Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts

I nodded and Sharon sniffed. Byron spent the whole party inspecting his boots. Kim and LaNell sat on the couch with paper plates on their laps. Neither one looked at anybody or said anything, except once when Kim did his barfing-dog imitation.

“I think Dion is gross,” Sharon said.

Chuckette and I agreed immediately.

“Gross,” said Chuckette.

“Gross,” I said.

LaNell coughed politely.

Since the whole valley seemed to have me fated for Chuckette Morris, I’d gotten the lowdown from Maurey. Chuckette didn’t have a tremendous amount to look forward to after the seventh grade. Her father, Don, worked for the phone company. Jackson already had dial phones and the outlying areas would follow by spring.

Don Morris once sent an entire paycheck to Oral Roberts. The family had to live on Wheaties and potato chips for a month. Chuckette had a younger sister named Sugar, who was destined to take everything Chuckette ever got away from her. Even at the party, Sugar hung around on the periphery of the action, going through the stack of 45 rpm records and telling Chuckette which ones mattered. I wanted to see Sugar naked.

Chuckette’s turn at the game came and we both said, “Mark.” The last thing I remember before they closed the door was Maurey looking at me from the back of the group. She held her fingers up in an A-Okay sign. Or maybe it was something dirty, I don’t know. I’d hoped she might be a little bit jealous.

“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Chuckette asked. Girls are all the time asking me that question. What do I look like anyway?

I nodded but it was way black and she couldn’t see my head. A tiny crack of light came under the door, enough so the penny in one of her loafers reflected a brassy color.

“Have you?” I asked.

“Lots. At church camp last summer three boys kissed me in one night. Deacon Saltzer said they would go to hell.”

“You told the deacon?”

“I can’t lie. If I lied he would have sent me to hell.”

“What’s hell like?”

“Are you going to kiss me or not? We’ve only got five minutes.”

“I don’t want to go to hell.”

“I was twelve last summer. I’m thirteen now. It’s okay to kiss when you’re a teenager.”

“Where’s your face?”

In the dark, Chuckette’s face seemed almost regular. She didn’t have pimples or zits or anything weird like that. Those would come later. I took her by the shoulders and kissed. The poor girl had nothing worth squat in her life, and I felt bad because of that, so I gave her a real kiss. Heck, I admit it, I got into the deal some. I’d never kissed anyone except Maurey, and Chuckette’s lips felt different. They were stiffer. The only weird part was when I touched the retainer.

Chuckette put out a little scream and bit my tongue. I yelped and jumped back, banging into the door. Voices came from outside the closet.

“What’s going on in there?” from LaNell, “Go get ’em, Sammy,” from Maurey, and Dothan, “No copping feels.”

Chuckette kind of whimpered. “That’s disgusting.”

“It was a kiss.”

“With your tongue out? It’s all wet.” We were flattened against opposite walls of the closet, as far away from each other as we could possibly be—about ten inches.

“Is that how people kiss back East?” she asked.

“Sure.” I didn’t know but I had to convince her I was normal and she wasn’t.

“Your mouth was open.”

“That’s how you do it, Charlotte.”

“That’s not how Southern Baptists do it.”

When I leaned to the right, a hanger bonked me in the forehead. My tongue felt stung. I didn’t know if I was bleeding or not and I sure couldn’t go back to the party with red dribble on my chin. I felt around until I found a coat or something and blotted my face and tongue.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Waiting for our five minutes to end.”

Chuckette started sniffling, as if she were trying to hold back tears. When I didn’t do anything, she sniffled a good honky one.

“What’s the matter?”

“The party’s ruined.”

“The party’s ruined because I gave you a French kiss?”

“Is it Eastern or French? Make up your mind.” I didn’t say anything so she kept talking between sniffles. “Daddy said it would end like this.”

“Crying in the closet?”

“He said boys would try to get me passionate so they could make me pregnant and ruin my life and make me go to hell.”

“You don’t sound passionate to me.”

She sniffed a few more times and blew her nose on something. “I wasn’t ready that time. Let’s try again.”

When I came home I found the toaster oven in the front yard. Someone had evidently stood on the porch and heaved it. I picked up the screen deal you put the food on, but left the rest.

The first I noticed when I went inside was a pair of toilet paper tubes up Les’s nostrils. Lydia’s voice came from the kitchen. “When was the last time you did something spontaneous? Just cut loose regardless of the consequences?”

Hank’s voice answered. “Every action has consequences.”

“You’re an Indian. Indians are supposed to get drunk and be stupid.”

“If I’m stupid I go to jail.”

I walked in the kitchen to find Lydia sitting at the table, rolling eight or nine eggs under her hands. Evidence of several more were splatted on the floor at Hank’s feet. Alice lapped at the mess. I set the screen from the toaster oven in the sink.

“Hi, Mom, I’m home.”

She sent me the look and rolled an egg slowly off the side of the table. It went into a slow motion effect as it fell, then it made a pop sound and blew up. The yolk didn’t break.

Hank sat in the other chair with his hands on the varnished wood tabletop, his thumbs touching each other. “When you’re stupid, you get shipped off to live with the common people for a few months. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is you might lose your trust fund.”

Lydia rolled another egg off the edge. Pop. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Dr Pepper. “Either you guys want one?” They didn’t look at me.

“I wish just once you’d do something you hadn’t planned to do,” Lydia said.

I opened my pop and sat on the milk crate to listen. It took ten minutes of back and forth to figure the situation, but near as I can tell, they’d gone with Delores and Ft. Worth to a new pizza place outside Jackson and Delores and Lydia got in a vicious fight about how many glasses of beer come in a pitcher.

Hank didn’t back up Lydia with enough enthusiasm, or maybe he took the what-does-it-matter stance. Anyhow, he’d failed her and Lydia didn’t cut slack when men failed her.

“You’re passive as wet toast,” Lydia said.

“Who sat on her couch for three months, refusing to accept where she was.”

“Who lives in a twelve-foot trailer with a kitchen table that makes into a bed.”

“I do.” Hank’s face had gone rock. I was impressed.

“I’m not about to spend my life waiting for free-cheese day at the county extension office,” Lydia said.

“Who asked you to?”

“You are beneath my dignity.”

Hank reached across the table. I thought he was going to hit her and I think Lydia did too—she paled real quick. Instead, Hank swept all the eggs off in one swoop of the arm.

“Take your dignity and stuff it up your ass.”

Lydia’s color came back. “How dare you resort to violence in my house.”

Hank stood up, knocking his chair back. “You want spontaneous violence?”

“Let’s see it, big man.”

The distance between me and Hank’s head was about six feet. I figured if he lit into her, I could knock him cold with the Dr Pepper bottle before his second punch.