Towelhead (25 page)

When Daddy got home that night, he was in a bad mood. He had heard on NPR that President Bush had announced a cease-fire with the Iraqis, even though Saddam wasn't dead yet—or even captured. He said Colin Powell should be fired for not doing his job, and President Bush should be impeached for ever listening to him.

He was also mad that Mr. Vuoso hadn't gotten called up in time to get gassed. Now that the Iraqis had surrendered, Daddy was pretty sure they wouldn't try anything funny against the Americans. “So this guy gets off easy,” he said, “once again.”

I wasn't sure what the other times were exactly, but I didn't want to ask, since Daddy was already upset. Instead I said, “Will Mr. Vuoso get called up at all?”

“Probably not,” Daddy said, and he went and got himself a beer.

I tried to act depressed about this like Daddy was, but inside I was glad. Now, it didn't matter if I lost Thomas because he was black, or if Dorrie stole Melina from me. Because Mr. Vuoso was safe. He was going to stay living next door. And as long as he was next door, I would never be alone.

A
week after the war ended, the shuttle launch in Cape Canaveral got canceled. Daddy said it was because there were some lug nuts with cracks in them, and because NASA had hired morons. He was mad that he was going to have to wait for his getaway weekend with Thena until April, which was when the launch had been rescheduled. He said he needed to recover from Colin Powell wrecking the war.

I was disappointed that Daddy's trip had been canceled, too. I had been looking forward to doing whatever I wanted for a couple of days, especially with Mr. Vuoso. I imagined his taking me out for dinner at Ninfa's again so we could celebrate that he wasn't going to get called up. Then I imagined that we would come back to Daddy's and use one of Mr. Vuoso's condoms to make love. I thought that by doing it nicely, it would prove once and for all that Mr. Vuoso hadn't raped me. That he had only been angry with me on that day he'd used his fingers.

My mother sent my father a letter saying she had read that his launch had been canceled, and that he and Thena must be so disappointed. She enclosed a picture of herself with her new boyfriend, Richard, at the pickle festival, and Richard was black. I guessed this was why she had changed her mind about my seeing Thomas. “This woman is the biggest hypocrite in the world,” Daddy said, showing me the picture. Then he crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. After he walked out of the kitchen, I went and got it. It was true, what my mother had said about the Japanese liking pickles. There were a whole bunch of them walking around in the background.

I took the picture to school the next day to show Thomas, and he laughed and said, “Don't that just beat all?” I agreed that it did, and every time I saw him for the rest of that day, he would shake his head and smile. Even though Richard was black like Thomas, it was as if Thomas thought something bad had happened to my family by my mother dating Richard, and Thomas was glad about it.

Pretty soon, Daddy started calling my mother's new boyfriend Colin Powell. He said things like “Maybe your mother will marry Colin Powell,” or “I guess your mother and Colin Powell must really like pickles.” I waited for him to call Thomas Colin Powell, too, but we didn't really talk about Thomas that much.

Thomas and I hadn't had sex since that first time at his house. He said he wasn't going to do it with me again until I told him the truth about why I wasn't a virgin. When I told him I was telling the truth, he said he didn't believe me.

“What an asshole,” Denise said when I told her.

“Yeah,” I said, even though he was right that I was lying.

“Who needs him, anyway?” she asked.

I shrugged. I kind of did want to have sex with Thomas again. I liked how he seemed to know this enough to think he could blackmail me with it. At first I could've taken it or left it, but now that he was acting like he was depriving me of something, I played along. It made me feel like one of the girls in
Playboy
who always seemed to like sex so much. Sometimes I even said “Please?” to Thomas, but he would just say no, not until I was straight with him. Then I went home and had an orgasm thinking about how I loved sex but couldn't get any.

The school newspaper with my article about Mr. Vuoso came out after the war had ended, which made some of the questions seem a little out of date. Still, it was exciting to see my name in print.

“Who the hell is that?” Thomas asked, opening up the paper at lunch.

“My neighbor,” I said.

“You mean that kid's father? You interviewed that kid's father?”

“He's a reservist,” I said. “That's what the article was about.”

“You could've written about something else,” Thomas said.

“But I'm the war correspondent for the paper.”

“No you're not. War correspondents are at the war. You're in Texas.”

“I was interviewing someone who was probably going to be at the war soon.”

Thomas stared at the picture of Mr. Vuoso in his army uniform. “He looks just like his stupid kid.”

“I know.”

“I hate that kid.”

Denise thought my article looked good. She said if Mr. Vuoso really did get called up, I would have the interview as a souvenir of our time together. She was disappointed, though, by Mr. Joffrey's response to her horoscopes. She'd shown him the paper and told him to read it, but he said he didn't believe in astrology.

I didn't give Mr. Vuoso a newspaper, but Zack had a friend with a brother in junior high who gave Zack a copy. He showed it to his dad, and Mr. Vuoso came over one night to talk to me about it. “I never said this,” he said, standing in our foyer and pointing to the last line of the article that my editor, Charles, had liked so much. “I would never have said anything like this.”

I didn't know what to tell him. I was hoping he would like that I had made him sound tough and strong.

“None of this stuff sounds right,” he said, hitting the paper with the back of his hand. “Go get that tape. I want to listen to it.”

“I can't,” I said.

“What do you mean you can't?”

“Daddy took it from me.”

“What?”

“He was mad that I interviewed you, and he took the tape. That's why I had to make the whole thing up.”

I thought he would feel sorry for me that Daddy was so mean, but he didn't. “This really fucking pisses me off,” he said. “I'm a representative of the United States Army. These are not things that someone in the army would say.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry?” he said. “What good is that?”

“I don't know.”

“It's no good, that's what good it is.”

“I'm sure no one in the army will see it.”

“You can't say that. Plenty of kids in that school could have parents in the service. Jesus. I look like a fucking idiot.”

“I tried to remember as best as I could.”

He looked at me. “Your memory is for shit, you got that? Don't talk to me anymore. Don't come over; don't do anything. Just leave me alone.”

“Why?” I said, and I felt myself starting to cry a little.

“Because you're a very stupid little girl,” he said, and he walked out.

I didn't know what to do after he left. I stood in the same place for a long time, then I moved to the couch. Mr. Vuoso wasn't going to be nice to me anymore. He wasn't going to be sorry for what he had done. Instead, he wanted me to be sorry for what I had done. Except what he had done was much worse. It didn't seem fair. I guessed I could still tell on him, since Melina's book said I had three years, but that didn't make sense, either. It would only make him madder.

There was still time before Daddy got home. I knew Mr. Vuoso had told me to leave him alone, but I couldn't help it, I went and knocked on his door. Zack answered. “Is your dad around?” I asked.

“That article sucked!” he said.

“Go get your dad.”

“My dad never said those things. You made it all up.”

“I know he's home,” I said. “He just came over to my house.”

“He doesn't want to talk to you.”

“Just for a second,” I said.

“Go home, towelhead.”

“Don't call me that.”

“Camel jockey.” He looked over his shoulder to make sure his dad wasn't there, then added, “Raghead.”

Suddenly, the little cat escaped. She raced out the open door and across the Vuosos' front lawn toward Melina's house. “Snowball!” Zack yelled. It was nearly dark, and he only had his socks on. “Move it!” he said, and he pushed past me out into the front yard. “Snowball!” he called again, hovering close to the ground and holding out his right hand like there was food in it. He made kissing noises, then said, “Snowball, Snowball,” in a voice even higher than his regular one.

I stayed on the front porch, watching. When Zack had traveled across Melina's front yard and almost into the next one, I went inside his house and shut the door. Then I locked it. It was almost time for Mrs. Vuoso to come home, but I knew I had a few minutes. I walked quietly through the living room and into the kitchen, but Mr. Vuoso wasn't there. I went upstairs. He was in his bedroom, lying down with an arm across his forehead. A very dim light sat on his bedside table. It reminded me of the old-fashioned oil-burning lamps they used on
Little House on the Prairie,
with the metal key on the side to turn it on and off. “Mr. Vuoso?” I said.

He took his arm off his forehead and lifted his head a little to look at me. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

“Get out of here,” he said, sitting up. “I told you never to come over again.”

“But I said I was sorry.”

Mr. Vuoso sat at the edge of his bed, staring at me.

“Can't you forgive me?” I asked.

“You crossed the line,” he said. “This was too much, putting words in my mouth.”

“I won't do it again.”

He laughed in a mean way. “Well, of course you won't! I'll never give you another interview, that's for sure.”

That made me cry a little, even though I didn't want another interview. It just seemed like everything he was saying was
never
. It all sounded so permanent.

“You can stop crying,” he said. “It isn't going to work.”

“I can't help it.”

“Right,” he said, like he didn't believe me.

“I can't.”

Mr. Vuoso looked at me for a long time. Then he said, “Do you know what you do?”

I shook my head. I was afraid to hear what he was going to say, but I was also glad that he was at least talking to me.

“You act like you're so young and you don't know what you're doing, but you do know. You know exactly what you're doing.”

“No, I don't,” I said, because it sounded bad, what he was saying.

“Yes, you do. You know what you do to men.”

I didn't answer him. Part of me still wanted to defend myself, but another part of me felt like he was giving me a compliment.

“Well,” Mr. Vuoso said. “You're not going to rope me in anymore. I've had enough.”

“I didn't rope you in,” I said. “I just liked you.”

“I don't want to be liked by you. There's something wrong with you.”

“Stop saying those things,” I said, trying not to cry again.

“I'll say whatever I want.”

Just then the doorbell rang.

“Who the hell is that?” Mr. Vuoso asked.

“It might be Zack,” I said.

“Zack?”

“I might've accidentally locked him out.”

“For chrissakes,” Mr. Vuoso said, and he got up and walked past me out of the room. I followed him downstairs and into the living room. When he opened the front door, Zack was standing there without the cat. “Snowball escaped!” he yelled. “That towelhead made her escape, and then she locked me out!”

I waited for Mr. Vuoso to tell Zack not to call me that, but he didn't. He turned to me and said, “Time for you to go home.”

“You didn't find her?” I asked Zack.

“Did you hear what I said?” Mr. Vuoso said, and he grabbed my arm hard and pushed me outside. I didn't move after he shut the door behind me, just stood there on the steps, feeling dizzy.

A moment later, the door opened back up and Zack and his father came out. “Go home!” Mr. Vuoso barked when he saw I was still there. “Get out of my yard!”

I moved off the steps, and the two of them rushed past me and out onto the grass. Zack had his shoes on now and was carrying a plastic container of dry food, which he shook as he called, “Snowball, Snowball!” Mr. Vuoso called the cat's name, too. I walked home slowly, wishing I would see the cat somewhere, but I didn't. It was just the empty street.

In my room, I lay on my bed while my heart raced. I wasn't sure what I would do without Mr. Vuoso. He was the person I was closest to—even more than Thomas. He was the one who did things with me that he wasn't supposed to, since he was a grown-up. When someone did things with you that they weren't supposed to—things that felt good—that was when you knew you were special. That was why you couldn't lose them. If you lost them, you weren't special anymore. You were just blah. You would have to wait for someone else to do things with, but since the things you were doing weren't right, you probably wouldn't find anyone. You probably had to realize that you were going to be alone.

 

When Daddy got home that night, he said, “I just ran over a cat.”

I looked at him. I had gotten out of bed and was sitting in the breakfast nook doing my homework. “What?”