My Girl Is a Trip

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• My Girl Is a Trip
• Chuck Barrow (bio)

She plays with matches. That was really the first thing that stuck out about her. She used to burn everything that found its way into her hands. Daffodils, candy wrappers, beach towels, bubble wrap, cotton balls, popsicle sticks.

She was the new girl who came out the sixth row of the school bus— no, not that one—the one where old dude flipped out on his wife and shot himself through the chest after Christmas break when we was in high school. Yeah, she was new then, she had hair like Carrot Top and freckles like a shredded orange peel. She had skin the color of milk in a bowl of Chex that had gone all soggy. We’d always see her with them boys from down the block when she was tryin to see who could let her borrow a X-Men comic book. Every comic book I gave that girl she never gave back and I never asked.

She would always get in a fight with a sista and they always whoop her ass. She would always be bleeding from somewhere because she always had fresh scabs. If she came to your house she’d never leave until your momma asked her if she needed a ride back home, and she only did it because that was usually when it was dark and the drug dealers was out. She was the only white girl who no other white girls hung out with, and she didn’t mind at all.

She would always hang with the boys and roll up her pant legs till that white freckled leg meat showed. She always wore clothes that was two sizes too big. When she laughed she sounded like a cat that got run over by a snowplow, and that sound made you laugh with her too.

One day we up there in that pool, nah, not that one, the one with the busted-ass pool with the janky diving board ain’t nobody in they right mind would jump off of, so who do I see but her and her big red hair and skinny freckled ass about to jump. Teachers hollerin, kids screamin, niggas laughin, “look nigga, look nigga! There go your girl!” My girl, nigga? Like she my girl now? Up and up she went, like somebody threw a broom and it just float in midair. Down she go, kersplattttttt! Niggas fall out, white teacher cryin, janitor sellin loosies, DJ bust a joke, whole pool howlin. She get out, first time I cry laughing. Whole body red like The Red Lobster logo, she lookin at me smiling and ask, “Did I do good?”

She got a face like a gum drop, man. All cheeks and dimples, no chin to be had. Eventually she moved into our living room because her momma was a drunk and her daddy locked up for reselling junk cars that would crash, and all her brothers in the army, and she ain’t have no one to listen to her talk or feed her lemonade and chicken when she was hungry and bored.

Outside she was my little hustling orphan Annie, Pippy Longstockin, lookin like the goddamn Wendy’s burger mascot, she get us anything we wanted real cheap cuz she white, and I’d sell it off, make double on it, we keep the shit we like. We got that flask like yea, we drank that wine I swiped [End Page 231] up out my daddy’s cabinet. Just me and her, matchin up, drinkin up, smokin up, yak for yak. My girl a trip on the outside, but inside she real nice, and she follow me everywhere.

Eventually, she just started living in my bedroom, and I’d let her have my bed. Eventually, I just let her sleep in bed with me too, until she’d take off her socks and make me have to open a window because them big ass feet of hers stank so bad.

Her feet stank the worst when it rained and she was in too big a rush to wear socks in her shoes. When the niggas...