the rest of the cupboards, clacking away, quicker and quicker, until some Saltines make their way into my hands and up to my mouth, stale.
Upstairs I hear the sound of my dad stirring.
I settle down into the chair, collected. He walks down the staircase and squints at me through the doorway.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She left.”
“With who?”
“Somebody.”
“Somebody who?”
“Some guy.”
Something changes in the whiskey sweat air around him. He freezes and gets a little taller altogether, shrinking and getting bigger in the same miracle breath. He looks at the wallpaper like he can see right through it, all the way to wherever and whatever that fancy car has driven off to.
“His name’s Lux. He’s kinda gay.”
“By gay do you mean that he’s a homosexual?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wull, some folks don’t like that word, so you should find a new one.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, something sweet. You’re a girl, girls supposed to be sweet.”
Then he looks at what I’m wearing. Not much.
“You wearing that outta the house?”
“Maybe, why, what’s wrong with it?”
“Seems a little light on the clothing part, don’t you think?”
“Wull, what do you think?”
“I think you look like trouble.”
“Wull, I can change, I guess—”
“No use lookin for trouble, Luli, it’ll find you soon enough.”
He looks at me there, staring up at him from the foot of the staircase, and something strange and wistful takes over his face.
“You know, it’s funny . . . in this light . . . you look just like your mother when I first met her . . . just blond and pretty . . . before she got mean.”
I look up at him, wanting to tell him I’m sorry, wanting to fix him and make him hate her back.
“Don’t get mean, Luli, just stay little and pretty and sweet, how bout that?”
I try to make my face smile but I think I’m turning out more of a grimace, some little girl squint into the sunlight.
“Just stay sweet.”
He stares at me like that for what seems like two weeks.
Then he snaps out of it like some broken spell, looking at me like I’m this demonic Muppet sent to hurl him into the abyss with trouble dressing and stray-cat luring.
“Tell your mama, when you see her, tell her I had some business myself, tell her I had some business out in Shelby and I may be gone for a while, you know . . . paperwork.”
Paperwork.
Now I know that’s a lie.
The last time I saw my dad pick up a pen, I was eight.
Then he barrels past me, quick, grabs his keys off the wall and rushes out the screen door, letting it slam hard behind. I go to the door and watch as he drives away, churning up dust all the way down the dirt road and into the horizon.
He doesn’t look back.
FOUR
I wander off to the barn to consider my options. it’s the day dying down, the hay and the wood smelling sweet and dusty. The grass and the heat of the day coming off the ground, up up up into the giant pink sky.
It may have been that word paperwork. It may have been the way the dust was flying up underneath the tires or the back side of the Nova as it shrunk into a glossy speck on the beige horizon, but something in my gut, sure as sugar, tells me this:
He ain’t coming back.
Now I’m not trying to cry wolf, since I’ve been accused of some such shenanigans before, but I just know this as a fact in the back of my neck and the bottom of my belly. He won’t be back. No way. Not after paperwork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad sign a check, let alone take a stab at paperwork.
There are some things you just know, like when the sun goes down and you know something different is gonna happen that night. You may not know what it is and it may not turn out to be much, but something in the air changing around you or the night creeping up tells you this time you’re in for it.
I feel like that right now.
I’ve felt like that all day long and into the night, this night, that’s holding something behind its back.
The second idea muddling its way up the back of my head and into focus stems from the way my frazzled, blue-robed mama was looking at that bald-headed man. It cannot be denied. She has it between the legs for him.
I don’t know what he’s got for her, if it’s in his head or his heart or his wallet, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it? Because he’s got her. that’s his problem. Good luck. Once Tammy gets her hooks into something or somebody it’s hard to get her out or off or out of the picture. Like some kind of blond tick, she’ll just suck and suck until she’s swelled up with blood, sweat and tears, like a needy grape. Then she’ll either burst, leaving your inside carnage strewn out about the kitchen floor, or she’ll just hop off, casual-like, as if nothing ever happened.
You gotta watch her like that. See whether she’ll bite or just hop off. The problem is, she has that blond flip, lipstick, I-can-make-your-dreams-come-true disguise that makes a fella forget his own name. I’d feel sorry for that old gray-suit peeled worm, if he hadn’t come in, usurped my daddy and drove off with Tammy to money-land, without a glance backwards, through the dust. As it is, though, I’ve got my own problems to worry about.
My two conclusions lead me to a third and final one, which goes something like this:
My time for the next few weeks, months, maybe years is gonna be spent either alone, like right now, swinging my feet out the barn with a gurgling stomach, or, possibly, with Tammy and that peeled worm in wealthypeopleworld with a fake smile and a quickie in the closet and a coming out the pantry out of breath, belt-buckling.
And though you might think I ought to clap my hands together, shout hallelujah and thank God the money train has somehow seen fit to stop outside my door, you yourself would be on the wrong track. This is cause you yourself would not be thinking about watching blushing and backrooms and groping of your for-sale mama while your dad is somewhere two sheets to drunksville. Look, the rich get richer and the poor get the picture. that’s what my daddy says and that is why I am not
