Towelhead (8 page)

“Oh.”

“Why?” she said. “Do you need a tampon?”

“Not right now,” I said. “But I will soon.”

“Can't your parents buy you some?”

“It's just Daddy,” I said. “That's who I live with.”

“Well,” she said, “can't you ask him?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“No?”

“I'm not allowed to wear them,” I said. “Not until I'm married.”

“Huh,” she said. “I guess I never really heard of that.”

“That's Daddy's rule,” I told her.

“Where's he from?” Melina asked.

“Lebanon,” I said, and for the first time, I didn't feel so embarrassed about it.

“Huh,” she said again. Then she said, “What's with the flag?”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You guys live on the other side of the Vuosos, right?”

I nodded.

“So why does your father fly the flag?”

“Daddy hates Saddam,” I said.

She looked at me like she didn't really understand.

“Mr. Vuoso thinks Daddy loves Saddam,” I tried to explain, “but Daddy doesn't. That's why he put the flag up. To prove it.”

“Why does your father care what that guy thinks?”

I thought for a second, then said, “I don't know.”

“Because that guy is a pig,” Melina said.

“Who?” I said.

“Vuoso,” she said. “He reads
Playboy
.”

“He does?” I said. Suddenly it seemed like something I should keep a secret.

Melina nodded. “We got some of his mail on accident yesterday.”

“Did you give it back?”

“Hell no,” she said. “I threw it out.”

“You threw out his
Playboy
?”

“Why shouldn't I?” she said.

I didn't answer.

“I'll throw out whatever I want.”

I felt really upset then. Not just because Melina had thrown out a
Playboy
, but because she seemed to think it was such a bad thing to like. I didn't want her to think that way. I wanted her to like it as much as I did. I wanted us to think the same way about everything. “Well,” I said, “I guess I better go.”

“All right.”

“Sorry about the birdies,” I said.

“Don't worry about it.”

It was a short walk back to the Vuosos', but I slowed it down by not cutting across their front lawn. When I walked in the door, Zack said, “What took you so long?”

“I was only gone ten minutes,” I said.

“You were gone fifteen minutes,” he said. “That means you lose fifty cents.”

“Whatever,” I said. I didn't really care. Mostly, I just wanted to think about Melina. How you could see the nub of her belly button poking through her T-shirt.

When Mr. Vuoso got home, Zack tried to tattle on me for having left him alone. “You can't stay by yourself for fifteen minutes?” his father asked, and Zack said he could, and Mr. Vuoso said that he didn't see what the problem was then. After his dad went in the kitchen, Zack gave me the finger and whispered that I was a dirty towelhead, and I whispered back never to call me that again.

Later that night, Daddy made me translate Grandma's letter for him. When I finished, he told me I'd done a very good job, then asked how much Madame Madigan had had to help me. I thought about telling him that the kids at school had called me names, but then I didn't. I just couldn't bring myself to say those words out loud. Somehow, I thought Daddy would think I was talking about him.

The next afternoon at the Vuosos', I hit four birdies in a row into Melina's backyard. “You suck!” Zack screamed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I'll go get them.”

“No!” he yelled, but I ignored him.

“Birdies?” Melina said when she answered the front door, and I nodded. There were pencils sticking out of the messy bun at the back of her head.

After she let me in, she asked if a picture she'd just hung on the living room wall looked straight, and I said it did. It showed a sandy-colored building set into a rocky cliff. “What is that?” I asked.

“Gil's old house,” she said.

“In Syracuse?” It didn't really look like Syracuse.

She laughed. “No. Yemen.”

I tried to think of where that was.

“He used to be in the Peace Corps,” she said.

“What did he do?”

She shrugged. “A lot of stuff. Mostly, he dug sewage systems.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Toilets,” she added.

I nodded.

“Squat down,” she said.

“What?”

“Bend your legs and squat.”

I did this, and she said, “No, more.”

I squatted more.

“Even more,” she said. “As far as you can go without letting your butt touch the floor.”

When I'd gotten as low as possible, she said, “That's how they go to the bathroom over there. There's no real toilets. They just dig a hole in the floor and crouch over it.”

“They do?” I said, standing back up. My thighs were kind of sore.

She nodded. “Can you imagine doing that when you're pregnant?”

“No.”

“Me, neither,” she said, laying a hand on her stomach.

“I guess I'll go get the birdies.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

I went through the kitchen and let myself out the back door. I didn't really like when Melina touched her stomach, and I didn't want to talk about her being pregnant. I wasn't sure why, and I felt kind of bad about it, but that was just the way it was.

Zack had already gone inside by the time I got back. He was sitting in the living room, trying to watch HBO. His parents didn't subscribe to it, but sometimes it seemed like you could see naked people through all the scramble lines. “Don't you want to play badminton anymore?” I asked.

He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “you're hitting the birdies over there on purpose. So you can go and talk to that lady.”

“I am not,” I said.

“I'm never playing badminton with you again,” he said, and he got up and went to his room. I turned the TV off, then went to the bookshelf and took down the dictionary. There was an atlas at the back and I found Yemen, right under Saudi Arabia.

That night at dinner, I said to Daddy, “You know the people that moved in next to the Vuosos?”

“Do I know them?” he said. “No, I don't know them.”

He liked to do this sometimes. Answer my exact question instead of the real one I was asking. I sighed and said, “Do you know that some new people moved in next door to the Vuosos?”

“Yes,” he said this time. “I do know. The woman needs to cover her stomach more when she comes outside. No one wants to look at that.”

“Well,” I said, “her husband used to live in Yemen.”

Daddy crunched on the cartilage from his chicken drumstick for a moment, then swallowed and said, “How do you know?”

“Melina told me,” I said. “That's his wife.”

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

“But she said I could.”

“I don't care what she said. Find out her last name and call her that.”

After dinner, Daddy packed up his clothes and went over to Thena's for the night. They had been seeing each other regularly since their first date, but Daddy wouldn't let her come to our house anymore. He said he didn't want to have to deal with her fussing over me with her makeup. “You hog all the attention,” he said. “I don't know how you do it, but you do.” Then he said that he needed attention, too, and that I was a big enough girl to spend a couple of nights alone each week.

I didn't mind being by myself. Actually, I preferred it. I could walk around the house without worrying so much that I was about to do something wrong. I could have orgasms with my bedroom door open. I could read my
Playboy
on the couch. That was what I was doing when the doorbell rang at around nine o'clock. It was Mr. Vuoso. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and his breath had a nice beer smell. “Hey,” he said. “Is your father home?”

“No,” I said.

“Well,” Mr. Vuoso said, “his floodlight is out. You might want to tell him.”

“He'll be back tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow?”

I nodded. “He's over at his girlfriend's.”

“You're a little young to be staying alone, don't you think?”

“I can do it,” I said.

He looked at me. “You're not afraid?”

I shook my head.

We didn't say anything for a few seconds, then he said, “What're you reading?”

“What?” I said.

He nodded toward the couch behind me, and I turned around. “Oh,” I said, wanting to play our game right. “Nothing.”

He smiled a little. “Nothing, eh?”

I didn't know what to say then, so I smiled a little, too.

“I couldn't decide which one to give you,” he said. “I just grabbed one off the top.”

“It's my favorite,” I said.

“Really?” he said. “Why?”

“I like the lady in the golf cart.”

“The lady in the golf cart,” he said, like he was trying to remember her.

“Her shirt is open, but she doesn't notice it,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” he said.

I nodded.

“That's what you like?” he said. “That she doesn't notice?”

“Yes,” I said. It made me so happy to finally be talking about this. To say things I knew only he would understand.

“Well,” he said. “Don't forget to tell your father about that light.”

“Do you want to come in?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I need to be getting back.”

“Oh.”

“You call us if you need anything,” he said.

“All right,” I said, wishing I could think of something to make him stay.

“Good night,” he said, but he didn't leave.

“Good night,” I said.

He reached out then and squeezed my shoulder a little bit. Then he moved his hand down the front of me, over one of my breasts. Then he turned and walked away.

After he left, I sat on the couch and had an orgasm just from touching my breast and thinking about him. When it was over, I remembered what Melina had said, that he was a pig. I didn't think that was true. It just didn't seem possible, that someone who could make me feel so nice could also be so terrible. I liked Melina a lot, and I thought she seemed very smart, but I also thought there might be some things she didn't understand. Mostly, I believed that anything that could give me an orgasm was good. I believed that my body knew best.

 

In the cafeteria the next day, Thomas Bradley brought his tray over to my table. “Mind if I eat with you?” he asked.

I shook my head, and he sat down. He had only a thin sheen of hair, and his eyes were a much lighter shade of brown than his skin. We didn't say anything for a while, then he said, “I'm sorry I called you that name the other day. I don't know why I did that.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“No,” he said, “it's not.”

I didn't know what to do then, so I kept eating my ravioli. When the bell rang, Thomas offered to clear my tray, and I said okay. He piled my plate and silverware and milk carton onto his tray, then stacked my empty tray beneath it. “I'll be right back,” he said, which I guessed meant I was supposed to wait for him, so I did. When he returned, he said, “Okay, ready,” and we walked to his locker together. He asked me if I needed to go to mine, and I lied and said I did. It was just nice, having someone to do things with.

Later, when I was bored in Social Studies, I tried to have an orgasm by thinking about Thomas, but it wouldn't work. Not like when I thought about Mr. Vuoso touching my breast, or when I imagined a man photographer taking my picture. So I gave up and started thinking about those things instead. I thought I was very lucky to have a system like this. To be able to test out different people and decide if I really loved them.

At the Vuosos' that afternoon, I checked the tampons on the back of the toilet seat, just in case Mrs. Vuoso had given up on trying to catch me. She hadn't. It was still just the four. I went downstairs then and told Zack I needed to go next door for a second. “No way!” he said, muting the TV. “There aren't any birdies over there.”