In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [62]
And so Maria and I felt we had reason to escape both our families: she, the chaos and filth of a home defined by poverty and abuse; I, the suffocating restrictions brought on by the actions of a world I could not control. We spent more and more time outside no matter the weather, mostly in the alleys that cut through our neighborhood.
Sam and Maria introduced me to others—people my age, thirteen, fourteen—whose parents cared little for their presence or absence. My parents cared, but the attention and acceptance I found with orphans seemed familiar and comforting: they appeared not to notice my foolish clothing; they thought the drill team girls were stupid. I concocted tales of afterschool prayer meetings to be with them, able to evade my father sleeping his daytime sleep and my mother, who against my fathers wishes had taken a job as a checker at a local market to help with the bills.
School became escape, a place to be with my new friends. But more important than the knowledge I learned from books was the knowledge that came to me in the girls’ bathroom between classes: how to apply eye shadow and mascara; how to exhale smoke through my nose; which boys carried rubbers in their wallets. By the time the bell rang for second period, I’d rolled my skirt to mid-thigh and thrust my bra to the bottom of my book bag.
Even behind my heavy glasses, the makeup provided by my friends made my eyes seem bigger, bluer. I no longer slunk from class to class but met each face in the hall with studied indifference. Tucked in the waistband of my skirt, the pack of Marlboros crinkled and scratched: I loved its feel there—a secret possession, a red-and-white undercover badge, my ticket into the alley, where the bad kids gathered each noon hour to slouch and curse with abandon.
Soon, even school became unbearable. Once inside, I dodged the teachers and ran for the alley, where my friends already waited. Some days we spent in collapsing garages or hunched in the corner of a darkened bowling alley, doing nothing more than smoking and laughing at the fools left behind. Other days we made our way downtown and across the railroad tracks to the Clearwater River. There, among the lush growth of snake grass, cottonwood and locust, we found sanctuary with bums. Their cardboard lean-tos held treasure: Sterno, cigarettes, sodden magazines whose pages unfolded into bare breasts and spread legs. Most of the hobos tolerated our visits, even welcomed our company. Others chased us with sticks and rocks, and it was their camps we returned to later, kicking the makeshift shacks to the ground, burning everything.
We called the shallow ponds and marshy backwater the slough, and even the name seemed wrought with adventure, a place that Huck and Tom might have frequented. Beyond the small islands ran the river’s swiftest current. In winter, when ice made for us a bridge from one bank to the other, we crossed and felt the rush of water vibrating beneath our feet. In warmer weather, we hauled from the back of Mac’s Cycle Shop huge Styrofoam packing crates and made rafts of them, which we floated from one back eddy to another. Larry was there then, and Brad and Sam, Shannon and LaDean, and Laredo. Once, when I slipped from the crate and came out soaked, Laredo built a roaring fire of driftwood while Larry peeled his white T-shirt from his skinny chest. “Here,” he said, and grinned as I turned my back to remove my own wet blouse.
I still have that boy’s shirt folded in some box marked MEMORABILIA. I had never been offered such a gift, and wearing it home that afternoon, feeling its cotton weave stretch across my breasts, knowing his own skin had rubbed just where mine did, gave me a sense of intimacy I had not felt since Luke. I still had it on when Maria called that evening to tell me Larry was