Girl
by Kerri Quinn

The summer of 1968, my mother, Susan, was beautiful. And thin. She taped pictures of Twiggy to the refrigerator, dyed her hair strawberry blonde and ate Saltine crackers while sitting on the fire escape watching the river swallow the night sky. I sat next to her on the cool black metal, my younger sister, Jane sitting between my legs. I took pieces of my mother’s smooth hair and pressed them against my face and inhaled. Back then she didn’t talk much. Talking was my job. And so was taking care of Jane.

Most nights Susan went out with her boyfriend, Frank, who drove a convertible Cadillac Eldorado, and once bragged to us that he could chew up to five pieces of gum at a time. I wasn’t impressed. Jane and I stayed up late, making popcorn and watching TV. I made up stories about fireflies, monster-sized rats residing in the garbage cans outside our apartment, and our father who had moved to Boston after Jane was born. I told her it was her fault that he had left, but she never believed me. Even though I was six when he left, his face had become a bunch of fuzzy lines, and I couldn’t remember the sound of his voice.

One night we fell asleep and forgot about the popcorn on the stove. We woke to an apartment filled with smoke and two firemen banging on the front door, Susan and Frank wide-eyed and breathless behind them. She pushed her way in; her hair was long and loose around her shoulders and her white shorts stained green. When the firemen left, she grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Margaret, grow up. You’re thirteen.”

It was around the time we moved to Fordham Road so we could be closer to Susan’s job at the publishing house, the same summer I found a blue knit cap in an empty parking lot down the street from our apartment building on Fordham Road. I gave it to Jane and she wore it everyday, even to bed. June slipped into July and we spent our days on the front stoop. Jane in that cap pulled down over her ears, and me wearing Susan’s clothes when she wasn’t home. We watched water from the fire hydrant cascade down on the bodies of shirtless kids, and waited for Susan to come home from work. We weren’t allowed to play in the water. “It’s dirty,” she said. One night when I complained, she said, “Frank and I will take you to the country sometime,” she said. “It’s not so hot, and the grass is soft there, not like city grass.”

Some afternoons Rubén, the guy with the tight curly hair who lived in the apartment below us, would wait on the stoop for her, too. He’d tell us stories about his family in Cuba and how they ate tortillas instead of bread, and sometimes he’d sing songs to us in Spanish.

“What are they about?” I asked one afternoon.

“Beauty and love,” he said.

He stopped singing when he saw Susan walk up the block, sunglasses swinging in her hand, her hips twisting from side to side. He stood and bowed. She stepped by him and up the steps. “Rubén, leave me alone,” she said. “Girls. Let’s go.”  She never looked back, and I followed, trying to walk like she did. In the elevator she told me not to talk to men, especially black men. “He’s from Cuba,” I said. She told me it was the same thing.

The morning of July 4th I woke early. We were going to the parade downtown and the night before, Jane and I had painted American flags on the back of cardboard we tore from some of Susan’s old high school notebooks. We left the flags on the kitchen table beneath the fan to dry.  I walked into Susan’s room, which was smaller than ours, her twin bed pushed against the wall. A woven tapestry of some lake in Italy hung from the slender closet door; on the nightstand there was a stout reading lamp, draped with a sheer black scarf. Susan stood in front of the mirror, holding a red dress against her, a price tag hanging from its sleeve. She smoothed back her hair, swayed the bottom of the skirt, whispering quietly to herself. 

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To the country.” She put the dress down on the bed and picked up a scarf, splashed with red and orange, from a pile of clothes and twisted it in her hands.  I stood in the doorway, my fists pressed against the inside of my nightshirt. I wanted to hit her.

“What about the parade?” I said. “Why don’t you ever take us with you?

In the bathroom down the hall, Jane flushed the toilet; she never shut the door. She turned the faucet on and ran the water briefly, pretending to wash her hands.

“Not this time,” Susan said.

“Not any time,” I said.

Jane came into the room, carrying Larry, the pet caterpillar she kept in a glass Coke bottle stuffed with leaves and broken sticks. She placed it on the floor, picked up the red dress and slipped it over her head. She stood, back to me, so I could fasten the zipper. The dress trailed down to the floor and covered her feet.

“Go to hell,” I said to Susan, and crossed my arms.

She pressed the edge of her palm against her forehead and sat on the bed; Jane spun around. She had that dumb look on her face. Eyes wide open, lips parted. It was the same look she gave me when I told her not to talk to the old man who wore army fatigues and lived behind the used car lot across the street. I could hear our next door neighbors talking behind the thin walls that separated our apartments, and then water rushing through the pipes. Susan, with her legs crossed, rubbed the tops of her feet, and quietly told me to go away.

I pushed Jane down, because I could, and ran into the kitchen, took the flags, opened the window and tossed them out. The white paint we had used for the stars was still wet and stained the tips of my fingers. Jane was behind me and screamed “Margaret!” as I watched the flags fall past white socks and men’s cotton briefs hanging from clotheslines between our building and the next. She hit me square in the back. I caught my breath, tightened my fists. “Go,” I said. She did and I was surprised. The center of my back ached. For a little kid she could hit hard.

Dresser drawers closed in the other room. Susan’s voice was muffled as Jane cried. I dragged a kitchen chair to the window and opened a matchbox on the sill, and lit them one by one and threw them out the window.

“You’re not supposed to play with matches,” Jane said. She was holding Larry, her face red, and her cap tilted to one side, her bangs sweaty and plastered to her forehead. She looked ridiculous. My stomach hurt.

“Come say good-bye,” Susan said. She stood in front of the mirror in the hallway, tying a scarf around her neck. This one had swirls of blue and yellow. Her fingers trembled; her lips were thin. “I’ll be back before you go to bed,” she said and opened the door. “I promise.” My heart jumped, and I stood not moving, not wanting her to go. She kissed Jane on top of her crazy blue cap and me on top of my head. Susan smelled salty like the ocean. “Don’t make popcorn,” she said and closed the door softly behind her.

Jane dragged the stool from under the hall vanity and pushed it against the door. She climbed it, one leg at a time, and fastened the security chain.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Change your clothes.”

“I’m not going with you.”

“Then I’ll leave you here.”

“No,” she said and sat on the floor.

I sat down next to her on the cool, scratched linoleum. “We’ll go to the park,” I said. “Get Larry.” I put my hand on her back and pushed her up. We changed into our street clothes, our backs facing each other. Jane grabbed her sneakers and slipped them on. I placed my finger on the shoe lace as she made a loop, and told her about the time I took the bus downtown by myself. “I was only five,” I said.

“You lie,” she said.

“Maybe.” I went into Susan’s room, took a twenty dollar bill from her sock drawer, and slipped the apartment key hanging from a yellow string on a nail by the front door over my head.

We lived on the fourth floor. I didn’t like to take the elevator; I liked to run down the stairs, but I had to stop on each landing and wait for Jane. My legs were long, thin and I was quick, the fastest on the block. On the third floor, I had to slow down. Mr. Detavio, our super, lived on this floor. If he caught me running in the building, he’d grab me by the shoulders and call me a “hooligan.” Outside his apartment, white kitchen sinks were stacked neatly next to each other.

“Will you wait,” Jane said as she caught up to me, her cap falling to one side. I fixed it and ran to the second floor but didn’t stop. And Jane was right behind me. There weren’t many times she could keep up, so we flew down the steps. And as we rounded the stairwell to the first floor, we almost knocked over Mrs. Rodgeski, carrying a bouquet of white lilies wrapped in crunchy cellophane. “What is the commotion?” She backed up against the wall and placed her hand over her heart. We knew she was crazy. Susan said so. “I’m telling your mother,” she yelled to the backs of our heads.

“She’s not home,” I yelled back and grabbed Jane’s hand and pulled her along the faded carpet and burst through the double doors and out onto the street.

It was early and cool, the sun hidden behind the tall apartment buildings. We slipped between old women dragging metal shopping carts and a young couple pushing a baby carriage trimmed with black and white lace. We cruised past two boys wearing T-shirts with no sleeves, fingertips pushing a basketball between them. I let go of Jane’s hand. “I’ll meet you at the light.” I ran, arms pumping, feet kicking up behind me, until I reached the corner of Fordham Road and Sedgwick Avenue, my breath caught in my throat. I bent over, my arms limp as Jane half-walked and half-ran to me. Her face was red and sweat trickled down the sides of her face. I took the bottom of my shirt and wiped her brow. She wrapped her hand around mine and held on tight. And for a moment, I was afraid she would slip away. 

“Keep up,” I said as we crossed the street. We had one block to go before we reached the park. I walked on the curb, one foot in front of the other, while she walked close to the buildings, running her hand along the open grooves in the chain link fence.

“You’re stepping on the cracks,” she said and stopped.

A man dressed in a white suit, hands waving over his head, crouched down low in front of her. “Little girl, are you a sinner?”

Jane squinted up at him and said: “No thank you.”

I taught her to say that.

The man stepped back. “I didn’t ask you for anything,” he said and walked away, hands stuffed in his pockets.

“The cracks,” she said to me.

“You think I wouldn’t?” I dangled my foot dangerously close to the smooth line in the gritty concrete.

“You’d kill Mom,” she said.

“Not today.” I stepped over the crack. “Maybe some other day.”

At the entrance to the park, there was a basketball court to the left with a group of boys running up and down the black pavement. In the center of the park was a kid’s playground made of cement and filled with discarded toys and yelling kids. We didn’t go there; we liked the shady spot that had rambling oak trees with bended elbows we could climb. We found a place under the tree near the duck pond. Jane pulled a spoon from her pocket and stabbed the edge of it into the ground, and I lay in the sun, arms spread out, and wondered what soft grass felt like.

“Girl,” a voice above me said.

I opened my eyes. It was Rubén. I pulled myself up, and curled my legs to my chest. The top buttons of his shirt were open. From what I could see, he had no hair on his chest. I wondered if my father had a hairy chest. I laughed at Rubén and looked the other way. His friend stood above Jane and tossed his cigarette into the grass. “She’s too young,” he said.

“Litterbug,” Jane said without looking up from her pile of dirt.

Boys on matching bicycles looped past us.  At the basketball court, two guys started pushing and shoving each other. I took my pony tail and pulled it around to my mouth and chewed on the ends.

“Where is your beautiful mother?” he asked and stretched his legs out next to mine. He picked at the grass.

“Who cares?” I said.

“Man. She is jailbait,” the friend said and walked away into the sun.

Rubén dropped a few blades of grass, one by one, on the tops of my thighs and stood up. “Do you know you look like her?” He pulled his hand through the back of my hair. I tilted my chin up, closed my eyes and wanted him to kiss me.

He walked backward, looking at me until he reached the park entrance and turned around. “I look like my father,” I said and lay back carefully. I stayed that way so I wouldn’t spill the grass off my thighs until I felt Jane’s warm breath on my face.

“You didn’t brush your teeth,” I said and covered my nose with my hand.

“Breakfast,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

“All right.” I took a few blades of the grass and put them into my pocket.

Fordham Road was full of people moving slowly, a group of musicians stood outside Alfonso’s restaurant in red berets playing accordions. Street vendors sold fruits and vegetables and chickens caught in small cages that clucked at us as Jane and I ran our fingers across the metal. I held my breath, the air smelled like blood. We stopped and bought some oranges from a man with silver-rimmed glasses and eyes that didn’t blink, and pushed our way to the bakery, Jane holding on to the elastic on my shorts. 

“Don’t talk to anyone,” I said. “And yell if someone makes fun of your cap.” She shook her head yes.

The bakery was quiet and warm. Mrs. Orlando behind the counter waved at me when I walked in. Two old men sat at a small marble table with slender black legs in the corner. “Where is your mother?” she asked.

“In bed. Sick.”

“Again?” She pulled two pieces of wax paper from a small cardboard box. “The usual?”

“Sure,” I said, pressing my hands against the glass display case as she selected two cookies that looked like checkerboards and placed them in a small white bag.

“And two onion bagels,” I said. “Would you slice them, please?”

When we got to the building, I opened the door and Jane ran to the open elevator. “Race you,” she said and slipped in before the steel doors closed. I took the stairs two at a time. As I reached our floor, the elevator doors were opening and I dove for the apartment door and slid chest down across the floor into the front door.

“You always win,” she said.

We took our food to the fire escape. Rubén and his friend were sitting below us.

“What are you doing?” he asked and climbed up the stairs. He sat between me and Jane and she peeled pieces off the orange and gave them to him.

“You’re babysitting today?” he asked.

“I don’t see a baby,” Jane said.

“We’re hanging out,” I said.

Two police cars streamed by, lights flashing. People on the street stopped, pointed and when they passed, they continued walking.

“What about your mother?”

“She’s at the store.”

“She must have a lot to buy.”

“She likes to shop,” I said.

A man across the street appeared in his window and dumped a glass of water on a basket of tall red flowers sitting on the sill. Rubén started to sing a song.

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“Bugs,” he said.

“I like bugs,” Jane said.

Rubén opened the window, and crawled inside. I followed him and sat on the blue recliner by the stereo. Jane was in the window. She looked like a bird, legs bent, arms at her side, about to take off. Rubén held out his hand and I wrapped my fingers around his, they were sticky from the orange. He led me to the dining room table, took a bagel from the bag and went into the kitchen. I sat down, head spinning, and moved my finger through the crumbs on the tablecloth.

“Do you want butter?” Jane was behind him, her fingers in Rubén’s belt loops.

He sat down across from me, and gave half the bagel to Jane. She broke off a piece and spread it across the top of a stick of butter. “Try it,” she said, “it’s good.”

I got up and stood between Rubén’s legs, his hand on the small of my back, on the edge of his nose was a black mark, and I tried to rub it off.

“It always there,” he said. “I spent a lot of time as a kid trying to get it off with a washcloth.”

“Me, too,” I said and pointed to the freckle on the crease of my eyelid.

“You didn’t try the butter,” Jane said and ran her finger across the stick.

“You’ve convinced me.” He reached over and wiped his finger across the butter.

I put my hands on Rubén’s shoulders and closed my eyes again, hoping he wouldn’t let go of me. And then he did. He dropped his hand from my back, and went into the living room and put on a record. Jane followed him asking him to dance with her, and I heard a woman’s voice singing in Spanish, and though I couldn’t understand her, I knew she was sad. Rubén came over to me, took my hand, and spun me around. He leaned me back into his arm, and the world went upside down. Jane on the ceiling and the green carpet the sky. He pulled my leg up and I curled it around his waist, his hand on my thigh. I leaned my head into his chest and he held me for a moment until he said, “Enough.”

“Do it again,” Jane said. She was sitting in the window.

“Yes,” I said, so quietly that Rubén couldn’t hear me.

“What are you doing?” His friend was standing behind Jane. “Let’s go,” he said.

The record skipped and the woman sang the same few words over and over. I rubbed the sides of my arms, and brushed a few strands of hair from my eyes. As Rubén climbed through the window, Jane asked him not to leave, and I watched not understanding why he left.

                                                                        *

I married a few times and lived with the fourth, a balding man named George, in a small apartment in Madrid above a vegetarian restaurant that baked bread every morning except on Mondays. The marriage lasted until our second anniversary when he told me he deserved better and so did I. I agreed. He moved out, and gave me the apartment and the electric toothbrush. A few weeks later I received a letter from my mother, telling me about the aches in her fingers and how her aloe plants had grown, and I decided I needed to see her. I flew to New York and we sat in the kitchen, the linoleum scraped and torn around the bottom of the stove, drinking tea from my grandmother’s china cups. And my mother was still beautiful, her hair long and grey, her eyebrows, thin and red, were drawn on. I asked her if she knew what ever happened to Rubén, and she told me he was a blackjack dealer in Atlantic City and lived by the beach with his wife and two kids. She tapped her fingers against the gold rim of the cup, and I reached across the table and took her hand.

Kerri Quinn lives in Flagstaff, Arizona where she teaches creative writing. Her work has been featured in descant, The Apple Valley Review, Cutthroat Literary Journal, Rumble and 971menu.com. Her story “How to Leave” appears in the Best of the Net 2007 Anthology.

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