GutterFlowers—

Monday’s start with James.

He’ll come in and shake her awake until she hits him, then jump up on her bed and leap around until she’s catapulted to the floor. The floors at James’ house are thickly carpeted, and smell a little like popcorn and dog hair. He’ll come and poke her arms through whatever clothes Mitch picked out for her, then drag her to the kitchen where she’ll sit in a stupor, watching the toaster. When it doesn’t go off for a couple minutes he’ll turn her face to the wall, so of course it’ll pop. And then he’ll be pushing an Eggo into her mouth and throwing her bag into the car and yelling, “Christ, Ginger, you tryin’ to kill me? Syd is gonna bust my ass if you’re late again, aw, shit, don’t tell her I cussed—”

She never makes the bus, and will pop her head sleepily into a motorcycle helmet and wrap her hands around herself, latched into the booster seat he stuck into the sidecar, and then they’ll be tearing through skinnier roads to the school’s back doors, where she’ll hop out and he’ll hand her a take-out bag from McDonald’s a little helplessly. She’ll beam at him, because he always gets the boy’s toys for her, and a six-piece nugget meal.

She waves when he pulls away in his sloppy, tough-guy clothes and tousled hair, and then skips into class, and eats her burger next to Traci, who munches on carrot sticks and whole wheat PB&J.

She knows that Kendra’s come when the windows start shaking, pumped full of base. Kendra’s car is a cough away from dying, her hair glossed gold and her eyes a glittery green. Her eye shadow is the color of a flower garden, and when she kisses Ginger’s cheek, her breath smells like pink bubble gum. “Buckle up, doll,” Kendra croons, her chin dancing to the tempo, fingers beating down her neon, leopard print steering wheel. “We might have to, ah, play chicken with the coppers,” she winks and Ginger beams back at her, then reaches into the glove compartment for Kendra’s make-up, and makes herself pretty. Pretty like Kendra.

“How’s James?” Kendra asks, and glances towards her carton of cigarettes, at Ginger, and lets her hand return to the steering wheel. Ginger purses her lips and bats her eyes and Kendra laughs, runs a light she proclaims to be orange. Ginger gets onto her knees and cups her hands around Kendra’s ear at the next stop sign they, at least, stall at.

“He has a picture of you in his room,” Ginger breathes, and gets some of Kendra’s hair caught in her sticky lips. Kendra whistles, and winks at Ginger the way a movie star might, slow and sensual, and Ginger mimics her in the mirror. She can’t quite get it.

“Silly kid,” Kendra says with a click of the tongue—which is funny, ‘cause last time Ginger thought James was three years older, but then, he does act kind of like Ginger. Silly kid. Kendra turns up the radio when one of the songs she likes comes on, and belts it out, her voice unmarred by her nicotine and edged enough for Broadway. She’s a full time waitress, and has been since sixteen. It makes Ginger brave enough to raise her own song, softly, so she can hear it and Kendra can’t.

At the restaurant, Ginger doesn’t hesitate to hop through the Staff Only doors and claim her own little back corner. The dishwashers and the cooks will slide by with sly-palmed candies, which she’ll suck on as she does her spelling and addition, until seven rolls around and Kendra comes over with a basket of leftovers. She’ll hold Ginger’s hand and skip to the car, singing to the music only she can hear, and drive home like a maniac, and carry Ginger up two flights of stairs since the elevator’s never really gonna get fixed.

Kendra’s home is like a gypsy caravan, the walls a mess of magazine photos and band posters, with long strings of beads hanging in every door. Incense seeps from the cracks in every wall, and Kendra puts on the T.V. for Ginger, flips to her favorite channel, plants a lipstick stain on Ginger’s brow and then runs back out the door. Ginger stays up late—later than she does at anyone else’s home, and turns off the television when the clock clicks into twelve, then crawls into Kendra’s bed. Sometime during the night, Kendra comes back in and drops heavily onto the mattress, making a little noise of surprise when she notices Ginger, followed by a long silence, where Ginger pretends to be asleep. Finally, Kendra smoothes back Ginger’s hair and pulls the covers up to her chin, then leaves the room. Ginger waits for several minutes before crawling out of bed and nestling in at the foot of the couch, at Kendra’s feet. Catlike and curled, she listens to Kendra’s slow breathing, and gradually falls back asleep.

Kendra wakes her up earlier than James does, because Kendra only needs about half the sleep James does, and brushes and grooms and dresses Ginger until she feels ready to prance down a child size runway. Kendra drives slower in the morning, rolling sugar over her tongue as she drinks her tea. She buys one for Ginger too, and it’s like liquid candy, so sweet she can only finish half. She kisses Ginger goodbye with a fast, “Say hi to Trent for me,” before driving off singing.

She jitters through the day until she crashes at one, and by then, it’s just about time for Trent. When she gets ready to leave, she makes sure everything in her bag is straight and neat, and takes three minutes in the bathroom to wash off the diva’s face, and leaves the room as Ginger.

Trent leans against the side of his sleek black car as he waits for her—vintage, whatever that means, talking muted into his cell phone. Everything about Trent is sleek, from his sharp, devilish hair cut and his aristocratic features, to his smart, heavily contrasting suit. He smiles only slightly when Ginger waves at him, though his forehead stays creased, his words agitated. She can hear the whispers from all the mothers in the parking lot—(my, what a handsome young man) and stands directly in front of him until he’s through with glancing at her guiltily, and snaps his phone shut. She raises her arms until her stoops enough for her to wrap them around his neck, and breathes in his clean, familiar smell. “Hi, Trent.”

“Hey, Agent G,” he says, because that’s what he is—her spy commander, “Don’t look now, but people have bee alerted to our meeting. Be discreet.”

“Okay,” she says seriously, “What’s discreet?”

“Guess. You know this.”

“Sneaky?” She bets, because it sort of makes sense, and he pulls away from her, with his handsome, crooked smile.

“Smart kid. You ready to bust up the bad guys?” he hands her a pair of sunglasses, and they slide them on together. Ginger’s careful with her pair—Trent doesn’t care when she breaks his stuff, but she knows it’s expensive, and she wants him to like her. She’s a little bit in love.

She hides under his desk when he gets back to work with a flashlight, her homework and a bag of pretzels. James likes grease, Kendra likes sugar, Trent likes salt. He taps her knee with his foot whenever someone comes into his office, so she’ll stop chewing. She holds her breath and pretends that she’s a mermaid, diving deep, deep below the ocean, while Trent protects her from above with golden tridents.

He smuggles her back out to his car at five thirty, and finishes her homework for her, compliments her doodles, then pulls out smoothly and heads for home. Trent is the only one of her guardians who owns a house—a small house, but still. The walls are painted white and the furniture is all glass and steel and made for admiring, not living. She is careful not to touch. Trent gives her books and movies and she sits and draws him pictures while he aches over his desk, hands neatly tapping out keywords. She tells him of all the grand things she’s done since the week he last saw her, like how she saved three princesses, (and are you married to them now?) no, the king had issues with gay marriage and polygamy, (I hope you set him straight) I most certainly did.

She falls asleep in his bed, listening to the rain, cold between the sheets. When she wakes up to his alarm, he is exactly where he was when she went to sleep, the lines in his back and jaw tight, hard. He rubs the circles beneath his eyes and drives her to school, reaches for a one armed hug and she throws her arms around him tightly, because Trent is her darling, her favorite, and she kisses his cheek so he’ll know, so he’ll sleep.

She’s moody for the rest of the day, because the worst part comes after the best, and Trent hadn’t had time to make her a lunch. Traci lets her have her sandwich, because she doesn’t like the pickles. When it’s three she drags her feet to the door and keeps her eyes down, and tells herself that in a week, she’ll be able to see Trent again, and that after this, she’ll have Mitch and Sydney and Morgan, who are all vying for second.

She’s already late when she’s opened the door, and even though Claire doesn’t say anything, her silence is heavy. Ginger shuts the door behind her hard, and doesn’t look at her sister. Claire is, actually, almost as sharply featured as Trent is, but where Trent’s weariness was sharpened with doggedness, Claire is brittle, and just about to snap.

She parks at the university’s parking lot and locks the doors, with Ginger left inside. The silence stretches until it ebbs, and with Claire’s absence, Ginger can hear the cars rolling past her window, the misted rain hissing along the asphalt, the stray whine of an animal, human or dog.

She doesn’t have any homework. Trent always makes sure to do three days in advance for her, and so she is left with nothing more to do. She sings the songs Kendra had taught her, pretends to drive James’ motorcycle, and draws more and more pictures for Trent, pictures that are not good enough to give to him.

When the car gets much too hot, Ginger pops the lock and opens the door, sucking in cold autumn air, before shutting herself in again and holding very, very still. Eventually, the car alarm dies down, and nothing happens for the five minutes it was ringing. People continue with their lives, maybe only glancing at her, (the poor kid in the car, god that’s obnoxious, would someone please turn that thing off?) before hurrying on.

Claire comes back eventually, and throws her text books into the back, swears when the alarm blares again, and fumbles and fumbles with her pockets her keys her

“God damn it,” Claire snaps abruptly, as the keys fall from her hand to splatter rain water over her ankles. She takes her time bending down to pick them up, and Ginger makes herself small in the seat, ashamed to be seen with her disgrace of a sister. Claire fists one hand and balls it to her forehead, brings it lunging down to slam harshly onto the car’s roof, making an ugly sound, and she really screams, “Damn it!”

Just as people start staring, Claire throws herself into the car and burns her way from the parking lot, angry tears pooling down her cheeks. Ginger observes her mutely, and says, “I can’t breathe when you lock me in.”

Claire’s hands go white around the wheel, her lips thin and she glances at Ginger for a long moment, then pulls off on a side street. Ginger reaches for her bag.

Claire stops in front of a stranger’s house and slams the door of her car, hard. Ginger gets out after her, thankful that Mitch had packed her an extra set of clothes, always nestled under her school books. She stands at her only living relative’s side while Claire pleads and wheedles and whines until she is passed from her legal guardian to another, new person.

“I’m sorry,” Claire is saying, one hand clutches and claws at her chest, “I just. I can’t deal with her right now—I’m so stressed, and I—” she keeps talking. Ginger looks up at the stranger, a boy all dressed up like a girl. He looks back at her.

“It’s not a problem,” he says, and does that thing people do when they’re trying to get rid of someone as quickly as they can. When she’s gone, the guy looks down at her and says, “She wasn’t lying when she said just one night, was she?”

“No,” Ginger says, “But I have to get to school in the morning.”

“It’s not happening,” the guy says, and obviously doesn’t know what to do with her. He fiddles with the edge of his skirt, and she notices that his legs are long and shaved and as slender as a girl’s. He wears eye shadow the way Kendra does, but something about his seems sadder—a little cracked.

“But I really need to go,” she insists, and he sighs.

“Look, kid, I’m sorry. I won’t even be here in the morning. I work weird shifts. Honestly, you should just be glad I’m not some kind of psycho child rapist. I only went out with Claire on one date, it’s not like she’d know.” He drags his hands up and pulls off his tumbling black waves of hair. Underneath, his hair is scruffy and short and reddish—darker than her carrot curls. She studies him.

“Why do you dress like a girl?” she asks, and he raises his eyebrows at her.

“Why do you?”

“I am a girl!”

“So am I. Just in disguise.”

She thinks of Trent, of spy games, and gets it. “Can I use your phone?”

She calls him Dusty because she likes the name, and he calls her Madeline, and he makes her some kind of Spanish food that looks gross but tastes good and hot, and he doesn’t complain when she makes him pray before they eat. He looks tired in a way that’s more self destructive, more worrisome. She frowns at him when he smokes, but falls asleep on the couch, and on Thursday morning, Morgan picks her up.

He looks livid—has his delicate, pointed features pulled into a dark twist that pushes the limits of human expression. It excites her, to see such passion. “She just left you?” Morgan repeats, turning his head around the doorway, looking around for Dusty. Ginger runs to get her things, but she’ll only be a little late to school, and Morgan will write her some kind of excuse. He’s good at lying.

“Yes,” she says simply, and he blows the long bangs from his face, extends a hand towards her bag and carries it to his taxi cab for her. He drives it for minimum wage during the days, because in this city, art is used as toilet paper.

She tells him what’s happened on the way to school, while Morgan listens, his expression still taut and angry, but she’s sure that by the time school’s over, he’ll be in a better mood. He’s like that, Morgan, recklessly passionate and flighty all at once. Three comes, and he’s still obviously irritated with her sister, but calm enough to drive her home chatting. She plays on his X-box for a few hours until her arrives and kicks her off, shuts down the television and pulls out his easels. Morgan’s home is the smallest—the T.V. also serves as a brace for his canvas.

Ginger watches him paint dark, serenely violent scenes with wailing faces and tortured eyes, mouths open and hungry for love. He gives her some paper and actual, high-class paints and sets her to work alongside him. She draws herself and Trent, holding hands and smiling. Morgan assumes it’s him, and she sees no reason to correct him. Upon his request, she dips her hands in scarlet paint and plants them squarely in the center of his masterpiece, feeling the paint, oily and cold, squeeze between her fingers. He proclaims her a genius, and takes out his camera, taking dozens of pictures before racing to his computer, and letting the bidding begin. She waits patiently for this to end, and then pulls off his canvas and beats him at MarioKart five times in a row. He takes each loss with appallingly bad sportsmanship and she laughs herself sick until at some point, she falls asleep.

She feels important, stepping onto the school’s curb from a cabbie, even if she is half an hour late because he’d had to drive some guy to work, and some other guy to a wedding. It made him twenty bucks, and if he’s happy, she’s happy. The clothes she wears to school earn her some looks—but then, that’s to be expected, with Morgan. With him, everything has to test the limits of conformity, and he’s all about explosions of color.

Sydney bikes everywhere. She’s healthy like that, and Ginger thinks that she might be prettier than Kendra, if only she’d let her hair down and wear something that wasn’t baggy or flannel. Sydney is soft, and comfortable to hug, and her hair always smells like cookies and sugar. Her skin is a rich, creamy brown complimented by her striking, icy blue eyes and billions of tiny black braids. Ginger sits up on the handle bars while Sydney bikes them back to the studio, because even if her clothes would make Kendra recoil, Sydney has more art within her than ten Morgans.

Sydney dances. Sultry, swaying dances, with skirts that whip about like tropical flames and a beauty that is all curve. She puts Ginger in the beginners class and Gingers tosses and turns her body with all the other little girls, and gets paired with the only boy in the class since she’s the tallest, and tries to find that place within her that is so very alive, so ready to be filled.

“Baby, you’re the blackest white girl I ever saw,” Sydney tells her later, and Ginger laps up the praise with a bright smile—because if Sydney says so, then she must be good. Sydney is her favorite of the girls, which is funny, because she’s the exact opposite of Trent. Sydney laughs at almost everything and loves everyone, and takes Ginger to movies and parks and concerts where everyone loves and hates everybody. It’d be frightening, if she weren’t with Sydney. But Sydney makes everything safe.

Because it’s Friday night, Sydney takes her out in a posh little tracksuit and they swim for hours at the neighbor’s pool. The water’s cool and silvery, and Ginger can feel it whispering all over her skin, like a song might. Sydney hoists her back over the fence when the sun starts to set and it’s time for the neighbors to come home. They go out to eat at whatever restaurant Ginger picks that’ll serve them something for under thirty bucks, so they go to a Chinese joint she picks for the pandas on the signs. There aren’t any pandas, but the rice is good and the air is steamy with heat lamps, with Sydney’s low, calm voice adding just a flair of atmosphere.

Ginger catches her up on everything she’s missed. Sydney’s eyes drop to the table whenever Ginger mentions Kendra, so Ginger makes that part quick, and launches into Trent, when is when she notices Sydney twisting a ring around and around one finger. She begins to suspect, begins to hope. Afterall, if Trent and Sydney got married, maybe they’d take her too, and then she’d get to see them all the time.

“Are you in love with Trent?” Ginger asks before she looses her nerve, and Sydney’s eyes look very white against her dark skin. After a moment she raises her eyebrows and says laughs.

“Where’d you get that idea?”

Ginger says nothing. Sydney taps her fingers and looks at the ceiling, and so Ginger knows she’s lying. Trent had taught her that—how to tell when someone’s lying. It’s different for everyone, but eventually, they all crack. Ginger fixes Sydney with her most menacing stare. Sydney snaps her fingers in front of Ginger’s eyes, looking impatient.

“What’re you doing that for? Eat your vegetables or I’ll with hold the ice cream.”

Ginger eats her ice cream, but does not forget. It’s all very confusing, and she’s still not sure who knows who, in her group-family. Her sister is where it starts. Her sister who had fought so hard for her custody, and then handed Ginger off to her ex-boyfriend (Morgan) as an indefinite babysitter. But then Morgan had things to do, and so he’d called up his best friend and sometimes model, (Sydney) and left Ginger with her. But eventually, Sydney had work to do, and so asked her gay twin, (Mitch) if he’d mind watching this kid for her, please? And since Mitch could only handle so much drama before his head exploded, he’d practically thrown her to James, his one sided love, (Ginger had no doubt that she was the pick up line) and when slacker James just couldn’t deal, the girl he was in love with, (Kendra) came along and saved them both. Back then, Kendra had been in some sort of relationship with Trent, (Ginger’s still not really sure what that was all about, but she thinks Sydney knows) and so it was only a matter of time until she was passed on to him. And Trent, being Trent, did the responsible thing and got her back to Claire. And then her sister cracked, and the whole thing started again.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Ginger says, maybe so that Sydney will get the idea, that Ginger wouldn’t mind at all, “If you did. Because I think he’d still like me anyway.” She gives Sydney a pointed look, because she does like Sydney, she does, but she still likes Trent better. Sydney smiles at her kind of sadly.

“Don’t worry about it, sweet. I don’t have a chance in hell,” she sighs, and pays for their meal.

On Saturday morning, the two of them sleep in, a habit Sydney most enjoys, before heading back to the studio, (a real dancer never skips practice) for lessons. Sydney teaches, Ginger learns. She’s just finished peeling off her sweaty leotard when Mitch arrives in a cloud of cologne. Mitch isn’t just gay, but flamboyantly so. He carries a purse that would send Kendra into a fit of envy, and all his pants are tailored.

“Sydney,” he says disparagingly when he catches sight of Ginger, “She’s all sweaty.” He pouts. Sydney rolls her eyes while all her friends and coworkers titter. They adore Mitch.

Ginger sneaks up on him and rubs her forehead against his thigh. He wrenches away from her with a shudder, and shows the whites of his eyes. “Oh, God.”

“Did she make you chip a nail?” Sydney bites, and pours her water bottle all over her face. Mitch looks appalled, and seizes Ginger by her arm.

“We,” he says with utmost indigence, “Are leaving.” He waits a moment for the cries of protest, and is met largely with muffled giggles. Sydney’s partner chooses this moment to enter, all disheveled and delicious, and Ginger feels Mitch tighten his grip on her arm.

“Caesar,” he says with practiced warmth, caressing the other man’s name indecently. Caesar looks at him with some alarm, and Sydney has to bodily throw her drooling twin out of the studio.

Mitch spends a good ten minutes bad mouthing his twin, (which he only half means) another five scolding Ginger (she makes fun of him) and finally explodes into a tirade about the latest celebrity gossip. Ginger listens intently. She’s waited all week to find out what’s been happening on the Brangelina front.

“I’m so glad,” Mitch confides when they’re almost home, “That you’re back. I mean I, I don’t really have anyone else to talk to like this, and you’re just such a doll, always listening, and I really love you kiddo, I do. I—” she just tunes him out, and waits for his emotional stage to pass, and doesn’t try to get in a word to make him feel better. With Mitch, it’s better just to listen. And he talks way too fast, anyways.

Mitch has already set everything up for her, from the Mozart in the back ground to the baby toys and Barney. She is not impressed. “Barney was arrested for coming to work drunk,” she tells him, and withstands his bursting into tears and writing several angry letters to the editor concerning Today’s Youth. She puts up with this for a while and then very firmly tells himto get a grip.

After that, he’s manageable.

He makes her grilled cheese sandwiches and cuts off the crusts and rents half a dozen movies at the nearest blockbuster and almost breaks down when she plops down on the floor in front of the television with her sandwich and her coloring books, and proclaims her the most adorable thing he’s ever seen. He does her nails, tacks her pictures to the wall, listens to all her songs and watches every dance, which she shows him freely and easily, because it’s hard to be self-conscious in front of someone so ridiculous.

Mitch isn’t as pleasant in the morning. He takes her to church on autopilot, which is boring except for the parts where they get to sing. They go home and he’s grumpy and snarky and criticizes everyone and everything before informing her of his latest conspiracy theories, containing but not limited to, subliminal brainwashing via television, internet terrorism, and plumbers who installed webcams in shower heads. As the afternoon approaches, Mitch locks himself in the bathroom and doesn’t reemerge until two hours later, his golden tooth glittering just as brightly as the diamonds in his ears, and the oil he’s rubbed into his hair and skin. James is coming. He packs her a lunch and another set of clothes since James knows nothing of fashion, and with Claire, you never know, and tells her stories about African princesses, who were by far more intelligent and resourceful than the European ones. (His Sleeping Beauty invested in thimbles.)

James doesn’t really knock. He comes in and grabs Ginger and does his best to elude and dodge Mitch, with varying degrees of unsuccessfulness, but doesn’t truly give in until Mitch is sly enough to offer him dinner. Even James’ latent homophobia isn’t enough to keep him away from a free meal. He glances at Ginger for confirmation of her support. She gazes at him reprovingly, and resigns herself to several hours of awkward, unintelligible flirting, but Mitch is surprisingly delicate. He doesn’t try to initiate any physical contact other than the occasional brush of hands when food is passed, and the conversation is, from what she can tell, light enough to have James laughing.

When they’re leaving, (Mitch makes James hold her hand when they cross the street, which is absurd, but so is Mitch) James says to her, “He’s not a bad guy.”

“He loves you,” Ginger says informatively, and then wishes she hadn’t, because James looks uncomfertable.

“Not really,” he says to the ground, “He’s just, shit, he’s just confused. Don’t tell Syd I cussed.”

“I didn’t last time,” she gets into the sidecar, “But I did tell Kendra that you had a picture of her in your room.”

James coughs, looking like his is a step away from dropping dead, “You what?! Wh—what’d she say? Oh, damn. Oh, shit. Did you really? Shit!”

“She already knew,” Ginger says commandingly and looks straight ahead, feeling him stare at her. After a moment, he bangs his head against the handle bars and hisses again, “Damn.” Before gunning it, and taking her home.

Sundays end with James.