The Geography of Girlhood Read Online Free

a loser and a
    sycophant. Trouble is, he says the most beautiful things,
    walks the most beautiful walk. First day I saw him,
    I thought,
There he is, the fool I’ll fall for.
He calls
    Tamakwa “summer camp for the hormonally insane.”
    He thinks he’s clever and oh my God, he is. He’s not
    wasteful like you are, he doesn’t waste my time with
    stories about cousins or killers. The stories he tells, they
    get right to the point, like a dog’s nose to a crotch.
    Your stories never had much of a point and if they did,
    I never understand how you got to it. This guy, he’s
    special in a stupid kind of way. He knows how not
    to hurt me, he knows how to bring up his girlfriend
    casually in conversation, he knows better than to lay
    himself in front of me and hold out a hand that could
    mean either “Stop” or “Come Closer.”.
     
Wedding Day
    My sister and I come home to find
    that our father has spawned with Susan,
    his bride-to-be that wants to get married at sea.
    I’m in the catch and release program
,
    she likes to say, thinking it’s funny
    that she’s had more boyfriends
    than there are salmon in the jetty these days.
    As we’re motoring out to the harbor,
    I look at my father, cheeks flushed,
    new wedding ring burning a hole in his pocket.
    As he steers us across the shallow part of the shoal,
    I try not to think of my mother,
    instead I look at my sister,
    who’s wearing Bobby’s leather jacket
    and not even trying to hide her latest hickey,
    and Susan, the brand-new bride
    who is tagging my father with a kiss and a vow
    before one day she releases him
    back into the wild.
     
Stepbrother
    One day he was a kid three grades below me,
    and the next we’re related.
    He’s more disgusting than the parts of a fish
    you throw in the trash.
    Fortunately, he doesn’t say much to me,
    except for
pass that
at the dinner table
    or
are you finished?
when referring to the bathroom
    or food of yours he wants to eat.
    He’s always down at the docks,
    collecting marine life, the kind that stinks when it dies.
    His glasses are big like goggles
    and for a person I’d prefer knowing nothing about,
    why do I have to accidentally see him naked at leastonce a month?
    His mother is always saying how
    he needs a positive male role model
    and I agree.
    He’s in desperate need of a dad
    but one thing’s for sure:
    he’s not getting mine.
     
Happy Birthday
    Randall Faber called me today to wish me a happy
    birthday and I said
thank you
and he asked me
what’d
    you do?
and I told him
I went to North Carolina to see
    my relatives and when I got back I had a whole new
    family
. Actually, I didn’t say that last part.
    Randall told me he spent his summer building an
    add-on to his kitchen with his dad and his brothers.
    Also, he got a new dog.
    I picture the Faber family—a gang of boys and a mom
    that makes the meals and a dinner table full of people
    that know how to love each other in a regular way.
    It sounds nice, I say, and Randall says it is, and he
    asks how Elaine is and I say we’re not really friends
    anymore, and he asks how Denise is, and I say I’d
    rather not talk about it and then we say goodbye,
    and that’s it.
     
Denise
    Denise is sick in the head
    and has been since June,
    when she killed something for the first time.
    Her father gave her traps for the kitchen and den
    and orchestrated their placement,
    as if he were back in Da Nang,
    festooning the forest with a collar of landmines.
    I was sleeping over
    the night he gave out the orders,
    and in the morning, we collected the bodies
    and bagged them before breakfast—
    three rigid mice and one warm one,
    soft and barely bleeding,
    fresh from the thunder of running from cats.
    We took them out to the trash
    and there, under the rotting elm,
    Denise’s sobs were the sound of a prom dress
    being taken off in a parking lot—
    slick and satiny and torn.
    Her father, all bourbon eyes and confiscated heart,
    didn’t like tears
    and refused us