I hated Peg and Leroy.
They were strangers pretending to be friends because my mother was giving them the baby. Our baby, who was going to be half-Indian, my mother had told us, like Cher.
Stringy clumps of hair the color of strained carrots twined round Peg’s thin neck. The chalky line of her lips receded into a small chapped face. Eager to show that they liked kids, they chose me to spend the day at their house, a house that smelled of Pine-Sol and too much scrubbing. Lacy afghans of brown and orange draped the backs of plaid couches. The place was quiet, with no books or toys. I fell into a chair and waited for time to pass.
I left the chair only to accompany them to the grocery store, where Peg bought me a pack of barrettes—a plastic-wrapped row of twelve hair clips, the kind clipped to the shiny heads of pretty girls at school.
Wow, I thought, maybe Peg is not so bad after all.
I pushed a banana-yellow barrette into my hair and took a nap near an open window, clutching the prize of the others. When I woke, the barrettes were gone. I ran downstairs. My fingers raced back and forth under a hedge of prickly shrubs. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until my hands were rubbed raw by privet and holly.
The barrettes were not to be found. Peg, of course, thought I’d thrown them away, became enraged when I told her I couldn’t find them; her face snapped shut. Leroy, who was little more than the red beard that masked his face, comforted her with a steady hand to the shoulder. They drove me home in silence, and as soon as my mother opened the door, Peg told her about the barrettes. She heated up as she spoke, said how ungrateful I was. I ran to my mother, turned to Peg, and screamed that I hated her. When the redheaded woman did not flinch, I went further.
“And you’re never gonna get our baby!”
My mother dug into my skin with her hands, told me to shut up, while Peg hissed, then buried her head into Leroy’s flannelled chest and cried.