Whores on the Hill Read online

  “Hey Red.” Brett Smith leaned one acid-washed leg against my locker. “What’s your story?”

  I slid one brown paper–covered textbook into my locker after the other. I liked to draw on the handmade covers during class, little cartoons of alien-shaped people scampering around with big open mouths.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you. Just you.” Brett bared his teeth, his breath smelled like peppermint. “Meet me at my Camaro after school. I’ll show you.”

  This is how Brett Smith courted girls at Thomas Aquinas. And unbelievably, it worked.

  But I was scared. I stared at one cartoon alien, with two horns pointing out of his head and a big O for his mouth, racking my brain for something to say.

  “I’m kinda busy,” I said. “Maybe later?”

  Brett Smith furrowed his black, bushy brows and took one long look at me, from my ankles to my chest, weighing, deciding. He popped his gum and said, “One shot only, girl. You decide.”

  He winked, kicked my locker shut with the heel of one Reebok, and sailed down the hall.

  I never saw the inside of Brett Smith’s tricked-out, low-riding Camaro.

  After that, I was history. Ghosted. Meat.

  Brett’s friends stuffed my locker with rotting vegetables from the cafeteria: black, oozing bananas, mushy lettuce, potatoes covered in eyes. They threw things at me in the halls, wads of paper dripping with spit, little paper airplanes with ugly naked girls drawn on them. They left used condoms for me on my desk chair in class. They egged my parents’ house, put bags of cow shit on the steps. They called, “Check out the cunt,” when I walked down the hall.

  I stopped talking. I mean nothing came out.

  My parents separated, tying off years of ugly words between them, extramarital affairs, et cetera. My mother bought a Colonial in Wauwatosa, an older, more established suburb halfway between the tony East Side of Milwaukee and hick country towns like Pewaukee. April came, then May. I finished out the school year. A Mayflower truck pulled into our driveway and two men in green jumpsuits carried cardboard moving boxes into the house, asking, “Where do you want these?”

  My mother’s left eye twitched.

  I didn’t know that all the other girls entered Sacred Heart Holy Angels from behind, through the courtyard, past the limestone statue of the Virgin Mary. On the first morning of my first day, we drove up the hill, past the long, sloping lawn, past the nunnery on the left side of the school and the chapel on the right. Like a Spanish villa, Sacred Heart nestled into the hill. The chapel had a gleaming, cedar roof, pointed beams, and a circular stained-glass window across which two angels spread their enormous wings. Next to that, over the main building, on top of the third floor, a beautiful bell tower perched above Sacred Heart Holy Angels like a glittering crown. I saw it once and right away knew I’d do anything to get inside it.

  My mother squeezed my knee and said, “Now don’t forget. Smile, Thisbe.”

  Sister Claire introduced me to my teachers—young and sheepish Father Flynn for theology, Madame Smith of the blotchy cheeks, Sister St. Joe, so beautiful and doe eyed, who taught chemistry on the third floor in a room that was rumored to be haunted.

  At lunch, I carried my books with rattling hands to a round, unoccupied table in the sun. All around me, girls were laughing and chatting, making a racket.

  “What’s this?” A girl’s gravelly voice sounded irritated. “Hey, what’s the story? You’re sitting at our table.”

  The girl wore her hair to her waist like a mess of wheat, with two narrow strips of hair braided on either side of her face. Her eyes were almond shaped, wide spaced, and perched over a dimpled nose that lent her small, angular face an inquisitive, catlike grace. The sunlight caught the dust motes circling around her like moth wings. Her plaid wool skirt was short. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, agitated. And then her fruit-shaped mouth turned up at the corners, smiling.

  “You’re the new girl, right? I heard about you. Hey Juli,” she called to a small Asian girl with freckles across her nose. “This is the girl from Thomas Aquinas. Listen,” she said, throwing her blue suede satchel on the table. “Do you know Billy Jank? He’s my ex. And that creepo still has all my Cramps records.”

  “I’m Juli. This is Astrid.” Juli stuck her hand out for mine. She had bottle green, flashing eyes. Her skin was so light and brown, it almost glowed. “Welcome to Sacred Heart.”

  “What’s your name again, Jellybean?” Astrid stuck the tip of a flaxen braid in her mouth to wet it.

  I thought of my mother. I smiled and shrugged.

  “You’re one of us now.” Juli smiled. “The last of a breed.”

  I ruffled the torn loose-leaf in my notebook, trying to look nonchalant.

  “You’ve got the look,” Astrid said, staring into my eyes. “Sick of the shit. Over it, right? We are too.” She touched my hand and I felt charged with a spark. Astrid smelled like Southern flowers, magnolias. “C’mon. We’re going to grab a smoke outside. You can spill the dirt on my old turdman Billy. Want to come?”

  “Su-sure,” I stuttered. Astrid and Juli didn’t notice anything, but I was stunned to hear my own voice again, after all this time. It felt like déjà vu, strange and familiar at once.

  I hadn’t had friends in so long.

  “I promise you’ll like it here,” Astrid said, eerily, linking her arm through mine. “Honest. It sucks, but then it’s all right.”

  We walked past the other girls, the three of us, Astrid, Juli, and me, laughing and chatting, past the trophy case, the senior lounge, the framed picture of the Virgin Mary and her pretty exposed heart. We walked outside into the white sunlight, where the crickets rubbed their legs together, singing, where the birds spread their wings and soared across the city sky. Where everything felt bright and shining and joyously, at last, alive.

  ... AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE SIZE OF OUR SKIRTS

  Sacred Heart Holy Angels was originally two schools, not one. Holy Angels used to be downtown on Lakeshore Drive where the girls wore tartan plaid. But registration dropped, it disappeared. Who wanted to go to a single-sex school anymore? So they brought all the Holy Angels girls over to Sacred Heart, which was the world.

  Because Sacred Heart was the only all-girls’ high school in Milwaukee, we came from all over town. Juli drove thirty miles from her mansion on the tony East Side; Astrid walked eighteen blocks from her mother’s ugly rancher; and even though my parents had just divorced, my father still picked me up from my mom’s new Colonial, saying, “Cinch that skirt any shorter and you’ll have a belt.” Otherwise, our relationship was strictly limited to the eight-and-a-half-minute ride to Sacred Heart in Wauwatosa, neither one of us talking much.

  Everybody called us “The Whores on the Hill,” Astrid, Juli, and me, but that didn’t stop us. Plaid wool skirts, we all had to wear them, hemmed three inches above the knee. The nuns always threatened to get out the ruler, to rip out the stitches, but they never did.

  Buy two pleated wool skirts and you were set. White oxford shirts and sweaters, your choice: blue or red. Cashmere, angora, ragweed wool, or sweatshirts from the mall with the tags printed across them, spelling out the words to the popular brands like Outback Red, Forenza, Benetton, Express.

  Personality unfolded in the details. The girls in the home ec club, all in spectacles and clear frames, who wore their skirts long, old lady like, dangling between their knees. Or the Tacky Twins, Martha and Suzanne, juniors both, who wore ribbon pins in their hair and drew smiley faces on their abbreviated tartans. “I mean, Jesus,” Astrid said.

  Girls at Sacred Heart wore their hair permed, straight, curly, long, short, bobbed, Princess Di, punk rock, streaked, or asymmetrical. Mostly, it was dirty, tucked underneath a baseball cap or swinging loose in a ponytail.

  Even socks, in a pinch, could express a mood or a student’s political stance. Sporty girls wore tennis socks, the kind with pastel-colored balls on the ends of them, bouncing from class to class. Preppy gir
ls favored knee-highs in a trifecta of colors: red, white, and navy blue, just the smooth tan tips of their knees peeking out, like fresh-husked corn. Tights, woolens, or patterned hose: everything meant something. Tights for uptight girls. Woolens for the pious, future nuns. Some girls wore ski socks with their Birkenstocks even during a light snow.

  “Hippies,” Astrid said, fiddling with the silver medallion of the Virgin she kept in the shallow keyhole where her collarbones met. “Where’s my home ec book? For God’s sake.”

  “Son of a bitch, shit. I’ll never make it to seventh period.”

  “Here, take these. They’re diet pills. Prescription. My dad got them for me.” Juli smiled and adjusted her new tortoiseshell glasses.

  “You look like Miss Scarlet from that board game,” Astrid said.

  “Really?”

  “Palm me two of those zingers, sister.”

  The halls swarmed with noise in between classes. Slamming metal lockers, plastic combination locks spinning, books dropping to the floor, that chalk-dust smell everywhere, and perfume. Astrid ran a brush through her farm-wheat tangles, kissed her fingers, and touched the frayed picture of Joan Jett torn from a magazine she kept hanging in her locker.

  “Watch out for Sister Mary Pat, she’s on the warpath. Gave me two demerits for my skirt being too short. Like, duh, already,” Juli shook out her black bangs with her stubby fingernails painted hot flamingo pink.

  We kept to our own dress code. Uniform punk. Fishnet stockings under our uniform skirts, black combat boots, oxford shirts torn at the collar, at the cuffs.

  Juli started wearing a scapula around her neck; she liked to keep the glossy picture of the Virgin between her breasts. Then we started doing that too: scapulas, rosaries, every crucifix we owned—we pulled out all the junk we’d been saving since First Communion and started wearing it all at once. We made a noise in the halls, like a clattering, the music of beads.

  Quinn Catherine and her best friend, Taliferro Moss, wore jean jackets over Shaker-knit sweaters. They swabbed their eyelashes with blue mascara on top, green on the bottom. They carried crescent Jordache purses tucked under their armpits; they lived on Lakeshore Drive in brick mansions overlooking the lake; their fathers were loaded; they were the most popular girls in school. Prissy, but still.

  Quinn Catherine and Taliferro Moss liked to follow Astrid, Juli, and me down the halls, whispering at our backs, “What are the Whores on the Hill wearing today?” They thumbed the shredded ends of our shirts and hissed, “Please. Who are you guys supposed to be?”

  Astrid spun on a steel-toed heel and said, laughing, “Stuff it, sister. You just wish.”

  We were girls in plaid skirts, loud and obnoxious, driving with the windows down. Capable students, nailing honor roll every year, despite our reputation. We were good kissers, decent dancers, fast with our hands. Desperate and dangerous. A little loose, sure. But desirable. Everyone knew.

  We were the girls who thought we were nothing if not this: a force, a flame, a million nerve ends electric with appetite and not afraid.

  DEMERIT

  NAME: Juli Sung

  DATE: September 2, 1987

  INFRACTION: Skirt too short. See Mrs. Noe in home ec to let out the hem.

  NOTE TO PARENTS

  DEMERIT(S): 2

  METROPOLIS

  My first nights out with Astrid and Juli went mostly like

  We’d get punked out at Juli’s house. Fishnets under our uniform skirts, knee-high Doc Martens on our feet. Astrid would flip one side of her hair over and spray it there. Juli ratted her bangs. I’d wear two silver-studded belts slung low over my hips. We’d step into Juli’s lemon-colored Audi and peel out of the suburbs.

  Thursday nights at Metropolis, they only served Coke, Diet Coke, or Slice. Monday was classic rock, where the hippies spun in circles, mouthing the words to “Freebird.” Tuesday they did Hair Bands; Wednesday Top Forty. But Thursday night, our favorite night, was New Wave All Ages.

  Neon arrows flashed against the night: METROPOLIS. Astrid, Juli, and me would order three Slices and perch against the wall, hawklike and watching. That feeling around you and in you, all excited and a little bit scared.

  “It’s easy, this trick, once you get used to it,” Astrid said. “Watch this.”

  Pick him out of the crowd, she said. Whoever catches your eye: the kid with the silver dumbbell threaded through his septum, the one who turns his hands like wings, dancing, the delinquent who wears a long, silver chain swinging out of his pocket, holding his wallet in.

  “Blue eyes. I could go for a blue-eyed boy.”

  “Tough. I’m talking muscles. Like that one, there.” Astrid rubbed her back up against the wall, smoking.

  The music would paw its way across my body. I’d lift my neck to it, try to swallow and jerk my chin to the rhythm. Astrid would laugh. “There you go.”

  Underground, across a big, square floor, teenagers danced, their elbows and knees akimbo, jerking to the music. Smoke lingered over their bodies, hands in the air and hair flying. Lights flashed across the floor, dappled over a shaggy-haired boy, his melancholic eyes a perfect, cerulean blue.

  Astrid said you should walk over, solo, and say something simple.

  “I like your shoes.”

  “Are you in a band?”

  “Nice tattoo” and “Hi.”

  You could ask, “Do you know the time?” or “Can I ask you a question?” and then not ask a question at all.

  You could dance or you could stand there. Cup your hand over his ear to speak into it, an easy excuse with the music blaring. Like a drug, like a hook, the way you wanted to touch him, lightly, brushing his jeans with your leg.

  He’d say, “Thanks,” maybe, “What’s your name?”

  Or “You want to dance?”

  Then “I’ve seen you” and “I know you” or “Want to go someplace quiet?”

  And “Can I follow you?” and “You smell good. What’s your name again?”

  You’d dance, moving slyly, your arm tossed over his shoulder. He’d put his face in your neck, nosing around. That first touch a little less, a little more than what you bargained for. His skin, mostly sweet, fragrant with musk. He’d turn you lightly by the hip, first right, then left. That teenage hypnotist’s stare, transfixed and hungry. Licking his lips before speaking, choosing his words carefully, surprised, even though it was always the same old story. Call it a variation on a theme, the things he could decide to say:

  “Want something to drink?” and “You need something to drink.”

  “I’ve been watching you” and “Have you been watching me?”

  “You dance nice” and “Hey, don’t go.”

  He’d be almost pretty, this one. Eyes as blue as a blue glass vase.

  Later, he’d go, “I know a place” and “I know a kid.”

  “You turn me on.”

  “Your friends can come” and “Let’s get out of here.”

  And always, somewhere in there, the clincher, the surefire, safe bet: “You’re so pretty. Know how pretty you are?”

  Astrid said, “Here’s where it gets interesting, Jellybean. Here’s what you do.”

  You could take him into the corner, the bathroom, the hall. There was a sloping leather couch that was easy to fall into. A fumbling, fevered kind of thing, hands everywhere, pushing against your jeans. He’d inhale your face, your mouth. His eyes closed tight and you there, more than a little bit scared and just trying to stop shaking. You’d kiss him, lightly, trying to calm yourself by palming the wet, clammy skin on his neck, touching the soft, lemon undersides of his ears with your lips. And then, before you knew it, before you even knew his name, his hands were slipping up your shirt and you’d flinch, wincing.

  Take a breath. Then another one.

  If his face seemed too close, his skin hot, almost burnt to the touch, if he frightened you, if you felt out of control, if you didn’t know what to do with it—a boy, your own fifteenyear-old desire—you cou
ld say, “Hold on a sec” and “Wait.”

  Astrid wouldn’t approve, but what could you do?

  In the dark, his hooded blue eyes would look black. He’d open and close his mouth, gasping for air. “Come on,” he’d whisper. “Don’t leave me hanging here.”

  But you’d already be gone, stumbling down the hall to go looking for your friends.

  “Jesus,” your blue-eyed boy would call. “What the fuck?”

  You’d look for your friends on the dance floor, the bar, the stalls in the Ladies. Juli, at the door, would be flirting with the bouncer. He was big and black and when he flexed his muscles, fat as cantaloupes, she’d laugh. “Astrid? Try the dark room.”

  The dark room was a small, windowless room with black lights that turned everyone’s teeth white as purple, the white belly skin of a shark. Teenagers would be sprawled across the floor. A boy with a knit hat would cut lines on a wobbly side table and snort them from a silver bullet. A girl in a white tank top would laugh so hard her nose bled.

  Astrid would be standing with her back against the wall, draped with the delinquent who wore a long, silver chain swinging out of his pocket. His silver chain would swing back and forth to the rhythm of his body as he moved against her. They’d open and close their mouths, making no sound, exchanging breath, fearless. She’d arch her back, offering her white neck to him, her self. Her blond curls would move like seaweed underwater. His face wet against her. His eyes, his lips, his hair. All of it, under her fingers, fluttering.

  Tell me that’s not something. Tell me that’s not anything. Tell me. It’s okay.

  AN INTERVIEW WITH A SACRED HEART HOLY ANGELS SOPHOMORE

  We knew all the teen magazines and flipped through them for fun: Teen, Seventeen, M. “Would you look at this?” Astrid said, pawing through the glossy pages and laughing. I was surprised by how quickly I fell into step with them, hanging out at Astrid’s or Juli’s house every day after school where we read useless articles like “Hair Guys Love” and took quizzes like “What’s Your Guy-Getting Strategy?” We read advice columns, interviews, beauty tips, fashion spreads, dating diaries, horoscopes. It was stupid and we knew it, so we started making up some of our own.