Red Hots

Denise has the Red Hots.

She doles them out one at a time.

One for me then one for her and then we eat them and make squinchy faces and then she doles them out again.

I am over her house, and we are sitting on her bed, which has no sheets and an itchy blanket cover thing with faded flowers on it, that is kind of beaten up and stringy.

I always wondered why Denise had big dark circles under her eyes. She always looks tired. And her brown eyes seem like sad dog eyes, like those paintings you see on sale at Bradlees, with the black velvet background. That is when she doesn’t have scared bunny eyes, the way the baby rabbits look out back when the cat chases them. And sometimes Denise’s eyes are both at the same time.

I like Denise.

She is usually so quiet and barely ever says anything to anyone at school, so I was surprised when she asked me over. We had never talked. I mean no one ever talks to me, so it was a real surprise.

I am still the new kid plus I have the wrong clothes. Again. Mommy moves us around a lot, usually when there’s a new man she’s married, and I am never dressed right for where we are. I have to wear big clunky red rubber boots. Not the knee-high zip up leather boots the other girls get, with the smooth soles, so they can slide on the ice. And I have a practical winter navy coat that is boring not like the flowery colorful maxi-coats the other girls have with fake fur linings, so they all look like Carole King who has a new album out called Tapestry that they bring to school and show each other, even though there is no record player at school so it’s stupid. But they get their Mommies to curl their hair and look like Carole King. I do not look like Carole King, and neither does Denise. But Denise does have long pretty brown hair that is a little stringy but that she tries to pull back with little plastic barrettes. Mommy gets mine cut into a pageboy because she doesn’t like brushing it because I whine too much when she gets to the snarls. Denise just has the snarls and long hair. I think she is pretty.

Mommy tells me I would slip and fall in the boots like the other girls have and I need the rubber soles of the red boots. Maybe I would but the other girls have so much fun gliding on the iced over puddles in the playground. When I try to slide I can’t, so I just stand there looking stupid. I did try to lick the monkey bars like some of them but my tongue got stuck and had to rip it off and it was bleeding, which was gross. The other girls ran away giggling. Denise stayed behind and asked if I was OK. That is when she invited me over. I was so grateful I said yes. Mommy says I am special and shy and that is why I don’t fit in.

Denise doesn’t have any boots. Only penny loafers that don’t fit right. Like someone older gave them to her. She doesn’t have any socks on either so she must be freezing. I am about to ask her why she doesn’t have any socks on but I see the scared bunny eyes and don’t. Her cloth coat looks old, too, and its sleeves are raggedy.  Carole King has bare feet on the album cover and her jeans look old. But she’s inside.

When we are sucking on our Red Hots, I get the feeling these might be dinner. There aren’t any visible parents around, and just the one light bulb covered by a wonky shade.

I don’t ask her where her parents are. But I can tell she is waiting for someone. I know because I have spent many days and hours waiting for my Daddy to pick me up to take me to his apartment in Hartford with his new wife Lily, who is really pretty and skinny and has dark hair down to her butt and has a suede bag with fringe and she looks more like Carole King than anyone and wears sandals even in the winter. But he forgets a lot. To pick me up. So I know that feeling and it’s the worst feeling and you feel like no one will ever want to see you ever again and like you would rather just be buried in a hole and die and Denise looks like that now so no way am I asking her why.

Every time we hear a car drive up her street, she looks up, but then when the headlights pass by her shoulders slump a little more. I now wonder why Mommy didn’t even check if Denise’s Mommy was here when she dropped me off. I guess she just thought Denise wouldn’t be alone. But also I am home alone a lot, so maybe she doesn’t think it matters.

Mommy is so happy I finally have a friend, so maybe that’s why she hasn’t asked me any questions about her. But now I think about it there was no car in Denise’s drive way. That should have been a tip off.

Denise wants to say something I think or maybe I do, but instead we just look at each other then look away. Neither of us says anything when the next car goes by and it’s just getting darker and darker. Denise asks if I want to watch television. There’s a small black and white TV in the corner with a broken antenna. I nod. Mostly there is just static but we can see ABC a little bit and it’s showing a dumb movie, but I am hungry and it’s better than nothing. Denise smiles with the scared rabbit look so I don’t ask about food. I am hoping maybe she will bring it up.

I kind of want to go home even though that would mean to Mommy and Roger smoking pot and laughing at nothing I understand and sometimes at me, but at least I have sheets. My skin is sensitive so the blanket is itchy even through my bell-bottoms. There are no pillows so I don’t need to worry about the feathers. I’m allergic. I get itchy bumps on my neck if I sleep on a feather pillow.

The stupid movie ends. It was about a woman who is impressed by a man so she leaves her life to live with him. I hate these shows. Most shows are like this though. I guess girls aren’t meant to have lives just somehow become part of a man’s life. It doesn’t seem fair. But Mommy does that all the time. That’s why we move so much.

When the ad comes on for an Elvis Presley record you have to order before midnight tonight, I finally do ask Denise if her parents are around anywhere. I had a friend when we lived in New Hampshire last winter named Brenda and her Mommy got migraines and would have to stay in a room alone in the dark for days. So I am hoping maybe Denise has one of those.

But Denise just shrugs and looks away.

“It’s OK,” I say, pretending it’s OK. But decide it’s time to ask about food because my tummy is making weird sounds. “Can we raid the refrigerator?” She looks at me with the bunny eyes again, so I don’t ask about dinner and instead we each eat another Red Hot. I am thirsty after and my throat is hot and I have to pee, but am too scared because Denise seems so scared to even ask where the bathroom is.

She shows me her doll, though. It’s an old Chatty Cathy doll but the string is broken so she doesn’t say anything. And the dress is ratty and the hair that is still on her plastic head doesn’t even have its ribbon. No one has Chatty Cathys anymore. Denise says, “This is Flossie!”

So I say, “Oh.”

And then she goes, “Flossie has a home in Paris and New York and someday she will take me there!” And her eyes are dancing happy, with a flash of light that is new and her cheeks get a little red even.

I want to say something to go along with this but the doll has lost an eye too and has no shoes and it makes me sad.

“Do you have a doll?” Denise asks me, smiling for the first time. Enough that I see her teeth are a little yellow.

I say yes but not that I also have a lot of stuffed animals and even a couple Barbies. But now I wish I had brought them so we could play and also I can’t really sleep without all my stuffed animals in a row next to me, never mind without sheets. But I just feel kind of guilty and spoiled now. When all Denise has is a broken Chatty Cathy doll and it makes her so happy.

I can’t believe she isn’t hungry, too, but we just get under the itchy blanket on the sticky scratchy mattress that I see now has brown stains to go to sleep. I can’t stop scratching myself but try to do it quietly. I don’t want Denise to feel bad. Denise leaves on the light, and so I notice she has little bright red bumps on her legs. There is a smell of a dog in the house, but no dog.

I wonder why I didn’t invite Denise over my house. But Roger and Mommy have books in the living room with naked people in them about how to have sex and also about growing marijuana and I don’t want any kids to see this. We get pamphlets at school from the government with stick figure drawings of adults getting arrested for having drugs. So I don’t want anyone to know there are drugs in our house and the naked people are just embarrassing. In the pamphlets the little stick figure kids watching the adults getting arrested become ‘wards of the state,’ and I don’t want to be a ward of the state.

That’s what they call it.

Which is why I know already I’m not telling anyone not even Mommy about Denise not having any parents here tonight.

Because there’s only one thing worse than bad parents or being alone and only having Red Hots for dinner and that is being a ward of the state. Everyone knows that.

I had a babysitter once who was crazy and said she would threaten to tell people about Mommy and Roger having drugs and so I would become a ward of the state unless I let her adopt me. But I didn’t. Let her adopt me. But she was scary and also said I was evil. So it was confusing. Why are the people who say they want to help so scary usually?

I can’t sleep but Denise does and then she starts dreaming and saying stuff that doesn’t make sense. Her face is in a knot and her eyelids are quivering and one arm is twitching like she wants to lift it but can’t and I can’t tell exactly what the words are but I get scared and wake her up and then she holds me really tight. I don’t know if she is really awake or asleep so I just let her and I don’t know what to do but look at the ceiling and the patterns the passing cars’ headlights make when they drive by and I want to cry. But I don’t. I just feel a giant hole opening up inside me that feels like it might suck me into it and suffocate or squish me to death or just make me disappear.

I am so glad when I wake up and there is the grey blue light of right before morning. Denise is sleeping at the way other side of the mattress. I must have fallen asleep. But don’t know how or when.

I am so hungry and thirsty and I have to pee so bad I am glad to see I didn’t pee the bed. I get up and walk down the skinny hall with the sticky dirty carpet and find the bathroom after trying to open a door that wouldn’t but then the next one did. There’s a grownup’s robe hanging off the door. It looks like a man’s robe. Faded plaid. I don’t see a lady’s robe anywhere.

The toilet handle doesn’t work right, so after I flush it won’t stop flushing. Denise comes in, her face all squished red with the shape of the mattress bumps and her hair all over the place and jiggles it until it stops.

I say let’s go over to the Howland’s and look for change outside near the dumpsters in the back parking lot and she agrees. I never took off my clothes and my mouth tastes like a musty cotton ball, but I want to get out of this creepy house. And if we find enough change we can buy candy bars and maybe a soda. I don’t know how far away we are from the Howland’s at Denise’s house but it’s close to where I live. So I’m hoping we can walk.

But as we are walking sometimes on a bumpy sidewalk and sometimes on the road with cars whipping by us when there is no sidewalk, I realize I have no idea where we are going. I don’t know if Denise does either.

In the cracks of the sidewalk there are tough little plants with pointy leaves growing out of them even now in February. Some sidewalks are bulging with the roots of trees underneath and some are cracked open by them. Where I live with Mommy and Roger in the upstairs of a house owned by the lady downstairs is across from the back parking lot of the Howland’s and Friendlies. There is no sidewalk at all just scrubby grass on a mound with dirt and sometimes some dandelions.

When I finally look up from the sidewalk where I was keeping my eyes peeled for change and was about to pick up what I thought was a nickel but instead was a silvery bottle cap, I see the Stop & Shop sign up ahead past a grassy triangle outlined by a curb with lots of traffic lights where a bunch of roads all collide. And now I know we are on the opposite side of town from where I live.

Mommy says I have a bad sense of direction.

But at least in where the Stop & Shop is there’s also a Bradlees and a Pier One and a movie theater and it’s like an L not just a couple stores in a row, so there will probably be lots of change we can find on the sidewalks and in the parking lot. Maybe enough to even get some real food. Usually when I am looking for change near the dumpsters it’s just for something extra or to ride the electric rocking horse in front of the drug store. Or sometimes I pretend I am an orphan or an explorer. But this time I’m actually starving. I want to rush to make the lights so we can cross the two big streets to get to the shopping center, but Denise has been walking slowly behind me. I want to yell at her to speed up. But I don’t because I don’t want to ruin my only friendship. But I think she knows I’m angry, because every time I look back at her she flinches, like someone might hit her. Then I realize she thinks that someone is me, and I want to die.

Somehow though I manage to get across the first road when there is a minute without a car racing by, and get onto the traffic triangle. I hope Denise is following. I climb up onto the mound of dirt and grass and turn around just in time to see her trip over the curb and fall down. I run back down and pick her up and over the curb onto the mound before another car whooshes by honking its horn. There is dirt on her face and a small cut on her forehead where a piece of broken glass from a beer bottle must have scratched her when she fell.

I find a crumpled up piece of tissue in my coat pocket and try to stop the bleeding. The blood on the tissue makes a deep red blob that scares me a little. Denise is still kneeling and looks up at me so gratefully I want to hit her. Maybe my crazy babysitter was right and I am evil. I start to cry. Denise puts her dirty hand up to the tissue and holds it on her forehead. She stands up and with her other arm she holds me tight to her.

“There, there,” she says, sounding like someone’s nice Nana on a TV show, “There, there, you will be OK.”

And I just start bawling like a big baby.

Some older kids drive by in a car and yell out, “Lezzies!”

I don’t know what that means.

But they laugh meanly and one of the guys with really short hair throws a bottle at us. He looks like he could be the older brother of this kid Kevin who is fat and whose face is always red and sweaty and says to me every day, “Hey you, kid, I’m gonna punch your guts out.”

Denise and her old coat smells musty like a house that hasn’t been cleaned, but I don’t want to move away from her.

I look for another tissue but instead find two Red Hots from last night that I stashed in my pocket. I put one in my mouth to stop me from crying, and it works. And I give the other one to Denise. She must be freezing because her coat is so thin and she still has no socks. So I hold her this time and feel her shoulders moving up and down like she’s crying, but there is no sound.

Then she is still and moves away from me and opens her mouth and fans herself like the Red Hot is burning her throat. I see her tongue and lips are bright red from the candy, so I open my mouth and ask her if my tongue is bright red, too.

She says yes, so we stick out our tongues at each other and laugh.

And then we turn away from each other and to the cars waiting for the lights to change and stick our tongues out at them and we laugh. I am crying again now and so is Denise but it’s different because it’s from the laughing.

Julia Lee Barclay-Morton, PhD is an award-winning writer and theater director, whose writing has been produced and published internationally, most recently with essays in Prairie Schooner, Heavy Feather Review, and (Re) An Ideas Journal, and chapbook published as winner of Nomadic Press Bindle Prize. She founded Apocryphal Theatre when living in London, while documenting work for practice-as-research PhD in theatre and philosophy. Now back in NYC, she is now working on a memoir about working through trauma with yoga leading unexpectedly to an autism diagnosis at age 57. Find her at TheUnadaptedOnes.com