MY REAL DAD TOOK off before I was born. My mom doesn’t say much about him and I don’t ask. “You get your ears from him,” Ma says. They stick out.
When I was little, we lived in an apartment up over my grandparents, Bubby and Pops. Ma had a job working at the paper mill, second shift, and the rest of the time she had to rest up. So mostly it was Bubby and Pops that took care of me.
Bubby was mean. If you peed in your bed she made you lie in it. She didn’t get around much on account of her varicose veins, but she had this little water gun with ammonia in it. If I touched something I wasn’t supposed to—squirt—she’d shoot me. She had good aim too. Always went for one of my eyeballs.
Pops was nice though. He was scared of Bubby too, so he’d have to sneak off if he wanted to say something to me. He taught me poker. “She’ll be good at that, little liar like her,” says Bubby.
I always wanted a set of paints. At school they’d only let you have three colors at a time and you had to share and the other kids always forgot to clean off their brushes between dipping in the black, say, and the yellow. So the colors always got all cruddy. I was careful with my brush, and I tried to show the other kids how to do it, so we could keep ours nice, but they never paid attention. They just smushed all the colors together till it just looked like throw-up. So naturally the teacher got mad, and never let us have any of the really pretty colors like hot pink or purple.
My seventh birthday, Pops bought me a set of poster paints. Every color in the rainbow and enough brushes so you didn’t even have to wash the same one off to paint a different color. Best birthday I ever had.
I took real good care of those paints too. I only painted small pictures, so they’d last longer. If there was some big area to fill in like sky or grass, I’d water down some of my paint, so I wouldn’t use it all up. I did this one picture of Pops, I still remember it. In real life he used a walker, but I made him sitting on a horse, with a lasso in his hand. To me he was a hero.
Another time I was making this picture of our whole family. Big this time, even though it was going to take a lot of paint. I started it before I went off to school in the morning so I left my paints out on this tray I used till I came home in the afternoon, to finish. It was turning out so good I didn’t want to rush it. I even made Bubby smiling.
When I came home that day, my paints weren’t there anymore. My picture was, but not my tray of paints. Pops was taking his nap I guess. Just Bubby sitting in the kitchen, listening to “PTL Club.”
“What happened to my paints?” I asked. “They were right here on the table when I left for school.”
“Darn tooting they were,” she said. “And what was I supposed to do with a dozen little jars of paint dripping all over the place all day? You think we’re living in Santa’s workshop?”
“Where’s my paints?” I asked her. Then I saw. Instead of all my little bottles, with the blue and the green and the purple and that, she had the big three-quart pickle jar on the counter, and it was full of this throw-up-colored stuff. She had my brushes soaking in ammonia. I knew better than to say anything. Just went to my room, like Pops did.
After Pops died, Bubby got real funny and had to go to the county home. That’s when Ma met Chester, that worked as a nurse there. I never heard of a man nurse before, but Chester was.
He was the first person since Pops that was nice to me. Chester used to give me rides in the wheelchair. Gave me the extra Jell-Os. Called me Princess.
I was real glad when he started coming round our place. It got to where he was over there most of the time, on Ma’s day off, and then he started sleeping over. He kept his razor in the bathroom. He even brought over his Lazy Boy chair, for TV watching, and this pet parrot he had since he was in the service, that was like twenty-five years old named Rat Fink. Rat Fink didn’t have a cage, he just perched on the back of the Lazy Boy chair eating seed out of this bowl Chester kept handy for him and dropping the husks on the floor. But I didn’t even mind that, just Dustbustered up the mess like Bubby was still there watching me.
It seemed like maybe we were going to be a happy family after all. Me and Ma, Chester and Rat Fink, kind of like on “The Brady Bunch.” We’d go to the movies sometimes, and bowling even. Saturdays we always went out for pizza, like a real family. Nights sometimes, real late, after Ma came home from the mill, I’d sometimes hear the sound of their hideaway bed bumping against the wall. I’d think, good. He’s going to stay around.
One night when I was coming out of the shower with my towel wrapped around me, Chester came over to me. Ma was at work naturally, so it was just Chester and me.
“Come here,” he says. “Let me dry your hair.”
“That’s OK,” I say. “I got a blow dryer.”
“You got to be careful with those things,” he says. “They dry your ends right out.” Still, I didn’t like the idea much. I was eleven, twelve maybe. Just starting to develop. You feel self-conscious.
“I do this for the old bags at the home all the time,” he says. “Massage their scalp, stimulate the blood vessels. It’s the big thrill of their week.” Now he’s unwinding the towel off my head, and working his fingers through my hair. “Sit,” he says. I do.
At first I feel uncomfortable, but then I start to like how it feels, the way he works his fingers into my scalp. I get so loose I almost forget where I am. The radio’s on. Chester always listened to this station where they just played polka music.
“You got real pretty hair,” he says. “I like your freckles too. And you’re starting to get yourself a nice body.” That part was nuts and I knew it. “I’m fat,” I say.
“I like my women soft like a pillow,” he says. “Laying on top of your mother is like laying on a brush pile.”
After that it’s like I’m watching a TV show, not my own life. He starts rubbing my neck, then my shoulders. He takes off my glasses. Then he’s lifting the bath towel off my shoulders and working his fingers into my back. “Let’s see your little titties,” he says. I turn around and show him.
He tells me I’m beautiful. All day long at the nursing home he’s scrubbing old dried-up, shriveled bodies, he says. “You’re my fresh peach,” he says. “I could eat you.” And then he starts sucking on me, making these slurping sounds. There’s this little trickle of drool I can see, running down my stomach. I’m wondering if the Brady dad ever did anything like this. I can’t believe the Brady girls would let somebody put their finger up inside them. I can’t picture Mrs. Brady letting him put it in her mouth. On the other hand, I never would’ve pictured Chester doing it either. So who knew anymore what might happen when nobody’s watching?
It lasted as long as one polka. Less, even. When it was over, he just pulled up his pants and handed me the towel. “I’ll bring home some of that coconut conditioner we use at the home,” he said. “For next time. Smells real good.”
That’s when I noticed Rat Fink, sitting on the back of her chair as usual, giving me the evil eye. “Lucky she don’t talk, huh?” says Chester.
And I never talked either. Three-and-a-half years he was doing it to me nights my ma went to work, I never said a word. Even after he left, I couldn’t tell her it was good riddance. We were better off. All I said was, “I sure don’t miss that bird.”