Belt Buckles & Pajamas Read online

  “No abduction. No kidnapping. She just left.”

  Shy Boy moves his chair closer to me. He takes my hand, raises it to his lips, and gives a soft prince charming pleased to meet the princess kiss on it. I ignore Stuart’s continuing rant about government strike forces taking us out one by one and look at Shy Boy and I get goose bumps.

  “Shy Boy, what are –” I start but he puts a finger to my lips and says “shhhh” and that is the loudest sound I have ever heard him utter and he brushes the hair out of my eyes and leans in and kisses me on the forehead and then on the cheek and then on the lips and it is passionate but not devouring and I am still me and it doesn’t consume me and it is the best kiss I have ever had.

  I hear the throat clearing and I pull back from Shy Boy’s kiss and Kareem is standing there, shaking his head. “Now, now, boys and girls,” he says, sternly but not so much that we think we are actually in trouble. “We can’t be necking in the lunch room. Too many health code violations with all that bodily fluid swapping.”

  Stuart giggles and I blush and Shy Boy just gives a wolfish grin like he gets caught making out all the time. “Sorry, Kareem,” I tell him but he knows I’m not and I know he doesn’t really care, that he is glad we are finding happiness.

  “You two just be careful, okay? Don’t let things get out of hand. Or out of control. Understand, Gordon? Don’t let little Gordon do your thinking, capiche?”

  Shy Boy keeps smiling but Kareem stares him down until finally he nods his head. “Good,” Kareem says. “And you, young lady, don’t be getting Gordon too riled up.”

  “Yes sir, Mister Kareem, I’ll be good.”

  “Don’t sass me, Daphne,” he says, shaking his finger at me. We both laugh.

  I watch him walk away and I wonder what would have happened had Violet invited Kareem instead of Sam. It would have been different, that’s for sure. But he wouldn’t be Kareem if that was something he would have agreed to, that’s why she had to settle for Sam.

  I look around and only see Sam standing guard over us and I know he isn’t going to bust me in the near future so I lean back over to Shy Boy and plant a real juicy one on him. I whisper in his ear, “I can’t wait for Wheel of Fortune” and he gets a great big smile on his face and kisses me again.

  Forty-Nine: The Mystery Of Melissa

  “Daphne, tell me about Melissa.”

  It is afternoon session and I stare at Andie and wonder how in the hell she knows about Melissa? “Who?” I play dumb, hoping this is all a mistake.

  She brings soft brown orbs of entrapment into play, peering through the depths of my heart and soul. “This morning, you mentioned her. That she was your best friend before Violet.”

  I must have said it when I was grieving over losing Violet. That’s not fair, using information obtained under false pretenses. Except I know there was nothing false about how she cared for me, about how she held me. Nothing false except the story I had told her.

  “She was,” I admit. I can’t keep it from her. I can’t keep the shields in place; I can’t bury it behind lies or walls of silence. “She was my best friend when I was a little girl. She was the only one I could talk to. The only one who would listen. Who could understand.”

  Andie takes my hand, giving me comfort, urging me on. Compelling me through spirit just when I had achieved control over body.

  I take a deep breath and force it out. “Whenever Dad… visited me, she would be there for me. Whenever Mom turned up the TV so she couldn’t hear me, Melissa would listen to my cries. She promised that everything would be okay, that one day Dad would turn back into Daddy and Mom would be Mommy and I could play dress up instead of dress off. That sitting on Dad’s lap would be safe. That I could be a little girl again.”

  “What happened to her?” Andie asks.

  “The night that Mom walked in on Dad’s visit – no, I’ve called them visits too often, they were anything but visits.” I turn embarrassment to anger. Choose bluntness over euphemisms. “The night that Mom walked in on Dad raping me. Not visiting, raping. That night when Dad went running out of the room after her and I heard Mom yelling at him and then I heard nothing, Melissa told me it was all going to be better now. That everything would be how it was supposed to be in the morning. That Mom would fix Dad and we would be a family and live happily ever after.”

  Tears brim in Andie’s eyes as I pour my life into her open hands. “She lied.”

  “Daphne,” Andie started, wanting to hold me, to heal me. But I held back, needing to finish. There wasn’t much more to tell, it would be better to get it over with.

  “So Melissa talked to me through the night, promising me the world and I believed in it more than Santa Claus, more than the sun rising in the east. We talked and held onto each other and I didn’t even go to sleep because I was worried that I would miss the change and sleep through it and if I wasn’t awake then maybe it would skip right back to normal. Bad normal, not good normal. When morning finally came I went downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table and all that changed was extra strawberries and home made waffles and I realized that Melissa was as powerless against him as I was. I never talked to her again.”

  I am ready now, and let her hold me. She is crying more than I am and it is strange how I have never let any of the others know about Melissa and now it doesn’t even matter to me. Not when fireplaces and romance novels and maple syrup and staying up until three a.m. drinking wine is holding me in her arms.

  Shy Boy gets up out of his chair and joins our hug and then Pet Shop does too and Stuart is there too and I feel a little tiny piece of Melissa saying she was sorry she wanted to help me but Daddy was just too big and strong and then my tears come out in torrents.

  “I forgive you, Melissa,” I tell her and I know somewhere, maybe with Glen and Theodore and Violet, she is happy for the first time since I drove her away.

  Sam doesn’t join our group, he just stands and watches but I can tell he wanted to. Whether out of genuine sympathy or to cop a feel, I don’t know.

  Fifty: Clean Wheel Of Fortune Is Boring

  It just isn’t the same playing Wheel of Fortune without Violet. I look at the puzzle and at least three profane possibilities occur to me but I know, even if I shout them out, it won’t be Violet, it won’t be funny, so I keep my dirty words to myself.

  Shy Boy and I are snuggled on the couch. He tries to pull the blanket up but I don’t let him. “I’m not quite ready for that, Shy Boy,” I say, but I give him a kiss and brush his hair back with my hand, and he smiles and accepts the boundary lines as I have drawn them.

  Sam walks over. “Hey, Daphne, can I see you for a second?” he asks. I get off of the couch and walk over to the corner. I feel Shy Boy’s eyes following us the whole time.

  “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to thank you, for, you know, covering for me this morning. Not that I did anything wrong, I was invited –”

  “By Violet, not me,” I tell him.

  “Sure, sure, but it’s not like I forced my way in. Violet told me you wanted to do it with me, wanted a man to teach you stuff, so you could make your boyfriend there happy.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could see her saying that.”

  “So, what I’m saying is, I got no hard feelings over last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sam leers at me. “If you still, you know, need me to show you the ropes, I could come by tonight.”

  I stand there, flushing red from anger or embarrassment or both. He sees my reaction to his words and starts backing away.

  “Now, girly, don’t get upset, I was just offering, that’s all.”

  “Get out of here before I take that dick you are thinking with and shove it down your throat.”

  Sam turns and quickly exits the room. I go back to the couch and try to calm down. I can’t believe he thought that I wanted to do anything with him, how desperate can he be? Or how desperate does he think I am? I mean, geez, I threw his
pants at him and kicked him out last night!

  Shy Boy touches my arm to get my attention and I have to catch myself to keep from slapping him. “Oh, Shy Boy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell him.

  His eyes tighten and he looks at the door that Sam left through and gets that angry look on his face again. “It’s nothing, Shy Boy, Sam didn’t do anything; I can handle him.”

  I’m not certain he believes me — maybe I am lying so much now that they are easier to notice. I stroke his arm a little and rub his chest a little and kiss him a little more than a little until we hear “lights out in five minutes.”

  Fifty-One: Dream A Little Dream

  It is a slumber party and I am in pajamas but it’s okay I like them. They are soft and snuggly and besides Melissa and Andie and Violet are all wearing pajamas too. Daddy pokes his head in and says, “Good night girls, don’t stay up too late,” and I say, “Aw, Daddy, we won’t” and he smiles and all the girls giggle and he shuts the door. Violet says Daddy seems nice and Melissa looks at me and I ignore her and say, “Yes, he is very nice.” Andie just listens to us talk.

  We sit in a circle and braid each other’s hair. I braid Andie’s and Andie braids Melissa’s and Melissa braids Violet’s and Violet braids mine. They are the bestest friends in the whole wide world.

  “I want to stay up all night,” I tell them.

  Melissa looks at me. “Is it safer to stay up or sleep?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?” Andie asks.

  Violet pulls my hair back, leaning over from behind, looking at my upside down face. “I say we stay up. I have all kinds of games we can play.”

  Andie says, “I don’t like those kinds of games. I think we should just play normal stuff. We can talk about boys and play with dolls and put on makeup.”

  Melissa starts to cry. “I want to go to sleep. If we go to sleep and don’t wake up until morning then we are safe.”

  “You’re just a baby,” Violet tells her. “If you can’t play big girl games then you just go ahead and go to bed. Alone.”

  “Melissa, wait,” I call but she is gone.

  Violet looks at me, looks at Andie. “What’s it going to be, Daphne? You want someone to make you feel good, to liberate you? You want someone to let you enjoy what is going to happen to you anyway? May as well sit back and enjoy the ride, I always say.”

  She isn’t a little girl and she isn’t wearing pajamas and her lust emanates from her and I feel the hunger, the ache, and the emptiness inside me, longing to be filled by her passion. To wash it away in a frenzy of satiation and fulfillment.

  I reach toward her, wanting to cling and thrust and grind against her body. I put my hand out, but Andie reaches me first. She places her hand onto my shoulder, blocking my way. “Daphne, you’ve been here already,” she says. “You’ve escaped from this illusion before. Remember, this is your body, your soul, she can’t make either whole.”

  And I grow up into a woman and I am in sweats and a t-shirt and Andie is in a skirt and a sweater and she is beyond lust and beyond safety. I know I want her in the way I wanted Violet. I know I need her protection the way Melissa tried to shield me from harm. I know she is all I have ever sought after and I know she will never be mine the way I want but I look over her shoulder and Violet sees my choice and then she is gone. Gone like Melissa.

  Before she can stop me I lean up and in for one quick taste and Violet was right, Andie is sweet, sweet as anything I have ever taken in, and I wake up and I am smiling and there are birds singing and I want to squirm further under the covers and hold onto this feeling as long as I can before it fades away and reality settles into its daily rendition that is anything but what my dreams have presented. When they aren’t nightmares, that is. Reality matches the nightmares all too often.

  Fifty-Two: Doctor Martin’s Fascination

  I walk into morning session still carrying a tinge of last night’s dream with me. Just enough to carry me right past the venomous figure of Doctor Martin, who we are ever so privileged to have among us once more.

  “Good morning,” Andie greets us and I give her a big smile and she notices I’m in a good mood, she has to, how can she not when every fiber of my being is reaching out and forging the bond between us, making it stronger every time our eyes meet, our hands clasp, our lips – no, that was just a dream, I know it was just a dream. But still, what a dream it was.

  “Superfreak,” says the hedgehog.

  Stuart giggles.

  “I wanted to spend a little more time with you today,” Doctor Martin says. “I thought we could do a little project together.”

  Stuart perked up. “Project? What type of project – we won’t be part of illegal government experiments funded by gasoline taxes, I tell you we won’t participate in such a scheme!”

  “Nothing like that. I just want to get some pictures to put on the walls in the cafeteria. I thought we could all walk down to the art room and draw some nice pictures to brighten the place up.”

  “Sounds better than talking to you,” I say. Doctor Martin seems a little taken aback, but I wasn’t being rude. Just honest. And it’s not like he doesn’t know we don’t like talking to him.

  We go to the art room and Andie hands out paper and markers to everyone. “Draw whatever is on your minds,” Doctor Martin instructs. “Your feelings, your dreams. What you like doing. What you wish you could do. Anything that is on your mind. Don’t worry, if you don’t want everyone else to see we won’t hang it up, it’s up to you.”

  “Can we draw more than one?” Pet Shop asks. “I don’t think I can fit the hedgehog and the cow on the same sheet.”

  “That’s fine, Herbert. You can draw as many as you want.”

  Pet Shop smiles and proceeds with his pictures. I look at my blank piece of paper. It’s just like the cards, trying to decide what to pull from nothing and make something, except this time it is about me, not about the dead people.

  Stuart is placing a bunch of zeroes and ones on his paper. I think it is secret code. Probably a real code that will bring the real government down on him to find out how he cracked it.

  Shy Boy is hiding his paper, crouched over it so no one can see it. He is drawing rapidly, his hand racing back and forth. Doctor Martin tries to peek at it and Shy Boy turns his chair and keeps it out of the doctor’s view.

  Pet Shop is on his third page and I haven’t started my first. I look to see what he has drawn and smile. They are perfect for him. He has three almost identical pages, each a pastoral scene with a big empty space where whatever invisible animal he is drawing must be.

  I take a marker and start sketching. I remember the feeling I awoke with, the dream set in past but looking toward the future, and the lines start falling in place. My abilities as an artist fall far short of the vision in my mind, but I do my best. I draw my feelings, my dreams, what I want, just as Doctor Martin asked for. I draw brown eyes and pearl white skin and a curl of hair over her ear. I draw black-rimmed glasses that are a trifle too low on her nose. I draw a sweater and stick a couple leaves on it. I draw full lips with a touch of honey rolling off of them. I draw my dream, I draw my Andie.

  I feel her looking over my shoulder. She must recognize it, I hope she recognizes it, oh, please recognize it, Andie. She gives my shoulder a little squeeze and I blush and I’m so glad I didn’t butcher it so badly that she couldn’t tell who it was.

  “Very nice, Daphne,” Doctor Martin says, and I am embarrassed, I didn’t draw it for him but I don’t care because Andie liked it. I mumble thanks and start scribbling on another sheet of paper until he moves on.

  He picks up Pet Shop’s papers and makes nice comments about each of them and I wonder just what the bad doctor is up to. Out of the corner of my eye I see Shy Boy hide a drawing under his shirt.

  When Doctor Martin gets to Shy Boy he picks up the drawing that Shy Boy didn’t stash away and looks at it without saying a word. He shows it to Andie who says, “That’s very nice,
Gordon,” but I see disappointment in her eyes. Shy Boy must have caught it too because he hangs his head and stares straight down.

  I catch a glimpse of the drawing in Doctor Martin’s hands and it is just a bunch of stick people, nothing special, even worse than the one he drew when Stuart was making aerial surveillance maps.

  When we are walking back from session I grab Shy Boy’s hand and we let the others go on ahead. “Shy Boy, I saw you hide the other picture. What was it? Why didn’t you want Doctor Martin to see it?”

  He stands there, holding my hand, looking me straight in the eye, not blinking, trying to connect but not having the words. I smile and give him a little kiss and tell him, “It’s okay, if you don’t want to show me, you don’t have to. You respected my boundaries, you can have yours too.”

  I start to walk away and he pulls me back. He slowly reaches under his shirt and pulls out the picture. He turns it over so I can see it.

  “Shy Boy, it’s…” I don’t know what to say. It’s a drawing of me! But it’s not really me, it’s someone beautiful. Naked, but beautiful. Not me, but it is me, and this is how he sees me? Naked, but not dirty. I can’t believe he thinks I look like this. Naked, but strong, not exposed, not vulnerable, not anything like I really am. This isn’t what I see when I look in the mirror. Not even close. How can he see me like this? How can anyone look at the wreck that I am and come away with this picture?

  “It’s wonderful,” I finally tell him. I hug him tight and kiss him hard on the lips and tell him he is too good to be true and thank him for sharing it with me and not Doctor Martin. I reluctantly return the picture to him but I know I will never forget not just the picture but what it felt like to realize that someone looked at me and envisioned that drawing.

  Fifty-Three: Remembering The Dead