Chapter 11: Pretty

11. Pretty

In my dream I was walking through a meadow with purple flowers and sunshine, holding hands with someone. For some reason my head wouldn’t turn to see who it was, but the hand felt soft. Allison walked within me and felt uneasy about it being a girl, wondered if it might be Brittany, and that re-ignited her guilt over that night and what she had done to Brittany’s reputation. I just relished the warmth of another hand in mine.

My first thought upon waking was embarrassment. The girl with the beautiful skin and the long slender hands had caught me looking at her, caught me watching her undress. Did she know about me? That I one of those who are attracted to girls. For some reason admitting that to myself didn’t spawn the struggle that it seemed to ignite in Allison, even though we both knew that she was really the same way. Of course her father had never been my father, and that changed everything. I must have had parents who shaped me at some time, but I didn’t remember anything about them or their thoughts on such things.

The embarrassment lingered for a while, but then I remembered her laughter at the end. I remembered the way she wiggled her hips as she slid her jeans down to her ankles. She had known that I was there all along and had been putting on a show for me, teasing me. And there had been joy in her laughter. Maybe she didn’t see me as a pervert at all. Maybe she had even noticed the way in which I had been noticing her, and didn’t think that was such a bad idea.

I decided to take a shower. I had taken one on as part of my initial intake into Holshue House, a shower in a private bath which had which had been preceded by a cavity inspection performed by Ms. Slanick herself. She had stood there and watched me the whole time, and then also watched me getting dressed into my regular clothes from the orange jumpsuit I had worn in jail. At that time I was still too numb to object to the intrusion. I was just thankful that it wasn’t the sleazy van driver.

There had been no shower since then. I had not cared about the way that I smelled, but today was somehow different. I wanted to take a shower, to once again be attractive. It was as if there had been forgiveness from a higher power in the laughter of my next door neighbor, and the fun of her little tease. Maybe I was nearly ready to forgive myself for what I had done to Allison and me with that crazy night. Allison kept herself locked away, dealing with other issues.

I had heard that there was a schedule the girls on the floor kept to avoid having to encounter each other in the gang shower, but I wasn’t yet privy to that, so I was just going to go for it. That was when I realized that not only did I smell a little rank, but the hair on my legs and armpits had been growing out. I searched around in my stuff for my razor, but of course there was no razor. There had been words about not allowing knives or other sharp objects at Holshue House because of the danger that we might try to harm ourselves, or others. Now I realized that it meant that we would have to become hairy – all of us. But I hadn’t really noticed it on anyone else. Maybe there was a secret. I didn’t yet have any friends close enough to share secrets, so I knew that I would just have to be hairy.

Luckily it was early and the bathroom was completely empty when I hung up my robe and walked into the musty tiles of the shower. I hadn’t stood totally naked in such an open area where anyone could walk in on me since I was in elementary school and had been part of the YMCA swim team, since long before I developed. But the water seemed to wash away all those concerns as I felt it pouring over my body, Allison’s body, in mighty sudsy streams. If only we could wash away our sins of our past so easily.

As I washed my hair and all the rest of my now hairy self, I pushed the memory of that night back into a corner, delighting in my own hairiness, running my fingers up my legs to feel the prickly stubs, and then finding the contrasting smooth skin of my butt. I remembered her butt from the night before, or what I had seen of it through those salmon panties. It was more muscular than mine, but curving out more. I closed my eyes to better recall, but then suddenly everything flashed into that image that looks like an old-fashioned photographic negative, the way that light lingers on the back of your eyelids when you have been staring at something bright, the effect that had happened when she turned off the light on me as I watched in the mirror of my window.

The negative vision suddenly brought back the accident again, and Brianna’s half-naked body underneath me. I had been conscious when I did that, crawling up onto her to feel her breasts, to kiss her lips. And then there was another brief memory of the fireman’s big hand lifting me off. I think that I cried out “No” because I didn’t want to leave the warmth of her body under mine.

Now, here in the musty bathroom, surrounded about by dirt-encrusted walls, I dreamed of knowing that warmth for real, only the kind where genuine affection was returned. I was going to be pretty.

A whirl of cooler air hit my back. I spun around to see Holshue House’s only Asian-American girl staring at me, standing at the entrance to the shower, wrapped in a towel. I felt a rush of embarrassment at having myself totally uncovered, massaging my butt, in front of a total stranger. And I must have intruded into what was usually her shower time slot. “Sorry,” I muttered as she withdrew back to the other part of the bathroom.

I hurriedly shut off the shower and wrapped myself in my own towel. My wet hair still dripping onto my shoulders, I pushed past her with eyes down, and back to my cubicle to dig through my clothes, still focused on the idea of becoming pretty.

I had been wearing the same jeans and t-shirt for nearly a week. Such clothes were pretty much the uniform of Holshue House. Now it was the time for a change. I wanted someone to look at me, to notice me again. I was determined to be pretty, and Allison, although timid about it, wanted it just as much.

My mother had included a short-sleeved dress in the clothes she had packed, a yellow one. Perhaps black would have been more appropriate at the time, but the color choice was probably deliberate on my mother’s part, feeling that the brighter color would cheer Allison up. The thought that her mother cared brought a warm ripple down through our chest. Perhaps she didn’t approve of all that we had done, but the woman still understood pretty. Perhaps she wasn’t as disapproving as Allison seemed to believe.

We weren’t really allowed make-up. Perhaps whoever made up the rules thought that a mascara brush could become deadly wielded in the wrong hands. But down in the bottom of my duffle I did find some lip gloss, a dark pink with a bit of sparkle. There was no mirror in my room, but I carefully applied it by touch, and then tried to catch enough of my reflection in the window glass to make sure that I hadn’t over-done it.

As I finished dressing I ran my palm once again up my hair legs. It’s hard to feel sexy with hairy legs and pits, but I knew that none of the other girls had been able to shave either, so we were all in the same boat. It was just that theirs were always hidden with the jeans and socks. I decided I was going to go ahead and be in-your-face about mine, and not give a shit, while at the same time praying that the girl with the beautiful skin wouldn’t be too repulsed.

In therapy I once again was sitting directly across from that girl, but I kept my eyes low, never raising them to look into her face. I did study those long slender fingers and the skin of her hands, fascinated, attracted, wanting to touch.

I also managed not to interact when Judy asked questions, responding with a quiet, “Fine,” now and then. I wanted her to look at me, and at the same time I didn’t want her to know that I wanted her to look. I wondered if other girls at Holshue House felt these desires for one another. Was this considered normal or totally taboo in this all-girl world? Did other girls feel the desire for her? And had she teased others the way that she had me the night before? Maybe she didn’t mean anything by it.

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In American History class, Mrs. Dickinson had moved on up to the Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion up in Virginia. Her monotone seemed hardly fitting for something where people were killed. People were killed. White people were killed. How many black slaves had been beaten to death to before that? And how could so many people have known that it was just wrong? So many were enslaved, like four million people, and yet it continued year after year. An outrage was brewing deep inside me. No one seemed to ask why it was allowed, why no one wanted to scream about the injustice. Instead everyone here in American History let Mrs. Dickinson drone on in her monotone, as if it hadn’t really happened.

In English we were still “discussing” Jane Eyre. I still hadn’t read the book. No one else seemed to be discussing anything either. Perhaps none of us had read the book, and perhaps Mr. Perkins knew that. I assumed that there would be a test over this stuff eventually, and I would probably fail the test, but maybe none of that mattered once you know you’re going to be imprisoned for another six years. Would anyone really care if I knew Jane Eyre when I left this place as a full-grown adult with a prison record?

The one face that seemed to be truly engaged with what Mr. Perkins was saying was the black girl, the one with the very dark skin, Michele. She sat on the front edge of her seat, taking in every comment that the teacher was making about character development and symbolism. Sometimes she nodded in understanding. If anyone in the class had read the book it was probably her.

The girl with the beautiful skin and long slender hands, sat behind me in English class. I couldn’t see her but I knew that she could see me, and I imagined her looking at me from behind throughout the whole class. I had thought that perhaps I would be very brave and talk to her when the class dismissed, but she was gone by the time I had gathered my books and turned around. Perhaps it didn’t matter. After all, what would I have said, “You have a nice ass.” Or “I like your boobs?” And then I realized that it wasn’t just those things at all that was pulling me to her. I liked her presence, the way she carried herself in this world, as if she truly belonged.

In the cafeteria I didn’t see her either as I carried my tray in search of a table. There was an empty seat at a table where Erika sat with two other girls, one of them bleached blonde like her, and the other an overweight brunette. Erika’s eyes gestured an invitation towards the seat, but I just knew that I couldn’t. Not after my visit to the basement the day before. And I didn’t want her to know that I knew her secret, the boy that she was somehow meeting down there.

Dark-skinned Michele sat at a table on the other side of the room, eating by herself. And it looked more like somewhere I wanted  to be.

She didn’t look up when I sat down. Maybe the message was that I wasn’t welcome, but I wasn’t going to be forced to join Erika’s little group, and I wasn’t going to just go away. I grabbed a white packet of sugar from the clear plastic box in the middle of the table, tore it open and dumped the whole thing across my heartless broccoli. There was still just silence even though sugar on broccoli was something that would normally draw some kind of a comment, derisive or humor..

She finally spoke without looking up, “You tryin’ to be my friend to relieve your guilt about being white?”

It hit like a slap, and I had nothing to say. My second forkful of sweetened broccoli hung mid-air over the plate, bits of it falling onto the gray naked hamburger. I was trying to ask myself if what she said was true, and not feeling particularly like going that deep. It was the kind of question that might take hours of self-examination. “Just trying to be friendly,” I muttered.

“Well, I don’t need no fuckin’ friends here,” she snarled so quietly that no else could hear.

Tears began to form in the corners of my eyes. “I just … just want to eat my lunch. That’s all.”

There was a full minute or two of silence as I hate four more forkfuls of the broccoli and two of the burger.

Then she spoke again, “I seen you coming up out of the basement and I know that you puked, like a little whimp. You think we oughta call you puke-face?”

“No,” I answered, determined not to let her get to me, but knowing that I was on the verge of tears.

She smiled a little, satisfied that she had gotten me sufficiently cowered. “You saw them, didn’t you?”

“Saw who?” I suspected that it was probably supposed to be “whom” but I wasn’t going to come across like some perfect-English snob.

“The ghosts. They all through this house, but the ones down there, they’re the worst.”

“Yes. I mean, yes, I saw them. That’s …”

“You know, Erika and her friends are going to give you shit for talking to me. You’re kinda breaking the rules sitting here like this.”

“What rules?”

“Her rules. ‘Bout the mixin’ of the races. She’s going to say something nasty to you about it. Just the way it is.”

“I don’t care.”

“They might beat you up. You really kill somebody?”

“No. I mean, not on purpose. I was drunk and I crashed the car – that’s all.” I knew I wasn’t going to tell her about the whole thing with Brianna, and the humiliation I had left her with.

“Well, I did.”

That was enough to stop the conversation. No one in therapy ever talked about what they had done to be sent to Holshue House. And this left me wondering if she really did, or if she was just wanting to scare me off, because I still didn’t seem to be at all welcome at this table with her.

“And now this place, it wants to kill me.” She grinned.

So she was speaking in riddles. After all, Holshue House was more like a boarding school with barbed wire than a prison. “You don’t like the food or something?” I asked, still struggling to make some conversation.

“Food’s fine. It’s the house. I ain’t been the basement myself, but I can hear them down there. I know.”

“You know what?” I tried to eat another bite of my lunch, but it was getting difficult to casually eat while she talking this shit.

“The house. This is a place is for clean pretty white girls like you, and I been sent here to die.”

“I’m not all that clean.” I thought about what I had done with Brianna, the perversion that Allison’s father thought possessed us that night that he caught us in James’s room. I thought of my unshaved legs which were visible under the skirt of my yellow dress.

Part of me wanted to lash out and tell her all of that, to tell her that I was just as filthy as anyone. But then the irony of the fact that I had showered and put a dress this day hit me, and I stopped. Telling people too much could backfire easily.

Michele stood up with her tray to leave, “Well, Killah,” in saying the name she perfectly mimicked Erika’s tone, “just stay outa my shit. And now you gotta watch your back, because just talking to me may make some people think you picking the wrong side.”

She left. Behind me I could feel the eyes of Erika and her two friends locked onto the back of my head. I let Michele get out of the room and then took my tray with the unfinished oatmeal back to the dish return, looking at the pastel walls, wondering if a house really could kill someone.