winter
Winter is intrinsic to Alaska, cold is part of its very soul, although there had been no snow for the last three winters, only ice. The year Girl moved to Anchorage winter came back with a vengeance—snow four feet deep, and temperatures down to forty below zero. Father had a round thermometer in the yard outside Girl’s bedroom window. She looked at it before she got dressed every morning. As light as it was in the summer, it was that dark in winter: the sun rose at 9:00 a.m. and set at 3:00 p.m., so when Girl had detention, she didn’t see the sun at all. She walked to the bus stop in the dark, the streetlights and houselights reflected and spread on the snow, like a layer of fog. Girl wore an unlined black leather jacket over a half-shirt that always showed her belly button. She had only two pairs of shoes: blue denim high-top Converse sneakers that she wore without socks, and black satin stiletto heels. She didn’t have cool socks, so she wore none at all, Miami Vice style. It was 1987, and while the hit TV show was losing popularity, Girl was from New York, so she was able to excuse any fashion faux pas she made at East Anchorage High as being a New York thing. She knew the other kids had no idea that although she had lived in New York state, she had never actually been to New York City. They thought the whole state was New York City, which was indisputably the coolest and toughest place in the United States. Everyone was afraid of her.
Girl always lost her gloves so she kept her hands in her pockets. She got up at 5:30 a.m. so her hair and makeup were just right. Before school she changed clothes … three times? Five times? Trying so hard to be perfect. Anchorage was in a valley, so the dry air was untouched by wind. Surprisingly, she was rarely too cold, even though she wasn’t dressed appropriately.
Girl was fighting to be cool. She had her braces removed, because the new orthodontist had a different plan from the one in New York. Suzy gave her skintight jeans and Father bought her stretch pants, as they called leggings, and half shirts. Wayne, the boy next door, gave her a leather jacket with Michael Jackson zippers, then Bob gave her a better, zipper-free one. Girl would do anything to be cool. She didn’t mind being cold if it meant no one called her a nerd. No one barked at her in Alaska. The only kind of beautiful she wanted to be was sexy. Her breasts grew from 34C to 34D that autumn. She got her weight down from 115 pounds to 97 pounds, because skinnier was sexier, but she couldn’t sustain it. Her legs were long and had a gap between her thighs. Was it good to have a gap? Was it bad? Did her legs look knock-kneed? She only knew thigh gaps were a thing to worry over because an older teenaged girl commented on Girl’s. She had to remember to not lock her knees when she stood, because it made a weird concave silhouette, but it was comfortable. She walked with her weight in her heels, her feet rolled out so she wore down her shoes on the outside edge. When she walked, her boobs bounced under her shirt, but she didn’t know how else to walk. She tried hard to be less bouncy, but she could not make her body behave. Always the throbbing of her crotch. The need to rub when she was home alone, the need to kiss and rip clothes off boys and feel their hands. The boys always hurt her breasts when they touched them, squeezing and sucking the nipples too hard. Only, if they weren’t so rough, it felt like nothing. She thought maybe the nerves were buried too deep because her breasts were so big. But between her legs she wanted them to touch and touch and touch. She could not get the same feeling on her own, even though she had been rubbing herself to fall asleep for as long as she could remember. She needed a boy to make the light explode with their sweaty hips thrusting harder and deeper.
christmas
Girl and Father sat on the living room floor to exchange Christmas presents before she went back home to New York for winter break. No matter where she lived, home was Cooper Road, the house Mother and Stepmother bought when she was in kindergarten. Father’s apartment had no tree or stockings, and he had only three packages for her to open, unlike the mountain of presents she knew awaited her at Mother’s house. Girl opened the biggest box first, a navy blue sweatshirt that said LIFE IS SHORT, EAT DESSERT FIRST! It wasn’t the kind of thing she would ever wear, and she pretended that she didn’t know that it was the bonus gift from the catalog his girlfriend, Daisy, bought a lot of gifts from. The second gift was more her style, although it still played to Father’s love of funny T-shirts. Girl smiled when she opened the mint-green sweatshirt with a puffin on it. It said, “When Puffins Go Bad,”
