I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (11 page)

“You should still go,” she said. I didn’t really want to. We find a copy of
Butterfield 8
in a wooden drawer—I borrow it. “You’ll have to have a drink first.” I’ve never had a drink. But it makes sense the way she explains it, getting ready for the party. It isn’t like I’m not curious. The kitchen is white. Sharee opens cabinets, finds a bottle of rum. “I can make a rum and Coke,” she said, gets a can from the refrigerator. I’m impressed that she knows how to do this. But she won’t drink with me, because of the babysitting. She takes the responsibility for kids seriously. I will too, when I
get the babysitting job with the people who call me Helen, who have the Cat Stevens album—I’ll steal their alcohol, but won’t drink it while I’m working. But I’ll learn that really that’s because I don’t like to drink alone.

Sharee hands the drink to me—it tastes like very cold Coke. The thick transparent glass is like a piece of ice against my lips, something I can bite. “Maybe you should drink another one,” she said. I didn’t really feel very different, not party-ready. She makes me another. I drink it. Both drinks hit at once. My chest radiates, a sun inside. I leave for the party, a few houses down the sidewalk. Speak to one of the older motorcycle brothers. He sits hunched over on his bike, as if the air is too heavy. Only his head lifted up like a snake. He has to raise his eyes to see me. Though he is one of the friendlier brothers, he isn’t attractive. Less raw than the others, he pouts about some problem that could prevent all the brothers from attending the party—some indignation one brother has suffered. The pouting biker has beer with him, and he’s going to leave with it, his trail of siblings. “Stay,” I said. It’s 1976. I’m fifteen now. Counseling him. Sharee’s neighbor inside the house, still wearing his wretched shorts. There’s a beer bottle in my hand. And then we’re all in the house, and drinking is the only thing that made it—or me—interesting.

Drinking is easier than I’d imagined, less dramatic. I feel myself cohere around a radioactive center, my arms reaching out like bright flowers. Where I end blurs. When I climb the stairs after the neighbor to see some drawing, and he kisses me—this boy I’d mocked for falling out of his shorts—it is brand new, this kind of wanting from another person. The pressure of his body alongside me, like matching sarcophagi. Though I don’t like him much or even have anything to say to him, I feel powerful in a way I never have before, with his body wanting mine. There is no way in, I’m only on display. Ornamental. Sharee and I have discussed this.
We’ve decided that we have to be seventeen before we have sex. I’m not sure I would have thought of that on my own, but now it’s a pact. He’s all over me like a din of insects. And where he touches me, I appear—my mouth, my hand, arm, breast beneath my bra, T-shirt—like when someone finds a new piece of land and names each part, the naming makes a place.

After the party, there is still a little light outside. I walk home with the feeling of his hands on me, pixilating ghost hands. The base quiet, military housing of nearly identical low, concrete homes. Same winding white sidewalk. Almost everyone inside in the heat. That base was known as America’s gateway to space.
I Dream of Jeannie
had twirled and blinked down the road, but the Air Force scenes were filmed here. The naming of the town had been marked by an imitation launch with talcum powder and some dynamite. I didn’t know any of that, didn’t know Wernher von Braun’s V-2 missiles had made their way here before I was born. I still wanted to be an archaeologist, still thought it was possible to go to ancient Egypt. Even in pictures, I can feel the ridge of an old brick, dust of Necco wafers on my fingertips. I want to find someone, unbury them. See their lost city broken into pieces and glue it together. Find bones held by sand and heat and hold them. Just me not forgetting you. Hello, I would say when I found them, hello hello from here.

We stay three years on that beach. Then move to the coast of Spain in 1978. I go to school for a few months in Rota, but they say I’ve taken all the classes. I’ve met all the requirements, and don’t need another year. So I graduate after eleventh grade and become the secretary of the Weapons Department on the military base, filling in for the actual secretary, who is on vacation. You’d think I’d have seen a weapon or two: M-16s, the makings of a bomb, something kindling, a howitzer, lash or hatchet. It’s my first job, the summer I turn seventeen, and the military wants to keep us busy. So, before the school year is out, all the high school students have completed job applications, and I’ve checked a box that asks if I can type.

During the Vietnam War, my dad had been on a ship at sea, and we’d lived in Hawaii, on Oahu, waiting for him. First in Waipahu, where the ground was red clay, then Honolulu. I was eight. Sitting on the shag carpet in the living room, I wrote my first poems and stories. My mom was a student then, at the University of Hawaii, getting a master’s degree in education. When my dad came home from a six-month trip, he brought me my own typewriter from Japan. I’d learned to type.

That summer in Spain, my classmates, among whom I’d felt oversized in hands and feet and conversation, are digging ditches, working in mud and water. They wave to me, suddenly popular,
from across a field where they march with shovels like workers under Chairman Mao.

I’d not had one date, no flirtation except hissing on the street, since arriving here. But in Weapons, I’m the only woman among hundreds of men, sailors, the military paying me $1.99 an hour to do very little work—some typing, a boy changes my ribbons and drives me to the Exchange at lunch. There are evaluations to type, each sailor comes to my office to sit in a chair, answer and sign. The most handsome had wanted to become a fireman, but had some medical problem that prevented him from carrying people. The sailors congregate in a room like an auditorium that feels like a store where I can choose. I try so hard to relax, but can’t.

At the town pier with my classmates, we buy hash by daylight, the sellers insisting we smoke it right there to be sure it’s good. The Sahara in the air making everything grainy. I imagine they’re photographing, setting me up for a
Midnight Run
lockup in some underground sewer, saying
let’s get the curly-headed one—her hair is too big
, none of the words understandable, like a radio that wouldn’t come clear. Even when we’re back on the base, in the playground I’m paranoid, unable to let go of the bars, swing. Hash was never my thing—the high so calm compared to drinking. But the girls from school are cold most of the time, except when we go into town to buy, and this is something we can do together. In Spain, I’m not allowed to go anywhere alone. So I’m grateful for the companionship, being outside. On my arrival in Rota, I’d heard cautionary stories of American military kids who’d been caught with hash by the Guardia and imprisoned in the Spanish jail. I was told that unless the families of the imprisoned kids brought food, they didn’t eat. When the families got transferred out of the country, the jailed teenagers supposedly got left behind. Though the stories sounded made up, they still scared me. But I was too lonely to stay home. And even less confident—my meager
social skills degrading with the move to a new country, new school. There’s one beautiful girl, smart and kind, who befriends me. We go running at night. Sometimes she takes me to parties in town, everyone high. It seems rude not to participate. I take the risk. The drug itself seems harmless. Unlike alcohol, it doesn’t change my personality.

At work in Weapons, I choose a boy with John Lennon glasses, blue hearts. His smile so calm it’s a song poured down my throat, ramshackle chest blanketed. He isn’t like the men I’ll go out with when I come back to the States, not like the one who’ll say he likes women with breasts visible from behind, swelling from the side like cakes, or the nickle-eyed man who’ll watch other women on the street, saying he loves how every woman in the city dresses up for him. The boy in Weapons can see me. Though when he and I are together, we’re mostly high.

I leave my family in Spain, move to Bridgewater, Massachusetts, for college. Headed toward my son—we’re less than three years away from each other.

In Massachusetts, when the boy’s letter comes, it’s the first time I’ve seen his handwriting and learn he can’t spell, can barely think in ink. Out of uniform, his cords had slung down his hips. Hair too long. An angel dust dealer from a mountain town in Montana, joining the Navy at seventeen, giving up on school. Before I met him, I’d been so lonely for touch that I’d run for miles at night with shin splints just to move through air. His arms, even in memory, were like a coat I could wear.

A friend once told me he couldn’t listen to Neil Young songs after hearing gossip that he’d written them underneath the influence of heroin. I’d often wished to be under that influence, but alcohol, cocaine, Qualuudes sent me into guardrails on the highway, and I knew heroin would take the light right out—I’d be a flashlight switched off, sent to live underground. I mean, I tripped waking up. And I still felt instructed by the girl I thought was real in
Go Ask Alice
, the heroin overdose that killed her. Alcohol seemed like something I could measure. The number of drinks countable, or an empty bottle, but heroin seemed uncontrollable, a flood. Though I’m not writing Neil off for finding a way in.

Before Gore Street, I was in love with a man who sang me Neil Young’s songs—“Down By the River,” “Sugar Mountain.” And losing him broke me in a way that pushed me further inside myself. We started going out in 1981, the summer after Tommy was born. The man who could sing showed me the place in his hand where his mother had died, where he thought he saw his own death. When we broke up, I sat on my bed for a long time. Stared at the white wall, wooden closet door. I’d started seeing the Sugar Mountain Man just after he’d separated from his wife. We were together three months. But I’d known him since I worked in the train car restaurant. He’d been the kitchen manager. In 1979,
when I’d gone for my interview, I’d opened the back door into the kitchen, stepping in heels onto the black rubber mat on the floor. I was nervous about the interview, and my heels got stuck in the little holes of the mat. I was trying to get unstuck, when I looked up and saw him smiling at me. He had the very pale skin of a Northerner, straight dark hair. He gave me his hand. But I was with Danny, about to get pregnant, and he was about to get married. It’ll be two more years before one of the other cooks from the restaurant starts dating me even though he has a serious girlfriend. I like him because he calls me Cosmo Girl and tells me I should be in a magazine. He’s companionable. (It’s not long after I’ve given Tommy to my relatives, and I can’t stand to be alone.) One night I get very drunk at a party, black out, and the cook panics, doesn’t know what to do with me, his girlfriend waiting at home. The Sugar Mountain Man had been at the same party, and had given his friend, the cook, his house keys. So the cook takes me to the empty house and leaves me there.

In the morning, when the Sugar Mountain Man comes home, he finds me in his bed. He’s sweet about it, laughing. After I dress, he gives me a glass of juice, plays some music for me. We talk all afternoon, until it’s time for me to go to work, bartending at the train car restaurant. He’s not working there anymore. I don’t have my car, so he’s giving me a ride home. My hair an explosion of curls from swimming in a pool at the party, sleeping on it wet—and he gently tries to fit his extra motorcycle helmet on my head. Tries to get strands out of my eyes. Laughing. I tell him to come into the bar, that I’ll buy him a beer. He does. I see him almost every night for three months.

Some afternoons, I work my other job at the Merry-Go-Round, a clothing store in the Altamonte mall, about a half hour north of Orlando. The music is terrible, disco, very upbeat. I’m selling clubwear for men and women. I tell the Sugar Mountain Man
how the manager tells me I’m not friendly enough with the customers, that I should approach them in a dancing kind of way, as if we’re in a club. It’s so ridiculous—I can’t do it. But the next day, the Sugar Mountain Man comes to see me at work. He’s not a shy person, but he’s self-contained. Not loud or outgoing. As he enters the store from the dim mall, he starts snapping his fingers and dancing towards me. Not caring what anyone else thinks. Doing it to make me laugh. Once he worked an especially long shift at his new restaurant, and overslept when we were supposed to go out. The next day, he came to the mall with a dozen red roses, said he’d never sleep again. No one had ever given me flowers. When he looked at me, I could tell he thought he was seeing someone beautiful. It made me feel as though I mattered.

He and his wife were about to divorce when she called, told him she was pregnant. There was nothing to do about it. He was angry at everybody. Backtalked a cop, wound up in jail. When I bailed him out, his clothes were sour, his face. We were sour—he couldn’t leave her pregnant. So that was that. I went to a party and drank half a bottle of something, six Kamikazes, took part of a Qualuude. I remember a friend repeating to me, “I’m sure he still loves you.” When she drove me home, I slipped off the seat, into the dark under her glove compartment. I decided to drop out of community college for the semester, just work all the time.

In the summer of 1981, I worked mornings in a doughnut shop, and some afternoons in the Merry-Go-Round, then in the juice bar next door to it. Later, I worked nights in the Night Train, cocktailing. It was all a lot of standing. Each job had its own outfit: at the Night Train, it was black shorts and suspenders, white shirt, red bow, but at the doughnut store, they kept the uniforms jumbled in a big cardboard box, and you got a choice—tan pants with a pink/tan top, or a dress the color of milky coffee. I chose the dress because I’d always preferred skirts and felt a kinship with
Ann Wilson in her
Rolling Stone
interview when she said skirts were more hygienic.

It was a month before a coworker told me that my dress was really a top. It had seemed awfully short, and I couldn’t bend over to get the lower doughnuts—had to curtsy like a princess. Nothing costs much at the doughnut shop, nor was there much to do to impress anyone, so the tips sucked—I’d see a dime and nickle beside an empty coffee cup, and think,
why bother?