Ugly Girls: A Novel (16 page)

So handling two was fine by him. But anything more than that and shit got chaotic. Flirt with three and you seem like a perv, someone who could buy beer but never someone to take a ride with. Ignore one and flirt with the others and the third will be the one to bring up your cleft lip, your gut, your outdated jeans.

I don’t know why
, she replied.

I just did it

Im sure u look real tuff
, he wrote.

Aint nobody mess with u now

Right?

Dayna was another type of girl, one he had to keep on his toes around. The type of girl to dare you to think exactly what anyone would think if they saw a bald girl in boys’ clothing charging toward them:
What the fuck is
that
?
She was downright begging for it, waiting for you to make a face or let out a
Damn, girl!
so she could stomp a mudhole in you, slice you up with her sharp tongue. Say how she had to get back before Perry could even get out of the car, drive them both away faster than you could pop open the beer you’d brought for them.

She might even hate you more if you said how pretty she looked, said how you always wanted to be with a bald woman, see what it was like.

He had to walk a fine line. Had to flirt with her only so far, had to make up the rest in pretend respect and pretend fear.

No one messed with me before

Why you want to meet up?

I wanta get to know u gals in person
, he wrote.

He pounded the desk. Ain’t no one in high school using the word
gals
. He’d never even really used it, it was something his momma said.
Why don’t you bring any gals around?
He looked over at his momma now, cuddling the TV remote to her neck like it was a teddy bear, her eyes half-closed, which meant she was close to asleep. She looked like someone’s doll baby that grew up and never lost none of its puffy rings of flesh, its blue-white skin, its half-lidded eyes. She hadn’t been stirred by his pounding on the desk, a blessing. Quickly, he wrote:

I get lonly

Lonley

However u spel it

It was a risk. No telling if a girl like Dayna would feel disgusted at this kind of confession, or would soften, feel sorry for him, want to help him out. He knew Dayna was a good speller, hoped that acknowledging his own poor spelling would help to thaw her.

There are red squiggly lines that let you know if something you wrote is all fucked up and misspelled

You just right-click and choose the word you meant

Awsome, thanks

I see what u mean

Neat trick

He didn’t know what she meant by right-clicking. Didn’t care. She was like one of his teachers in school, acting like everything was so easy to understand, and he was just being stubborn. He wanted to tell her to forget it. It wasn’t worth all this ass-kissing he had to do to get her to do what he wanted, he’d just work Perry harder, maybe even climb in her window one night.

Sorry you get lonely

I’ll see if Perry wants to meet up

It had worked. She was the type of girl, he now knew, to feel flattered by confessions. To feel like she alone was worth confiding in. Probably because she felt like she had endured more pain than Perry, had more character. And it might be true, but Jamey didn’t give a shit. Perry was the one with the blond ponytail, the grass-green eyes, the criminal’s heart. He was pretty sure about that last one, anyway. It was a crucial part of the equation that made up the girl he was looking for: it meant she was up for anything.

Thank u

I mean thank you

We’ll have a good time, dont worry

I’m not worried
, she wrote.

Dayna has signed off.

He hadn’t been lying when he’d confessed to getting lonely. He’d never been good at loneliness. Especially now that he was home, and home meant his momma watching him with her flat doll’s eyes, eyes filled half with indifference and half with desperate suckling need. In jail he would have called his loneliness
boredom
. But now, outside, he saw it for what it was. He needed to put his hands on something, again. He’d start with his hands, see where it went. Some girls just went with it. Some did and then didn’t. Some made him work for his reward.

He knew it was disgusting, wrong, this kind of need. He knew because it was the same kind of need he watched pulsing out from his momma. But it was beyond him. It was biological. It was instinct. As natural as a lion feeding off some thrashing animal, fighting hard to stay alive even as its belly opened up. That lion probably didn’t feel all that great listening to the animal howl and die. But a lion’s got to eat.

PERRY COULD SMELL HERSELF.
It was the same odor she’d smelled all night, lying in that cell, coming off those women in waves. Crotch, left too long without a washrag. Salt, sweat, and something nasty, something nastier than sex, something hot and close like blood. Now she was the one with her skirt hiked up over her hips, now she was the brown lump wearing three layers of clothing, dirt on her face and lining her nails. Now she was the one trying to braid her hair like nothing, like there wasn’t no smell, and if there was it was your problem, not hers.

She’d gone straight to class, hadn’t stopped to wash up first, and now she regretted it. A girl had let her have a piece of paper, but no one had a pen for her to borrow. Without something to concentrate on, the smell seemed to be getting worse. A boy in the next row shifted, turning away from her; the girl in front of her leaned forward, hunched over her work. Everyone probably trying to breathe with their mouths, so as not to whiff in any more of her.

The only saving grace was that Travis wasn’t in class. Perry looked over at his empty chair, glad that he wasn’t there to catch a whiff.

She raised her hand, asked if she could go to the bathroom. The teacher nodded, waved her off. As she stood, a fresh burst of the smell bloomed out.

In the bathroom, she smelled her hair, her hands, her clothing. Went into a stall and put a hand into her underwear, brought it up to her nose and inhaled. She smelled stale, unwashed, like her body would smell if she stopped caring. Her hair still held a whisper of the fruity shampoo she’d used the morning before. Her armpits smelled mostly like the baby powder in her deodorant, only a small oniony fang of B.O. peeking through. Nowhere could she find the source of the crotch smell, but she still smelled it anytime she moved. Like it was the sum of all her parts. Like as a whole she was no better than a hooker’s unwashed vagina.

She washed everything anyway. Soaped up her hands and worked the pink lather into her face, her neck, her armpits. Soaped up a wad of toilet tissue and pushed it into her underwear, wiping. When she was done she stood in a stall, letting the air cool her dry. Someone had written
SLOPPY CUNT
in red marker, the only words in this stall. If she’d had her book bag she’d have taken out a pen and written
YEP
.

In the hall she felt cleaner, more awake, her neck and hands cool. The soap she’d used smelled like bubble gum and toilet cleaner; she breathed in, hoping to smell it on herself, nearly happy enough to laugh when she did. There was even a pen on the floor by the drinking fountain. As she bent for it she heard footsteps coming around the corner, stood up just in time to see it was Travis.

“You weren’t in class,” she said.

He still had on his work uniform, and there was a deep line in his hair from where he’d worn his visor. Perry could smell the dishes on him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t have to be sorry. I was just hoping to see you.” In the mirror Perry had seen that her hair was limp, flattened, all the shine gone out of it. She was glad, it felt like a miracle, that she’d pulled it into a ponytail before running into Travis.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. He picked at his shirt, drips of grease dotting it like raindrops. “I mean, I meant, did I miss anything?”

“I want to kiss you again,” Perry said. She took a step toward him, she couldn’t help it, she wanted to be near to him.

“I know,” he said, stepping back from her. “Me, too.”

It was a shock, a literal shock, like someone had fastened a clamp over her heart and pushed a pedal that sent a current right into her body, up through her throat and down to her toes. He’d said he wanted to kiss her, too. Perry felt filled up, like someone had poured a kettle of hot water over her head. But he’d also backed away. Here came the hideous smell again.

“Maybe I’ll stop by again,” she said, “if you’re working.”

“No,” he said, “don’t do that.”

He’d said it quickly, like the idea repulsed him. “Oh,” Perry started to say.

“Meet me somewhere else,” he said. “Tomorrow night I’m off. We can meet at my house or something. My mom works nights.”

“I can do that. I can take the bus. I’ll meet you there, if you tell me the address.”

“Thirteen forty-six Baton Rouge,” he said. “Take the bus to White Road and then walk into the neighborhood behind the 7-Eleven.” She repeated it back to him, twice, trying to stamp it deep in her memory. The smell was cascading off her, she half expected to see it pouring over him like candle wax, but he asked her to come over, he gave her an address, and it was like he couldn’t smell her at all. She wondered if she’d even tell him about her night in that cell, tell him about the other women.

“I’m going to skip this class,” he said. “So I’ll just see you later.”

This was a relief. Perry hadn’t wanted to walk back with him, hadn’t wanted to break the spell, do something to change his mind. Hadn’t wanted to walk into class with him, either, didn’t want anyone thinking she’d gone to the bathroom to meet up with him. Not that she hadn’t done something like that before. She just didn’t want anyone thinking it about him.

And she didn’t want him thinking anything like that about her. In the night she’d thought how it could be something she had pride in, that she’d survived all those hours in that cell. That she’d thrived, even. But now she felt ashamed even thinking about telling Travis about the drugstore, the jail cell, the other women. She watched him walk down the hall. His shirt was wrinkled, and a bit of it had come untucked, but it fit tight across his shoulders. So it was settled: She wouldn’t say shit to him about her night. She’d pretend like it never happened.

CHARLES WAS STILL IN BED
when Baby Girl got home, which meant their uncle hadn’t been home, or if he had, hadn’t noticed that Baby Girl wasn’t home to make sure Charles got up when he was supposed to. She’d left him in there, not wanting him to see her bald head yet, not wanting to answer when he asked where she’d been. Instead, she’d gotten online. She wanted, more than anything, to show Jamey that she didn’t care that he was only into Perry, that she’d just wanted to be his friend all along, she’d never been interested. She’d nearly convinced herself of it, driving home. She even started feeling sorry for him, how he tried to convince her that he really did want her to come along on the meet-up, how he confessed that he was lonely. He had no idea who he was talking to now. He had no idea things had changed, she had the power, and she would do everything she could to make him see that she was beyond caring about him. He wanted Perry, he could have her. He would see that any hold he had on Baby Girl’s emotions had dropped away, as mean as a rock slide.

And Perry would see it, too.

After she signed off, she went to Charles’s door and pushed it open. He was flat on his back, eyes open, his hands folded over his shirtless chest. He’d once seemed rock solid to Baby Girl, but now he’d gone all soft and pale, his nipples almost womanly with how fleshy they were, how they drooped whenever he stood.

“I think it’s time for me to get up,” he said. “My butt hurts.”

He was upset, Baby Girl could tell. He was talking to her like she was going around the room and stealing all his things, right there in front of him, while he lay helpless on his back.

“You know how to read a clock, Charles,” she said. “You know what time you need to be up. You don’t need me to come in and get you, do you?”

His room smelled like breath. “But you always do,” he said.

“Well, if I ever don’t, like this morning, you got to be able to get yourself up. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My butt hurts.”

“Get up, then.”

He swung his legs around. His boxers were loose and Baby Girl looked away so she wouldn’t see his stuff, but it didn’t matter. When he stood his thing peeked out the front, shriveled and brown-pink. Charles had had plenty of girls before his accident. Some of them had tried to be nice to her, offering up lip glosses and gum and, once, a pink condom in a glitter wrapper. They’d come and gone. Baby Girl had heard some of what went on in Charles’s bedroom, girls moaning or laughing or yelling. It had made her feel sick, scared even, she couldn’t see the point in it all. But now, in his bedroom on this morning, there wasn’t no sex in what dangled from his boxers that Baby Girl could see.

Why did she have to always remember how he used to be? The doctors had said some days would be better than others. Some days he’d be a five-year-old, some days he’d be like an eighth-grader. But he’d never be the same person he was before the accident. And it wasn’t like Baby Girl was waiting for him to be, waiting for some miracle to alight on his head like some kind of mercy bird. It was just that now she knew: there wasn’t no point. You just did shit and waited to see what happened. Charles’s accident had been like a line in the sand. And Baby Girl had crossed it over and over.

“Get dressed,” she told Charles. “I’m going to take a shower, and then later I’ll take you to the library.”

They had adult programs there, mostly for homeless people, but Charles loved it. Those were his friends now, some of them with child brains like his. And it was somewhere she could leave him while she and Perry met up with Jamey. She could leave him home watching videos, make him a sandwich and chips to eat on the couch, but he’d been left alone too long already, because of her. Because she wanted to go out and shave her head in a drugstore bathroom just to show the world how little she gave a fuck. Now she saw that the fact that she wanted to show the world anything meant she gave a fuck, way too much of a fuck.