“What do you want me to do?” she asks.
Such a soft, accommodating voice. Knowing after fifteen years behind bars that nothing is free. Nobody gives away anything at no cost to the receiver. Whatever it is — cigarettes, magazines, tampons, stamps, Mars bars or a jar of peanut butter — it comes with strings tough as fishing line.
“Nothing. I don’t want you to do a thing.”
Now her eyes stray from my shoes to my face, opaque eyes without inquiry. So I answer the question a normal person would have posed. “I saw you leave Decagon. No one was there to meet you. I offered you a lift.”
“That was you?” She frowns.
“Me. Yes.”
“I know you?”
“My name is Bride.”
She squints. “That supposed to mean something to me?”
“No,” I say and smile. “Look what I brought you.” I can’t resist and place the bag on the bed. I reach inside and on top of the gift package of YOU, GIRL I lay two envelopes — the slim one with the airline gift certificate then the fat one with five thousand dollars. About two hundred dollars for each year if she had served her full sentence.
Sofia stares at the display as though the items might be infected. “What’s all that for?”
I wonder if prison has done something to her brain. “It’s okay,” I say. “Just a few things to help you.”
“Help me what?”
“Get a good start. You know, on your life.”
“My life?” Something is wrong. She sounds as if she needs an introduction to the word.
“Yeah.” I am still smiling. “Your new life.”
“Why? Who sent you?” She looks interested now, not frightened.
“I guess you don’t remember me.” I shrug. “Why would you? Lula Ann. Lula Ann Bridewell. At the trial? I was one of the children who—”
I search through the blood with my tongue. My teeth are all there, but I can’t seem to get up. I can feel my left eyelid shutting down and my right arm is dead. The door opens and all the gifts I brought are thrown at me, one by one, including the Vuitton bag. The door slams shut, then opens again. My black stiletto-heeled shoe lands on my back before rolling off next to my left arm. I reach for it and am relieved to learn that, unlike the right one, this one can move. I try to scream “help,” but my mouth belongs to somebody else. I crawl a few feet and try to stand. My legs work, so I gather up the gifts, push them into the bag and, one shoe on, one left behind, limp to my car. I don’t feel anything. I don’t think anything. Not until I see my face in the side-view mirror. My mouth looks as though it’s stuffed with raw liver; the whole side of my face is scraped of skin; my right eye is a mushroom. All I want to do is get away from here — no 911; it takes too long and I don’t want some ignorant motel manager staring at me. Police. There have to be some in this town. Igniting, shifting, steering with a left hand, while the other one lies dead next to my thigh, takes concentration. All of it. So it’s not until I get farther into Norristown and see a sign with an arrow pointing to the police station that it hits me — the cops will write a report, interview the accused and take a picture of my wrecked face as evidence. And what if the local newspaper gets the story along with my photograph? Embarrassment would be nothing next to the jokes directed at YOU, GIRL. From YOU, GIRL to BOO, GIRL.
Hammers of pain make it hard to get out my cellphone and dial Brooklyn, the one person I can trust. Completely.
Brooklyn
She’s lying. We are sitting in this dump of a clinic after I’ve driven over two hours to find this hick town, then I have to locate her car parked in the rear of a closed-shut police station. Of course it’s closed; it’s Sunday, when only churches and Wal-Mart are open. She was hysterical when I found her bloody and crying out of one eye, the other one too swollen to shed water. Poor thing. Somebody ruined one of those eyes, the ones that spooked everybody with their strangeness — large, slanted, slightly hooded and funny-colored, considering how black her skin is. Alien eyes, I call them, but guys think they’re gorgeous, of course.
Well, when I find this little emergency clinic facing the mall’s parking lot I have to hold her up to help her walk. She hobbles, wearing one shoe. Finally we get a nurse’s bug-eyed attention. She is startled at the pair of us: one white girl with blond dreads, one very black one with silky curls. It takes forever to sign stuff and show insurance cards. Then we sit down to wait for the on-call doctor who lives, I don’t know, far off in some other crappy town. Bride doesn’t say a word while I drive her here, but in the waiting room she starts the lie.
“I’m ruined,” she whispers.
I say, “No you’re not. Give it time. Remember what Grace looked like after her face tuck?”
“A surgeon did her face,” she answers. “A maniac did mine.”
I press her. “So tell me. What happened, Bride? Who was he?”
“Who was who?” She touches her nose tenderly while breathing through her mouth.
“The guy who beat you half to death.”
She coughs for some time and I hand her a tissue. “Did I say it was a guy? I don’t remember saying it was a guy.”
“Are you telling me a woman did this?”
“No,” she says. “No. It was a guy.”
“Was he trying to rape you?”
“I suppose. Somebody scared him off, I guess. He banged me around and took off.”
See what I mean? Not even a good lie. I push a bit more. “He didn’t take your purse, wallet, anything?”
She mumbles, “Boy Scout, I guess.” Her lips are puffy and her tongue can’t manage consonants but she tries to smile at her own stupid joke.
“Why didn’t whoever scared him off stay and help you?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”
She is shouting and fake-sobbing so I back off. Her single open eye isn’t up to it and her mouth must hurt too much to keep it up. For five minutes I don’t say a word, just flip through the pages of a Reader’s Digest; then I try to make my voice sound as normal and conversational as I can. I decide not to ask why she called me instead of her lover man.
“What were you doing up here anyway?”
“I came to see a friend.” She bends forward as though her stomach hurts.
“In Norristown? Your friend lives here?”
“No. Nearby.”
“You find him?”
“Her. No. I never found her.”
“Who is she?”
“Somebody from a long time ago. She wasn’t there. Probably dead by now.”
She knows I know she’s lying. Why wouldn’t an attacker take her money? Something has rattled her brainpan otherwise why would she tell me such fucked-up lies? I guess she doesn’t give a damn what I think. When I stuffed her little white skirt and top into the shopping bag, I found a rubber band around fifty hundred-dollar bills, an airline gift certificate and samples of YOU, GIRL not yet launched. Okay? No species of would-be rapist would want Nude Skin Glo, but free cash? I decide to let it go and wait until she’s seen the doctor.
Afterward, when Bride holds up my compact mirror to her face, I know what she sees will break her heart. A quarter of her face is fine; the rest is cratered. Ugly black stitches, puffy eye, bandages on her forehead, lips so Ubangi she can’t pronounce the r in raw, which is what her skin looks like — all pink and blue-black. Worse than anything is her nose — nostrils wide as an orangutan’s under gauze the size of half a bagel. Her beautiful unbruised eye seems to cower, bloodshot, practically dead.
I shouldn’t be thinking this. But her position at Sylvia, Inc., might be up for grabs. How can she persuade women to improve their looks with products that can’t improve her own? There isn’t enough YOU, GIRL foundation in the world to hide eye scars, a broken nose and facial skin scraped down to pink hypodermis. Assuming much of the damage fades, she will still need plastic surgery, which means weeks and weeks of idleness, hiding behind glasses and floppy hats. I might be asked to take over. Temporarily, of course.