West of Then by Tara Bray Smith

Author:Tara Bray Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

“How about a hooker?”

Devika laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.

“No, I’m serious. I can get the costumes from my mom.”

“Not.”

“Uh-huh.”

“When?”

“I can have her send them. From—”

I didn’t quite know where my mother was. Texas? Last time I’d heard she’d moved to California with Margaret, to a town called Monterey. I had no idea where Monterey was. I’d only been to San Francisco and to L.A. Dad and Debbie took me to Disneyland. I had wanted to go on the Matterhorn, but when we got there it was closed for repair.

I remembered the costume. Red, with fringe. Back when I lived with Mom on Oahu we picked up her paycheck one day. Fort Shafter, Hickam, I don’t remember which. In a brown room, louvered windows stretched across the wall. Light shone as if through paper over waxed concrete floors, aluminum folding chairs, brown laminate deuces. There was the stage, the bar, and further back a room, the stripper’s dressing room, where the girls kept their costumes on a dolly. A red one—sequined, stringy—had been strewn across the back of a chair.

Devika stopped in the middle of the road. We were playing Charlie’s Angels on our bikes. It was evening, mid-October. Unfinished houses ripped across the horizon. The road smelled like tar and rain.

“Like a real hooker costume?”

“Totally.”

She took off her windbreaker and twirled it around her finger.

“Like this?”

I laughed, hand on a hip. “Hey there, mister, howsaboutagoodtime?”

I almost peed my pants. It would be the best costume in Ulumahi. Everyone would crack up.

Cat. Fairy. Butterfly. Beauty Queen. Hooker.

When I lived in Tantalus, at Kinau Wilder’s, I had been a cat. I still had the picture. No frame, just the photo stuck to a square of glass. I was holding the hand of a bearded Japanese man. He must have worked for Kinau, like Mom did. He wore a flashlight on his forehead. I wore a black leotard. Whiskers were painted on my cheeks.

“Hooker,” I told Debbie when I got home.

She was at the sink facing Kona’s pen. It was a weekday, so it was just us.

“Come and wash the lettuce.”

She looked odd, as if she was trying to remember something. She dried her hands on a paper towel, rubbed her nose.

“That’s not an appropriate costume for a little girl, Tara.”

I knew it wasn’t.

“It’s just a joke.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is.” I hated washing lettuce. I hated making iced tea. I hated scooping Kona’s poop.

“No, it’s not. It isn’t funny at all.”

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