Gods in Alabama (12 page)

“Come on and I’ll buy you girls a Coke while we wait.”

I nudged Clarice’s foot harder. It was one thing to walk past Jim Beverly, but if she thought we should sit beside him at a table and drink a Coke so she could flirt with Bud Freeman, she was insane. And anyway, Bud Freeman? What was Clarice doing flirting with Bud Freeman? Bud had always been extremely sweet, the sort of boy you’d trust with your sister, but maybe not the bright-est bean in the patch.

Plus, this was a boy who, at the age of six, had eaten a worm.

We saw him eat it. He ate that worm whole. And no one had dared him to or made him, he had just taken it in his head to do it. And now Clarice was giving him a kissing look, like she wanted to kiss him on his worm-eating mouth. I nudged at her foot again, practically a kick this time, panicking because she actually seemed to be considering it. Clarice glanced at me.

“I’m not thirsty,” she said. Bud nodded, visibly deflating, and she quickly added, “Arlene and I wanted to walk down to Baskin-Robbins and get a cone, but we didn’t want to carry these bags all that way. Maybe you could help us?”

Oh, she was smart. Baskin-Robbins wasn’t in the food court. It was at the other end of the mall. She’d combined an escape route for us with a request for a man to tote her things, a clear sign of romantic interest. Also, she was going to get him to buy her a sweet food you licked—a love food, Clarice’s borderline-slutty friend Janey would call it.

Bud gathered up all the packages, flexing his mighty thews, while Clarice googled at his forearms in a parody of female appreciation. He seemed to eat it up, though. We headed back across the food court, Bud leading the way. Clarice sailed ahead of me to walk with Bud, and I followed, churning in her wake.

Jim Beverly was still there with his crew of football boys and toadies. I kept my eyes on Clarice, and it was easier this time.

Maybe, I thought optimistically, it would be easier every time until I didn’t even notice him. Until he didn’t even exist. But then my eyes, of their own volition, snaked sideways to peek at him.

He was watching Clarice walk. His gaze was proprietary and lingered on her ass. I looked away.

At Baskin-Robbins, Bud bought three cones, and we sat down on some benches near a stand of ferns in the middle of the mall hallway to eat them. Bud and Clarice were in full flirting mode now. I passed the time people-watching. I watched boys, mostly.

Boys roving in packs, boys alone, boys being dragged along by mothers on a mission. Not one of the boys noticed me watching.

Because when they came into our orbit, each and every one of them was much too busy staring or sneaking glances at Clarice.

Even the men, I noticed, men with wives and children, paused to drink in the sight of Clarice tossing her shiny hair and laughing at something not funny that Bud had said.

I looked at her, too. I tried to see what they saw. I knew she was pretty. She had always been exceptionally pretty. But I tried to look at her like a man might look at her. I tried to think like Jim Beverly. I saw then how soft she was. She still had a toddler’s Cupid’s-bow mouth, exquisite, but not her own. It was the mouth of every pretty baby. She looked so pliable. I saw how easily she might be pushed into shapes.

There was no edge to her, no hard place, no angle. Nothing stopped the eye, just soft curves that led you gently down to look at the next curve, which led you on to the next. Her baby cheeks took you to her neck, then to her soft shoulders, to her high breasts, to the dip of her tiny waist, to the flare of her hips, her rounded bottom leading into her endless golden-brown legs. Her skin had a bloom to it. It looked silky and vulnerable, easily bruised.

I looked away. A boy in the endless stream of boys was standing by the Baskin-Robbins, watching Clarice. There was always a boy watching Clarice. It seemed there always had been, I had simply never been so aware of them before. This boy I knew. He was another Possett boy, and in our sophomore class, although only because he’d had to repeat eighth grade. He wasn’t stupid or lazy. He’d had cancer. He’d gone into remission and been a miracle. I remember when he entered our class, he was bald as an egg.

He was also a skinny little guy with troubled skin and eyes that were sunk too far back in his head. Clarice was out of his league, and he knew it. He was taking her in furtively, in gulping glances.

I got up, dropping the remains of my cone in the trash, and walked over to him.

“Hey, Walter,” I said.

He started guiltily, caught. “Hey, Arlene.” He shuffled his feet a bit.

“Walter, you’re sixteen, aren’t you?”

“Yah,” he said.

“Cool. You got a car?”

“Yah,” he said. “Well, not my own. Not yet. But my dad let me drive his today.” Even then, caught, with me breathing up into his face, his greedy eyes kept straying to Clarice. He couldn’t seem to stop himself.

So I stopped him. I said something guaranteed to stop him. I said something like “Why don’t you show me your car. If it’s got a big backseat, maybe we could do it.”

He stared at me, shook his head. I could see he was trying to process what “it” I could possibly mean. He flushed a dark, earnest red. Then he said, “Arlene, you shouldn’t say stuff like that. You shouldn’t kid around like that. I mean, we’re Baptists.”

I said, “I wasn’t kidding around.” I pressed the back of my hand casually over the fly of his jeans. Something flexed against my touch. I felt it move like a fisted hand, uncurling. I took my hand away, but I could still feel the ghost of movement prickling across my skin.

Walter forgot we were Baptists. He grabbed my hand and started leading me at a canter past Baskin-Robbins, towards the mall’s side exit. As we zoomed past the benches, I yelled, “Clarice, Walter’s going to show me his car real quick. We’ll be right back.”

“Meet us at the front,” she called back. “Bud’s daddy’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

We hurried out to the parking lot, and Walter led me to his car.

We were practically sprinting. The side lot was full, so Walter started up the car and we drove around to the back of the mall where there was no public parking. We stopped behind a Dump-ster. Then we sat there for fifteen long, silent seconds. Walter stared at me. He looked both hopeful and terrified. My own face felt blank. I was in the driver’s seat, watching Arlene get ready to fuck Walter Fiercy.

“Walter? Are you a virgin?” I asked.

He shook his head. We both knew he was lying.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” he said, lying. “Are you?” he added hopefully.

“No,” I said, and he flushed again. I could see in his face that he believed me, and that he knew I did not believe him. I could read his mind, but I was a closed book to him.

I said, “Come on, then. Since we both know what we’re doing and all.” He flinched at that, weaker than me. I stared him down, as if daring him to do something, do anything but sit in his daddy’s car with his hands in his lap, looking at me with drowning eyes. He didn’t know what to do, and I let him flounder there until my ownership of him, of this moment, was a living thing between us.

Then I climbed over into the backseat, and he followed.

“You got something?” I asked. He looked puzzled, and I said,

“You know, something. Like, something.”

Understanding dawned, and he fumbled in his wallet for the rubber he had probably carried there since he was twelve. I helped him get it on, and we did it. It didn’t take long, and it didn’t hurt much. I was bone-dry, tight with disinterest, but the condom was lubricated. What held my attention was his utter seriousness, his total concentration. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be suffering through some internal drama that was utterly divorced from me, and yet I was causing it, and I resolved it for him.

The next morning I woke up and my bed was full of blood. I stared at it, uncomprehending, and then panicked. He had broken me, and I would never be able to have babies. Probably I would hemorrhage and die of bad sex, and worse, the doctors would tell my aunt Florence what had killed me. But then I realized it was only my unreliable period showing up a week early. I felt very forgiving towards Walter then, and through Walter I felt forgiving towards all boys. I didn’t even like Walter, but I was extremely grateful to find out so immediately that his ancient rubber had done its job.

As soon as Walter finished, I pushed him off me and checked my watch. I had about four minutes to get back to meet Clarice.

We hurriedly straightened our clothes, and then he drove me to the front entrance where Bud and Clarice were standing. All our bags were piled at Bud’s feet. I hopped out of the car.

“That’s your car?” Clarice said to Walter, looking questioningly at Mr. Fiercy’s huge boat of a sedan.

“My dad’s,” Walter said to her. But his gaze had changed. It slid over her and off as if she were made out of Teflon. He’d just screwed the closest thing she had to a sister, and she was a closed door. He would have to dream of different pretty girls now. I realized he was looking at me. I looked back, raised my eyebrows at him. “What?”

He said, “I’ll call you later, Arlene.”

“Why?” I said.

“I thought, I mean I just . . .” Bud and Clarice were looking at him now, too. “I thought we could be lab partners,” he fumbled out. “Chemistry.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m taking bio.”

“Yah, well,” he said. “Okay, then.” He drove off abruptly in blushing confusion.

Clarice poked me in the side with her elbow and said, “Walter Fiercy totally likes you!”

I shrugged. “Well, I don’t like him.” And that was the end of it.

After that, every one of the boys I led astray was another road-way to Clarice that I saw as closed. I admit the logic was flawed.

But at the time it gave me a sense of control. It was like I was protecting her in the only way I could. And also, I admit it, the sense of power was addictive.

For a few moments, I owned every boy in my class, one by one, and in an order of my choosing. They lost themselves in me while I remained grounded. From each boy I stole a moment where I was totally myself and they were dissolved, not even people. And each time I stayed myself a little longer. The Arlene Clarice had made me become after she found me mooning over a dead roach, this smart and smart-ass girl, became less of a lie with every boy.

I was a battery, charging myself up with them.

Until one day I was strong enough to follow Jim Beverly and some stupid little frosh I didn’t even know up Lipsmack Hill.

And I killed him.

I said fucking those boys was effective. I never said it was healthy. 

CHAPTER  7

I WOKE UP lying in the crook of Burr’s arm, feeling shy in only my panties, with the hotel sheets pulled up to my chin.

The digital clock beside the bed said it was barely past five, but Burr was awake, too. When he felt me stirring, he took his arm out from under my head and propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me in the dim light. He wasn’t embarrassed or shy at all, and I longed to stay right where we were, in the hotel, as if I had no relatives waiting to dissect me and no past rising to destroy me.

I sat bolt upright, clutching the sheet to my chest. “Shit,” I yelled. “Burr, I forgot to call my folks last night and say we were stopping over to sleep!”

He slapped himself in the forehead. “I meant to remind you.

We’re about eight hours late. Your mama’ll be worried.”

“Mama nothing,” I said. “Aunt Florence will have burst something by now. Hand me the phone.”

“Won’t they be sleeping?” he said.

I shook my head. “They’re all up. Aunt Flo may have already headed out to her garden by now, if she isn’t pacing the house and calling upon the Lord to send a rain of fire down upon my head.”

He rolled over to his bedside table and flipped on the lamp.

Then he rolled back, bringing the phone with him and resting the base of it on his chest.

He picked up the receiver and held it out to me.

I took it but paused before dialing. Burr was sprawled in the bed beside me wearing nothing but a sheet. He was long in the torso and lithe, with broad shoulders and narrow man hips. He was perfectly at ease. Hell, he was perfectly everything.

Burr caught me looking at his body and grinned, again propping himself up on one elbow, setting the phone on the bed in between us. He waggled his eyebrows like a lech. “Why don’t you call later?” he said in a low-down, nasty voice.

“Behave,” I said sternly. “Listen, Burr, you have to be quiet. I mean dead quiet. And none of that ‘I think it’s funny to torment my lover when she’s on the phone with her parents’ crap you always see in the movies. Swear?”

He held up three fingers like a Boy Scout and nodded.

“The problem is that I don’t know what to tell her,” I said.

Burr shrugged. “Tell her the truth.”

“Are you on crack?” I yelped.

“I meant, tell her we stopped over because you were too tired to drive. You don’t have to tell your devoutly Southern Baptist aunt the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“Right,” I said, and I took the phone.

“Why do I feel like I’m back in high school?” he said, grinning. “Scared Mom’ll find out what I’m doing.”

That irritated me. “You’re a Baptist, too, Burr. You’re not supposed to have sex before you’re married, either. You want me to call your preacher’s-wife mama and tell her what we did last night? You know good and well it’s a sin—”

“People sin, Lena,” Burr interrupted. He sat up and reached for my hand. “People in love sin a lot. God invented sex. He knows how it works. Don’t forget, we also believe in forgiveness.”

“Not if you do it on purpose,” I said. “You can’t just say, ‘La la la, this is what I want to do, and I can always get forgiven later!’ There’s a moment, Burr, a moment where you can choose, and if you choose what you know is wrong, on purpose, how can you ever come back from that?”

“Lena, that’s some hard-ass screwed-up theology you’ve got there. I’m willing to sit here naked in the bed with you and debate redemption, but only if you can look me in the eye and tell me truthfully that the only reason you never threw down with me before last night is because we’re Baptists.”