Read Online Don't Kiss Me: Stories by Lindsay Hunter - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lindsay Hunter
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nothing really to see. White cloth, black thread. No bumps or creases. I pray for Jean’s body but I wasn’t born a yarnhead and that’s the cross I have to bear.
Jean and me been studying my face in the mirror, looking hard at it, and we pretty sure it’s still my face. And that is a relief.
Jean says it’s all right to grow up and get old and die without ever taking a man for your own. That’s another relief.
Jean says there’s no need to set your hair or wear red nails or spritz lilac stuff behind your ears, if somebody don’t want that kind of attention then that is A-OK.
I see my momma do all these things, but it don’t seem to matter. I don’t do none of them, but that don’t seem to matter either.
Jean says my daddy been throwing some of my stuff in the trash. She’s right, I know some of my stuff is gone, but I don’t fix on the details.
At school a boy named Bo asks me do I want to meet him behind the swings, there’s a brick wall we can duck down behind, I say sure cause that seems the easiest.
Recess at noon. Or midnight? One is 12, the other is 12, so ain’t they the same? All of it’s the same, what Bo got to show and what I seen at the other 12, I’d like to talk it over with Jean but like I said she ain’t allowed to school, I tell Bo about the two 12s but he ain’t listening, I saw Bo had one of them fungus nails on his pinky finger, thick and green, the button on his pants shiny as a new penny, the bell rang and I went into the little girls’ and upchucked the egg my momma fried me that morning.
At lunch I traded my sandwich for a pink pencil, cause Jean loves pencils and we never seen a pink one.
Jean says, Did you feel better? I say I did.
Jean says to hide, and we do, and we whisper how any minute we could pee, and I want to laugh and yawn all at once cause I feel so happy to be with Jean, but we have to keep quiet cause we’re hiding, and the first one to make a noise during loses.
We never talk about what happens if you win at hiding.
Hiding always ends with Daddy finding us.
Daddy asks me do I want to ride on his motorcycle and I say yes even though Jean says I’m a dumb bitch.
Just around the block a few times, my daddy says, and then I need you to help me out with something in the garage. I don’t listen to that last part. I go stuck clock. My face ain’t my face. I think how we’ll ride past that mailbox with the wood ducks and that flat dead cat in the road, and that house that got burned up by a drug addict. Wind in my hair, my hair that ain’t yarn.
Jean don’t have a daddy, so she don’t know. Cause how can you tell your own daddy no? You can’t. If you can I’m sorry for you.
A GIRL
There was a girl gone missing a few years back. Her momma standing out front of the Dairy Queen, eyeing your cone like you was hiding her child within. You seen Dee? Dee Switcher? You seen her? Nope was always the answer, but I’ll keep an eye out. And before you knew it that cone was gone.
That was the year that old bitch Miss Shane was teaching us algebra. Solve for x , children. Chalk dusting her dress like she had a ghost dress on over her other one. Them arms like dough on a spit.
That missing girl used to do her eyeliner during class. Over and over, underlining her eye like Miss Shane underlined them nasty equations. Solve for x .
We all had plans for that girl. She had a chest. She smoked them long thin lady cigarettes in plain sight of the custodian. When that retarded boy ran into the girl and knocked her purse down a condom spilled out, flashing there in its gold wrapper, looking for all the world like a coin.
The girl picked up her lipsticks and wallet and hair things and left it there, left that condom on the ground and walked off. Us thinking hard about ways to spend that coin.
There was other girls of course. The entire cheerleading team could get you going, save for the chubby one, but she’d do in a pinch. The majorette, Glenda was her
Jean and me been studying my face in the mirror, looking hard at it, and we pretty sure it’s still my face. And that is a relief.
Jean says it’s all right to grow up and get old and die without ever taking a man for your own. That’s another relief.
Jean says there’s no need to set your hair or wear red nails or spritz lilac stuff behind your ears, if somebody don’t want that kind of attention then that is A-OK.
I see my momma do all these things, but it don’t seem to matter. I don’t do none of them, but that don’t seem to matter either.
Jean says my daddy been throwing some of my stuff in the trash. She’s right, I know some of my stuff is gone, but I don’t fix on the details.
At school a boy named Bo asks me do I want to meet him behind the swings, there’s a brick wall we can duck down behind, I say sure cause that seems the easiest.
Recess at noon. Or midnight? One is 12, the other is 12, so ain’t they the same? All of it’s the same, what Bo got to show and what I seen at the other 12, I’d like to talk it over with Jean but like I said she ain’t allowed to school, I tell Bo about the two 12s but he ain’t listening, I saw Bo had one of them fungus nails on his pinky finger, thick and green, the button on his pants shiny as a new penny, the bell rang and I went into the little girls’ and upchucked the egg my momma fried me that morning.
At lunch I traded my sandwich for a pink pencil, cause Jean loves pencils and we never seen a pink one.
Jean says, Did you feel better? I say I did.
Jean says to hide, and we do, and we whisper how any minute we could pee, and I want to laugh and yawn all at once cause I feel so happy to be with Jean, but we have to keep quiet cause we’re hiding, and the first one to make a noise during loses.
We never talk about what happens if you win at hiding.
Hiding always ends with Daddy finding us.
Daddy asks me do I want to ride on his motorcycle and I say yes even though Jean says I’m a dumb bitch.
Just around the block a few times, my daddy says, and then I need you to help me out with something in the garage. I don’t listen to that last part. I go stuck clock. My face ain’t my face. I think how we’ll ride past that mailbox with the wood ducks and that flat dead cat in the road, and that house that got burned up by a drug addict. Wind in my hair, my hair that ain’t yarn.
Jean don’t have a daddy, so she don’t know. Cause how can you tell your own daddy no? You can’t. If you can I’m sorry for you.
A GIRL
There was a girl gone missing a few years back. Her momma standing out front of the Dairy Queen, eyeing your cone like you was hiding her child within. You seen Dee? Dee Switcher? You seen her? Nope was always the answer, but I’ll keep an eye out. And before you knew it that cone was gone.
That was the year that old bitch Miss Shane was teaching us algebra. Solve for x , children. Chalk dusting her dress like she had a ghost dress on over her other one. Them arms like dough on a spit.
That missing girl used to do her eyeliner during class. Over and over, underlining her eye like Miss Shane underlined them nasty equations. Solve for x .
We all had plans for that girl. She had a chest. She smoked them long thin lady cigarettes in plain sight of the custodian. When that retarded boy ran into the girl and knocked her purse down a condom spilled out, flashing there in its gold wrapper, looking for all the world like a coin.
The girl picked up her lipsticks and wallet and hair things and left it there, left that condom on the ground and walked off. Us thinking hard about ways to spend that coin.
There was other girls of course. The entire cheerleading team could get you going, save for the chubby one, but she’d do in a pinch. The majorette, Glenda was her
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