A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That Read online

  “It sounds like she’s getting what she deserves,” he said.

  “It was an accident.”

  “She killed her friend.”

  “I know, but—” she tried.

  “But what?” Josh said, shaking his head.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “They should hang her,” he continued, his tone and mood changing now. “Or give her the chair.”

  “It was an accident,” she said again.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Josh said. He turned right on Second, passing the stores and restaurants, heading toward Pacific Coast Highway and the beach.

  Georgia looked out the window, at the palm trees, at the busy street, shoppers carrying bags, couples holding hands, young mothers or maids pushing strollers. Three girls she recognized from school stood at the stoplight on her right. They had Rollerblades swung over their shoulders, and were laughing so loudly that Georgia could hear them from where she sat. She stared at them hard, wishing they’d feel her stare, and look into the car. She wanted them to see her with Josh, but they didn’t look, were obviously too busy with each other to care. Georgia turned to him. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked.

  “Let’s talk about Craig,” Josh said, a sly smile on his face.

  Georgia tried to smile herself, but the smile was weak and silly. She twisted in her seat. She shook her head no.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “I don’t know about this,” she said.

  The light turned green and Josh accelerated. “Do you like my car?” he asked, ignoring her last comment.

  “Yeah.”

  “It was my mom’s, but now it’s mine,” he said proudly.

  “Pretty cool,” she said.

  “Damn straight. Not everyone gets a car at sixteen, but my mom feels like shit since she left us. She’s so fucking guilty she’ll give me whatever I ask for. School clothes, a bike, a new surfboard—top of the line.”

  Georgia almost said, “That’s great,” but stopped herself. She didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded. He wasn’t looking at her anyway, but up at the rearview mirror, trying to change lanes, watching the traffic. “Kevin has a car,” she said finally.

  “That thing?”

  “It gets him where he needs to go,” she said.

  “It’s a clunker,” Josh said.

  Georgia shrugged, but he still couldn’t see her, didn’t seem concerned with her response, because now he was pulling into the beach parking lot, turning off the car. “Relax,” he said. “You want to be here, right?”

  Georgia didn’t answer him. She didn’t know where she wanted to be, didn’t understand why just a half hour earlier she’d jumped off the couch, excited, and now felt uncertain. She almost wished she were home, sitting down with her parents for that roast.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

  “Nothing,” she said, biting her bottom lip, staring straight ahead at the windshield in front of her. “If you like the car, Josh, you should wash it. It’s dirty.”

  “I know.”

  “It would look better, you’d like it even more, if it were clean. Don’t you think so?”

  “Probably.”

  “I could help you wash it this weekend,” she offered.

  “Not going to happen. I’m surfing with your brother this weekend.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  It was dusk, and the sun was fat and orange, falling into the ocean. She looked at Josh. He wore a striped T-shirt and a pair of shorts. In that light, his knees were pink, pinker than the rest of him. They sat in silence for several minutes before he put his hand on the seat between them. He inched the hand closer to Georgia, his fingertips brushing the hem of her skirt. He spread his fingers out so that his hand became a starfish.

  4.

  Georgia stood in 27 Flavors, trying to decide. Her friend Rebecca was twelve but looked eighteen, with huge breasts and full hips, with makeup on her face like art. “I want frozen yogurt,” Georgia said, staring at the ice cream. “This stuff is fattening.”

  “Who cares?” Rebecca leaned over the counter, peering in. “It’s delicious.”

  Earlier the two of them had stood outside Kevin’s bedroom door, eavesdropping, while he talked to his friends—three of whom had seen Georgia naked: Craig and Josh and Anthony. Harvey was there too; Georgia recognized his whine. The girls put their ears to the door. Liz Phair was on the radio, and the boys were talking about chicks’ voices and chicks’ bodies. Kevin was saying, “What a guy really cares about is a girl’s body. Fuck her face. And who cares if she can sing. Who cares about what her face looks like. It’s the body you fuck. If she’s fat, her pussy’s fat.”

  And his friends said, “Yeah, that’s right.” Their voices sounded like one voice, and Georgia couldn’t tell them apart. They could have been one boy, and she started thinking about how similar they were, even without their clothes, even inches from her face. She stood with her friend at the door, imagining all she’d done with the three of them, listening to their laughter. And then her brother mentioned paper bags, said he wanted to put one over an ugly girl’s face while he fucked her titties. “Better than fucking a fat girl any day, though,” he said. “Fat’s the worst.”

  “Come on,” Rebecca said now, “get some ice cream. You’re skinny, Georgie. What do you have to worry about? It’s me with these hips,” she said, slapping her side.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I want that,” Rebecca said, pointing at the tub of Chewy Chocolate.

  The boy behind the counter wore a red-and-white uniform, a little square hat on his head. His pimply chin jutted out from the rest of his face, which was sunken in comparison. With a chin like that, the boy could have leaned over the counter, pointed himself in Georgia’s direction, and tapped her on the shoulder with it. With a chin like that, he could have pushed her away.

  Georgia looked down at the tubs of ice cream—pink and green and white, one with little chunks of creamy cookies, one with nuts, one with ribbons of fudge, another with bits of brightly colored bubble gum balls. She suddenly felt short of breath, and she tried to breathe, she thought about breathing, and it was a strange thing, having to think about what only moments earlier came naturally.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Rebecca said. She held her ice cream cone, and her tongue was going around and around in a circle.

  “I’m going outside,” Georgia told her.

  “Why?”

  “I need air.”

  Once outside, Georgia replayed those moments at her brother’s bedroom door. She was thinking about those boys and their identical fingers. She tried to imagine their chins and noses, their individual voices, wanting to see each boy as distinct, but it was impossible. She was thinking about paper bags and breathing when Rebecca bounced out of 27 Flavors. “God,” her friend said, “just leave me in there with zit face. I’m sure.”

  “Sorry, Becky. I don’t—”

  “I have a date with him this weekend,” she interrupted, obviously excited.

  “Who?”

  “Zit face—the guy who served me.” Rebecca turned what was left of her cone upside down and sucked out the rest of the chocolate.

  “I didn’t think you liked him,” Georgia said.

  “He’s not so bad, actually. He goes to Diamond High and knows that girl who killed her friend. Did you hear about that, the girl who killed her friend?” she asked.

  “No,” Georgia lied.

  “Well, I guess she was trying to suck the fat out of her friend and—”

  “I heard about it,” Georgia said, cutting her off.

  “Why’d you lie? Sometimes, Georgie, you’re so weird. I don’t always get you,” she said.

  Georgia shrugged. She shook her head. “Becky,” she said, cautiously, almost whispering. “What does ‘fucked her titties’ mean?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I have an idea. I
kind of know.”

  “Well,” Rebecca said, chomping on her last bite. “He sticks his dick in your nipple hole.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “And then,” she continued, “he moves it in and out. You’d be surprised how much that little hole stretches.”

  “No one’s doing that to me,” Georgia said.

  “Why not? It feels good.” Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Grow up, Georgie,” she said. “Live a little. No ice cream, no titty fucking. What’s wrong with you?”

  5.

  Other men and boys noticed Georgia. It was as if they saw straight up inside her, all that she had done. It was like a list had been written and they were privy to it. She understood that her body belonged to the whole damn street. Three of them looking related, like brothers or cousins, pulled up in a white truck. The bearded one leaned out the window, his head and neck, an arm, his big hand grabbing at the air around her, saying, “Let’s go make a pretzel together.” And Georgia misunderstood him or she understood him perfectly. “What?” she said. “What do you want?”

  The next day after school Georgia was walking home alone, passing a group of high school boys, and it took every bit of nerve to put one foot in front of the other. She thought about crossing the street or turning around, right there in the middle of the block, hitting her forehead with her palm, pretending to have left something at school—a book, a pen. She thought about that but kept walking.

  “Georgia,” one of them said.

  She ignored him.

  “Georgia?” he said. This time her name itself was a question.

  She stopped, looked directly at the boys. “I’m not Georgia,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong girl,” she told them.

  6.

  After a day at the beach, she sat with Rebecca on a bench in Huntington. Pacific Coast Highway. The sun was coming down on their tan shoulders. They sat with a Jack in the Box bag between them, taking turns dipping their hands inside the bag, pulling out fries. From a distance, if someone were to pull up in the far lane and look at the girls, they might have appeared older than they were.

  “Let’s play a game,” Rebecca suggested.

  “What do you want to play?”

  “Count the Love.”

  “What’s that?” Georgia asked, and as her friend answered, she was certain that Rebecca was inventing the game as she went along.

  “Let’s see,” she began, “we count the number of guys who notice us. And we can’t leave this bench until we get to, uh … until we get to number sixty-nine.”

  “What if our bus comes?”

  “We’ll catch another bus,” Rebecca said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay,” Georgia said.

  And the two of them sat there, waving their bus by five times. They counted them: those leaning out their truck windows, those who sprayed them with kisses from dark jeeps, those who shouted “You’re beautiful” or “I love you” or “Suck my big dick.” Even if the light was green and the boys and men were zipping by, many of them still had something to say.

  “That counts,” Rebecca told Georgia, “even if we can’t make out the words.”

  Georgia nodded, shoving the last of the fries into her mouth.

  “When you’re young like us,” Rebecca said, “guys love you. But once you hit seventeen it’s all downhill. You lose it.”

  “Lose what?”

  “This,” Rebecca said, waving her hand in front of her like a game show model presenting a prize, a washing machine or shiny new boat. “All this love.”

  “Love?” Georgia said, doubtful.

  “Or whatever it is,” Rebecca said.

  7.

  Georgia’s mother was head paralegal at a law office in Manhattan Beach, and when she came home from work in the afternoons, often went to her bedroom and fell asleep. Georgia herself couldn’t nap—there was always too much on her mind—and she envied her mother’s ability to sleep during the day.

  This particular afternoon her mother stood in the living room, in front of the reclining chair that her father usually sat in. Though it was five, a half hour past his usual arrival, he wasn’t home.

  Georgia sat at the dining room table, studying. She looked up from her homework. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Work,” Georgia’s mother said flatly, in a tone that suggested she didn’t want to talk about him. She leaned down, pulled off her black pumps, and then fell heavily into the chair. She rubbed her calves, first one and then the other. Her legs were long and slim, as beautiful as the rest of her. “I’m tired,” she said. “Diane’s got me doing four cases at once. That’s too many, Georgie. Do you know how hard your parents work?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you know why?”

  “Good food and pleasant shelter,” Georgia said, having been through this conversation several times before.

  Her mother smiled. “Honey, get your mom something cold to drink.”

  Georgia went to the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tea. When she returned to the living room, she handed the glass to her mother. She looked at the dining room table, thinking about the homework she’d left there, and decided it could wait. She sat down on the couch, across from her mom.

  Georgia’s mother lifted the glass to her mouth, ice cubes clinking, and looked at her daughter. “What are you staring at?” she said. “What’s with you lately?”

  “Nothing’s with me.” Georgia picked up a fashion magazine from the coffee table and began thoughtlessly flipping through the pages.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” her mother asked. She had her hand placed on top of Georgia’s hand, stopping her daughter mid-flip.

  “I want to read this, Mom.”

  “Okay, read,” she said. “As long as you’re fine,” she told her.

  “I’m good,” Georgia said, unconvincingly.

  Her mother nodded. “I’m glad you’re good,” she said. “It’s a mother’s job to worry, though. I know you and Kevin are doing what kids do, but your grades are fine and your teachers seem to like you. I should be happy that you’re doing as well as you are.” She sighed, relieved.

  Georgia thought about Kevin’s ugly girl with a paper bag over her head, getting titty fucked. She gave her mother a weak grin. “I have a question,” she said, closing the magazine, holding her spot with one finger.

  “Yes?”

  “Is there a hole in my nipple?”

  “A what?”

  “A hole. Rebecca said that there’s a hole there.”

  “That girl—so sweet when she was little, but she’s growing up to be bad news. What happened to that girl?”

  “Nothing happened to her.” Georgia rolled her eyes. “Answer my question, please.”

  Her mother leaned back in the chair. “Yes, honey, there’s a hole there,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “When you have a baby, milk comes out of it.” Her mother closed her eyes. She made circles at her temples with her fingertips. “Just the sound of a baby crying can bring on the milk. One time you ruined my very favorite blouse.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m tired,” her mother said. “Let me rest now, Georgie.”

  “One more thing ,” she tried.

  “Can’t it wait? Don’t you have some homework to do? Isn’t that what you left at the table?”

  Georgia looked at the table, then back at her mother. “But—” she began.

  “Please, sweetie,” her mother said, “give me just an hour of quiet time.”

  8.

  “There’s the kind of girl you fuck and the kind of girl you marry,” Kevin said. He was standing at the refrigerator door in his fluorescent surfing shorts and socks, his body tilted forward so that his face and bare chest were nearly inside. Georgia stood in the kitchen doorway, holding a caddy filled with nail clippers and files, a half dozen bottles of her mother’s nail polish. She stared at her brother’s back, which was broad, with freckles and a million red pimples. Some of the pimples were white a
nd ready.

  “Where’s the milk?” he said. “I can’t find the goddamn milk.” He was moving things around. “Shit,” he said, taking ketchup, a bag of red cherries, and defrosted hamburger meat from a shelf and placing them on the counter. “Have you seen the milk?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “Maybe Dad—”

  “Dad’s been weird lately,” Kevin interrupted. “Have you noticed?” He looked at her.

  Georgia shook her head no.

  “He’s forgetting shit. He asks me a question, I answer it, and ten minutes later he’s asking me the same damn thing.”

  “I haven’t noticed,” Georgia said, realizing she hadn’t spent much time with her dad lately.

  “I don’t think they love each other anymore,” Kevin said.

  “Of course they love each other,” Georgia said.

  “I can’t wait until I move out. No more running out of milk, chicks on the couch, music as loud as I want it.”

  “You’re only sixteen,” she reminded him.

  “I’m older than you.”

  “So?”

  “I swear, when I’m on my own, I’m having one big party—day and fucking night.”

  Georgia moved from the doorway to the kitchen table and sat down. She started looking through the bottles of polish. She picked one up, shook it, and held up the shiny red for her brother to see. “What do you think of this?” she asked him.

  “I don’t think about it,” he said. “Guys don’t think about those things—a chick’s nails, come on, Georgie.”

  “What about our voices or our faces?”

  “Huh?” he said, not really listening.

  “If you move out, how do you plan to pay rent?” she asked, changing the subject, not wanting him to realize she’d been standing outside his bedroom with Rebecca at the door, eavesdropping.

  “The Fish Joint pays me.” He turned and glared at his sister. “It’s just a matter of time. I’m saving money—or I’m going to start saving. This week, you watch, I’m going to put something away. You’ll see,” he said.

  She looked at Kevin, doubtful.

  “What?” he said.