Sweetgirl by Travis Mulhauser
Acknowledgments
Leo and Edie Lou, who are my beating hearts and who taught me a lot about everything. Susan Ramer, for being spectacular. My editor, Megan Lynch, for her talent, vision, and guiding hand. And everybody at Ecco who has done so much for this book. S?ren Palmer, for all the rides and the readings. Jon Baker, for all the answered questions. The Sustainable Arts Foundation, for their incredible generosity. For their readings and many areas of expertise: Fred Mulhauser, Whitney Mulhauser, Cassy Stubbs, Laura Waldrep and Matt Norcross. For their endless support, Joanna Kolodziej and Kyler Mulhauser. And for all sorts of stuff, this list of stellar human beings: Pamela Kolodziej, Emily Dings, the Gillmors, the Reddings, Niels Lunsgaard, Matt Gallagher, Gill Pulley, Robert Sorrenti, Rebo Sullivan, Susan Miller-Cochran, Michael Parker, Terry Kennedy, the Aarons, John and Terri Lee, and Louise Deaton.
Chapter One
Nine days after Mama disappeared I heard she was throwing down with Shelton Potter. Gentry said she was off on a bad one and wandering around the farmhouse like a goddamn ghost.
Mama bought her booze at Night Moves, where Gentry worked the counter, and he stopped by to tell me he saw her at Shelton’s while he was out there delivering a keg.
“When?” I said.
“Last night,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to come by.”
The only thing that surprised me was my own surprise. As many times as Carletta let me down I still felt all gut-punched and woozy, like it was the first time she forgot to pick me up from school.
“She didn’t even recognize me,” he said. “It was like she looked right through me.”
Gentry took a puff of his clove and pulled his knit hat down over his ears. He had seven years on me but we were friends. He sold me cigarettes at the store even though I only turned sixteen that summer and I was always supportive when he had some drama with a boyfriend.
He looked at me with sad eyes. He said he could come in if I felt like talking, but I didn’t see the point. Gentry was a good listener and there was plenty I could say about Mama, but none of it was going to bring her home.
I grabbed my hoodie off the hook, thanked Gentry for looking out, and made for the pickup. He called after me from the porch, but I kept going.
It was late and cold and I was bone tired. I work at Pickering’s Furniture, and I’d stripped and sanded two small tables and a chest of drawers that night. I didn’t lock the shed until after eight, but what was I supposed to do? Stretch out on the couch like everything was copacetic?
No, I started the truck instead. I cranked the heat and looked out at the falling snow. There was a norther on the way but the apocalypse itself wouldn’t stop Mama if she was already in orbit—so I gunned it down Clark Street and set out for the north hills like a solid-gold fool.
Our block was all beat-down rentals and busted-up fence, but the digs were even worse when I hit Detroit Street, where the Mexicans stayed. Carletta called it the barrio and liked to cluck her tongue when we rolled by those crumbling-down row houses. She liked to say she didn’t understand how some people lived.
I never bothered to point out that we were just a few blocks away, in a one-bedroom, and that I didn’t know whether to say I slept in the living room or the kitchen because the couch was technically in both. The irony would have been lost on Mama, who always said we had an “open floor plan”—like we lived in some magazine house where everything was spread out nice and all the fabric matched the throw pillows. Like we put out bowls of decorative fruit, just because.
It’s not that I minded the couch. I slept like a baby. It was just that Carletta had a way of denying certain realities to make her life seem like more than it was, which was sort of like coping, but was mostly just another way to lie.
Still, I missed her. I missed her and I was tired of my waiting-around, worried-sick life. I was tired of the wondering where she was, and of the constant alarm that gripped my heart like a strangler vine.