Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,236

a drunk with castanets. They discuss treasury bonds and Reagan’s Star Wars missile plan, cycling in Bali, and the price of Brett’s 14-carat-gold octagon Rolex—$1,950. Across the room Mark begins to dance with Amy, a redhead who appeared in Amadeus. Or maybe A Passage to India.

“Uh-oh,” Brett says, nudging me. “Things are beginning to get interesting.”

I excuse myself. I go to the bathroom. It is the one place to hide. Men want to know what women do in bathrooms. They hide.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub. It is a round-edged prewar New York tub. I don’t need to pee, but anyway I lift my dress and lower my stockings to my knees. The division is strange, black to white. I touch each side of the division, one side and the other, jumping the line, my finger popping—nylon to skin, skin to nylon. From the elastic of my bra, I remove a small pen, and on my thigh I draw some fossils, rose fossils, which are petrified rose remains. Last time I saw my dad we ate gelato and he gave me a newspaper article about rose fossils dating back thirty-two million years. Also on my leg I write my name. My dad—I haven’t seen him in a long time. Gelato means summer.

Behind the shower curtain above the tub is a tall window set deep in a tiled rectangular cubby. It looks onto a sheet of brick, which is the neighboring building. Outside is music from an adjacent apartment. The song comes from a time when music used to say who you were, not how to look, and life was like a dream you dreamt streaking by like you’re staring out of a speeding vehicle. Nights were dark then, black, like mother of coal.

I climb into the tub. I push the shampoo bottles to one side of the sill and crank the window open. Some dust blows in, a little ash.

Do you say your prayers little darlin’,

Do you go to bed at night

Prayin’ that tomorrow, everything will be alright.

The song curls in the air shaft between buildings before getting drawn out through the duct. I follow its route. Sometimes you see a balloon going that way, bobbing in jerks against nothing, like a toy retracted by God. It’s sad to see a balloon disappear that way; it makes you nostalgic. It is seeing the child you once were and conceding that more are coming—you are not the last.

Quiet now; not quiet, just the whimper and rumor of voices skulking through the fissure between door and floor. At the sink I wash my hands. I unravel a strip of toilet paper to wipe my footprints from the bottom of the tub. It’s not that I’m neat; it’s just that I have so much time to kill.

When the guests have gone, we go back to bed in his childhood room, where we first had sex. I wonder if the last time will be in this bed too. That would be good, a last time.

Mark’s body approaches mine. His hands tow across my skin like damp mitts. I feel without feeling, which is nothing, which is easy, like sterile mechanics. I am thankful he does not insist upon cognizance. There are certain things a girl cannot tolerate.

There is a place to go, a place no one can access—a barrier. I do not know what it blocks, but I move to it, journeying, further and deeper, to reach—I don’t know, just a place.

“You okay?” Mark asks when it is over. He always asks.

“I’m okay,” I say as I sit up, “just thirsty.” This is not a lie. The thirst is supreme, as though inside I have shriveled. I stand at his parents’ refrigerator, drinking everything, one container at a time, moving left to right so I can keep track of those that I have emptied. I hate to raise an empty container as if it is full—the way your hand flies up, deceived.

In the living room window, I see myself, white from blue moonlight or blue from white moonlight. My arms look like dead arms, clipped to my shoulders by pins, dangling; I watch as my image detaches from my silhouette, stepping away.

I see her. She touches her cheek; my arm remains hanging. She pivots, winding one quarter around, though I am still. Her hands draw behind her back and rest airily on the rise beneath it. I know this girl, I think. She may be the one I once was. She is