Michael, Antoinette, and Me

 

Part Two

 

Mrs. Petticoat was an attractive woman, a bit taller than me, dark brown hair in a high ponytail. I liked her dress, a sky-blue shirt dress, buttons all the way down the front, breaking on her knee. She labored from her desk with a thick brown folder, coming to the chest high counter.

“There’s a crowd of kids blocking the front door smoking cigarettes,” my mother greeted.

“And?” she answered, opening the folder, placing a single sheet of paper in front of my mother, pointing. “Sign here.”

“Pen?”

A pen was provided.

Rich chocolate eyes ran over my mother. “Unless you have any questions, that’s all we’ll be needing from you.”

The inflection in her declaration was like a magic wall prohibiting questions.

When the glass door closed behind my mother cutting off the chaos from the hallway, Mrs. Petticoat leaned toward me. “Alcoholic?”

I backed instinctively from the face, just a little, offering a shrug.

“Your classes. Given your transcript, we put you in honors.”

“Honors?”

“Advanced classes.”

“Home Economics?”

“It’s your arts elective. The only place we have a chair. This early in the school year, you shouldn’t have any trouble catching up.” She nodded toward me. “You’ll want to ensure your bra strap doesn’t stray.”

Glancing, I repositioned my tank top. “Thanks for the advice.” I’ve never dressed for other people. This day, I guess, I wanted to be cute. I wore my white tank top with my denim skirt three inches above the knee. My boots, of course.

 

The school emanated the stench of unwashed humanity. The restrooms were worse, the air thick with cigarette smoke even between classes, sinks and toilets less than clean, soap dispensers missing or broken.

Generally, the building didn’t need a good cleaning and repair. It needed a bulldozer.

I made it to Honors English halfway through the forty minutes, a debate going on.

A tall girl with cinnamon face and beautiful, lush black hair was saying, “It’d be nice not to have to worry about how we sit all the time.”

“If you don’t learn to sit like a lady now, when are you going to learn?” the teacher retorted, looking at me. “Can I help you?”

Just inside the door, books to my chest, I held a paper forward.

About my mother’s age, full figured, white button-down shirt, blue hoop skirt to her ankles, black flats, Mrs. Bastille projected authority. “Don’t be shy,” she told me, snapping her fingers, an invitation to advance.

“I’m not shy,” I objected, I just like to be invisible.

She took the paper, leaned to her desk, signed it, and then returned it to me. “This goes back to the office.”

“I know, says so right on it.”

She gave me a hard look. “There’s an empty desk toward the back. Do you have an opinion?” Mrs. Bastille asked as I dropped my books on the desk, sliding onto the chair.

Sure, plenty. “I didn’t catch the subject.”

“School dress code,” the boy next to me said. “Should girls be allowed to wear pants?”

“I’ve not given that any thought. Let me see.” I rolled my eyes, addressing Mrs. Bastille. “On the one hand, it’s a tradition, a social norm, something we do because we’ve always done it. We have no good reason to prohibit young women from wearing pants. I might add, as I heard when I came into the room, some young women may feel more comfortable wearing pants.”

I shrugged at the silence in the room. “In my opinion, people should do what they’re comfortable doing, not required to do stuff to make other people comfortable.”

“Thanks very well-reasoned for something you’ve not given any thought to, eh?”

“Toby.”

“OK, Toby.” She glanced the clock. “We have just enough time for the quiz on this week’s material. Toby, since you weren’t here, you may sit this one out.”

“I’m good, Mrs. Bastille.”

When the quiz reached me, I wanted to shout, You’re just fucking with me now!

Diagraming sentences.

 

The cinnamon girl with beautiful hair, I never did get her name, and others surrounded me in the hall after class.

Wide eyes, bending a little, unnervingly in my face. “How do we change it?”

I took a half-step back. “Change what?”

“The dress code.”

“March? School walkout? Sit-in? It’s not like you have to invent how to protest. Just read the newspaper.”

“We need a leader,” another girl said.

“That’s not me. Try this. Get as many girls as you can to wear pants to school. Sure, you’re in trouble, maybe sent home to change, but if you get enough people to do it every day for a long time, they’ll just give up, no longer enforcing the dress code.”

“Great idea!”

“How about we just wear pants with our dresses? That way, we don’t have to go home to change.”

As the mob moved off, I said, “I like my dresses.”

 

I didn’t think I’d like my new school.

 

Just after last period, fatigued from stress and anxiety, I lumbered on the second floor after Home Economics, safe in the knowledge if I ever got my face bounced off the concrete again, I’d at least know how to properly apply stitches instead of using clear tape when I was swept up in a crowd of boys.

In the boy’s restroom, the faces clambered at me incoherently, jumping back, attacking again. They smelled like wet dog and vomit, stale liquor, tobacco, and pot. A boy a head and a half over me cupped my cheek with a calloused hand, his other hand taking the hem of my skirt, his vile mouth engulfed my mouth, his tongue entering me against my blubbering objection.

I was lost in the blackest depths of my worst nightmares taken flesh.

My right knee came almost to my chest, my full weight bringing my boot down on his instep, soliciting a sharp crack and screech. As he withdrew, I leveled my palm up on this nose in two quick strikes. I didn’t want to use my fist, avoiding two days of ice to bring the swelling down.

Now, the fist in his solar plexus. As he doubled over, I cupped my hands on the back of his neck and decisively bounced his face on the sink. He fell backwards, another boy attempted to rush me, losing his footing on the wet floor. Taking the back of his head, I helped him, too, bounce off the sink.

I might have growled, clocking the remaining boys, most rushing the exit. The second boy, hands to faced, rolled on the floor crying. The first boy wasn’t moving.

I’d hoped I killed him.

I didn’t.

Because that’s the way the universe works.

 

I didn’t bother with the bus, another nightmare of a crowd of people stuffed in a container with a closed door. The two-mile walk did me good. I managed to find my happy place, walking with Antoinette, holding hands in a white bliss of innocence, unencumbered by matters of the flesh.

My disorganized piles of belongings on the floor and musky sofa were more disorganized than when I left for school. Digging in the small brown paper bag of underwear, I was relieved to discover my money still in the bottom of the tampon box. I placed my money in my right boot.

 

I somehow thought I could store my lawnmower in the hall outside our front door.

When I asked my mother whether I could return to the house, recover more of my stuff, she answered, “It’s all being sold.”

“My books, my lawnmower,” I grieved, not bothering to mention personal items. “Aren’t yours to sell.”

“We have rent, bills. That car, such that it is, didn’t buy itself. I have to get to work, you know. You have to stop thinking about only yourself.”

 

I had thought my life in the world – in objective reality – sucked with a few shining spots here and there. I was now thrown into hell, my safety, my identity ripped away from me. I sat on the floor trying to dream myself to a better place, maybe snow fall, maybe rain to dance in just above the lake.

The door opened. “Hey, Toby,” Mark greeted. “How’s the new school?”

“Great. How about you?”

“Jerry’s giving me a lift. Dad didn’t think it wise to disrupt my education – he’s paying the tuition for my last two years.”

“This keeps getting better and better.”

“Right?”

I looked up at him. 17-years-old, now almost in a man’s body. With straight C’s and a D, he could be an A student in the new school system. Of course, with his shaggy straw hair hanging in his face and dumb farm boy grin, he could easier end up raped in the boy’s room.

I wanted to ask him not to rape me. I wanted to ask him not to jerk off on my face. “I would like, Mark, if you don’t hit me.” Without Keith on the corner and a door to lock, I was vulnerable.

“Hit you? Hit you? I would never hit you.”

“Well, thank you for that,” I answered, dripping with the most convincing fake sincerity I could squeeze into the sentence. I didn’t bother having him deny he would rape me.

 

In the bathroom, I changed into my scoop neck half sleeve off-white dress breaking on my knee, the dress bringing Antoinette to mind, taking just a few minutes to apply eye shadow and mascara, a touch of lip gloss. Reading Cosmopolitan each month got me interested in makeup. Many people my age went with outrageous and extreme. Again, having read Cosmopolitan, I liked a subtle brown and tan palette.

I dressed for me, fleeting moments missing my full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I’d yet to fathom the full depth of what I’d lost. A couple people in school offered passing positive comments on my boots as if I wore my boots to please them.

I did love the look, but my choice was more of practical than of fashion, validated in the upstairs restroom at school. I rolled my eyes at myself in the small medicine cabinet mirror, pushing thoughts of school aside, school to be dealt with in the morning. The lack of a phone call from the school surprised me. I expected the police.

I loved my threadbare, faded denim jacket, two sizes big, dropping to my waist, with its breast and side pockets, sleeves flowing over my knuckles. The jacket felt like a hug and didn’t remind me of anybody.

Mom staggered from her bedroom as I was leaving. “Where you going?”

Thinking of someone other than myself for once, I did not turn. I did not answer, sure I would unload six and a half miles of bullshit on her, maybe hitting her in the face – once, maybe three times. She may not have been the villain. I was sure she was somehow culpable. I didn’t much like I’d become a violent person, killing my brother in his sleep with the eight-inch butcher knife from the kitchen topping my list on how to solve that problem.

My immediate vaguely fleshed out plan was to leave the apartment until my mother left for work after eleven, my brother fast asleep. Close by, near the elementary school out of view of the street, I stumbled on a small playground with swings. As the sun was dropping away, I managed to drop away, too, effortlessly floating to and fro.

   “You can’t really kill him,” Antoinette told me from the other swing.

“If I weighed twenty more pounds, I would have killed that boy in school.”

“What’s up,” a voice intruded, older teenagers surrounding me. The voice was friendly, non-aggressive.

“Love, love, love the boots,” a female voice added.

“Not much,” I answered. “Thanks.”

“This is our place,” another voice, distant added, this voice having a threatening edge.

“Chill, asshole,” the original voice said over his shoulder. “We gather here every day about this time, smoke pot, hang, chill. Someone always has beer. You can join us.”

I left my perch, looking up. His was a good face, soft brown eyes with hair to match floating onto his shoulders. He wore a red plaid shirt, faded blue jeans, sneakers, a pack of cigarettes bulging his shirt pocket. Clocking the dozen faces, more boys than girls, but for the guy and the love the boots girl, they all hit me like the this is our place guy.

Terrible things can break quickly when a group perceives a person as an interloper evidenced back in sixth grade and more recently in the second-floor restroom in the new school.

“Maybe another time,” I told the good face attempting not to sound dismissive.

“You know where to find us,” he called to my back.

 

I wandered aimlessly in the direction of the mall a town and two miles over. The mall, like me, was new. My first stop, which was incidental, was at an idling bus planted at the bus stop, interrupting newspaper reading.

“Sure, sure,” the driver said, a man in his fifties with wonderful eyes pushed into a dark chocolate face coming alive at me. “You just ride with me into the city, then grab a number 109 at Market.”

“I should be writing this down.”

He laughed the most wonderful laugh that was ever laughed, plucking pamphlets from a rack at his left knee. “Bus schedules,” he explained. “You seem like a bright girl. You’ll figure it out.”

 I worked the schedules into my red suede bag looped on my shoulder. “Thank you. I was looking for something to read.”

He shook the newspaper open in front of him. “Should try the paper.”

“Every day,” I agreed, turning, then turning back.

“Nice to meet you. Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome.”

 

Public transportation was a lesson in you can’t get there from here.

 

The first thing to catch my eye was my reflection in the plate glass windows of Strawbridge, my dress hem dancing with my stride. For the sake of my sanity, I’d convinced myself it was Antoinette I was attracted to and not me. Passing conversation at church had confused me about masturbation. Reading Cosmopolitan and other monthly magazines offered a different perspective.

The plate glass windows drove home how much I’d miss my cracked full-length mirror.

Playland pulled me toward it. In the summer, delivering papers, I’d often pause, watching children playing in a swimming pool, splashing, laughing. I had no desire to be in the pool. I enjoyed they were enjoying the water and the company.

Pinball, Skee-ball manned by mostly kids, mostly boys, stood in two banks. Beyond, oddly, was a roller coaster. Not a large roller coaster, but a roller coaster just the same. Curiosity compelled me through the chaos, the highest point of the track no more than fifteen feet from the floor.

Obviously closed, I doubt I’d taken a ride if it were open, I came to the gate. A man, fortyish, knelt at a car, grunting. He had the sandy hair of a suntan lotion model and should have been on a beach in a bathing suit instead of wearing what struck me as an expensive businessman outfit.

He was attempting to lift the car and place a wheel on the axel. Not having three hands, he was not faring well. Risking getting hit in the face with a hammer, or rather in this case a steel wheel, I invited myself through the gate, squared myself to the car, bent my knees, grasped the bottom, and lifted.

He quickly placed the wheel, set a washer, installing a cotter pin. “Alright.” Standing, we worked the car onto the track. He looked down on me. “I’m really no good at asking for help.”

“I’m absolutely no good at offering help, yet here we are.”

“Bill Locke.” He offered a hand.

“Toby.” I took the hand. “Mr. Locke.”

“Call me Bill.”

“I’d rather not.”

 

Bill Locke sat on the side of the car, I stood. We spoke of nothing for half an hour. He offered me free plays on the game of my choice, waving an arm toward the front of Playland.

I shrugged. “I don’t play.”

“Hungry? I’ll buy you dinner.”

“Very nice of you to offer.” He didn’t strike me as creepy at all. I’d pulled a thorn from his paw. He felt indebted. I fully understood why he never asked for help. “I could use a job.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, evaluating. “Do you have a social security card?”

“I do.” I’d recently found my card in a box in the attic along with my birth certificate – I was disappointed to learn my parents were really my parents – and much to my surprise, my baptismal certificate. Though not the same church building, I was a member of Trinity’s little club. I’d planned to meet with Father Sweet on the matter when my life was uprooted like unwanted crabgrass.

 

“Good morning, Mrs. Petticoat,” I greeted, elbows on the counter.

From her desk, she glanced me over her glasses. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, I thought I’d skip homeroom, come right here for some bud nipping and misconception dispelling.”

“Notice has been sent.”

“I don’t follow.”

“To your homeroom.”

“OK. Notice of what?”

“To report, eh, here.”

“Here I am.”

 

Mr. Barrett, a man in his late fifties, sat tall in his chair behind his green metal sparsely populated desk, dark hair slicked back, thin, pale lips, shadowed, sunken eyes, he looked uncomfortable in his attempt to look comfortable, the fingers of his right hand dancing on a thick brown folder.

 I took up the position four feet in front of the desk, Mrs. Petticoat looming behind me.

With his name on the door and on his desk, he still felt the need to say, “I am Mr. Barrett, vice principal of this middle school.”

“Good morning.”

He gave me a look as if I interrupted him. “This incident yesterday.”

“Yes.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you aware you put Larry in the hospital? Well, they didn’t keep him overnight or anything.”

“I was not.”

“It could have been worse for Randell. We have big plans for him. Big plans.”

I nodded, assuming Randell to be the second boy attacking me.

“Football star, you know.”

“I did not.”

“Would have been terrible if you broke his foot, too.”

I shrugged.

“I have nine statements here, all saying you stormed into the bathroom and attacked the boys.”

The absence of police indicated he did not believe the statements.

“What do you want from me, Mr. Barrett?”

He sat back in his chair, studying me.

“I mean,” I explained, “given we have misconceptions to dispel and all. What is it you want from me?”

He sat forward, opened the file, elbows on the desk. “This is a mess, a complete and total mess. Randell has talent, can throw a football like there’s no tomorrow.”

“What is it you want from me?”

“Boys will be boys,” he said as if a prelude.

“I’m familiar with the concept.”

“They have their rituals, like to welcome new students. It’s actually a compliment.”

I assumed the they to be the gang of rapists, the popular boys, Randell’s toadies, those who wrote the statements. If I were to go after the rapists, the rapists and the school system would come hard at me.

Same shit, different flies. “It would be nice for all this just to go away,” I floated.

“Yes, it would,” he agreed, his dark eyes steady on my pale brown, unnerving me.

“Let me withdraw, today, now.”

“Huh?”

“From the school system.”

“We’d need a parent’s signature for ­–”

I shrugged. “You have my mother’s in that file. Mrs. Petticoat can prepare the form. I’ll sign my father’s name and ­­–”

Mr. Barrett presented a traffic cop hand, closed the file, offering the folder to the air where Mrs. Petticoat plucked it. He swiveled his chair to face the window away from me, her retreating out the door. I thought to thank him for his time. I didn’t.

When I entered Mrs. Petticoat’s office, she climbed from her desk, going to the window watching the parking lot, hands joined behind her back, rocking. I signed my father’s name to the blank form on the counter.

Invisibility is my superpower.

Back in the hallway, I said aloud, “Buds are nipped, misconceptions dispelled, my problems with my new school fixed.” I stepped lightly in the river of children as first period let out, secure once again in my invisibility, amused to see three girls wearing pants. 

I fully understood the value of a high school education. I also understood the new school could not provide it.

 

Having spent my life living in a house, the apartment was cramped, my sofa and things in orderly piles occupying half of the living/dining room, the kitchen table and three chairs occupying the other half. Beyond the table was the kitchen, such that it was, the hall, bath, and bedrooms off to the north side, front and rear exits next to each other on the south.

Sitting at the table, my mother glared at me from behind her bottle of bourbon. “Why are you home so early?”

I rolled my eyes wearing classic 15-year-old. “Oh, Mom. It’s pizza day at school and the pizza is like, terrible, so I came home for lunch.”

“Even bad pizza is pretty good.”

“They shouldn’t even call this pizza, then.” I rummaged through my clothes, slipping away to the bathroom, returning dressed in a red plaid button down, black jeans, and of course, my boots, hair in a high ponytail.

“They let you dress like that?” she asked.

“It’s the first day of fall!” I slung my red suede bag over my shoulder, vaulting out the backdoor, down the stair, across the rear parking lot, over the railroad tracks, and into a beautiful day.

 

Four hours and change later, I swallowed hard on the air and my disappointment, the church thrift shop not having a used bicycle or two. The three church ladies were pleased to see me, wondering why I hadn’t been in church. I didn’t throw Father Sweet under the bus, explaining I moved.

“Fishman’s Bikes, up on Queen’s Highway has a good selection of used bikes,” I was told.

I thanked her, rolling my eyes at the next eight-mile hike. I stopped by The Tower for a cheeseburger with the works and soda. The cheeseburger was great, something familiar, not as good as Sally’s, which was the main reason I wanted to get a bicycle. I could get a bus from the mall to the intersection in one transfer, but I’d be stranded until morning.

A half-mile after lunch, I caught the highspeed train up three towns, the clacking of wheels and flashing by of close in buildings, seeing and not seeing was mesmerizing. The train let me off two blocks from the bike shop.

Mr. Fishman didn’t seem much older than me, oozing happy. Despite appearances, I made him in his mid-twenties, infectious smile, soft brown eyes with hair to match covering his forehead, barely curtaining his ears. We spoke of nothing, passing pleasantries for twenties minutes when he sighed deeply and asked, “What can I do for you?”

“I need a bicycle.”

“Oh, need.”

“Yes, need.”

“I’m betting you don’t want a new bike.”

“Want is one thing, Mr. Fishman.”

 

When I left the apartment in the morning, worst case, I expected to be arrested, best case suspended/expelled for a couple of weeks. The thought had never crossed my mind the rapists would be seen as the antagonists, me the victim.

That’s the way the universe works.

Never in my wildest dreams did I suspect the authority would be so panicky to shield the rapists, they’d set me free. I assumed the rapists had chalked up a pantheon of victims.

I thought, with my new-to-me bicycle, I could ride the thirteen miles to and from my old school each day. I could just show up, work my schedule. Sitting in the dark of the front steps luminated by a harsh spotlight, the quiet of late evening interrupted occasionally by someone yelling unintelligently from places here and then there unseen, reminding me how nice it was not to have my father around, I rolled my eyes, Sure, just like stepping into Antoinette’s family.

I opened the newspaper, shaking out the pages, leafing through, looking for an ad/notice I’d seen often. I thought to call my father, asking for tuition so I could finish my three years and change in the old school. Possible, if I caught the good father a third way from sober to dumb drunk, if he even had the money, which I doubted. His proclivity toward overindulging in beer and watching TV as a worthy goal unto itself put a serious damper on any ambition he could have applied to his job.

I had no idea what he’d become, taking up with the woman closer my age than his. He could be living the good father. For now, not beating Tammy. Yet. I did not wish to give that man, whatever he’d become, any power over me.

“Any good news today?” the love the boots girl asked, sitting a bit too familiar beside me.

Ignoring the greeting as rhetorical, and ignoring the invasion of my personal space, I asked, “Do you go to the high school?”

“I do.”

“Have you been rolling in skunk?”

She giggled an endearing giggle. “Pot, in a car with the windows rolled up.”

I shook the paper out, turning a page. “I’ve not seen anything in the news. Is rape a regular thing in the high school restrooms?”

“Not as regular as the middle school.”

“I guess the younger boys are anxious to try out their new toy on someone other than their sister.”

Keira’s face was a pleasing square framed with mildly curly hair two shades darker than mine dancing on her board shoulders, strong shoulders inviting my cheek to lay against within the protection if not for the stink of skunk. I liked the way her eyes squinted up when she laughed, and she laughed often, free of the chains within the darkness surrounding us.

I envied her innocence.

“Boys have their rituals. When you get to the high school, you’ll be reading Lord of the Flies, which will give you some understanding into the nature of men.”

“So, you’re saying to cure the boys of being boys, I should maybe lob a Molotov cocktail in the boy’s room and wedge the door?”

“My god, I’m not saying anything of the kind!”

I shrugged. “It’s an allegory, besides, no one died in the fire. Though boys will be boys, in the end even the boys realized they were assholes. In real life, we don’t get that happy ending.”

“Oh, you’ve read ­–”

“I have a perverse habit of reading textbooks, anything my older brother brought home.”

“You’re not from around her.”

“No.”

“Farmgirl?”

“Not that either.”

“It was the rolled in. I summer on my grandparent’s farm.”

“My mother’s parents are farmers. One Christmas visit, my grandmother shared the story of Stinky One and Stinky Two, the two dogs and a dead skunk.”

“Dogs will be dogs.”

I shrugged, narrowing my eyes at the help wanted.

“Looking for work?”

“Eh, yes but no, this.” I carefully tore at the page.

“GED?”

“Sure. I’ve read a prep book, looks easy.”

“I’ve thought about it. School does get kind of boring. Still, gets me out of the house. You could have hung. Last night. Robbie kind of likes you.”

I resisted rolling my eyes, assuming Robbie to be the good face boy from the night before. “I don’t do well in groups, particularly groups of boys. I am not a hanger. Typically, this is a long conversation for me.”

Keira visibly sighed. “Sometimes I think I’d prefer books to people, too.”

Still having not had proper social cues burned from my psyche, I stood with her. At 5’ 9”, she had three inches on me. In a corny ritual dating back millions of years, we introduced ourselves and shook hands. I agreed with her, “It’s really nice to meet you,” even though it wasn’t particularly.

“What should I tell Robbie?”

I answered at first with a head tilt and narrowed eyes. Robbie wasn’t a mesomorph yet could possibly step up to fill Keith’s role in delivering an edict from the mountain to my brother. But then, “Has he ever raped anyone? That’s kind of like a deal breaker for me.”

She shared her wonderful laugh, her eyes squinting closed, her right hand taking my elbow. “You’re funny!”

It was a serious question.

 

I’m guessing I was 12, Saturday before Christmas. My parents dragged home a cut tree, playacting a tradition long lost – more likely never had to both. There was a perfect moment in the afternoon, the tree, the decorations stacked about on the floor, Nat King Cole singing in the background.

I can still hold that moment there, like a dream made real.

My mother thought I should try her bourbon, my father, his beer. I sipped the bourbon, made a face, shaking my head. I declined the beer. The perfect moment got sucked from the living room, their argument starting over which is better, the bourbon or the beer, ending with concerns the tree wasn’t straight, my father yelling, throwing the tree onto the front lawn.

The tree lay there two weeks.

 

I made a face, shaking my head watching my mother eat soup cold from the can, hungerly downing her bourbon.

“You have no idea what I’ve suffered,” my mother challenged. I guessed she was speaking of her shift at the hospital.

“You’re right, Mom. Can’t imagine.” I worked my denim jacket over my faded red plaid shirt from the day before.

“Shit,” she bit. “All night long. I clean up shit.”

Red suede bag over my shoulder, U.S. history book to my chest with my right arm, I opened the door. “I’m off to school.”

 

 The chill of late September felt cleansing moving across my face, history book in one arm, balancing walking my bike with the other hand aside the railroad track. A half mile down, beyond a golf course to the west, I found what I was looking for. A dense grove of trees ran west and east from the tracks rendering the location invisible from house or road.

My new soft asylum, where a person like good face won’t come up on me saying it’s their place but I can hang if I wish. A place to sit, to dream, to dance, maybe even dance naked under the stars peeking through the trees.

Off the fist-size stone railroad path fifteen feet, a small clearing revealed itself, a twenty-inch-thick tree fallen alone side perfect for sitting, ample space to safely kindle a small fire – as if made for me.

Because sometimes that’s just how the universe works.

 

Thrift Drugs and the Acme Market opened before most other stores in the mall. Well, the whole Thrift Drugs didn’t open. The large glass door slid aside allowing access to the small lunch counter. I thought I could kill an hour or so with a couple over-easy eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and tea.

They weren’t famous for their breakfasts. The special was under a buck.

Counting myself, nine of the twelve stools were occupied. I manage to snag the inboard end, so had no one on my shoulder, room for my open book to my left, head resting on my right hand.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” The waitress, taller than me, slim, not slimmer than me, bright eyes a rich brown like rubbed mahogany, straw hair braided halfway down her back, dressed in a pink cotton dress with white trim, eye-catchingly short, casually looked down her nose.

 “Well,” I narrowed my eyes at her nametag, not that I needed to, “Carol. I could ask you the same.”

“I happen to be in college,” she answered with a feigned snootiness, turning on her heel, hurrying off.

“She’s kidding with you. She’s just not very good at kidding.” The man turning from the grill was easily thirty, unshaven, shorter, skinnier than me, wet, wide eyes the color of the noon day sky, close cropped black-red hair, bad teeth. He slid a small plate with four sausage links next to my book. “Clown order ‘em, didn’t want ‘em,” he explained.

I thanked him with a nod.

“Pretty girl like you, in the mall this early, either cutting school or a runaway.”

“Don’t get all creepy now.” I tried to suck the words back.

He chuckled. “Don’t kid yourself. I don’t hit on children. That is creepy. Men doing that.” He rolled his eyes. “I got the remedy for men like that.” He patted his right hip.

My eyes may have gone wide.

“Oh, relax. I got a permit, used to be a Texas Ranger. I follow the horses around.”

“Horses?”

“Racetrack. It’s just ­–”

“I know where it is.”

“I clean the stables, walk the horses. You’re small enough, you could exercise them. I mean, if you are a runaway. There’s work, they feed you, give you a warm cot, shower, three almost square, ask no questions.”

“I’m not.”

He shrugged.

“Do they have many women following the horses?”

“Eh, no, not usually.”

 

U.S. history distracted me for a short time, Carol distracting me from my distraction. I couldn’t hear the conversations. I could read body language. In that moment, I fully understood and appreciated Sally’s patter from The Tower, not so much Sally pontificating at me, but the way she worked other customers. Carol was not good at it.

People moved off to where people go, all in a hurry, I guessed, to get to work. Carol placed a cup with saucer next to me, coming around the counter. “We get a break in the action.”

“I withdrew.” I sipped my tea.

“From?”

“School.”

“You dropped out?”

“That’s not what the form said. We had a major disagreement over school policy. We were all in agreement about the withdraw.”

“What’s with the book, then?”

“I’ve not read it.”

“Huh?”

“I read textbooks. It’s like a hobby.”

“We have a bookstore on campus, some used books. Down in the city, by the bridge plaza. Bus at Strawbridge drops off a half block away.”

I flipped a folded paper from my breast pocket. “This the place?”

“Well, yeah.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Have you been out a year and are you eighteen or older?”

“That’s required?”

“Maybe.”

Two people bellied up to the other end of the counter.

“See me at the Strawbridge bus stop at one. Don’t be late.”

 

“You don’t play at all?” Bill Locke asked, engaged on a pinball machine.

I thought he must have eyes in the back of his head. “Not at all.”

“It can be addictive.”

I shrugged.

He quit in mid-play. “Come with me.”

Toward the back, off to the right through fencing, he worked his key in lock to a nondescript door, pushing the door in, entering. “Come on,” he encouraged.

Against my instinct, I followed into darkness.

The light came on as the door clicked shut behind me. “This is the office.” He turned, looking down on me. “Oh, I assumed you’ve come to work.”

“Sure.” I unclenched my fist, relaxed my shoulder muscles. “I just need maybe thirty minutes circling around 1 o’clock.”

“Social security card?”

Digging in my bag, I provided.

Bending to the desk, he copied my name and social security number onto a form, returning the card along with a 3” by 9” form. “Timecard,” he explained. “When you work, record your time. Turn the card in to Mary by the close of business Friday night, you get paid on Monday. Any questions?”

I examined the card. “Clear as day. Who is Mary?”

“Oh, Mary Locke, my sister. She’s in the change booth out there – most of the time. Introduce yourself when you get a moment.” With a wave of his arm, he indicated 8 five-gallon blue buckets against the back wall behind the desk. “Today, I need this counted, bills banded, quarters wrapped.”

“Holy fuck, Mr. Locke!” The buckets were full. I put my hand to my mouth. “Sorry.”

He chuckled. “You and Mary will get along fine. Keep the door closed.” He worked his keyring. “The door locks automatically. When you circle around 1 o’clock, this will get you back in.”

I took the key, repeating holy fuck as Mr. Locke disappeared from the room.

 

Carol took my elbow as I approached, leading me away from the small crowd at the bus stop. “The test is tomorrow, 8 AM sharp,” she whispered, not needing to.

I nodded, watching her eyes. “How’d you change. Your clothes?”

“Huh? Oh.” She half turned. “Army backpack. I don’t have time to get home and change before the bus for class, so I carry a mess of stuff with me.”

“Test tomorrow, 8 AM.”

“I can get you in.”

Again, I nodded.

“I work the table. It’s a school thing, required volunteer work. Be sure to get in my line.”

“OK.”

She produced a small notepad. “Full legal name, social security number, address. I’ll have your form ready for you to sign.”

Once more, nodding.

“I’ll get you a desk. It’s up to you to pass the test. I hope you studied math along with your reading.”

“I’m OK on the topic.”

“Fifty bucks.”

“What is?”

“That’s how much I want. You’ll still have to pay the test fee in the morning.”

Without hesitation, I dropped to the concrete, unlaced, removed my boot, counting out bills, offering them up. “Thank you.”

“Not a word to anyone.”

 

I was sick of money and done my task by seven.

“What’d you come up with?” Mary Locke asked me through the window of the booth.

I slid the key across. “$15,478.50.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’m good with numbers,” I explained.

“Bill needs you Sunday. Here. 7 AM. Wear old clothes.”

I passed my timecard in.

She gave me another. “Do you need any money. I mean against your pay?”

“I’m good.”

 

Sleep is overrated.

 

My visit with Sally at The Tower was like a balm for my damaged soul. For a little over an hour, everything was right with the universe. I then danced naked in my new soft asylum around a small fire, cutting my right foot on a piece of broken bottle, which didn’t slow me down.

With Mom off from work asleep, my bother snoring, I treated myself to a long shower, reborn. After dabbing with peroxide and determining I’d not have to needle-and-thread, I taped cotton balls over the wound on my foot.   Dressed, sitting at the table in my mother’s spot, I leisurely breakfasted on my half cheeseburger and fries from The Tower, glancing over the survey of H.S. history offered in the schoolbook I stole. I’d read other books on the history, wondering why the schoolbook left so much out.

I guessed they had to condense the topic to fit time to teach and pages in a book.

 

Carol was not good at it, telegraphing as if by proclamation she didn’t know me and that I brought the form she provided. Bending to the table, I placed the fee next to the form, signing my name. She thanked me for providing identification, which I hadn’t, the fee disappearing into the cash box.

Since I wasn’t a spy attempting to infiltrate a Soviet Boc checkpoint, Carol’s flamboyant overacting was of no consequence.  

I completed the day of testing by the noon break, secure in the results. The decision to take the test came up on me so quickly, and with Carol’s intervention the night before, I had no time to work up any anxiety, not that I have ever had any worry over any test. A mass of people, the door closed, the sense of feeling trapped works on me like the flame melts the candle’s wax.

The college being downtown, I had three miles or so riding though the city, now the sun fully realized. Not often, but often enough, clots of people, all ages, lounged, crowded porches, most smoking cigarettes, some drinking beer from cans, emotionless faces, heads following me like a tank’s torrent.

I’d wondered whether my father now lived in one of these houses.

The day was beautiful, the leaves on the trees teasing at their dance into winter as I broke along the river just west of the city streets. Autumn, the most wonderful time of the year. Recently, I’d bought a new rake, planning to transition from mowing to raking. I briefly wondered whether my lawnmower and rake sat in the garage where I left them. I’d planned to buy another rake, to go door-to-door beyond my apartment complex. I thought to wait and see what plans Bill Locke had.

The feeling of having no place to go, nothing I had to do filled me up, gliding along the streets. I stopped by Smith’s Army Surplus. I came away with new boots, mine having become too small ­– again, the fourth incarnation. I treated myself to an army-green backpack favoriting the smaller over the larger. I knew I’d fill whatever I got. My shoulders are not broad in the least.

With Mary’s warning of wear old clothes, I treated myself to an oversized long sleeve tan work shirt with brown pants to match. I’d been frugal with my money with my spring and summer cash having to last all year. Now, with my change of living arrangement, I’d thought the money I had would have to last forever.

Bill Locke was like a bright star in an otherwise black sky. Like the beacon in the sky, I wasn’t sure what it was, what it promised. I did not discount the light at the end of the tunnel could be another train coming at me.

 

My mother’s green Galaxy 500 was in the parking lot. She was not home. With the sun dropping away from Saturday, I figured Mark was off doing what 17-year-old boys do on Saturday night. I did not realize how tired I was until I sat on my sofa, removing a boot. Falling on my side, I was fast asleep.

 

I don’t believe I ever gained full consciousness, or rather as I did, I went to my soft asylum tucked away just above the lake, stark branches swaying with my naked dance, fluffy snow swirling around me.

Disjointed impressions, flashes – like watching out the high-speed train window with my eyes unfocused as the train sped by close-in houses pulled me back to objective reality. I fought to stay by the lake.

The foul odor of beer, the stench of cigarettes on rancid, hot breath, wet dog, dirty hair, unbathed humanity.

“Hold her arms,” a calm instruction from the darkness.

“Get her pants off,” eager excitement.

My shirt pushed up. “She’s got no tits!” Four male voices repeated, almost like a chant.

 

I knew Joe from 6^th grade, the kid I left bleeding on the steps in front of the school. Joe was angry, snarling, “Take this,” accompanied the dozen thrusts inside me, his face distorted, lunging at me with each command.

Mark was no different from when he masturbated, snickering, his face hovering out of the darkness inches away.

“Goddamn, Mark. Don’t cum inside her! She’s your sister!” a voice I didn’t know said unseen.

“That would be impolite,” he agreed, withdrawing, bursting up my chest. His face dropped on mine, his vile tongue entering my mouth as he laughed.

The other two, strangers to me, were somewhere in-between Mark and Joe, at once giggling amused and angry, both yelling in my face.

What I remember most is the palatable anger.

 

When I was twelve, a couple weeks after I found The Tower and met Sally, soon after midnight, I stopped in for some Sally time. She wasn’t there. I treated myself to the cheeseburger with fries, sitting at the counter facing the highway. I didn’t not like the waitress I’d not met. I just wasn’t in the mood for a new friend.

My reflection caught me. I was aware I was attracted to myself, convincing myself it was the then-dead Antoinette I was attracted to, seeing her in me. I gave myself a coy smile, my reflection smiling back.

We had a dialog, mostly in my head, with an audible giggle now and then. I even fed her a French fry. The man at the counter behind me, him drinking coffee, obviously a trucker the only vehicle in the parking lot a tractor trailer, was either fascinated or amused, which drew another giggle from me.

The illusion was so powerful, I was absolutely intoxicated. In the moist heat of August, I lost my virginity to Antoinette, a Ballantine Beer bottle and myself. I didn’t much appreciate the penetration. The bottle inside me didn’t do much to enhance my date with Antoinette, was maybe distracting, which could have had something to do with the discomfort.

Still much better than four random penises shoved in me over twenty minutes, the Ballantine Beer bottle quicker and cleaner. I didn’t bleed from the rape. I did leak semen for what seemed like hours.

With penises like divining rods, they collectively cared about only one thing, pulling my pants and underwear off my left leg, leaving my right boot on. If they bothered to undress me, I’m sure they’d have stolen my money, too.

I showered long, hot, and soapy. When I discovered my mother wasn’t home, I should have left the apartment.

Although I experienced a tug-of-war between real events and dancing naked among the soft snow, I didn’t fully land back in the apartment until I was dressed sitting on the toilet, working a towel on my wet hair after my shower. I knew Mark would rape me. I didn’t suspect he’d bring friends.

My mother occupied her usual perch at the table. “This is Sailor Max,” my mother said in the tone of an eight-year-old presenting an A on a math test. “This is Toby.”

I was relieved the four boys were gone, off to where boys go late at night, almost morning. I clenched my jaw at Sailor Max, barely not a boy himself, closer to my age than my mother’s. He half stood from his chair, offering a hand. “Nice to meet you!” he declared, much too excited. I expected a well golly or hee haw.

I think I may have tilted my head back, looking down my nose at the hand. “Sorry, I don’t know where that thing’s been.”

“I was told you’re a snotty little cunt,” he delivered with something between a grin and a sneer.

I could have been offended. I was relieved to hear my mother’s true opinion of me. Turning, stepping off, I examined the contents of my new backpack, removed the history book, affirmed I had a change of clothes, my light red suede bag strap across my shoulder, flipping the bag on my back.

“Where you going?” my mother asked, failing to sound like she cared.

“Fuck you,” I answered.

Sailor Max found his feet, approaching. “Why I oughta ­–”

Sailor Max had two inches and twenty pounds on me, his light hair barely not shaved, brown eyes dull from a night of drinking and fucking my mother. I had no doubt I could take him in a fight, maybe even kill him if I wanted to.

Leaning across my bike, I opened the door. “You oughta what, Sailor Max?” I asked dismissively.

Since he had nothing to oughta, he retreated, falling back onto the chair, into his Ballantine Beer.

 

I was a half-hour early, the mall parking lot void of cars. A white Ford pickup came alongside. “You’re early. I like that in a person,” Bill Locke told me. Dressed sharp in a dark blue suit, light blue tie with pink stripes, I wondered whether he slept in a suit.

With only slight trouble, I managed my bike into the truck bed.

“Hungry?” Locke asked.

“I’m good.” I settled in, my backpack on my lap.

Six miles and change later, the truck found the curb in a residential area.

“That’s it,” Locke said.

“It, what?”

“Oh, the house. Took settlement two weeks ago. Needs some work.”

The Victorian half hidden in maples sat back on a large lot, the lot enclosed in a wooden rail fence, mostly fallen, a stark oasis surrounded by neatly manicured three model tract houses marching off in all directions.

“The lawn needs mowing,” I said, standing on the sidewalk.

He came beside me, offering a red bandana with paisley design. “I need you to start in the upstairs bathroom. The water’s been off for a long time.” He nodded toward the truck. “Everything you need should be there.”

I nodded, watching the house.

“Are you OK with that?”

“Sure, Mr. Locke.”

“There’s a powder room and a bathroom ­­–”

“I know the difference.” I broke the spell, climbing in the back of the truck, dropping my bike to the street. “It’s my most valued possession. I’ll take it in with me.”

Mr. Locke set down the buckets, tied a dark blue bandana on his face, unlocking the door. “The water and electricity are turned back on.”

“Are we robbing the place?”

The door opened, then it hit me. I wrapped my face up. “You don’t have me helping you bury bodies, do you? We’re not friends like that.”

He chuckled behind his mask. “Maybe someday.”

High ceilings, the house seemed to go on forever in both directions. “It’s beautiful, Mr. Locke.”

“It’s a mess.”

“Oh, I can see it for what it was, and what it can be.”

“I regret Mary talking me into this - sometimes.”

“All this stuff –”

“Yes, fully furnished. Owner died five years ago. The children squabbled until the failure to pay the taxes forced the state –” He gave a hard nod. “Nothing you need worry about. I’m going to get a trash container – sometime, we can clear this stuff out.”

“I can go through –”

“Bathroom, Toby.”

“Bathroom, Mr. Locke, as soon as I get some windows open.”

“You may need a hammer –”

“I’m pretty bright – for a girl. I’ll figure it out.”

“There’s a phone in the kitchen if you find you need anything. Our number is next to it. Go check the bathroom before I leave.”

Up the stairs, down the hall, I pushed the door open. The toilet, sink, and tub were full of shit, the floor and most the walls smeared with shit. “This is perfect,” I said to the bathroom. “This is exactly what I need today. Exactly perfect.”

“OK, Toby?” sang from downstairs.

“Yes,” I called back. “I got this. Thank you.”

 

By noon, I applied the third coat of straight bleach to the floor and fixtures, ready for fresh air in my lungs, riding my bike a bit over a mile to the supermarket, buying four bags of yellow onions. I would have bought more. My backpack would only hold so much.

People in the market moved away from me, many flamboyantly, the cashier scrunching her face in an exaggerated distortion.

I did smell like shit. I just didn’t notice or care.

With various bowls from the kitchen filled with cubed onions distributed around the house, I opened a can of baked beans from the pantry, and with a spoon from the drawer, headed to the backyard wading in the knee-high grass. Going on my toes, I peeked through the side window of the garage.

Looking back toward the house, I puzzled at my instructions. Mr. Locke said I was to start in the upstairs bathroom. I thought the task would take days, not hours. I imagined Mr. Locke thought the same. I decided, in the absence of instruction, I could decide what was next.

Or I could call Mr. Locke and ask.

I put my shoulder against the side door, the door yielding to my third appeal. With the oil and gas checked, choke engaged, I gave the mower five soft pulls and a hard sixth, the mower sputtering to life, filling the garage with black smoke before I could tweak the choke back, adjusting for a low idle while I finished my beans.

The overgrown landscape did not fall easily, but by my hand, the front yard fell, Mr. Locke rolling up as I was working a scythe around where the mower couldn’t reach at the fence posts.

Climbing from the truck, he gave me a look of disapproval.

I shrugged.

“Bathroom too much for you, huh?”

I shrugged again. “Bathroom’s done, Mr. Locke.”

“Done?” He looked toward the house. “Eh, OK. I brought lunch.”

“I’m good.” I leaned the scythe against the fence. “Let’s have a look.”

He produced his bandana.

“You may not be needing that.”

 

Following up the stairs, I explained, “My mother was raised on a farm. My grandmother told me the two dogs got into a skunk – I mean, the dogs killed the skunk, which is what farm dogs do. When dogs kill something, they roll it for whatever reason dogs have to do so. Anyway, the dogs got in the house, rolling all over the living room carpet and sofa.”

“Onions, Toby?” Mr. Locke asked over his shoulder.

“Yeah, onions. Grandma said onions absorb smells, even bad skunk smell.”

“Damn,” he critiqued my labor.

“I want to give it one more scrubbing, the bleach pulling the last of the stains out.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Experience. Today.”

“You are pretty smart – for a girl.”

“Oh, you’re just mocking me.”

“Not in a bad way. What did the onions cost you?”

Moving down the hall, I said, “I have the receipt. I made a note. I took a can of beans from the closet. You can take that out of my pay.”

He chuckled.

“Well, Mr. Locke, they were your beans.” I pushed open the powder room door, which wasn’t as terrible as the bathroom. “This next?”

“Yes, I think, Toby. This and the powder room downstairs, then the kitchen. Maybe you wish to take the rest of the day off.”

I really have no place to be. I offered up the shrug of all shrugs. “I was thinking.” I nodded down the hall. “That bathroom, eh, was like that – and much of the damage in the house – is from people, I’d guess kids, breaking in at night, partying, doing what kids do.”

“That is the conclusion and assumption I’ve made. I’ve been considering putting plywood on the doors and downstairs windows –”

“I’ll stay, Mr. Locke. To protect your property. I mean, I’m not going to have to chase kids off with a baseball bat, I mean just me, I mean, someone being here will let people know it’s not abandoned and –”

“Toby.”

“Mr. Locke?”

“Is there something I should know about?”

I blushed, just a little, my eyes watering up, looking at my feet. “Not really, Mr. Locke. Where I’m staying now isn’t safe.”

“In what way? I know most of the police across the towns.”

“I think I should stay here, to protect your property.”

“Are you a runaway? Are the police, is anyone looking for you?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Maybe when we’re the kind of friends to help bury a body, you can tell me the details?”

“Maybe, just like that.”

“Do you promise to record every minute you do work on your timecard?”

“Yes. And list any food I take from the closet.”

He snickered down on me. “You’re the tenth person we’ve put in the counting room this year and the only person who didn’t steal anything, your count right to the quarter.”

“You didn’t need me to –”

“We have a company that does that.”

“That’s kind of a relief. That sucked.”

“But you would have done it anyway. All the other people took two days to do it.”

“You wanted to see if I’d drop to my knees in shit today.”

“What’s more impressive than you doing what you’re asked is taking it upon yourself to do over and above.”

 “I like a neatly groomed lawn.”

“How old are you? No, don’t tell me. When I was your age, I watched a man attempting to lift a slab of concrete. He wanted to lift the slab, wedge it so he could break it. He could lift it, but not having three hands, couldn’t put the wedge it. Of all the people passing by, I stopped to help him.”

“Couldn’t help yourself. I know the feeling.”

“Much older than me, we became best friends. I buried him last year.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged. “Now, here’s you, squatting like a weightlifter, out of nowhere, in the white dress like you’re a princess or fairy, lifting what you can’t possibly lift. All these years, I’ve never imagined what me lifting that concrete looked like to Hanson. Maybe, Toby, life is a circle.”

“Maybe.”

We came to the front door, Mr. Locke working at his keyring. “You going to be OK, I mean in the house, alone. At night?”

I accepted the key. “Mr. Locke. If you mean to ask if I’m scared of ghosts, goblins, and other monsters, well, I don’t believe in mythical, supernatural, or magical creatures.”

“No?”

“I’ve met real monsters. If the supernatural show up, I’ll dance with them.” 

He chuckled. Half out the door, he turned. “What time do you expect to be here tomorrow?”

“Except maybe a run to the store, maybe another short errand, I have no place to be.”

“I assumed school.”

I offered another shrug because that’s how we communicated.

“After we bury a body together?”

“Maybe two, Mr. Locke. Maybe two.”

 

Part Three