Ugly Girls: A Novel (17 page)

“You look like a boy,” Charles said. “All your hair’s gone. You have boy hair.”

“Isn’t it cool?” Baby Girl said. If she put the right tone into her voice Charles would go along with anything.

“Cool for a boy,” he said. “You’re ugly now. You’re ugly! You’re ugly!” He was jumping up and down, nipples jiggling, his thing flying up and down, over and over. Baby Girl could feel her face getting hot, the way it did when she was about to say something. “You’re ugly ugly,” he yelled. “Boys don’t want girls who look like boys!”

Her head felt hot enough to pop. She ran at him, pushing her hands into his chest as hard as she could, until he was on his back on the bed. He wasn’t her big brother anymore. She wanted to murder whatever he was now, wanted to crush it in her fists. If the real Charles wasn’t ever coming back, why did she have to see his face every day?

His boxers had come all the way down in the struggle, and Baby Girl could see that he was hardening. She thought of the women in the cell, of Perry laughing with them, at her. Of the boy in the dune and Jamey. Charles before his accident, Charles now with what old Charles would have called a chubby. Dicks everywhere, none for her.
You look like a fucking retard.
She slapped his face. “You’re a fucking retard,” she yelled, spit flying from her mouth.

He held his face, one hand on top of the other. He opened his mouth, his lips wet, and wailed like something was broken. Maybe his heart. She backed away, kept moving until she was safely in the bathroom with the door closed. Turned the shower on and stood under it so she wouldn’t have to hear him carrying on.

She shampooed her bald head, her hands moving slow. Rinsed and lathered again. And again, hoping her heart would stop throwing itself against her rib cage. Tried to focus on how already there was some stubble, how she wouldn’t look this way forever. What would Jamey think when he saw her? She couldn’t stop herself from wondering. Such a pussy. The shampoo ran down her face until her eyes stung.
Good.
If she’d been teetering on the edge of ugly before she shaved her head, now she had definitely crossed over that edge.
Good.
There were new truths on this side of the edge. Like how you could stop caring what people thought if you knew there was no hope to look otherwise. Like how people might underestimate you, think you couldn’t keep up. She held her eyes open under the water. She could keep up. She was way ahead, in fact. She would bring Charles’s gun to the meet-up. Pictured Perry’s face, how scared it’d make her, how Jamey might realize he’d underestimated her. It wasn’t loaded, but a gun’s a gun. She’d still have the upper hand. All along she’d been trying to convince herself she was stone all the way through. When she already knew that it was a fact, could feel the cold rock under the washrag she dragged over her body. This lumpy stone no one wanted to fuck.

IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER
Myra had eaten the eggs she’d made for Jim and then thrown them up that she realized she had a shift, and it had started an hour before. She’d called the truck stop, didn’t even have to try to sound like she was sick, a small blessing.

“Myra,” Bill had said, “why don’t you take some time. Come back to us after you get yourself under control.”

His voice was quiet and kind, pitying. The receiver smelled like Myra’s breath: bile and eggs and the ruined yeast smell of beer. She wanted to get off this phone and stick her head in the fridge, the freezer, both at once, anything to get fresh air on her face.

“I got myself under control, Bill. We had some bad news about Perry yesterday, and I…” She couldn’t say
drank too much
. Felt like too much of a give. So instead she said, “Ain’t you ever made a mistake?”

“I knew you back when,” he said. And it was true: they’d gone to the same high school, back when Myra was runner-up for prom queen and so God-fearing that she’d only sip from the beers handed to her. Never finish them. But she’d also gotten pregnant not two seconds out of high school, and she’d never made her way out of this town except to give birth to Perry at the hospital in the next county over, Perry’s daddy long gone by then. So if he was implying those were the glory days, that Myra should look to them as blueprints for who she should try to be today, he had another think coming.

“Fuck you, Bill,” Myra said. Saying it aloud felt like a drink from an ice-cold glass of orange juice. A blast of awakeness, the sky was blue, the sun was yellow, the fucking chimes tinkling just so, it was morning.

“Mm-hmm,” Bill answered. “Take a week, dry out.”
Click
, he’d hung up.

She looked in the fridge: no orange juice. But the cool air did help for a minute, and there was beer, one single frosty can so close to the shelf edge it was like it was daring itself to go over. She had no idea when Jim would be home, no idea if he’d have Perry with him. An image flashed across her mind, quick and dark and flickering, like she was watching it in a dingy movie theater: her hand on that boy’s pants front. The feel of him, hard and sure, leaning in. The thought sent fingers of shame up her body. She’d have had him, if. And she’d told Jim about it because she’d been proud, proud that a young man wanted to fuck her: wilted, drunk her. Even now she felt a tingling down there. The fact was she was the kind of woman who would do the whole world, if it’d keep her company when she needed it.

She opened the beer, popped the top expertly with one finger. Gargled the first gulp and spat, the bubbles sharp and cold in her throat, her throat alive.

She was on the steps with her can, still in her nightdress, when Jim pulled up. She could see that he was alone, no Perry. The beer had sorted her out, organized her emotions and sickness into neat compartments, laid a fuzzy blanket over them. The sky had changed colors, it was a golden gray now. A storm was coming. They hadn’t had one in weeks. Myra wanted to feel the first drop splash onto her face, wanted to tempt the lightning.

Jim walked over and stood in front of her, his eyes on the empty beer can dangling from her fingers. “I dropped her at school,” he finally said.

“Good. It’s going to storm, looks like.”

“How come you didn’t ask?”

“What?”

“How come you didn’t ask where Perry was?” He was playing with his keys, clenching them tight and then letting them loose. Metal on metal, a terrible worrying sound.

“I would have gotten around to it,” Myra said. “And besides, I figured she was in jail or with you.”

She knew she was taunting him now, trying to push his buttons. Trying to piss him off. Give him just what he wanted: a drunken wife that didn’t care whether her family lived or died. The fact was she had been worried about Perry, she’d been worried about her since the day she was born, worried so hard that she’d made herself sick, worried herself to the fridge night after night, worried until she convinced herself all she could do was trust that she’d raised a human being and not a monster. After Myra got boobs, her own momma started looking at her funny, asking to smell her breath, her neck, her hands.
You’re going straight to hell to bear the spawn of Satan. See how you like the boys then.
And look how good all that worry had worked on Myra.

“I don’t want her hanging out with that Dayna no more,” Jim said.

He wasn’t taking the bait, wouldn’t scream at her about what a horrible momma she was, wouldn’t even threaten to leave. Myra wanted to throw her arms around his neck. But that kind of action would require a trip around the world, a magic trick, some impossible kind of journey that Myra didn’t think she was capable of.

“All right,” she said. “But you know we can’t control who she’s friends with at school.”

“She shaved all her hair off,” Jim said. “Dayna did, I mean.”

“Now that’s a girl with some secrets,” Myra said. “We can’t blame her for that. Plus, with a friend who looks like that, the boys will probably stay far away, right? And I know for a fact that Perry ain’t been talking to the boy she was into online, not for a while, anyway.”

“What boy?”

“Just some new boy in town named James or something,” Myra said. “Jamey. He likes bass fishing. For a while Perry would be on that computer for hours, talking to him. But all that stopped about a week ago. She ain’t been on the computer in days, so she ain’t replaced him with another, either. See? You think I don’t pay attention, but I do.”

Jim nodded. “Jamey, huh? Bass fishing.”

“He seemed like a nerd type, as far as I could tell. Maybe Perry just liked the attention.” Myra felt silly saying that last part. Might as well have been talking about herself, dredging up the fight she and Jim had that morning. Her head zinged at the memory of it, her hangover finally emerging from out of the fuzzy blanket. Her hand on that boy’s crotch. Shame and desire. Storm. Her hand.

“Anyway,” Jim said, sitting beside her. Myra knew he was thinking of what she’d confessed, too. “I got another shift tonight.”

“I know,” Myra said. “I saw on the calendar. I got a week off from work, courtesy of Bill.” She didn’t want to tell him the part about drying out, but it came out anyway. “He told me to get myself together,” she said.

“Better him than me,” Jim said. An attempt at a joke, a nod at their fights, and even though he was hinting at a mountain of pain between them, Myra felt thankful. Thankful that he’d joke, thankful that he knew her so well, thankful that he was sitting on the steps with her, him shaven and clean and her wrinkled and used up.

A low growl rolled over them, the thunder far off but closing in, the sky more gray than yellow now. The neighbor’s chimes blasted, the wind picking up. Myra realized she hadn’t heard the loud polka music in days, realized she’d take that over those chimes in a heartbeat. At least the polka was music, and not just a series of random screeching notes. With one you knew what to expect. With the other you just had to take what you got.

“We should get inside,” Jim said.

“You go ahead,” Myra said. “I’ll be in after a while.”

She wanted to wait and see if Pete would show up, wanted to tell him not to come by no more. The odds of him wandering around in a storm seemed slim, and maybe that was why it was so easy for Myra to sit out there, waiting to do the right thing. Wouldn’t be her fault if she never got the chance.

BABY GIRL DROVE TO SCHOOL,
waited in the parking lot for Perry. She’d sent two texts:
Hey bitch I’m in the parking lot
and
We’ll meet you by the quarry tonight
.

She had left Charles at home after all. No library for him. Goon, goon, she was a goon. The gun was under her seat. All of it felt like a giant fucking joke.
I’ma get mine. I’ma get mine. I’ma get mine.

She could see how it would go: They’d pull up, Jamey would be waiting there, he’d probably be cute enough for Perry to take over from there. Which meant he’d have a face and two arms and two legs, ha-ha. Maybe she’d show them the gun, maybe she’d keep it to herself. Depending on whether she wanted them to get scared or not. Depending on whether she wanted to get scared, too.

What had Charles done with the gun before the accident? Had he ever pulled it? Had he ever shot it? In her head she put the gun in the hands of the Charles he was now. He shook it, waved it around, laughing, pulling the trigger over and over, yelling,
Click! Click! Click!
right along with it.

She’d seen preaccident Charles get angry, saw how he could get as big and senseless as a gorilla. In her head, that Charles gritted his teeth, pulled the trigger,
blam blam blam
, three starbursts, aimed right at her.

She couldn’t say which version of Charles seemed sillier. Both dancing apes,
Look at my gun!

The parking lot security guard was headed her way, though she couldn’t tell if she’d been seen. Today it was the PE coach in the golf cart, driving slow, peering and squinting into every back window. Baby Girl slid down in her seat. The sky filled her windshield, a wash of greenish yellow-gray. A few leaves blew by. She had the urge to honk her horn, over and over, come and get me, do whatever you have to, I don’t know anymore, I don’t know anymore.

Well, if she did show them the gun she’d make sure it was for a reason. But why had she brought it? Charles had once told her that if you pull a gun you’d better be ready to kill. She didn’t want to kill. She just wanted them to stop breathing, ha-ha.

The golf cart was getting closer, moving so slow that Baby Girl had another urge, the urge to leap out and take off running, just to show the coach that she could outrun him, that he’d have been better off on foot. She pulled the gun out from under her seat, rested it in her lap. If he found her he’d be getting a show, that was for sure.

One day she wouldn’t live with Charles no more, she wouldn’t be friends with Perry, she’d be someone else with hair and a job and a memory of the day she sat in the parking lot at school with an unloaded gun. She heard the golf cart creep by her car, heard it reaching the end of the row and turning down another. So she hadn’t been seen. More thunder, closer now, louder. She cracked her window. The air was thick, the sky like an overstuffed balloon, one more drop of water and the whole thing would burst.

PERRY WAS SURPRISED
by Baby Girl’s text, figured they’d had enough of each other for a while. But now here she was, ready to pick Perry up from school and take her wherever. She thought about texting back,
I’ll just see you later
. She didn’t have a whole lot to say to Baby Girl, she was tired and smelly and she just wanted to get through today so it’d be tomorrow, so it’d be the day she would meet up with Travis. But the thought of wasting time in the trailer with her momma wasn’t all that alluring, either. In the end she texted Jim,
Don’t need a ride, taking the bus home
. At least driving around with Baby Girl would give her something to do.

It was going to rain, Perry could smell it in the air. Baby Girl was slumped down in the driver’s seat as Perry walked up, just her forehead visible. She sat up when she saw Perry, shoved something under her seat.