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Doll Crimes 23
23I’m not supposed to smoke, you know. Mouthfuls of it, warm swirls hovering at the edge of my esophagus, burning like tiny fireballs on the way down. My lungs crackle open, seize. I choke back a cough, jets of smoke jolting out my nose in staggered silver puffs. I wait a moment. I try again. My hands already shake from the nicotine. The nausea comes next.My mother has always smoked. Clem did, too. “It’s not a good habit for a kid,” my mother has told me. “Staying away from cigarettes keeps us girls pretty.” Winking. Sliding a menthol between her lips.It started with the guys offering me cigarettes back when I was nine or maybe ten, eleven or maybe twelve. Handing them to me when my mother wasn’t around, flicking open a box to show me a deck of slim, spicy-smelling tubes neatly packed in tight rows. The filters all clean as cotton without the scorch, the stain that marks them later. Would you like one?Something secret in their
Doll Crimes 24
24Those early days at the petting zoos and the public gardens, the nature spots and caravan parks. I remember them. Those hours we spent in the picnic areas where the shade fell over us in heavy, dark dapples. I kind of miss them. Those times we bought sparkly ice cream floats and bright red hot dogs and gave ourselves hiccups from laughing between swallows. Sitting out on the grass or at the wooden benches. Under the trees or beneath the sky. By the fire areas, at the camping spots. The scents of cut grass and scorched meat cutting over the dark, mud-smell of deeper soil. Momma’s smile switching sizes, sometimes so wide I could see all the way to the back of her tongue, other times so small it was just a sloped curve. Her smile waxing and waning, her upper lip dipping in when her mouth stretched out. Lipstick marks on her teeth. Traces of red rubbed off on white. Smiling at something I said or did, something she noticed. Silly question
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25If you want life to be easy, you’ve gotta be a bit easy yourself. Advice from my mother when I was twelve, maybe thirteen. Old enough to need to know. Watching her snip the top buttons off blouses. Switch pale lipsticks out for red. Even men who are intimidated by heels, like heels.I’ve never worn heels, not even for a picture. My shoes have all been thin-strap sandals, Mary Janes, hiking boots. Beach slops, slippers. Once my mother made me two daisy chains, and wound them around my toes.Everyone wants something beautiful.She’s beautiful, she knows. Taking care of her hair, careful getting dressed. Never looking another woman in the eyes. Like they don’t exist, because even if they do there is still only her. There is only us. People don’t call me beautiful, they call me pretty. With my plastic bead bracelets, my breath like strawberry chewing gum.There are so many sad, lonely men in this world.Always in her bag: mouthwa
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26I don’t know where Susie is. Gone for the day with his deliveries and grades. Mom bolts the front door from the inside and drags a chair up against it.“Our space now,” she says.She’s hungover again, red-eyed. My mom, she can look pretty young even though she has to be around thirty at least, but when she’s had too much to drink the night before, no amount of cleanser and hairspray can pull her youth back into focus. Her skin dries out and shows the crow’s feet and fine lines creeping in under her eyes, shrinking the blue above. Her mouth curves down at the edges against her smile—her headache grimace, warping her mouth. Her color is too waxy, too grey. Concealer helps, but it can’t change what’s beneath. We don’t have a hairdryer, so I’m combing my hair and toweling it in turns. My hair slides wispy and damp between my fingers when I pull. The process is drying it fluffy, light. My skin is slick with lotion. I’m chewing gum, eve
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27I won’t lie about what I do and don’t remember. The eye in my forehead flutters like a black moth caught in a bad dream, fetching the images that shadow the back of my mind. Because the cliff-edge dividing what was and what is…the ink dot that bleeds in place before the line changes course. It starts falling down right about here.We made waffles and we burned them.And then my mother told me about Uncle Steve.***Momma was wearing her tan-and-sheepskin jacket, the one with the broken zip and the collar that flipped up against her ears. Faded and stained. It smelled the same way old books smell. She wasn’t wearing any makeup except for her mouth—a darker shade than normal, the color like the inside of a wound. She looked young and pale and kind of still. Maybe it was the chill on her bare cheeks, the way her breath puffed in tight bursts of vapor. She was breathing like her jacket was too tight and she couldn’t take air in all th
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28We’re at the pizza place around the corner from Susie’s house. A takeaway spot with restaurant ambitions. Checkered tablecloths over plastic surfaces, fluorescent lights swapped out for candles melted into green bottles. The seating is too tight; tables and chairs crammed up against the counter where waiters do the ordering right over your head. The menu is written out in chalk on the blackboard up on the wall. Swirly letters all shaded skew. Margherita, but not like the cocktail.Regina, the name that makes boys smirk.“And what’s the little lady keen on?” Susie says to me. Smirking.“She likes calzones,” Mom says. “The more mushrooms the better.”My mother and I ate mushrooms together once a year or so back. The colors brightened up around us in booming tones, and the sand we lay on snaked in loops and patterns. I’d never understood before how everything is alive. Even dried-up water weeds. Even grains of sand. The moss growin
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29Make the black marker tumble down an inch or two. We kept moving. We stayed at roadside motels, the safer ones with clean-enough swimming pools and no used needles or wasted condoms lying around the outside steps. Not the ones that looked too rowdy for kids our age. The worse ones were always small and sour-smelling. Water stains on the ceilings. Mattresses sloped down in the middle from years of heavy bodies and not enough turning. The bathtubs were stained with yellow rings no human hand could erase, and the mirrors were flecked with small black spots like fleas frozen behind the glass. At night the sounds of people yelling, of TVs playing too loud. Sounds masking other sounds.The check-out days, those were the best mornings. The quiet rush just before dawn. Momma ruffling my hair, dancing her fingertips to my armpits, kissing my cheeks to make me get up. Me giggling, kicking my feet, reaching my arms around her neck so she could
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30We’re in a suburb of a city somewhere, and the suburb’s name is Rosefield. We’re on the money side of the place, the part where everything is glossy and clean. Trash-free sidewalks lined with fancy cars, cafés with frilled awnings spread over outside tables. Trimmed trees and perfect flower bushes. We got here kind of by accident, piling off the train after a lady who was hiding a kitten under her jacket. I caught the glimpse—bright green eyes mottled with brown, staring out at us from the shadow of a lapel. It tried once or twice to mew at us: tiny, bright-white fangs guarding a pretty, pink tongue. I say ‘try’, but maybe it did. The world can be loud for such a small voice, especially if nobody knows to be listening.“Follow the kitty,” my mother said when the woman stood, and jabbed me with her elbow. “Hurry. Animals are always a good sign.”I don’t know about that, but maybe.The cat didn’t really matter, of course. Not if yo
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