Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

Then again, why had he acted like such a bitch about it?

She swept up the shattered horse, buried it under some paper towels in the trash can. At least six bottles in there, probably more around Myra’s bed. That answered that. She went back to the computer.

Jamey had left a comment on her newest profile picture. Haha your beatifull even with that hat on!! She had read one of Travis’s papers once during a group activity in English. He was a good speller.

Outside, Jim pulled up, honked once. Ever since he found out Perry had skipped a few times, Jim didn’t allow her to take the bus. “Jim, let her find her own way,” Myra had said, “trust me.” Perry could hear them through the wall. “Not when it comes to this,” Jim said. The next day, he’d driven her to school. And all the days after that.

Which didn’t mean Perry wasn’t still skipping. But at least Jim felt better.

PERRY’S HAIR WAS WET, she was neatly dressed, she had her book bag. Jim knew if he checked she’d have made it look like her bed was slept in, had probably even punched a dent into her pillow, but the deep purplish lines under her eyes told a different story. He knew she hadn’t slept at all.

She got into the car riding a wave of gray morning light. When the door shut, the light was gone. He felt sad about that, which meant he was just as exhausted as she must have been. “How was work?” she asked, but immediately turned her head to watch herself in the side mirror.

He wanted to tell her how he’d watched an inmate swallow mouthfuls of his own bright blood after he got in a fight with his roommate over toilet rights. Just gulp, and then his mouth would fill again, and then gulp. How Jim had held a roll of toilet paper up to the man’s mouth and it got half soaked. But he knew he’d never say things like that to her, and he knew it wouldn’t matter if he did.

Instead, in his usual quiet way, he said, “It was fine. Glad it’s over. How was your night?” He said it in an I know you weren’t in bed not one single second kind of way.

“Fine, glad it’s over,” Perry answered.

Now what did that mean, Jim wondered. Was she being cute? Or was she in trouble? But of course she was.

“You see your momma this morning?” Jim asked.

“Sure didn’t,” Perry said. “She was still in the bedroom with the door closed when I came — when I got up.”

Jim let the slip go. “I’ll check on her when I get back,” he said. “I probably forgot to set her alarm.”

They sat in silence the rest of the way there, and Jim was grateful for it. The prison was an ocean of sound. If you worked one of its cinder blocks out of the wall and held it up to your ear you’d hear waves and waves of men — men shouting, crying, moaning. After that, even silence was a roar.

“Hey,” he said. “You want McDonald’s?” This was something they did on special occasions. Fridays. Or when Perry got a good grade. This morning was the opposite of a special occasion, but that seemed to Jim even more of a reason than a B+.

“Hell yes ,” Perry said. She finally turned and looked at him. He could see what she’d look like as a grown woman: still pretty, but worn. Like a lily left on a tabletop for too long. Her green eyes were red in the corners. Then she smiled a little, her funny tooth resting on her lower lip, and she looked like a kid again. He filled with love for that kid.

“I could eat a whole hog,” she said.

“Don’t say hell,” Jim said.

WHEN MYRA FIRST STARTED bringing Jim around, Perry thought he was some kind of scary giant who’d crush her like a soda can under his fist. This was after Myra’s other boyfriend, Donald, had finally gone on his way. Donald was a scary toothpick type who’d crushed her with his mean mouth and his needle teeth and his beer breath.

But Jim was different. Looked Perry in the eyes the whole time she’d be talking. Cooked dinner, brought Myra flowers. Cheesy red roses, not a lot of creativity there, but it’s the thought like they say. And he never drank. Perry was eleven when he came around, twelve when they got married. They moved into his trailer because it was a double and in a nicer park than the one they’d lived in before, an old Airstream with a single cot Perry slept on while Myra lolled on the two-cushion loveseat. He had a little garden out front, mostly strawberries and forget-me-nots, and he and Myra hung a wheel of chimes outside their window to christen the occasion.

Those chimes didn’t last. It was like Myra didn’t realize they’d make music every time a breeze blew by. They were gone after a week. And Jim’s calm didn’t fix her shit. She’d still miss a shift about once a week at Byron’s Truck Stop — where she made doughnuts and sold truckers and teenagers their gas — because she’d be doing her drinking.

Perry tried to feel lucky that Myra didn’t drink all the time, just some of the time, tried to feel lucky that even when she did drink she kept it tidy. No public scenes, no weeping calls from a bar like Donald used to do. Myra just goes to her and Jim’s room and drinks in bed till she don’t know what’s what.

Perry knew it was because of a sadness of some kind, or a noise she didn’t want to hear. She had tried to get to the bottom of it, pin down the reasons why, but the truth was there was no list of reasons, unless that list included everything and everybody .

Myra had taught Perry about makeup and clothes and hair. Took care of her when she was sick. Smelled like Oil of Olay (her night cream) and limes (her Coronas). Once Baby Girl had called her a drunk-ass drunk and Perry socked her dead in her arm. Had meant to get her on the chin. It was the last thing Baby Girl ever said about Myra, and in return Perry stopped doing her impression of Charles in front of the TV.

Perry loved Myra the way any child loves their mother, only she could see her mom more clearly than just any daughter could. Myra wasn’t some smeary presence who lived only for her kid. Perry was just a midpoint on her timeline. It was similar to how Perry saw Baby Girl. Both of them had their flaws, but Perry had her own, too.

She and Jim didn’t have that same understanding, but that was a good thing. Jim wanted Perry to hold on tight to her innocence until she arrived safely into adulthood. It was nice to be seen that way, like she was unsmudged and unwrinkled and flapping dry in a clean spring air. Until someone pulls the pins and what, it’s time to lay flat on a bed? Was that what adulthood was? If so, she’d been an adult since she was fourteen.

Jim pulled into the Walmart parking lot so they could turn around and go back toward the McDonald’s. It was strange seeing it in the light of day, knowing she and Baby Girl had just been thugging there not hours before. Perry almost wanted to ask Jim could he drive around back, just real quick. She wanted to see the tire marks from the doughnuts. The embers from the fire. Had it actually all happened? It seemed like a dream she’d feel dumb for having.

WHEN BABY GIRL GOT HOME Charles was eating Cheerios out of a mixing bowl. “This is good,” he told her. She could see the open bag of sugar on the table in front of him, a ladle sticking out of it. No wonder it was good.

“Hey, Charles,” she said, “you make some for me?”

“Oh my Lord,” he said. This was his new thing. Oh my Lord. He had gotten it from their uncle Dave, who they lived with, and who had found God after Charles got hit by a car while on his motorcycle a little over a year ago. Dave had been out all night that night, which used to be common, had come home to a police officer waiting in his driveway. Ran right to church after that. Baby Girl could understand. Church answers a lot of questions for you, so you don’t have to yourself. Back in the day she used to go to church and it wasn’t all that bad, she played bells in the kids’ choir, ganked Danishes to eat with her little friends before Sunday school, bowed her head to pray to a God she imagined looked like Santa Claus in his pajamas.