Read Online Sarah by J.T. LeRoy - Free Book Online Page B

Easter show?’
    I lift my head to see Le Loup standing in his barn doorway, Pooh peeking out from behind him, laughing.
    Stella stomps up to Le Loup and talks to him fervently, pointing at me occasionally. Pooh rolls her eyes, laughs, and spits. Le Loup narrows his small eyes at me. I try to look virginal by making my eyes look big.
    When Sarah was after someone else’s man, she’d put her hair into pigtails and practice making her eyes wide in the mirror. ‘Nothin’ makes a man want you more than thinking you’re an unpopped virgin. This make the best virgin blood,’ she’d say, slipping a Burger King foil ketchup packet into her bra. ‘Makes them feel like fuckin’ God.’
    ‘Well put our little angel down!’ Le Loup motions to the group like he’s guiding in an eighteen-wheeler.
    ‘She’s gotta be put to the bed!’ Petunia insists.
    ‘Most of my babies do, Petunia.’ Le Loup winks at her and Petunia shakes her head and smiles self-consciously.
    ‘Bring the holy one in, by all means.’ He waves and they carry me in. As we pass Le Loup, he smiles and scans me over like a tray of deli slices.
    Pooh is chortling in the background until there’s a sudden loud smack and a gasping for air. I look up and see Pooh, bent over, holding her face and Le Loup looking on with the same muted smile.
    ‘I see you got your baptizing sheets all made,’ Stella says pointing to the satin black-and-white zebra sheets they gently lay me onto. ‘She won’t be needing…’
    ‘I understand that,’ Le Loup says with a smile but with an undertone of force.
    The 3D poster of Pope John Paul II on the ceiling is winking at me in a slightly lascivious way. Everyone is standing around the bed staring at me. I smile and wave like I did to Pooh earlier in the morning.
    Two loud hand claps make everyone jump. ‘Okay, folks, thanks for bringing her ‘round.’ Le Loup claps his hands again and everyone starts to file out, humming ‘We Saw Thee Not’ in the key of F.
    ‘So, you’re a saint,’ Le Loup says in a buried voice, sitting on the bed and leaning over me, his small eyes gleaming with impatience.
    I hear Pooh suck her teeth. I don’t move.
    ‘Well, Pooh, I guess you’re on your own tonight. Hope that Jackalope did you well.’
    ‘Le Loup, you don’t believe she’s a saint, do you?’ Pooh says while moving out of Le Loup’s striking range.
    Le Loup plays with my curls like a cat toying with a mouse tail.
    ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ He smiles sideways at her. ‘Whore or saint, don’t matter. They both bring in money,’ he laughs.
    Pooh squeezes her fierce eyes at me. I tilt my head into Le Loup’s hand.
    I practice smiling at Pooh, just like Sarah does when some girl would come charging at her, broken beer bottle thrust out like a torch. I’d wrap my arms around myself and watch Sarah lean deeper into her man’s arms, a masklike detached grin floating across her carmine mouth. I’d watch from the corner of the bar, hidden behind the dusty striated rays of light, as the man would toss a can at the crying woman and yell at her to go get lost and Sarah would lick her lips in triumph.
    ‘Get out of here, Pooh,’ Le Loup says calmly.
    Pooh starts to say something, but Le Loup pulls back his fist, so she runs out, slamming the door.
    ‘We gotta practice our miracles,’ he says, gently tugging at my hair.
     
     
    The rain never came that night. The sky boomed, flashed, and squeezed out a few fat droplets, but no more than that. That miracle was clearly the jurisdiction of a saint triumphing over the sorcery of a black snake. Some whispered about the ash trees that burnt up in flashes of lightning, just the sort of conniving sign of a black snake. But Stella said there is always plenty of heretical jealous folks around to spread nasty rumors.
    Pooh made hardly any money that night as well. All the truckers came to see me, laid out on zebra-striped satin sheets. They whispered their prayers for a