Whores on the Hill Read online

  It swept me up, this pleasure, and exploded across my body.

  The noise of the city drifted in under the windows after, cars honking, people calling to each other, after. From the falafel joint on the corner, Arabian music carried on the air like onions frying, a beautiful sound, voices wailing and bells ringing. You could get lost in it, that easy.

  DEMERIT

  NAME: Thisbe Newton

  DATE: March 5, 1988

  INFRACTION: Skipped school March 4, 1988. Report to Father Flynn for detention in the library on Monday at 3:30 p.m. sharp.

  DEMERIT(S): 4 demerits and one-week detention

  BEARDS

  Sister St. Joe explained that in some social groups, like wolves, only the alpha female is allowed to mate and reproduce.

  “If the other females, the zeta, the omega, get pregnant . . . sayonara. That’s it. They’re out of the pack,” Sister St. Joe said.

  “What happens to them?” Jessica Seymour, a brainy girl in Buddy Holly glasses, asked.

  “Well, out there, under the harsh climate,” Sister St. Joe said, tugging at the tips of her black veil, “most often, they die.”

  “That’s so unfair,” Jessica whined.

  “God, Jessica’s such a Beard,” Astrid hissed, laughing.

  Beards wore their uniform skirts long, dangling between their knees. Beards preferred clear frames on their eyeglasses and enjoyed wearing striped socks in colors like seafoam green and sky blue. Beards wore loose, ill-fitting tops in grey cotton. Beards discussed the characters on Star Trek like they were real people. Beards joined German Club, they carried Rice Krispy treats in their backpacks, they traveled the halls in scraggly hordes like mangy dogs.

  “Check out the wolf pack,” Astrid joked, making her hands into the Vulcan V and catcalling, “Nanoo-nanoo,” when the Beards passed us in the hall, ten to twelve of them at a time.

  That was the geeky variety of Beards. But there were more.

  Some Beards were even pretty, cheerleaders. All female teachers were Beards. Our moms were most certainly Beards. We didn’t like to even consider if the nuns were Beards or not. In our minds, the nuns didn’t count. They were women born without sex. The lunch lady, Mrs. Noelle, must have been a Beard. Every Grateful Dead–listening, hemp-wearing hippie chick was a Beard. We suspected, but weren’t sure, that Quinn Catherine and her best friend, Taliferro Moss, were Beards.

  “I hate Beards,” Astrid said.

  Astrid was the first to start shaving her pubis. She liked to keep it clean.

  “Guys love it,” she said.

  Then we started doing it too. First with messy, stinking creams like Nair, the kind you buy at the drugstore. You’d gunk it on and then have to wait, five to eight minutes, sitting naked on the toilet seat while reading a fashion magazine. Then we’d shave with a pink plastic razor the razor company called “Daisy.” Sometimes, you’d get a rash. And that’s all you could think about all day, that burning, angry patch. Still, we shaved ourselves down, religiously, like a morning prayer. Watching our sex reveal itself, smiling and bare, like a boy’s.

  Guys were surprised, at first.

  “Jesus Christ,” Bailey, a cute soccer player from Fenwick, whistled between his teeth once when I inched myself out of my jeans. “Come here, sister. Lemme get a look at this.”

  Sometimes, I felt like a polished pearl, a smooth stone. Once, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and saw a child, an old woman. The face of death, my hairless, powerless sex. I shivered and got in the shower.

  “Look at that Beard. Gross,” Astrid said, standing in Metropolis, watching a group of football players from Fenwick circle a blond, innocent-looking girl from Thomas Aquinas. She wore a blue dress and red saddle shoes. “So not punk rock,” Astrid said.

  It took a fair amount of time—all the clipping, waxing, shaving, tweezing, plucking. Little whispers of red hair clung to the corners of the tub. Don’t think it didn’t get tiresome.

  “Why do you do that?” Devin asked one lazy afternoon, both of us tucked under his sheets and naked, his hands drawing up and down the line of my body.

  “It’s supposed to be good for sex, I guess. I mean for the girl.” I blushed and crossed my eyes, embarrassed. “At least, that’s what Astrid says.”

  Devin licked my collarbone with his tongue. “I bet you’d look pretty, just natural. I mean, maybe, s-someday, if you wanted.”

  First a day, then two days, then a week, I forgot about my razor. I capped the Nair cream and put it on the shelf under the sink. Slowly, in patches, my red hair started coming back in.

  “Look at that, Red Dragon,” Devin said. The fine filaments of my hair stood up straight, thrilled to be called anything other than “Whore on the Hill.”

  But I had Astrid, I had Juli. I had two uniform skirts hanging in my closet.

  In gym class, when we hit the showers, Astrid took one mincing glance at me and spit the words, “Look at Carrot Top, this one. You too? Fucking Beard.”

  When I got home, I shaved myself down with a pair of neat, small sewing scissors and put the clippings in a powder blue envelope. I placed the envelope in the drawer of my vanity and touched the crenellated corners of the paper while I fixed my face.

  Devin lifted the sheet in the afternoon and said, “Summer cut again, huh?”

  “Hairy Beard, to your left, pronto.” I elbowed Astrid in the ribs after detention at the White Hen.

  Astrid glanced over her shoulder at the girl behind the counter and looked at me, warily. “Takes one to know one, right?” she asked.

  “What do you think?” I said, slyly slipping a package of Nibs into my pocket.

  Astrid’s face brightened. She nipped a roll of SweeTARTS and a Twix bar—“You like these, right?” she whispered— and slipped them both into her blue suede satchel.

  We breezed through the glass doors, laughing, and making a break for Juli’s car.

  “I’m so perfect for a life of crime,” Astrid said, smiling, back in Juli’s car and passing out her candy stash. “Goddamn, I hate Beards,” she hissed. “That Beard was so dumb she didn’t even look at us once. Did she, Jellybean?”

  Like a mother to her cubs, Astrid was to us, with every day getting colder.

  DOROTHEA DIX

  We shouldn’t have been surprised when Juli landed in Dorothea Dix, but we were. We could visit her on Wednesday afternoons, from four to six. Or Sundays, all day.

  “Hey,” Juli said. She was sitting on a green vinyl couch. It’d only been two weeks since she bleached the tips of her hair white and played the Blow-job Queen at that Fenwick party. She wore her blunt-cut bangs in her eyes and no makeup, lounging in a pair of ratty grey sweatpants torn at the hem. Underneath her green ragweed sweater, her arms were wrapped in gauze, from her wrists to her elbows.

  Kids in cropped denim jackets slouched by the windows and smoked cigarettes. A skinny little p-rocker kicked the foosball table with his steel-toed boots, exhaling, “Motherfucker.” This blond skater kid with chains hanging out of his pocket saw Astrid and winked. “Hey Betty,” he said.

  “This place is better than Metro,” Astrid nodded.

  “If you can’t get a date, go to Dorothea Dix.”

  We tried to act nonchalant, Astrid and I, like we did this kind of thing every day: visit our best friends in the loony bin. But Astrid betrayed her nerves by compulsively flicking her fingers, snapping her wrists. Me, I was shaking.

  “See that junkie?” Juli pointed to a kid wearing cargo shorts over a pair of ratty long underwear. “He came into my room last night. His thing was twelve inches long. No, honest.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Juli’s got a tape measure in her mouth.” Astrid snapped her wrist. We laughed, all of us nervous. Astrid tapped out her mother’s cigarettes and asked, “Want one?”

  Dorothea Dix was the first private psychiatric hospital in Milwaukee. One day cost $850. The patients got cappuccinos at breakfast, shrimp cocktail at lunch.
r />   You didn’t get carried into Dorothea Dix kicking. No one would strap you to the bed. There wasn’t any shock treatment, or solitary, or padded rooms. Instead, nurses passed out Percocet and Valium in little paper cups and the kids bitched about their parents in group. Everybody loved Dorothea Dix.

  “Give me one of those.” The kid with the cargo shorts slumped onto the vinyl sofa with Juli. Her bare feet touched the fine, black hairs on his leg. He grabbed the cellophane package of cigarettes. The shot, wasted vein in his arm was fat as a finger. A tattoo right above it, right where the needle slid in, read FEED ME.

  Juli thumbed it, the beefy blue vein and the tattoo both.

  “You like that?” he asked.

  Juli called Astrid first.

  “My dad’s going to kill me,” she said. “All this blood. On the carpet too.”

  “It’s stupid, really,” Juli said when we got to her house. “I just wanted to try a straight razor. It was so easy. Like slicing through butter.” She blushed.

  She sat on her bed with a roll of toilet paper, winding it around her bloody arms. I felt my head fill up with water, standing in the nightmare of Juli’s nice bedroom, blood spattered all across the white shag carpet.

  For once, Astrid’s steady calm looked shaken. She kept zipping her Virgin medallion back and forth on its silver chain. She gingerly stepped around the blood and perched on the edge of Juli’s bed. “Sweet pea, honey,” she asked, “are you okay?”

  Juli wore this funny, crooked smile while she picked at the nabs on her bedspread.

  “Does anybody have a cigarette?” she asked.

  When Juli’s dad got home that night, he looked at the carpet and the bloody TP mess of Juli’s arms. He took a Kleenex out of his blazer pocket, blew his nose, and said, “Get in the car.”

  Juli’s dad drove her straight to Dorothea Dix.

  “Man, check this out,” Junkie Boy said, lighting a match by pulling it through his teeth.

  “Want to see them?” Juli asked, and we said sure.

  The gauze spiraled off her arms and lay in loops like big ribbons around her splayed knees. Deep gashes, like gills, like little mouths, slit the skin of Juli’s arms from her wrists to her elbows, as if wanting to breathe.

  “What’s that?” Astrid asked, pointing to the yellow jelly in the corners of Juli’s cuts.

  “Oh, that’s just fatty tissue. You know, the skin growing back.”

  The nurses at Dorothea Dix wore orthopedic shoes, just like the nuns at Sacred Heart Holy Angels. When they moved, they made no sound.

  “You okay?”

  “Sure,” Juli said with her funny, crooked smile. “I kind of like it here.”

  Junkie Boy took Juli’s arm in his hand. He blew smoke into the gilled mouths of her cuts and said, “Tell Daddy where it hurts now.”

  MISSISSIPPI THUNDERPUSSY

  Astrid and I wandered the streets around Sacred Heart after school while we waited for Juli to finish her two weeks at Dorothea Dix, the both of us bored and looking for something to do. Sometimes Devin picked us up in his stepdad’s Impala to take us out for mocha lattes at the Coffee Trader, but Astrid always said something like, “You guys are so cucu-cute,” poking fun at Devin’s stutter, or, “I’m so bored, I could slit my wrists. Oh wait, Juli already did that.” Then she laughed.

  In the hall between chemistry and home ec, Astrid said, “Mississippi Thunderpussy. C’mon after school. Please.”

  “I’m meeting Devin at nine,” I said. “He’s got a race.”

  “We’ve got time,” Astrid said. “Just say their name. It’s fun.”

  We said “Mississippi Thunderpussy” and were off.

  In an oil-stained garage on the Southside, the shoddiest, trashiest side of Milwaukee, Ray and Glenn stepped into their guitars like robes. They slung them over grungy white T-shirts, ripped at the collars and the cuffs. Jerome strapped on his Everlast bass with the cerulean finish while Tucker panted a beat on the drums, tongue out. Through all of this, Grubb stalked the room, chewing on amphetamines and showing the whites of his eyes. When the guitars started in, Grubb rushed the microphone, grabbed the wire, and swung it around his head. He lassoed the air.

  Astrid thought Mississippi Thunderpussy were the coolest.

  “Here Grubb,” Astrid pantomimed on the bus ride over. She stuck out her tongue and pretended to remove her underwear. She flicked her wrist and dunked it. “Can you get a lick of this?”

  Kids stood around, shaking their heads, smoking cigarettes. A giant snake with black diamonds on its back slept in a dirty cage on top of the tool table. The boys wore their fingernails blacked out, all of them in metal-studded belts and low-top Converse sneakers.

  Astrid stomped her Doc Martens to the beat. Her eyes followed Grubb, his rooster bangs and rattail, all feathered peacocklike. Jerome caught my eye in between sets and smiled, his top lip curling like a question mark.

  “Isn’t this the best?” Astrid asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever. I mean, yeah.”

  After the show, Astrid walked over to Grubb with her palm out and a Sharpie, asking, “Sign this?”

  “Groupie? Cool.” Grubb wiped the sweat off his brow. He was huffing, his big barrel chest still thumping to the beat. “Hey.” Grubb grabbed Astrid’s arm and slid down into the couch with her. “Tell me your name.”

  Astrid popped her gum and looked at him, wide eyed. “What do you want it to be?”

  “Eat this,” Grubb said, palming her a handful of amphetamines. Astrid put her leggy calves in Grubb’s lap and chewed two tablets, showing off.

  Jerome, the bassist, sidled up beside me and thumbed the edge of my skirt. He said, “That’s hot.”

  Grubb picked up Astrid’s leg, he licked her anklebone until she laughed. Somebody’s mother poked her coiffed head in the garage, saying, “Ray, dinner.”

  “C’mon, girls,” Grubb said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Astrid said, “For sure,” and I checked my watch.

  Grubb and Jerome cleared a space for us in the van, pushing aside drum kits, old Styrofoam cups, fast-food bags from McDonald’s. I pulled Astrid aside, saying, “Astrid, it’s nine. I gotta go.”

  “You can’t leave me now. My heart’s racing on this meth.” Astrid laughed. “Just half an hour. C’mon, please.”

  Astrid got in the back of the black tatty van and I followed her, yanked the sliding door closed. Don’t ask me why. Because that’s the way I was then. I followed my best friend. Jerome palmed me a chunk of chalky speed and I ate it. Grubb drove over back roads, circling the blanched, bare fields in the country, bored and with nowhere else to go. The whole time, I felt restless and itchy, like I could scratch out of my skin.

  “Astrid.” I leaned over the car seat. “Now. I’m going to be late. I’ve got to go.”

  Astrid ignored me and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” She leaned over to whisper it into Grubb’s ear.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  But Astrid just smiled. “Absolutely.”

  Grubb jerked the van to the left, off the road, into the gutter and down towards the cornfield just skirting the road.

  “Oh shit,” Jerome said, just before the van crashed through the stalks of green corn, swallowing all four doors, just before the short, brown stalks seemed to sweep back behind us, devouring us whole.

  “Fast, Grubb. Faster.”

  “Jesus, it’s like a car wash,” Jerome said from the backseat, trying to sneak his arm around me but I slid easy out of his grasp.

  “I don’t believe this,” Astrid hooted.

  Corn husks fell like a downbeat under the tires. Thump, thump on the doors, the windshield, the roof, as Grubb cut a path through the perfect, brown field. The force of the corn pushed against us, but he drove the car like a knife, unsheathed, slicing through the field.

  “Just a little farther.” Astrid motioned. “We’re close. We’re almost there.”

  Grubb dug the car deep, deeper into the hea
rt of the field, the seed, the center of the universe. The cornstalks turned white in the light of the headlights, dancing. Astrid gripped the glove box with both hands, flipped her seaweed hair, and hissed, “Yess.”

  Grubb turned the van in a wide, sloping circle, cutting through the corn. Then he turned right like a thresher, going back. It was loud and crashing and fast, the stalks, the stars, the black sky, all of it blurring under the headlights and Astrid laughing.

  Grubb cut the engine. There was nothing but a ticking silence, the stars and the sky. We stepped outside, the broken, bleached husks giving way under our shoes like an enormous woven rug. A couple of husks fell into the van, across the backseat. We craned our necks and stared at the stars. The whole world was humming. We stood in the center of the cornfield and laughed.

  “I’ve never seen a crop circle before.” Jerome smiled.

  The stars blinked distant above us. It was late now, too late to meet Devin behind the Southside Speedway.

  “Contact,” Astrid crowed. Her chipped front tooth caught the moonlight and shimmered like a knife. “We made contact.” She raised her fist, laughing.

  We stood in the lopsided circle in the middle of the cornfield. All that hollow, wasted space. You could call it blight or a landing strip. Or us.

  DEB SCOTT’S BIRTHDAY PARTY

  When Juli was discharged two days early from Dorothea Dix, we picked her up in her own car. It was a grey afternoon. Everything felt flat and bombed out. Juli waited on the curb in her ratty green sweater, white tape still around her wrists. Astrid handed her the keys, “You know what tonight is, cupcake?”

  Juli picked at the tape around her wrists, blankly, bored. “What?” she asked.

  “Deb Scott . . .” Astrid said.