Glory O’Brien, atomic bomb

I bought the dress—the larger size, because I wanted it to look roomy, like those dresses in Dorothea Lange’s Farm Security Administration pictures from the Dust Bowl. Wearing clothing a size big makes you look like you’re hungry and poor. Makes you look like you are withering.

When I stopped at the drugstore on the way out of the mall, I stood in aisle six pretending to look at shampoo. I asked myself, Why am I buying crab killer for Ellie? Why can’t she do it herself? And I was angry. Suddenly. One minute, I was Glory O’Brien, dress shopper; next minute I was Glory O’Brien, atomic bomb.

Somehow, staring at the nine million different types of Pantene shampoo made me see Ellie for what she’d always been. A manipulator. A competitor. A codependent. A leech. An obligate parasite—who needed me, but whom I didn’t need.

Transmission from the bottle of Pantene Pro-V Straight to Curly 2-in-1: My shampoo will make men look at you. Trust me. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Transmission from the bottle of Pantene Pro-V Frizzy to Smooth shampoo: Don’t use that two-in-one shit. Makes your hair all wiry. Use me. Grab a bottle of conditioner, too, and then men will totally look at you. Also, wear shorter shorts and unbutton your blouses about two more buttons. You may also want to get a tan. And shave your legs more often.

I took a picture of the rows of shampoo. I called it Empty Promises.

I walked back to the pharmacy and asked the guy for whatever would kill the pubic lice my slutty friend had. I said, “Can you give me whatever stuff will kill the pubic lice my slutty friend got?”

This made the people working in the pharmacy laugh and soon I was walking out of the mall with a graduation dress and crab killer. And I was mad at Ellie for being sexy. Or being slutty. Or being whatever made her have sex before I did. But when I looked out to the parking lot and accidentally met eyes with a guy who was walking toward me holding his son’s hand, I stopped.

Transmission from the guy walking into the mall: His grandfather was a teacher. His granddaughter will be a teacher, too, but before she ever gets a chance to teach, she will be exiled from a place called New America. I shook my head and walked to my car.

When I got there, I stared at myself in the sun visor’s mirror until I could get a transmission. No transmission. See, Glory? You’re imagining things.

When I got home I took a deep breath and approached Dad.

“You’re staring at me,” Dad said.

“Yes,” I said.

Transmission from Dad: His great-great-grandfather came to America from Tipperary after losing his land to the English during the 1888 evictions. His name was Pádraig O’Brien and he played the tin whistle and made a living out of that and thieving in the Philadelphia area until he settled down with Mary Helen, a woman who had fourteen children, one of whom was Dad’s great-grandfather John. John O’Brien was a banker… or a thief, depending on which way you looked at it.

He said, “Did you find the dress?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I did.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

He smiled at me. “You’re still staring,” he said.

Transmission from Dad: His grandmother stopped talking to her sister after the farm got split up and she didn’t get as much money as her sister did.

I got no transmissions from the future. All I saw were distant cousins and grandparents and even ancestors from the fifteenth century eating a skewered, smoked pig with their dirty hands.

No future. Because maybe I had no future.

I looked down at my hands.

“Do you have something to say?” Dad asked.

“Yeah.” Silence. “I know you said no before, but can I… can I have the key to Mom’s darkroom?”

He looked surprised when I asked, as if I hadn’t been taking pictures nonstop for the last few years, filling his biannual sketchbook gifts. As if I hadn’t been having to take my black-and-white negatives to the local photo lab to get them sent out to be developed rather than doing it right downstairs where there was a place to do it myself.

I decided to stop all eye contact and look into space while talking to him. I didn’t care about ancient O’Briens and their weird family issues.

“I want to develop some film and it seems dumb to send it out.”

Dad said, “I haven’t been in that darkroom since—uh.” He stopped and sighed. He really thought about it as if I’d just asked him to do something huge rather than hand over a key. “I know she kept all her notebooks on the shelf above the sink. Sketchbooks… kind of like yours. You should find a lot of info in there. Recipes and stuff.” He fidgeted, looking frazzled by this. “Chemical recipes. Not cakes. Your mother was very private about her chemistry.” He gestured to the prints on the walls. “If you get into those notebooks, you can’t tell anyone what’s in there, okay? Especially not that Wilson dick.” Mr. Wilson was the photo teacher in school. Since he got a bank of computers for his graphic arts lab, he only kept one tiny old darkroom for the history of photography class. I knew Dad hated the guy. They knew each other before. Before.

“No problem,” I said. “I don’t have any more classes with him anyway.” I cleared my throat and said this last part loudly and slowly. “Because I graduate from high school tomorrow.”

He stopped working on his laptop and looked at me.

“Wow,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, how did that happen?” he asked. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt. “Come here.”

I sat next to him on the couch and he put me in a loving headlock. “How the hell are you graduating from high school already?”

“I did this thing called growing up. What happens is your body and brain get larger. It’s an amazing process. You should try it.”

“Smartass.”

“And?”

“And I’m proud of you,” he said. He let me out of the headlock.

“Is something wrong with your eye?”

He cleaned his glasses again and blinked back tears that welled in his eyes. “I worry.”

I shrugged.

“No college. No plans. What the hell are you going to do here with your old man?” I didn’t say anything because I didn’t have an answer. “You’re not sticking around for my sake, right? You better not be sticking around for my sake.”

“I have a plan,” I said, thinking of how I didn’t really have a plan.

How could I tell Dad that I didn’t make plans because I was Glory O’Brien, girl with no future? A year ago when my classmates were perusing college catalogs and course descriptions, I was just thinking about freedom. Freedom from everything. I didn’t know what that was yet, but I knew it meant something.

I used to think it meant I was going to follow in Darla’s footsteps. I knew it, you know? I knew it. But now it might mean Free yourself. Have the courage.

He handed me the key off his key ring. “Be careful down there.”

“Bears?”

“Stop it. I’m being serious. You can’t spend too much time in a darkroom, kid. It can get to you.”