Living Dead Girl (8 page)

I want to lie down on the bench then, or better yet, on the grass, rest on something living and see if I can hear the dead underneath. But I can't, because then people will look and Ray doesn't like looking, wants me silent, his little ghost girl.

I lean over and touch the grass instead. I have not felt grass in years. Ray doesn't like me getting dirty.

It doesn't feel like much of anything, and I am oddly disappointed, like when the soap operas are taken off so someone important in a tie can talk about things that don't matter because they will never reach me. Ray has me wrapped up tight from the world.

"You lose something?" Jake says, and squats down across from me, touching my fingers in the grass. I slide my hand back, wipe it on my jeans. His hands aren't hot like Ray's but they are longer than mine, bigger. I know what that means.

"You look ... nice," Jake says, and I look down at myself, in my too-small jeans and strange strained pink shirt, and wonder what I look like to him. "Wanna go to my car?"

I look like what I am. I live so I can be what Ray wants, what he needs, and you can see it if you look hard enough.
You can see that you can make me do anything. Most people look away, though. They do not want to see what it is possible to make with hands just like theirs.

I get up and follow Jake to his car. He offers me some pills and shrugs when I shake my head no, swallows them down dry. "Fucking school," he says. "I hate it."

"Does your sister hate school?"

"She's six," he says. "She still thinks it's fun." His look says I have said something stupid, something everyone should know, and I look down, wait for him to put his hands on his belt. Must think of something to say. Must think of words.

He does it for me, clearing his throat, tapping the fingers of one hand against his leg. "You like school?"

"It's okay." I remember desks and telling secrets and standing in line for lunch. Throwing food away because I was full or didn't want it.

I would give anything to go back and take that food, slap that stupid once upon a time girl and shove what she was too dumb to want down my throat, eat and eat until I grew thick, fleshy everywhere with rolls protecting me from everyone's eyes. From Ray's eyes.

"So, uh, do you want to ... ?" He rubs his leg, and then tries to take my hand again. I let him this time, hold still while he rubs it across the front of his jeans. He is so tentative, so unsure.

He seems so young, younger than I've ever been, even when I was born into Ray's arms, and it takes no time at all for me to talk without words, without doing anything that Ray will see. Just my hand moving back and forth, not even on his skin. So easy.

He tries to touch me afterward, hands on my chest, mouth looming toward mine. He does not push my breasts down, flattening them, but cups his hands around them. I don't mind that, but I do not like his mouth on mine, him trying to breathe into me, the darting slick surface of his tongue. Ray kisses my forehead or my knees or the insides of my thighs, but his mother made him kiss her good night every night and so he told me he'd protect me and never kiss me.

I push away after I've counted to ten twice, and he says, "I don't kiss right, do I? My last girlfriend said I sucked."

I don't know what to say to that, to the naked worry in his voice. His weakness makes me nervous.

It makes me want to hurt him, too.

"See, my friend Todd--you've probably seen him, the really tall guy with the amazing girlfriend, the one with legs ..." He trails off. "Anyway, he had her set me up with May, who is kind of fat but does it with anyone and--well, we went out for a while. Todd says I shouldn't be such a fucking girl about this stuff but, you know, it's not like--" He blows out a breath. "It's not
like there's a fucking manual or anything, is there?"

He laughs. "A fucking manual? Get it? Shit, these pills kick ass. Sure you don't want one?"

I shake my head, and words fall into it. "I have better ones."

"Bet you do," he says. "You're like ... I don't know. A rock. You know, nothing to see, but then you pick it up and there's this stuff on it. What kind of pills?"

"Where does your sister come in the park?"

"Lucy?" he says. "I don't know. The entrance over by the school, I guess. How come you always ask about her? I'm too boring to talk about?" Ray would say that as a low, throbbing whisper, louder than a roar, but Jake makes it a needy whine, like a fly's buzz.

Bzzzzz. Bzzzz. I listen to the flies during the day, in the summer. They fly around, living on who knows what--air maybe?--and then, come fall, they're gone. I wish I could be a fly. Live on nothing. Have wings.

"You do like me, right?" he says. "I did everything Todd said, offered you my best stuff, talked to you, washed up after gym."

I do not know normal, but I do not think Jake is it. He is watching me, huge-eyed, far away but here at the same time. So eager to be told he's good, he's special, that he ...

He reminds me of me. Living dead boy, all broken inside.

"What happened?" I say, and he blinks slowly, slip sliding in his seat.

"What do you mean?"

"What happened to you?"

He sits up and fingers his belt buckle. There is no bulge under it, though. It's an empty gesture. A trying.

When we first moved to Shady Pines I used to turn to Ray at night, thinking if he thought I wanted his sweat and hands and pain, it would be over sooner, that he'd let me go earlier each night, that maybe he would give me grace.

Grace is my favorite church word. A state of being. Something you can pray for. Something God can grant. Something you can obtain. Perfection is out of reach. But grace--grace you can reach for.

"Nothing," he says. "Well, my parents. Disappointed, you know, 'cause I'm not smart or anything, not good at stuff. I'm like my real dad, who up and ran away."

"But your sister's perfect."

"Your face," he says, blinking like he's asleep and trying to wake up. "You--you look funny when you talk about her. Like you want to eat her, or something. Swallow her up whole." He shakes his head, closes his eyes.

Will he go to sleep? If he does, I could--could I leave now?

I wait one breath, two, twenty. Then whisper his name. "Jake?"

"Want to enjoy this," he says, sullen fly buzz back in his voice. "Not think about things. And you ... you don't like me at all, do you?"

"No," I say, and watch his eyes fly open, mouth drop into a little round O I could twist my fingers into, knotting his lips before squeezing his jaw. Bending him back, forcing him down. He would do it, I think.

He would break.

I lean over, put my mouth on his. Bite his lip, feel the flesh, soft and tender, caught between my teeth. Hear his startled, slow yelp.

Watch him wipe his mouth when I pull away, no hand raised, no words, no voice. He's just still. Silent.

Just like I sit with Ray. Just like I am when Ray reaches for me.

"Be here tomorrow," I say, and leave. I don't even stop to look at Annabel before I go, just walk to the bus, the taste of his broken mouth in mine.

Now I know why Ray does not care about food, why he eats the same meals over and over, why all the things that cramp my stomach with want mean nothing to him. I am all filled up, head to toe crammed with having Jake sitting there watching me. Those wide drugged eyes, and what was behind them.

Fear.

RAY KNOWS WHEN I GET HOME. OF course he knows, senses I have seen what he understands and watches me walk toward him, grinning wide. You did it, Alice, he says, you found out when she's coming back and it's tomorrow, no question in his voice, fact, Ray owns the world, he makes what he wants happen, and I nod yes.

He says, Come here. He says, You're my pretty girl. You're my forever girl. My girl. My Alice.

He pinches the stub of my left breast hard, then grabs the right and hauls me in, face changing, smile shifting into his real one, all gums and teeth. Ready to tear.

He says, Do you see what time it is? He says, Do you know how long I've been here, waiting?

I look at the cable box. 5:02 it says in red, 5:02, and I am supposed to be home before then, I should always be home when Ray gets there, should always be waiting for him and he says-—

He says, Do you think you can do this without me, you think you can have some kind of--pause--spit hot on my face--fun? You think some boy is fun?

Shaking me now, my head and neck go SNAP back and forth.

You think you were having fun?

No Ray no I swear I just-—

You just what--? Watching my face, thumb tracing my lips, pressing hard.

He won't be a problem I got him to come tomorrow and he will and Annabel will be there, she's all better, he said so, she'll be there waiting and she's so pretty you'll like her Ray you'll love her I'll hold her down, hold her hands while you show her how to behave.

"And that's all?" Fingers in my hair, tearing, pushing me down onto the floor.

"That's all, he's nothing, you know it, I know you know it."

Teeth snapping by my neck. Whisper,
I do. I know everything.

Now everything is familiar. He says, You need me. You love me. Say it. Say it.

Say it, I have said it, I will say it now. I talk until my voice dries up. Words are just letters, A-L-I-C-E, and I know the ones he wants to hear.

Ray sits me on his lap and gives me sips of water after, crackers and a tiny piece of cheese, a special dinner, the cheese coming from his own food, a sandwich he bought, a large roll with meat oozing out the sides.

Mine, he says, but I'll share it with you. Soft kisses on my tender skin and I look at the ceiling so my flesh won't creep away from him.

He says, Kissing it better, you see? Making you all better. Aren't you better?

I nod. Stare at the ceiling and think that soon Annabel will be here. Soon I will not be alone.

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A little girl. She took long showers every night, swimming in the water rushing over her and washing her hair till it squeaked when she ran her hands down it, parents sighing why do you have to be so clean?

It was like she knew, in a way. Like that water was grace and soon she would not be able to find it. Soon nothing would make her more than what she was.

Nothing would make her whole.

RAY IS READY IN THE MORNING. HE wakes me up early, before the sun is even up, taking me by the hand--circle around the wrist, his fingers overlap my bones easily--to the shower.

"Today's the day," he says. "I want you to look special for our little girl."

He does not want me shaving the hair on my legs or under my arms, other Alice tried something, I think. Ray once talked about red water and Alice's hurt wrists in his sleep, anger waking him up and sending him crush-crashing into me.

Sometimes I think if I could meet other Alice I would hold her head under water myself.

He hands me a cream to use and I stare at its bright label as I smear it on me; strange, strong odor, flowers and something that makes the inside of my nose burn. He would wax me all over but it costs a lot, and Ray believes in saving. Plus my stinging legs and armpits, when smooth, will still never equal the tenderness of the stripped skin between my legs, so what would there be for him to savor?

He does not like to see me with the cream on, does not like the smell or the reminder that my pink nightgown used to drag along the floor, leaving a trail behind me. Now its end rests almost at my knees, and the lace trim that once ran around the collar is worn down, rubbed away by washing and Ray's hands tracing over it. Tracing over me.

He packs while I wait for more bits of me to fall off, and when I am done I wash the smell off and pick up the shampoo after he pounds on the door and says, "And wash your hair too!"

When I am done he checks my hair to make sure it is clean enough, and then has me sit and comb it while he shaves. He talks about the money, which he's already gotten out and packed, the maps he's bought, the places we might go. Nevada. New Mexico. Arizona. Somewhere big enough for him to get a job.

Somewhere that will never notice us, our newness when we come in, our wrongness as we walk around. He
tells me what he will do to Annabel and how I will hold her hands and maybe even help him, turning around to hold my hand, stroke my fingers. Shaving cream on his face, a little cut on his throat.

"You'll smell like her," he says, eyes gone far away. "We all will."

I pull the comb through my hair. Ray makes sure I use conditioner so it won't tangle. He says he wouldn't like to cause me any pain.

His mother cut knots out of his hair, scissors leaving tiny silver scars on his scalp. He showed them to me after we came here, after he found me walking down the road toward the highway, thumb out like I wanted a ride.

Two days after we moved into Shady Pines, and I thought, I can't live here. I can't.

He drove me all the way to 623 Daisy Lane when he found me, stopped the truck--brand new, I bought it just for you he said, you were supposed to wait for your surprise and you didn't, now get in. He drove right by the house and told me what he'd do to the people inside.

Then we drove home. He pulled over, Exit 56, I remember the sign, nothing but trees and a closed gas station, and got me out of the truck. Into the woods. Smash crash into the trees, dirt grit bugs twigs in my face, my mouth, my head slamming into the ground over and over again.

His hands in my hair.

His voice. You won't leave me. You won't leave me. You won't leave me. Say it.

I won't leave you.

Not ever?

Not ever.

Back to Shady Pines, and I thought, I can live here. I thought, and then, after a while, I just started watching TV. It made the days pass faster.

Easier.

RAY CALLS IN TO WORK, SORRY, FAMILY emergency, sick brother out in Pennsylvania, not in Philly, he wishes, but out west, near Pittsburgh. He practices before he calls, makes me listen.