“Oh.”
#Five looked at her expectantly, but Girl didn’t know what to say. She wished #Five would just go away.
“Well, anyway, it’s not his fault. Just thought you should know,” #Five said as she walked out of the room. Girl never told her father what #Five had said, and Girl never saw #Five again.
Brother and Girl helped Father move from his ex-wife’s small ranch house to a bottom-floor unit in the apartment building he owned. It had brown carpeting, white walls, and a large stone mantel that ran the length of the living room. The kitchen had an almost-modern counter that did double duty for kitchen prep and eating space. The apartment was large and utilitarian, identical to all the other one-bedroom units. The four-plex itself was one of a half-dozen buildings set off the main cul-de-sac in groups of twos or threes—a development well thought out but then abandoned, the individual buildings sold off to various investors. #Five, her father’s newest ex-wife, was a realtor. Owning rental property had been her idea. It was 1987, and the Anchorage real estate market was hot, or was going to be hot, or might be hot someday. Girl thought the place was depressing, and like all of Father’s places, didn’t have room for both children.
photographs
Mother didn’t have a lot of rules for the children. She didn’t like to hear dirty jokes, but she didn’t mind the children telling them to each other. Mother didn’t swear, but she didn’t complain when the children did—other than motherfucker. That word was banned. She didn’t mind them kissing people in the back seat while she drove. She didn’t think clothing was necessary around the house, though they had stopped going nude camping the year after Girl started “developing.”
“Why aren’t we going to Sabra’s Pond this year?” Girl had asked.
“Well, since Michael took over, it’s gotten over-commercialized. People with cameras hiding in the bushes, planes circling overhead,” Mother said.
“I wish he hadn’t put that ad out,” Stepmother added. “It’s not a safe place anymore.”
But there was more to it than that—Mother thought puberty might make it awkward for the children. As it was, they went one summer too long. The last year, Girl’s breasts were starting to appear, and she was growing hair between her legs. Girl struck up a friendship with a twenty-eight-year-old man, eating breakfast alone with him in the woods, something expressly forbidden, but how was Mother supposed to make Girl feel safe and warn her of the dangers of adult men at the same time? He came into their campsite at night, after everyone was asleep, and left presents for Girl to find when she woke: pretty rocks, which were all right, and a vial of perfume, which somehow wasn’t. It was easier to just stop going.
The one rule Mother expressed loudly was “no naked photographs.” Once, at Sabra’s Pond, Girl and her friend Stephanie were singing a song down at the beach. Well, actually, Stephanie, a year younger than Girl, was singing, but she was shy and hid behind Girl, who stood in front and lip-synced. One of the adults grabbed a camera, but was stopped by someone before they could depress the shutter.
“Judy doesn’t allow photographs of the children,” they explained. Mother didn’t want Girl to have anything in her past that could affect her future.
Girl was thirteen when it happened, a few months shy of fourteen. She had kissed her first boy at an amusement park—both of them in their long Hawaiian shorts called jams—one month before she turned thirteen, and during the next year she kissed a few more, but no hands had gone over her shirt or under it. The kids at church were all kissing each other in the woods, more a game than any real intention. Girl would kiss just about anyone to see what it was like, but when one of the boys tried to get her to kiss her brother, “just so you can say you have kissed everyone at church,” she refused. Kissing his best friend had been weird enough.
One day, the family was over at Mother’s best friend’s house. The grown-ups were talking downstairs, and Brother and Girl were upstairs with Jim, Mother’s best friend’s son. He was the only kid they knew who had a lesbian mother, and it was always a little more relaxed around him, like a cousin, only not exactly. Jim was one year older than Brother, two years older than Girl, which would have been enough to make him their natural leader, but more than just age, Jim was a genius. He had skipped a grade or two already and had his own personal computer. The children played B-52 Bomber on his Amiga, and there was a virtual therapist program called Eliza that Girl particularly liked. When you typed “shut up” to Eliza, she replied “OK” and closed the program.
Jim also had a real camera, not just a point-and-shoot, and his own darkroom.
“We should take pictures of Girl,” he said. “You know, like if you want to do Playboy one day.” He brushed his dark chestnut hair to the side, his brown eyes bright behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Girl had a kind of half-crush on him, but he never said or did anything to indicate he felt the same.
“With your tits you should definitely do Playboy as soon as you’re old enough,” Brother agreed. “Then we wouldn’t have to get jobs.”
Girl wasn’t so sure. She thought, yeah, if times got tough, it would be good to know that she had something to fall back on, but if she did Playboy, she’d keep the money for herself. She wondered how much they paid.
“They wouldn’t even know you aren’t eighteen now,” Jim added.
“Did you see the pictures of Madonna? She was fourteen
