Towelhead (10 page)

“Is this true?” Daddy asked me.

I nodded.

He was quiet for a second. “Why did you hit him?”

“Well,” Mrs. Vuoso said, “I just don't think there are any circumstances under which hitting would be appropriate.”

Daddy kept looking at me. “Was it because of a game?”

I shook my head.

“It wasn't because of anything!” Zack said.

“I just think Jasira seems like a very unhappy little girl,” Mrs. Vuoso said. “I mean, I hate to say it, but this isn't the first problem we've had with her.”

“What are you talking about?” Daddy said.

“He called me a towelhead,” I said then, terrified that Mrs. Vuoso would start talking about her missing tampons.

Daddy looked at me. “A what?”

“A towelhead,” I said.

“A towelhead?” Daddy repeated. Then he turned to Mrs. Vuoso and said, “Did you know your son called my daughter a towelhead?”

Mrs. Vuoso looked at Zack then, like she hadn't known at all.

“And a camel jockey,” I said.

Daddy looked at me again.

“And a sand nigger,” I said.

He laughed. “Jesus Christ.”

“I don't think this is something to joke about,” Mrs. Vuoso said. “I mean, if Zack used inappropriate language, I apologize. But violence is violence. I just think Jasira must be a very unhappy little girl.”

“Where's the check?” Daddy said.

“Pardon me?” Mrs. Vuoso said.

“You said you had Jasira's last check,” he said. “Where is it?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Vuoso said. She hesitated for a second, then reached inside her jacket pocket. “Here you go.”

After Daddy took it, he showed it to me. “Is this the right amount?”

I looked at it, even though I was too nervous to read it. “Yes,” I said.

“All right, then,” Daddy said. “I think we must be finished here.”

“Well,” Mrs. Vuoso said, “I don't think we are finished.”

“Thank you very much for coming,” Daddy said, and he went and opened the door for them.

After a moment, Mrs. Vuoso said, “Well, all right,” and she and Zack left.

I thought Daddy would hit me once they'd gone. I thought maybe he was just pretending to be nice to me in front of Zack and his mom. But he didn't hit me. He said, “What was she talking about when she said she'd had other problems with you?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You must've done something.”

“Once I left Zack alone to go and get birdies from Melina next door,” I said finally.

Daddy looked at me.

“I mean, Mrs. Hines.”

He nodded. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Big deal,” he said.

He went outside then to take our flag down so we wouldn't be unpatriotic. When he came back in, he said, “Guess whose flag is still up?”

“Whose?” I said.

“Who do you think?” he said.

I went to the dining room window and pulled the curtain aside. It was hard to see at first, but after a moment, I noticed Mr. Vuoso's flag, drooping in the still air. I thought then about how he had been with me at sunset. How he had been unpatriotic because of me.

“I should go over there and say something,” Daddy said. But he didn't. He folded our flag and put it in the closet. Then he sat in his chair and picked up his newspaper. I lay back down on the couch. I must've fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, Daddy was standing over me, whistling his awful wake-up song. When I opened my eyes, though, it wasn't so terrible to see his face.

I
stopped bleeding the next day. Then, a few days after that, I stopped feeling sore. I tested myself out to see if I could still have an orgasm, and I could. I was glad everything still worked down there, but I didn't really want to have orgasms anymore. They didn't make me feel that much better.

My period came, and the tampons went in more easily than ever. There were only a few of them, though, and soon they ran out. I had an idea that I could ask Mr. Vuoso to buy me more—that he would want to get them for me, since he had hurt me. But then, when I watched him from the dining room window taking his flag down, I changed my mind. He didn't look so sorry anymore.

Zack's new babysitter was Melina. She played badminton with him in the backyard, just like I used to do. She didn't really run that much, maybe because of the baby. She just stood still while Zack hit the birdies to her. Sometimes he hit her in the stomach, and she would yell at him to cut it out. I thought about telling her what Mr. Vuoso had done to me so that she would feel terrible about working for him, but I didn't. I was too ashamed.

Mostly, I looked forward to when Daddy came home at night and he would call the Vuosos names. He said they were ignorant and sons of bitches and hicks. He said that Mr. Vuoso was going to get called up soon enough, and that Saddam would gas him and that that would serve them all right. I asked Daddy what happened when you got gassed, and he said, “You fall to the ground, and you don't see, and you can't feel. And you're so thirsty. Except any water you can find to drink is filled with the gas, and it makes you even sicker.”

“I thought you hated Saddam,” I said.

“Of course I do,” he said. “These are just the facts.”

I nodded. It was nice, feeling closer to Daddy. Ever since Mrs. Vuoso had fired me, it seemed like he was trying to make me feel better. He even called my mother to tell her what had happened. “She just went ahead and hit him,” I heard him say. “Right in the arm.” Later, when it was my turn to talk, my mother said, “If you have a problem with someone, see if you can talk it out first before resorting to violence.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What's she telling you?” Daddy demanded, since he was standing right there.

“That I should try to talk things out first,” I said.

“Give me that,” he said, and he took the phone away from me. Then he started fighting with her about how she was Irish and didn't know anything. Eventually, he hung up on her and we went to have pizza at Panjo's. We sat on a picnic bench outside the restaurant, even though it was the end of November, and Daddy said, “Your mother is coming to Houston for Christmas.”

“She is?” I hadn't heard that part of their conversation.

He nodded. “She wants to stay with us so she won't have to pay for a hotel.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking he wanted my approval.

“What do you mean, ‘Okay?'” he said. “Is it your house?”

“No.”

“That's right,” he said, gnawing on his crust. “It's my house. I decide who stays.”

I didn't say anything.

“I told her she could have my study, even though it's against my better judgment.”

I nodded.

“Your mother can be very hard to live with,” he said. “She thinks she knows everything.”

“How long is she staying?” I asked.

“Too long,” he said. “A week.”

“Wow,” I said.

“If she starts to get difficult, I told her I was kicking her out.”

I wasn't sure how I felt about my mother coming to visit. I hadn't seen her since July, and I didn't really miss her that much anymore. I worried that if she noticed this, she would get mad. She already seemed mad that I'd stopped calling her so often. “What's going on down there?” she'd say, calling me herself. “I hardly ever hear from you.” I'd tell her nothing was going on, and she'd say that couldn't possibly be true. She was right—except that I couldn't tell her what was going on. I just didn't do regular things.

Once I tried to tell her about Melina, but she got bored. “Why would I want to hear about a pregnant woman who can't be bothered to go out and buy herself some decent maternity clothes?” she asked.

“Her husband used to work in Yemen,” I said.

“So?”

“I just thought it was interesting.”

“Well,” my mother said, “I want to hear about you. That's what's interesting to me. Tell me about school.”

“What about it?”

“Do you have any friends?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Thomas Bradley.”

“Fine,” she said, “tell me about him.”

“We eat lunch together,” I said. “Then he clears my tray for me.”

“You can't clear your own tray?” she asked.

“I can,” I said. “He just does it first.”

“You're too young to have a boyfriend,” she said. “Remember that.”

“He's not my boyfriend,” I said.

“Right,” she said.

“He's not,” I insisted.

In a way, though, he was. The kids at school teased us about it, and when they did it in front of Thomas, he never told them it wasn't true. Sometimes I wanted to tell them myself, but I was afraid that if I did, they would start calling me names again. They had stopped when they thought I was Thomas's girlfriend. I wasn't sure why, since Thomas didn't seem all that popular. He was a lot bigger than most of the other kids, though, and he did help the YMCA swim team win most of their meets.

At the beginning of December, he asked me over to dinner at his house. “My parents want to meet you,” he said.

“Why?” I said.

“Why do you think?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Well,” he said, “do you want to come or not?”

“I have to ask Daddy,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “Just let me know by tomorrow. My mother has to buy the food.”

That night at dinner, when I told Daddy about my invitation, he said, “No. You're too young.”

“But his parents are going to be there,” I said.

“I don't care,” he said. “If you want to go over to a friend's house, you should try to make friends with a girl.”

The next day, when I told Thomas that I couldn't come, he said, “What if my mom called your dad? Would that help?”

I shook my head. “I don't think so.”

“Why not?” he said.

“Daddy doesn't like that,” I said, even though I didn't know for sure that this was true.

That night, Thomas's mom called Daddy anyway. I didn't know it had happened until I heard him yell, “Jasira!” I was in my bathroom, hand-washing my bras with the Woolite Daddy had bought me. When I got out to the kitchen, he slapped me. It was the first time he had been mean to me since I'd gotten fired, and I started crying immediately. After I'd calmed down a little, he said, “That was Mrs. Bradley on the phone. Do you know Mrs. Bradley?”

I nodded, even though I didn't know her personally.

“She was calling to convince me to let you go to dinner at her house this weekend. Do you know how embarrassing that was for me?”

I nodded again.

“When I say no, it means no. It doesn't mean tell your friend to have his mom call and try to change my mind.”

“But I told Thomas not to do it,” I said. “I told him you wouldn't like that.”

He looked at me. “How come when you tell people no, they think you mean yes?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well, I do,” he said. “It's because you say yes and no in the exact same way. No one can tell what you're really thinking. You need to learn to speak with more emphasis. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound forceful.

He nodded. “That's better.”

“I'm sorry that Mrs. Bradley called you,” I said.

“Don't let it happen again.”

“I won't.”

“And you're not allowed to go in that boy's room with him. I already told his mother.”

I didn't know what to say to this. I'd assumed I wasn't going.

“You are restricted to the common areas of their home.”

“Okay,” I said.

That Saturday, Daddy took me to the mall so we could buy a box of Godiva chocolates for Mrs. Bradley. I felt embarrassed to give someone I didn't even know a present, but Daddy said that was what you did when you were a dinner guest. Then we went to the liquor store to buy her a bottle of wine.

When I came out of my room that night, Daddy looked at me and said, “Don't you have anything besides jeans?”

I shook my head.

“You can't go to someone's house for dinner in jeans.”

“Thomas wears jeans.”

“I don't care what Thomas wears,” Daddy said, and he walked past me toward my bedroom. I followed him, and when I got there, he was holding one of my cotton skirts. “I thought you said you didn't have anything besides jeans.”

I looked at him.

“What's this?” he asked, shaking the hanger a little.

“A skirt.”

“Put it on,” he said, handing it to me.

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said.

“Because why?”

“Can't I just wear jeans?”

“Why can't you wear a skirt?” he demanded.

“Daddy,” I said, “my legs are too hairy.”

He looked at my legs then, even though they were covered. “All right,” he said, “hold on a second.” He handed me the skirt and walked out. A few moments later, he came back with some shaving cream and his fancy razor. “Go in the bathroom and use these,” he said. “Then put the skirt on and let's go.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Hurry up,” he said.

I couldn't believe I was finally going to get to shave. I did my calves as quickly as possible, then my bikini line. The pool was closed for the winter, so Daddy would never find out. “What's taking so long?” he yelled, and I yelled back that I was trying not to cut myself. Luckily, the tub had one of those crisscross drains, so I was able to scoop all the hairs out afterward.

“Now you're going to be late!” Daddy said when I finally came out. “What's the point of going to all this trouble if you're not even going to be on time?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It's rude to be late,” he said, and he grabbed his keys and walked out the back door.

On the drive over to the Bradleys', he told me to make sure not to talk with my mouth open, and to say that the food was good even if it wasn't. “Okay,” I said.

“And don't sit there looking miserable,” he said. “Try to smile a little.”

I nodded.

“I don't want to hear any more of this shit about how people think you're an unhappy little girl. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Practice smiling now,” he said, and I smiled a little, and he said, “Good. Just keep doing that.”

The Bradleys lived two developments over from us. We'd looked at the model homes there, and even though they were a little bit nicer than ours, Daddy had decided that they weren't worth the money. As we turned onto the Bradleys' street, he said, “They probably paid twenty thousand more than I did, and for what? An extra bedroom? Idiots.” He pulled into their driveway, which was wide enough for two cars, even though there was only one in it now. I remembered then that the color of the pale bricks on the outside of their house was called “champagne.”

“All right,” Daddy said, putting the car in park, “get out.” It was the way he talked to me when he wanted to be nice without using nice words, and suddenly I felt happy. I even thought about leaning over and kissing him good-bye, but I knew that would ruin everything, so I didn't. “Thank you for the ride,” I said.

He nodded. “Call me when you're ready to come home.”

“Okay,” I said, gathering up the wine and chocolate.

“No later than ten,” he said.

“Okay,” I said again, and I got out of the car. Just then, Thomas opened the front door and walked out onto the steps. “Hi,” he said. He was dressed up a little bit, too, in khaki pants and a gray turtleneck sweater.

“Hi,” I said.

He looked over my shoulder. “Is that your dad?”

I turned around then to see what Daddy was still doing in the driveway. I waved good-bye to him, but he didn't wave back. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Thomas.