Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

Touch it. It . In Baby Girl’s mind it was a weapon, an animal that could play dead till you weren’t looking and then bam, you were in trouble. In her mind it was a tiny baseball bat, a bunless hot dog. It filled with blood when aroused, she had learned that in sex ed. A blood-filled hot-dog-shaped balloon animal. It was absurd, you could almost laugh if you weren’t such a no-touching-it virgin. The extent of Baby Girl’s experience was the time she had let one of Charles’s friends take her for a ride on her own bicycle. She sat on the handlebars while he teetered them through the neighborhood, winding farther and farther away from the house, until they were back where the new houses had started being built. Behind a yellow dune of sand the boy had reached under her shirt, pinched and twisted her nipples. You ain’t wearing no bra, he’d said. Baby Girl hadn’t known how to respond, what to say, had let him gently push her until she was diagonal, her back sinking into the dune, had let him unzip her jeans and reach down into her underwear and pinch and twist there, too. Had let him rest on top of her, had let him grind the hard front of his jeans into her until he shuddered and stopped and rolled off. Baby Girl wondered was he her boyfriend now, this boy she’d seen picking his nose, this boy who’d even farted in front of her, one morning after he’d stayed the night in Charles’s bedroom. This boy who didn’t seem like he’d be getting no taller, which was a shame. “Hey, look,” the boy said. He was holding up a yellow rubber snake he’d found by the dune. He whipped it at her, hitting her on the arm. He laughed. The sky was pinkening behind him, the sting in her arm getting sharper before it began to wane. Baby Girl wondered when the kissing would start, but he just hopped on her bike, barely waited for her to get on, too. Back at the house the boy had gone into Charles’s room, and soon after, they’d left. Baby Girl watching television, working hard to focus on the program instead of the rawness she felt in her underwear. She and the boy never spoke about it and it never happened again. The next time she saw the boy he had his arm around a young black girl, twice his size. Then Charles had his accident and after that who the fuck cares about no boyfriend?

But it was like a shackle around her ankle, holding her back. Perry had done it plenty of times. Baby Girl hadn’t done shit. Just that one afternoon in a dune when some boy had used her like a trash can.

“I don’t even fuck them,” Baby Girl said. “They just want to look at me. Because I’m a virgin.” She was thinking of Jamey. How it had seemed like he might be the one to reveal it to her, might be the one to pick up where the boy at the dune had left off. How that made her a sucker, again, how she was that same dummy on the couch waiting to be undone by anything with a wiener. How Perry had her pick, just had to spin and point. How these ladies acted like it was nothing more than a garage sale. Suck you off for ten dollars, or best offer.

“No doubt,” the woman on the floor said, and they all laughed, even Perry. For a quick flash of a second Baby Girl thought, She belongs here .

JIM DIDN’T HAVE no connections at the courthouse, or in the basement where they held people. Still, he was a guard at the prison, a kindred spirit of the law, and he figured it should count for something when he went to fetch Perry. Dayna, too, if they’d let him.

It was one of them quiet days. Everyone at school or work, blue sky, green grass, everyone making complete stops. A day when you’d tend to your yard, fall to sleep on the couch, wake up an hour later to see the sun still shining, just in a different spot. The peace of the day fell around Jim as quiet as snow on a frozen man. He appreciated it but it didn’t help, the world kept turning, he was losing Perry and Myra and himself faster than he could get his head around. And he felt just tired enough to let it be.

Driving felt like something, though. He was taking action just by pressing the gas, pointing the car in the direction of the jail.

He knew he should feel angry, disappointed, betrayed. Embarrassed, ashamed. His stepdaughter arrested and him a prison guard. Ain’t that something to yell about. He knew what feelings he was supposed to feel, he just didn’t feel them. Maybe they’d rise to the surface after a while, like how dinosaur bones rise up after something shifts. He doubted it, though. First you’d have to have faith in the shift. Faith, something else buried.

He pulled in at the courthouse. The last time he’d been here was to marry Myra. Perry in ruffled socks. Myra holding a bouquet of silk flowers she’d bought at the Walmart, arranged herself. The lady judge jowly as a bulldog. Afterward they’d gone to the steakhouse for lunch, and together they’d decided to allow Perry to have as many bowls of ice cream as she could eat. Their first decision as parents was to let Perry do exactly as she wanted. And now look where she was. Jim tried to laugh, shook his head. It struck him that it was easy, back then, to keep his back straight. Like he was crafted from cement. Now it felt like a burden, rolling his shoulders back, making sure his weight was distributed properly. Easier these days just to lean into the world.

Did Perry remember that day? That must have been the last time she was here, too. But maybe they brought criminals in through a different entrance, maybe she had no clue this was the same place. She had called him Dad for a few years, but then one day it was Jim again. And if Jim was honest with himself he’d admit that it was a relief, that answering to that word had never felt natural.

Inside, a woman behind the front desk told him where to go. Had seemed disappointed in him, to be here on a weekday morning to see about someone who’d been arrested. She had a slur, her words coming out wet and slow, and Jim decided he couldn’t be sure if it was disappointment with him or with how her own words landed.

Down two flights of stairs, the windows disappearing, the lights getting dimmer and dimmer. Through a metal detector and two sets of swinging doors. Into a waiting room where a Hispanic man and a woman in a head scarf sat rows apart. He walked up to the counter. A woman sat behind the Plexiglas on a stool set too low, scratching her head with a pencil.

“When was your loved one arrested?” she asked, moving the tip of the pencil to the back of her head.

“There’s two of them,” Jim said.

The woman pursed her lips, arched her eyebrows. Tapped her pencil on the glass. “When. Was. They. Arrested?”

“Just this morning,” Jim answered. “About two hours ago.”

“Oh,” the woman said, “you can’t do nothing until bail has been set. And I doubt bail has been set. You can sit here and wait or you can go home and wait, your choice.”

Jim had his prison guard ID in his pocket, had planned to pull it out, slide it across, ask for a favor.

But now more than anything he wanted to get away from this woman, get away from the two people waiting, the woman in the scarf knitting and humming to herself, the Hispanic man sitting with his chest out, ankles crossed, doing nothing. Myra had said to leave her. It suddenly felt like the best thing for her, the best thing for the whole family. Certainly the best thing for Jim. He could come and get her in the morning. He could use the money hidden in an old box of Honey Smacks on top of the fridge to bail her and Dayna out. He could feel more prepared to look angry, to look like he cared.

EVERYONE HAD HER OWN SMELL in this cell. The hookers smelled like sex, like buttery sex threaded with fruity lotion. The homeless thing in the corner smelled like dirt, and like butt crack. Perry could smell herself, too: sweat and shampoo. And Baby Girl smelled the strongest, maybe because of how close she was sitting to Perry, but also maybe because she was losing her shit, and it was coming off her in acid waves. Like she was curdling.