Clown Girl - Monica Drake [68]
I tiptoed out of my room for water, and when I turned the corner a wedge of white glare cut through the kitchen.
In the spotlight of the open fridge, Italia held my orange plastic jug to the shine of her plum-tinted lips. She tipped her head back, and drank. I whispered a quiet, “ No,” and sucked in my breath, but it was too late. Vitamin B-rich urine ran in a trickle from her mouth. I froze. Yikes—the horror! I was doomed. Below her half shirt, her abdomen rippled like an earthquake. She threw herself forward and spit everything out. She spit on the fridge, on our chores list. She spit on the worn chart that said it was forever my turn with the lawn.
“What the hell?” The orange jug was marked with her purple lipstick at the rim. “What is this shit?”
Not shit, but piss, I thought. Maybe hers was a rhetorical question, thrown out to the darkness. In the slim hope that she hadn’t seen me, I ducked behind the table in the center of the kitchen even as my bum leg screamed, unwilling.
She smacked her lips together. “Is this…Christ…it’s piss!” She’d figured it out! Then she dove at me around the table. “You… Clown Girl!”
I straightened up and ran around the table. She doubled back and came at me from the other way. I ducked, reversed direction, almost tripped on a barbell, and jumped to keep from falling. I skidded past Nadia’s outstretched hand. She threw the jug at me. Urine rained down, the jug bounced off the stove.
I turned the corner, made it to my room, and slammed the door. Italia’s weight-trained fists hit the mudroom door like hammers.
My mouth was sand. My heart was a knot. Heart trouble, heart trouble…I needed to stay calm. I couldn’t go back to the hospital. I pressed in the lock and pulled on the doorknob. My legs were light and shaky, and so was my head, pumped up on Chinese B B s. “I didn’t do anything,” I hollered through the door.
Italia hit the door again. Three quick hammers. “And you won’t ever again! Open up,” she hissed, as though through a clenched jaw.
The lock was only a button pressed into a two-bit knob. I had to work fast. I used a shoulder and all the strength I had to shove the dresser in front of the door. The dresser scraped along the wood floors.
I got on my knees and dug my fingernails into the loose cotton of the futon mattress. I lifted one side. The other half lay as a dead weight, a clumsy dancer. My pillows tumbled off. I folded the mattress over, tried to flop it up on one end. My bad leg ripped anew and my back ached as the mattress and I two-stepped toward the door.
Italia snarled, “I drank your clown piss? What the hell? I’m going to twist you into those balloon knots.” The dresser trembled. The knob moved back and forth with a tight jerk and a clicking sound. I hefted the mattress against the chest of drawers.
“I can still taste your piss, you little skank.” Italia spit, three times in a row, fast: Hack-too, hack-too, hack-too…
Hormones, estrogen, androgen, testosterone—all the working out Italia did, I swear she was making her own Y chromosome. She was nuts. Worse than the “Twinkie defense.” She said, “I’ll kill you, Clown Girl. If you mess with my food…” Hack-too. “Jesus. You knew I’d drink out of that jug.”
She’d kill me! She meant it. I yelled, “It was medical. I needed it for medical tests.”
“Oh, now you’re a freaking urologist… ”
I said, “No, a patient! The doctor asked for that urine, for tests—”
“Sick clown piss?” Hack-too. She beat on the door again. “So you’ve got something and I drank it ?” Her fists came harder and faster now. She spit as she pounded.
The coins on my shelves rattled. A sketch of Rex fell off the wall.
“Nothing catching. Urine’s really clean. I read that. It’s acidic.”
When did my voice get so high?
The door buckled. My vision narrowed. The bees in my brain were buzzing at full tilt. I said, “Women washed their faces in urine, in the old days.” My voice broke. There were spilled BBs on the floor. I picked up a few and put them