Deep Sixed

It’s hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock, as you used to say, before you met your second wife, pants around your ankles, behind the concession stand at the company picnic. I can still see you coming back with the hotdogs and sno-cones, completely playing mom and me, your naïve daughter, for fools. But I don’t wanna talk about food right now, not out here in the middle of bum-fuck Egypt.

We’ve been pulled over for an hour now with engine trouble, standing outside of the bus baking in the heat of midday. It’s better than being packed in like sardines, I guess. The driver has done nothing but apologize, promised us refunds on tickets, but everyone’s still bitter.

I haven’t seen a tree or anything for miles. I think the driver mentioned some place in Kansas earlier, but it feels like ages ago. If you could only see those Mennonites --- they sure know how to take punishment! It’s got to be over a hundred degrees out here, yet they’ve still got their bonnets and everything on, chattin’ away in that scratchy language of theirs. Their baby hasn’t cried one bit. The Mexican family (isn’t there always one?) has been huddling around the driver, probably afraid of getting mugged by one of the more aggressive passengers. Like that big guy with the messed up eye. He came in at one of the stops and kept ranting and raving about how some bitch ho girlfriend of his ran off with his wallet and left him stranded and now he’s taking a bus to catch up with her in Las Vegas. Yikes.

Everything to my name is in that overstuffed bag under my feet and it wouldn’t be hard for one of these creeps to leave me penniless and pathetic. Plus there’s no guarantee you even still live in Salem. I keep getting the feeling that I’m being really naïve and foolish, that I’ll regret my decision to leave. Then I think back about everything and it seems the lesser of two evils even in the worst case.

I feel like I’m drowning in sweat. My hair is greasier than the bottom of a KFC bucket. What would you think if you saw me like this? It’s not like I’ll have a chance to shower before you do.

“Out of the frying pan an’ into the fire, ain’t it?”

An older lady, her name’s Charlene, has sat next to me during the trip, ever since our transfer in St. Louis last night, though I haven’t really talked to her much yet until now. I think she’s gone through about ten cigarettes in the hour we’ve been stranded here, and even so she’s lighting up again. Her face is creased hard but shows the wear of labor as much as time. Her light, wispy hair, ravaged by the sun, and poor care too I’ll bet, is faded and graying. She has a raspy voice, and she uses it now as she burns about half a cigarette in one drag. She slowly exhales before she speaks, and the pungent aroma of tobacco invades my nose.

“You look like you’re gonna pass out there. Didn’t you bring a bottle of water or somethin’?”

“No. I didn’t think of it before I left.”

She smirks and takes another pull. “Must be your first time on a Greyhound.”

“I just didn’t have time is all.”

Her laughter is like falling rocks.

“You’d prolly forget your head if it wasn’t tied on. Lemme give you some tips... always bring water and snacks, always board early so you can get a good seat, and never use the bathroom in the back of the bus.”

I smile at that. Earlier on the trip someone had thought it would be pretty funny if they took a shit on the toilet seat and left it there. It was an awful two hours until the next Greyhound station where it was finally cleaned up. Sometimes the levels people lower themselves to surprises me, but I suppose I’m no better.

“If you tell me where you’re headed I might let you have a drink.”

I shrug my shoulders and squint up at the sun. “To see someone I haven’t seen in a long time.”

I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice or the look on my face, but she doesn’t ask me to clarify, though she makes no move to offer me a drink either. I know it wasn’t a very good answer, but can you blame me? I haven’t seen you in sixteen years; I don’t even feel like I know you anymore. You don’t even know I’m coming. How am I supposed to say anything more? Charlene seems like a nice enough person, but I am anything but proud of the reasons surrounding me being on this broken bus in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah, I know how it is. I’m goin’ to the yearly family thing, or was.” She pauses to spit angrily. “That is if we ever get out of here.”

“Are you gonna be late or something?”

“At this rate I reckon I just might. If Burl were here he’d fix this hunk ‘a junk and we’d be on our way, but that scared driver don’t know nothin’.”

“Is Burl your husband?”

“Yeah, but he said he had work to do if he didn’t go and it’d be cheaper too. Shit, he’s just tryin’ to get out o’ spendin’ time with his sister an’ her butt-burnin’ fee-yon-say and how they’s investin’ in such-an-such uppity new market. You’d think she hung the moon, an’ eeeevry year she keeps naggin’ Burl why he don’t do it too. It’s such a buddin’ market and you two could sure use the extra money she says. If bullshit were music she’d have a brass band, though I don’t says that to her face. Burl’s such a chicken-heart sometimes, avoidin’ his sister just ‘cause she as crooked as a bedspring.”

I want to share my problems too, but I don’t deserve sympathy. I’m despicable. I see her taking out another cigarette. That makes twelve.

“Yeah, I know... bad habit, huh?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that...”

“It’s ok, I know you was thinkin’ it. I know I smoke too much. Been smokin’ since I was seventeen an’ I ain’t about to stop. Burl tells me to quit all the time.”

I try to wave some of the smoke away inoffensively. “Why don’t you?”

She shrugs and stares off at the ground in thought. Her sudden hacking cough breaks the silence, and I can’t help but think how ironic and poetic it is considering the implications of my question.

“I guess... I just want to, okay? I know they’re bad, and my husband does nothing but give me hell for it, but so what? I wanna smoke, you know?”

As she solemnly adds the last one to the dozen on the ground, I try to imagine how black her lungs must be by now. She has to be in her late fifties at least. That makes just about forty years of chain-smoking.

“It’s my one guilty pleasure in life. Ain’t you got a guilty pleasure?”

I try to smile casually. “I used to be a porn actress.”

You won’t be proud of me. It’s not like I’m coming back because I love you, but that I don’t have another choice. How does it feel to be a last resort? I never made enough to afford my own place, so it’s either you or mom, and I can’t stand living with mom anymore. Sometimes when I acted in front of the camera, pretending to be in heaven and paradise, I couldn’t remember how I had gotten myself into it all. Then I’d remember that cold winter day walking from the Laundromat because mom wouldn’t let me use the one at the house and getting stopped by that guy. Him. He was the start. A fucking scouter. I would have never done it, never even considered doing it at all, if he hadn’t mentioned money. Lots of it. Lots of it for doing something so simple, so quick, just a few hours and I would be on my way, three hundred bucks richer.

It’s not like you or mom or even I could have ever predicted this --- any of this. It’s not like when I was a kid I wanted to grow up and be the next Traci Lords, I was just introduced to it all a little too early so when the offer came it didn’t scare me that much. I was such a crazy kid. You might remember, if you paid any attention, how I used to strip my Barbies down naked and make them have sex, but this was when I still thought the guy peed in the girl or something.

When I was seven you let me watch one of your “skin flicks.” I was too young to know what that meant, but I had never seen mom so angry when she found out. Of course, she never would have found out if I hadn’t asked her why she didn’t have big bouncy things like the ones in the movie. Not that mom really cared if my entire childhood would be forever warped; it was for appearances sake, and principle, and what would the neighbors think, or my teachers if I said something at school? You both used to get into fights all the time over petty shit like that. I wasn’t too young to know that much. Mom was always the victim, wasn’t she? It wasn’t just you --- both of us constantly stood in the way of the quality of life she so obviously deserved, and my innocent curiosity at the time only fueled her case.

I think finding out about your concession stand fun was the last straw for mom. It wasn’t that you were cheating on her --- you had done that plenty of times. But it was with her boss and she held that power over mom mockingly up until we moved, and you know how mom hates having people control or humiliate her. You would be getting divorce papers in the mail three months from then anyway, long after mom had taken me to her mother’s in Florida. My west coast days were over then.

I’m glad I got the window seat this time. Sometimes it’s good to be a transferring passenger --- you get priority. But the interstate has got to be the single most boring road to drive on. All I find myself doing is thinking. We’re passing through a new city now, all square and squat and dusty, but I don’t know what it’s called and I’m sure even if I did I’d forget by tomorrow.

I miss Charlene. She’s gone on her way and I’m left here to continue on mine. It reminds me that I’m going to have to find you on my own, alone, but I’m not going back home. I’ve got a dog-eared letter here from you. Of course, it was sent years ago; I don’t think I’ve gotten one since. Maybe you’ll blame it on the postal system. Do you even still live at that address? I remember one birthday card had some other woman’s name on it too, but by the next one it was missing. What if I can’t find you? I don’t know, but better a father that may or may not still be out there and may or may not even care than living another day under my mother and that man.

Yeah, mom’s remarried now --- does that surprise you? She married Alfred Huxley III, your rich friend with the accent and two sons to show for his past mistakes as well. She knew him from the groups you brought back. He was there for her during the divorce, encouraging her to go and promising he would follow, which he did. But suddenly my house was no longer mine; it was a stranger’s house. One of his boys was a few years older than me, the other much younger. When I was thirteen I found them in my room, going through my underwear, and, a year later during junior high, I came home to find a pair of my panties, stained with semen, in the kitchen trash. When I showed her, mom slapped me and told me to put it back in the trash. They teased me, tormented me, and destroyed every last shred of dignity and privacy I had left. I used to stay late at school, even getting detention, just to have an excuse to come home late.

You were right not to put up a fight when mom wanted a divorce --- she’s a penny-pinching power-hungry bitch. When she told me she’d prefer if I found a place to live on my own, I asked her how she expected me to afford that. I never got any money from you, and I’m sure you had your reasons, but mom didn’t feel like I enhanced her image in society much, and wouldn’t it be better if I got out there, made something of my life, found my niche?

What niche? If my niche is demoralizing myself in front of the camera until I’m too old to use, I’d rather die. Or seek out the only other person I know who might help me.

“Mind if I sit with you?”

I look up to see just about the biggest black guy ever standing over me, and believe me I’ve seen a lot of big men. The white of his eyes contrasts starkly with his richly dark skin and his hair, wild and in dreads, is held back by a thick rubber band acting as a make-shift hair tie. His enormous hand rests on the back of the seat ahead of mine. I imagine he could lift me with one arm. There’s a kind of intimidating virility to his muscular body that puts me on edge. His plain white shirt has to be at least a 4X --- how can anyone be that big, seriously?

“Y-Yeah, sure. Take it.”

He sits down heavily and I swear the bus rocks a little. He keeps looking around eagerly, as if expecting to see someone he knows.

“This the bus headed for Salem? Shit, they all look the same. You from around here?”

“Nah, I got on in Miami.”

“Miami? Damn, girl, how long you been ridin’ this damn thing?”

“Few days now.”

He licks his lips, peers around once more, and begins to tell me his tale of woe, of how his car broke down in Atlanta where he was trying to get signed, how his friends call him Slobbabone, AKA the “Sexual Chocolate,” and how he’s sure he’s seen me somewhere before.

Why do people always tell me their life story? Am I wearing a sign that says, “Hey you, come over here and tell me all about yourself, because I want to know!” You wouldn’t know, considering you never called, wrote, or anything, but I used to work at JCPenney when I was first fresh out of high school, despite mom telling me it was a “commoner’s job.” Old people would talk my ear off as they stood by the register long after they had bought their hot-rollers and long underwear. One time this old guy told me how he was having trouble pleasing his wife because he couldn’t get it up anymore. He was definitely ashamed of it and was being completely honest... to a complete stranger. Seriously, what is it about me?

“Here, listen to this whenever you get where you goin’, letcha’ friends know about me, a’ight?”

He hands a CD to me, the permanent ink scribbles still looking fresh on the generic cover. Not wanting to be rude, I slip it into the bag at my feet. I catch him looking down my shirt as I lean over.

There was a time when I was terrified of peeing in a public restroom or changing clothes in front of mom. It’s not just that they were filthy places or that she would always comment on how fat I was getting, but that I truly was terrified of doing anything private with others nearby. I would hold it in every day at school until I got home and lock my door just to change into pajamas. There was a time when I wouldn’t call out a complete stranger and give him a dirty look for staring.

“Like what you see?”

“Oh sorry, girl, I didn’t mean to... if it makes you feel any better they are really nice.”

Of course they are --- they’re nice to every guy. It is that very reason that I was able to make the money that I did when the opportunity finally arose. I was banking on people like the “Sexual Chocolate” to keep girls like me in business. I reach up and twist the air vent closed to take the edge off of a sudden chill.

“I know I seen you somewhere before...”

I glance around quickly and notice his fervor is attracting the attention of a few nearby passengers, the creepy balding middle-aged guy with his plaid shirt tucked in too neatly, the twenty-something guy with hair that looks like he’s been driving 200mph in a convertible...

You know what? I’ve left them. I’ve left that pitiful existence. I want nothing of it. I don’t want my past mistakes following me like an unwanted child, so, like you, I’ll leave it all behind, erase it from my memory. There, see, it never happened, did it?

He snaps his thick fingers together, though they don’t make much of a sound, and claps, which does. More heads turn.

“You the girl from Melon Maidens #4! I know it!”

I have to smile at his childlike ignorance. “No, you’re wrong. None of it ever happened. I’m just a girl going to see her father.”

-- Written in late 2005 for my Creative Writing Fiction class. It was slightly updated, though I can’t remember to what extent, in early 2006. --