Hick by Andrea Portes

from being the full bad person I’m meant to be. She puts a light on in the attic and keeps it on, just barely.
    But, boy, you should’ve seen her blush. That paper turned red all right.
    Once I get to Vegas I’m gonna find someone to make my legs dangle.

EIGHT
     
    Sometime deep into the night I am awakened from my grassy slumber by the sound of something streaming steadily beside me, up a ways in the ditch. I sit up and squint blindly into the dark. Much to my surprise or fear or wondering if it’s just a late night vision, I see a woman there, standing upright in the moonlight. Her skirt is jacked up above her hips and her legs spread, pissing straight down like a man, miraculous in her accuracy. Her high heels are dug into the dirt and she seems, at that moment, to be some kind of superhero, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or at least to stand straight upright and piss boy-style.
    She’s pretty, not so much from some glossy, made-up, magazine-like imitation but in that way that has something to do with knowing or feeling or having been up to no good. Like trouble. She has that same blond Doris Day flip like my mama, only with a little more roots and a lot more hairspray. She doesn’t see me. She just stands there pissing casual over the night.
    I watch her with a weird little thrill that she doesn’t see me but I see her, till I remember my predicament and have a vision of her driving away, leaving me behind, without a trace. And that would not do.
    “Jesus, lady, you trying to piss on my head?”
    She starts, not exactly a jump, but I know I surprised her, which seems not easy to do, judging from the look on her face when she spots me in the dirt. She sighs through her lips, almost like a pout and a sigh met on the dance floor and went for a whirl.
    “Holy fucker, kid, you could give someone a heart attack yelping out from the ditch like that.”
    “That was not a yelp, and anyways, you bout pissed on my head.” “Sorry, I didn’t see ya.” She susses me out. “What the hell ya doing out here anyways? You oughta be in bed.”
    “I am in bed.”
    “You some kinda runaway or something?”
    She takes a cigarette out of her purse and lights it, throwing the match down and squishing it into the ground with the front of her heel. I take note that, within her peeing extravaganza, she didn’t seem to bother with any kind of panties.
    “How can you pee standing up like that?”
    “Whattaya mean?”
    “I mean, don’t you have to squat a little? I always have to squat a little.”
    “Naw. Not if you’re smart. You just find where the hill goes down, move your feet out the way and shoot.”
    After that, we just sort of stare at each other. There’s something about her I like. Something familiar, like she’s just leaning through this life and not caring too much about the walls falling downaround her. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would tell you to sit up straight or wash your mouth out with soap or scold you for elbows on the table. She looks like what I want to look like.
    “So, you gonna tell me why you’re out here or are you trying to be mysterious?”
    “I got in a fight.”
    “Oh.” She nods. “Boyfriend?”
    “Naw. Just some guy picked me up on the side of the road. He seemed all right but then he kind of got crazy and I just looked at him and said, ‘Let me out,’ and he tried to make me stay, begged me actually, but finally I just opened the door and got out.”
    “Well. Good for you. that’s smart.” She takes a drag. “You’re smart. that’s the kinda thing happens all the time. Think someone’s okay and then they start to act real nutso and turn into some snoring shitbag and next thing you know you’re tied to the bathtub.”
    I stare at her, in awe, like she’s some highway angel sent down from heaven to school me in the ways of shitbags and nutsos and snoring in the dark.
    She shakes her head, private, taking the last drag off her cigarette.