Those Girls (2 page)

I was half expecting to see Dad’s truck in the driveway now as I walked toward our house, or have him roar past me, laughing as he left me choking on the dust. I glanced behind me. In the distance I could hear calves mooing and a tractor out in the fields. I aimed my camera at a pretty bird sitting on the fence, then took another shot of our house. Dani was home. I could tell she was in a mood by the way she’d parked the truck—sideways, windows down, the grille almost touching the front steps—and by the music blasting from inside the house. I slowed my pace.

I didn’t mind living on the ranch, but I wished it was ours—the bank had foreclosed on our old place. That house had been pretty—I still remembered the front patio swing, the white fence that went down to the road, how Dad would repaint it every year. This was just an old ranch hand’s house on a cattle farm, but we had lots of room, a big yard for Dad’s stuff, and we needed the work. After Mom died—she was hit head-on by a truck carrying a load of hay—Dad lost his job. He took off to Calgary for months. I’d just turned ten. Courtney was eleven and a half, and Dani almost thirteen. We ended up in foster homes.

They couldn’t find one willing to take all of us so I got put with a family that already had six kids, two of them handicapped. There never seemed to be enough food for everyone. I’d wait until my foster mother wasn’t looking, then slip some of my mashed potatoes or whatever onto the little kids’ plates, shaking my head to warn them to keep quiet about it. If one of them forgot and yelled, “Thank you!” my foster mom would whip around and we’d end up with nothing. I ran away once, trying to get to my sisters, but got picked up by the cops. I found out later they’d tried to run away a few times too. None of us made it.

Finally, after five months, Dad came back, promising to stay sober.

Courtney told me a little about her foster family, how the father peeked at her in the shower, how the mom used to slap her when he wasn’t watching.

Dani didn’t talk about her foster home much, just said the people had been old and couldn’t take care of their farm and wanted a helper. I don’t know if they were mean to her—she never said. Sometimes I wondered if she wished she was still there. “Did you like it better than taking care of us?” I said. She cuffed me lightly across the head and said, “Don’t be a dumbass.”

*   *   *

When I walked into the house she was sweeping the kitchen and I could smell pine-scented cleaner. All the windows were open.

“Where’ve you been?” she said. “I looked for you at the barn.”

“Ingrid needed help in the fields.”

During the school year we worked on the farm at night and on weekends, but in summer we worked whenever they needed us. Our arms and legs were muscled, our hands blistered—Courtney was always putting lotion on them or doing her nails. Dani would spend all day in the fields if she could, riding the tractor with a smile on her face, her hair under a big cowboy hat. Sometimes after school she’d even go over to her boyfriend’s place to help—his family had the neighboring farm. I didn’t mind working in the fields, but I preferred working with the animals. Spring was my favorite, all the babies being born, but I refused to eat the meat, which made Dad furious. I took a few beatings for that.

“We’ve got to get this place cleaned up before Dad gets back,” Dani said.

“Okay.” I started washing some dishes that had been on the counter for at least a week, scraping at the dried food, imagining a big dinner when Dad got home. I hoped he’d take me grocery shopping with him.

After Dad got us out of foster care, he’d found this place and kept himself together for months. Then the beer cans started piling up. The cops came by a few times, asking if we were okay, but we kept our mouths shut. When teachers asked about a black eye or a bruise we couldn’t hide, we’d say we fell or hurt ourselves on the ranch, tangled with a mean horse. If Dani heard someone teasing us, she delivered what we’d gotten good at taking. I didn’t tell her when a kid gave me a hard time about the smell of manure on my shoes or called Courtney names. It just made Dani feel bad.

“Where’s Courtney?” I said.

Dani shrugged. “Where is she usually?”

So she was off with another boy. I wondered who it was this time.

Dani and I had the house clean by the time Courtney got home. We were out in the backyard, setting up beer cans to do some target practicing. Dad left us his rifle when he was out of town—an old Cooley .22 semiautomatic he’d gotten from his father—and made sure we had enough bullets. He said he wanted us to be able to take care of ourselves. We didn’t have much time to just kick around, but we liked shooting stuff or going fishing. I squinted, took aim on the can, held my breath, and squeezed the trigger. The can flew into the air.

“Good shot!” Courtney’s husky voice said from behind me.

I lowered the gun and turned around. Courtney had a case of beer on one hip and a cigarette in her hand. Her long hair was damp and tangled, and her baseball cap was on backward. She was wearing dark sunglasses too big for her face, which looked cool, and a bikini top under a black tank top.

“She’s always a good shot,” Dani said. She didn’t give a lot of compliments, so it meant something when she did. I liked shooting, liked that moment when everything came into focus, came down to a split second. Same with my camera, seeing the frame, lining up the shot, taking a breath, then boom!

“Jesus, what’s with your shorts?” Dani said. Courtney’s jeans shorts were cut so high you could see the bottom of her front pockets.

Courtney laughed. “You like them? They make the boys go
craaaazy
.” She sang out the last words. Courtney was always laughing or singing. Mom used to say Courtney sang before she talked. She was a pretty good guitar player too, had bought a secondhand one and taught herself by listening to the radio.

“They just about show everything.” Dani wore cutoffs—we all did—but Courtney’s were always the shortest, the frayed bleached-out edges contrasting with her golden skin. I glanced at her legs, then down at mine, wondering if I could get away with taking my shorts up an inch.

“Here, take a beer and shut up already,” Courtney said.

Dani grinned and grabbed the beer, opening the can with a pop, and took a long swallow.

“God, that’s good.”

Courtney handed me one. I took a slug, savoring how cold it felt going down my dry throat on a hot day. I liked beer, the fuzzy feeling it gave everything, the malty taste, but the smell always reminded me of Dad.

“Where did you get the beer?” Dani asked.

“A friend.”

Dani just shook her head. There wasn’t much you could say to Courtney. She did what she wanted. Dani would get mad at her, but Courtney would grab her in a big hug or sing her a silly song or get her laughing somehow. She worked hard but she played hard too. If Dani got after her about how she needed to sleep, she’d say, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Dani pointed to the cigarettes and Courtney threw her the pack. Cigarettes were another luxury. Sometimes we’d steal a couple from Dad’s pack when he was home or from one of the farmhands. Then we’d sit out on our porch, sharing drags. We sat now on the rock edge of what used to be a nice garden running around the house. It was just weeds these days. Dani kept trying to grow vegetables in the backyard, but Dad kept driving over her patch.

Courtney passed me a cigarette, lighting it with the end of hers. I set the gun against the warm rocks and took a drag, watching to see how Dani did it, her mouth parting slightly to let the smoke out in a long, lazy exhale. I leaned back so she couldn’t see, tried blowing it out the same way.

Only the middle of July and the grass was already dead, same with the flowers we’d planted. Most of our front yard was dirt. Dad was always dragging home stuff from the junkyard, and scrap metal and wood littered the property. The house was in bad shape—in the winter we had to board up the windows—but I liked the sprawling deck on the front. I was going to ask Dad if we could paint it.

I didn’t bring any friends home, and we kept to ourselves at school. Dani was usually with her boyfriend, Corey, who was kind of cute in a redneck farm-boy way with his tanned skin, white teeth, and dimples. Courtney was always skipping or hanging out with a boy; most of the other girls didn’t like her. I tagged along with my sisters or worked on my homework during breaks. Dani put my report card up on the fridge, like Mom used to. I helped with their homework sometimes. Courtney would just get me to do hers if she could, but Dani wouldn’t allow that.

Dani moved over to sit on the tailgate of her truck. It was an old Ford, and silver where it wasn’t rusted out. She’d bought it from her boyfriend’s dad for cheap, then worked it off. It was usually broken down. She kept it cleaned out, hung a coconut air freshener on the rearview mirror, but it didn’t hide the stink of manure from our boots. I always kicked my boots on the fender, trying to get the dirt off before I climbed in or she’d yell at me.

Courtney took a long drag. “I’m going out again later.”

“You nuts?” Dani said.

“If he’s back, he won’t be home for hours.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” I said. Sometimes he stopped at Bob’s, his friend in town, and they hit the bars, but other times he came straight home.

She tugged the back of my hair. “Don’t worry.”

Courtney acted like she didn’t care what Dad did to her, but I knew she was scared of him. Mom was the only person who’d ever been able to keep him under control, but he’d still go on benders with his friends, then come home yelling and throwing stuff around, breaking dishes. She kicked him out a couple of months before she died, but he sweet-talked his way back in, sober and swearing he’d stay that way. Mom was really happy for a while—we all were. Dad stayed sober until the night we found out she’d died. Sometimes I think about how sad she’d be over what happened to us, how pissed off she’d be at Dad.

I looked down the road again, imagined his truck getting closer.

“
Promise
you’ll come home early?” I said. The last time Dad caught Courtney sneaking in, she hadn’t been able to sit for days.

“Promise,” Courtney said.

“He told you what would happen if you mess up again.” Dani dropped her cigarette onto the dirt, ground her heel into it. “He
warned
you.”

“God, you guys are paranoid,” Courtney said. “He’s not even in town.”

But I’d seen the way she glanced at the road before she picked up the rifle.

“Come on, let’s shoot some more cans.”

CHAPTER THREE

We shot cans until we’d finished the case of beer, moving each one farther away to make it more challenging, trying to distract whoever was taking aim. We were all good shots—Dad had taught us. When we were younger he liked to make us set the cans up for him—he’d shot one when I was reaching for it. I fell back, crying, and he laughed. I didn’t flinch the next time.

The rest of the afternoon we did laundry, hanging it outside to dry because the dryer was broken again, then made dinner, adding some rice to the last of the tomato soup to make it more filling.

After dinner, Courtney headed upstairs to get ready for her date.

“Want to keep me company?” she said.

Courtney didn’t like being alone much and often asked me to hang out with her. I didn’t mind. I liked sitting on the side of the bathtub listening to her talk about her new boyfriend and watching her do her hair and makeup. We’d shoplifted most of the makeup—we figured stealing samples wasn’t as bad—but we shared what we had. It led to a few fights, mostly because Courtney left a lid off something, but usually we were okay. Dani didn’t use makeup unless she was going out with Corey, but I liked playing around with it.

Courtney was leaning toward the mirror, carefully shaping her eyebrows with an old pair of tweezers. I perched on the side of the tub, the porcelain cool against the backs of my legs. The window was open, blowing the curtains with a faint breeze, but it was still damn hot. The scent of the cedar shingles baking in the sun on the roof drifted in, mixing with Courtney’s hair spray and perfume.

“You going to see Shane?” I said.

She paused, looked confused.

“That guy with the blue car,” I said.

She made a face. “Ugh, no. I got rid of him last week.”

Courtney didn’t keep boyfriends around long. The only guy she’d ever gotten sort of serious with, Troy Dougan, had moved away in May. She said she didn’t care because she was going to move to Vancouver as soon as she graduated. She figured she could make enough money to move down to the States in a few years, somewhere like Nashville, and become a country singer. When I graduated I was going to come live with her in Vancouver—I couldn’t wait to see the ocean. We talked about it a lot, how I’d go on tour with her and take all her photos. I took one of her now, her tawny skin bathed in warm evening light from the open window that turned the side of her face gold.

I didn’t actually have any film in the camera, hadn’t had any for weeks. Sometimes Dad would bring me home a roll, same with Courtney—she stole it or got boyfriends to buy it. She liked the thrill of grabbing it right under the clerk’s nose. Dani kept telling her, “You’re going to end up in jail before you’re twenty.”

Courtney stepped back, straightening her sundress. We didn’t have many clothes, and what we did have we’d bought at the secondhand store. Courtney spent hours mixing and matching stuff, trying to make it look like pictures from magazines. Dani and I mostly wore jeans and T-shirts, but Courtney was good about lending us her things.

Courtney fluffed her hair over her shoulder. I smiled and took another photo, thinking of our mother, how I’d watch her brush her long hair in the mirror. But Mom never wore makeup, letting her freckles show. We’d still had some of her clothes until we went into foster care. Dad had gotten rid of just about all her things—even her wedding ring. I’d managed to save a couple of photos and the camera, Dani kept her recipe cards, and Courtney clung to an old bottle of perfume that was dried up now.

“Where are you going?” I said.