Read Online Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman - Free Book Online
Authors: Tupelo Hassman
Tags: Contemporary, Young Adult
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metal in her voice. I start to cry. I unbutton my pants slowly, quiet, like the way I’m crying, my mouth wide and silent, spit stringing. I push my pants down. I put my thumbs on my panties but I can’t push them, all my strength is in my stretched mouth, my tight-closed eyes. But Carol is sitting on the toilet seat so she can keep an eye on Timmy, who is splashing in the bathtub, and me at the same time, and she yells into the hallway, “Now. Rory.”
In the bathtub I can’t have any toys and she won’t let me play with Timmy’s because she says I am too big for that. She won’t let me have a washrag because, she says in a copy-catter voice, “You already took a bath so you must be clean.” I’m not allowed to do anything but sit cross-legged next to Timmy, who is used to me crying, and motorboats his Lego through the water and laughs. Carol sits on the toilet seat and stares at me until the water finally grows cold enough to make Timmy start to fuss and then she lifts him out of the tub. She starts to dry Timmy off and as she wraps him in the towel and takes him out of the bathroom she says, “Get in bed.”
The lights are always going out now. It happens when I’m with Carol a lot, but never at school and never with Viv. Mama is working nights at the Truck Stop, and when she’s not working there
she’s working graveyard at the Primadonna so I’m almost always with Carol. I must be saving all my electricity to use during schooltime, I think, and that’s why Mr. Lombroso learned my name and why people with briefcases started showing up in his office to ask me the same questions over and over and why I got a new skirt and why Mama, when I do see her, started looking at me like I’m going to lay an egg.
outlier
“ W ait,” the Briefcase Man says.
“Verb or noun?” I say, and swing my legs and wish for a harder question. I want a question that takes all the electricity I’ve got and blows me into a million pieces.
“Wait,” the Hardware Man says. He tells Sonny to watch the counter at the Hardware Store because he’s going to take me for burgers. Sonny’s always talking about how he’s ready to man the counter himself but he never looks happy when the Hardware Man says he’s taking me to pick up lunch. He stands at the door with his arms crossed, watches us get into the truck and drive three stores down to Pete’s Liquor where the Hardware Man leaves the engine running and goes inside.
I do not swing my legs in the Hardware Man’s truck. The floor is covered with empty cups and beer bottles and hamburger wrappers and junk and the seat is covered with cloth that is stiff from being spilled on. It’s hard where it should be soft and I try not to touch it. I don’t want to touch anything, but still, when I see the Hardware Man through the window with his back to me, I reach down
to the trash under my feet and turn over a piece of glossy paper. A lady’s face stares up from between my fingers. Her flat face is all O ’s. O ’s around her blue eyes and on her pink cheeks, and the red that makes her two lips is a big empty O . Her picture is in a bad kind of magazine, not for play and not for kids. I know what it is now, but I’ll forget again as soon as it gets dark.
When I told Mama I wanted to get rid of my dolls and only have books, she was thrilled. When I started keeping them in ABC order, she called Grandma to tell her even though she hadn’t dialed Grandma’s number in so long I thought she’d forgot it. I wanted her to do something that had less to do with pride and making telephone calls and more with worry from seeing that all these letters can’t be lining up to spell anything good, that I should be getting invited to sleepovers instead of getting perfect grades, but that was all she did. Act proud. Like all there is to getting by in life is knowing your ABC’s.
“Enough.”
That’s what Carol says and she says it
In the bathtub I can’t have any toys and she won’t let me play with Timmy’s because she says I am too big for that. She won’t let me have a washrag because, she says in a copy-catter voice, “You already took a bath so you must be clean.” I’m not allowed to do anything but sit cross-legged next to Timmy, who is used to me crying, and motorboats his Lego through the water and laughs. Carol sits on the toilet seat and stares at me until the water finally grows cold enough to make Timmy start to fuss and then she lifts him out of the tub. She starts to dry Timmy off and as she wraps him in the towel and takes him out of the bathroom she says, “Get in bed.”
The lights are always going out now. It happens when I’m with Carol a lot, but never at school and never with Viv. Mama is working nights at the Truck Stop, and when she’s not working there
she’s working graveyard at the Primadonna so I’m almost always with Carol. I must be saving all my electricity to use during schooltime, I think, and that’s why Mr. Lombroso learned my name and why people with briefcases started showing up in his office to ask me the same questions over and over and why I got a new skirt and why Mama, when I do see her, started looking at me like I’m going to lay an egg.
outlier
“ W ait,” the Briefcase Man says.
“Verb or noun?” I say, and swing my legs and wish for a harder question. I want a question that takes all the electricity I’ve got and blows me into a million pieces.
“Wait,” the Hardware Man says. He tells Sonny to watch the counter at the Hardware Store because he’s going to take me for burgers. Sonny’s always talking about how he’s ready to man the counter himself but he never looks happy when the Hardware Man says he’s taking me to pick up lunch. He stands at the door with his arms crossed, watches us get into the truck and drive three stores down to Pete’s Liquor where the Hardware Man leaves the engine running and goes inside.
I do not swing my legs in the Hardware Man’s truck. The floor is covered with empty cups and beer bottles and hamburger wrappers and junk and the seat is covered with cloth that is stiff from being spilled on. It’s hard where it should be soft and I try not to touch it. I don’t want to touch anything, but still, when I see the Hardware Man through the window with his back to me, I reach down
to the trash under my feet and turn over a piece of glossy paper. A lady’s face stares up from between my fingers. Her flat face is all O ’s. O ’s around her blue eyes and on her pink cheeks, and the red that makes her two lips is a big empty O . Her picture is in a bad kind of magazine, not for play and not for kids. I know what it is now, but I’ll forget again as soon as it gets dark.
When I told Mama I wanted to get rid of my dolls and only have books, she was thrilled. When I started keeping them in ABC order, she called Grandma to tell her even though she hadn’t dialed Grandma’s number in so long I thought she’d forgot it. I wanted her to do something that had less to do with pride and making telephone calls and more with worry from seeing that all these letters can’t be lining up to spell anything good, that I should be getting invited to sleepovers instead of getting perfect grades, but that was all she did. Act proud. Like all there is to getting by in life is knowing your ABC’s.
“Enough.”
That’s what Carol says and she says it
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