Janet Fitch - White Oleander

But now that I’d shadowed Marvel in and out of malls, heard the wall-to-wall canned Christmas carols, experienced Marvel’s blinking Christmas light earrings, I was starting to come around to my mother’s point of view.

I sat in the dark in the playhouse and imagined I was with her now, and we were in Lapland, in a cottage of painted wood, where the winter was nine months long and we wore felt boots and drank reindeer milk and celebrated the solstice. We tied forks and metal pans to the trees to frighten evil spirits, drank fermented honey and took mushrooms we collected in the fall and had visions. The reindeer followed us when we tried to pee, craving the salt of our bodies.

In the house, Ed’s brother George was dressed as Santa, pink drunk. I could hear his laughter over the other voices. Ed sat on the couch next to him, even drunker, but he was a quiet drunk. Justin got a road race set that cost Ed a week’s pay, Caitlin had a plastic ride-in Barbie car. All my gifts came from the 99-cent store. A flashlight on a keychain. A sweatshirt with a teddy bear on it. I was wearing the sweatshirt. Marvel insisted. I smoked my Tiparillo and turned the flashlight on and off, just a heartbeat ahead of Rudolph’s nose on Marvel’s rooftop Santa display. We were having a secret conversation, Rudy and I.

I thought how easily you could kill yourself when you were drunk. Take a bath, fall asleep, drown. No turtle would come floating by to rescue you, no spotter plane would find you. I took my mother’s knife and played johnny johnny johnny on the playhouse floor. I was drunk, stabbed myself every few throws. I held my hand up and there was satisfaction at seeing my blood, the way there was when I saw the red gouges on my face that people stared at and turned away. They were thinking I was beautiful, but they were wrong, now they could see how ugly and mutilated I was.

I pressed the knife to my wrist, drew it softly across, imagining how it would feel, but I knew that wasn’t the way. You opened the vein from top to bottom. You had to consider the underlying structure.

What was the underlying structure of this, that’s what I needed to know: Joey Bishop singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” poets sleeping in cots bolted to walls, and beautiful women lying under men who ate three dinners in a row. Where children hugged broken-necked giraffes and cried, or else drove around in plastic Barbie cars, and men with missing fingers longed for fourteen-year-old lovers, while women with porn-star figures cried out for the Holy Spirit.

If I could have one wish, Jesus, it was to let my mother come get me. I was tired of sucking the sails. Tired of being alone, of walking and eating and thinking for myself. I wasn’t going to make it after all.

Slivers of light escaped through the shutters of Olivia’s house. No men tonight. They were home with their good wives or girlfriends. Who wanted a whore on Christmas?

Oh Christ. I’d been spending so much time with Marvel, it was starting to rub off. Next thing I knew I’d be making racist jokes. Olivia was Olivia. She had some nice pieces of furniture and some clocks, a rug and a stuffed parrot named Charlie, while I had some books and a box, and a torn cashmere sweater, a poster of animal turds. Not that much different. Neither of us had much, when you got down to it.

So I went next door. Nobody would notice tonight. Her yard smelled of chives. I knocked, heard her footsteps. She opened the door. The expression of shock on her face reminded me she hadn’t seen me since November.

She pulled me inside and locked the door. She was wearing a silver-gray satin nightgown and peignoir. She’d been listening to the music I’d heard that first night, the woman with tears in her voice. Olivia sat on the couch and tugged at my hand but I resisted her. She could hardly look at me. Scarface, the kids said. Frank N. Stein.

“Good God, what happened?”

I wanted to think of something clever, something cool and sarcastic. I wanted to hurt her. She’d let me down, she’d abandoned me. She didn’t think twice. “Where were you?” I asked.

“England. What happened to your face?”

“Did you have a good time in England?” I picked up the CD box on the table, a black woman with a face full of light, white flower behind her ear. She sang something sad, about moonlight through the pines. Billie Holiday, it said. I could feel Olivia staring at my face, the scars on my arms where my sleeves crept up. I wasn’t beautiful anymore. Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound. She wouldn’t want me around.

“Astrid, look at me.”

I put the box down. There was a new paperweight, grainy French blue with white raised figures. It was heavy and cool in my hand. I wondered what she’d do if I dropped it on the stone tabletop, let it go smash. I was drunk but not drunk enough. I put it down. “Actually, it’s a dog’s world. Did you know that? They do anything they want. It was my birthday too. I’m fifteen.”

“What do you want, Astrid?” she asked me quietly, beautiful as always, still elegant, that smooth unbroken face.

I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted her to hold me, feel sorry for me. I wanted to hit her. I wanted her not to know how much I needed her, I wanted her to promise never to go away again.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You aren’t really,” I said. “Don’t pretend.”

“Astrid! What did I do, go out of town?” Her pink palms were cupped, what was she expecting, for me to fill them? With what? Water? Blood? She smoothed her satin skirt. “It’s not a crime. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, okay? But it’s not like I did something wrong.”

I sat down on the couch, put my feet on the coffee table among the antiques. I felt like a spoiled child, and I liked it. She shifted toward me on the couch, I could smell her perfume, green and familiar. “Astrid, look at me. I am sorry. Why can’t you believe me?”

“I don’t buy magic. I’m not one of your tricks. Look, you got something to drink? I want to get really drunk,” I said.

“I was going to have a coffee and cognac, and I’ll let you have a small one.”

She left me there listening to Billie Holiday sing while she made clicks and clatters in the kitchen. I didn’t offer to help. In a minute, she was back with glasses, a bottle of brandy, and coffee on a tray. So perfect in every way, even the way she put the tray on the table, keeping her back straight, bending her knees.

“Look,” she said, sitting down next to me. “Next time I’ll send you a postcard, how’s that. Wish you were here, love . . . Brandy.” She poured cognac into the snifters.

I drank mine down in a swallow, not even trying to savor it. It was probably five hundred years old, brought over on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. She looked down into her glass, swirled it, smelled it, sipped.

“I’m not the world’s most considerate person,” Olivia said. “I’m not the type who sends birthday cards. But I’ll try, Astrid. It’s the best I can do.” She reached her hand to touch my face but couldn’t bring herself to do it. The hand fell on my shoulder instead. I ignored it there.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Olivia said, removing it, sitting back against the pillows. “Don’t sulk. You’re acting just like a man.”

I looked away and caught our reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, the beauty of the room, of Olivia in her silver nightgown like mercury in moonlight. Then there was this wretched blond girl who looked like she had wandered in from another movie, her face scored with welts, her 99-cent sweatshirt, her unbrushed hair.

“I brought you something from England,” Olivia said. “You want to see it?”

I wouldn’t look at her. What, did she think presents would make it all better? But I couldn’t help watching that beautiful slow walk as she went into the back of the house, silver satin trailing her like a pet dog. I poured myself some more brandy, swirled and watched the liquid separate into trails and meet in the amber pool at the bottom. The smell was fire and fruit, and it burned as it went down. I felt just the way Billie Holiday sounded, like I’d cried all I could and it wasn’t enough.