Julia Rose Eng

The road is bumpy so I close my eyes. They must think I’m sleeping because the radio switches to a symphony suite. It is summer, a summer so hot I want to barf. A summer too hot for Beethoven or Vivaldi. A summer so hot that I enjoyed the cold showers in my little bathroom. So hot, so suffocating that Mom and Dad locked me in like an inside cat. For my health. But just hot enough for them to set me free on the lawn to buy a blue Icee pop, the one that tastes like America. So suffocating, so not-inside-cat that I ran out into the rain a week ago to visit the rest of the road for the rest of the suffocating, not-inside-cat summer, blue Icee pop in hand.

I hear Tattoos begin to ask CD something but Pearls shuts him up before he really starts. I mean when I got picked up off the curb I was covered in mud and it was pouring so I’m like their little rescue pet or something. When I got into the car I didn’t ask too many questions because the car was dry and warm and still is. 

Well I must have really fallen asleep because I wake up to Tattoo’s aspartame-tongued breath in my face assuring Pearls that this is the spot. CD is crouched on the seat beside me. She isn’t hovering her hand over her CD player like she does when we are driving on the bumpy road because we are pulled over in the woods. 

The guys want to swim. Not just dip, but swim in the river. Tattoos is all like, come on. He says that I’ll be refreshed. That I can finally wash all the mud off. He has a cruel looking body, but his voice is like a warming stove so I think I can trust him. I still protest a little. I don’t have any clothes. I’ll get all wet. I’ll get the car all wet. Pearls tosses me some briefs though. His briefs. In case I feel too naked, he says.

I am often told I am precocious. Like an inside cat. My brain is so developed but very plastic, and even though Dad dropped me when I was the size of a bundle of asparagus, my mind is so capable. I like to keep track of every flag we drive past, and I mark down every one that makes me feel patriotic. It’s usually the big ones. There are fourteen marks on the door handle and I am thinking about how neatly spaced they are.

We walk down to the river and it’s already turning Pearls’ lips purple. He keeps the necklace on when he swims. He looks older without a shirt on. I am hugging my chest, but I have his briefs on. Not too naked, I’m not too naked, I think. Tattoos jumps in and splashes us. Come on, he says. Stop being so. He does not say anything because I can fill in the blank myself because I am best at games like that. I try not to shriek and turn away from the splashing. The guys say it’s okay. They say it’s clean, it’s real Mountain Dew from up top. They know all about it, and that’s why it’s so cold. CD comes down the hill and takes off her big shirt. She is uncannily thin.

Tattoos lifts me up and I can’t hold onto my chest any longer but he pretends not to notice. Look how light he says. She’s very small he says and then he looks at Pearls. So Pearls lifts up CD in his arms like some trailer park bride. They are laughing and tossing us up like washed fruit.

I’m gonna throw her, watch. Tattoos is swinging me around with big arms and I am giggling. I am in the air and I land in Mountain Dew. I wipe hair and Mountain Dew from my forehead and I am proven uncannily thin. Pearls is spinning CD and she has her arms linked around his neck. He launches her quick and she spins out weird. It’s platinum tinsel flying through a pre-nine-eleven sky, like the Challenger poofing in the sky like a cloth full of flour. I like to watch videos on the Internet. internet? Internet.

She splashes dull. I’m laughing, look at the doll, look at her fly like a circus acrobat. But now the Mountain Dew has some cherry liquor in it and Tattoos is acting like it’s a big deal. Pearls scoops me up and I tell him, I can’t see, I wanna see. I don’t get it. The Internet does not have a guide on what to say when you feel bad for leaving someone behind. I like the phrase, you’d make a better door than a window. Mom likes to say it when I am standing in front of the television when she is doing her DVD workouts. Pearls is a bad window.

On the car ride towards somewhere, away from the Mountain Dew, I get the whole back seat to myself and look at all the license plates. I think about how old the car is and how it smells like soap and bleach. I get a cherry Slurpee. As a treat, because I am quiet. Tattoos drives now and Pearls scribbles in a book and I fall asleep with the CD player, staring at my patriotism marks on the door handle while my head hums against the window. I am not an inside cat.