White Oleander

Thirteen? The shock of it made me drop a stack of clothes off the hook. I thought back through the past year. My mother's trial, all the sessions and questions, medication and caseworkers, Sometime in there I'd turned thirteen. I had crossed a frontier in my sleep, and nobody had woken me to stamp my passport. Thirteen. The idea so stunned me I didn't even argue when Starr insisted on buying me the pink dress to wear to church, and two bras so they wouldn't hang down to my knees when I was thirty, and a package of panties, some other things.

 

We went next door to Payless for shoes. Starr took a sample red high heel down from the display and put it on without a sock, stood on it, smoothed her shorts over her hips, cocked her head to one side, made a face, and put it back on the stand. "I mean, I really thought like that. Who cares if I stick my tits in some stranger's face? It's nobody's business but mine."

 

Carolee whispered, "Mother, please shut up. People are staring."

 

Starr handed me a pair of pink high heels that would match my dress. I tried them on. They made my feet look like Daisy Duck's, but Starr loved them and pressed them on me.

 

"She could really use some goddamn sneakers or something," Carolee said. "All she's got are those thongs."

 

I decided on a pair of hiking boots, hoping they weren't too expensive. Starr looked pained when I showed them to her. "They're not very . .. flattering."

 

But snakes rarely struck above the ankle.

 

ON SUNDAY MORNING, Carolee was up early. I was surprised. On Saturday she'd slept until noon. But here she was, up at eight, dressed, her little backpack on her back. "Where are you going?"

 

She brushed her sandy hair. "Are you kidding? I'm not going to spend my day listening to Reverend Creephead talk about the Blood of the Lamb." She put her brush down and rushed out of the room. "Sayonara." I heard the screen door slam.

 

I took the hint from Carolee and pretended I was sick. Starr looked at me hard, and said, "Next week, missy." She wore a short white skirt and a peach blouse and four-inch spike heels. I could smell a big waft of Obsession. "No excuses."

 

It was only when I heard Starr's Torino heave itself onto the road that I dared dress and come out, make myself some breakfast. It was nice being alone, the boys hiding somewhere down in the wash, the distant whine of dirt bikes. I was just eating when Starr's hippie boyfriend came out of the bedroom, barefoot in jeans, pulled a T-shirt over his head. His chest was lean and hairy, sandy threaded with gray, his shaggy hair out of its usual ponytail. He staggered down the hall. I could hear the sound of his piss, the water coming on. Splashing, flushing. He came into the main room and found a cigarette in a pack on the table, lit it. The hand that held the cigarette was missing one ringer and the fingertip of the next.

 

He smiled when he saw me looking at it. "You ever see a carpenter get a table in a restaurant? Table for three, please." He held up his damaged hand.

 

At least he wasn't sensitive about it. I kind of liked him, though it embarrassed me that he was the one causing the "Christ almighties" through the wall. He was a plain man, lean-faced, sad-eyed, long graying hair. We were supposed to call him Uncle Ray. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a beer. Shhhhht, it sighed when he popped the top.

 

"You're missing the Jesus show." He didn't drink his beer so much as pour it down his throat.

 

"So are you," I said.

 

"I'd rather be shot," he said. "Here's my theory. If there's a God, he's so fucked up he doesn't deserve to be prayed to." He belched loudly and smiled.

 

I'd never thought much about God. We had the Twilight of the Gods, we had the world tree. We had Olympus and its scandals, Ariadne and Bacchus, the rape of Danae. I knew about Shiva and Parvati and Kali, and Pele the volcano goddess, but my mother had banned the least mention of Christ. She wouldn t even come to the Christmas pageant at school. She made me beg a ride off some other kid.

 

The nearest I'd come to feeling anything like God was the plain blue cloudless sky and a certain silence, but how do you pray to that?

 

Uncle Ray leaned up against the doorjamb, smoking, looking out at the big pepper tree and his pickup truck in the yard. He sipped his beer, which he held in the same hand as the cigarette, dexterous for a person missing two fingers. He crinkled his eyes against the smoke as he exhaled out the screen. "He just wants to ball her. Pretty soon he's gonna tell her to get rid of me, that s when I get my thirty-eight, teach him a fucking thing or two. Then you'll see a little Blood of the Lamb."

 

I picked the marshmallows out of my cereal, arranged them on the rim of the bowl, purple moons, green clovers. "It's not a sin if you're married," I said. I didn't think he'd hear me but he did.