Little Angry Packages
11.25.00
Curtis kicked a box of Cheerios about twenty fat green-then-black-then-green
tiles in the aisle just after Suki tipped the shopping cart over. He punched
his fist into the middle of Super Golden Crisp's space on the shelf, shouting,
"Turncoat!!!" at the smiling cartoon bear on the front. Suki clapped and did a
little hoppy dance. They left the grocery store before anyone could remember
anything worthwhile to tell the police about them.
It wasn't that Suki looked up to Curtis because he was some kind of anarchist
or a punk. She just wanted to be someone different, and he was the first
different boy that had ever come to Davis, her own personal hell by Spot Lake
in Maine. Curtis wore whatever he could scrounge from the First Spiritualist
Church's little attached store, usually picking something button-down and
striped. Suki helped paint his nails black every few days. Unlike the only
other punk in Davis, Curtis seemed to really care about the state of his nails.
She liked that, too.
They first did it on Suki's bed, clumsy and somewhat impersonal. He had a
fistful of her Care Bear sheets the whole time, and when she looked, he had an
expression on his face bordering on pain and nirvana. She cried, but only
because he bumped something inside her that hurt for days afterwards. Suki
liked the little dimples just over his bottom, and the fact that he HAD to
brush his teeth after going down on her. She thought of it as good hygiene.
Curtis lived with his mother and a little brother in an apartment above
Ferris's TrueValue Hardware, right on Main. Suki wasn't allowed into the place,
but she saw a little rectangle of it from the street one night when she met him
there to go to a movie together. It seemed small, warm, and cozy, she told him
later. Curtis laughed but offered no more information.
They never got into the movie, which was rated "R," and besides, Curtis didn't
believe in paying for entertainment. Instead, he took her to an abandoned
Volkswagen bus in the parking lot in front of Ben Franklin and fingered her
under the pristine chemical blare of the sodium streetlamps.
She didn't ask him where he got the black eye the first time she saw one. It
didn't seem right, and he never offered an explanation. Later, almost as if it
wasn't related, Curtis mentioned that his Dad had come by for a visit. Her
stomach hurt from thinking that one over.
Suki stole forty-six dollars from her father's little metal box in the desk in
the study. She handed it over, fingers white and freezing in the November air,
to Curtis, right outside the Barn Mart. They stomped back and forth and sang
snips of songs never played on the radio. Curtis's little brother had a good
tape collection; she'd hear it when he took her to his room for a few hours,
before his Mom got back from work at the Ben Franklin. Finally, someone with
enough moral ambiguity came along, and Curtis gave him twenty bucks for a pint
of whiskey. For the record, the label said, "White Buck."
They mixed it with one liter bottles of Star Cola, the cheap stuff, and drank
it while walking along Main street, looking in the dark windows of the barber,
the eye doctor, the cosmetics store. A cop stopped to question them, but Curtis
snatched Suki's hand and they booked it through an alley, hiding in the woods
by the Brooks School until the cops quit caring. It wasn't like they'd done
anything.
Suki told Curtis she felt sick. He told her it was all in her head and then he
showed her a trick that helped her forget she was going to puke. She asked
Curtis if he'd ever really hurt someone. He puffed up and said that he hurt
lots of people, all the time, and that she should take it easy or he'll get
tough with her, too. Suki knew it was all bullshit, but she didn't tell him
that. She gave him a big hickey just under his ear. They went home around ten.
Suki's parents had gone to bed early and she got in okay. Curtis's Mom had a
date over; the door was shut, but he could hear her plain as porno.
They had a special place at a deserted farmhouse on a cliff overlooking the
lake. Suki loved it more than Curtis. He broke out all the windows upstairs,
but she wouldn't let him ruin the kitchen or the living room. She put up little
curtains made from discount fabric from Ben Franklin. She set the rickety table
with some of her old play dishes, still pink, but with the cartoon characters
faded off. Curtis tried getting her to smoke weed here, but Suki choked and got
sick right off the bat. He said he never cared for weed, either. She knew that
was a lie, too, but it made her feel good.
Two days before Christmas, Curtis showed up at Suki's house afterschool with a
black eye and a bloody lip. He never went to school, so Suki didn't see this
till three. He'd been lying on the floor of his apartment most of the day, he
said, but that was all he offered for an explanation. She took him inside, the
biggest no-no, and tried washing him up at the sink.
Her mother came home unexpectedly, found her daughter straddling that boy from
downtown's lap, with his shirt off on the floor. It didn't matter that Suki
wasn't doing anything, that she was just cleaning up his cuts. Suki's mom
flipped out and Curtis slammed over a porcelain Christmas tree on the way out
the door. He didn't put on his shirt until he got all the way to the end of the
driveway, even with muddy snow everywhere and more coming down.
Suki found him outside his apartment, on the steps leading down to the street.
His breathing was ragged. He clung to the stairs like wet laundry. The cold dry
air of the hallway smelled like bad groceries. She coaxed him to his feet, led
him outdoors to get a little air. It never occurred to her that it was he that
smelled so poorly.
Sometimes, when snow falls in town, with all those orange lights pushing their
way down between the big fat flakes, to look up is just as wild a thrill as
getting drunk. Suki and Curtis sat against a pole, with her arms around him,
looking up into the snow falling down so hard. He sniffled often, and she
figured it was the cold. She leaned into him, feeling how stiff his jeans
jacket was in the winter night, and whispered into his throat that she loved
him. She didn't want him to say it. Not yet. But just the same, it was her new
trick. Whispering it when he couldn't hear.
They did it that night in the alley behind the Barn Mart, with nothing but
their coats to keep them warm. She cried into his shoulder, worried that
someone would hear. Curtis held her so softly, his hands gentle in the small of
her back. It was the little things, Suki always told her girlfriends
afterwards, on whispered phone calls when neither girl should've been on the
phone, or awake, even.
On the twenty-fourth, Curtis left Suki a little box wrapped with Sunday comic
strips and topped with a bow made from tin foil. She found it on her doorstep
before her mom or dad saw it. They were on their way out to the car to go visit
her grandmother at the home. She got the package open in the back of the car
without her parents noticing. Inside was a good handful of Curtis's hair,
snipped off in a big hunk, it looked like. Under the hair were a few tapes; his
brother's, she imagined. Beneath all this, a fresh bottle of black nail polish
and a scrap of white notebook paper. The piece of paper said one thing: "change
everything."
Suki found the apartment empty when she got there that afternoon. The floors
were bare, except for the sum of debris that people leave behind when they move
on. She felt her stomach crumble inwards, saw the weak light from the street
fragment against her wet eyes. She ran from the place like she'd seen death.
But then, hadn't she?
At their secret farm, Suki threw the little plastic plates through the windows
of the kitchen and the dining room. She picked up the chair and smashed it
against the wall. The table went over with a lackluster collection of thuds,
and it didn't seem to notice her kicking and thrashing. Suki collapsed into a
pile and cried into her new fleece jacket, her lips tasting salt and snot. She
sobbed until she couldn't remember what she was crying for, wiping herself up
with one of the curtains she'd ripped from the wall.
When it was all over, she walked home in the dark. The moon was gone. She snuck
in through the garage, and got her clothes off without waking anyone. In the
bathroom, she brushed her teeth, peed, and washed her face. She slipped into
her warm sheets and cried herself to sleep listening to love songs turned down
low on her radio.
In the morning, she'd throw up. It would happen twice more. Her mother would
yell at her, hit her, drag her by the hair to the car, and drive her four towns
over to Waterville, to get the problem "taken care of." But none of this had
happened yet. It was the night before Christmas. Suki had already opened two
gifts. The fleece sweater, and the box from Curtis. She fell asleep to a song
about the way love is and the way love should be.
***
Chris Brogan