Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

Out front of his momma’s trailer he put his hand in his back pocket. What he found there sent a thrill so sharp he almost peed. There were her panties, right where he’d left them the night before, bunched and warm from his body. Would she miss them? Would she know someone had been there and taken them?

He hoped so.

WHEN BABY GIRL GOT HER PHONE BACK she saw that there were no new text messages from Jamey. She hadn’t responded the day before when he’d texted to ask where she was. It felt like weeks ago, getting that text, driving over to Perry’s, driving to the drugstore, worrying that not texting him back was too big a risk, like she was playing too hard to get. But now everything had changed. Even her car felt different, like someone much larger had been sitting in the driver’s seat, like overnight she’d shrunk down to something else. Her bald scalp burning like a lidless eye. There was no way he’d consider being with her now. Touching her. If he’d ever even been considering it in the first place.

No, he’d just been texting her and chatting online with her so he could find out more about Perry, find out where they went, what they did. For a moment, early in the morning lying sleepless in that cell, she’d felt angry. Enraged and righteous. He’d gotten in, he’d planted a flag over her heart, she’d even helped him stake it in. She could have torched a city over it. Her whole body felt alive. But now, driving home alone in her car, she just felt exhausted. Thinking of her rage the night before, she nearly laughed. How could she think Jamey liking her was possible to begin with? That she even wanted it? Quit acting like a girl. She heard the words, heard Charles’s voice, preaccident Charles. Any time she cried around him, he’d say it. She had been acting like a girl, carrying on with Jamey like some desperate airhead girl .

That morning one of the guards had called her a goon. Hey, Blondie, get your goon, someone’s here to take you home. And it was true. She was a goon. Perry’s goon. The word felt like a second name. If the guard had wanted to insult her, well, the guard had done the opposite. The guard had revealed her, reminded her. Fuck this , Baby Girl thought, though by this she couldn’t tell if she meant everything — the guard, arrest, Perry, Jamey, her own sad vanity — or the nothing she was hoping to drive into.

It was Jim, waiting there for them, watching them come down the short hallway like he was just picking them up after school, hands deep in his pockets. Kept them there when Perry walked up, even as she put her arms around him.

“Y’all are lucky,” he said quietly. “Since Dayna didn’t technically steal anything the drugstore ain’t pressing any charges. And the old woman you assaulted says the Lord told her she shouldn’t press no charges, either.”

Baby Girl watched to see if Perry would laugh at this, but she’d just nodded, her head down. Like she’d learned her lesson. And maybe she had, at some point in the night, maybe she’d also been lying sleepless, but Baby Girl doubted it. It was more likely she was just giving Jim what he wanted, pretending like she’d grown a conscience overnight. It had disgusted her, seeing Perry’s bowed head like that, filled her belly like a fungus.

Now, in her car, she couldn’t understand her disgust. This was the way Perry had always been. It had never bothered Baby Girl before and in fact Baby Girl had treasured this about her, had envied it, even. So then what was different? She worried it was her own pathetic softening. She wanted to be touched. She wanted a friend. She wanted, she wanted, she wanted. She was pathetic. Girly . She had to get her shit together. She couldn’t blame Perry for being what she’d always been.

In the parking lot Jim had pulled Baby Girl aside, his hand firm on her shoulder. “I’d tell you to stay away from each other,” he said, “if I felt like you’d listen, but I know you won’t. You bring out the worst in each other, is what I believe.”

Baby Girl shook off his hand, wanting to say something back, but the words caught in her throat.

“You want to keep going on like that,” he said, “I guess that’s how it’ll go until something stops you. I hope this was the something for you.”

He had put a hand on top of her head, just for a second, like he was checking to see if it was real, what she’d done to herself. “Is this you?” he’d asked. “Is it?” Then he’d gotten in his truck, waited for her and Perry to follow so he could drive Baby Girl to her car.

“Fuck yeah, it’s me,” she answered now. It was ten in the morning, everyone at work or school. There were no cars in the rearview, just her own eyes looking back. It dawned on her that a man must have driven her car to the impound lot, had likely pushed her seat back so he could fit. She hadn’t shrunk in the night after all.

WHEN PERRY SAW JIM’S FACE she knew her momma must have had a doozy of a night. Then when Jim told her about the old lady not pressing charges because the Lord told her not to, Perry could feel a ghost of herself standing nearby, laughing. It was how she would normally have reacted. But Jim’s face and the way he kept his hands in his pockets made her feel sick. Myra was an asshole. She herself was an asshole. They should be doomed to live together in that trailer, each driving the other to drink, or go out and throw shit at old ladies, until the end of time. Jim should be living with some woman who had a garden, could put her lipstick on straight, drank a beer only when it was rude not to. A woman that didn’t have no kids, a woman that didn’t need him so bad.

Sometimes Perry hated the understanding she and her momma had, especially when she remembered how that understanding came to be in the first place, remembered nights when Myra would bring a friend home to play cards in the bedroom , remembered nights when Myra would spit up, quick and deadpan as a baby, scoop it up in her cupped hand, remembered nights when Myra wanted to sleep fitted to Perry like a snail to its shell. Remembered how the trailer felt soggy with Myra — there wasn’t nowhere to go. Tears enough to fill the baths she loved to take, and it was a wonder those tears weren’t carbonated.

Perry had seen Baby Girl at school, she was chubby and freckled, with eyes the color of maple syrup, and she had a big brother that was nice to everyone, only he was dangerous, too. You don’t want him liking you , Baby Girl had said. Perry felt in love with him, felt desperate to play cards in her bedroom with him. Then after his accident Baby Girl started wearing his shirts to school, stopped bringing her books to class, shaved half her head. And Perry felt in love with that, whatever it was Baby Girl was up to, wanted some of it for herself. That armor.

But it had grown from the inside out. She’d wanted to show Myra how she looked, so she’d made herself metal, shiny as a mirror. Learned all about playing cards in the backseat of whoever’s car. Getting warmed through with beer. And going further than Myra ever had: never, ever, asking could she have a hug or a kiss, never asking Baby Girl to spend the night in her room because she felt lonely. Ignoring loneliness, finding other shit to do with her time than be lonely.

Backseats and stealing cars and throwing gum at an old lady was easier than being at home.

She’d always wondered what Jim’s backseat or stealing cars was. Figured he had to have something. Maybe he went to a diner after work some mornings, flirted with a waitress. Maybe he didn’t even go to work some nights, and went to the home of a woman who had a garden.

But seeing his face at the end of the hall that morning confirmed it: he didn’t have shit. She and Myra were what he had. She’d tried to put her arms around him, let him know she felt grateful, but it wasn’t something she usually did, and it had felt like hugging a telephone pole. There had been no give.