairgoers were dressed in jeans and heavy belts, and Western shirts with barrel cuffs, flap pockets, and plackets of mother-of-pearl snaps running down the front. At least half the men wore hats of white or black straw, beautiful Stetsons and Millers and Resistols. Women wore tight-fitting denim, or crinkly broomstick skirts, and embroidered boots. Mama and I had both opted for jeans. We had dressed Carrington in a pair of denim shorts that snapped down the insides of the legs. I had found her a little pink felt cowgirl hat with a ribbon that tied under the chin, but she kept pulling it off so she could clamp her gums on the brim.
Interesting smells floated through the air, the flurry of bodily odors and cologne, cigarette smoke, beer, hot fried food, animals, damp hay, dust, and machinery.
Pushing the stroller through the food court, Mama and I decided on deep-fried corn, pork-chop-on-a-stick, and fried potato shavings. Other booths offered deep-fried pickles, deep-fried jalapeños, and even strips of battered deep-fried bacon. It does not occur to Texans that some things just aren’t meant to be put on a stick and deep-fried.
I fed Carrington applesauce from a jar I had packed in the diaper bag. For dessert, Mama bought a deep-fried Twinkie, which was made by dipping a frozen cake in tempura batter and dropping it in crackling-hot oil until the inside was soft and melting.
“This must be a million calories,” Mama said, biting into the golden crust. She laughed as the filling squished out, and lifted a napkin to her chin.
After we finished, we scrubbed our hands with baby wipes and went to find Miss Marva. Her crimson hair was as bright as a torch in the gathering evening. She was doing a slow but steady business in bluebonnet candles and hand-painted birdhouses. We waited, in no hurry, for her to finish making change for a customer.
A voice came from behind us. “Hey, there.”
Mama and I both turned, and my face froze as I saw Louis Sadlek, the owner of Bluebonnet Ranch. He was tricked out in snakeskin boots and denim, with a silver arrowhead-shaped bolo tie. I had always kept my distance from him, which turned out to be easy because he usually left the front office empty. He had no sense of regular work hours, spending his time drinking and tomcatting around town. If one of the trailer park residents went to ask him about fixing things like a clogged septic line or a pothole on the main drive, he promised to take care of it but never did a thing. Complaining to Sadlek was a waste of air.
Sadlek was well groomed but puffy, with broken capillaries spreading across the tops of his cheeks like the mesh of hairline cracks at the bottom of antique china cups. He had enough good looks left to make you sorry for his ruined handsomeness.
It struck me that Sadlek was an older version of the same bo
ys I had met at the parties Luke had taken me to. In fact, he reminded me a little of Luke himself, the same sense of unearned privilege.
“Hi yourself, Louis,” Mama replied. She had picked Carrington up and was trying to pry the baby’s tweezerlike grip from a long curl of her light hair. She looked so pretty with her bright green eyes and her wide smile…it gave me a jolt of unease to see Sadlek’s reaction to her.
“Who’s this little dumplin’?” he asked, his accent so thick it was nearly devoid of consonants. He reached out to tickle Carrington’s plump chin, and she gave him a wet baby-grin. The sight of his finger against the baby’s pristine skin made me want to grab Carrington and run without stopping. “You already eaten?” Sadlek asked Mama.
She continued to smile. “Yes, have you?”
“Tight as a tick,” he replied, patting the belted jut of his stomach.
Although there wasn’t anything remotely clever about what he’d said, Mama astonished me by laughing. She looked at him in a way that sent a creeping sensation down the back of my neck. Her gaze, her posture, the way she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, all of it conveyed an invitation.
I couldn’t believe it. Mama knew about his reputation just as I did. She had even made fun of him to me and Miss Marva, saying he was a small-town redneck who thought he was a big shot. She couldn’t possibly have been attracted to Sadlek—it was obvious he wasn’t good enough for her. But neither was Flip, or any of the other men I had ever seen her with. I puzzled over the common denominator between all of them, the mysterious thing that drew Mama to the wrong men.
In the piney woods of East Texas, pitcher plants attract bugs with an advertisement of bright yellow trumpets and red veins. The trumpets are filled with sweet-smelling juice that insects can’t resist. But once a bug crawls into the pitcher, it can’t get back out. Sealed in the crisp interior of the pitcher plant, it drowns in sugar water and is consumed. As I looked at Mama and Louis Sadlek, I saw the same alchemy at work, the false advertising, the attraction, the danger ahead.