Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

“I know what you mean,” she said.

“Yes, because you’re fat. I’m fat, too.”

She crossed her arms over her middle, pressing them in to hide the rolls behind her T-shirt. Everywhere she went, even in her own brother’s room, she couldn’t be something she wasn’t. Bald. Fat. Ugly. “That ain’t a nice thing to say,” she said. “Remember? You’re supposed to think how you would feel hearing something, and then if you don’t like it, then you don’t say it.”

“I’m fat, too,” he said.

“Do you remember how you used to think? Do you remember all the times you’d give me advice?” He could sometimes remember things that had happened years ago better than what had happened close to the accident or after. Part of her felt that if she just got him to remember, if she just connected this Charles to that Charles, he’d become whole again. Himself again.

“I remember telling you to buy your own pipe,” he said, grinning. He scooted his chair closer. “Because you never could roll blunts.”

Baby Girl’s heart beat fast. His smile, the way he said it, it was him. If she ignored the basketball shorts and his fleshy torso and the toenails he refused to trim, if she just looked at his grin and listened to his words, it was her big brother, it was old Charles, giving her shit like he used to. She wondered if he had to ignore her bald head, the way she dressed, to see his little sister. Little sister. She hadn’t felt like the little sister in a long time.

“I could roll blunts, just not as fat as you liked them. You never could get high off just a couple tokes.” Charles picked his nose, pulled out to study what he found. Another thing for Baby Girl to ignore. “Do you remember what you told me after you broke up with Crystal?”

He wiped his finger on his shorts, wagged it in her face like a scolding teacher. “‘Don’t give no one you ain’t married to no real money.’”

“‘Twenties is fine but no more than that.’”

Charles laughed. “She was a ho, right? That’s what you called her. I remember that. Of course I do. Of course .”

Baby Girl could feel her throat tightening, like she might cry, but fuck that.

“I need to ask your advice,” she said. She had to force the words out. “Charles. You listening?” She felt like she was asking a kidnapper to step aside so she could speak through a peephole to the one he’d kidnapped.

He scooted his chair again. “Of course.”

She heard the microwave ding. Soon Dave would be wanting them to come eat dinner. Charles heard it, too, she could tell he was trying his hardest not to leap up and go see what Dave was making. Baby Girl leaned in, holding his gaze.

“You remember that day you and your friends said you rode up on someone?”

“Of course,” Charles said, but Baby Girl could tell he didn’t remember all that well.

He had come home with blood on his knee, his hair matted with sweat, thick, greasy drops gliding along his jaw. Even inside, with the air-conditioning rattling away, he hadn’t stopped sweating. Baby Girl had offered to get something for his knee, had asked him what happened as she daubed it with peroxide and pulled a curled stale Band-Aid across the scrape. “We all met up at the gas station,” he said. “We rode up on someone and I was in front.” Baby Girl had nodded like she knew what all that meant. Smoothed the blanket they draped over the rips in the couch’s fabric, the once vibrant blue flowers worn and dull from being sat on over the years. Charles stared at the television. Whatever it was, he’d seemed stunned by it, frightened even. “And?” she nudged him. He’d turned, focused his eyes on hers. She felt gathered in, held tight. “I was in front,” he said, like that was the end of the story.

Now Baby Girl needed him to finish the story. She pointed at his knee, at the small white scar in the shape of a fingernail. “Remember how you got that.” Telling him to remember. She wasn’t asking.

“Yes,” Charles said. “I remember. I do. I rode my bike to the gas station to meet up with my boys.” He spoke so formally now, all the swagger gone. “I had my gun in the side of my pants instead of in the back so it’d be easier to get to.”

This he had never told her. “Why did you need to get to your gun easier?”

“Because we were going to ride up on someone. This boy named Bones.” He stood up now, began to pace from his desk to the door, which is what new Charles did when he felt anxious. Baby Girl knew she had only so many questions left before he folded in on himself, lashed out. There was a lamp without a shade on the nightstand, and she kept her body trained toward it, ready to grab it if Charles got crazy.

“When you say you rode up on Bones, does that mean you shot him?” she asked. Dayna had been afraid to show her ignorance asking a question like that, but Baby Girl didn’t have that same fear, not with the Charles in front of her now.

“I was in front,” he said. “I really don’t like thinking about my bike.” His voice was getting loud, any second Dave could rush in. And shutting the door would make him feel even more desperate, caged.

“I know,” Baby Girl said quietly. “But it’s ’ight, ’cause you here now with your baby sis. You ain’t there, kna mean? You here.” She was trying to speak to the Charles he once was, using the words he used. Trying to be a mirror that would make him become himself again.

“Okay,” Charles said, and his pacing slowed. Baby Girl could feel it working.

“So you rode up on this Bones cat and what. You shot him? How you get that scrape on your knee?”

“I told you,” Charles said. “I was in front. When we rode up I was supposed to shoot but I couldn’t. I crashed in the yard instead.”

She had wanted him to tell her sometimes people deserved it. She had wanted to hear he had done far worse. “You saying you ain’t never shot no one?” she asked. She had wanted him to tell her shit like that happened every single day and people just carried on like it was nothing.

“I never shot no one,” he said. “I liked riding my bike and selling stuff and helping Dave pay bills.” This was another revelation, something Baby Girl had never even considered.

“You helped Dave?”

“Of course!”

A Frito-Lay truck is what had forced Charles off the road, into the guardrail and jackknifing through the air, his brain slamming against his skull even before he’d hit the ground. The doctor with the wine-colored birthmark on her neck had said all the broken bones and internal bleeding were nothing compared with what the soft meat of his brain had gone through, that even if he’d been wearing a helmet it was almost guaranteed he’d have the same brain injuries. Charles had tried to pass the truck. None of it was anyone’s fault, not the truck driver’s or the fuckers who built the guardrail. No one to blame, no one to ride up on.

“But you hurt people before,” she said now. Her throat felt small, like it did when she was sick, like it had room for breath or words but not both.

“I don’t remember,” Charles said. He scooted again, put his heavy warm hands on her knees. New Charles would do that, touch her or Dave out of nowhere. The affection of a child, only since he was a man it always made Baby Girl uncomfortable. His face was oily, she could see the blackheads between his eyebrows, could see a nose hair hanging loose from his nostril. His eyes looked like they did when he was drunk, watery and bloodshot and far away, and though they were looking right into hers, they were as soulful as marbles.

Baby Girl moved her knees but his hands stayed with them, she knew he could probably feel how she no longer shaved her legs, and she was embarrassed. She had always wanted to be a baby sister he worried about, someone pretty and dumb and lusted after, not the pale, lumpy thing she was. His hands were moist, so hot they were sweating, and his breath was sharp. After their parents had died he had become a man. After Charles had his accident she had become the man. It made her flush with rage, the unfairness of it all, the mourning that never fucking stopped.