Free Gringa by Sandra Scofield

shorter than anybody else’s. She was gone before I could call out to her. What would I say? I wondered. “Remember me?”
    At Christmas we went in Kermit’s new (used) pickup to see Dad. He had rented a trailer in a cheap park, all dust and garbage cans and screaming kids. Once we’d gone to a cafeteria to eat, and Kermit and I had each given what sounded like little speeches about what we were doing (Kermit was going to start night school in January), Bud started drinking beer and turned on the television. We went home the next day. Bud didn’t act surprised. He said he was glad to see us, and maybe we’d come another time. That was all. That was the last time I saw my dad.
    Early in the new year Kermit started acting funny. He was out almost every night, and I didn’t know what to say when Sherry called. One night he took me to a drive-in and bought hamburgers, and while we were eating in the car, I told him what I thought, that he looked like the cat that ate the bird.
    He leaned back and closed his eyes. “What you see is a satisfied man.”
    â€œLord, what does that mean?”
    He sat up and took a bite of his dripping hamburger. “It means I’m getting laid,” he said pleasantly. “But don’t get any ideas, because it’s a man’s world.”
    â€œHow come I don’t see Sherry anymore?”
    He backed the car out so fast my Coke spilled on my lap. I sopped it up with napkins and heard Kermit say, “I don’t see her anymore, nose-butt.”
    He wouldn’t say who his new girlfriend was. I figured it out one night when she called and I said he was asleep. “Can’t you wake him up?” the girl asked. I said he’d been really tired, he’d worked hours overtime. “Well hell,” she said, “how much rest does he need?” She laughed. “Tell him he missed a good time.”
    I told Kermit it was the weirdest thing I ever heard, that he would go out with Natty Mooster. And “go out” wasn’t what they did. He told me to stuff it. But with the secret out, Natty started coming over when my mother wasn’t home, lying around with Kermit in his filthy room drinking beer and watching the little television he’d bought for himself. (I hated him for that. All my mother had wanted for years was a TV.) She gave me superior smiles and said things like “Aren’t you growing right up now?” and “Wonder, do you take after your brother in any important ways?” Once she came up behind me when I was standing at the refrigerator thinking what there was to eat. She put her arms around me from the back and pulled herself close, and then she put her mouth down on my neck and made a chill run down my back. I yanked away so hard the pickle jar rattled on the top shelf of the refrigerator. I was going to say something really hateful to her, but when I turned around she had a soft look on her face, sweet as the way she’d look at her sister Plum, and tears came up so fast I had to run out of the house to let my feelings go.
    When a creepy second-string basketball player from history class called and asked me out, I said yes without a second thought. I didn’t even know for sure which boy it was until he said something to me after class about seeing an Elvis movie. After we did that, he drove to the edge of town to park. His name was Farin. He had beer on the back floor of the car. It was warm, but I drank two. “God I’m full!” I said in a while, in a giddy voice that amazed me and made me laugh. “I’ve got to pee!” Farin gestured grandly to the horizon. “Pick your spot,” he said. He gave me a smirky smile as I slid out of the car and went around behind. Pee splashed on my shoe, and I tried to wipe it against the tire. I knew I’d die if I had to think of anything to say. I wanted desperately to be at home instead, but not because there was