Towelhead (5 page)

I shook my head.

“Well,” he said, “it's true.”

I guessed it was an interesting story, only I didn't want to hear any more. It bothered me to know nice things about Daddy, since that wasn't the way I usually thought of him. I was afraid of being tricked into liking him, so that the next time he turned mean—which I knew he would—it would be too surprising.

At home, Daddy said that he needed me to do him a favor. “What is it?” I asked. I couldn't believe I had anything he wanted.

“I'd like you to write a letter to your grandma in Beirut.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because,” he said, “she loves you very much.”

“But I don't even know her.”

“That doesn't matter,” he said. “She's your grandma.”

He got out some paper then—onionskin, he called it. It was really thin and made crackling noises whenever you touched it. I sat down at the dining room table, and Daddy sat across from me. “Dear Grandma,” he began, and I wrote it down. I hadn't known he was going to tell me what to say, and I felt pretty relieved about that. “I miss you very much,” he continued, then he paused so I could write that down, too. Once I had finished, he said, “I hope you are happy and in good health. I am living with Daddy now in Houston. We have a very nice house.” The next part was all about how I was sorry that I couldn't write to her in French, but that I was taking classes and would learn soon. Then, at the end, he made me put “Daddy is engaged to a very nice woman from NASA.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Then why are you saying it?”

“Your grandma won't understand dating,” he said. “She'll be happier if she thinks I'm getting married.”

“But what if you don't?”

“How do you know I won't?”

I didn't say anything.

“I may very well get married,” he said. “This woman likes me a lot.”

“Okay,” I said.

He pointed to the letter. “Now write, ‘I love you, Grandma,' and sign your name.”

Afterward, he looked the whole thing over and told me it was very nice. “Your grandma will really like to see your penmanship,” he said. Then he got a new piece of paper out of the package and started translating my English into Arabic. He said I could go, but I stayed for a while and watched him write from right to left. When he was done, he asked if I'd like to sign my name in Arabic, and I said sure. I thought he would show me how on a scrap of paper, then let me copy it onto the onionskin, but instead, he gave me the pen, then held my hand in his as he guided my movements. I knew he was just trying to help, but I really couldn't stand for him to touch me. My arm went kind of stiff, and when we'd finished, he said that Grandma was going to think I was retarded.

In bed that night, I squeezed my legs together and tried to have an orgasm just from picturing the lady in the golf cart. I didn't think it would work, but it did. When it happened, instead of thinking terrible things, I thought about Mr. Vuoso. I thought about his hand around my waist, and his nice cologne, and how he had let me go home when I wanted to. I thought about how he had called Daddy a fucking towelhead, but he still liked me.

 

At school the next day, I was nervous. I wondered how things would go with Mr. Vuoso that night. How we would ever be alone again so he could touch me. While I sat in Social Studies, listening to Mr. Mecoy talk about how Texas used to be its own country, I started pressing my legs together under the desk. I was very still and quiet, so no one would notice, and I had an orgasm. When it happened, I looked across the aisle at Robert Serling, the boy who had stuck my maxi-pad to his forehead. He had blond curly hair, and I realized in that moment how handsome he was.

That afternoon at the Vuosos', Zack said, “We're not allowed to look at magazines anymore. My dad put them in the garage.”

“Can't we just go out in the garage?” I asked.

Zack shook his head. “My dad says he'll know if we sneak and look at them.”

“All right,” I said, though I was disappointed.

“He says you should've known better,” Zack said.

“Yes,” I said. “I should've.”

“I know what you were doing in that chair.”

“What?”

He laughed. “You know.”

“I wasn't doing anything.”

We went outside then to play badminton. For once, Zack didn't hit me in the boobs, and we actually ended up finishing a game. We had to quit in the middle of the second one, though, when we hit our last birdie into the yard next to Zack's. We thought about climbing the fence, but it was too tall. We'd have to wait until the newlyweds got back from their honeymoon. They'd moved in a week earlier, then left right away for Paris. I hadn't met them, but Zack had. He said the lady was pretty and the man was tall.

We went back inside and turned on the TV. I couldn't remember what we had done before looking at magazines, and now that they were gone, I couldn't imagine what we would ever do again. After a while, I went upstairs to steal a tampon from Mrs. Vuoso, but there were too few in the jar to make it safe.

On the way downstairs, something caught my eye in the master bedroom, and I stopped. It was a large green duffel bag at the foot of the canopy bed. I walked in and knelt down on the floor. I was quiet for a moment, listening for footsteps, and when I didn't hear anything, I unzipped it. Mostly there were just clothes: white T-shirts, camouflage pants, boots, sneakers, boxer shorts, belts. I reached a hand in to see if anything had been slipped between the neat piles, and it had. Something wrapped in plastic or cellophane. At first I thought it was candy, but then I pulled it out and saw that it wasn't. It was rubbers. A long strand of them.
Durex,
the package read.
Extra Sensitive
.
Super thin for more feeling
. I ripped one off and stuck it in my pocket, then put the rest back. Downstairs in the living room, I asked Zack if his dad was going somewhere.

“Why?” he said.

“There's a duffel bag in the bedroom.”

“That's in case we go to war with Iraq,” Zack said.

“Oh.”

“It could happen anytime. He has to be ready.”

“Is it going to happen soon?”

Zack shrugged. “I don't know.” Then he turned back to the TV.

I sat down on the couch then, feeling worried. I started to wonder if Mr. Vuoso really could die. Daddy had been talking a lot about the possibility of a war lately. He was really excited about it. He said, “Saddam is a bully. He can't invade another country and get away with it.”

When Mr. Vuoso walked in the door that night, I stood up and smiled. “Hi,” I said.

He didn't smile back. “Everything go okay?”

I nodded.

“Good to hear,” he said, and he walked in the kitchen.

I didn't know what to do then, if I should follow him or sit and wait for him to come back.

“You can go now,” Zack said.

“Shut up,” I told him, and I pretended that I was watching something on TV. A couple of minutes later, when Mr. Vuoso still hadn't come back, I let myself out the front door.

At home, I was upset. I didn't even feel like having an orgasm. I tried to think of a reason to go back to the Vuosos', and when I couldn't, I went over there anyway. Zack opened the door. “What do you want?” he said.

“I need to talk to your father,” I told him.

“About what?”

“Just get him.”

He looked at me for a second, then turned and yelled, “Dad!”

“What?” Mr. Vuoso called back.

“Jasira wants to talk to you!”

He didn't answer, but a few seconds later, he came to the door. “Yes?” he said, standing behind Zack.

“Can I talk to you in private?” I asked.

He was quiet for a second, then said, “Zack, why don't you go upstairs and start your homework?”

Zack left, even though I could tell he didn't want to.

“What is it?” Mr. Vuoso asked, his hand on the doorknob.

I didn't know what to say then. I guessed I thought that he might say something—or do something—if I just set it up so that we could be alone. “Well,” I said finally, “I wanted to thank you for not telling my father about yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” he said. “What was yesterday?”

I looked at him. He seemed so different now. “Yesterday,” I said. “In the guest room.”

“Nothing happened yesterday,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”

I was quiet for a second.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said.

“All right, then,” he said, “we'll see you tomorrow. Have a good night.”

He shut the door, and I stood there on the porch for a minute. After a while, I went home and locked myself in my bathroom. I took Mr. Vuoso's condom out of my pocket and hid it behind the Comet with his wife's tampons. Then I sat down on the edge of the tub and started to cry. I knew from health class what condoms were for, and I knew that if Mr. Vuoso got called up, Mrs. Vuoso wouldn't be going with him. That could mean only one thing, which was that he was planning to love other people. I just didn't understand why it couldn't be me.

For the rest of the week, it was the same thing. Mr. Vuoso came home and asked me how everything had gone, then went in the kitchen. I didn't know what to do. I thought about calling him or writing him a letter, but I wasn't sure what I would say. Maybe he was right. Maybe nothing really had happened.

On Saturday, Daddy wanted to get some new clothes for his date, so we went to the mall. At Foley's department store, a salesman showed him some different sport jackets, and Daddy tried them all on. He asked me what I thought of them, and I said they were nice, even though they looked exactly like the ones at home in his closet. He ended up buying a navy blue one, along with a blue striped tie. I thought we would leave then, but instead, he said I needed some new things, too. “No, I don't,” I said, since shopping for clothes with Daddy sounded as bad as shopping for maxi-pads. But he said yes I did, and that I was starting to sag.

As I followed him through the store, I couldn't stop thinking about this. That I was sagging. I couldn't stop thinking that for Daddy to have known it, he would've had to be looking at my boobs.

In the ladies' underwear department, he asked the saleswoman to help us. He mentioned again that I was sagging, and she said that I probably needed to start wearing underwires. Then she got a tape measure and used it right there, in front of Daddy. I didn't have to take off my shirt or anything, but the tape got stretched across my nipples. “Thirty-four C,” the saleswoman said, and Daddy whistled like he couldn't believe it.

While the two of them went off to find me some bras, I sat in a pink velvet chair next to the cash register and thought about my mother. The last time she'd taken me shopping, she'd tried to get me to wear underwires, too, but I wouldn't. They hurt too much. “You won't be happy if you end up with stretch marks,” she said, but I still wouldn't do it. After a while, she gave up. We went to the food court and got hot dogs, and she told me that one day I would make some man very happy. “I will?” I asked, and she nodded. “Even with stretch marks,” she said. Then she met Barry a few months later, and I guessed he wasn't the man she had been thinking of.

Soon, Daddy and the saleswoman came back with a bunch of different bras. She took me in the fitting room and told me to press a little red button if I needed help, and I said I would. I undressed and put on the prettiest one first. It was silvery gray with a tiny bow at the center. I couldn't tell if it fit or not, so I pressed the red button. When I opened the door to my dressing room, though, it was Daddy standing there. I crossed my hands over my chest, but he said to move them so he could check the fit. “Where's the lady?” I asked, and he said she was busy with another customer. When I still didn't uncross my arms, he said to stop this nonsense, that a bra was no different from a bathing suit.

I really couldn't stand the sight of Daddy in the mirror, looking at me. I couldn't stand the way he tugged at the hooks on the bra, or made adjustments to the shoulder straps. I didn't understand why he wanted to know so much about my body if he didn't even like it. I thought he should keep away from it instead. I thought only people who really and truly liked it should get to see it.

He ended up buying me seven new bras, one for each day of the week. The saleswoman told him that not many fathers would take the time to make sure that their daughters had proper foundation garments, and I could tell that made him happy. She gave him a bra club card so we could get a discount the next time we came in, and he said we'd see her next year.

As soon as we got home, Daddy told me to go put one of my new bras on and show him. I thought he meant without a shirt, like in the dressing room, but when I came out like that, he slapped me and asked what the hell I was doing. I started to cry and ran back in my room, and a little while later, he came and knocked at the door. “What's the problem in there?” he asked, and I said, “Nothing.” “Good,” he said. “Because I'm still waiting to see one of those bras.” When I finally came back out wearing a T-shirt, he said, “Much better.”