Towelhead (35 page)

“You can come over tonight, okay?” Gil said.

Daddy shrugged. Then he turned to me and said, “You can't come home? Even for just one afternoon?”

I didn't know what to say. I looked at Gil.

“No,” Daddy said. “I'm talking to you, not him.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I can't.”

Daddy was quiet for a second, then he said fine and went home.

Melina and I went and sat in the living room then. She asked me how I was doing, and I said okay. She told me again that I had done a good job with the policewoman, but that I should probably prepare myself for the fact that I would have to tell my story a few more times to different people. Plus, she said, I would have to go to the doctor. “What kind of doctor?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“My doctor,” she said. “The doctor who takes care of me when I'm pregnant. She's very nice. We'll go together.”

“Will Daddy come, too?” I asked.

“God, no,” she said. “I mean, I guess we can't stop him from sitting in the waiting room, but he can't come in the examining room. It's not allowed.”

“Okay,” I said. I got my book about teenagers from the coffee table and read about how, when you have an exam, they put a kind of tool in you to spread your insides so they can see. It said you were supposed to relax while they're doing it, so it wouldn't feel uncomfortable. It said that the doctor might try to show me my insides with a mirror, since they were fascinating.

While I was reading, the phone rang. Gil, who was still in the kitchen, answered it, then called me to come in. “It's your mother,” he said, handing me the receiver. I wished I could tell him that I didn't want to talk to her, but I figured I shouldn't, since he'd already had to defend me against Daddy. I was worried that someday soon he might get tired of having to tell people to leave me alone.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the phone.

He nodded, then grabbed the magazine he'd been looking at and headed into the living room.

“Hello?” I said, wishing Gil had stayed.

“Jasira?” my mother said.

“Yes?”

“Is that you?”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “Daddy just called me. He told me what happened.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I'm going to come down there next weekend, okay?”

“I live with Melina now,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Daddy told me.”

“You can stay with Daddy, but I live with Melina.”

“Okay,” she said.

I didn't know what to say then. I couldn't think of anything. Finally I asked, “What will you do when you come?”

“Well,” she said, “just see you, I guess. Talk to you.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe I shouldn't have sent you down there to live.”

“I like it,” I said, which was the truth. I did like it.

My mother started to cry. “How can you like it?”

“It's not so bad.”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “You were very brave to talk to the police.”

“Thank you.”

“Now that man will go to jail, and he won't hurt any other little girls. You prevented him from hurting other girls.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I didn't really like to think of Mr. Vuoso going to jail. It bothered me. I knew he had done bad things, but he had done good things, too. He had been my friend sometimes. He had been jealous of Thomas. He had yelled at his son to be nice to me. He had protected me from Daddy.

“Anyway,” my mother said, “I'll be front and center in that courtroom, giving him the look of his life.”

“What if it's on a school day?” I said.

“What?”

“What if court is on a school day and you can't come?”

“They'll have to get a substitute,” she said.

After we hung up, I went in the living room and told Melina and Gil that my mother was coming in a week. “I've never met your mother,” Gil said.

“I met her,” Melina said, but she didn't say anything else.

“I don't want to live with her,” I said.

“Okay,” Melina said.

“Will I have to?” I asked.

“Not if you don't want to.”

“Will I ever have to live with anyone I don't want to?”

“Of course not,” Melina said.

“Thomas says I can't live with the neighbors.”

She sighed. “Well, Thomas doesn't know everything.”

Daddy didn't come back that night, even though Gil had told him that he could. Part of me was glad, but part of me missed him a little. If we had been together, we could've made fun of my mother and how terrible it was going to be when she visited. Or we could've talked about how the police car had stayed outside the Vuosos' house late into the afternoon. Or how when they had left, Mr. Vuoso had been with them, carrying a small duffel bag.

 

Denise gave me the pictures we'd had taken of ourselves at Glamour Shots. She said that I looked like a model and that I could be in a magazine someday. She said she looked like a model, too, but if it had been a shot of her whole body, then forget it. She gave Mr. Joffrey a copy of one of her pictures, and a couple of days later he gave it back to her, saying that he couldn't accept it but that she looked very nice. She asked me if I was going to give a copy of my picture to Mr. Vuoso, and I said probably not. “You're not in love with him anymore?” she asked, and I shook my head.

I gave Thomas one of the pictures, and he said he would cherish it always. He'd started walking me everywhere in school, like he thought someone was going to get me. He met me at the curb when Melina dropped me off in the morning, and he waited with me in the afternoon until she came to pick me up. He told me he'd decided that he didn't want to have sex with me anymore, not until I was older. Instead he held my hand and kissed my cheek. He didn't say anything selfish about what I should do for him. He came back to Melina's one day after school, but all we did was sit and watch TV.

Daddy must've seen Thomas's parents come to get him, because he came over that night and knocked on the door. He said I wasn't allowed to see Thomas anymore, not because he was black, but because we'd had sex. Melina said I was allowed to see him, except with supervision. Daddy said I was his daughter, and he would make the rules; and Melina said it was her house, and she would make the rules. Daddy said he couldn't believe he didn't have a say in how his own daughter was raised anymore, and Melina said he was overstating.

My mother arrived on Friday night with her new boyfriend, Richard. Daddy let them stay at his place while he went to stay with Thena. It seemed strange to me that he was letting a black person stay in his house. Part of me thought he was doing it to try to impress Melina, who he felt had unfairly judged him as a racist. “How could I be a racist?” he'd asked me one night on the phone. Sometimes he called to tell me good night or to ask if I'd done my homework. “I mean, just take one look at me!” When I didn't answer, he answered for me, saying, “Well, I couldn't be a racist. Hardly. It's a joke.”

My mother called from Daddy's house and asked if I'd like to come over and meet Richard. Melina was standing nearby in the kitchen, her fingers spread out across the front of her T-shirt. It was like she was trying to massage Dorrie through her stomach. “I don't usually go over there,” I told my mother.

“You can't come over for just a night?” she asked. “I mean, we've come all this way.”

I looked at Melina. She shook her head slightly, like she was agreeing with me that I didn't have to go over there. “You could come over here,” I offered.

Melina nodded approvingly.

“Come over there?” my mother said.

“Melina says it's okay.”

“Uh-huh,” my mother said.

“You could meet Melina and Gil.”

“I think I already met her,” my mother said. “Didn't I?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“I guess I just thought you might break your rule and come and stay the weekend. I mean, your father's not even here.”

Melina made a face. I could tell she was getting bothered by how long this was all taking, by how my mother wouldn't do things our way.

Finally I said, “I don't like to go to the place where Mr. Vuoso hurt me.” It wasn't actually true, but I was learning that whenever I talked about Mr. Vuoso to my mother, she didn't bother me so much.

“Oh,” she said. “I see. Well, okay. Why don't we all just go out for dinner then? Richard and I rented a car.”

“With Melina?” I asked.

“Well,” my mother said, “I guess I was thinking it could be just us for tonight. What do you think?”

I looked at Melina. She shrugged. “Okay,” I said to my mother. Mostly I just wanted to get off the phone. “I'll meet you in the driveway.”

“Great,” she said. “You're going to love Richard.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Maybe you could invite your friend Thomas to come.”

I didn't understand why Thomas could come but not Melina, so I said no. After we hung up, Melina said, “What's her problem?”

“She doesn't want to meet you,” I said.

“She already met me.”

I shrugged. “She doesn't want to meet you again.”

“How can you not want to meet the people your kid is living with?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Weird,” Melina said.

“Can I go to dinner with them?”

“Sure,” she said. “I mean, I guess I'd prefer to meet this Richard guy first, but whatever.”

I nodded and went to get my shoes. I wondered if it would always feel good, asking Melina for permission. It wasn't so much the yes or no part I cared about, but the extra parts. The parts that said she was worried that someone was going to hurt me.

It was strange, walking back to Daddy's house. I wasn't usually outside at this time of night anymore, since this was when Gil and Melina made dinner. And when I was outside, I wasn't alone. Melina had relaxed a little about my going out since Mr. Vuoso had gone with the police, but then he paid bail a couple of days later and came back and she got nervous again. Even though she said there was no way he would dare to do anything now, I noticed that whenever I said I wanted to go out lately, she made up a reason that she wanted to go out, too. Or else she looked at Gil, if he was there, and he made up a reason.

Daddy hated that Mr. Vuoso was out on bail. He said fifty thousand dollars wasn't enough for what Mr. Vuoso had done, and that he couldn't wait for the real punishment to start. I didn't really like seeing him, either, but not for the same reason as Daddy. I didn't like seeing him because it was too hard not to feel sorry for him, and I knew I wasn't supposed to do that. Every time I felt sorry for him, I felt like I was disappointing Melina, even though she might not have known what I was thinking.

Today when I walked past the Vuosos', I noticed a new white cat in the front window. I couldn't believe it. She looked so much like Snowball that I thought maybe it was her, maybe she'd come back to life. But of course she hadn't. She was still in the freezer, wedged in with all Melina's frozen dinners.

My mother ran out of Daddy's house and hugged me. She was wearing jeans and a blue oxford shirt and sneakers. Her hair was in a ponytail. I thought she was trying to look like Melina, even though I wasn't sure she remembered what Melina looked like. I hugged her back until it seemed like maybe she was going to start crying, then I pulled away. She sniffled a little, then introduced me to Richard, who was bald and had a beard. He leaned forward to shake my hand. I got the sense that he didn't want to come too close to me, and I liked that.

We went to a place that served a lot of grilled meat. I liked how instead of saying you wanted a certain dish with a name, you just said, “I'll have the chicken,” or, “I'll have the steak.” We got a curved booth, and my mother sat between Richard and me—closer to Richard, though. Sometimes, when he said something she thought was funny or smart or nice, she reached over and scrubbed his beard with her fingers. When she started to get upset that her steak had been cooked wrong and that Richard's was more what she had wanted, he passed his dish to her and she felt better. The two times he got up to go to the bathroom, she asked my opinion of him. I said I thought he was different than Daddy and that he had a soft, low voice. She nodded. “I know. It's very romantic.” I was glad when Richard came back so I didn't have to think of more things to say about him. When my mother went to the bathroom, he asked me about school and how I liked living with Melina and Gil. I said I liked it a lot, and he said that people could find family in all kinds of different places.