Towelhead (16 page)

“No, she's not,” Thomas said. “She's afraid of you. You're the one who jumped.”

“Because you scared me,” Zack said.

“There's nothing to be scared of,” Thomas told him.

“You broke into my house,” Zack said.

“We did not,” Thomas said.

“Then how did you get in?”

“The door was open,” I said.

“No, it wasn't,” Zack said. “No way.”

“Yes, it was,” Thomas said.

Zack looked at me. He was quiet for a second, then he said, “You still have your key.”

“No, I don't,” I said.

“Give it back!”

“I don't have your key,” I said.

“I'm telling my dad,” he said.

“You're not going to tell your dad anything,” Thomas said. “We just came over to see your kitten. That's all. You got upset about nothing.”

Zack sniffled a little.

“We're just waiting for the cat to come out,” Thomas said.

“She's not going to come out as long as you're here,” Zack said. “She doesn't like you.”

Thomas ignored this. He looked at the
Playboy
on the bed and said, “Is that yours?”

“It's my dad's,” Zack said.

“There's more in the closet,” I said, and Thomas went over to look.

“Shit,” he said, looking at the stack. “You gotta let me borrow a couple of these.”

“No!” Zack said.

Thomas borrowed a couple anyway. “I'll bring them back tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe the cat will be out by then.”

“You can't come back here!” Zack yelled.

“Fine,” Thomas said. “I'll keep the magazines.”

Zack looked at him.

“C'mon, Jasira,” Thomas said, and he walked out of the room.

“You better give that key back,” Zack said to me.

“The door was open,” I said, and I turned and followed Thomas out.

Back at my house, Thomas wanted me to take my pants off again so he could try to have an orgasm, but I said no. “But I'm not mad anymore,” he said, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “It'll probably work.”

“It's too late,” I said. “Daddy could come home.”

“So what? I mean, what's the big deal? He knows we're friends.”

“That's just the way he is,” I said.

“We're not even doing anything.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“What if your dad came home right now and we were just talking?”

I thought for a second, then said, “He would yell.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Would he hit you?”

“No.”

Thomas was quiet. I couldn't tell if he believed me or not. I might've answered the question too fast. Finally, he said, “Okay, I'll go.”

“You will?” I said, relieved.

“Yes,” he said, standing up. “I don't want you to get in trouble.”

“Thank you.”

I walked him to the front door then, and he kissed me. He put his tongue in my mouth for a long time, and I put mine in his. We moved them all around each other, along the sides and over the tops and bottoms. We pressed our mouths even tighter together to try to make our tongues reach farther. It seemed hard and rough in a way, but also kind of soft, since we were really just trying to get closer.

That night, Mr. Vuoso and Zack came over and knocked on our door. “What do you want to apologize for this time?” Daddy said, and he laughed a little.

“We don't want to apologize,” Mr. Vuoso said. “We just want our key back.”

“What key?” Daddy said.

“The key Jasira had when she used to sit for Zack.”

“She already gave that back,” Daddy said. “To your wife.”

“No, she didn't,” Mr. Vuoso said.

“Did you give the key back?” Daddy asked me.

I nodded. I didn't know what else to do.

“She's lying,” Zack said. “She broke into my house today with her friend. They scared my cat.”

“What friend?” Daddy said.

“Her black friend,” Zack said.

Daddy turned to me. “Were you with a black friend?”

I didn't say anything.

“Girl or boy?” he demanded.

“Boy,” I said.

I thought he was going to hit me then, so I flinched. Only he was just touching his hand to his forehead. Mr. Vuoso saw it, though. “We're not here to get anybody in trouble,” he said. “I don't think there's any reason for that. We just want our key back.”

Daddy kept looking at me. He moved his hand again, and I couldn't help it, I flinched again. “Why are you doing that?” he yelled. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well, stop it!”

I looked at Mr. Vuoso. I wanted to tell him not to leave. That as soon as he left, things would be worse for me than ever.

Mr. Vuoso took a deep breath. “I don't think anyone meant any harm here,” he said calmly. “These are just the kinds of things kids do.”

“What do you mean?” Zack wailed. “That was breaking and entering!”

“Zack,” Mr. Vuoso said, “you can go home now.”

“But—” Zack said.

“I'll see you at home,” Mr. Vuoso told him.

Zack looked at his father, then slowly turned and let himself out the front door. When he was gone, Daddy turned to me and said, “Go and get that key.”

I did as he told me. On the way back to the living room, though, I heard him and Mr. Vuoso talking, so I stopped in the kitchen and listened.

“You hit her,” Mr. Vuoso said, “and I'll call Protective Services.”

“The discipline of my child is none of your business,” Daddy said. “You discipline your child; I'll discipline mine.”

“You hit her,” Mr. Vuoso said, “and I'll know it, and I'll call Protective Services. You got it?”

I came back in then and gave Mr. Vuoso the key.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Get out now,” Daddy told him.

“Remember what I said,” Mr. Vuoso warned, and he looked at me and left.

Daddy shut the door. Then he turned to me and raised his hand like he was going to hit me. He didn't, though. He just swung his hand close enough to my face so that I thought he would. He did this two more times and each time I flinched. Then he stopped. He said, “You're grounded. You're to come straight home after school and stay indoors. I will be calling to make sure that you do this. If you don't, I will find a way to beat you so that no one will ever know. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

He turned and went to bed then. So did I. As I lay there, I thought over and over again about what Mr. Vuoso had said.
Protective Services
. What were Protective Services? Were they part of the army? I had no idea. But I thought I could tell what kind of place it was from the name, and I was pretty sure it was a place that wouldn't like Daddy.

W
e picked up my mother from the airport three days before Christmas. Daddy didn't talk in the car. He hadn't really talked to me much at all since the night Mr. Vuoso came and got his key back. It was hard for me to tell what he was thinking. In a way, that was worse than usual. At least when he yelled at me or hit me, it was all over with.

I hadn't been to the airport since I'd arrived in Houston the previous summer. I noticed as we got closer that a lot of the billboards were different now, but that they were all still sexy. I tried not to feel like they were my fault this time, but it was hard. I just wished Daddy would say something about them, even if it was mean. I wished we didn't have to ignore them.

Daddy parked in the airport garage, then turned off the car and looked at me. He said, “If you want to go back to Syracuse with your mother, that's fine with me.” He didn't seem particularly mad or anything, just tired.

“I don't want to go back,” I told him.

“You may change your mind when you see her.”

“No, I won't.”

“Well,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt. “You do whatever you want. I can't seem to control you.”

The video monitor in the airport said that my mother's flight was on time. We found her gate, then waited outside it with a bunch of other people. Soon, the plane landed and the passengers started coming off. My mother was somewhere in the middle. When I saw her, I was sort of surprised. It wasn't that she looked different or anything—she didn't; she looked exactly the same. It was just that it hit me how long it had been since I'd seen her. And that I did kind of miss her.

I waved to her and she smiled and waved back. When she reached us, she bent down to hug me. As she pulled away, I noticed she was crying a little, and that made me cry, too.

“Try to calm down,” Daddy told us.

“Shut up, Rifat,” my mother said, dabbing at herself; then she gave him a hug and a kiss. He put his hands lightly on her waist and acted as if he didn't like it, but I was pretty sure he did. His face relaxed a little, like it did when he spoke Arabic to his mother on the telephone.

“Where's the baggage claim?” my mother asked, and Daddy led the way. My mother walked beside me, carrying her handbag and a small briefcase. She wore a pale blue sweaterdress and a long black wool coat. I felt sorry for her that she would be too hot as soon as we stepped outside.

“My God,” Daddy said, pulling off the three big bags my mother pointed to on the conveyor belt. “You're only staying a week.”

“They're Christmas presents,” my mother told him. “Don't be such a complainer.”

“Just so you know,” Daddy said, “Jasira and I have decided not to exchange gifts this year.”

“Why not?” my mother asked.

“Because,” he said. “We're protesting the fact that Bush is waiting until after the holiday to wage war. It's disgusting.”

“Do whatever you want,” my mother said.

Outside, she took off her coat and gave it to me to carry. “So this is Houston,” she said, even though it was dark and you couldn't really see anything.

“Yes,” Daddy said.

“Well,” she said, smiling down at me, “I look forward to getting a tour.”

“Look,” Daddy told her, “just because you're on vacation doesn't mean I am.” He was pushing her luggage on a cart that had cost him a dollar to rent.

“You can lend Jasira and me your car, can't you?”

He didn't answer.

“We'll take our own tour,” she said.

“Houston is a big city,” Daddy said. “I think you'll find it can be somewhat difficult to navigate.”

“We'll figure it out,” my mother said.

On the way home, I felt like I could finally relax when we passed all the billboards for the gentlemen's clubs. And that was before my mother said, “My God. How many strip joints can one city have?”

“A lot,” Daddy said.

She laughed. “I guess so.”

At home, when we pulled into the driveway, she said, “What's with the flag?”

“I'm an American citizen,” Daddy said. “I can fly the flag if I want to.”

“Why do you want to?” she asked.

“To show support for the war.”

She laughed. “You just said you were protesting the war!”

“I'm protesting one aspect of the war and supporting another aspect,” he said. He added, “You know, the mark of intelligence is the capacity to hold two conflicting ideas in your head at one time.”

“Uh-huh,” my mother said, like she didn't believe him.

“I don't need your permission to fly the flag.”

“I didn't say you did,” she said, then she turned to me and made a face like Daddy was crazy.

I was very careful then to act like I didn't think Daddy was crazy. To not make a face back. Part of me had begun to worry that he might send me home with my mother, even if I didn't want to go. That all his silence meant he was sick of me.

Inside, my mother said our house was beautiful. We showed her the whole place. The only thing she didn't like was the ficus plant with Christmas lights on it. “We're getting a real tree tomorrow,” she said. “That's it.”

“No,” Daddy said. “We're not. That's part of the protest.”

“Look,” my mother said. “I've got all these presents, and I've spent a fortune, and I'm putting them under a real tree. No one says you have to pay for it, so don't worry.”

“I suppose you want to borrow my car for this tree?”

“Who else's car am I going to use?” she demanded, and he didn't answer.

My mother and I shared my bathroom. I had taken all the secret things out from under my sink and put them in my room, which was a good thing, since the first place my mother looked was under the sink. “Good storage space,” she said, and I nodded.

That night, after we brushed our teeth and washed our faces, she came in my room to tuck me in. “Have you thought any more about coming home with me?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“And?”

“I have to finish the school year,” I said.

She sighed.

“I'm sorry.”

“I don't have anyone,” she said. “It's very lonely for me.”

“I'll come back next summer,” I told her, even though I didn't want to. She had just been so nice to me all night. I felt like I had to say something.

“Next summer?” she said. “That's a long way away.” Then she got up and went back in her room without kissing or hugging me, or even turning out the light. I got up after a few minutes and went and knocked on her door. “Yes?” she said.

I pushed it open. She was propped up in bed, reading. “Are you mad?” I asked.

She looked up from her book. “Why would I be?”

“Because I won't come home.”

“I'll live,” she said.

I wasn't sure what that meant. I wasn't sure if it was really true that she would live, or if I was supposed to feel guilty and then eventually change my mind.

“Good night, Jasira,” she said.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I walked over to the bed and leaned down. I waited to feel her arms around me, but it didn't happen. It was just a plain old kiss that I gave her, while she held on to her book.

 

The next morning, Mom asked Daddy to make us his special pancakes, but he said no, that there wasn't enough time. I hadn't had them myself since the day I'd met Thena. “Then you can make them Christmas morning,” my mother said.

“We'll see,” Daddy told her.

We all got in the car to take Daddy to work. With Mom there, it was kind of like Daddy and I were on vacation from each other. He couldn't get mad at me and hit me in front of my mother, which meant that I didn't have to worry so much about what I did or said. I could just sit in the backseat and read the black painted house numbers off the curbs as we made our way out of our development.

At one point Daddy turned down the volume on NPR and said, “If I find any scratches on this car, I'm going to be very angry.”

“If there hadn't been a war, and you weren't boycotting Christmas,” my mother told him, “you would've gotten a tree and scratched the car yourself. So shut up.”

Daddy didn't say anything. It was kind of exciting to hear her talk to him like that and have him not be able to answer back.

“I don't want any sticky resin on the car, either,” he said. “It's impossible to get off.”

“Can't you stop threatening people for even one second?” my mother asked. Then she turned around to look at me in the backseat. “I mean, how do you live with this?”

I wished she wouldn't keep doing that. Trying to get me to say bad things about Daddy in front of him. It always made me tense, especially with Daddy glaring at me in his rearview mirror, waiting for me to mess up.

Finally I said, “I don't know.”

Daddy rolled his eyes and shifted his gaze back to the road. “Her stock answer,” he muttered.

“How can you not know?” my mother said.

I shrugged.

“Well,” she said, turning back around. “If you can stand him, you can have him.”

I didn't say anything. Just stared at the road in between their two seat backs.

“You'd be surprised at who can stand me,” Daddy said.

“Oh yeah?” my mother said. “Who's that? Your girlfriend?”

“Yes,” he said. “My girlfriend.”

“Goody for her,” my mother said.

“That's right,” Daddy said.

They didn't talk for the rest of the way. To show that she was mad, when we dropped Daddy off at his office, my mother drove off while he was still trying to tell her something through the driver's-side window. “Asshole,” she mumbled. I was in the front seat now, and I forced myself not to look back at Daddy. I worried that I might feel sorry for him.

We had a map that he had drawn for us the night before. It showed where he thought we could get a good tree, and also where the grocery store was, since we needed a few things. There were three twenty-dollar bills attached to the map with a paper clip, and my mother told me to take the money off and put it in her purse. When I opened her wallet, I found a picture of Barry. “What's this?” I said.

She looked over at me. “What do you mean, what's this?”

“I thought you didn't like him anymore.”

“He doesn't like me,” she said. “They're two different things.”

“Oh.” I hadn't seen Barry in so long. His messy light brown hair and the dimple in his chin. It seemed like I should be the one to have the picture, since I was pretty sure he still liked me.

“Did you put the money away?” my mother asked.

“Yes.”

“Then close up the wallet,” she said, and I did.

At the tree place, she picked the expensive kind, a Douglas fir. The man said the needles would stay on longer. He tied the tree to the top of the car for us, then we went to the grocery store. Mom got everything on Daddy's list, then asked if I needed anything. “No,” I said.

“What about period stuff? Sanitary napkins?”

“No,” I said, “I don't need any.”

We went and stood in the checkout line. My mother took a
People
magazine off the rack and read a little. I already felt tired from the whole visit.

On the way out of the store, my mother parked our grocery cart beside the self-service Xerox machine. She reached in her purse and pulled out a few strips of paper, then lifted the lid of the copier and laid the papers out on the glass.

“What are you copying?” I asked.

She put a few coins in the slot and said, “Your father's pay stubs.”

I didn't say anything, just watched the copies slide out on the paper tray. There were three total, and when the machine stopped, my mother picked them up and folded them in half. She stuck them in her purse, then lifted the copier lid and took out the originals. “Okay,” she said. “All done.”

In the parking lot, we loaded the grocery bags into Daddy's backseat. I pushed the empty cart off to one side, while my mother got in the car. A moment later, as I was buckling my seat belt, she said, “I don't need you blabbing to your father about this. I mean, apparently, the two of you are pretty tight, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd keep your mouth shut.”

I knew she wanted me to say that I wasn't tight with Daddy, so I didn't. Instead, I said, “Where did you get his pay stubs?”

“His desk,” she said.

“But his drawers are all locked.”