I look for the bathroom and wander into the kitchen. There are lines of coke and razors laid in neat rows on a mirror on the table, one of those Jack Daniels mirrors you win at the carnival that comes to town now and then. Next to the mirror is a half-eaten birthday cake from Safeway. The cake has violet frosting flowers, and the letters, “Happ Birth Cha” on top. The Donelli brothers’ mom is out of town and yesterday was their sister Charlene’s birthday. This is the party to celebrate both occasions. Lynyrd Skynyrd blasts from the stereo in the living room, where Danny and his girlfriend are making out on the couch, but everyone else is in the garage, including my boyfriend, Todd.
Todd had called me that afternoon and asked if I wanted to go to the party. I’m thirteen and bored. He’s sixteen and leans his maroon motorcycle hard around curves. Hell yes I wanted to come.
I was supposed to have dinner at my aunt’s house with my parents, though. When they got home from work, I told Mom I felt sick to my stomach and needed to stay home. She seemed suspicious but left me behind anyway.
As soon as they were out the door, I called Todd and he picked me up on that bike. His deep-set eyes are America-blue, his face rough in all the right ways, and his body was tight beneath the black leather jacket when I wrapped my arms around him.
We drove across town and now here I am, looking for a place to piss while Lynyrd Skynyrd begs for three steps toward the door. Honestly, the rest of the night is a blur. I sit on Todd’s lap in the garage, his thick fingers splayed across the small of my back, pinky hooked in a belt loop on my denim cut-offs, my small hands passing joints and drinking cans of Budweiser chased with more Budweiser. We are on an aluminum lawn chair that rocks unevenly on the cement every time we move or laugh. It’s a BlurryFlirtingTeasingJokingBullshittingDrinkingDrinkingDrinkingDrinkingSmokingSmokingSmokingSmokingKissingLaughing kind of night.
I lift Todd’s arm and check his wristwatch. Ten-thirty. I tell Todd we should go so I can beat my parents home.
We climb onto the bike and duck and weave through the twisted streets of our small town. God I love this bike. I never wear a helmet, I like the wind all over me, pushing skin into bone. He wears a black matte helmet. Wartime forties style. Badass. It makes me want to bite his neck ‘til it bleeds. Instead, I close my eyes, rest my chin on his shoulder, and lean with the movement of the bike.
When we turn onto my street, the cul-de-sac my house sits on is quiet. I see the Radioactive Pickle, our dark green Oldsmobile Cutlass, in our driveway.
“Shit, they’re home,” I say.
My lungs fall to the gravel.
My six-pack buzz gone just like that.
Todd stops the bike one house away from mine. “Do you just want to come home with me?” he asks. His head tilts to the side, and in the near dark, the silhouette of his too-many-times-broken nose crooks like a question mark.
I want to go with him. It would just make things worse, though. “Naw, they’ll be pissed, but they’ll get over it.” He nods and pulls into our driveway.
“You sure?” he asks when I maneuver off the bike.
I answer by kissing him hard. We smile at each other when I pull away. I wave to wave him on and watch him leave, listen to the engine fade as he turns onto the main road and heads home to his trailer across town.
It’s warm. Desert nights aren’t always cold. Even the coyotes have quieted their moaning and left behind a stillness that tightens my jaw. I walk up the driveway, around the eucalyptus tree and up to our front door. I turn the knob.
Nothing.
It’s locked.
My stomach drops. I’m screwed.
I spin around and start to walk away, but where am I going to go? It doesn’t matter, the door handle jiggles, and a yellowish light falls onto the sidewalk where I stand. Dad steps outside just far enough to grab me. His breath comes hard and heavy with vermouth. He pulls me inside, kicks the door shut, and throws me against the wall next to it, slamming his martini glass next to my head at the same time. The jolt flashes light across my vision. Glass congregates at my feet. My head bounces against the wall and turns to the right as it falls forward.
The gin and vermouth dribble lazily down the wall, like everything is slowing down just so I can focus on each long, slow, slooow, sloooooowwweerrr drop creep to the floor.
Fast forward. Dad yanks me away from the wall and spins me around again, this time into the dining room.
Are we dancing?
He punches me hard in the face and I’m on the floor. Mom stands where I just was, her hands to her face. “Stop it! You’ll kill her!” Each syllable exaggerated, panicked. I barely recognize her face with her mouth misshapen like that. Her voice sounds like the edge of a broken bottle, ragged, shattered, dangerous.
Dad leans over and backhands me.
Slaps my face.
Kicks my ribs.
Slaps my face again.
His shoes thud against my legs.
His breathing jackknifes.
Fist pummels my jaw.
No words. Just that wreck of breath.
His beer belly heaves over me.
I turn my head and look into the carpet.
What if I was Gulliver and the carpet threads are the forest of an entire hidden society of tiny, tiny….
I try to sink into the carpet, to become that small. And I am. I am in the carpet. I live here now, it is home. Some fibers are brown like I remember but some are red. A group of people stand in front of me, smiling. The women are round and plump, the men short and muscular. Women and men alike have beards and skirts. I reach for my chin. It is smooth. I am still me. A thick red rain falls on my new friends and me. We run away from it and eventually outrun the storm. Silence. No one speaks. One elderly man approaches me. We smile at each other and he leads me to a piece of popcorn embedded deep in the floor. I use it as a bed and sleep, my new friends guarding me like the seven dwarves guarding Snow White.
Awkward and cracked and sitting on one of our living room chairs. I am awake. When did I grow back into the huge, aching, physical thing?
Mom next to me in the matching chair, that table with the lamp and half-full ashtray between us. My nose bleeding. My head with a machete in it. My bones laughing things hanging onto muscle out of habit.
I cry. Yell. “I didn’t deserve THIS!” I look at Mom.
“I don’t know that you didn’t,” she says. She is livid. Her face, normally smiling, is flat and still. Her voice too calm. Cat tongue smoothing her coat.
I am heaving, sobbing. Her words, her demeanor, hurt worse than any bruise he puts on me. She is protector turned punisher.
He sits on the footstool at the end of my chair, calming down while Mom gets ramped up.
There is a big family discussion.
I treat them like shit.
I treat the rules like shit.
I treat school like shit.
I am a piece of shit.
Somehow, I am in Dad’s lap, cradled in his arms like an infant, and he is crying between drinks. He is so sorry and I will always be his little girl.
Todd comes to pick me up from school the next day. He wants to make sure I’m okay. He and his bike stand out in the line of mothers and fathers and babysitters in station wagons and sensible sedans.
I wear dark make-up and a long-sleeved, loose sweatshirt. Even though it is ninety-seven degrees outside. Even though everyone else is wearing shorts and tank tops.
Todd isn’t the only one in the line of cars to pick me up, though. Dad is there in the Radioactive Pickle. Only, Dad isn’t in line to pick me up like he is supposed to be. He is parked in front of the bike racks where you aren’t supposed to park because he never picks me up and doesn’t know the rules.
Dad yells at me from across the road to get my ass in the car. I’m mortified. I’ve been trying to avoid attention all day, and now everyone is staring. Now they notice how I’m dressed. How Dad is in the wrong place. How he yells at me.
I meet Todd’s eyes and want to run to him. I want to mouth, “I love you,” or, “I’ll call you later,” or blow him a kiss or jump on his bike and let him take me anywhere else.
But I can’t.
I can’t even manage a smile. Just a nod. My head is stone and drags the ground as I cut between cars and sulk into the passenger side of the Pickle.
Dad looks at me and shakes his head. “Jesus Christ,” he says, “what are you crying for?”
By Jessica Rich