Towelhead (24 page)

“I'm great,” she said. “I have a new boyfriend.”

“Richard?” I said.

“I already told you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Last time we talked.”

“Well,” she said, “he's very nice. Much nicer than Barry, that's for sure.”

I was quiet. I never knew what to say when Barry came up.

“I really think you'd like him,” my mother said.

“I'm sure I would.”

“Richard and I went to a pickle festival last weekend.”

“Oh.”

“Guess who loves pickles?” she asked.

“Who?” I said.

“The Japanese,” she said. “Who knew?”

We both laughed a little.

“Everything okay down there?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Your father behaving himself?”

“Yes.”

“What about Thomas?” she said. “Do you ever see your friend Thomas?”

“No,” I lied.

She sighed. “That's too bad.”

“You and Daddy said I couldn't see him.”

“I know,” she said. She sounded a little tense.

“Sometimes I see him in school,” I said, “but I can't help that.”

“The thing is, Jasira, I might've been wrong about him.”

I put my hand on the kitchen counter. I felt a little dizzy to hear her say she was wrong about something. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“I'm just saying that maybe it wasn't fair to tell you you couldn't see him just because I had a hard time when I went out with your father.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I feel bad about it,” she said.

“Does that mean I can see him?”

“Well,” she said. “I don't know. Let me talk to your father about it.”

“All right.”

“You can't date him, though, because you can't date anyone. You're too young. But I think I might've been wrong about you visiting with him.”

“Okay,” I said.

After we hung up, I felt better than I had in a long time, like I had been smart to do the things I thought were right. I went in my room and lay down on my bed. I put my hands in my pants and started touching myself. I couldn't stop thinking about Thomas's face when he'd looked between my legs. I didn't care about the sex part. I just liked being stared at. I wanted to go back over to his house so he could do it again.

When my mother called back that night, Daddy yelled, “What do you mean you changed your mind?” After she answered him, he said, “Well, she's living with me, so I make the rules!” He hung up on her, then came back in the living room. “I don't care what your mother says,” he told me. “You're not seeing that black kid. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said, even though I didn't, not at all.

“If I ever find out that you've been seeing him, I will punish you severely. I mean it.”

“But you're a minority, too,” I said.

“Listen to me: When we fill out forms that ask our race, we check white. Middle Eastern is considered white, and that's what we are. Then there's the black category for your friend. You see the difference? You should be glad we don't have to check this box.”

He went back to his chair where he had been watching the war on TV. CNN was showing footage of Iraqi soldiers running away from a bunker just before an American plane bombed them. “Look at that,” Daddy said, cracking a nut. “It's disgusting. There's only one man they need to kill, and they're not going to do it. It doesn't matter to kill the Republican Guard. These people will do whatever Saddam tells them. So if Saddam isn't there, they won't do anything. Just forget about these people.”

I thought maybe he was trying to be nice to me by talking about the war, but I didn't feel like talking. I was mad that Daddy was a racist, and that he was trying to force me to be one, too. I wished I could just tell him the truth. That I had gotten as close as you could to a black person, and that nothing terrible had happened at all.

At lunch the next day, it was still bothering Thomas that there hadn't been any blood when we'd had sex. After I set my tray down and punctured my milk carton with my straw, he said, “Did you get raped?”

I looked at him. “What?”

“Is that why you won't tell me what happened?”

I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if I had gotten raped. I knew what rape was, of course, but I was pretty sure it was only when someone had sex with you, not when they used their fingers.

“Jasira?” he said.

“No,” I said, “I didn't.”

“What were you just thinking about now?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you thinking about when you got raped?”

“No,” I said. “I already told you. I didn't get raped.”

“Then how come there was no blood when we had sex?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“There was supposed to be blood,” he said. “Since there wasn't, you either had sex with someone before you had sex with me, or you got raped. Which is it?”

“It's not any of those things.”

He looked at me. “It was something, that's for sure.”

“Maybe it's from using all those tampons. I got stretched out.”

“I doubt it.”

All the way home, I thought about what Thomas had said about getting raped. I knew that rape was bad, of course. I knew that when someone did that to you, it was scary and it hurt, just like with Mr. Vuoso. But then I didn't think it could be rape because I liked Mr. Vuoso again. On TV, people who got raped went to court and felt happy when the rapist was convicted and went to jail. They wanted bad things to happen to the rapist. But I didn't feel that way about Mr. Vuoso. Not at all. I didn't want him to get gassed or killed or called up or anything. I was in love with him, just like I had told Denise. Whatever he had done to me, it couldn't possibly have been rape.

When I got home, I did my homework, then went over to Melina's. She answered the door wearing an apron over her T-shirt and stretchy black pants. “Hey,” she said. “Why are you knocking?”

“What?”

“Why didn't you use your key?”

“Oh,” I said. “I don't know. I don't have it with me.”

“Why not?”

“It's in my backpack.”

“Well, next time I want you to use it.”

“Even if you're home?”

“It doesn't matter if I'm home or not.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I gave it to you for a reason,” she said.

I nodded. “Can I read my book?”

“Yes.”

I followed her into the house. I noticed that her apron strings were tied in a tiny knot at the back since there wasn't enough of them to make a bow. “Help yourself,” she said, gesturing toward the coffee table where the book sat.

“Are you making something?” I asked. I couldn't really smell anything cooking.

“Sort of,” she said. “It's a salt substitute. You mix up all these different herbs and stuff in the coffee grinder, then when you put it on your food, it's supposed to trick you into thinking it's salted.”

“You can't have regular salt?”

“Not with my blood pressure, no.”

“Oh.”

“Why don't you grab the book and bring it in the kitchen?” she said. “You can read while I grind.”

“Okay,” I said, heading for the coffee table.

I liked Melina's kitchen because it didn't look like ours or the Vuosos'. I could tell that she and Gil hadn't picked any of the kitchen designs that the housing development people had offered, but had done things their own way. I especially loved the big silver stove and refrigerator. They seemed like things you would find in a restaurant.

I sat down at the kitchen table, which also reminded me of a restaurant, a diner my mother and I used to go to. The seat cushions were covered in glittery red vinyl.

Melina went back to her work at the counter, and I opened my book to the rape section. It said that rape was any time someone forced you to do a sex act you didn't want to do. It said that whatever had happened wasn't my fault, no matter what kind of outfits I wore. It said that Mr. Vuoso was an angry man with mixed-up values. If I wanted, the book said, I could take up to three years to report him.

As I read, Melina turned the grinder on and off. She shook it a couple of times, too, while it was grinding, like a maraca. When she was done, she took the top off, licked her finger, and stuck it in the mixture. “Is it salty?” I asked her.

“Come and taste it,” she said.

I got up and went over to the counter. Melina licked her finger again, stuck it in the powder, then said, “Open your mouth.” I did, and she put her finger in, and I closed my lips around it so that when she pulled it back out, it was clean. I did this as if it was something I had done with my own mother many times, only it wasn't. My mother and I never did anything like this.

“What do you think?” Melina asked.

“It tastes like garlic,” I said. “And parsley.”

“But not salt,” she said.

“Not really.”

“Ah well.” She unscrewed a small glass jar and began spooning the powder into it. “Maybe Gil will like it.”

“What would happen if you ate regular salt?”

“I could have the baby too soon.”

“Oh.”

“To save me, they would make me have the baby, even if she wasn't ready to come out.”

I nodded.

“They always save the mother first.”

I was glad to hear this, since I didn't really care about Dorrie.

“But the mother always wants to save the baby,” Melina said.

“Is that what you would want?” I asked her.

“Of course.”

It depressed me that she said this, even though I knew that it shouldn't.

“I have to pee,” Melina said, handing me the spoon. “Would you finish this for me?”

“Sure,” I said.

She untied the little knot at the back of her apron and took it off. I started scooping the powder into the jar. A second later, I heard her say, “Rape?”

I looked up from what I was doing. Melina had stopped at the table on the way to the bathroom and was now looking down at my open book.

“Do you have a question about rape, Jasira?” she said. She was talking a little more quickly than usual.

“What?” I said.

“Why were you reading about rape?”

“I wasn't.”

“Yes, you were,” she said. “I want to know why.”

“I'm reading the whole book,” I said. “That's just the part I was on when you wanted me to taste the spices.”

“There's no way you could've gotten this far in the book with the amount of time you've been over here. There's just no way.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm skipping around.”

Melina looked at me. She didn't say anything for a long time. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Okay. It's your book. You can read whatever parts you want.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“But if you have any questions about anything you're reading, you should come and ask me.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I know about everything that's in this book.”

I nodded.

“Do you have any questions you'd like to ask me now?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

She sighed. “All right then.”

After she'd walked out of the kitchen, I went and closed the book and put it back in the living room. Then I finished putting the fake salt in the jar and screwed the top on. Melina came back and said, “Where's the book?”

“I'm finished reading it,” I said. “I put it away.”

“Oh!” Melina said, and she put a hand on her stomach.

“What is it?” I asked, even though I could guess.

“Dorrie just kicked.”

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “She might do it again. Want to feel?”

“I should probably go home,” I said.

Melina seemed disappointed. “Oh.”

“Your spices are all in the jar,” I said, picking it up to show her.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

I went home then and cried on my bed. First I cried because I hated the baby, then I cried because I felt terrible for hating the baby. Then I cried the hardest when I realized that hating the baby made me like my mother, whom I never wanted to be like, not in a million years. If I was mad at my mother for always being so jealous of me, then it seemed like Melina could get mad at me for always being so jealous of her baby. I didn't want that to happen, so I made myself stop crying. I told myself it was better to feel terrible and lonely than to hate a baby, and I tried to do that instead.