“They do it all the time,” Sukey said, her voice casual and grown-up, as if she were trying to deny the tears on her face. “They steal firecrackers from the rail yard, throw them in people’s yards and back porches. They don’t like me because I won’t…go with them. We’re in the same class, and I do better ’n them. That’s all.”
Tess knew it wasn’t close to all, but she let it go.
“Let me walk you home.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.” Sukey’s usually sweet voice was fierce.
“Well I do. Walk me to my car?”
Those were terms Sukey could accept. They began walking. Tess noticed the girl was studying her in a sidelong glance, trying to match her stride for stride, although her legs were so much shorter.
“Were you scared?” Sukey asked, as they waited to cross Fort Avenue.
“Petrified. But I was angry, too. So angry I didn’t have time to think. I shouldn’t have hit the one boy, Noonie, but I couldn’t think of anything else. It would serve me right if there was a cop on my doorstep tonight, ready to take me in for assault.”
“It was self-defense,” Sukey said. “And everyone knows Noonie is an asshole.”
“Strangely, being an asshole is not considered a mitigating circumstance. Besides, it’s not up to the cops to sort out whether something is self-defense. That’s why it’s a better idea not to resort to violence. Luckily”-Tess grinned-“they didn’t get my name. What are they going to do, go to the district and swear out a complaint on Tall Dyke with Braid?”
Sukey laughed. A little shakily, but she laughed.
“Are you a dyke? I mean-a lesbian?”
“No. You know, someone calling you a name doesn’t make you that name.”
Sukey’s voice was about as low as it could be and still be audible. “I’m fat. They say I’m a fat pig, and they’re right.”
It was a test, and Tess wasn’t sure she could pass it. What did Sukey want her to say?
“Here’s a break in the traffic. Let’s run for it.”
They scampered across the lanes. A pickup honked, some Baltimore grit boy, grinning stupidly at them.
“Wanna get high?” he called from his window.
“Not with you,” Tess said, then regretted her flippancy. But if she had gone into some zero-tolerance swoon, Sukey would have fingered her for a hypocrite.
On the other side of the street, Sukey said: “See, he asked you, not me. Because I’m fat.”
“He didn’t ask me. He asked some girl he saw flouncing across the street. He asked an ass, he asked a pair of breasts. Not me, Sukey. My parts. When you’re a female between the ages of fifteen and fifty, life is a chop shop and you’re a Toyota Corolla.”
Sukey would not be comforted. “Maybe they start with your parts and work up to seeing a whole you. It has to begin somewhere, somehow. But with me, all they see is a blob.”
“You’re not a blob.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me I have a pretty face, too?”
Tess stopped walking. She wanted to touch Sukey, to pat her arm or take her hand, but she sensed the girl would recoil at any physical contact, no matter how small.
“Do you brush your teeth every day?”
“Huh?”
“I asked if you brush your teeth every day.”
“Of course I do, after every meal.”
“Then you’ve looked in a mirror and you know you have a pretty face. I don’t have to tell you that. No one can tell you that. Oh, they can tell you, but they can’t make you believe it. And Sukey-”
She had the girl’s full attention now.
“You should know this. Whatever you weigh, whatever you look like, there are boys who are going to tell you that you’re pretty. That you’re beautiful, that they love you, that there’s no one like you. And at the moment they say it, they mean it. Boys will say anything to get what they want. It’s the moment after they have it that you have to worry about.”
Sukey tossed her hair. “Boys. I don’t need to go with boys. Lots of older guys ask me out.”
This, Tess suspected, was not one of her lies. Or if it was, it wouldn’t be for long.
“Yeah, I know about those men. Guys in their twenties who come around girls your age, who seem so mature and cool. They’ve got cars and spending money. They followed me home from school, too. But the thing about a twenty-five-year-old who goes after a fifteen-year-old is that he’s already been turned down by a whole decade of women, you know what I mean? He just keeps moving down the ladder until he hits someone young enough and”-she had started to say “dumb enough” but stopped herself-“and naïve enough to buy it.”
Sukey looked unconvinced. Tess understood. As frightening as it was to have an older man call to you from his car, it was exciting, too, and pleasurable. Sukey wasn’t ready to give up that tiny bit of fizz in her life, the consolation prize for the boys who threw firecrackers and called her names.
“What if it’s true love?”
“What if?” Tess wanted to tell her it was almost never true love, but Sukey’s books told her something different. It wasn’t just paperback writers who believed in love, either. The guys themselves thought it was love, at least for a minute. Strange love, perverted love, twisted love, but always love. She decided to change the subject.
“You know, I was at the swings for a reason, Sukey. I was looking for you, thinking about Jane Doe. Are you sure she said what she said, about how she had been at a place that sounded like Domino’s, and lived in the Sugar House?”
“It wasn’t the swings.”
Great, the story was already changing.
“You said-”
“We ended up at the swings. But I met her up at Fort McHenry, on a bench overlooking the water. A bench where I go to read. She said she was supposed to meet someone there. She said it was the only place in Baltimore they both knew, where she felt safe, because you can see so far in all directions, and no one can sneak up on you.”
Tess tried not to show her exasperation. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“You made me nervous, you didn’t give me time to tell it from beginning to end, and Brad was there, doubting every word I said. We walked down to the swings together. That’s when she told me the stuff about the Sugar House, and a place like Domino’s, only not the same. Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.” I believe you believe what you say, which makes you even harder to fathom. “But I haven’t been able to find any place quite like that. Not a place that knows Jane Doe. What did she look like?”
Maybe it hadn’t even been Jane Doe, just another woman wandering through at the same time, and Sukey’s imperfect memory had dressed her in Jane Doe’s wardrobe.
Sukey thought about this. “She looked like a painting.”
“A painting? Any particular one?”
“No, I mean-even though she was dirty and her hair was tucked up in this hat, you just wanted to look at her. For a moment, I thought she might be somebody famous, because she didn’t look like anyone you see on the street, you know what I mean? It was like Julia Roberts, or some big movie star, but different. I just wanted to…look at her.” Sukey blushed. “I mean, I’m not queer, I don’t like girls, but she…I’d never seen anybody like her.”
“So you walked down to the swings-”
“SUKEY BREWER.” A woman’s voice, shrill and frantic, cut through them like a hard wind. Tess saw Sukey at age forty, short and round beneath a towering brunette beehive, bustling toward them.
The older Sukey grabbed the girl by the elbow and swung her around. “I have been looking everywhere for you. I told you to come straight home this afternoon, because I needed you to watch your baby brother while I go shopping. You were supposed to be home an hour ago, not hanging out in the park, telling stories to whoever will listen.”