Rose of No Man's Land (8 page)

Oh.
Bernice’s “Oh” was a gasp of air, a shaky, verbal shrug. She peered at my sister from behind the thin curtain of bangs.
Oh, it’s hard, sure
, she nodded.
Kim, she’s like my little sister here, you know? Such a hard worker too. You wouldn’t believe it, but it’s true. And she brought in a lot of
business. It’s just dead without her. Oh —
this “Oh” was a fishy, shamed gasp at having used the word “dead” in conjunction with Kim Porciatti. A fierce flush flooded her round cheeks and a drip of cry spilled over one of the eyes, and was quickly sopped up by her hair. Kristy was nodding a therapist’s nod, melodramatically concerned. She took a deep breath, and then, as if just remembering me, spun around and pushed me toward the weeping manager.

Bernice, do you know my sister, Patricia?

Oh, no, girl, I didn’t know you had a sister! Older or younger?

Younger
, Kristy purred, and patted a strand of hair above my ear like I was a little doll.

Oh, that’s sweet! You’re lucky
, Bernice nodded at me.
Kristy’s a good kid. What a great big sister she must be, huh?
I nodded my head dumbly. My outfit was draining my IQ.

Patricia was close with Kim. IS close with Kim. This has been wicked hard on her too.

Oh —
Bernice’s neck bent out, giraffelike, toward me.
Oh, no. Have you seen her? Will you tell her to please call me — when she can! No rush, no rush. It’s just that, she hasn’t called at all, you know, and I don’t want to replace her.
She laughed.
Who could replace Kim? Right? But I need to know when she’s coming back. And how she is, just any word from her would be good. Do you know…why? She did it?

Uh…I stammered. Fucking Kristy did not even tell me the extent of the untruth she had planned. What a total scam the job-getting activity would be. You think she would have briefed me on it. I mean, what if I just turned around and said, Kristy, Why Are You Such A Rotten Lying
Liar? Why Are You Lying About A Suicide Victim? Why Are You So Evil? But Kristy was my sister, knew me well, had banked, correctly, on the fact that I would be too frozen in fear to protest the ecosystem of lies springing up around me. I would be paralyzed and easily maneuvered.

Oh, that’s tacky, huh?
Bernice seemed embarrassed.
I’m sorry. Patricia.
She looked at me close.
Have we met before? Have you come in here with Katie and Yolanda?
She meant Katie Adrienzen and Yolanda Peters. Katie was Kim’s best friend, they were like a famous friend-couple, always together, dressing in complementary outfits, sort of looking-glass doubles of each other. Katie was dark where Kim was blond, she was already filled with curves, I mean boobs, while Kim was skinny like a lanky supermodel, her chest concave in a way that looked glamorous, not undeveloped. Yolanda was a couple years younger than Kim and was being groomed by Kim to be, like, the next Kim. She was mini-Kim. It was pathetic. I nodded.

Yeah, I Think I’ve Been In Here With Them, I mumbled.

Kristy whapped my arm with her clutch purse.
Of course you’ve been in here! It’s only your favorite store!
She turned her smile to Bernice.
She’s nervous to be meeting you. Ohmigod! means a lot to her, and she’s still freaked out over Kim and all…

Sure, sure.

But anyway, I was thinking — why doesn’t Patricia here help you out while you’re waiting for Kim to come back? I mean, I’m sure if you had to replace her, temporarily, Kim would want one of her friends to take her place. And I know it would be Patricia’s dream to work here, right
Sis? She’s shy! But, she’s a great worker. Loves fashion. And is sooo motivated!

You look like you love fashion, you do
, Bernice mused, nodding her head.

It took every mental muscle in Kristy’s brain for her to not blurt and take credit for the giant hoax of my outfit. I saw her struggle with it, her mouth tense.

You really want to work here?
Bernice asked. She kept blowing upward gusts of breath to knock her hair from her eyes. She peered at me hopefully from behind her outgrown hairdo. I couldn’t believe it. It was too easy. My sister was a genius, a dark genius.

Who Doesn’t? I gushed.

It’s true
, Bernice said,
This is the most popular shop in the mall. That poor thing Debbie who works over at Dark Subject has been trying to get hired here since Christmas. Those freaks have been making her crazy. Did you know the lady who manages the place got her teeth filed down to look like vampire fangs?

Oh my god
, Kristy said in that deep, gossipy shit-talking voice.

Honest to god. A dentist did it. Can you imagine? He should get his license revoked. I mean, isn’t that illegal? As a cosmetologist, what would you do if someone came to you and asked you to make them look like a circus freak?

I’d tell them to go see a psychiatrist!
Kristy said.

Bernice O’Leary sighed then, in the grip of a moral dilemma. Her bangs shagged limply, she allowed them to curtain her vision. She looked down at the mess of jewelry at her feet.
I did promise Debbie the next opening…

But it’s not really an opening
, Kristy reminded her.

It’s not really an opening
, Bernice agreed.

It’s for Kim
, Kristy said gently.
And you.

It is
, Bernice nodded. She looked at me. I tried to make my eyes go round like Kristy’s when she’s trying to be extra sincere, but they felt only bulgy and I think I alarmed Bernice.
Don’t cry!
she gasped, reaching out and touching the bare skin of my arm. I shrank back.
I know this is hard
, Bernice said.
Suicide, god! Who commits suicide in this day and age, when there’s so much help available? I mean, we got medicines now…
She took a firm breath.
Come in on Monday, all right, girl? I really do need the help.

Family time!
Ma hollered from the couch in a cartoony-sweet voice. It was the voice that gave birth to Kristy’s saccharine singsong.
Family time!
There was real glee in Ma’s voice, I heard it as I rounded the kitchen and entered the living room, the room with the shades perpetually drawn so there wasn’t glare on the television, the room with the spotty beige wallpaper and the scuffed-up wooden floor and the couch — the fat and battered and stained and slightly funky-smelling most important piece of furniture in our house. Ma was stretched out on it like always but she was literally stretching, her whole body pulled taut like a cat, her muscles vibrating with the pull, and when she relaxed she did not fall back into her usual fetal curl before the TV. She shook herself out and propped
up straight. I remember when I was smaller, when I would see Ma pop out of her ennui like that, a bright smile and a slight gust of energy. I would feel a real swell of hope in my heart. I would think: she’s better. Her face would be rosy, and instead of a brow cramping with the weight of possible illness, instead of the general downward cast her face took beneath the unfathomable heaviness of all that can befall a body, she’d have a simple, innocent smile on her face. Not a big grin, nothing manic, just a sweet openness. It felt like she was waking up from a long, dark dream of illness and mental nuttiness. It seemed possible in those moments to start over again, as a family. Not get our dad back — I wasn’t too interested in having some strung-out stranger joining us. What I wanted was the three of us — me, Ma, and Kristy — starting off on a new foot, a more hopeful spring in our step. But they didn’t last long, these bursts of attention and openness. Eventually I came to identify them as moods, nothing more than a swing in a new direction. Mood swings. It’s weird that these little moments that had led me to believe that Ma was maybe better were ultimately what brought me to the conclusion that she is hopeless. Even her bursts of cheer are symptoms of her mental illness. Nothing about Ma is well, and still I can’t help it. When she snaps out of it for a second I like to be there. It stabs that little place in my heart that wants a real normal Ma so bad, I can’t stop myself from sitting before her like a dumb puppy-daughter sucking up her smiles and her interest. So I did; I wandered into the room and there she was, flushed and beaming. Who knows, maybe her and Donnie got it on while we were at the mall
and she’s blissed out on some gross sex wave. Best to avoid the couch just in case. I sat down on the edge of the coffee table, shoving over a small pizza box containing half a congealed pizza, the cheese run onto the cardboard and dried there thick as wax. It still smelled good, though. I hadn’t eaten anything yet. Kristy wouldn’t let me eat at the mall because she was certain I would spill greasy food onto my borrowed finery and, honestly, I’m such a slob I couldn’t really make a convincing case in favor of taking the chance.

On the ride home in the Maverick I enjoyed the way the open window tore at the hairdo. The hairdo had done its job and could now be dismantled. I enjoyed the feeling of it wobbling in the breeze, and I enjoyed the way my life suddenly felt cracked a bit more open. I guess I had something to look forward to, something new, something novel. It was pretty wild that me of all people was now going to work at Ohmigod! I was going to have to somehow continue the enormous lie that got me hired, but I had just started thinking about my life in terms of movies, you know? And this seemed like a real cinematic turn. Kristy was too proud of her bullshitting abilities to do anything human like check in with me and make sure it was okay that she had just scammed me a job atop a hill of deep falsehoods, so we buzzed home in silence, the wind creating a whirl of ash that made the car feel like the inside of a souvenir snowglobe. Once we pulled up to the curb on Lincoln Street I was out of the Maverick and rocketed into my room, the shabby house trembling under my supersized flip-flops. Out came the evil bobby pins. I examined their nubby tips for specks of dried blood because I swear
Kristy had secured them to the actual tender skin of my scalp, it had hurt so bad. But the small, crimped pins were bloodless. My hands probed the mysterious updo, digging out pin after pin, all buried beneath the tacky twist of hair. There seemed no end of pins to be found there. They accumulated on my dresser, snagged with dry strands of damaged hair. When I finally had retrieved them all I shook my head like a dog shaking off wet, in hopes that my hair would flutter back down to normal, but no. It stuck out all over the place, bent and sticky. I looked like a madperson on a TV show, with the kind of hair they put on someone to demonstrate insanity. In the bathroom I flushed the makeup off my face with some palmfuls of tap water, and I peeled off the ruffly and revealing high-fashion clothing, pulled on some sweats, and dug Ma’s old Weight Watcher’s T-shirt out from the ball of sheets on my bed. Better, normal. My own normal, since Kristy and her kind would insist that it’s not so normal for a fourteen-year-old American female to lounge around in sweats without a friend in sight, no gang of girls dying to slumber party at my crappy house, sticking each others’ bras in the freezer or whatever weird-ass things girls do when they stay up all night together, getting wigged out on sleep deprivation and making out with pillows. No gang of girls, and, if I may be honest, no boys either, as in, I could give a crap. I’m seriously not interested. And I know that is seriously abnormal, but I’m not going to lie. I’m not so good at lying. Which makes me a little anxious in regard to my new employment at Ohmigod!, since it does seem like my primary job requirement is to be an ace number-one bullshitter, so I better get
good at it quick. I better learn how to properly sashay in a pair of platform flip-flops. I better learn how to be a girl.

Ma hollered her
Family time!
cry from the living room and I put the brain-twister aside and went to spend a bit of bright-time on the couch with her.

Ma, I Got A Job, I started.
Oh yeah?
she asked, part happy, part skeptical. The skeptical part is always there — it’s the part trying to sniff out the potential disease or festering bacteria in any individual or location or concept. I’ve learned not to take the skeptical tones personally. Yeah, I’m Working At The Mall Now, At A Clothes Store. Ma squinted her glittery green eyes at me, like shards of beer bottle glass.
So you and Kristy, both working at the mall, huh?
I nodded my head. The salty-grease stink wafting up from the pizza box was starting to really get to me. I hooked my fingers into the crust of a triangle and wrenched it from the cardboard.
Women of the world, my daughters
, she said with a smile. She said,
You two don’t take after me, that’s for sure. You must take after your father. He didn’t have any problem just going out into the world, did he? Clearly he didn’t.
I bit into the tip of my pizza. Extra cheese. My teeth really sunk into the thick mass, yum, it was excellent. I love cold pizza. I love it better cold than hot. I was ignoring Ma because she was being what they call passive-aggressive with that comment. Like me getting a job is the equivalent of abandoning the family and running away to Louisiana to get high in a swamp like our dad did. That’s Ma, though. One hand is petting your head while the other’s giving you a pinch.
What’s up with your hair?
she asked.

Kristy Did It For Me. You Should’ve Seen It. I Looked
Wild, Like A Fashion Model. It Was All Up And Fancy.

You look like a homeless person now
, she commented.

I Know. I bit into the pizza again. I looked forward to eating it all the way up to the bubbly crust, and then splitting the crust open and dousing the fluffy insides with a ton of salt. Better than those pretzels you buy from a cart at a carnival. Where’d The Pizza Come From? I asked. It wasn’t every day that you come home to find such riches left out on the coffee table.

Donnie brought it home. He got some work off his cousin.
She sighed happily. Donnie had a cousin who owned a couple houses in Malden, and sometimes when a water heater exploded or a toilet got especially nasty he’d call Donnie over to help him fix it. I don’t know what it is about guys. They do seem to know how to do things. Even a certified loser like Donnie has the ability to patch up a busted water heater. It’s not a lot, but still, it’s maybe more than Ma. Though I guess Ma had kids, so that’s something, right? God. It’s so Tarzan and Jane, it’s really depressing. I think I’d like to opt out of the whole man-woman thing if possible. And it does seem possible, right now, when I’m mostly just a kid, but I know at some point the kid is going to melt right off my body, and then what? I’m a woman? It’s too overwhelming to think about.