Chloe Doe (13 page)

“You know what Walt said? He said, ‘If they’re as pretty as you, you have yourself a dream come true.’”

She holds out her hand and shows us the ring he gave her. It’s silver with an amethyst stone. “You see that? Walt gave that to me. It’s not dime-store quality, either. That stone’s semiprecious.” It’s her birthstone.

When they get back from Las Vegas, we ask our mother what it was like, getting married in the Graceland Chapel.

“It’s small,” our mother says. “There are pictures of Elvis, of course. The whole ceremony took five minutes.” She waves us away with her hand. “There’s not much to tell.”

Walt doesn’t have a job because he gave up everything when he followed his heart. Our mother says he can get back to doing what he was doing in Nevada, and she helps him look through the newspaper.

“What does Walt do?” I ask.

“He drove a truck for the Miller Brewing Company,” our mother says. “We’ll see if they’ll hire him back. Give him a route here.”

Camille tells me Walt is on her bad side. He’s her enemy. Her
muñón.
Which means, he’s what’s left after an arm or a leg’s been torn off in a terrible accident. We learned the word from our mother’s friends. Camille says Walt is like Manolo, who was killed walking the tracks up from Mexico. His ghost with no arms haunts all his friends, hanging on for a taste of life.

“Why don’t you like Walt?”

He touched her, pulled her against him and pushed his hand down her shorts when she was outside watering the azalea.

Camille said he was like a rabid dog, breathing down her neck.

“What did you do?”

“I bit him. I’d have bit his ear off, except I wanted to get away from him.”

He left a hand mark on her skin. You can see where his fingers pressed into her, under her underwear.

We find our mother in the kitchen, emptying a box of dried potatoes into a pot on the stove. She’s still wearing the blue corduroy skirt and white blouse she wore to work this morning. She looks over at us when we come in.

“What do you girls want? You come in here to help me?” She keeps her concentration on stirring the potatoes and milk.

“We came to show you something,” I say.

“Oh, yeah. And what’s that? You find something out in that yard? Some buried treasure maybe? That’s what I’d like to see.”

“No,” I say. Our mother is always looking for a windfall. She says, every time she buys a lottery ticket, “Lord, let this be my windfall.” Or, “Pick a number girls. Bring me luck. Bring me my pot of gold.”

“Well, what do you have?” she says. She turns her eyes on us. Our mother’s eyes are the prettiest we’ve ever seen, women in magazines included.

Camille moves closer to her and pulls down the waistband of her shorts. She shows our mother the bruise shaped like a hand that Walt left on her.

“Who the hell did that?” our mother asks. She puts the spoon down and takes hold of Camille’s shorts, bending for a closer look. “Have you been roughhousing with those boys down the street? I told you to stop playing with them.”

“It wasn’t the boys,” I say. We don’t play with them.

“Well, then?” our mother asks. I look at Camille and see her eyes are beginning to tear. “Who did it?” It seems suddenly Camille can’t say a word. “Damnit, girl, who left that mark on you?”

“Walt,” Camille says, pulling in air like she’s been running. “He came after me out by the azalea.”

“What do you mean? He came after you like how?”

“Like he was a wild dog,” I say, and our mother looks at me with a sharpness in her eyes and tells me to “keep quiet this minute.”

“What’d you do?” she asks Camille. “Did you say something to him?”

“No.” Camille’s back straightens, like it does when she’s had enough. “I was picking off those dead leaves and he came up behind me. He held me close.” Like a lover, Camille said. And he wouldn’t let her go.

Our mother’s hand on the shorts loosens and the elastic snaps against Camille’s skin. She crosses her arms over her stomach and looks down at us for a moment in silence. Her eyes look like drops of paint in her small face.

“Men don’t know their strength,” our mother says softly. “It was an accident.” She runs her hands down the front of her skirt. “They’re really just sweethearts, you know?”

But Camille isn’t done. She looks our mother straight in the face and says, “He put his hand in there.”

“In where? Jesus, Camille, in where?”

“In my underpants. He put his hand in my
underpants.
” And then he said to her, Jesus Christ, Camille, you have something growing there. And laughed.

Our mother takes hold of Camille’s bunched fists and squeezes them gently. There’s a softness about our mother’s face that smoothes out the lines around her mouth. That makes her pretty. Camille says this is her payday look. When she’s able to make the rent and the electric bill. But it’s also how she looks when she’s in love.

“Come on, now, Camille. It was an accident. We know it was an accident.” She drops Camille’s hands and goes back to the stove. “Well, these are burnt.” She grabs the pot and carries it to the sink. “Go back outside now,” she tells us.

We decide we should run away. We pack our clothes, Camille’s box of lipsticks, and my book on wild horses into plastic bags we got from the grocery store. We get as far as the corner when Camille has to go back for her radio, which can run on batteries. She sits on the edge of her bed, trying to find a station. She lets her bag slip to the floor. She looks like she might stay awhile, so I remind her of what we were doing.

“We have nowhere to go,” she says. And no money. We couldn’t even get on the train.

Evening Rose

W
alt takes us to Denny’s for ice cream. He smells like Fritos and wears a blue shirt with his name on the pocket. He has a key ring on his belt loop and a tattoo of a woman in a red dress on his arm. When he flexes his muscles the woman dances. He got it in Mexico.

At Denny’s we’re allowed to order whatever we want, so long as we can finish it. Camille orders a banana split with extra strawberries. I order a mint chocolate sundae. Walt drinks coffee with two sugars and watches us eat.

Outside, the heat ripples off the pavement. It’s August and Camille and I go to the Y while our mother works during the day. Sometimes Walt comes for us and takes us away from there, where we really don’t want to be, where there are only little kids and poor kids whose parents can’t pay for a real vacation or a babysitter. We go to the beach and sometimes ride the roller coaster. Other times, we go to Denny’s.

“You have a chocolate syrup mustache,” Walt tells Camille.

He asks the waitress for more napkins and puts them down in front of us.

Camille wipes her lip with her spoon and ignores him.

Camille is good at pretending not to notice people. She doesn’t say hello to Walt when he comes in from work.

In the evening he and our mother sit in front of the TV and laugh. Walt does the commercials, “Pine-fresh scent with Lysol,” in a woman’s high-pitched voice.

“How do you like that, Camille?” he’ll say, and Camille will carry on like she didn’t hear anything.

I get up and leave the room, go outside with a book and let our cat, Simon, curl up in my lap, or make up a hopscotch board and play by myself.

He works for the Miller beer company again. He drives a cold truck and delivers beer to liquor stores and 7-Elevens. Sometimes he brings us penny candy: Bazooka bubble gum and Tootsie Rolls.

He makes good money.

“How much?” I ask.

“Enough,” he says, then laughs with his head back and his mouth open and black.

“More than the president?”

“Almost.”

He lives like a king.

We’re not allowed to drink coffee, but Walt gives us sips of his, and sips off his beer. Our mother says, “Walt, stop that.” But she laughs when she says it.

Camille has a collection of lipsticks. She’s not allowed to wear them out of the house, not even to the grocery store when our mother is with us. She can’t wear them into the front yard. Our mother doesn’t want our neighbors to think Camille is loose.

Some of the lipsticks, half-used and broken, our mother gave Camille when she grew tired of their color. Most of them she got from restrooms in restaurants and gas stations. These are close to brand-new.

She has seven: Desert Mirage, Wine and Roses, Persuasion, Copper Penny, Hot Cocoa, Really Rose, and Pink-A-Boo.

She’s not allowed to wear the Hot Cocoa; our mother says it’s for black women. And she can’t wear the Persuasion because it’s too red and she’s too young. Most times Camille wears Wine and Roses because it reminds her of the women in the movies who have a lot of cute boyfriends. Before every kiss someone yells “cut” and the actresses touch up their lipstick so they won’t be forgotten. Camille says she plans to leave her mark, too. Even if she doesn’t become a world-famous actress, like she wants to.

She’s always looking for more, so when we finish our ice cream we tell Walt we’re going to the ladies’ room.

Camille picks through the garbage first. They always fall to the bottom. She pulls out the wet paper towels and hands them to me to hold and put back in the trash when she’s through looking. I don’t get anything for my efforts, not even a chance to try on whatever we find, but if I don’t help, she kicks my ankles or punches my arm until I yell uncle and have to do it anyway.

“Jackpot!” Camille pulls out her arm. She has two lipsticks. “Evening Rose,” she says. She looks at the other one and tries to push back the little sticker on the bottom. Half the fun are the names. “Damn. It’s rubbed off.”

When she opens it there’s nothing left, not even a little stub.

“Looks like it was some kind of pink,” she says. “Maybe Dreamy Pink or Peony.”

We stand in front of the lipstick displays when our mother takes us to the drugstore. Camille memorizes the names. One day she’ll model them in magazines.

“What’s the other one look like?”

She uncaps it and rolls it all the way up. The tip is smashed but there’s enough left that this is a good find. It’s the kind of red — too dark — that our mother won’t let Camille wear. Which is OK. Camille saves her lipsticks in a shoe box. When she’s sixteen and moves away like she plans, she can wear them.

Walt is waiting outside the restroom when we come out. Camille tries to pocket our find.

“What do you have there?” he asks us.

“I found them,” Camille says.

“I didn’t say you didn’t. What are they?” He bends closer to us, his hot breath in our faces.

“Lipstick.” Camille keeps her hand closed around them. “I’m not going to use them,” she says. “I just like looking at them.”

“We’re not allowed to wear makeup,” I say. “Not out of the house. Not until we’re sixteen.”

“Let’s see them.”

“Why?” Camille has her hand with the lipsticks pushed into the front pocket of her shorts.

“A man likes lipstick just as much as you women,” he says. “You know that’s why you wear it, to get our attention.”

“We don’t wear it,” I say. “We’re not allowed.”

“Come on.” He starts us toward the door. Outside, the heat makes us sweat and makes everything white. “You can show me in the car. There’s a mirror you can use to put it on.

“You can wipe it off before we get home,” he says.

Camille sits in the front seat, because Walt tells her to. He pulls down the visor and opens the mirror so the light pops on; and I can see Camille’s face, tight and as white as my rabbit’s foot.

“Put on the lipstick, Camille,” he tells her.

But she doesn’t want to. Her fingers are curled around the lipstick and her knuckles are white.

“Did you hear me?” His voice is louder, and heavy. It fills up the whole car.

Camille’s shoulders twitch. Her fingers open and the Evening Rose rolls onto her lap.

“You want me to help you?” Walt asks.

“No.”

Camille scoots forward in her seat so she’s sitting on the edge. She looks into the mirror. I can see her lips are trembling, but she moves the tip of the Evening Rose over them anyway. Twice she has to stop and use a fingertip to wipe off the extra. Walt sits behind the steering wheel, with the engine running and the air conditioner on high, while he waits for Camille to finish and show us.

“Beautiful,” he says, when she’s done and turns to him. “Color’s perfect.

“Come here, Camille.”

“No.”

“You want to know what a real woman wearing lipstick feels like?” he asks.

“No.”

“Yes, you do.” Walt’s hand snakes out and he grabs Camille by the back of her neck. He moves so he’s almost on top of her and kisses her on the mouth. A long kiss. His wormy tongue licks her lips and then he moves away.

It leaves Camille’s lipstick smudged. She looks like our mother does after she and Walt sit for a long time on the sofa while Camille and I are sent outside to play and we come in unexpected.

“You feel grown-up now?” he asks Camille. “You feel like a woman?”

Camille won’t look in the mirror at the smudged lipstick. She wipes her hand over her mouth then uncaps the Evening Rose and runs it smoothly over her lips. She moves back to her side of the car and flips the visor up. She breathes like she’s crying, like she can’t get enough air.

Walt puts his arm over the seat and looks in back.

“What do you think, Chloe?” he asks me. “You ready for some lipstick?”

I think he should keep his wormy mouth to himself.

Camille is only thirteen. I tell him, “We’re not allowed to wear makeup.”

“What did I tell you, Camille? Your little sister needs a little more growing up.”

He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “Eh, Chloe? Maybe next year you’ll like lipstick?”

When Walt turns onto our street he hands Camille a napkin and she wipes off the Evening Rose.

Between

I
moved up the food chain. Today, I can decide between two entrees for lunch. Chicken breast or pepperoni pizza. I wait until I see them both and then make my decision. The chicken is sliced, was cooked on the grill, and is on top of a pile of lettuce. The pizza looks like it’s been sitting a long time. The oil has risen to the surface and is beginning to form like Jell-O.