Snakes of St. Augustine, page 22
On a bench nearby, Brillo Pad’s sort-of girlfriend, Melon Ball, shifted from one hip to the other. During roll call in class, the teacher had used Melon Ball’s real name, Melinda. Her skin looked too thin to hold her bones. One of her shoulder blades had a scab on it. “Hey, those snakes didn’t belong to you,” she said in a voice like a toy with a pull-string in its back. “Those were Chelsea’s property.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Gethin said. Sweat dropped from his sternum to his stomach, making him want to scratch. His arms tightened.
“Dude,” Brillo Pad said. He moved closer, whispering. The exhaust blasting out of his mouth smelled like hot garbage and cheap weed. “Nobody said you stole anything. Listen, what’s your story? You’re jumping out of your skin. Speaking of skin, what the hell’s wrong with your face?”
Gethin fingered a scab that had formed on his chin where he couldn’t stop scratching it. “Allergies.”
Melon Ball hauled herself off the bench, one limb at a time. A long ponytail sprouted from the top of her head. She separated it, tugged both parts, and flipped the end over her shoulder. The pieces of her hair fell in six lines: One, two, three, four, five, six. Her hips rolled and her skirt dragged on the ground. The fabric made a sound like a scolding at bedtime: Shhhhhh. “Ha ha,” she said. “Somebody’s got meth mites.”
“I don’t take meth,” Gethin said.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Then what the hell’s that thing on your face?”
“Whoa, nosy Melly, chill out,” Brillo Pad said. He wrapped his elbow around her neck and knuckle-rubbed her head until she wriggled free. “We don’t care what he’s up to, do we, babe? Lookit, my man’s been shopping. He’s probably got a little cash on him. Am I right, man? You got a twenty on you?”
The words were spinning around like a roulette wheel: Clackety clack-clack-clack. Gethin exhaled against the sound. Once, twice. He had a ten-dollar bill, two fives, a one, and some coins in his pocket. About twenty-two dollars. “I wasn’t shopping,” he said. “They didn’t have what I needed.”
Brillo Pad’s upper teeth jutted forward when he smiled. “So,” he said, scratching his head, “no speed, huh?”
“No,” Gethin said. “I’m in the Recovering Bucket.”
With his head tipped back, Brillo Pad laughed so that the dark underside of his teeth showed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m safe,” Gethin said. As they talked, he counted the number of people who walked behind Brillo Pad: fourteen. Too many people. “Rahman doesn’t work at the pet store anymore. Rahman was my friend. The new manager doesn’t sell lovebirds.”
The wind blew Melon Ball’s skirt open, exposing her wrinkled knees, which made her look like a very old woman with a sparse patch of pubic hair. No underwear. At the top of the skirt, a long sash wrapped around her waist. She untied it and made a new knot that seemed to be a slipknot but it could have been a half-hitch; Gethin couldn’t see because her hands moved too fast. Her fingers trembled. “Change the subject all you want, but you took Chelsea’s snakes,” she said. “You need to bring them back.”
Gethin decided not to mention the police officer who had relocated Chelsea’s snakes to the serpentarium, where they would have a better life.
“Yeah,” Brillo Pad said. “Those snakes are her livelihood, man.”
A dog barked, low and slow. Gethin turned his head toward the sound. Outside the ice-cream shop, a familiar shape came into focus. Kevin was leaning against the wall with one hand in his pocket. He raised the other hand without smiling. Hello, Gethin, the hand said. I see you.
Brillo Pad tugged at Gethin’s sleeve. “Can you help me out, man?” His voice had a curl to it and a hook at the end. “Got a little cash? Maybe we could make a trade?”
Melon Ball rearranged her skirt, her hair, and her sash again. She rolled her tongue over her chapped lips before speaking. “Chelsea’s really upset.”
Gethin shifted his feet so they were pointing in the other direction. “I see a person I know.” He didn’t say, “My friend’s here,” because that would have been incorrect. Kevin wasn’t his friend anymore. Kevin was the guy who was trying to steal Rocky. In the distance, Kevin started walking away.
“We haven’t had anything to eat all day,” Melon Ball said.
“There’s a place down the street,” Brillo Pad said. “Pizza slices are two for one. Whatever you’ve got, man, really.”
It wasn’t like Gethin needed his money anymore. The pet shop wasn’t selling lovebirds. “How much does a slice of pizza cost?”
Brillo Pad licked his lips, bouncing. “Five bucks, fully loaded.”
A folded ten-dollar bill came out of Gethin’s pocket. With his fingers, he sharpened its creases. “Five plus five is ten dollars,” he said, handing the money to Brillo Pad, who crushed it in his fist.
Melon Ball smoothed her skirt, ready to go.
Brillo Pad had water in his eyes. “Thanks, really,” he said. “We’ve been starving. Nobody’s helped us all day. Hey, if you have another ten, we could get a whole pie.”
“I have to go,” Gethin said, pivoting to leave. Between the strolling tourists, a police officer walked by, licking an ice-cream cone covered with rainbow-colored sprinkles. Two sprinkles were stuck to his chin—blue and green. On his sleeve, the St. Augustine town patch said, Founded in 1565.
“Please,” Brillo Pad said.
Gethin handed over two five-dollar bills.
“Hey, man,” Brillo Pad said, grabbing Gethin’s shoulder. “I feel bad. Let me pay you back. Just a taste to keep it real.”
“I don’t need anything,” Gethin said. From behind, he felt a tug at his jeans, like his back pocket was being ripped off. He kept moving. Kevin’s back appeared once or twice, whenever a seam opened in the crowd, but he was gone by the time Gethin reached his car. Probably Kevin had gone home to Rocky.
Gethin’s plan to buy a lovebird had failed. He still had the purple passion flowers. Too late, Gethin realized he no longer had enough money to buy a bottle of wine starting with the letter Z. Maybe Serena would have a bottle of something in the refrigerator. Either way, Gethin felt certain he could still win Rocky back. He could get her back into the Safe Bucket, with him.
25
Rocky
To lace up her boots in Kevin’s tiny guest room, where she had been staying, Rocky had to hairpin her legs on the twin bed. She couldn’t sit on the edge of the bed and bend over her knees without banging her head against the wall. After two days, the acrobatic act had gotten old. Venturing into another part of the house to pull her boots on or off felt awkward; she was bound to run into Kevin, who was constantly lurking. She didn’t have time for another one of Kevin’s long-winded lectures. Rocky needed to get to school, which would require a sprint to the bus stop at the end of the street. After class, she would take another bus back into town to work her shift at the restaurant.
Kevin let recovering addicts stay in the guest room; inside, the white walls were decorated with a crucifix and the Serenity Prayer cross-stitched on a yellowing piece of linen. The house dated to the turn of the century. Kevin had sectioned off the original kitchen, turning the back part of it into an extra bedroom room where Rocky slept. She could spread her arms and touch the beaded-wood paneling on either side of the room. Also in the space were a free-standing porcelain sink and an old mini fridge that hummed all night long, right by her head. Near the end of the room, off the kitchen, a door led down some steps and into the backyard.
Rocky was in another kind of recovery. Or was she? Did she want to go back to Gethin, or not? The question kept flipping over in her mind like a perpetual coin toss. Heads, tails, heads. Could she ever accept someone she had no hope of changing?
She had fallen for three things about him: his ability to create order out of chaos, which Rocky had never learned to do, growing up in her parents’ loony-bin house; the way his deadpan proclamations made her laugh, even if he didn’t get the joke; and his body. She wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Gethin had a killer body, broad at the shoulders and rippling across the middle. Rocky had worked hard since she was fourteen—old enough to get a Social Security card and a job. Why shouldn’t she have a little fun for once in her life? It was impossible to take him anywhere, though. He embarrassed her by acting weird. Also, for Rocky, the honeymoon had ended when he disappeared.
She checked her phone and groaned. Another five minutes had slipped away. Her boots were still only halfway laced. On her back, at least she could see part of the sky and the top of an oak tree with its ancient, tangled branches. She otherwise couldn’t see out of her room’s ship-style portal without standing on the bed, which she had done a few times, trying to shake off claustrophobia. Kevin’s yard was a small plot of well-tended grass and two trees with a swinging bench strung between them. On either side, two-story houses hugged the lawn, giving it a closed-in feeling, nothing like the jungle behind Serena’s house where she had revealed the river by bushwhacking her way through the saw palmettos. Rocky had loved to walk Serena’s homemade river trail with Gethin after they first met, before he started collecting snakes again.
Gethin said he had stayed clean. He hadn’t slept with Chelsea, the woman who wandered around Hypolita Street, selling weed and photos of herself with a ball python wrapped around her neck. Rocky believed him. People took advantage of Gethin all the time. His mind was always spinning in concentric circles that tightened and expanded like gravitational fields in a universe inhabited only by Gethin.
One more loop in her laces and Rocky would be ready to run for the bus stop. From the kitchen, the air conditioner clicked on. Within seconds, her small room turned icy. The floorboards in the old house slanted from the front door to the back. Three or four times an hour, all the cold air in the house got trapped near Rocky’s bed, whenever the window unit chugged to life. She swung her feet onto the floor and inspected the laces. Her mind felt knotted. Would he hold her back forever? Yes. Did she love him? Yes. Rocky wanted to run to the bus stop and keep going. She wanted the tiny bed to collapse and swallow her into a sinkhole.
She bounced up, eager to leave.
Kevin blocked her exit. His creased face was illuminated on one side where sunlight was blasting through the back door. “Headed out somewhere?” He was always smiling. At first, Rocky thought he was a rare species: a genuinely friendly guy, a sturdy safety net. Lately, Kevin’s friendliness had seemed more like a tangled fishing net that had snagged her ankles.
“I’ve got a class and work after that. I’ll be back late.” She didn’t say she would be home—only that she would be back. Kevin’s frigid prayer room didn’t feel anything like home.
His chin bobbed up and down while he looked around the room at her open suitcase and her sneakers tucked under the bed. “You’ve got a key,” he said.
“I know. Thank you.” The hair on her arms stood at attention, either from the cold or because Kevin kept staring at her without blinking. How long had he been standing there? She would have moved into the kitchen and through the living room, but he took up the whole door frame. “I really appreciate you helping me out.”
He leaned against the door with his hands in his pockets as if he had all the time in the world. “You give any thought to what we were talking about before?”
Rocky removed her backpack from a hook on the wall. “Sure, I guess.” If he started another sermon about acknowledging her desires and living with honesty and integrity, Rocky was pretty sure she would barf. A wave of his rolled across the room, coiling itself around her. Maybe she was wrong, and Kevin was only being his usual unbearably paternal self, but at that moment, he was giving her the creeps. “Seriously,” she said, “I can’t thank you enough, but I’m going to miss my bus.”
“Let me drive you.”
“No.” It came out too fast. Rocky wasn’t sure why. Something about him seemed off. “The bus is easy.”
She moved forward, hoping he would step aside and let her pass. He spoke again without moving. “I saw him downtown,” Kevin said. “Gethin, talking to that drug dealer with the red hair.”
The air conditioner coughed and roared louder. Rocky’s fingers had gone numb.
“Gethin talks to everybody he meets. He always says the same thing about how he likes hiking and music and snakes.”
“No, honey.” Kevin took his hands out of his pockets and grabbed both sides of the door frame, preventing escape. “This was something else. I know a drug deal when I see one.”
The wind felt squeezed out of her. She swallowed, trying to get more air. “Why are you telling me this? I thought you were Gethin’s friend. You were his recovery sponsor.”
“I’m not his sponsor anymore.” His hands dropped to his sides. “I’m more concerned about you now. I want you to move forward with your eyes open, so you’re not fooling yourself about a future with this guy. We can’t judge him, but we’ve got to be realistic here.”
Rocky charged for the door, hoping to disappear before her eyes filled up. Kevin caught her and squashed her against his chest. It wasn’t a Dad Hug. His hands, moving down her back, weren’t the hands of an uncle comforting his niece. “Shh,” he said, whispering into her hair. When she stared up at him, his eyes had glazed over, like an animal in some weird mating trance. “You’re okay.”
“Stop,” Rocky said, struggling to free her arms. “I have to go.”
“Come on,” Kevin said. His breath smelled sour. “Stay with me.”
“Stop,” she said again. “No.”
Kevin cupped her face with both hands and laughed. “The diva act is getting pretty old, kid,” he said. “You really need to smile more.”
His fingers, circling her neck, felt rough against the tender part of Rocky’s skin where her psoriasis had begun to flare up again. “Don’t touch me.” She twisted her head, trying to break free. “You’re practically Serena’s uncle.”
In one quick move, Kevin crushed her against his body. “Take it easy,” he said. “You’re always so stressed out.”
Too many times, Rocky had been in the same situation. She knew what to do. There was no point in fighting. Kevin was bigger and stronger. Instantly, she went limp, surrendering all resistance, putting on an act like the snakes Gethin called “drama noodles”—little gray hognose snakes that flip over with their tongues hanging out, playing dead if anybody messes with them. Kevin’s tart aroma overpowered Rocky, making her feel dizzy. She thought of Gethin’s licorice seeds and his collection of sweet-smelling soaps. When Kevin pulled back and looked down at her, she ducked under his armpit and ran, bee-lining it for the front door. She didn’t bother closing it behind her. Her sneakers, all the clothes in her suitcase, and her toiletries could stay where they were until she could retrieve them, sometime when Kevin’s car wasn’t parked outside.
She should have seen it coming. Danger wasn’t always as obvious as a slippery hand making its way under the covers, courtesy of her mother’s latest drunk boyfriend when she was twelve. It was more nuanced than the red-eared guy leaning through his truck window while she swerved on her bicycle. Sometimes, danger smiled. It pretended to be a friend. A hero with a hard-on. She was sad, but not surprised to see danger in Kevin’s face. For Rocky, danger was everywhere, always.
If she had a car, she could sleep in it, but she had refused to take the rusty old Honda she owned with Gethin. She didn’t want to be tied to him that way. Not anymore. She didn’t want to be tied to any man.
26
Rocky
The bus dropped Rocky off at the northernmost tip of campus. It was a ten-minute hike from there to the quad and the chemistry building. She scanned the concrete benches and the grassy lawn, half-hoping to see Gethin, relieved because the Math Nerds were alone under a palm tree, passing a hookah back and forth.
The Biochem 211 teacher was an adjunct. Almost all of them were adjuncts. It was cheaper than paying full-time faculty. The teacher, Stan, rattled on about DNA methylation in space—genes turned on or off to make life’s blueprint older or younger—the astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station while his twin stayed home eating potato chips—the twisted double helix and cosmic radiation. The whiteboard trembled like it might come crashing down every time Stan banged on it with a marker, as he liked to do. The class dragged on.
And on.
And on. Rocky checked her phone for messages. No word from Gethin or Serena—her family. Or were they? She scrolled through Gethin’s Facebook page, which he had reactivated, but without updating it. Immediately after class, Rocky would call and tell Serena about Kevin.
“Marie Maynard Daly,” Stan said, too close to Rocky.
She looked up, recognizing the name—dreading it. Stan stared through her.
“She was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry,” Stan said, eyes locked on Rocky, as if he was the first person in the entire universe to know this fact. “She pioneered the way for other women in the field.”
Swiftly, Rocky lifted her phone to her face, furious. Marie Maynard Daly, daughter of an immigrant, who rose to greatness studying enzymes. Blah blah blah. Rocky had heard the tale at least six times already. Each time, she had been the only woman of color in the classroom. Every recitation seemed orchestrated for her benefit.
Two guys on the front row glanced over their shoulders, presumably checking to see if Rocky looked inspired yet. She wanted to crawl under her desk and out the door. Fortunately, class was over. Stan’s big windup about game-changing Black women chemists had been his grand finale.
The bus was late. She had to run to reach the restaurant on time.
Inside, the night’s entertainment—a slender sixty-something woman and a white-haired guy with a guitar—were crooning and plunking their way through a soft jazz version of an old hookup song. For Liz & Taylor, who performed twice a week, it was once again a marvelous night for a moon dance. In the kitchen, a dish banged onto the floor. The french fry grease smelled particularly viscous. In the dimly lit room, Rocky blinked her eyes into focus. Shelby was nowhere to be seen. Rocky had made it to work first. She approached the hostess podium to put dibs on the best tables. Emmaline, the current hostess, traced a laminated map of the dining room and marked the prime sections with an R for Rocky.
