Ellen Corry

A Short Story published in West 10th Creative Writing Journal.

Mama always warned me about boys who were sweet enuf to make ya teeth fall out. Guy was never all that sweet. Just real finnicky. But I wanted to lick his face the way golden retrievers maul little kids, overpowerin’ him until all that’s left is bone. The first time we kissed, I paid everyone a quarter so we would spend seven minutes in heaven. He begged to just talk but I planted one on him. Real nice. No tongue. I never left his side from then on.  

He calls after me, sweetly, like a dog. “Dotty.” “Dotty.” Mama tells me that we would run through the sprinklers neckid on summer days as kids. I got no more feeling on the soles of my feet from the scorching asphalt, so I believe her. But I can’t imagine Guy neckid. He’s an action figure where the clothes are stuck to the skin. I think he showers in swim trunks. Guy wishes I would cover myself more. Probably cause I’m his greatest temptation, the eighth deadly sin, a Marilyn Monroe of the American South. I rotate four baseball t-shirts, three pairs of Hami-down shorts that fit too big or too little depending on the day, and days-of-the-week underwear that I purposefully pull above my waistband. They don’t make Sunday because God’s Day and underpants shouldn’t mix, so I steal Mama’s thongs on Sunday. Mama said I culd be pretty if I tried. She said I need to asentuate ma features.  

The day Guy left for college was the only day I wanted to asentuate ma features. I stood next to his big truck, leaning on the tailgate, and praying he’d throw me in one of his big moving boxes. He asked if I had been playing dress up and wiped off Mama’s lipstick from my hopeful expression. I wanted to bite his finger, draw blood, and force ‘im to admit I was beautiful. I would bite him when he said “I love you.” I didn’t read a lot growin’ up, but I knew those words meant something different than what he was saying. Guy’s always real complicated that way. Mama said he was finnicky cus he never knew what he was sayin, he just like sayin stuff, but I love to listen to him talk. Things sound smart and honest coming from a boy with a quiet voice like his. 

I know he grits his teeth when I talk to his friends. I’m tryin. It comes easy to some girls; Jenna Earls smiles with her big blue eyes like she was born to get whatever she wants. My eyes are muddy brown, so I gotta yell loudly at the sky. That way God know just what to give me.

Guy left on my seventeenth birthday. “I’ll be back before you can blink, little Dotty. Keep waitin.” His fingernails are always covered in crud, but I wanted him to put his grubby hands on my face when he said that. I like to look at the different color freckles covering his pale skin that prove he’s not from around here. I wish I would’ve told him I was pregnant or something. We ain’t ever done anything, but it would give him a reason to stay. Even just to laugh at me. Time makes me crazy when Guy’s not here. When I was twelve, he left for two weeks to see his Daddy in Florida. I killed a lizard. I’ve had to turn to other things since he’s gone to school. God and I got real close cause I pray he’ll fail math and come home. But I’m angry. I sit in my English class and roll my eyes at the smart kids who ask questions with words I don’t understand. Ms. Harper put me in Honors English cause I have “potential to get better”, but they speak in a whole different language, smiling and nodding about their big ideas. Always real impressed with themselves. They shoot looks at each other when I talk like I don’t know I’m the dumbest in the room. Ray Carver thinks books can e-lis-it feelings and a good novel would expand my hore-i-zons. I’d bite him too, but he’d call me un-cooth or he-dun-is-tic. Mama said I shuldn’t bother myself with those kinda kids cus I’d never see em past high school. I’ll never see past my house like Guy does.

On my eighteenth birthday Guy’ll come back from college. He’ll tell me about the pretty girls with long hair living in his dorm. Girls who don’t have days-of-the-week underwear. I’ll tell him stories of the boys who call me by my full name. Boys who like me always say “Dorothy.” I like sittin’ shotgun for them more than Guy because I know exactly what they want. But when I’m with em in the back seat, letting em slip a hand in my Hami-downs, I miss the boy whose clothes are stuck to his skin.

Mama said the drinkin age round here shuld still be eighteen, so I’ll git a beer on my birthday. I’ve had lots a beer before. I like holding one because my hands move less when I talk. I look like I’m fighting less for people to believe what I’m sayin. Daddy said Guy can have a beer too, but only two if he wants to drive me round. He likes cranking up the heat in his truck so my thighs melt to the leather. I peel myself off like a sticker whenever we get to where we’re goin. I ain’t got a car, but Guy promised to teach me driving when he got back. The truck is a little big for me. Hallie Reynold’s dad drives the same one. He probably thinks I’m shootin him the eyes when I stare at it through my window. Guy’s will be back soon.  

Daddy’s good at making cakes and it’s funny watching him try to remember the names of my friends. I like looking through photos to watch Daddy lose his hair. I pick up the little white photo album out from under the TV stand. Tomorrow another photo goes in it, Daddy and Mama lookin real pretty standing over me while I blow out my candles. But something’s funny about it, so I gotta talk to Mama before she adds the new one. I counted twenty-three pictures. Twenty three pictures, but I’ve only lived seventeen birthdays. My picture is there for the next six years, but they ain’t happened yet. It’s the same Dotty in all those pictures after seventeen. My hair is done in the same way Mama does on my birthday. I even got the same smile, not the funny one I did when I was little. 

I know they’re not real cause Guy would be in the eighteenth photo. Guy and I would be sipping those drinks with the umbrellas on my twenty-first. The twenty-second photo would have me in a wedding dress. Guy promised we could get married on my golden birthday and Daddy could make the cake. We ain’t got a picture of Guy in a couple years.

I love that photo album. Ms. Harper says, “It’s good to keep track of the phases of life because it has good days and bad days.” When I saw it had been screwed up, I threw it real hard back at the TV stand. Mama’ll say that the photo people fudged up and she just threw all of em in there. Mama shouldn’t do things like that because followin’ time shuldn’t be messed up.  

A yellow looking newspaper fell out with a pretty boy on the front page. I’m not a fan of the news, but I like when Guy gives me the comics at Waffle House breakfast. The pretty boy was wearing a shirt from the college Guy goes to, smiling happily in front of the big arch. Black and white print made the picture look all sad like how the guys look in the murder documentaries Daddy watches. The newspaper said the boy died drinkin and driving on the highway that connects our town to the big college town forty minutes south. The same road Guy will speed down to see me tomorrow. Mama said drinkin and drivin was a dumbass way to die.

The article is old, but Mama probably kept it to shove in my face when I git my beer. I know that’s not fair. I got to think about that kid who died. A girl is probably stuck waiting for him forever. You never change much after stuff like that.

Mama doesn’t need to worry cus Guy always does the driving. I just wait for him to pick me up and take me places.