and
our fathers kiss us on both cheeks when they leave in the morning. The girl on the
right looks slantwise at the other, but the girl in the green skirt stares straight
out from under her bangs, right at the camera.
Toy is not French, but she’s angular and beautiful. We’re in the downstairs bathroom
and smoking pot out of a homemade bong that leaks. It leaks all over my jeans, so
I take them off and sit on the edge of the tub in my favorite underwear and my favorite
striped T-shirt and watch Toy line her eyes with black pencil. She wears a black vintage
dress because she loves Audrey Hepburn. I love Audrey Hepburn too and I’ve started
to wear ankle-length pants and striped shirts, like in Funny Face, but neither of us resemble Audrey Hepburn in any real way. We’re sixteen and Toy,
I’m noticing, is cracked and uneven looking, with sly eyes and bony elbows and a strange
little scar where her neck meets her collarbone. She had, I know, much worse stepfathers
than mine.
This dress is cotton, with a deep V in the back and a high square neckline. We found
it together at the dollar bins at Goodwill and after we washed it in her sink and
hung it in the shower to dry, we both tried it on. So we both own it, but mostly Toy
wears it. Sometimes we think that the perfect dress will change everything. Sometimes
I’m jealous of the way it looks on Toy, who has long legs that stick out from under
the dress like the legs of an elegantly carved table, even though hers are white and
won’t tan no matter how long she sits in her mother’s backyard.
I watch Toy who’s adding eye shadow on top of the pencil and heating up my curling
iron so she can make little forties waves in the hair around her face. I’m watching,
but I’m also holding my head aslant, chin down, looking up through my eyelashes and
sneaking peeks at how I look in the mirror. I tuck my hair behind my ears and imagine
myself with Toy’s boyfriend, Seth. I want him to think I’m beautiful, like how he
sees Toy. I want him to want something with me. Something real. He’ll take my face
in his hands or my hands in his hands and he’ll stand close and say my name.
“Anna,” he’ll say.
All of this I imagine while staring into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror. Toy is
talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like
the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it
is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories
that crisscross and contradict and dead end.
Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.
In this story she’s wearing the same dress that she’s wearing now. She’s waiting for
the bus to come to my house when her camp counselor from the third grade drives by.
It’s late and the air is cool. She’s without a sweater and watching the tiny bumps
on her arm appear and disappear and reappear, so she doesn’t notice when the camp
counselor pulls alongside her.
He rolls the window down, tips his head to one side and says, “I recognize you. You’re
Toy.”
And Toy says, “I recognize you, but I don’t know your name. I remember that year at
camp. I wore my favorite dress every day. It was red-and-white checkered with a white
placket in the front and yellow buttons. You said I should change if I wanted to play
soccer with the other girls.”
Toy looks at him as he idles by the bus stop in his faded blue car. Then she looks
away, high into the pine trees that shield them from the sky and then she looks back.
She decides he’s cute and she’s calculating in that way so she drops her voice a bit,
like a whisper that only he’s meant to hear and she says, “I didn’t want to play soccer
with the other girls.”
The camp counselor has vivid green eyes, dark brown curls, and the beginning of a
beard in that way we both agree is sexy.
our fathers kiss us on both cheeks when they leave in the morning. The girl on the
right looks slantwise at the other, but the girl in the green skirt stares straight
out from under her bangs, right at the camera.
Toy is not French, but she’s angular and beautiful. We’re in the downstairs bathroom
and smoking pot out of a homemade bong that leaks. It leaks all over my jeans, so
I take them off and sit on the edge of the tub in my favorite underwear and my favorite
striped T-shirt and watch Toy line her eyes with black pencil. She wears a black vintage
dress because she loves Audrey Hepburn. I love Audrey Hepburn too and I’ve started
to wear ankle-length pants and striped shirts, like in Funny Face, but neither of us resemble Audrey Hepburn in any real way. We’re sixteen and Toy,
I’m noticing, is cracked and uneven looking, with sly eyes and bony elbows and a strange
little scar where her neck meets her collarbone. She had, I know, much worse stepfathers
than mine.
This dress is cotton, with a deep V in the back and a high square neckline. We found
it together at the dollar bins at Goodwill and after we washed it in her sink and
hung it in the shower to dry, we both tried it on. So we both own it, but mostly Toy
wears it. Sometimes we think that the perfect dress will change everything. Sometimes
I’m jealous of the way it looks on Toy, who has long legs that stick out from under
the dress like the legs of an elegantly carved table, even though hers are white and
won’t tan no matter how long she sits in her mother’s backyard.
I watch Toy who’s adding eye shadow on top of the pencil and heating up my curling
iron so she can make little forties waves in the hair around her face. I’m watching,
but I’m also holding my head aslant, chin down, looking up through my eyelashes and
sneaking peeks at how I look in the mirror. I tuck my hair behind my ears and imagine
myself with Toy’s boyfriend, Seth. I want him to think I’m beautiful, like how he
sees Toy. I want him to want something with me. Something real. He’ll take my face
in his hands or my hands in his hands and he’ll stand close and say my name.
“Anna,” he’ll say.
All of this I imagine while staring into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror. Toy is
talking and this is why I love her. She can go on about herself ceaselessly and like
the scratching of a branch against the window at night, the steady insistence of it
is comforting. She has stories without beginnings, stories that trail off, stories
that crisscross and contradict and dead end.
Toy is the star of her stories. Events orbit her like a constellation.
In this story she’s wearing the same dress that she’s wearing now. She’s waiting for
the bus to come to my house when her camp counselor from the third grade drives by.
It’s late and the air is cool. She’s without a sweater and watching the tiny bumps
on her arm appear and disappear and reappear, so she doesn’t notice when the camp
counselor pulls alongside her.
He rolls the window down, tips his head to one side and says, “I recognize you. You’re
Toy.”
And Toy says, “I recognize you, but I don’t know your name. I remember that year at
camp. I wore my favorite dress every day. It was red-and-white checkered with a white
placket in the front and yellow buttons. You said I should change if I wanted to play
soccer with the other girls.”
Toy looks at him as he idles by the bus stop in his faded blue car. Then she looks
away, high into the pine trees that shield them from the sky and then she looks back.
She decides he’s cute and she’s calculating in that way so she drops her voice a bit,
like a whisper that only he’s meant to hear and she says, “I didn’t want to play soccer
with the other girls.”
The camp counselor has vivid green eyes, dark brown curls, and the beginning of a
beard in that way we both agree is sexy.
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