Towelhead (36 page)

The next day, my mother still wouldn't come to Melina's. This time she said she wanted to go to meet Thomas and his family. I was embarrassed because I was pretty sure she just wanted Mr. and Mrs. Bradley to see that she had a black boyfriend. I wondered if Richard was embarrassed, too, but if he was, he didn't say anything. He just shook Mr. and Mrs. Bradley's hands, then we all sat down in the living room and talked about different planets Mr. Bradley had seen through his telescope.

At one point Thomas asked if we could go upstairs so he could play me a song. None of the adults seemed to know which one of them was supposed to answer. Finally my mother said, “Um, sure. Just don't be too long.” I said we wouldn't, and Thomas and I got up from the couch. When we reached his room, he said, “Your mother is weird.”

“I know.”

“She didn't want you to come up here.”

“She doesn't like when boys like me,” I said.

“Why?” he said. “She's got her own boyfriend.”

I shrugged.

Thomas picked up his guitar and played a few chords, then put it back on its stand and asked if he could eat my pussy. I said no, since our parents were downstairs, but he said he would hurry. He said he wouldn't have asked if I'd been wearing pants, but that since I was wearing a skirt, it would be really easy for him to get down there.

“I thought you didn't want to do stuff anymore,” I said.

He thought for a second, then said, “It's more that I don't want you to do stuff for me. But this is something for you. That's different.”

I said okay and lay back on his bed. He pushed my skirt up, pulled my underwear off, and put his face between my legs. I pushed myself against his mouth when it started to feel like I was going to have an orgasm, and it seemed like that made him lick me even better.

When it was finished, he came up to my face and asked me if there was anything else I'd like him to do, and I said that I'd like him to let me suck his dick. I could tell by the way he was leaning his hips back that he wanted me to see his erection and say something like that.

“Okay,” he said in a serious way. “I mean, if that's what you want.”

I said it was and unbuckled his belt. While I was sucking on him, I felt relieved. Ever since I had told everyone what had happened to me, and they had all tried to do the right things, I had felt lonely. It wasn't that I didn't want people to do the right things, or that I didn't want to be helped. I did. But I still wanted my old life, too. I wanted to make love to people. I wanted them to tell me what to do. I couldn't imagine those feelings ever going away.

When we went back downstairs, my mother asked what song Thomas had played for me. She said she hadn't heard any music.

“That's because my amp wasn't plugged in,” Thomas said. “I was playing without my amp.”

“Oh,” my mother said.

When we got back to Daddy's, my mother asked me to come in just for a second, so she could give me a present. I asked her if she could give it to me in the driveway, and she said no, I had to come in. When I didn't move, she sighed and said no one was going to make me stay at Daddy's if I didn't want to. “We'll leave the back door wide open,” Richard said, “in case you need to make a quick getaway.” I smiled at him, but my mother gave him a look that made me think she might get mad at him later.

Finally I said okay and went inside. We walked back to Daddy's study, where my mother's suitcase was open on the floor. It held clothes I'd never seen before, including a silky pink nightgown. From there, I glanced briefly at the unmade bed, trying to imagine something about my mother and Richard from the way the sheets and pillows were positioned.

“Here,” my mother said, handing me a small wrapped box. I opened it and found a razor inside. Not the disposable kind, but a heavy metal kind that came with replacement blades. “Do you like it?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “It's very nice.”

She nodded. “Let's go in the bathroom. I'll show you how to use it.”

“I already know how,” I said, sticking out one of my bare, shaven legs. I knew from Barry, from Thomas, and just from doing it myself.

“Oh,” she said, looking hurt.

“I really like this present,” I said. “It's my favorite present you ever gave me.”

“I'm glad,” she said, even though she didn't look glad. She looked like she was going to cry again. I put the razor down and gave her a hug. “I'm a terrible mother,” she said.

“No, you're not,” I said, since it seemed like that was the right thing to do.

“Yes,” she said. “I am.” She pulled away from me and dried her eyes.

I didn't say anything. All of a sudden, I felt tired. I wanted to go home.

“I'm very jealous of that Melina,” my mother said.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“I just don't want to meet her.”

“Okay.”

“You can live with her if you want, but I can't go over there. I just can't.”

I nodded. We made plans to have breakfast at Denny's the next morning, before she and Richard left. I picked up my razor, along with the wrapping paper and ribbon. I thanked my mother again and kissed her. I told her I loved her and that I'd had a nice time with her that day. I didn't tell her that I'd already changed my mind about what the best gift she'd ever given me was.

 

Mr. Vuoso pled no contest. It was like saying you were guilty without actually having to say it. The judge would still punish him, though, as if he had said he was guilty. The good part was that I wouldn't have to tell my story to any more people, or go to see the doctor. I didn't know if Mr. Vuoso had done this to try to be nice to me, but it felt like he had. When I suggested this to Melina one day, she said absolutely not, that I shouldn't be fooled. “He's doing this to be nice to himself,” she said. “So that if your father brings a civil suit against him later, he can still plead not guilty.”

Melina and Daddy started to talk a lot about Mr. Vuoso's sentencing, and how much jail time they hoped he got. They still fought about different things—what time I should go to bed, how short I should be allowed to cut my hair—but more and more they were becoming friends over how mad they were. At first I was glad that they liked each other better, but then the things they said about Mr. Vuoso made me nervous. Especially when they talked about how other people in jail didn't like men who hurt children, and how they did mean things to those men.

In the end, I didn't really want anything bad to happen to Mr. Vuoso. I just wanted him to be sorry, like he'd been back when he'd first hurt me. I wanted him to always be sorry, to always worry that I was still feeling hurt, to always want to try to make something up to me. Then, sometimes, I wanted him to try to get something for himself from me. But to do it in a nice, soft way that scared me only a little.

One morning, when I hadn't had bad dreams the night before and Melina hadn't come to sleep with me, I woke up early and got out of bed. Gil had already showered and left for work, since it took at least an hour for him to get to the center of Houston with all the traffic. Melina was still asleep. I dressed in my clothes from the day before and went downstairs. It was just getting light outside, and I waited for Mr. Vuoso to come out with his flag. When I saw him, I went to the freezer and got Snowball.

I took her outside with me and stood on the front steps. I watched Mr. Vuoso in his front yard, attaching the hooks on his flag post to his flag. When he saw me, he stopped what he was doing. It felt like we looked at each other for a long time. I came down off the steps and walked to the edge of Melina's lawn. There was her driveway in front of me, then the Vuosos' lawn started. After a moment, I crossed Melina's driveway. It was as far as I would go. “Hi,” I said.

“Get away from me,” he said.

I didn't know what to do then, since that was so different from what I had hoped he would say.

“I'm sorry I told on you,” I said.

“Get the fuck away from me!” he hissed.

I stood and watched him pull the rope so his flag would run up the pole. When he was done, he headed for his front door. “Daddy killed Snowball,” I said.

He stopped and turned around. “What?”

“It was an accident. He ran over her, and then we froze her. We didn't know what to do.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“This is her,” I said, holding out the package.

He paused for a moment, then walked to the edge of his lawn, stopping at the place where his grass met Melina's concrete.

“Here,” I said.

He took Snowball from me and looked at her frozen body. He felt it a couple of times, like he was trying to figure out how she was positioned.

“This is her head,” I said, showing him, and he nodded. After a moment, I said, “I'm sorry.”

He sighed. “It's not your fault.”

“She escaped when I was talking to Zack.”

“It's not your fault,” he said again.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked at me then in a very sad way, and I knew that I loved him. I would never tell Melina or anyone else, but it was true. I couldn't help it. He was sorry. He really was. He hadn't meant to hurt me. He loved me, too.

He reached out then and put his hand on my face. It was still very early in the morning, and the sky was pink and hazy. The heat of summer was coming, and it was hard to believe that this was as cool as it was going to get all day. His palm on my cheek felt damp and warm. As he pulled it away, I heard a scream behind me. I turned around to see Melina on her front steps. She was wearing the clothes she had gone to sleep in the night before. “Stop!” she yelled. “Stop it right now! Don't you dare touch her!” And then she fell. Down the front steps, and into a strange, bulging heap on the walkway.

 

I turned and ran across the lawn toward her. Her eyes were closed, and she had a cut on her wrist that was starting to bleed a little. “Melina?” I said. She didn't answer. She was lying on her side across the walkway. “Melina?” I said again, touching her shoulder. When she still didn't wake up, I ran to get Daddy. Mr. Vuoso had already gone back inside his house.

Daddy was awake and finishing packing for his Cape Canaveral trip. He and Thena were leaving that night, right after work. Now, as I yelled at him that Melina had fallen down the front steps, he wanted to know what I was talking about. “Where's her husband?” he asked, even though he was already moving toward the back door to get his shoes.

We went outside together, skipping the sidewalk and cutting across Mr. Vuoso's front lawn instead. “Melina!” Daddy yelled as he ran. “Hello! Melina!”

She still hadn't opened her eyes by the time we reached her, and Daddy made little slaps on each side of her face. “Melina!” he said. “Time to wake up!” When she didn't respond, he told me to go and call 911. “Tell them we need an ambulance for a pregnant woman who has fainted,” he said, and I nodded and went inside. As soon as I picked up the phone in the kitchen, though, I heard a siren. It was coming closer and closer, and I waited a moment to dial. When I understood that it was actually driving down our street, I hung up the phone and went back outside. “They're here already?” Daddy asked, turning around to look at the flashing lights, and I shrugged.

Not even the loud siren woke Melina up. Only when one of the two men paramedics waved smelling salts under her nose did she open her eyes. “You fainted!” Daddy yelled at her, in the same loud voice he'd been using to try and wake her.

She nodded, even though she also looked confused.

“How long has she been out?” the paramedic with the salts asked. He was still holding the broken packet in his hand, and I was both afraid and fascinated to smell it.

Daddy looked at me. “How long?”

I thought for a moment, then said, “About five minutes.”

“Do you remember why you fainted, ma'am?” the other paramedic asked. This one had a stethoscope around his neck and was pushing up the sleeve of Melina's shirt so he could wrap a blood pressure cuff around her arm.

“My hand hurts,” she said.

“You have a cut,” I told her, pointing to the bloody spot.

“We'll clean that up in just a second,” the paramedic with the salts said.

“They want to know why you fainted,” Daddy said.

“I don't know,” Melina said, looking at me, and I knew then that she did. Then she made a strange face and grabbed her stomach. “Oh my God.”

“Contraction?” the paramedic with the stethoscope asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “This is my first baby.”

We all watched her. “Breathe,” the paramedic said, and she did, huffing and puffing lightly.

When it was over, she moved a little to try to sit up, and that was when I noticed the bloodstain between her legs. It stood out on the light blue surgery pants she wore as pajamas. “Uh-oh,” I said.