Dumb Girl

When I started 11th grade, I was reunited with Stacy. She sat in front of me in homeroom. I found her presence to be wholly distracting. Her blond hair curled soft against her shoulders and the clean, flowery scent of her shampoo lingered around her like a halo. When she walked into the room for the first time and looked around, she caught me already staring at her and her cheeks turned a redder pink. She looked fearful; she bit her lip, her eyes widened, but she smiled and walked toward me. She whispered “hi” and took the seat in front of me. The room changed. Books opened. The black letters before me turned into ants and walked away in wavering lines. Free at last, the white pages became fluttering moths. I thought about all the letters I had written to her. What was I thinking? When class ended, she turned.

“Hi, Jane,” she said.

“Hi.”

“Want to sleep over this weekend?”

“Sure!”

A long, awkward silence followed. Then she said: “Great!” And again she turned red.

When Friday finally came, I was already packed and ready to go home with her from school. We met after 9th period and walked together to the El, then took it to the Fullerton stop near her neighborhood and walked toward her house. We didn’t know what else to do, so we stopped at a coffee shop on the way and sat at a table, facing one another and sipping hot chocolate from big mugs. We talked, then sat long after there was nothing left to talk about, as if staring at each other for hours on end without talking was something normal for two teenaged girls who were friends.

That night we slept with our bodies locked together under the quilts like two pale plants with leaves folded around them, defenseless, as egoless as vegetables. When we turned over in bed, it was as if a small breeze had stirred us and not the act of human volition. I don’t remember sleeping, only listening to my beating heart, feeling the way the hairs on my arms stood on end like exposed nerve endings. Each one pulsed, it seemed, as if it had lungs and heart and blood vessels.

The next morning I woke up alone. I thought my sleepy brain made the room seem different, but then I remembered. I sat up and looked around. Stacy sat in a chair across the room looking at me. She was showered and dressed and writing in her journal; her face looked upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing’s wrong, Jane,” she said, her tone clipped. “I have a lot of homework to do and you should really just get going now.” I stared for a moment unable to say anything. The night before felt like a dream, the way we sat and stared at each other at that coffee shop. I thought I remembered touching her face with my fingers, even tracing the outline of her lips, thinking how beautiful she was, or did I whisper it out loud? I suddenly felt ashamed and embarrassed. I felt a knot forming in my chest; tears burned behind my eyes. I choked it down, threw off the covers, and quickly changed into my clothes. I left her house without another word. During the ride home, shame and embarrassment over my feelings burned in my gut, or rather, for expressing those feelings so freely, leaving myself open to be drawn upon and shot down, defenseless.

On arriving home, I found Jamie waiting on my front steps, tears running openly across the plains and valleys of his face, his deep eyes black with anguish.

“Jamie, what’s going on?” I asked while rushing to his side. He looked at the ground and opened his mouth then shut it, tears spilling wildly with the effort to speak. I sat beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. He stiffened and then relaxed, cloaked his naked face in the wideness of his pink palms, the length of his fingers extending toward the top of his head, and shook. I didn’t know for several moments that he was quietly sobbing until streams of tears made their way through the betweens of his fingers like gutters, pouring through and down, dripping and congealing in the dust below.

We sat for a long while, my arm around his shuddering shoulders, tears spilling through his thick fingers. Eventually his body quieted and his hands dried. I asked again.

“What happened?” He stared forward blankly for a full minute before he answered.

“My dad. He’s not my dad,” he said dully. I listened to his ragged breathing, the sounds of leaves rustling in the wind, birds and their languages. I wasn’t surprised.

“He went to prison for assault before I was born. He was locked up for over a year, I guess. My mom had another man even before he went away. She had me with ‘im soon as my dad was locked up. I mean, not my dad, you know—” I nodded.

“So my real dad, he was a union laborer in Iowa. My mom met him on the job; she was a secretary for a union organizer back then. She started up with ‘im. He took off when he found out she was pregnant. She had me and told my dad she found me in a basket on the front porch, you know.” I nodded. I gripped his shoulder with my hand.

“How did you find out?” I asked after he was silent for a minute.

Tears started leaking from his eyes again. He took in a deep breath and answered: “I caught ‘im on top of Heather. Mom wasn’t home. I found them in her room, neither of ‘em with any clothes on, him on top of her…” He started crying harder again. I grasped his shoulder and pulled him closer.

“I ran in there and punched the back of ‘is head hard as I could. He fell off ‘er and jumped up, came at me. I picked up a chair and swung it at ‘im. It caught ‘im in the face and he went down. His face was all gashed open and bleeding. He was knocked out. Heather was screaming ‘NO, NO, DON’T HURT MY DADDY’” He started crying in his hands again. He yelled out what Heather had screamed and its echo reverberated against the neighboring houses. Sophie came outside.

“Jane?” she said quietly.

“Go back inside, Soph. I’ll be right there,” I said.

“Where were you all night?” she asked quietly. “Mom never came home; I had to call Aunt Nancy.” Anger shot through my body and my fists involuntarily clenched. I had told my mom I would be sleeping over at Stacy’s and asked her to be home. Jamie raised his wet face from his hands and looked at me, his eyes echoing her question.

“I stayed overnight with a friend,” I told them both. “Now go inside, Soph. I’ll be in soon.” She walked back in the house and closed the door. I looked at Jamie. He looked at his shoes, kicked some gravel, and started talking again.

“I didn’t know what else to do so I called 911. I told them my dad was raping my sister then came after me and I hit ‘im in the head with a chair and knocked ‘im out cold.

They told me to stay put. The next second they were just coming through the door. No knock, no warning. They appeared. They took my dad away in an ambulance and they called my mom home from work.”

He was looking down. I could see puffy swells beneath his eyes. I knew he was ashamed to lift his face, to cry. I crouched before him and placed my palm awkwardly against his cheek. He looked up at me. His pain was palpable. Tears rose and spilled on my face and I quickly embraced him. He leaned against me and wept freely. I held onto him, my arms wrapped around his shoulders and my hands grasped at his back. I felt a fierce love and loyalty for him mixed with sharp hatred for the criminal he had mistaken for a father. I wanted only to remove the pain from his body and absorb it into me. He was as close to me as a real brother and he was the only person in the world who really knew me, the only one who cared to know me.

I cried. I cried for him, the love and the hate, the anger. I cried for me and for Sophie and Raelyn. I cried for Stacy. My eyes turned to great lakes, hot tears poured from them as if driven from the soles of my feet up through my legs, traveling dark and light striations of muscle and vein, building and gaining strength, drowning out all feeling and knowing, leveling all in its path. I might have continued on this way for fifteen minutes or more but I can’t be sure. Time grows slippery and stretchy sometimes. Jamie stopped crying, his body still and his arms firmly surrounding me.

I had collapsed during my fit onto him, and was sitting on his lap, crumpled against his chest. He loosened his hold and leaned back. Bracing me up with one arm he used his free hand to wipe my tears. He wiped them gently; his calloused fingers scraping the delicate, wet skin of my face lightly, tickling me. I giggled through tears and batted his fingers away. He held my face in his hand and gazed at me. I closed my eyes because looking at him felt too intense. His lips pressed against mine, which were wet from tears, and held still there for several moments. I thought nothing of it initially; it seemed quite natural to me. Then I sensed a shift in him, a sort of eagerness. He pulled me into him and pressed his lips harder against mine.

I began pulling away when his mouth opened and his tongue probed against my sealed lips searching for an entryway. I turned my face and pushed away from him, struggling to untangle my legs from his and stand up. I looked down at him and he dropped his head.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s OK.”

“It’s obviously not OK,” he said angrily, looking up at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. He softened.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you differently than you love me,” he said.

I looked away from him and sat back down beside him. His yellow Cheerios t-shirt was wrinkled from where I had bunched it in my hands and large dark wet spots from my tears littered the front and top of its shoulder. His shoulders were broad and his back was strong. His face was sweet yet handsome, lean and friendly. His eyes were deep brown and glittery. He was beautiful and he was my best friend. I felt that I should feel the same way about him that he felt about me, but I knew that I didn’t.

“Where were you last night?”

“I was with Stacy.”

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you wish she would kiss you like I just tried to?”

“No, I― yes.”

“Yes?”

“No.”

“Which is it?”

“I don’t know.”

He shook his head and looked away. He kicked the dirt and stood up. He took three steps away and turned around. He took one step toward me and stopped.

“I think you do know. I think you want her to. I think you’re gay.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“Why, am I right?”

“Yeah, I think you are.”

“Are you serious? Are you sure?”

“I would be in love with you if I weren’t.” A swift breeze blew my hair into my face.

“That doesn’t help me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He softened again. He sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulder. I leaned my head against him and sighed.

“So what happened then?”

“What? When?”

“Last night is when.”

“Oh, nothing happened. I don’t even know what’s going on. I don’t think she feels the way I feel.”


“Well, she’s dumb then,” he said. I laughed and hugged him. He pushed me back, stood up.

“I feel like a jerk,” I said. He wiped his palms on his thighs. He didn’t look at me.

“She’s dumb,” he said, a slight, crooked smile on his face. He walked away. I stood, moved to go after him, stopped, sat back down. Dust plumed from the gravel where his white converse high-tops fell. I stared after him until he disappeared. I was fixed to the spot, unable to move or breathe. A car rumbled by as if in slow motion. The door behind me slammed.