Ugly Girls: A Novel (20 page)

“Where are we going?” Baby Girl asked once they were inside.

“Just drop me home,” Perry told her. Her voice came out in a croak.

“I thought we were going to decide what to do.”

“We have decided,” Perry said. She looked out the window, away from Baby Girl.

“You’ve decided,” Baby Girl said. But she started the car, didn’t say nothing more. The wipers clearing the windshield, time already passing.

Perry pulled down the visor to look at herself in the mirror, something she always did when she felt shaken loose, something she had started doing back when she had first had sex, with a man who worked at the same shop her momma did. He was nineteen and Perry a few weeks into being fourteen. She’d watched him whenever she went to visit her momma after school. He had a genuine fang and a tattoo of something sharp peeking below his shirtsleeve. Later she found out it was a quill,
quill
, a word she didn’t know until he’d said it. She’d wanted to laugh but hadn’t. And he’d watch her, too, black glinty eyes on her while he mopped or stocked the cold case.

It was the first time Perry felt how curiosity could shift, black and churning and alive, into desire.

He’d called in sick one day, which meant Perry’s momma had to go in, and he came by the trailer when Perry was home alone from school. “Hey, show me your bedroom” was all he said. They’d done it quickly on the top of her bedcover, him saying “Ready?” at the exact moment he’d pushed into her, the pain as jagged and bright as a small explosion, though there’d barely been any blood. Then again in the shower, which Perry had pretended to enjoy as much as he did, but really it just felt practical, like some kind of a procedure. Easy. And the way he looked at her during.
Bow down
, she nearly said, and she knew he would have.

After he left, Perry looked at her face in her momma’s hand mirror. She looked the same as she always had. It was a letdown. Nothing had changed, only everything had.

But when she looked in the mirror now she saw that she was different. Smudge of Myra. Faded and fading. And then she allowed the thought she allowed whenever she felt like she might be disappearing:
Least I ain’t Baby Girl.
Bloom of relief. She could get through this, past it. No more than a tick on her timeline. Just had to stay strong till the next tick.

Plus, it hadn’t been her who’d pushed him. There was always that: it hadn’t been her.

TONIGHT HE’D APOLOGIZE
to Herman. Make it clear that he didn’t take kindly to being asked about his daughter by a man in prison for taking one alive, leaving her naked and mostly dead in a farmer’s hayfield. But Jim knew that if you treated prisoners like animals, they tended to act like exactly that. If you treated them like they were human beings, with real emotions and brains, they’d act the part.

Herman was curled in his cot like always, hands in his armpits, facing the wall. Jim rapped on the cell bars with his nightstick.

“Hey,” Jim said, trying to force some kindness into his voice, but still the word landed like an embroidered turd.

Herman uncurled, lay flat on his back. Jim took it as a good sign. He saw that Herman’s bandage was smaller now, and it didn’t wrap his head. Another good sign.

“Herman, I’d like to apologize for jabbing you in the eye. It wasn’t right. I should have explained to you that you don’t talk to no one about their kin rather than putting the hurt on you.”

The man seemed to be listening, his wild eye moving side to side.

“Okay?” Jim said.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Herman said. There was a whine in his voice, something no grown man should resort to. It turned Jim’s stomach.

“Go on, then,” Jim said. “But mind yourself.”

“I asked after your daughter for a reason,” Herman said. “And it wasn’t ’cause I wanted to scare you, or have something to think about at night. I’m a changed man now that I have a personal relationship with Jesus.”

A personal relationship.
The prison chaplain, a lady with short bushy hair, always talking to the men about becoming buddies with God. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the men tried it on and took it off like a pair of pants. Jim started to feel impatient.

“Go on, then,” he said again.

“One of the men used to be in here knows your daughter. Been talking to her. Working on her. You know what I mean?”

“Perry?” Jim hadn’t meant to say her name out loud. Didn’t want none of the men knowing it. But there it was. Saying it then felt like a conjuring, like he’d whispered her name right into a demon’s ear and then pointed the way.

“I don’t know her name,” Herman said, rubbing his wild eye till it squished. “All’s I know is Jamey been talking to someone he claims is your daughter. Got himself online and found her there.”

“Jamey?” Saying that name aloud pricked his heart with fear.

“You remember Jamey,” Herman said. “Looked like nothing, said nothing, was nothing?” Herman laughed. “He got out some months ago. Been writing to me now and again. Lives with his momma.”

Jim didn’t remember a Jamey but knew he could find out who he was easy enough. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked the man. “What are you trying to get in return?”

“Nothing,” Herman said. “Jesus Christ told me I gotta dump all the trash, clear the land and start over. I know I got a affliction that’s out of my control, so I got to give it to God.”

“Jamey,” Jim said again. A carousel was starting up in his mind, real slow but gaining speed. Music and lights. Perry as a girl, Perry now, Perry on the computer, a black shadow creeping up behind her.

“Yeah,” Herman said. “He was in here ’cause that high school girl stabbed him with his own knife and got away. He told me they found him with his finger in the wound like a stopper, claiming a raccoon got him. And since there wasn’t no penetration on his part, excuse me for saying the word
penetration
, it’s a trigger word for me that I am to avoid, but anyway since there wasn’t none of that he got a kiddie sentence and left here with most of his life still before him. But you need to know he’s got intentions on your daughter.
Perry.
”

Now the carousel was deafening, the lights flashing wildly, Jim’s heart like a tennis ball against the side of a house. He knew he should feel afraid for her. But all he felt was rage. Stupid, so fucking stupid. A man should look forward to going home. When he got there he’d make her delete her Facebook, change her phone number. Maybe he and Myra would look into a new school for her as well. And he’d find this Jamey and destroy him.

But first he unlocked the cell door, stood over Herman with his nightstick raised. Even in his blindness the man recurled, protecting himself. “Thank you for telling me,” Jim said. “If I ever hear you saying her name again, you’ll wish for the day I got you in the eye.” Jim hit the side of his bed, over and over, at first to scare the man, and later he felt ridiculous for doing it, it seemed like something a bad actor would do in some TV show Myra might watch, but right then it had just felt so good.

A COUPLE ON THEIR WAY
to a dark spot on the far side of the quarry, vibrating with desire like two tines of a tuning fork, the condom in the boy’s pocket like a brand on his leg, didn’t even look down. A stray dog saw but didn’t know what to make of it. Barked once, got spooked by its echo, moved on. A boy who’d just made a slingshot, knew where he could get some real mean rocks, asked his daddy later that night did he know there was a mannequin all twisted up at the bottom of the quarry? “Ain’t that something,” his daddy answered. Cars drove in, parked, couples argued and kissed and swatted at each other. Four airplanes and a helicopter flew over. Then there were days of rain. Days and days. No one went to the quarry, hardly anyone went out long enough to make a difference. When the sun returned so did the boy, something about that mannequin kept occurring to him. (Did mannequins have gray skin sometimes? It niggled at him, a splinter in his brain.) But when he looked down all he saw was a shoe, and he couldn’t even be sure it was the same kind of shoe the mannequin wore. Someone had already got the mannequin, the boy decided, took it home to live in the basement or took it to the dump to be tossed in a pile. He felt sad about that, but only for a moment, because then his eye fell on the perfect rock, round but jagged, just heavy enough to sail through the air but still cause some real damage. His mouth watered, thinking of a broken window, a crack in a windshield, or maybe, if he felt mean enough, a bruise. He forgot about the mannequin, never thought about it in his waking moments ever again.

THE DOORBELL RANG,
something Myra hadn’t heard in ages. No one ever came by, and when they did they knocked or just looked in through the screen door and asked whatever it was they’d come to ask. Or came and sat down on the stoop with her, like Pete had. For a moment Myra thought it might be coming from the television, was
The Price Is Right
on? But no, the TV sat dark. She’d turned it off as a challenge to herself: she’d do something constructive, she’d do anything else aside from watch TV or drink. That had lasted a solid hour, an hour she spent bargaining with herself. Okay, I’ll only do
one
. But which one? The beer had won out. It was room temperature, almost flat. It had lived under her and Jim’s bed for quite some time.

And then
DING ding DING ding
. Myra saw through the screen door that it was an enormous woman, heaving for breath, wearing a sleeveless housedress, her arms like dough on dough. The woman leaned on a cane that looked like it might snap under her weight, her other hand gripping the rail. Which hand had she used to ring the doorbell? How had she stayed upright?

“Help you?” Myra asked, coming to the door.

“I’m asking have you seen my son,” the woman wheezed.

“Your son?” Myra said. “I don’t know you or your son.”

“His name’s Jameson,” the woman said. Her chins trembled.

“Don’t know him,” Myra said.

“He ain’t come home,” the woman said, and Myra saw that what she had taken for sweat was actually tears. Her whole face was wet, her eyes positively burbling over.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Myra said. “How old?”

“Jamey’s thirty-three,” the woman said, and Myra nearly laughed.

“Your son’s in his thirties? And you wondering where he’s at?” As she often did, she felt her throat swell with pride that she didn’t baby Perry like some parents babied their children. “He’s probably at some girlfriend’s house,” she said to the woman, “or sleeping off a bender!” She had meant to calm the woman with these possibilities, but she saw that they’d landed wrong, saw fat new tears pushing every which way out the woman’s eyes.

“Jamey don’t have no girlfriend,” the woman said. She let go of the rail to paw at her face, wipe the tears away, but they kept coming. “And he ain’t got nowhere else to sleep.”

“Well,” Myra said, and let it hang there. She wanted this woman to move on, limp over to the next trailer, quit crying helpless and sloppy on her steps. “Well,” Myra said again. “You got a picture?”

The woman started, like the thought hadn’t occurred to her until just now. “No, I don’t have no picture with me.” She said the word like
pitcher
.

“Bring me a picture,” Myra said. “And I’ll take in his face and keep an eye out. I work at the truck stop off the highway, and I see people coming and going all the time. I’ll ask around, once I got a picture.” She would have offered this woman anything to get her off the porch.

“Mm-hmm,” the woman said, nodding, looking past Myra into her trailer. This moment of preoccupation had halted the tears; this was the kind of woman who could handle only one thing at a time.

“He ain’t
here
,” Myra said, more sharply than she’d intended, but she hated this woman, this wounded whale, this
thing
that was keeping her from her beer.

“All right, then,” the woman said. “I’ll bring by a pitcher soon as I can find one that’s recent.”

“You do that,” Myra said, and slowly, so it wouldn’t feel like an insult, closed the door in the woman’s face. Seeing as how
that
was his momma, Myra didn’t blame this Jamey for disappearing for a while. Maybe it’d do the woman’s heart some good, having to get out and walk around asking after him. Exercise, fresh air, nothing wrong with that. Even thinking about it made Myra feel refreshed. She’d definitely earned this next sip, and the ones after that.

AGAIN, LIKE SHE’D DONE A DOZEN TIMES
over the past few days, Baby Girl picked up her phone and dared herself to make the call. There had been no mention of it on the news, nothing in the newspaper, no police showing up at her house, nothing. If she made the call she could pretend she’d come upon it, she could pretend someone had told her about it, or she could tell the truth:
I pushed a man into the quarry. He was trying to attack me and my friend. He’s dead.

And again she decided not to dial. She could hear Charles in the kitchen, could tell by the metallic pings that he was eating cereal out of an old mixing bowl, banging his spoon with each bite. Told herself she’d better get in there before he ate the whole box, she could always call later. He wasn’t going to get any less dead.

She had thoughts like these now.
Any less dead.
Like she was some hack comedian. Really she was just scared, and full of hate. Scared of what would happen when he was found, and hate because she got to breathe even after she’d stopped the breath of another.

Had she, though? Every day her memory got more fogged. He reached for the gun, she tried to get the gun back, he fell into the quarry. Had she pushed him, or had he simply fallen due to the force of the struggle? Did that last possibility make her feel better?

No.

Because the fact was they hadn’t done anything, not one single thing, to help him. Or to get his body out. Not a thing.

Baby Girl’s uncle Dave was always talking about hidden evils in the world. “Evil is everywhere, Dayna,” he’d say, mixing creamer into his coffee, or cutting into his chicken tender, or during a commercial. “It could be in the most beautiful woman you ever saw. It could be in your own brother.”