On the boggy cemetery ground, I plucked blades of damp grass and listened to the odd clamor of vault bells, then hip hop from a car radio. A family across the way filled a grave cup with flowers, and the kids left homemade God’s eyes on the headstone.  The marigolds I’d tugged from the garden were splayed in vivid gold against the grey tombstone; the flowers’ musk was always unusual, like a damp room shuttered too long, and yet it warmed me, tunneled me to the memory of my mother’s weekend efforts in the garden. 

On her last day, her heavy breaths stank of rotten fruit. She’d said funny faces, when held too long, couldn’t shake themselves right. I didn’t imagine it would be my mother’s  own eyes locked open. I couldn’t look at her after that, not even at the funeral. I needed to forget she could face me and see nothing.

Today was my last day in New Orleans before returning to the all-girls boarding school in North Carolina for my junior year. Plenty of girls there had lost their virginity and returned from summer with a story. Couches, basements, attics, and tree forts had taken their childhood in a frenzy of fumbled moans. A few of them cried and blamed an inexperienced boy for a ruined first time. Others invented school projects for extra time to flirt with guys at the office supply store on errand runs in town.

───

When mom died, my dad sent me off to a boarding school, but when home, we lived in a hotel he ran, our moments together infrequent and unfamiliar. Our hotel, which we called Fielding House, had buttercream stucco, olive-green shutters and three-stories with front wrought-iron balconies that dripped with Mardi Gras beads.

Inside, the bottom floor smelled of nutty coffee, and the voices of guests drifted upstairs as they played a round of hearts. My room never stayed the same after I left for boarding school. This visit I stayed in The Natchez Room, named after the local steam ship. Inside, every piece of furniture shone from a cherry stain and weekly polish: the four-poster bed, a nightstand, a full-length mirror, and a distressed steamer trunk, its top splayed with local magazines.  

I tugged the ceiling fan to life before my cousin Lisa leaned in the doorframe; her fingers wiggled hello. She had curly red hair that frizzed round in the humid summer. Her body glistened, recently glazed in coconut oil from laying out. Intended to be pale as tapioca, like her mother, Lisa had to be one of the other girls, and the other girls had tans. 

“So a big night on the town, M. Your dad asked me to maybe come along bowling with you tonight. Rock ‘N’ Bowl, right?” 

“Yeah, if you can give me a ride. That’s it.” 

“I could, but that isn’t what I promised I’d do,” she said, and grinned. “There’s a guy, right?” 

I nodded. 

“Good deal,” she said and fished a small bottle of Jack from her purse. 

I took the bottle from her extended hand and tried not to catch its scent. I stepped away from her eye and took a gulp that made me flinch. 

“My mom would’ve never let me out of the house at your age to meet a guy. You’re lucky,” she said. 

“I didn’t tell him everything...” 

Her hand beckoned for a return of the bottle. “You aren’t going like that.”

“What are you wearing?” I pressed back.

“You’ll see.” 

I frowned and turned to run the sink. In the corner of my eye, Lisa stripped. She had breasts, firm and full of weight. Mine looked like those shuttlecocks people whack in badminton. I splashed water on my face, and she opened the bedroom window before she lit a cigarette. After a drag, she asked, “You go see your mom today? I saw your dad downstairs.” 

“Yeah, this morning.”

“I go, now and again. I see her more than I see you.”

“It’s not my fault that I don’t get to stay here.” 

“Right, I know,” she said, wincing. “You know any other guys I might like?”

I shook my head no. “Seriously. He’s it.”

Lisa put her unfinished smoke out in the toilet bowl, opened her purse and reapplied lipstick and stepped into a spritz of floral perfume. She pulled on a white cotton skirt that made her tan legs pop and a tight red tank top that tied at the neck.

“Let’s see your look,” she said. 

I’d hung out with Jeff Troy all summer in loose jeans and nubby band shirts. But when I pointed at the heap of clothes on the floor, Lisa laughed.

“You dress like you’re house painting. Here, I’ll try your jeans, and you wear the skirt.”

I threw the towel to the floor and pulled the skirt on. The short hem made my legs look long, although above the knees, my thighs revealed a bluish pale. She actually fit in the pants, though she had to roll the top over or they wouldn’t stay on her hips. She had one of those voodoo-conjured bodies other girls hate: great boobs but rail-thin everywhere else. 

“You’re stuck with your t-shirts unless you grow tits in the next half hour.” 

I still wore training bras, sexy to perverts. So, I tugged a Blondie tee over my bare breasts and swiped raspberry balm across my lips. My cheeks warmed on their own plenty.

───

Lisa sped through alleys so that I heard the sounds of men as they dumped trash and whooped when we passed. 

“So take Esplanade to the fairgrounds, and when you hit Carrollton, take a left,” I said.

“I’m not a cab, kid. I’ve been before. I know the bartender there,” she said, and winked. 

“I’ve never seen you.”

“You go to bowl. I get drinks, listen to bands. You would see me if you hadn’t waited till your last night to ask about extending your curfew. What’s with that? Your dad wouldn’t even notice you’re gone at night.”

I shrugged.

“Con says you wanna study rocks?” she asked. “Are you a dork now?”

“I want to be a geologist.”

“But you don’t even wear jewelry?” 

I scowled, turned the volume high, and a brass band inspired us both to bounce, a little, in our seat.

───

No one stood around outside Rock ‘N’ Bowl, but the inside of the alley roared. Jeff handed out shoes to other high-school kids. I would have to look busy with Lisa. I couldn’t stare at him. Taller than me at 5’9, his smile hooked me across the room.

“He’s over there by the shoes,” I said, my gaze steady. 

“Not bad. I’ll be at the bar. Find me if it gets weird.”

I frowned and walked over to Jeff. I tried to breathe regular so my face wouldn’t go full tomato. He wore a faded black shirt and jeans. He had a way of leaning into the counter that made my hands shake. 

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked. 

“Nice, your old man’s letting you out tonight?” 

“I got bored.”

“You tell him about me yet?” 

“Should I?” I smiled, and he shrugged. 

“Better if you don’t. Parents make everything complicated.”

Jeff had his chin length hair tucked behind his ears. He talked to two regulars that I’d never met but who haunted the alley in the summer for air conditioning—one was scrawny and white with full tattooed sleeves, and the other was black and good-looking with furrowed eyebrows and a gold crucifix. I looked at the bar, and Lisa leaned into a suit. She waved a drink in her hand, an umbrella bobbed at the top of it. I turned to the three of them.

“So, I can take a break in five minutes.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I looked around the crowded alley and scanned the room for a sole detail that felt original, but the room felt photocopied from days prior. A wave of teens slurped spiked cokes and collectively reeked of Cool Water perfume. 

“I thought about what you said yesterday about your school. If you hate it so much, why’d your old man make you go in the first place?”

“He’s not a mom. He didn’t know how to do my hair for church or what to dress me in, ” I said. 

“I might be able to get you a job here,” he said. “If you want to stay. But you’d have to be cool if it doesn’t work out.” 

───

Girls my age walked over, and I had to step aside. They straightened their too-small dresses as Jeff explained the discount packages. 

 I turned to the two guys and smiled nervously. The two of them looked me over and went back to talking shit about a white girl in Lane 3. She had rhinestones on her rear pockets, and the guys called them ass lights. I knew her. When we were eight we played hand-clapping games because her mom worked at the B&B. When we were twelve, she put razor blades in my bus seat. They ripped the butt of my pants and dug a small cut. When I looked behind me and saw a crowd of laughing faces, I saw her face the clearest. I almost spoke but didn’t. In the moment, it eluded me that a girl would turn mean and that I’d find a way to forgive her.

“Hey, I’m Morgan.” I waved. 

“Terrance,” said the white guy, who pointed at the other and said, “That’s Cleve. What do you think, girl? Check that out on three. Would you give her a kiss?”

“I don’t kiss girls,” I said. “Not yet anyhow.”

“All right,” Cleve said, and grinned. 

The girl spilled out of her jeans, and her body flung forward, as her hand released the bowling ball. Her orange thong rose above her belt, and the guys howled. When the white one laughed, he swung his elbow and the pinup girl tattoo on his arm kicked her leg high. She turned around and caught my eye. I lifted my hand in a solitary wave, and she nodded but kept with her friends. 

Jeff stepped from the counter to talk with us and put his hand on my lower back. I looked behind me, a second later,  and saw the night manager had filled his spot. 

“Is she telling you all about rocks?” Jeff asked. 

“You got rock?” Cleve asked. He looked me over curiously. 

“No, sorry. I study them.”

“Like you’re gonna make crank?” Cleve asked, his eyes wide. “It’s always the ones you don’t expect.” 

“We’re going on a walk,” Jeff said. He shook his head in apology. 

We ascended the steps to the lobby. His hand moved from my back to my sweaty palm. He squeezed it, and lead me away from the bowling crowd toward the arcade. We stepped into a dark closet, and he turned the lock. A string clicked on a single bulb above our heads. We laughed until silence and kissed. He liked it when I pulled on his lower lip with my teeth; I’d read that move in a magazine. We hid in a closet stacked with supplies for children’s birthday parties. Cone hats, paper cups with clowns on them, and numbered birthday candles bore witness on metal shelves. 

“You’re killing me in that skirt.” 

“Your friends suck,” I said. 

“Yeah, they used to be better. When the storm hit, they got jumbled in the head.” 

“We don’t have to keep the same friends.” I laughed. 

The vision of him looking at me naked had me short of breath. It had to be now, though. If I waited now, I would wait until college. I needed to return to boarding school for the first time with my own story and that surge of confidence the non-virgins wore. He crouched to kiss the skin above my knee. His hand climbed up my thigh and into my underwear, his fingers roved. He peeled my underwear off, and it clumped awkwardly around my ankles. 

“You know when the hurricane hit, it dug up a lot of graves at the cemetery. They’re all above ground, but it exposed the tabby, you know, oyster shells and cement. It’s sort of beautiful,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear about that right now,” he murmured. 

It was weird, an observation from the morning, but I could have said anything to fast forward. I didn’t say stop though. The force from the morning gone, and now I wanted another me that I could inhabit. I fantasized a return to the cemetery where I’d dig my own hand into the ground until I felt the chill of unseen earth. 

I heard the clink of his belt against the metal shelf. He pushed me back against the shelves and the head of a huge nail poked my backbone. My skirt dropped with a few tugs, and I kicked my underwear free from my ankles. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. Through a sliver of light from an upper window, I saw he’d paused to catch my eye.

I buried my head in his shoulder, and kissed my way up his neck instead of searching for words. My thoughts swung from the razorblade girl in the alley to a story in the morning paper about California landslides. With each thrust, I saw earth spilling onto a winding highway, and then I saw the girl and I, years ago, in cut-off shorts and handkerchiefs knotted to our backs for shirts riding bikes in the quarter. I saw a house inclined, its frame crunched into a broken hard taco shell, and then I saw our little girl palms moving over one another, vibrating from hand-clapping songs.

───

A hand pounded on the door. What if it was someone’s birthday, and we were holding the party up? The pounding amplified, followed by a jiggling of the doorknob. “This is crazy,” Jeff said, and stopped. He kissed my forehead, and pulled his shirt over his head.

“Another time,” I said, shouting over the noise. Did this even count? Our elbows banged as we found the rest of our clothes.

Once dressed, we opened the door to a flood of yellow light and the sound of  clinking pins and arcade bings. I saw Lisa’s chipped blue nail polish before I could register anything else. 

“You creep,” she said. She shoved Jeff with a single flexed palm. They stared at each other like actors who’d forgotten their lines. She thumped him against the wall. 

“I can’t take this on right now,” Jeff said. He walked away to the counter, his hands straightened his hair. 

“He’s a keeper,” she shouted to no one. 

“Lisa, chill,” I said. Her eyes went huge and she grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the parking lot. 

I looked behind me and saw Jeff at the counter. He flailed, flustered, as he handed out shoes to a line of teenagers. 

“What happened in there, kid?” Lisa asked, outside.

“Hanging out,” I said.

“Please tell me you weren’t…” 

“Yeah, and you practically shared it with me.” 

Tears boiled over the bottoms of her eyes, and rested on the brink, threatening to ride out on her black mascara. 

“Whoa,” I said, “I wanted to.” 

“Get in the car.” 

I obeyed and we sat. She pressed her face into the steering wheel. Rain had brewed while inside and now everything outside the car window blurred with the gathering of water. An odd char scent stole into the car.  

“Are you trying to make this about you?” I asked.

“Actually, I’m supposed to be looking out for you. I saw a guy drag you in a closet.” 

“I wasn’t planning on telling you,” I stammered. “You should be excited.”

“I’ve told you about all the guys I’ve known because I am old enough to be with them.”

“I was supposed to tell you beforehand? Drive.”

She ignited the car and peeled out of the lot. All I wanted was for her to stop talking. 

We drove beside the trolley line when she finally opened her mouth to say, “I don’t think you’re aware of this, but when your mother lost it, that’s when she got pregnant with you.”

I turned away from her and looked out the window. A gang of kids raced bikes in front of a row of shotgun houses, and my stomach soured. It was less my mother and more that I hadn’t even considered babies or my life changing.  

“Are you trying to say she was stupid?” 

Lisa braked for a red light. “No, dear God. There are consequences to sleeping around, and I wanted to know he didn’t drag you into the closet.”

“I told you about him all afternoon. It was fine.” 

“Sometimes you think it’s fine and it isn’t,” she said. 

“What the hell? Just drive.” 

Our voices surrendered to the whoosh of tires over rain and distant car horns. Blocks passed and my eyes glazed. I didn’t know what I was doing, not really. All that made any sense to me were my geology books but no one I knew cared about that. 

I sighed. “I’ve felt so close to her all day.”

“That’s what happens when you visit her. Same for me. All the thinking about a person can make them stick around,” she said. A quiet laugh startled me, and she said, “Maybe that’s what ghosts are. Our imagination and our memory.” 

“People see ghosts they don’t know though,” I said. 

“Maybe they knew them and don’t remember,” she said. “We forget people too.”

When we got to Fielding House she parked in the porte-cochere but left the engine running. I waved off the night valet.

“How was it?” she asked. I looked at her questioningly, and she added, “Sex?”

“I don’t know,” I winced. “It hurt.”

Lisa raised her eyebrow and said, “It does for everyone the first time.”

“It seemed unfair though,” I said. “He enjoyed it. Was I going to if it lasted longer?”

“You should have enjoyed parts of it from the beginning,” she said. “Next time, find someone nicer.”

 “But I don’t know anyone else,” I said. “I’m around girls. And he was nice. I tried to tell him—”

“If you couldn’t tell him you’re a virgin, he wasn’t nice.  Jesus, you need me.” 

“I need to think,” I said. “I’ll call you before I leave.”

She grabbed my chin to face her and said, “Please do so I can educate you on foreplay.” 

I wriggled free and waved goodbye over my shoulder, running toward the front door. 

───

Inside Fielding House, a jazz quartet played in the lounge.  Couples and wallflowers danced with drinks or smoked. I slipped in the kitchen and pulled open the little drawer under the phone. It was filled with colored sugars and little plastic babies for Mardi Gras king cakes. Looking around, I spotted the yellow square of the phone book on top of the fridge. I grabbed it and grimaced at the dust film on the covers, and went through the R’s: Rockedge Pools. Rocket Video. Rock ‘N’ Bowl. I found the number and dialed from the ancient landline without even thinking of what I would say, but I felt I had to explain Lisa. I looked down at my legs, exposed under the mini skirt. It was ringing when I hung up. The alarm of realizing how I was dressed erased the need to explain Lisa.

I hadn’t drank too much liquor in my life but I ached to be steady and numb. A half-full bottle of wine weighed a receipt on the counter. I grabbed the bottle, and ran to my room, brushing the sleeve of the porter, but I escaped up the stairs.

Inside my room, I remembered a box of my mom’s lingerie I’d found in the attic weeks’ past. I pulled it out, opened it, and laid her slips and bras across the quilt in a fan shape. I ran my fingers along the breast cups and the chiffon details. Lines of faint light from the streetlights snuck through the shutters and lay across the bed, enough to move around in the dark. I chose an apricot-colored slip and brought it to my face, fuzzy from wear. I wanted it to smell like her: a medley of sunscreen and those funky marigolds.  It didn’t smell like that. It had the musk of a cedar brick left in the box to keep the moths out. 

I pulled the cork and licked the red drops off the rim before taking a sip.  It burned in its descent, the aftertaste full of sour figs. I undressed and took another sip of wine from the bottle. I pulled on the slip and the length was fine but I had nothing to fill the top. Against my chest, the breast cups looked like deflated balloons. 

I drank slow and rode out the blooming anxiety. I could run a bath, but I didn’t want to move. I waited for a revelation that would propel me into action. A strap had fallen off my shoulder. I wound a corner of the slip and pulled it high to my waist startled to see red splotches from the pressure of his thighs that erased the pale, and illuminated my skin in troubled color. I let the slip fall back to my knees and walked over to my desk. I sat cross-legged in the chair and ran my fingertips over the tops of gems sorted in a seed box until I found carnelian, the orange-red color of it blood-dark in the dim light. I ran the cool stone across my cheek and recited a natural disaster: “Landslide, noun, the sliding of a mass of earth from a cliff.”

Kimberly Faith Waid was shortlisted for the 2019 Tennessee Williams Fiction Contest, and her fiction has appeared in Abe’s Penny, which is archived at the MoMA in NYC. She's twice been a resident in fiction writing at Vermont Studio Center, where she began tackling the second draft of a novel set in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama that probes identity, racially motivated urban development, and complicit journalism in the sixties. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California.