Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

Baby Girl parked but left the keys in the ignition. Always ready to take off again. She walked slow with her hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched, staring at the ground, drifting in and out of the headlights’ glare. Every now and then she bent to pick up a bit of newspaper, crumpled receipts, a palm frond gone brown. Kindling for the small fire Perry knew she was fixing to make. Dumped it all in one of the carts left outside, held her lighter to the palm frond, which took to the fire like that was all it was waiting for to look alive again. Bright orange rib cage of a thing, quickly turning black. “Shit!” Baby Girl hissed, and ran back to the car.

Perry watched the tiny curls of flame for as long as she could as they drove off. Myra was always talking about itches, how people were either scratchers or ignorers. The scratchers poke and poke at it, even though it makes it itch more. The scratchers love the itch and they love the poking. It could go on forever but for the blood, and even then, it’s a small price to pay. That’s how nights with Baby Girl had gotten. None of it seemed to matter. The sun always came up.

They ditched the Mazda on the side of the highway, near the exit headed back to where they’d left Baby Girl’s car on a quiet street. Cars rushed by them as they walked along the shoulder, some honked, people on their way to work or home from work, probably none of them on the way back from an all-night bender like they had been on. Baby Girl made a visor of her hands to protect her face. She was so pale that even ten minutes in the sun could do her in. Even a weak sun like this one, set back behind a screen of gray. Even this sun would turn her red as a fire ant. “See you at school,” she said.

Perry nodded, turned down the road leading to her house. She was too tired to say anything back. She had to walk while Baby Girl got to drive home because she couldn’t risk Myra hearing the car, or worse, Jim seeing it on his way back from work.

Baby Girl honked as she rode past. Trying to get a rise. Perry ignored her, concentrating on how hard the asphalt felt under her feet. Every step a pounding. She walked through a few neighborhoods on her way to the trailer park, each dingier than the last, until she got to one of the nicer ones, brick homes with actual grass in the yards, no cars parked on the street, a man in a suit taking a mug of coffee to his car. Next would come the cul de sac of duplexes and apartments, pretty yellow siding and flower boxes, though the parking lot out front had cracks and potholes, and there weren’t any BMWs or Lexuses, just Nissans and Hyundais and maybe a Buick or two. Then there was the neighborhood of short, squat houses, skinny driveways, no sidewalks, shrubs and grass looking like they’d gone months without seeing to. Mostly old trucks parked out front, sometimes rickety-looking motorcycles. And finally her own neighborhood, if it could be called that, short rows of trailers leading up a small hill. Hers was three rows back. Perry knew what people thought when they heard the words trailer park . Dirty kids in dirty diapers, car parts, people drinking or hollering. But that wasn’t so true for where she lived. They had all those things, but never all at once, it seemed. And if you had a double-wide, like Myra and Jim did, it almost felt like a normal-size house. Perry didn’t love it, but it was home.

It was nearly seven thirty when she got there. Myra was still in bed, either because she had a day off or because she didn’t wake up when her alarm went off. Perry knew it was probably the second option, what with her having a beer last night. No telling how many came after.

The trailer was quiet and still; it felt to Perry like the preserved remains of a family long gone. Myra collected things, little colonies of shit, and displayed them all over the trailer. Along the windowsill behind the couch she had her group of vintage glass jars; dust had coated them long ago, so instead of reflecting light they just distilled it, held it like a glaze. The couch had its own grouping of pillows, embroidered with dog heads or sayings like COFFEE MADE ME DO IT and IT’S 5 O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE. Mostly pillows Myra picked up from the truck stop. They helped hide how worn the couch was, all its rips and tears, same went for the doilies Myra collected. The walls of the trailer were faux wood paneled, so cheap you couldn’t drive a nail through to hang up a school photo without the whole wall splitting and your picture frame falling to the floor in a shatter. Myra had grouped photos on top of the TV, on the floor in front of the TV, and on the bar leading into the kitchen. None of Perry past the age of eight, like time had stopped once Perry went into the fourth grade. Jim and Myra’s wedding photo in a huge scalloped frame, Myra in a pink pantsuit and Jim in a stiff white shirt, perched on the back of the easy chair against the wall. If you sat too hard it’d topple, and they had all learned how to sit just so, all learned to lean their heads back to hold it in place, all learned you sat in that chair as a last resort. It wasn’t like they all sat together much anyway, so there was usually plenty of room on the couch. Between the couch, the chair, the TV on its stand, and all the shit Myra arranged everywhere, there was about a two-foot path from the front door to the hallway off the bedrooms. Just enough to get by.

When Myra started bringing stuff home, Perry knew she was trying her hardest not to drink. And it worked, but it also held her feet to the fire. A constant reminder of the distraction she craved.

Jim would be pulling up soon to take Perry to school. She showered, mussed up her bed to make it look like she’d been in it. Maybe he wouldn’t know, though he probably would, but even so, Perry knew it was important to at least pretend for him. She got on the computer while she waited, listening for his truck.

There was a message from Jamey.

NO SUBJECT.

Perry girlie,

It has been a lonley nite without you. I got to turn in soon becos I have school in the morning. I guess so do you. Maybe your asleep???

Anyways, hope to talk to you tonite.

Jamey

It was a thrill having a friend like this, a friend Perry could pretend with when there came a need, but it was also a lot of work. Jamey had added her on Facebook months back, and she’d finally accepted his request on a night when Baby Girl couldn’t go out. His profile said he went to high school a few towns over. He played baseball and was all right looking from what Perry could tell.

Now he wanted to talk every single night. She had given him her phone number but he never called, just texted, because he had free texting but limited minutes. Part of Perry was waiting for the other shoe to drop, to find out it was Baby Girl or some jerk from school playing a joke.

In the meantime, it was fun to read what he had to say, especially when it got sexual, and it usually did. Ooooh baby. He loved to write that line. Ooooh. It almost got her to feel sorry for him.

Perry had been hoping the message was from Travis. Seeing Jamey’s message instead, seeing his need to talk to her, it was a need , bared naked and misspelled in a dumb Facebook message, it turned her stomach. Even worse was the fact that she had her own need, a need for Travis to like her, and she wasn’t no better than Jamey.

She looked away from the computer, away from Jamey’s message. The lumpy couch, the worn quilt covering the threadbare patch in the arm, the crocheted rug beaten nearly white over the years, the endless, endless army of glass figurines posing across every flat surface. The house felt empty despite the three people living in it. Myra filled it with stuff and more stuff.

Every time she got to thinking like this it was like time stopped and froze her right where she sat. She’d never leave this shabby, unloved room. The Perry that she was right then, that girl was trapped forever. Before she knew it she had a glass figurine of a rearing horse under her shoe, using her full weight to mash it into the linoleum. Why had she said that thing about Travis’s shoes?