Don't Kiss Me: Stories (7 page)

Then one day Milton was back, flopped in the kitchen watching Posy lick her private details, and you had the feeling you had just walked in during the pillow talk portion of procreation, and you was probably right cause Posy birthed a litter a couple months later, had em right underneath your dining table, left a stain the color of the fancy drink you had on your first dinner with the Indonesian man, Pink Sunrise is what it was called, Posy basking in her spill and Milton somewhere else, what did he care really, four kittens lived and one came out balled tight and not breathing, and you buried it in the backyard, and you cried cause you figured someone had to mourn the loss.

So now you had Milton Posy Pink Sunrise Squints and FluffFluff. And one day you saw the Indonesian man drive by your house in his white four-door, very slow, the sun running a flashing diamond from the hood to the trunk as he passed, you couldn’t see his face but his hair looked big, looked womanish, you did not let that stop you from believing it was him, you needed it to be him, and that night you finally relented and welcomed the two stray cats you had been feeding inside, Posy clawed the one but that seemed to be the end of the matter, now you had eight, and you were nine. You had been watching from the window every day and part of the night. The Indonesian man had driven by, it was a fact that snapped into place with a satisfying click, you pulled it out, no it wasn’t him, you placed it again, click, it was him, you clicked and clicked and clicked.

Your two strays whelped litters of their own, you noticed how kittens in both had bits of gray the way Milton had bits of gray, you wanted to feel something about it but you couldn’t drum nothing up. Now you had fifteen. You didn’t see the point of naming them. You had the thought maybe they should name you. Wisp, Haunt, Treatfingers.

You couldn’t keep up with the litter box, and one wasn’t enough, or two or three, so you sprinkled litter over the linoleum in the downstairs bathroom, you sprinkled till there were dunes, and you felt satisfied at the solution. You left the back door open day and night, you put flypaper up and it worked okay, you saw that another stray had come to stay, and then another, but them cans of Fancy Feast weren’t all that much to begin with, so you started buying in bulk. At night you slept faceup in your bed. You could see the fan blades going round and round, you could see the headlights sweeping into your room as a car passed and then sweeping right out again. Something about these cars passing compelled you to do something. Life was out there. Do what? Your stomach was a hot stone. Your heart raced. But you did nothing, what could you do? You had decided if it was the man driving by it was best he didn’t see you watching for him. You watched the fan, the cats moaned, you fell asleep, you woke up. You fell asleep.

One day the phone rang. The Indonesian man? No. A neighbor. The cats gathered in the yard at night and made a racket, it was too much, did you understand? You placed the phone in its cradle. The gall of your neighbor, not being the Indonesian man. Your cats wove in and out of your legs. You felt braided, your insides most of all, tightly wound and fastened snug. You dumped can after can of Fancy Feast, some of it splat on their heads. You ran a finger through a blob of tuna ’n veggies between a white one’s ears, licked your finger clean. You did that until the white one’s head was blobfree, you opened a new can and picked at it with a fork until you were full.

And then one day a woman came to your door while you were grooming your forearms. The woman looked official, her pelvis threatened to burst out her khakis, she had a badge of some kind, a man in sunglasses waited for her on the driveway. Is it the Indonesian man? you asked. The woman stared into your house with her mouth open. Your cats wove and wove. The man, you repeated. Has something happened to the man? Your eyes stung, your cats moaned, it sounded like one long No. The man in the driveway jogged over and looked in. They were from Animal Control, you saw that now. You looked down at your feet, where a turd had appeared, curled over your big toe. The Indonesian man had once told you a story about how, fishing as a boy, he’d reeled in a diaper, how his father had made him pose for a picture with his catch. You remembered how the Indonesian man had pushed your hand when you’d reached for his elbow.

The man in the sunglasses gagged, wondered in a whiny voice why lonely cat ladies were his problem. You wanted to hug him for saying so, for thinking it was loneliness made you what you was. Lonely was normal. Come in but mind the dunes, you told your visitors.

RV PEOPLE

We’re in the RV. Someone coughs like a baby’s rattle. One of us left the last time we stopped for gas. We were in the aisles of the convenience store looking for sausages, air fresheners, some kind of prophylactic. We are the type to look for things. Then one of us was gone, we saw him walking slowly toward the highway, and some of us watched while he turned against the flow of traffic, and some of us watched when he got into another car, and some of us watched the glint on the windows of that car, light flashing on the windows like some kind of magic trick, and we turned back to our aisles, we turned back to the rest of us, and we paid for the gas and lifted some candies and passed them around us when we were back in the RV. A few of us looked around and asked after the one that left, for them it was like poof, he was gone, did he have ash blond hair, did he prefer to drive in the afternoons? No one answered and we were back on the road anyway.

Later one of us mentions the heat, we’re in the desert now, we don’t remember how or why we headed in that direction, we breathe the dry heat in and try to remember to let it back out. A few of us work tying knots in a rope, tying a cat’s paw, then a clove hitch, then a half blood. Tying, untying. Someone ties a noose and we look away for a while, we can feel her eyes on us but we don’t look, she needs to learn. We hit a bump and stop, back up, hit the bump again. Someone in the front says, Had to make sure it was dead, and we sit while some of us are out there cutting it up, discarding what we don’t want, making neat cuts we can all agree on. When we get going again the meat is stowed in the cooler, we are running low on ice and we worry about the keep, some of us worrying the blood on our fingers, using our mouths before it can dry, but it’s hard to get under the nails just right.

We drive all the night, keeping each other company. We say things about the abundance of stars, so much light, but we don’t really care for stars, there are other things to notice, like woodgrain, like a sheet on the line, like the tender parts of the naked among us, like the smell of anything after it’s cut into. Some of us shuffle cards, deal them out, we make piles of cards, they are worn like dollars now, a two of clubs gives out, crumbles in our laps, we push the bits onto the floor, some of us collect the bits later on.

At an all-night diner we pick up more of us, some of us are convincing enough to get a waitress to leave her pad and apron behind, some of us are lonely enough to take a woman and her baby. The woman cries all night long, even when we make soothing noises, even when we hand her our treasures: two river stones, silver foil, a braid of hair. We take her baby from her, we pass it forward, we rock it in our arms.

Close to dawn we drive off the road, into the desert. We park and arrange ourselves to sleep. Some of us are on the dining bench. Some of us lie on the floor, stomach to back, half to half, so there is enough room. Some of us take the bed in the back, touch each other in the agreed-upon way. Some of us cry out and are ashamed. We close our eyes. We open them hours later. Two have left, we see their footprints in the sand outside, heading farther into the desert. We follow the footprints for a time. We turn when we are in danger of losing sight of the RV. We think it was two men, we count ourselves, we think it was a man and his boy, they have left their bar of soap, they took a few cuts of meat, there are drippings down the narrow walkway and down the steps. Some of us get behind the RV and push it back to the road, digging our toes in, most of us are barefoot, some of us are prideful of the thick soles of our feet, but that pride is frowned upon.

We drive. Some of us are sick into the bucket. Some of us check for ingredients, flavorings, there are none. There is only the cooler. The waitress passes white packets of sugar from her pocket, some of us feed from the new woman’s breast, but it is work. We barter for clothing, for secrets, for touch. We wear what we find. We claim what we can. We say
sss sss sss
into our ears. We say hush, hush. Some of us lean into each other and touch. We are bored. We don’t say this but it is what we are. Some of us put mouths to mouths, use our teeth, some of us try not to mind.

In the evening there is a red sky. We notice how it bleeds into the horizon instead of out. A few of us pass the drippings cup, but soon there’s none left.

In the morning one of us kills another of us. We are not sure how, there is no blood. There is torn clothing, a broken cup. Some of us try to mourn, some of us sing over the body, we lay the rope in a thief’s knot over the heart. We think how sad that what made your life something woulda happened whether you existed or didn’t. We forget who of us did the killing, it don’t matter.

On another day we wake and we are fewer. On this day we remember who is missing: the waitress, the momma, her baby. We remember because they are new, and it is an abomination to shed the new. More footsteps leading out, into the desert, away. We feel skinned. They are new, and they have gone. We look among us, we all agree. We gather things: throwing things, catching things, stabbing things. Rope, always rope. We tie the rope to the RV, we press our feet into the footprints of the escaped, we keep hold of the rope. We have lost some of us, but we will not be lost.

It is not long before the footprints become draggings, we can see them ahead, how they struggle to go on. Some of us exalt, speak our language. Some of us use our weapons on ourselves, we are so eager. We are the type to look for things, we are saying. Up ahead they are slowing. We begin to run.

CLOCKS

Momma says Jean’s just a imaginary friend, but I tell Jean Momma’s just a imaginary bitch.

Jean’s a yarnhead.

Jean says that ain’t nice to repeat but it’s true, it’s what she is, and based on the pictures she draw it is clear her momma is a yarnhead also.

You gotta be careful around the scissors cause yarn don’t grow back. That’s how come Jean’s so sensitive.

Jean told me once she saw my daddy wipe his stuff with a kitchen towel.

I have to leave Jean at home when I go off to school cause otherwise the kids will be jealous about how I got a stuck clock where my brain’s supposed to be, that’s how my momma explained it and it makes sense.

The clock by my daddy’s side of the bed ain’t stuck, but it ain’t telling the time either. Noon. Midnight. Noon.

Jean tells me if I spend time fixing on details like that I’ll drive myself to drink. This our new best thing to say.

We like anything where a key is needed. Keep that secret locked up tight now, girlie.

That’s our second-best thing to say.

Me and Jean play like we spies sometimes, we used a old flashlight for a while, but in the daylight you don’t need no more light and in the nighttime we got too scared, you should only spy if you really want to find something.

And we didn’t really want to all that much.

Noon’s okay. Midnight, though.

If you take off Jean’s clothes there ain’t nothing really to see. White cloth, black thread. No bumps or creases. I pray for Jean’s body but I wasn’t born a yarnhead and that’s the cross I have to bear.

Jean and me been studying my face in the mirror, looking hard at it, and we pretty sure it’s still my face. And that is a relief.

Jean says it’s all right to grow up and get old and die without ever taking a man for your own. That’s another relief.

Jean says there’s no need to set your hair or wear red nails or spritz lilac stuff behind your ears, if somebody don’t want that kind of attention then that is A-OK.

I see my momma do all these things, but it don’t seem to matter. I don’t do none of them, but that don’t seem to matter either.

Jean says my daddy been throwing some of my stuff in the trash. She’s right, I know some of my stuff is gone, but I don’t fix on the details.

At school a boy named Bo asks me do I want to meet him behind the swings, there’s a brick wall we can duck down behind, I say sure cause that seems the easiest.

Recess at noon. Or midnight? One is 12, the other is 12, so ain’t they the same? All of it’s the same, what Bo got to show and what I seen at the other 12, I’d like to talk it over with Jean but like I said she ain’t allowed to school, I tell Bo about the two 12s but he ain’t listening, I saw Bo had one of them fungus nails on his pinky finger, thick and green, the button on his pants shiny as a new penny, the bell rang and I went into the little girls’ and upchucked the egg my momma fried me that morning.

At lunch I traded my sandwich for a pink pencil, cause Jean loves pencils and we never seen a pink one.

Jean says, Did you feel better? I say I did.

Jean says to hide, and we do, and we whisper how any minute we could pee, and I want to laugh and yawn all at once cause I feel so happy to be with Jean, but we have to keep quiet cause we’re hiding, and the first one to make a noise during loses.

We never talk about what happens if you win at hiding.

Hiding always ends with Daddy finding us.

Daddy asks me do I want to ride on his motorcycle and I say yes even though Jean says I’m a dumb bitch.

Just around the block a few times, my daddy says, and then I need you to help me out with something in the garage. I don’t listen to that last part. I go stuck clock. My face ain’t my face. I think how we’ll ride past that mailbox with the wood ducks and that flat dead cat in the road, and that house that got burned up by a drug addict. Wind in my hair, my hair that ain’t yarn.