Ugly Girls: A Novel (24 page)

“I’m fat, too,” he said.

“Do you remember how you used to think? Do you remember all the times you’d give me advice?” He could sometimes remember things that had happened years ago better than what had happened close to the accident or after. Part of her felt that if she just got him to remember, if she just connected this Charles to that Charles, he’d become whole again. Himself again.

“I remember telling you to buy your own pipe,” he said, grinning. He scooted his chair closer. “Because you never could roll blunts.”

Baby Girl’s heart beat fast. His smile, the way he said it, it was him. If she ignored the basketball shorts and his fleshy torso and the toenails he refused to trim, if she just looked at his grin and listened to his words, it was her big brother, it was old Charles, giving her shit like he used to. She wondered if he had to ignore her bald head, the way she dressed, to see his little sister.
Little sister.
She hadn’t felt like the little sister in a long time.

“I could roll blunts, just not as fat as you liked them. You never could get high off just a couple tokes.” Charles picked his nose, pulled out to study what he found. Another thing for Baby Girl to ignore. “Do you remember what you told me after you broke up with Crystal?”

He wiped his finger on his shorts, wagged it in her face like a scolding teacher. “‘Don’t give no one you ain’t married to no real money.’”

“‘Twenties is fine but no more than that.’”

Charles laughed. “She was a ho, right? That’s what you called her. I remember that. Of course I do.
Of course
.”

Baby Girl could feel her throat tightening, like she might cry, but fuck that.

“I need to ask your advice,” she said. She had to force the words out. “Charles. You listening?” She felt like she was asking a kidnapper to step aside so she could speak through a peephole to the one he’d kidnapped.

He scooted his chair again. “Of course.”

She heard the microwave ding. Soon Dave would be wanting them to come eat dinner. Charles heard it, too, she could tell he was trying his hardest not to leap up and go see what Dave was making. Baby Girl leaned in, holding his gaze.

“You remember that day you and your friends said you rode up on someone?”

“Of course,” Charles said, but Baby Girl could tell he didn’t remember all that well.

He had come home with blood on his knee, his hair matted with sweat, thick, greasy drops gliding along his jaw. Even inside, with the air-conditioning rattling away, he hadn’t stopped sweating. Baby Girl had offered to get something for his knee, had asked him what happened as she daubed it with peroxide and pulled a curled stale Band-Aid across the scrape. “We all met up at the gas station,” he said. “We rode up on someone and I was in front.” Baby Girl had nodded like she knew what all that meant. Smoothed the blanket they draped over the rips in the couch’s fabric, the once vibrant blue flowers worn and dull from being sat on over the years. Charles stared at the television. Whatever it was, he’d seemed stunned by it, frightened even. “And?” she nudged him. He’d turned, focused his eyes on hers. She felt gathered in, held tight. “I was in front,” he said, like that was the end of the story.

Now Baby Girl needed him to finish the story. She pointed at his knee, at the small white scar in the shape of a fingernail. “Remember how you got that.” Telling him to remember. She wasn’t asking.

“Yes,” Charles said. “I remember. I do. I rode my bike to the gas station to meet up with my boys.” He spoke so formally now, all the swagger gone. “I had my gun in the side of my pants instead of in the back so it’d be easier to get to.”

This he had never told her. “Why did you need to get to your gun easier?”

“Because we were going to ride up on someone. This boy named Bones.” He stood up now, began to pace from his desk to the door, which is what new Charles did when he felt anxious. Baby Girl knew she had only so many questions left before he folded in on himself, lashed out. There was a lamp without a shade on the nightstand, and she kept her body trained toward it, ready to grab it if Charles got crazy.

“When you say you rode up on Bones, does that mean you shot him?” she asked. Dayna had been afraid to show her ignorance asking a question like that, but Baby Girl didn’t have that same fear, not with the Charles in front of her now.

“I was in front,” he said. “I really don’t like thinking about my bike.” His voice was getting loud, any second Dave could rush in. And shutting the door would make him feel even more desperate, caged.

“I know,” Baby Girl said quietly. “But it’s ’ight, ’cause you here now with your baby sis. You ain’t there, kna mean? You here.” She was trying to speak to the Charles he once was, using the words he used. Trying to be a mirror that would make him become himself again.

“Okay,” Charles said, and his pacing slowed. Baby Girl could feel it working.

“So you rode up on this Bones cat and what. You shot him? How you get that scrape on your knee?”

“I told you,” Charles said. “I was in front. When we rode up I was supposed to shoot but I couldn’t. I crashed in the yard instead.”

She had wanted him to tell her sometimes people deserved it. She had wanted to hear he had done far worse. “You saying you ain’t never shot no one?” she asked. She had wanted him to tell her shit like that happened every single day and people just carried on like it was nothing.

“I never shot no one,” he said. “I liked riding my bike and selling stuff and helping Dave pay bills.” This was another revelation, something Baby Girl had never even considered.

“You helped Dave?”

“Of course!”

A Frito-Lay truck is what had forced Charles off the road, into the guardrail and jackknifing through the air, his brain slamming against his skull even before he’d hit the ground. The doctor with the wine-colored birthmark on her neck had said all the broken bones and internal bleeding were nothing compared with what the soft meat of his brain had gone through, that even if he’d been wearing a helmet it was almost guaranteed he’d have the same brain injuries. Charles had tried to pass the truck. None of it was anyone’s fault, not the truck driver’s or the fuckers who built the guardrail. No one to blame, no one to ride up on.

“But you hurt people before,” she said now. Her throat felt small, like it did when she was sick, like it had room for breath or words but not both.

“I don’t remember,” Charles said. He scooted again, put his heavy warm hands on her knees. New Charles would do that, touch her or Dave out of nowhere. The affection of a child, only since he was a man it always made Baby Girl uncomfortable. His face was oily, she could see the blackheads between his eyebrows, could see a nose hair hanging loose from his nostril. His eyes looked like they did when he was drunk, watery and bloodshot and far away, and though they were looking right into hers, they were as soulful as marbles.

Baby Girl moved her knees but his hands stayed with them, she knew he could probably feel how she no longer shaved her legs, and she was embarrassed. She had always wanted to be a baby sister he worried about, someone pretty and dumb and lusted after, not the pale, lumpy thing she was. His hands were moist, so hot they were sweating, and his breath was sharp. After their parents had died he had become a man. After Charles had his accident she had become the man. It made her flush with rage, the unfairness of it all, the mourning that never fucking stopped.

“I killed a man. I pushed him into the quarry and he died.” Now her face was wet and hot, she tried to move her knees again and this time he let her, his mouth open, lower lip hanging, wet with drool. “I wanted to shoot him,” she said, though she had never fully realized that until just this moment. She would have. She would have pulled the trigger. She would have gone further than Charles ever had.

“I don’t like these stories,” Charles said. He didn’t bother wiping the drool and it hung from his chin before dropping into his lap.

“It’s not a story,” Baby Girl said. “I did it. I had your gun.” If she could say what she had done, if she could make it real for him, maybe she could catch him up to her. Maybe that was the gap that needed the bridge.

“My gun?” He stood again, his chair toppling softly into a pile of clothes. “You killed a man?” He pushed her, hard, but she held her ground, refusing to fall back. She grabbed the lamp, yanking the cord from the wall. Held it close to her body, stood to face him.

“Calm down, Charles,” she said. “Shh.”

“You have to tell,” Charles said. He was standing so close to her that she had to hold her head back so it wouldn’t be smashed into his chest. “You have to tell!”

He was getting loud again, and this time she heard Dave call, “Everything all right back there?” She knew he’d be making his way back any second now.

Charles covered his ears, something he did when he was about to blow. The doctors said his ears would ring when he was stressed for the rest of his life. “You can’t just leave him there,” Charles said. “He can hear the cars going by and no one is coming to help him.” She knew he was talking about himself now. It made her feel sick, knowing he remembered lying there on the road in pain, alone. He kicked her hard in the leg. Without thinking, she brought the lamp up and around, cracking him on the cheek. He looked at her, stunned, like his ears had finally stopped ringing.

A spot of blood appeared on his cheek, a glossy dark pill. “What in God’s name, Dayna!” Dave had appeared, was holding her by the arms and dragging her out of the room. Charles bent over, wailing, crying so hard that he could barely breathe. The top of his ass was out, his mouth open, crying like a toddler, he
was
a fucking retard, he was a retarded mess who would never be okay again. She ran from the sound of Charles screaming and Dave trying to soothe him, out the front door to her car.
I’m sorry. Little bitch. Cunt. Suck my dick.
Charles’s brain would never heal, Jamey would never climb out of that quarry. Perry would never have half the worries Baby Girl had.
Little bitch.
Charles hadn’t been who she thought he was. Neither had Jamey. Or Perry. She wouldn’t be like that. She would be who she was. She would say what she did.

JIM HAD DRIVEN TO THE SCHOOL,
circled its empty parking lot until a guard in a golf cart rambled over. No, he hadn’t seen Perry since school let out, and he’d have known it ’cause she was quite the looker, and Jim wondered about ramming the cart with the truck, wondered was every man just a penis he had to protect Perry from, wondered if Perry was used to it, just assumed every man on earth was looking for a way to shove himself in. “No,” the guard said, he hadn’t run into a man fitting Jamey’s description. “No, strange perverts aren’t allowed on school grounds,” he said, chuckling with pride. “Do me a favor,” Jim said, trying to keep his voice even. “Do me a favor and get ready for me to come back here and hit you directly in your face.” The guard looked insulted, but not like it was something he hadn’t heard before, and drove off with a jerk.

Jim had called Jamey’s parole officer after that, a woman who sounded like she had a lot bigger fish to fry. Another line rang on and on in the background as she told Jim she hadn’t heard from Jamey in a few days, maybe even a week or more, but that wasn’t unusual since he was only required to check in every two weeks. Did she know Jamey had been on Facebook? Did she know he’d been talking to teenaged girls? Of course she didn’t know that. That was strictly forbidden, Jamey’s momma was supposed to monitor his Internet usage, promised he’d only be on there to look at the news or look up a recipe.

Jim didn’t know exactly why he didn’t tell the P.O. he couldn’t find his stepdaughter, who just happened to be one of the teenaged girls Jamey had been talking to. Maybe ’cause then it’d be real, Perry’d be missing, raped, tortured, dead. The thought made him angrier at Perry than he’d ever been before.

“Tell you what,” the P.O. said. “You get me proof, concrete evidence that our man’s been stepping out, and I’ll be on him like a whore on a dollar.”

He’d gone to a few bars, bars he knew ex-cons liked to hang out at, but these were the types of ex-cons who would eat a man like Jamey for dinner, eat his hat for dessert. Now Jim was simply driving from bus stop to bus stop. Cell phone like a hot brick in his hand. Should call the guys he knew were off-duty, see if they could be out looking too, call the cops, report her missing, call Myra. Had decided to call the P.O. back and be honest when he saw her, waiting at the number 6 transfer, sitting on the bench with her ankles together like it was any old day and she was any old teenager.

She was crying, mascara wet on her cheeks, her blouse was rumpled, her mouth looked smeared. She looked more like her momma than ever. Now he really would kill Jamey, he didn’t even know he’d been considering it. He’d kill him, and he’d confess to avoid the death penalty. Neat as that.

He stopped in front of the bench. He’d been going fast and had to stomp the brake, the truck screaming. Cars behind him blew their horns, swerved around him.

“Hey,” Perry said.

SHE STEPPED INTO THE TRUCK,
Jim yanking her by the arm until she nearly fell into his lap.

“Where is he?” Jim’s voice was low and mean.

“Who?” Perry asked. She thought of Travis, how he’d closed the door in her face, how his stuff was dried on her leg, how she smelled like sex and sweat, she smelled like the women in the jail.

“Tell me where Jamey is,” Jim said. “Tell me right goddamned now.”

It was like his name could stop time, could stop her heart beating, it felt like her heart and lungs were trying to work despite her quicksand blood. “Jamey?” she repeated.

“Tell me where he is so I can give his parole officer an address.”

“What did Baby Girl tell you?” Perry asked. Jim was driving toward home, speeding through stop signs and running yellows. Who was waiting there for her? Baby Girl? The police?

“She told me everything,” Jim said. “She told me every little last bit. So you better tell me your side.”

IT HAD WORKED.
Lying to Perry had worked, only she didn’t tell him the story he was expecting to hear. He could smell the sickly sweet odor of sex on her, had been waiting for her to say she’d given in, or he’d forced her, or she wasn’t quite sure what had happened but she’d gotten away. But instead.