Towelhead (28 page)

“You can come in,” I said.

He paused for a moment, then nodded and walked back toward me. On his way into the house, there was a breeze of his cologne. After looking around the living room for a moment, he went and sat in Daddy's chair. “C'mere,” he said. “Come and sit with me.”

I stood still. It was taking me a minute to get used to his being so friendly. “Thank you for not telling on me about Thomas,” I said.

“Thomas?”

“My friend from yesterday.”

“Oh,” he said. “I don't really want to talk about that.”

“Sorry.”

“Can't you come over here?”

I walked toward him slowly.

“Sit with me,” he said, patting his lap. As soon as I sat down I felt his penis against my bottom. I knew he wanted to do things with me, and that I should do them since he had gotten called up. Mostly, though, I felt like I should do them because I had done them with Thomas and Mr. Vuoso knew that. I felt like if I said no, he would ask me why I would do things with Thomas and not with him, and I wouldn't have an answer.

After I had sat in his lap for a while, he started rubbing his hand on my breasts. He pushed my shirt up and then my bra, then he leaned down and bit one of my nipples. “Ow,” I said, and I put a hand over the breast he had bitten. “Don't do that.” He didn't do it anymore, but he made a strange face at me. A face like he thought what I had said was funny. “Okay,” he said, “we'll do something else.”

He told me to kneel on the floor then, and I did, and he unzipped his pants and put his penis in my mouth. At first he moved my head for me in the way he wanted it to go, then he took his hands away so I could do it on my own. When I stopped doing it right, he put his hands back over my ears and started showing me again.

After a while, he told me to stop and to stand up. I did, and he unbuttoned my jeans and had me step out of them, along with my underwear. Then he had me lie down beside the coffee table on my stomach and he put his penis inside. It was just like the day before with Thomas, when he had clothes on but I didn't, and he was behind me. But he didn't reach around to rub me like Thomas had. He just pushed my head into the carpet.

After he had moved in and out for a while, he pulled out and told me to get up. He sat back in Daddy's chair and put his penis in my mouth again. I tried to act brave about how I would have to swallow the stuff, but at the last minute, he pulled his penis out of my mouth and pointed it at my face. Some went across my lips, and some went on my cheek. “Good,” he told me, putting his penis away. “That was good.” Then he zipped up his pants and said he would think about me in Iraq.

After he left, I put my hands to my face to keep it from dripping onto the carpet. I could feel it starting to fall from my skin. I walked to the bathroom naked, holding the drips, then got in the tub without looking in the mirror. I didn't want to see myself like that.

In the shower, I wanted Thomas. I wanted to tell him that he definitely wasn't right about Mr. Vuoso being in love with me. I wanted to tell him that I wished I had still been listening to him about not opening the front door.

I got out and toweled off. I put on new clothes and put my old ones in the washer with some of Daddy's, since he didn't like me wasting water with a half-full load. Then I went back to my ironing. I finished two more shirts before Daddy came home. When he saw them, he said they were better than the cleaners. He took out his wallet to pay me, and I tried not to cry from his being so nice.

M
r. Vuoso didn't get called up. I kept waiting for him to leave, but he didn't. He stayed. Every day I saw him taking out the trash, getting his mail, taking down his flag, pulling in and out of his driveway. It was a hard thing to think about. That he had lied to me, that I had believed him, that now he seemed to feel fine while I was ashamed. I was ashamed for being stupid. For doing something I hadn't wanted to do, and then, every day, having to look at the person I'd done it with.

The worst part was that when he saw me, he didn't ignore me. He smiled, or waved, or called out, “Hi, Jasira! How are you?” The second worst part was that I would smile back, or call back, “Fine, thank you.” At first when he acted like that, so sincere, I thought maybe he was still getting called up, just that he hadn't left yet. Then when I asked Zack about it one afternoon, he said, “My dad's not getting called up! Didn't you hear, retard? The war's over. We kicked Saddam's ass.”

I especially felt ashamed in front of Melina. When I saw her outside, I wouldn't go out. If she came outside while I was outside, I would make up a reason why I had to go in. I didn't go to her house anymore to read my book, and I didn't answer my door when I thought she was on my front steps. I ran out of tampons, and instead of asking her to get me more, I just used pads. Wearing pads was one of the few things that made me feel better anymore. They were like a punishment I could give to myself.

I thought I deserved to be punished because that time with Mr. Vuoso, my body had been excited. In my mind I hadn't been, but then when Mr. Vuoso had pushed himself into me, it had gone in easily. He had said things like, “You really want it, don't you?” and “This is what you like, huh?” I felt betrayed by my body. I felt like I had been thinking one thing in my head, but then in this other part of me, it was something very different. Whatever part of me was in control of between my legs wanted bad things to happen because it did the thing that made it easier for bad things to happen.

I got dizzy, thinking about all of this. Sometimes, when I thought too hard, my fingers tingled, and I could feel the inner lining of myself shrink up and curl into a ball. Like Snowball had been on the road.

In French class, Madame Madigan had to ask me three times how I was doing before I looked up and said, “
Je vais très bien
.” Thomas had to repeat himself so often he started calling me deaf. Only Denise seemed to understand why I couldn't pay attention to anything.
That guy doesn't love you anymore?
she wrote in a study hall note.
Yes,
I wrote back, and I drew the frowning face with the little tear like she had drawn for Mr. Joffrey.

Denise invited me to stay over at her house that Saturday, and I said I would ask Daddy. “Sure,” he said, “as long as you do all your chores first.” So I spent Saturday morning scrubbing my bathroom and vacuuming. Daddy also wanted me to help him weed the flower beds we had planted in front of the house, since we had stopped taking care of them after my mother went back to Syracuse. While we were outside, kneeling in the dirt with our work gloves, Melina's husband, Gil, came over. He said something to Daddy in Arabic, and Daddy answered him back. I knew they had small conversations like this sometimes when they met out in the street. Daddy would always come inside and say that Gil had a good accent but predictable politics.

“Nice day for gardening,” Gil said now in English. He wore jeans and house slippers and carried his mail tucked under his arm. One thing I noticed about him was that he wore glasses only on the weekends, the same way other people wore sweatpants or old sneakers.

“Yes,” Daddy said, looking up into the sun. “Jasira and I thought we should take advantage.”

I hated it when he made it seem like something was our idea together, when really it was just his. Even if it was only gardening.

“Well,” Gil said, “I don't want to interrupt you guys. I just came over to invite you for dinner. Melina thought we should all celebrate the end of the war.”

“Celebrate?” Daddy said. “What do you mean celebrate?”

I thought the way Daddy was talking would scare Gil, but he didn't seem to notice anything. He just smiled a little and said, “You're not happy?”

“No,” Daddy said. “I'm not.”

Gil shrugged. “We don't have to celebrate. We can just eat.”

I hoped Daddy would say no, we couldn't come. I hoped he would be his usual self and keep us away from other people. But he didn't. He said, “This is a very nice invitation. We would be happy to come.”

“Great,” Gil said, and he told us to come on Friday at seven-thirty.

After he left, Daddy said, “This guy is as bad as that idiot Vuoso, making assumptions about me.”

“Then why do we have to go for dinner?” I asked.

He looked at me. “I thought Melinda was your best friend.”

“Melina,” I said.

“We don't call adults by their first names,” he said.

“Sorry.”

After lunch, he drove me over to Denise's. He waited in the car until she opened the front door, then drove away. Denise waved to him, but I don't think he saw. “C'mon in,” she said. “We're just having lunch.” I told her I'd already eaten, but she said I'd have to eat again, since her mom had made us a quiche.

Mrs. Stasney was taller than Denise and had short reddish hair. She shook my hand when I walked into the kitchen, then told Denise and me to take a seat. “Jasira is depressed,” Denise announced.

“Really?” Mrs. Stasney said. She brought the quiche from the oven and set it on the table. “Why is that?”

“Because her boyfriend doesn't love her anymore. Just like what happened to me.”

“You girls are too young to be getting depressed about boys.”

“No we're not,” Denise said. “We're in puberty.”

After we had rinsed our dishes and put them in the dishwasher, Mrs. Stasney dropped us off at the mall. Denise wanted to get a pair of pants, but none of them fit. They were either too small for her butt and just right for her waist, or just right for her butt and too big for her waist. “This sucks,” she said, and she sighed out of the corner of her mouth so that her wispy blonde bangs flew up in the air.

Since Denise couldn't find any clothes that fit her, we went to a store called Glamour Shots and had our pictures taken. It was a place where they put a lot of makeup on you, gave you a fancy dress to wear, then had you pose like models. I was embarrassed to do it, but Denise said it was the only thing that would cheer her up. Afterward, the photographer showed us proofs of all the pictures he had taken, and we picked the ones we liked best. I had enough money to order only one copy, but Denise bought me two more. “One for your mom and dad,” she said. “Duh.” I thanked her, even though I was pretty sure that the last thing my parents would want was a sexy picture of me.

Denise's dad picked us up at six o'clock. He was tall but chubby, and as I sat behind him in the backseat, I noticed the flesh-colored hearing aid Denise had once mentioned that he wore. Mr. Stasney had been at the gym when I'd arrived at Denise's house, and now he told us all about his workout: how many miles he had racewalked, how many crunches he had done, how much weight he had bench-pressed. He said he had lost three pounds in the last week, and Denise told him that was good but that she wanted to talk about something else. “Ask Jasira about herself,” she said. “Try to learn something about my friends.”

“Tell me about yourself, Jasira,” Mr. Stasney said, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

“Not like that!” Denise said. “Ask her specific questions.”

Mr. Stasney asked me a bunch of specific questions then about school and Daddy and my mother. It reminded me of when I had eaten dinner with Thomas's parents, except Mr. Stasney didn't seem quite as interested in my answers. He wasn't mean or impolite or anything. He just seemed like maybe he wasn't finished talking about his visit to the gym.

We went to the Olive Garden for dinner, where Mr. Stasney embarrassed Denise by talking loudly and introducing himself and us to the waitress. Then we went back to Denise's and watched a video she had rented called
A Patch of Blue
. It was an old movie from the sixties about a blind girl who loved a black man. “I thought it would remind you of you and Thomas,” Denise said.

“I'm not blind,” I said.

She hit me in the arm. “Not that part!”

In the middle of the movie, Denise lay her head on my legs, which I had pulled up onto the couch. Sometimes, when I would try to bite off a piece of my cuticle, she would reach up and grab my hand and say, “Don't bite.” Then she would hold on to it a little while longer before letting go.

Mr. and Mrs. Stasney had gone out to visit friends, and when they came home, I worried about their seeing Denise lying on me. But Mrs. Stasney just stood in the doorway and said, “How romantic.” Denise told her to shut up, and she just laughed and said good night. I couldn't imagine ever telling my mother to shut up. I couldn't imagine her ever thinking it was okay for me to be romantic.

I wished Denise would lie close to me in her double bed like she had on the couch, but she just kept to her side. I wondered a little if I was gay, then decided I probably wasn't. Mostly I just liked to have someone touch me in any way they wanted, but without it hurting or feeling bad.

 

The next morning, when Daddy came to pick me up, the
Playboy
Mr. Vuoso had given me a few months earlier was sitting on the front seat. I saw it through the passenger's-side window before I even opened the door, and for a second I thought of running back inside Denise's house and asking her family to protect me. But I didn't. I just stood there, staring through the window. “Get in!” came Daddy's muffled yell, and finally I pulled on the door handle.

I had to pick up the magazine before sitting down on the seat, and for some reason, this felt more embarrassing than anything I could've imagined: touching it in front of Daddy.

At first he didn't say anything. He just sat there, watching me put my seat belt on. I hadn't known what to do with the
Playboy
so I just set it in my lap after picking it up to sit down. I would've preferred to put it on the floor with my backpack, but I knew it was there for me to get in trouble about, and that Daddy would want us both looking at it while he yelled.

As soon as we were out of sight of Denise's house, Daddy punched me in the thigh really hard. Then he did it again and again in the exact same spot. I wanted to lay a hand over the spot to try to cover it, but then I thought he would just punch my hand. “What the hell is that?” he said finally, pointing to the
Playboy
.

I didn't want to say it was a magazine, because I knew that wasn't what he was asking. He was asking where I got it, why I had it, what I did with it. I knew I wouldn't be able to answer any of those questions. Ever. I knew he would keep punching my leg until I could, but that since I couldn't, he would have to just tire himself out.

Instead of answering him, I asked him where he had found the magazine. “What do you mean where did I find it? You know exactly where I found it.”

“You were looking in my room?”

“No, I wasn't looking in your room. I didn't have enough laundry to fill the washer, so as a favor to you I was going to wash your sheets.”

“Oh.”

“When people do us a favor, we say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

We drove past a gas station, where a bunch of high school kids were holding a fund-raising car wash. They were carrying signs and jumping up and down and yelling things at people who drove by, like that their cars were dirty and support the United Way. I knew Daddy hated them. I knew if he ever saw me acting like that, even though that was probably how you were supposed to act at car washes, he would get mad.

“Where did you get that magazine?” he demanded.

I couldn't answer him. I just couldn't. It wasn't that I wanted to protect Mr. Vuoso, because I didn't. I wanted Mr. Vuoso to get in trouble. I just didn't want to get in trouble along with him.

“Answer me!” Daddy yelled.

When I still didn't talk, he hit me on the leg again and told me there would be more when we got home. He said, “You are not living in the moral universe. The things you do are very different from what normal people do. You are not normal. This is a magazine for men, not women. You are looking at pictures of whores, and you like them so much that you save the magazine. You do not obey me; you do not obey your mother. One day, Jasira, you will run out of places to live.”

We pulled into our development and, a minute or so later, passed the spot where Daddy had hit Snowball.
Sorry, Snowball,
I said in my head. I said it every time we passed this place. I tried to imagine her dashing out in front of Daddy and Daddy not being able to stop. But it always ended up in my mind that he didn't want to stop. That maybe he could've, but instead he decided to hit her.