The Girl in the Red Coat

45

When I start my first period I know what it is because I remember Mum telling me about them, that it’s something that happens to every girl sooner or later.

I don’t know if thirteen’s the right age — I can’t remember that bit. For the first time in ages I miss Dorothy. She’d take charge and tell me what I had to do. All I’ve got is Gramps and you wouldn’t even want to mention things like periods to him.

I stick a wodge of toilet paper down my panties.

‘Can we stop here?’

Gramps peers through the window at the one-horse town — basically a street with stores.

‘Why?’

‘I need to get some stuff, OK?’

The toilet paper makes me waddle like a duck as I walk into the store. The lady behind the counter wears a check pink coat over her normal clothes.

‘I’m looking for some advice,’ I say. ‘On how to go about things when you have your first period.’

‘Oh, my dear. Don’t you have a mother to help? Don’t you have a lady relative?’

I grab some gum off a display stand and toss it on the counter. ‘Nope. I’ll have that too, thanks.’

She looks sad for me, then it’s boxes and tight-packed plastic bags on the counter.

‘It’s best if you start off with pads,’ she says. ‘For comfort.’

When I get back into the truck Gramps asks, ‘What have you bought?’ She’s put the pads in a big candy-striped paper bag so people won’t see what I’m carrying.

Stuff like this is difficult to talk about with Gramps. I have to think very hard about what to say. ‘Things for women,’ I say finally.

He looks amazed. ‘But you’re not old enough.’

I don’t answer and he drives off looking like he’s had a shock.

I think about the lady in the shop and how nice she was. How sad she looked when she found out I didn’t have a mother to help. She shouldn’t have minded though.

I’ve gotten used to looking after myself.

*

We drive till we’re somewhere outside a city. I try to remember which one Gramps told me it was but I don’t want to ask him again. He gets lots of pain these days, in his bad leg and in his hands too. When he wakes up they’re folded, like they’ve turned into wings in the night. It takes two hours for them to unfold properly but even then they hurt. Sometimes, we try to lay hands on him. I close my eyes and wait for the hum to go through me but it never does, not with Gramps. He doesn’t get angry now though, like he did that first time at the tree. He just seems sad that I can’t help him like I do with other people.

When we’ve gone past the city, with all its smoke rising up into the air, Gramps asks me to drive. I do this sometimes. He taught me because now and then his hands hurt too much to hold the wheel. We only do it when there’s not many people around to see. I asked when I could have a driving test but the answer was never. Never: because I’d come into the country as some kind of illegal alien. And that means we have to be careful, or I’ll be deported. So it’ll be real hard for me to ever get a job or anything like that.

Through the window the countryside looks dirty, like it’s been coated in black stuff. There’s machinery in the fields that Gramps says are mine workings.

‘Let’s stop,’ I say. ‘I’m hungry, let’s get something to eat.’

We stop and change places then we drive into a diner. I know it, I recognise where we are now, it’s a diner we generally go to if we come this way. Me and Gramps aren’t so good with the supplies and the cooking as Dorothy was, so we eat lots of pizzas and chicken wings and stuff like that. I take my wash things in with me.

‘Order me a Margarita, Gramps. I’m using the bathroom.’

I fill the washbasin with lovely hot water and take off my jacket and hang it up on the towel rail. My jacket now is like a soldier’s. It’s got bright golden buttons and flaps on the shoulders. I found it in a thrift store. I’ve stuck to wearing red all through. It reminds me I’m Carmel and I like to wear red. I always make Gramps call me that when we’re not working. I take off my T-shirt and soap myself standing in my jeans and vest. I dunk my whole head into the basin and scrub at my hair. Then I dry myself off under the hot blower.

Two women with thick make-up all perfect stare at me while they’re washing their hands, but I can’t worry about that. I have to keep clean. Now I’ve got my periods it’s even harder to keep that way, especially as I have to hide it from Gramps. The women staring don’t know anyway — they don’t know what it’s like to be me. They go back to proper bathrooms every day of their lives I expect. They splash about in hot water like dolphins.

I make hard eyes at them and they stop staring and look down at their hands with their coloured nails flashing under the running water.

In the diner I have to help Gramps with his sachet of ketchup because of his hands. He sits and looks out of the window. He’s been real quiet lately.

‘What you looking at, Gramps?’ I’m oozing ketchup onto my own fries now. I like it so much I use three whole sachets just to myself.

‘Only watching the comings and goings.’ I look outside and there’s cars and trucks pulling up or leaving as people finish eating and others arrive. There’s pizza in his hand that’s been there for about ten minutes.

‘You better eat up, your pizza will be stone cold,’ I warn. But he grunts and looks at it in his hand like he’s forgotten it was even there.

‘What are we going to do now?’ I ask. I worry about things a lot. We make money often when I use my hands but usually Gramps gets anxious then. Whenever we settle in one place he says we’re getting too well known, that someone will try and take me off him. When it starts being like that we climb back into the truck and drive and that means we have to start again from the beginning. It means we get right down to the last dollar in the Bible.

Gramps clears his throat. ‘There’s a gathering of the faithful I’ve been informed about.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘I got in touch with Munroe, he’s organising it.’

‘But I thought you didn’t want anything to do with him?’

‘Beggars cannot be choosers.’ I think about this. I guess we are a bit like beggars. ‘We should go, it would be a chance for us to shine.’

‘I don’t like the sound of it.’

‘You should really not be so independent. You should listen to me.’

‘No. I don’t like big crowds, you know that. They freak me out.’ We’re scratchy with each other today. It’s like we can’t help it.

He pays and goes out to put some gas in the truck so I put our plates and stuff on a tray with the empty sachets and take it up to the counter for something to do. There’s a man there coming on shift and putting his apron on.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ He reaches behind him, to the shelf where there’s paper models of chickens and spare salt pots, and he brings down a letter. ‘I knew you’d come round this way sooner or later. I remember you.’

The letter is addressed: Carmel Mercy Patron. (The girl who wears a red coat — always with an old preacher man) Stu’s Diner. Nr Pittsburgh. USA.

I want to tear it open straight away but Gramps is outside, telling me with his hands to come on, hurry up, so I stuff it in my pocket so he won’t know.