Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [38]
“But I didn’t—”
Deliberately, she set down her shake. “Listen, Grace. Don’t you go asking about things you don’t understand. What I do in my own time is my business, and it ain’t for anyone else to judge. Including you. All right?”
“Fine,” I said in a small voice. “Sorry.”
“I sound like a hypocrite. That’s what you think, right? Hating on men, and then sleeping with them. Well, maybe I know a few more men than you do. So don’t that give me a better perspective?” She picked up a clear plastic water cup and dumped the water on the ground. “Trust me. You sure as shit don’t have to like somebody to take ’em to bed.”
She overturned the cup on top of the little gray spider. Instead of squishing it, she slid the cup across the table and shifted the spider to her hand.
“Besides,” she said as she released the spider in a patch of weeds, “I don’t just hate men. I don’t discriminate. I hate all people equally.”
“Errybody freeze!” hollered a man. “I got a gun!”
Nobody froze. Because everybody recognized the wheezy, boozy voice of Earl Barnaby, the most notorious drunk in town.
Earl’s everyday apparel included two dirty plaid shirts in contrasting colors, one unbuttoned over the other. His face was usually scorched pink, from the midday hours he spent passed out in parking lots. Momma said he’d been a year behind her at school, but he looked old enough to be her father.
He slapped his hand on the counter in front of Sarah Cooper. “Now, nice an’ easy, empty that there register, or I’ll blow this pop stand into the ground. I gotta catch a plane to the izzlands t’night.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Aw, come on, Earl. Can’t you just leave us alone for one evening? I’ve been here almost since noon. I’m exhausted.”
“But I gotta burgle. I’m a burglar, it’s in my blood.” He aimed his finger at her menacingly.
“The only thing in your blood is too much whiskey. Now fuck off, Earl, all right?”
The huddle of teenagers began to laugh. They weren’t paying any attention to Earl, but he seemed to think their laughter was directed toward him. His shoulders sagged.
“Jess a little loan, darlin’,” he pleaded. “My plane’s taking off! I gotta get to the izzlands t’night, but I got nothing to get there with. Ain’t there nothin’ you can do?”
“I would, but it’s not my money to give you,” Sarah said.
When Mandarin turned back toward me, I saw that her whole face had changed. Like she was holding back tears. I’d never seen her look like that before.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“At least Earl over there’s dreaming of better places. But I swear, sometimes it seems like he and us are the only ones. It’s like no one else is even aware that there’s a whole world outside Washokey.” She closed her eyes. “God, we need to get out of here!”
With her eyes still closed, she spoke again. “Did you know I’ve never even seen the ocean?”
I shook my head, then realized she couldn’t see me. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“Have you?”
“Once,” I said. “I had an aunt in Washington, and we flew there to see her before she died. I was seven or eight.”
My memory of the ocean came crashing back. A gray sea. Cliffs, tall trees. A plane journey to Seattle to meet my mom’s dying sister. Momma rarely spoke about her, so the trip had been a surprise. It was during the pre-Taffeta, postpageant days of my childhood, when Momma didn’t know what to do with herself, and I used books to hide. We slept on the pullout couch for three nights. Each morning, Momma rose before she thought I was awake, to sit on the porch and drink black coffee and stare out at the water.
“Tell me what it was like,” Mandarin commanded.
“The ocean? It was big. And gray. And constantly moving. Like there was a storm inside it. It scared me, I think.”
“I wouldn’t be scared.” She took a small, deliberate sip of her milk shake. “Y’know, there’s strawberry fields in California. Stretching on for miles. All the way out to the sea. Rows and rows. You could run forever and never see them all. And the way they’d smell … Can you imagine?”
Though I should have known, the realization startled