loved a nice glass of red,” he said, and a little of the drink seeped into my mouth. I remembered as a girl my mother called rum and Cokes Cuba libres, struggling with the words, slurring them. Croo-bra lee-bray. It embarrassed me when she said it. I knew somehow she was saying it all wrong. I had sipped some out of her glass once when she wasn’t looking and had never found that taste again in anything, until now.
“Cuba libre,” I said, and Stringy looked at me funny.
“Broads like to be so fancy, don’t they? It’s ’bout the cheapest rum you can find and warm cola. Don’t get too excited.”
One of the Jasons looked me all over. “Sorta hot,” he appraised. Clapped Stringy on the back and handed him a small baggy.
They all had their radios tuned to the same song, and it blasted out of their car speakers, about California and knowing how to party. I saw now that there was a group of girls too, standing together smoking cigarettes, wearing cut-off denim skirts over bruised orange legs. Fresno girls. One wore fur boots that came up over her knees and a skirt so short and so low-waisted it looked like a belt. Her pink thong strings were pulled up on her bare hips and she snapped them with long sharp nails. I was repelled by them but I also wanted to be with them, standing in their circle, knowing their thoughts. Maybe I could. I touched the Liz Claiborne linen of my mother’s dress. No, I heard her say. You’re different.
Still, I wished I had made Daisy curl my hair, put eyeliner on me, wipe the grime from my skin with one of her cool lavender cloths. My stomach was a little paunch forward, safe and invisible under the dress.
“I don’t want to see you smoking with those hags,” Stringy said. “I’ve fucked most of those chicks and they’re all going to be hoarse-throated cancer cases by the time they’re forty, and baby, we’re better than that.”
He lit a cigarette.
“Most of them?” I took another sip from my cup without thinking.
He looked at the group of five women and nodded. “I think so. Not a one was my girlfriend except maybe that black-haired one but she’s a liar.”
Dog came up and pulled Stringy over, started pointing to the rims on his truck. I felt nervous standing alone. I took another small sip from the red cup, just wanting something to do with my hands. I felt it trickle down my throat. In the dark here it seemed that what happened with Lyle could have never really happened. Here I was with my boyfriend at a party. I remembered my mother had told me once she’d had a beer a day when she was pregnant with me and that I turned out fine. She said it like she was proud, as if she’d cheated a system, but I knew that one beer meant at least three. I took another sip and my stomach churned but then settled into the burn. I could see why people drank, being here. How else were they supposed to make it through the night? This was how my mother had mustered the courage to leave me. All the beers she drank had given her permission. I looked at the group of girls and walked over to them.
“Hi, little sister,” a bleached blonde with a lip ring said. It sounded like she was sucking a mouthful of hard candies, but soon I realized it was just her voice.
I thought about how I’d been instructed by Vern to witness to strangers, always say your name nice and clear . . . I took another sip of the liquid and it wasn’t strong anymore. In fact it tasted no stronger than the cola we used for baptisms. I wondered if God had extracted the rum from it to save me. A wobbliness occupied my legs and my hands tingled. I didn’t hate the way it felt. “I’m Lacey May Herd.”
“Come on closer. We ain’t gonna do nothing to you,” she said.
“God protects me and I recoil from sin as if from a hot flame.”
The blonde looked at her friends and shrugged. Fanned her face with her hand. Even at night, sun nowhere, the heat was heavy upon us. It seemed to come up from the earth. “God ain’t nowhere around here,” she said.
I took another sip, syrupy sweet. Someone turned the music up even louder. I had