12

 

 

 

 

12

 

 

Anyway.

Susie. The guy with a girl’s name. The guy with the clenching hands he hasn’t used to touch me yet. Only her. His hands on her hips, her thighs, her breasts. Grasping, clasping. Open and shut.

“You don’t care if your kid hears us?” Susie said the first night we crashed over.

“Why should I? She’s not a baby. Plus, it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like, literally.”

Susie watched me watching her.

“Hey, kid,” she called to me, turning away from him with her arm slack around his neck. “You don’t mind if Susie and me make friends, do you?”

“I thought you already were,” I said, spreading my smile so my mother laughed and Susie stared at me. Eyes stuck.

I turned away because I was starting to blush. My heart stepping up like I was about to panic. The eye in my forehead itched. I messed my hair into my eyes and unzipped my bag. Cover. Distraction.

Please stop looking at me.

“Hey, angel,” Momma said later that night, sneaking back to me in the total darkness with a towel closed between her breasts. “You don’t need to be so scared of your momma’s friends. They’re your friends, too. Okay?”

Wrapping me up close to her so we fell asleep again.

Friends. As if any of them have been people she knew before. Really, they’re just strangers. Really, they’re the legal occupants of apartments or houses with clean enough beds and maybe some food in the cupboards. Temporary roommates. Makeshift providers. Even the ones who sort of do become friends shift out of our lives after a while. An overstayed welcome has a way of killing love.

Love makes men softer, safer. If love isn’t real, explain that.

I guess it’s real enough in the time it lasts. An hour, a day, a week. However long it takes for things to break.

***

Susie is younger than most of our past friends have been. Or if he’s not so young, he acts like he is. Kid with a cap and crow’s feet. Overpriced sports shoes, chipped coffee mugs. Fancy leather lounge suite. Tin cans for ashtrays. No decent crockery. He spends a lot of time on his phone talking about ‘menus’ and ‘suppliers’. ‘Deliveries’ and ‘grades’. He doesn’t wear a suit, he doesn’t work set hours. I have a pretty good idea what it is he does for a living, but I won’t ask about it outright. I guess Mom must know already, too, so there’s no point mentioning it. There’s nothing dangerous here so far. He lets me sleep on his couch while Mom shares his bed, and he hasn’t tried to sneak up on me or spy on me or anything that I can tell.

I would know, because I always do.

It’s in the eyes at first. I’ll get up from the table to go fill a glass with water or something, and I’ll feel the skin on the back of my neck start to burn. I’ll know without looking back that they’re staring at me, watching me. Things quiet. The air thickens. I’ll get nervous, and it’s difficult to move naturally. My steps lurch, my hands jerk. Friends of ours who get like this, they won’t look away until I look at them—and then his fixed gaze shifts, and there’ll only be a smirk left on his face. Something knowing. Something smug.

Then anything I say will require a physical response. I say I’m hungry or I’m tired or Where’s the remote, it doesn’t matter what, anything, and the response will come with a hand on my shoulder. Fingers wrapping over my hip. A pat on the rump with a firm hand that hits a touch too hard, but not so hard I’m allowed to say anything. Occasionally a kiss on the forehead, leaving a too-wet residue slimy on my skin. These are not real signs of love. These are gestures of false affection matched nicely with empty words. They’re excuses to come closer.

It only gets worse after that.

I’ve learned to plug the keyholes in bathroom doors with tissue paper. I’ve learned to sleep with my jeans on, snug fit all the snugger with a great big belt closed over the button, the shiny metal teeth of the zipper locked tight. If I can find one, I’ll use a belt with the kind of buckle so big it clangs when it’s pulled loose.

It isn’t always enough. When Mom drinks too much or takes too many pills—because this has happened, too—she sleeps on a planet far, far away. No amount of ringing belt buckles will bring her crash-landing back to whatever single-bedroom apartment or quiet suburban duplex we’re calling home.

Susie. Girl-named guy with the clenching hands. Grasping, clasping. Open and shut on nothing but air. We’re staying at his house, but something about him tells me he’s still looking for home. Just like we are. Just like me.