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  Michael liked to pretend he was a ‘bad boy’ he greased his hair back, he wore steel tipped boots, he kept a packet of cigarettes in his sleeves and would light them with matches he got from Ginger’s (a strip club and bar his mother worked at) with pictures of naked women bending over and sitting with their legs in a v.

  Michael and his mother lived in a little one story clapboard shack (though that was too kind a word for it) with a thin coat of blue paint and a tar paper roof a few streets over from our house.

  It was only the two of them. Though his mother still wore her wedding ring Michael never talked about his father and liked to punch anyone girl or boy who ever asked after him, so there were all sorts of rumors about him running off with another woman or having died or just washing his hands of them and walking off one day.

  His mother worked at Ginger’s as a dancer at night and spent her mornings as a waitress at George’s the diner across the street, so like the rest of us kids when we weren’t in school we had a lot of free time on our hands. Michael liked to spend his time smoking, shoplifting from GoodWill and breaking car windows.

  Even though I hadn’t taken any interest in him, and most of the other kids ignored me because I had to ‘watch the baby’ (Mary was still running around in diapers at the time) and couldn’t play as much anymore, Michael had taken a bit of a shine to me. He was always around when I was around. He always jogged past my house in the morning and offered to hang out with me when I was babysitting Mary. When I wasn’t there with he liked to make up stories about what we were doing when he was over at my house. How he kissed me, or held my hands and that we were ‘going steady’ and how I was his girl so the other boys (Who hadn’t even given me a second glance) better stay away.

  We weren’t and I would tell everyone that we weren’t. Though I did like the thought of someone liking me, for me. And if I wore my hair down more after he said that I looked pretty one day then that was just a coincidence.

  On our five year anniversary of living in Dogtooth (I don’t count the months which added up over the years when we would go on ‘vacation’ or doing a big skeDaddle or pretending that we were cowboys again on the run from the cops; which actually wasn’t far from the truth) Michael invited me over to his house.

  I could tell he had made an effort to clean up, the furniture was old but someone had sprayed lemon scented Spray Fresh over it, the rug was stained but clean. We stayed in the living room on the sofa in front of the old TV.

  I tucked my hair back behind my ears (I had started letting my bangs grow out longer now) and looked at him shyly. He offered me a grape soda from the mini freezer and tried to casually throw his arm over my shoulder as Robocop played in the background. I told Michael that I’d be his girlfriend like he kept telling people if he promised me that he would stop shoplifting and breaking things because it was fun.

  Michael promised me that he would. He kissed me on the cheek, it was wet but I didn’t mind it.

  ***

  A week later Michael came up behind me when I was picking grapes with some of the younger kids in the valley; more went into my mouth than into my bucket but I wasn’t going to be going home until I had a full pail. He whispered a quick hello and then reached into his pocket, and before I could ask what is that he had pulled a thin gold little chain around my neck and fastened it.

  “Do you like it?” he asked me.

  I looked at it, Mom used to have a box full of jewelry before our many moves and her pawning them off for whiskey and beer and to pay off what I later found out to be my father’s lawyers fees. It was pretty. It was a simple little gold chain that felt feather light and there was a fat little pearl hanging off the end. I had never had any jewelry before, any real jewelry that is, I had a box full of costume jewelry that I used to play with before giving it to Mary and nobody had given me anything this nice in years.

  “It’s pretty,” I said.

  “Whose was it?”

  “It was my grandma’s.” Michael said with an ‘aw shucks’ kind of grin.

  “Will she be okay with me wearing it?” I asked him.

  “She ain’t around anymore to complain.” Michael said.

  I told him I’d wear it even though I knew better, I kept it hidden under my shirts and didn’t tell anyone or let anyone see it, not Mary who was talking more than ever, not Mom who could have stolen it and sold it and definitely not Dad who had been in a mood for weeks now, staying out later than usual and coming home drunk. I had heard him and Mom arguing about him losing his job and looking for another one. I was afraid that we’d be moving again but I didn’t say anything when Mom asked me what I thought about having an adventure in the Big Apple one of these days.

  Even though I had asked him not to tell anyone about the necklace and to promise me that he’d stop stealing he hadn’t. He had bragged to the other kids how he had smashed out the windows of a genuine fire truck and how we were together and how he was going to put a ring on my finger and a baby in belly.

  When I heard what he had been saying, I knew I had to end it. But with the threat of moving and the way Dad had been acting when he was home, drunk angry and getting on everyone's nerves with how clingy he was being too I didn’t end it yet. Even though I meant to and had practiced what I would say, but I could never bring myself to say it.

  We were still in Dogtooth a few weeks later, my father had pawned off my mother’s wedding ring the big one with the rubies and the emeralds he had bought her from Paris to pay off our bills. Mom had been crying and arguing with my father over it for days, my father kept saying it was just metal and he’d buy her a new one when he started working again. Mom kept asking him when that would be and how she wanted to go to New York because her uncle had a place for us to stay in his townhouse and my father just kept yelling that he was a man and he could take care of his family before he stalked off in one of his moods.

  I went out to the Sticks to go play on the train tracks with some of the other kids, we were playing a mix of tag and hide and seek where someone would be it and then we would all hide until they found all of us and start all over again.

  After I had been It twice I had found a good little spot behind one of the shacks that had half fallen over from all the snow we had gotten over the winter. The roof had caved in, and it was filled with splinters and rusty metal; which was why nobody had picked it to hide in. I was still small enough to wriggle in through the window and hide in the corner.

  I could hear the chase start and a bunch of giggling and shouting when Michael tried to come in through the window too.

  “Go away,” I whispered at him annoyed. He had been acting as clingy as my father had been with me and Mary (I used to think it was because he thought my mother had had enough and pawning her wedding ring was the final straw and he was afraid he’d wake up one day and find that she had left him and taken us to the Big Apple) and I wanted some space from the both of them.

  “There’s not enough room for the both of us.” I tried saying as he clambered down and right over to me.

  I smelled sandalwood and felt him press up against me, bare chested. I was afraid though I wasn’t sure why at the sight of him like that so close to me. I had seen Michael and a lot of the boys and some of the girls running around with their shirts off when it got to hot out before.

  “No,” I said pushing on his sweaty arm as he pushed up against me.

  “It’s fine.” he said with one hand planted on either side of my hips as he looked down his nose at me panting.

  I was uncomfortable but didn’t say anything else.

  “See it’s okay.” he said. “We both fit.”

  “I guess.” I said.

  “Susie,” he whispered.

  “What?” I asked him.

  And then we both waited as we heard someone moving outside of the shack.

  “What?” I asked him when the feet had moved away.

  “Have you ever kissed anyone?” he asked.

  I squinted up
at him, the sunlight was pouring straight down through the roof, dust fairies and small spores were drifting up in down in the bright shafts of yellow light, I could feel the heat from his body on either side of me. I could see the cords of muscles under his skin and jumped when our fingers brushed together.

  “Yes.”

  “With who?” he asked jealousy.

  “My Dad.” I said honestly.

  “I mean grownup kissing, like in the movies Susie, it doesn’t count if it’s your Dad.” he said.

  “It does too I said,” blushing even though something slimy started moving in my belly at my confession. “They were real.”

  Michael looked at me funny and then he leaned down, “Come here, I’ll show you what a real kiss is supposed to look like.”

  “Fine,” I said just to get him to stop looking at me like he had smelled something rotten.

  His lips pressed against mine and then it was all a jumble of wet tongue and teeth, it was so familiar and disgusting, and I hated it. I pulled away as he pushed forward until we were fumbling over each other and I could feel his fingers up under my shirt, and his hot hand on my stomach and his other hand was fumbling with the buttons on his pants. When I pushed my hand on his I jumped, I knew what was pressing against my hip. I pushed him back, hard, hard enough for him to jerk up and scratch his back against the splintered wood and to hollor when it broke the skin and a few trails of blood ran down his back.

  I scrambled out under him not caring if I got caught or not or if the other kids called me chicken because they already made fun of me, and ran home.

  The next day Mariah who I hadn’t talked to in months told me that Michael was telling everyone that we had been having sex.

  “That’s not true!” I said. “He just kissed me is all and I didn’t even like it.”

  Mariah said she believed me and so did some of the other girls but I didn’t care.

  It hadn’t been that good of a kiss. It had been just as gross as the rest of them, but just as real.

  ***

  I sent the necklace back to Michaels with Mariah who told me he had gotten it back and how angry he had been, so angry that he had thrown it out in the trash can before he kicked her out. He had come by a few times banging on the door and calling for me to come out, thankfully my parents hadn’t been home. I called Michael a week later and told him it was over.

  “I don’t want to see you anymore. You broke your promises.” I said when he didn’t say anything.

  “So, you knew who I was when we started dating.” he said.

  “I thought you’d be different.” I mumbled.

  “You’re an idiot.” he said.

  “Well you dated and idiot so what does that say about you?” I asked him. He didn’t like that and after a steady stream of curses said, “Well at least I got my rocks off before I dumped you.”

  I hung up the phone. He was hurt but he was stupid. We had never had sex, I was only thirteen but I wasn’t a virgin I knew what sex was and what we had done in that old shed had been nothing more than a dirty fumble.

  When Dad asked me over a beer one day with a mean look in his eye what happened to my friend, the tall boy who didn’t wear enough clothes I didn’t tell him everything that had happened, just that we weren’t friends anymore. I knew that it would only cause problems for everyone if I had told him the truth. Especially for me.

  Chapter Seven

  Even now after everything that's happened my father George Hale still commanded my fear and the utmost respect. He was the only man I can honestly say had taken the time to get to know me, but he also had kept my sister and I in the dark about a lot of things for years.

  I sat in front of the old rose bushes that had grown monstrously huge, erupting over what had once been a well maintained lawn only thirteen years ago when the real trouble had begun and their quiet little street had been frightened into silent complicity by the events that had taken place over the years.

  I remembered how Mom had come running into the bathroom screaming one night, the blood on the floor and the rug, my father’s straight razor sunk to the bottom of the toilet bowl as she pressed a towel to my bleeding arm and an ambulance siren a couple of blocks away. And then it all faded and the reality of the garden reasserted itself; the sun, the birds chirping in the trees, the caterpillar crawling in the grass past my foot.

  I caught a glimpse of myself in Mom’s bathroom mirror; my hair was darker than it was the last time I was here and there was peach fuzz on my face and upper lip.

  “It’s real good to see you again sugar,” Mom said in between her nervous fussing.

  “It’s good to see you too.” I said and popped a grape into my mouth. Large, overripe and too sweet just like I remembered.

  The kitchen smelled like oranges and the old furniture had been replaced with new ones from Ikea, sleek blocky white lines and bright bursts of color that made my eyes hurt.

  I lit a cigarette and held it in my mouth watching the ash build up in a long column as the wind blew my hair over my shoulders. I groped around my pockets for a napkin and when I couldn’t find one, flicked the ash onto the grass and rubbed what fell on my blue jeans in with my hand.

  It was so familiar but so different here. The grass where the sprinklers were was tall and bright green but the area around it was littered with patches. There were small piles of yellow paint leftover from when Mom had painted the house. A small duck pond surrounded by rocks sat in the back of the yard The only thing that remained untouched from my childhood was the rose bushes surrounded by manure (my mother said that it let the plants grow better and stronger than just mulch) steaming and filling my nose with a wet unpleasant aroma.

  My father had planted these roses for Mom when I was still in diapers he had gotten them from California and kept the weak tender bulbs and seeds wrapped in wet newspaper so that they survived the journey to Dogtooth and were able to bloom again in the harder but still fertile soil. Mary and I had spent hours pulling weeds from the flower beds and mowing the lawn.

  Mary looked like a little doll when we were growing up. She was a tiny thing, with white blonde hair and big brown eyes and a funny little way she wrinkled her nose or chewed on the tips of her fingers when she was nervous. And it was a constant, so much so that my Mom once resorted to pouring hot sauce all over her fingers to stop her from biting them.

  Everything made Mary nervous; going to the store, to school, meeting new people, and trying new things. Every time she had to go to school it was as if it was the first day all over again; there was a lot of crying and begging before she eventually went to school and everything was fine until the next day when the cycle would start all over again. She never went to any birthday parties and never went over to anyone’s house or invited anyone over to ours. She preferred her books to people and spent most of her time with me or Mom.

  Mom said to give her time, that she would grow out of it, my father wanted to scare it out of her, toughen her up, so he would go around the house pretending to be a monster who would jump out at her at random times to scare the pants off of her; which it did. Which left my sister a sobbing mess and Mom now angry at Dad and Dad would be sulking because everyone was mad at him including me, who usually took his side in most of their arguments and (stupidly) made sure that Mom always shared some of the rainy day money she had squirreled away so that he could go to the Prairie Rider.

  When my sister ran away screaming I ran into the monster’s arms, he told me that I was his favorite but he made me promise not to tell my mother or Mary because it was our secret. I promised I never would. Once Dad said to me, “Sugar, sometimes I think you’re the only one around here who actually loves me.” I had quickly rushed to assure him that they loved him too, just in their own way, Mary hated all of the hugging and rough-housing that my father and I loved to do and my mother was...well she was my mother, but he had just shaken his head and drank a little more whiskey and held me close. “I hear you honey, but I don’t know w
hat I’d do if you ever stopped.” I told him that I would never stop loving him even if the sun went out.

  Chapter Eight

  Growing up I had what my mother called a unique set of features and a great personality.

  Which was a nice way of saying ugly.

  By the time I was fourteen I was almost six feet tall, and skinny as a rake, with a smattering of freckles across my nose that I had inherited from my grandmother and later passed on to my daughter.

  I had so many nicknames (insults); string bean, french fry, twiggy or twig, dead girl walking, jack skellington, broomstick and Lurch. I had a head full curly mousy brown hair that turned a ugly dark blonde one summer. My skin was burned a dark brown by the sun and it took years of living in Wisconsin for it to turn pasty white again.

  I had resented my mother for the longest time for naming me Susie. Not Susannah. Not Suzanne. Just Susie. I would have rather been been called Alice, or Beatrice, or even Mary. The older I got the more I suspected that she wished she had picked a different name for me too, or preferred a child who fit the name Susie -one who looked more like mary, blonde, sweet, and pretty- but had unfortunately gotten stuck with Susie.

  Tall, ungainly, stubborn like a mule and who had no interest in playing with dolls and loved roughhousing, climbing trees, roping my sister into playing knights and wrestling like on tv with my father. Mom’s only response was to say, “Susie,” as if my name was a sigh.

  Something that made her tired, something that meant trouble.

  Dad on the other hand loved my name. He would tell people the most embarrassing stories about me, like once when I was three years old I thought I was a cat and ran around the house naked for three days meowing and purring and peeing in the garden and crawling on the furniture and sleeping in his lap until I came back inside and was a little girl again. I didn’t like hearing him tell these stories, over and over again but he didn’t want to hear that. He wanted me to be his partner in crime, to laugh along with him and tell him what I thought he needed to hear to keep him going, to keep him here at home with us. I learned how to love lying, the exhilaration, the same kind I felt as a small child from doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.