Sister Golden Hair: A Novel by Darcey Steinke Read Free Book Online

get grunts and eye rolls from my mother. I decided to change the subject.
    “Sandy is having trouble with her boyfriend,” I said.
    I thought my mom might like this information, but I could tell by how she pressed down the spatula so grease oozed out of the hamburger that she did not.
    “I hope you’re not looking up to that woman,” she said.
    I didn’t say anything.
    “You know Sonny is married.”
    “Separated,” I said.
    My mom swung around, holding the fry pan in front of her. It was rare; she’d gone from a solid 5 straight to a 2. The grainy hamburger and the greenish grease pooling in the tilted pan looked disgusting.
    “Jesse, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
    At least they’re people I actually know , I wanted to say to her, not strangers I read about in the newspaper. My mom would rather pretend to have relationships with people than actually deal with our real-life neighbors. But I just grunted and ran out of thekitchen, up the stairs, and slammed the door to my room.
    I held my View-Master to my eyes, pushed the lever down: Alice’s head poking out of a thatched roof, then the wide, menacing smile of the Cheshire Cat. The colors reminded me of the stained-glass windows in my dad’s old church, gemlike and glorious. But I couldn’t move myself into the tiny 3-D colors like usual, so I tried to read the book I’d gotten from the library on worldwide burial rituals. I was on the part where mummies, after being swathed in linens, are first placed into one coffin and then a second. Through the wall I could hear Mrs. Smith playing hymns on her piano. She had a long list of things that were bad luck. Some of them were obvious, like breaking a mirror, but others I’d never heard before, like sweeping after dark and cutting your fingernails on Sundays.
    I had always felt it was good luck that my mom was prettier than all the other moms, and that even though she didn’t dress up anymore, she couldn’t help but look stylish in her paisley head scarf and big dark sunglasses. But now her face was the color of a mushroom and she had velvet bags under her eyes like a zombie in a monster movie. Incrementally, she had transformed from the mom I used to love into a creature, weepy and miserable, a dark thing to be afraid of in the middle of the night.

    “You’re getting good color on your front,” Sandy said as I spread my towel beside her on the grass, “but you need more on your back.”
    It was late in the afternoon. Shadows fell over our toes, but the sun was still hot. We lay before the mountain like virgins about to be sacrificed. I pulled down the side of my bottom, to show her the line of lighter skin.
    “Malibu Barbie!” she said, as she shook the baby oil and iodine and squirted a glossy puddle between her breasts.
    “He still hasn’t called,” she said, motioning to the phone she’d pulled outside, which now sat on the welcome mat. Eddie sat beside it. He had on a pair of huge stereo headphones that had been accessorized with tinfoil sticking out at odd angles.
    “He’s in the Head Crusher,” Sandy told me matter-of-factly.
    “My eyes are going to squirt out of my head,” Eddie yelled cheerfully, as he turned the page of his comic book. He wore his father’s recon gloves, the tips of the fingers cut out, he’d told me earlier, so he could better grip his weapon.
    “I’m sure there are good reasons he’s not calling,” she said, laying her head against her arm. “Emergency root canal, or that lazy son of his might have gotten busted.”
    I watched sparrows rub themselves with dirt in the ditch beside the driveway and listened to Mr. Ananais mowing down by the road. Lulubell lifted her furry head and looked at me.
    My dad came out of the duplex in his bell-bottoms, a striped shirt, and a wide tie. He was going to his second job at the psych center, but before he got in the car, he walked over to where Sandy and I lay.
    I sat up and pulled my knees into my chest; he