Venom

by Ashley Evans

Ten (and a half)

Your hair is the first thing that catches my eye that day, across the motel parking lot, as I help my mother hang out laundry. I let one of the plastic clothespins snap shut on my finger and yelp. Mama swats me with the dish towel she’s about to drape over the line before she spots you, too.

Sunlight sets your red hair ablaze as you skip across the cracked asphalt, towards the tire swing. The green-eyed monster bites me immediately. My hair is the dull color of dirty straw.

The woman with you — tall and tanned, too young-looking to be a mother  — does not share your red locks. She approaches with caution, as if Mama and I are watchdogs who might be looking to bite.

“Y’all rent rooms long term?” There’s no man with you, lingering in the rusting Cadillac, and maybe that’s what’s making her nervous.

Mama nods. “By the hour, by the week, by the month. We don’t judge here, friend. Money spends the same.” We took what patrons we could get, this far from the main highway, the McDonald’s and the Walmart. “Don’t look like much, but it’s cozy.” When the woman doesn’t respond, Mama adds, “For the ones with kitchenettes, one night’s twenty dollars, but there’s a discount for longer stays.”

Your mother smooths her hands across the thighs of her blue jeans, already marred with tears and snags. “It’s just me and my girl.” The cakey foundation she used to cover up a bruise on her cheek doesn’t quite disguise her likely reason for running. “We’re quiet, won’t cause any trouble, but I don’t have a lot of money, either. I can clean rooms, or help cook…”

Mama and I both can see where this is headed. She wouldn’t be the first to barter for a cheaper rate, and I half expect Mama to dismiss her. But maybe she catches the way I glance towards you, the redheaded girl who has taken a shine to my tire swing hanging from the big elm tree. You twirl around, letting the hem of your sundress drag in the dirt. There aren’t a lot of kids my age around, and Mama says it’s too far to ride my bike to town alone.

“You better come on in the office,” she tells the other woman, pinning the other side of the dish towel up. “Coffee’s fresh.” 

As the grown ups head inside, you catch my eye mid-twirl, and wave.

##

“I’m Tina,” I say.

“Andy.” You grin. “Well, Andrea, technically, but no one calls me that.”

You’re from Wyoming. Rural like here, but so much cooler — open prairie and rodeos. Horses. All we have is my uncle’s dumb Holsteins, grazing across the road, placid piebald blobs mowing the green. 

You show me your favorite beanie baby, and the friendship bracelet you constructed out of rainbow pony beads and embroidery thread. A friend out west has the matching one. 

Already I’m hoping that someday you’ll make me one, too. “How long do you think you’ll stay?”   

“I don’t know. Couple months. At least until Ma can find something more permanent.” Your pink jelly shoes squeak on the concrete as I lead you to the vending machine tucked between blocks of rooms. I buy us both a can of Fruitopia with quarters that’ll go straight back into my mother’s pocket.

“Living here’s not so bad. Cable in every room.” Between sips, I ask, “Where’s your dad?” I have no shame, only a burning desire to learn as much as I can about you.

You toss your fiery hair, look at me with bright blue eyes. “Where’s yours?”

You and your mother settle in, and neither of us ever brings up our absent fathers again.

##

Almost Fourteen

The summer before eighth grade, paper wasps build their tubular nest under the eaves at the corner of the 200s block. They give chase to anyone who passes too close. The laundry room is out back, through the narrow corridor, and any time a person dares venture that way, they’re liable to get stung. We make a game of it, seeing how fast we can dart between the buildings and escape their wrath.

Over the winter, all the baby fat dropped off our bones, and since school let out, we’ve transformed into coltish things that only come indoors when the sun goes down. I don’t have my period yet, but you got yours one day in Home Ec class. You cried because you spotted through your favorite maxi skirt, but I gave you my sweatshirt to tie around your waist, and Mama washed the blood out when we got home.

The motel became your home too, even if your mother still says things like, I’ll be out of your hair, Minnie, as soon as I can find something more suitable, every few weeks. Something suitable never comes up for the right price, so here you stay.

Your mother dates men on and off, but the latest fling results in a shotgun wedding and a promise to move you both into his house as soon as possible. Jerry manages the local dairy bar, buys milk off my uncle to make his ice cream, and is — according to most of the town — an okay guy. He’s nice enough, I guess, you say, but there’s an undercurrent to your tone I don’t like.

I don’t like the way Jerry looks at you, either, or the way he pinches you on the soft underside of your arm when we’re all gathered for pizza on Friday nights. But he showers you and your mother with gifts, and the suspicious part of me and the jealous part of me are locked in a fierce battle. 

When I ask Mama why she doesn’t try dating, she laughs so loud the pigeons hanging around the office take flight. ‘Cause, honey, you and I are doing just fine on our own.

Mama makes enough money letting rooms and mending clothes on the side that we never go hungry. So what if I don’t have a Gameboy or a CD player or new clothes every few months? You share everything with me, anyway.

##

We find an old boom box in the attic and drag it around everywhere, listening to Mama’s cassettes of eighties pop. Dancing wild to the synthesizer-heavy tunes where no one can see us, collapsing in the shade.

“We should practice kissing,” you declare after one marathon session, breathless, with all the solemnity of a preacher giving a sermon on sinning. 

“What for?”

“In case a boy likes you, dummy. Aren’t there any boys you like?”

It’s a subject you broach with alarming regularity, pushing us further and further from fantasizing about horseback adventures through the mountains or missions to outer space. Puberty blows. “Maybe.” 

“Tell me — c’mon!” You push on my shoulder. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

“Drew is kinda cute.” The boy in question has long, delicate eyelashes and dark hair that falls in his eyes just so. More pretty than handsome, and maybe that’s why I like looking at him sometimes, when I can’t look at you.

“Oh my god, you two are totally gonna get married someday!” you shriek. “Tina and Drew sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

“Shut up.”

You bring your arm to your mouth. “Just watch me. Do what I do.”

“How do you know how it works?” We do everything together, and I’ve never seen you with a boy outside of school activities.

You shrug. “TV and stuff.”

I watch you thrust your tongue against your own skin and suck with your lips, trying to tamp down on the sudden unwelcome desire that you do that to parts of me instead.

“Now you,” you insist, eyebrows raised.

“Andy…” 

“Andrea. Sounds more grown up, right?” you ask, and it’s then that I realize that I’m already losing you.

So I concede, pretend to make out with my own arm, because losing you completely is too horrible to contemplate.

##

Our first real fight — full on screaming match — happens in August, only two weeks before school starts up again. The last few days, you’ve been catching rides to town with Jerry when he leaves in the morning, hanging around with the townie kids, stranding me here on my own.

“Well, get up earlier and you can come!” you yell. “It’s not my fault you’re never ready in time.”

“If you just waited for me, we could ride our bikes!”

“That takes forever. And then we have to figure out where to stash them all day. I know Jerry sucks, but—”

“Jerry’s an asshole.” I point at the latest purplish spot on her thigh. “Did he do that?”

“What? No. I ran into the corner of the nightstand two days ago.”

“Liar! What else is he doing to you, Andy? You can tell me.”

“Nothing! He’s not doing anything!” You stalk towards the 200s block, then whip around. “And even if he was, he’s my stepdad now. No one’s gonna believe me.” Your voice catches in your throat on the last words.

“Andy, my mom will. Or the guidance counselor. You have to tell someone, before—”

“Screw you,” you shout, and walk right into the wall beneath the wasps’ nest, rattling the boards. “Shit!” 

I grab your hand and drag you into a sprint, the enraged buzzing of the wasps filling my ears.

Across the parking lot, across the road and beneath the electric fence, then onto the wet grass, slip sliding. We stumble two or three times — and once I hear you cry out in pain — before we careen over the bank into the neck-deep water of the pond.

Somewhere in the air, I lose your hand.

The splash as we hit the surface scares the shit out of the cows, who spook in the opposite direction for a hundred yards, snorting.

I come up first with a punch of profanity, the cold water pushing the air out of my lungs in a growly fuck! Even out here I feel instant guilt, wondering if Mama heard.

You break through a few seconds later, sputtering.

The cows peer at us as we drag ourselves out of the pond and collapse, panting, on the grass. 

“One got me,” you whine, presenting the sting for inspection. The angry red welt protrudes from your pale, sun-dappled forearm.

“Are you allergic?” 

“Don’t think so.” You shrug bony shoulders. You look fragile stretched out on the grass, like a porcelain doll left to decay in the pasture among the dandelions. The wetness on your face could be from the pond or the pain. 

I don’t want you to hurt any more.

Grasping your arm, I bring it to my mouth. Latch my lips around the sting, sucking.

You snatch your limb back, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Sucking out the venom.”

“I thought that was snakes.”

It’s my turn to shrug. “Dunno. Just trying to help.”

You stretch your arm back towards me.

Red-gold hair tickles my nostrils as I try again. It’s like when we practiced French kissing, so I push a little with my tongue against your skin, unsure if what I taste is the venom or the sunscreen you slathered on that morning.

This time, when you pull your arm away, you do it slowly. “That was kinda weird.”

“Sorry.”

You nudge my hip with your foot. “Nah, I think it helped. Sorta.” You flex your fingers, swipe at your eyes. “It doesn’t really hurt any more.”

“Good.” When you say nothing else, I decide on a peace offering. “You want to go watch MTV? My mom’ll probably make us lunch.”

When we trudge into the kitchen, the August sun having already baked us half-dry on our journey back from the pasture, Mama cocks an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. Then she notices the welt on your arm. I pray she marks the bruise on your thigh, too.

“I thought I told you girls not to mess with that nest.”

“We didn’t,” you say. “Honestly, Mrs. Martin, those things are like some people. Just plain mean.” There is a faraway look in your eyes.

Mama sighs and opens the cupboard. “Fluffernutter sandwiches okay?” She saves the marshmallow fluff for when she doesn’t feel like cooking. Or when someone she loves is having a bad day.

Three bites into the sandwich, the tears start rolling down your cheeks and don’t stop. “Mrs. Martin?” you whisper, “I — I have to tell you something.” 

I put my arm around you, and Mama throws hers around us both.

##

Seventeen

In the years after the annulment and Jerry getting run out of town, you go a little wild. As if you are trying to reclaim what had been taken from you.

You burn through the boys in town like wildfire, one after the other, trying to drag me along for the adventure. When I don’t show any interest in following in your footsteps, you stop coming over as often. Stop picking the same electives, stop offering to help with my English homework if I help you with your algebra, stop watching TRL every weekday like it’s our religion and not a music video countdown.

Your mom gets a steady gig and, after six years, an apartment. She’s still alone, still lonely, but I think she’s waiting until you’re out of the house to try again. I can’t forget the way she screamed the night we all sat down on our ratty sofa and you told her what that fucker was doing to you.

She believed you, too, thank Christ.

Every Tuesday at 1 PM, you go to counseling and miss the back half of chemistry, the one class we have together. You are still healing, and for the pain the psychiatrist can’t help with, you use the boys.

It is pathetic — selfish — that I wish I could go up to you and say, Use me. I am here. I will be here, long after they are embers and ash. I’ve been with you all along. I’ve loved you since the day you turned up at my mother’s motel and walked up to the tire swing like you owned it.

I don’t say these things. Can’t say them, because we hardly ever spend time together now and because the confession will confuse you. I’m still confused myself, enough that I try going on a few dates. Drew is sweet, at least, and doesn’t push when I don’t want to do more than kiss — without tongue. I never did get the hang of doing it with, because I never had the guts to ask you if we could practice with each other.

##

I find you on the steps leading up to the motel office one afternoon when I get off the bus.

“Hey. What’s up?”

You pat the concrete next to you, and I sit.

“You get a ride out here or something?”

“Nah.” You gesture toward the 200s block, right outside your old room. Mama refuses to rent it out on principle, in case you and your mother ever need to come back here, and now your bicycle is leaning against the clapboard. “Took a lot longer than I remember. Some assholes in an F150 almost ran me off the road, too. I think they were college kids.”

“Fuckers.”

“Yeah.” You slap your denim-clad knees a few times. “So…I, uh. We haven’t really talked in a while.”

“No.”

“So I broke up with Todd this morning.”

“I’m sorry.” I’m not really — Todd is the captain of the basketball team and a bit of a douchebag. Still, he lasted longer than all the others, and you looked happy, from a distance — 

There are tears in your eyes. “I know I kinda have a reputation, but I really liked him.” You suck in a deep breath. “That is, I really liked him until he tried to hit me.”

“What?” Within a heartbeat, I’m seeing red. “He did what?”

“Yeah, uh, I told him I didn’t want to go to the game tomorrow night, and he just lost it. It’s the semi-finals, blah blah blah. I was like, dude, I have a mountain of homework and my mom is working a double that night so I need to get dinner ready for when she gets home, cause she’s, you know, fucking exhausted after a shift like that, and he just…” She lifts her fist and taps it against my cheek. “Only he hit the wall and not me, but…it just brought back so many bad fucking memories, you know?”

“God, I’m sorry, Andy. Andrea, I mean.”

“You,” she says, “Have earned the right to call me Andy.”

I nod.

“He apologized, but I just…I needed to end it. And then I needed to come see my best friend.”

I squeeze you so hard when I hug you that you flail, pretending to gasp for air, before you smile.

“You want to come in?”

“Yeah. Definitely. Your mom still keep marshmallow fluff in the cupboard?”

“You know it.”

“I could use a snack. And maybe a few more hugs. And I want to know what you’ve been up to. You went out with Drew a few times, right? Is he just not as cool as he looks?”

Maybe it’s time to tell you the truth. Not because I expect you to reciprocate my feelings, but because you are my friend, and I think you will look past the awkwardness of my crush and will understand. 

And for you, I will do everything I can to be there. To listen. To wrap my arms around you if you need a hug, or just make you a silly little sandwich.

The wound you bear is like the wasp sting. I will suck the venom out, bit by bit, if you let me.