Horseshit Chapter 7 (Julia Skakel chapter 1/2)

"Autumn Oranges"

She stares out windows with ivory trim reflecting the rain like steel, as the wind tumbles her parents’ patio decorations and the rain makes jugs out of the candle holders and damp reeds of the figs and branches. The patio looks like a mostrador del bar. And of course, the help is tan.

All of it can be replaced. The fake palm trees, for $500. The candles, imported lavender greens from Switzerland —she thinks of her mother watching Shirley Temple in Heidi. Her name chiseled on the wood railing could be redone. And the spot where she first went down on a guy (and pieces of her soul scattered like dandelion seeds), in the bushes after a dance—on fire—parents awake, maybe—it can all be redone, the brilliant pieces.

You can only see the pool because it matches the windows and the rest of the yard doesn’t: it looks like wet money. Dad’s outside in his damp khakis yelling at Perez to get the leaves out of there. There are three dead frogs Perez catches floating like still-spun ballerinas. Then Dad hits him on the head with his briefcase and goes to work. Legally, Perez doesn’t even live here.

Julia Skakel picks the outfits out of her closet and shares them with the bed. She doesn’t want to get out of Horseshit like so many other kids. This town’s just dirt and streams and bridges and traffic lights. She’d be happy living anywhere, somewhere, outside of this shell. This idea of Julia Skakel is becoming a burden. She’s had a hernia and not told anyone. She’s had worse. This is, in its most self-absorbed, a form of slavery. But she tells herself she could have a more terrible life—drugs, AIDs, a GED. She could be a teenager forever.

Now it’s Monday. Rick Smith, the ever elusive blond boyfriend—so dirty blond—was supposed to come over this weekend. He chose to be with the guys. He was out fishing in the rain with the rest of these men. They walk like praying mantises, pretending more-powerful than the real mantises they bed and marry and keep locked in satin sheets. Rick’s lips taste so sweet. He never lets you taste full-on, but just enough. Like a knight withholding sanctuary.

Julia throws the green dress on the floor. The closet is emptying like the school bus and she isn’t sure where to put all the personalities. They lie from neck to ankle with a pillow for a head. Who gets picked last? Mother keeps knocking at the door. Someone was supposed to bring Julia a food tray, but she keeps turning the TV up louder. It’s a shitty TV. She’s already had it for three years. It’s only thirty-two inches and Daddy still hasn’t hooked up the satellite. You can hear the cordless through the vents when Mom talks to Mrs. Single. “Never wants to sleep with me anymore,” “I just can’t seem to turn him on,” “I don’t even know what makes him tick.”

Nights are always depressing. You feel happiest in the morning, waking up and feeling five—wondering if the Band-Aid from when you slipped off your bike back then is still on your knee. On weekends you hide in your room or in public, at parties. Face nose deep in a pillow in front of some guy, anyone. On weekdays you show yourself at school, get up and dance through the hallways and classrooms with gross tile from when the poor kids’ parents went there. In LA no one’s original. In Horseshit, only rich people are aliens. Now those grown up poor get to clean the same tiles for a living. In thirty or forty years they’ll all lay down together, tile after tile, with dirt on top of them instead of under, letting the town’s leaves color their graves.

Really, you must prefer days. Nights are full of makeup, costumes, the tainted things. Days make sense. Days mean your parents are at work in their law firms or out bagging with the girls, purchasing clothes from monopolies with Monopoly money. They shop in pharmacies with armed guards and create tabs to create more stores.

In twelve hours night will come: you can slit yourself, gouge yourself, leave half your insides on the floor. Your parents have maids to clean you up. Your parents have money to color your grave. Your parents have you. Are you feeling well, dear? Lie down. Pick or move a dress. Buy a new bed and don’t move the dresses.

Then again, she wouldn’t ride the bus if they paid her. Mom hires a driver. And she accepts.

School is just a plastic mirror. It’s a makeup mirror. It’s not the real world. No matter how much you pretend, you can never let go of yourself. Once the mini-skirts are torn, only school uniforms will remain. Let your skin pull off too fast and you’ll find the worst inside. Julia leaves the most important parts of herself in her locker and decides to check in with the bathroom. There’s a crew there that sits like owls repeating the same gossip over and over. “Who’s going out with who? Who’s dumping who? Who injected who? Who’s who?”

“You’re in late,” they say.

“Saab break down again?” Amy asks. She’s a pale one. White chalk for skin and uncomfortable bloody brown tones for hair: menstrual opaque. Gray Scale would send her back to the sweatshop. “That’s the third time this year, right?”

“Our Saab didn’t break down. We don’t even own one. We own a Porsche.” Julia rolls the tricky eyeliner on over and over, weaving herself. “That’s one of them. We don’t have just one car.” Her cleavage pouts into the mirror when she leans over the sink. The janitor needs to clean the sink more. She used to talk to her parents about that stuff. Now when she talks to her parents, “stuff,” is all she says.

“When the fuck are we gonna get out of here?” another one says. “I can’t believe it’s not fucking Christmas yet.”

“Yeah, or Thanksgiving.”

“I’m going on a mini vacation to the Bahamas.”

“No you’re not! When??”

“Two weeks. My dad says we don’t have to wait for school vacation. He’s taking time off. He says Mom needs it or she’s going to have another breakdown and he doesn’t want to pay more doctors’ bills. Might as well spend it on some place hotter than here.”

“God, that’s not fair. You’re so lucky, Jamie.”

“I know,” she says. It’s so on-key. She should be in the school band. She should be in the glee club. She should be in a soundproofed room. Julia does her eyes over and over again silently. The mirror is starting to tire.

“How’s Rick?” Tina Lewis asks. Her teeth are annoying. Her dad let her try some experimental whitening technique. They glow now.

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him all weekend.”

“Ooooh,” Claudia says.

“Don’t talk like that,” Amy tells her.

“I’m not crying over it,” Julia says touching up her eyes. Then she decides to undo everything. She goes blander. She lets the sheen evaporate.

“No, no way, just saying. Whatever’s between you, Julia. It’s none of my business. I just saw him bowling on Friday. Didn’t you want to go?”

“I haven’t seen him all weekend,” she explains. “Thanks for asking, Tina.”

“Uh huh. Well, he was having a good time. All the guys were there.”

Claudia combs her hair without getting overshadowed by Tina. Her hair is light, but not blonde. Her shoes are new, but not expensive enough. “You’re lucky, Julia. I made three strikes, but Drew Parker hit on me. Uhn,” she says, pulling some hair. “I don’t even know him.” That’s how you find out what he’s like, Julia thinks. That’s how you find out what they’re all like. “Apparently he likes barfing on girls’ tits or something.”

“You rocked on that strike,” one of them says, far in the back.

“Should’ve been there,” Claudia says. “I’m sure Rick would’ve been happy to see you.”

Julia pulls her hair into a bun. It’s the most offensive thing she’s done. It looks . . . almost unwashed. “Who says I want to see him?”

“Who says he wants to see you?” Tina says. The bathroom reeks of bullshit lipstick and batting eyes colored with serrated lashes and Maybelline. “It’s your lost cause, Jule. Deal with it.”

Julia goes for the door in the outfit she finally picked out, forgetting what it is and hating to touch their germs on the handle. “Maybe you should find out how much he wants to be with you. Ask him. And let me know how it works out.”

She’s out and afraid of classes that are afraid of her. The tiles on the floor under her purple shoes crumble like dry makeup. The front seat of the class is always the worst. She picks it right away.

Some teacher without a face comes in. They talk math. They discuss a million things a million miles away and which have nothing to do with how an arrogant lawyer spends his money on weekends. Mommy doesn’t know a whole lot aside from who’s having a sale and why it doesn’t matter with the allowance she gets from her man. Mommy has a lot of crumpled outfits. Mommy has a lot of crumpled pieces of outfits.

Time peels off like fake nails. The math teacher hands out a paper about how long it takes for a battery to die and Julia fills it out slowly with curvaceous purple ink in long threads that say, “Why does this matter? It has no bearing on her real life.” Behind her the bathroom girls make fun of Fridge Johnson, the fattest girl in the class, and they throw paper airplanes at Julia’s head like the rain. A girl catty corner from Julia’s left shifts uncomfortably in brown sweatpants. Square Peg sits anonymously somewhere, fingering her hair, avoiding the stares. How many of these outcasts are here? Later when Julia goes home there’s a call from the school about her behavior and she deletes the message waiting for someone to come home to make her dinner. No one’s around to watch her. Perez is fishing for more pieces of the deck while she passes the window. The pool looks nicer now. It stands out a little, amber sun reflected through light drizzle. It always looks good in twilight, when the early shadow against Autumn sun oranges the impressionable waves. It’s always been a good pool. Soon it will be night and you won’t see it at all.

A favorite.