When I left that place, I was physically healthy but my mind was still a nest of dark, angry confusion. I could barely focus long enough on a thought to sort out what was real from what I’d imagined. Enter Rachel Levine. The first human being, after Dennis, to show me love, patience and real kindness.
Dealing with me at sixteen was like approaching a snarling dog. Stay back, hold out a hand, let the creature come to you. Don’t impose yourself. Wait till she’s ready. And Rachel waited. Sweet-faced, soft-voiced and firm. Always there. Just like Guy and Dennis – at the beginning.
I enjoyed two blissful years with the Levines. Their home became an oasis of calm. Birdie had disappeared from my life, sucked back into that nightmare world I’d narrowly escaped. I was free to concentrate on my studies, graduate with honors, win a bunch of scholarships and buy a sky-blue tulle prom dress. I’d finally let Rachel take me to a hairdresser, who struggled to get a comb through my tangled hair, then gave up and promptly cut it into a pretty, face-framing bob. After that I’d shrugged the hoodie off and emerged from my chrysalis to also discover it was okay to be pretty, to show my face and be proud, now the perverts and predators had been banished to the margins of my new middle-class life.
I didn’t think about Birdie again until my high-school grad.
Rachel and her husband were in the audience. I smiled at them as I crossed the stage, palms sweating, teetering on heels too high for comfort. I grasped that diploma like a talisman, beaming when Rachel pressed a bouquet of roses into my arms then steered me into the common room among the dizzy swarm of eighteen-year-olds feasting on party sandwiches, dainties and fruit punch. Hugs from school friends, breathless promises to stay in touch and plans for the summer made my grad day feel almost normal. Until I thought I glimpsed Birdie.
Outside the window.
A flash of denim and skimpy crop top. Bleached hair and hollow eyes, pushing a stroller. Inside a baby sucked on blue Kool-Aid from a bottle. She stopped and stared at me. Her eyes bloodshot, her mouth slack and drooling. I blinked and she was gone. Dropping my plate on the floor, I ran over to the window, placed my palms flat against the glass and searched for a sign. A plastic soother. Wheel marks in the dirt. Nothing.
“You okay?” said Rachel, taking my arm.
“It was her. I saw her.”
“You mean Birdie?”
I nodded. Rachel’s face was calm. Her voice soft enough to quiet every raging demon inside me.
“It’s natural that you’d want to see her here. To be proud of you today.”
I accepted her explanation and let her soft arm wrap around my shoulders to guide me back to the coffee table.
I told myself I must have imagined it.
I’ve often lied. Stretched the truth. Made things up. I’ve done it a whole lot of times. Like telling the cops it was Patti that told Lester to shake it, don’t drop it. Not me.
I didn’t think of Birdie again until my first year in college. I still went to the mall then, but to buy things rather than find shelter. I’d discovered guys. Found that I could actually be attractive if I dressed up and made an effort. Their sudden attention was a revelation to me after years of hiding behind a hoodie.
In my first year I went on the pill and slept with three or four guys. All of them had money. I made them buy me stuff. Drinks, food, college T-shirts, school binders with gold crests, writers’ journals with gorgeous covers – and books. So many books. I impressed them with my reading list. Burroughs, Proust, Wallace, Melville, Munro, Atwood. I read them all. Even tried to discuss them, but none of them held a candle to Colby who, for some reason never made it to college. I heard from one of our ex-high school buddies that he’d taken a carpentry course at some community college and lived out in the sticks making garden chairs and kitchen cabinets.
So once they’d bought me enough gifts and I’d eaten my fill, I slept with them. Strange, they all seemed so grateful. And so persistent afterwards. But after I’d bared my body to them and abandoned all control, I couldn’t bring myself to look them in the eyes again. Then I hightailed it back to the mall in search of familiar ground and a new outfit to lure the next sucker. I’d become a slightly different version of Birdie. More educated, more respectable, but way more sly and calculating.
One afternoon I went there I used the back entrance. Walked by the benches where the deadbeats and junkies hung out. That’s when I saw Loni.
Or at least a cartoonish, used-up version of her. Caved-in mouth, broken nose and fried clumps of hair sticking up from her scalp. She was hunched over a bottle, pushing away some old drunk who was whining for a shot. She yelled at him and shoved him off the bench. I stood a few yards away. Far enough to bolt inside if I had to. Far enough to get to mall security if I needed them.
“Loni,” I said. Very calm. Very confident because of my shiny shoulder-length hair, nice jeans and Hollister hoodie.
She looked up and grinned showing yellowed stumps of teeth. “Well, if it ain’t the bitch sister.”
“Charmed to see you again. Where’s Birdie?”
She shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
A necklace of purple hickies adorned her neck. Who would kiss her now?
“Oh, but you do know,” I said, despising her as much as I always had. Maybe more.
“Could be up in Duluth on the ships. Can’t say.
