He rolled up his sleeve to show me L A N A, my name scratched into his arm, bloody, indelible, a series of cat scratches. I didn’t know what to say. Why did he do that? We stood outside the café, college guys pressed to the window breathing on the glass, drawing hearts in their breath. One drew a penis. I laughed. Noah rolled down his sleeve.
‘Call me when you get home?’ he said.
In the reflection of the café window I saw myself smile vaguely, random guys and Noah all looking. I wanted to kiss him, lay my hand on his red scars, something, but I didn’t, I was just looking. It felt like a weight, everyone looking for something from me to make their day. How did Catwoman manage it? I couldn’t recall Judy ever looking troubled. Sad stuff happened and she sat by the window, closed her eyes and let the sun bounce off her, Catwoman to the bone. I didn’t think I could ever be like that. Noah looked so sad, lost. I imagined my name scarring him all his life, something to be explained to whomever he married, doctors, swimmers, holiday-goers, coroners, next of kin. I was an identifying mark. I’ll throw away the perfume when I get home, I decided. I visualised unscrewing silver lids, pouring bottle after bottle down the toilet, flushing it into the ocean to make irresistible fish or something.
‘Later,’ I said, walking towards Mom’s car pulling in on the corner.
I turned around. The college guys were piling out of the café and looking in my direction; so was Noah. I stood a little taller and put on a wiggle so as not to disappoint them. I imagined Catwoman twitching a tail, slinking into the night. It was less than a block to the car, Mom and a trip to the mall — shoes on sale, a shirt to be returned, it was a long walk. I felt those guys watching me, right now, all of them. The image of myself tipping the perfume away disappeared faster than my breath in the cold. I just couldn’t see it. Catwoman would get it, maybe no one else does. Their eyes felt like sun on my skin. I felt their eyes on my hips wind my walk into a tick-tock. Who can fight what they inherit? I used it. Sure, there’d be other boys, sad boys, desperate guys, men showing off, scars, bad tattoos; I tried not to think about it. Not yet. I couldn’t imagine walking through life knowing no one was watching me walk away.
Boys Like Dolls
Nathan’s GI Joe is his friend, sort of. There’s a scar on his cheek he won’t talk about. Nathan touches the smooth plastic welt. Joe spits.
‘Women love it, son. Don’t let anyone tell you a man can’t be someone with a scar. Scars are what we are.’
Nathan nods. This is exactly the sort of thing Joe always says.
When the doll first spoke, the boy wasn’t shocked. He’d arranged Joe’s hands to grip onto the cliff of the window-ledge. Eagle eyes looked up, positioned with the lever on the back of Joe’s head. Blue sky rushed through the glass. Joe lost his grip and slipped.
‘Shit,’ he said.
The carpet was beige, dusty and stained. Nathan looked at the doll on the floor, bare feet like paddles pointing out of different sides of a boat. If Joe was a person, the bone would have broken. If he was a person who fell this way, ‘shit’ is exactly what he’d say.
‘Joe?’ Nathan said.
‘Private,’ Joe said. ‘What now, Sergeant? Sarge?’
Plastic eyes stared.
‘I’m Nathan,’ the boy said.
The doll lay down, poseable ankles twisted. His valiant salute to his beret had been lost as soon as he was taken out of the box.
‘Private Joe, reporting for duty, Sarge.’
‘I’m Nathan,’ Nathan said. ‘I’m not a sergeant, I don’t think.’
‘Yes sir!’
Nathan looked at Joe, awaiting orders. He’d never given orders before. No one ever called him ‘sir’. (Once, on a birthday card, his aunt wrote esquire on the envelope, but it wasn’t the same.) Giving orders might be kinda cool; Nathan left Joe to guard sheets of newspaper under his bed.
‘Let no one see them,’ he said. ‘That’s an order.’
It was still early. Nathan’s mother was in Helen’s room, trying to dress his sister between bounces on the bed. Thud. The newspaper dropped through the letterbox. Nathan snuck downstairs with a sheet of newspaper under his arm, just in case. He flicked through the paper. All clear. Today was ok. There were no pages he had to replace with stories about albino hedgehogs or a raccoon out of nowhere messing up someone’s lawn.
‘Nathaaaaaaaaaaan.’
On Saturday, Nathan’s mother calls upstairs. She makes his name so long he’s bored before he’s even there. He leaves Joe in the snowy pillow mountains and runs. It’s shopping day again.
‘Put your shoes on,’ Nathan’s mother says.
Helen is all ready in the hall, bundled into the lazy-mobile of her buggy, though she’s old enough to walk. Nathan buttons his coat.
‘Don’t forget your scarf,’ says his mother.
The scarf is itchy and striped yellow, red and blue. Nathan loops it around around his neck and thinks of Joe calling him Sarge.
The bus is rammed with old ladies with wheelie bags and women with buggies. Everyone gets on the bus to cough, cough, cough, cough. Everything is in the air. Nathan pulls his scarf over his mouth, remembering his mother spraying piney fresh all over the house.
‘Chemical warfare,’ Joe says. ‘Cover your mouth. Quick!’
Nathan’s mother rings the bell twice to get off at Quids In. Inside, she picks up a basket and hands another to Nathan. Stroking her chin, she considers tinned vegetables, crisps, packet rice and biscuits close to their best before.
‘Can I have this, Mum? Can I?’ Nathan asks.
He is clutching a piece of cardboard with a desert painted on. Brittle plastic is moulded over a plastic ammunition belt, boots, a helmet and cotton fatigues. Everything rests in perfectly shaped slots like shoes on sand.
‘Put it back,’ his mother says. She is looking in her purse, counting change, subtracting money for the bus into one compartment and figuring out how many tins of soup she can buy with the rest. There’s no chance of a helmet. Helen has grabbed a pair of plastic shoes and a tiara and is waving them around.
‘Nathan,’ his mother says.
She looks at him with too much in her hands: purse, bag, a box of cereal, the wire handle of the shopping basket hooped over her elbow. It’s up to him to wrestle the princess shoes off his sister. He tugs and she wails. He tugs, she wails like the plastic shoes in her hand are on a string connected to her mouth.
‘Sshh,’ Nathan says. ‘Are you going to be a man or a little girl?’
His sister looks at him with an open mouth. Everything about her is pink, from the flowers on her tights to the bow clipped to her hair. Everything screams ‘little girl’. Yet, she stares at Nathan and stops whining. Sometimes Joe is a good guy to know.
Nathan’s mother pushes the buggy to the checkout. Behind her, he spots his chance. He thinks of Joe’s bare feet and rams the soldier clothes into his waistband under his coat. Walking to the counter, he’s rigid, the cardboard like a six-pack strapped over his belly and everything fluttering inside. They are halfway out the door. Yes! Home free. Nathan can feel his pulse racing like a car on a plastic track.
‘Excuse me…’
The shopkeeper holds a price gun in one hand, the other taps Nathan’s mother’s shoulder. He’s not smiling; he looks like he’s forgotten how. The boy’s mother turns, buggy jamming the doorway. People wait to get past.
‘What’s this?’ the shopkeeper says.
Nathan’s heart plummets to his stomach. The shopkeeper holds a silver coin in his mother’s face.
‘Foreign,’ the shopkeeper says. ‘You gave me this.’
‘Did I? Sorry.’