"WATER HITTING WATER"
by Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Jenny is certain nobody sees her take the slinky shirt from her father’s store. It’s blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light enough to ball up in her hand.
Her father owns a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks are filled with clothes for teenage girls, tight shirts with tiny snaps down the front, mini skirts, acid-washed jeans, Doc Martens in every color. Dance mixes of the 70s pound through the speakers.
The price tag cuts into her palm. She waves goodbye to the sales girls, walks under the neon sign and out of the store. The sensors don’t go off because she knows how to beat them.
Jenny hurries to the food court to meet Marcus like she does every day after school. They share their homework and eat Chick-Fil-A. Her father claims she’s shooting low. Last Sunday while he watched football on TV, she’d had sex with Marcus in her dad’s Mercedes in the garage.
She finds a table in the center of the food court next to the fountain. The sound reminds her of waterfalls. Summers, her family used to take wilderness vacations. Her mother loved to hike and if she saw a waterfall on the map she’d turn Rambo, take the lead and slog them through streams, fell twigs and branches with her boot, tear her legs up on brambles. She’d make them stop and listen for the sound of water hitting water, then head that way. At the falls they’d crouch on slippery rocks and watch the cascade like it was Broadway dancers.
She and Marcus sit close enough to the fountain to feel the spray. They share some waffle fries. He cracks open tiny packs of pepper and dumps them into a pile, adds ketchup to make his own hot sauce. “I’ll pass,” Jenny says, when he offers her some.
“You’re missing out,” he says. He has on his faded Saints jersey, baggy jeans, scuffed army boots.
The security guard glances over at them and Jenny holds up the paper cone, offers him a fry, but he shakes his head, no.
“Can we do what we did on Sunday again?” Marcus says.
“What’s that?” Jenny says, smiling. She bumps her knee against his, takes a bite of chicken.
Her father appears at their table and puts out his hand. “Give it back,” he says.
“What?” Jenny says.
Her father motions for the security guard to come over and Jenny has to walk between them, through the mall to Body Electric so her purse can be checked.
“You’re wrong, Dad,” she says, under her breath. She checks over her shoulder for Marcus and he’s a few yards behind. Shoppers have stopped to watch. “Call a lawyer,” she tells him, and he shrugs, palms up.
The shirt is there in her purse.
“I’ll handle this,” her father says to the security guard, and he motions to Marcus to wait outside.
“Is this the first time?” He paces back and forth in his office.
Jenny sits on a chair with a back that rocks.
“Why would you steal from me?” he says.
Jenny rocks harder in the chair.
“Can you sit still?” her father says.
She fools with the buckle on her purse. She doesn’t tell him about the other shirts. Size 2s because her mother has lost too much weight. Presents Jenny can give on her own because her father would let her take what she wanted and not make her pay, but Jenny doesn’t want free shirts.
Her father stares at the ceiling. “I don’t know how to help her, either,” he says.
He walks Jenny out. Marcus offers him his paper bag of kettle corn, and her father takes some. Clouds move through the skylight.
“Too nice a day to be inside,” her father says.
After dinner Jenny and her parents watch videos of The Travel Channel her father has taped. There’s a crumpled Body Electric bag beside her mother’s chair.
In the dark room with the volume cranked high, they take dream hikes through cool, dense forests, and jump over deep gorges, and stop to drink from an icy blue lake. So many faraway places, Greenland, Patagonia, the Himalayas.
Jenny’s mother sips peppermint tea. She wears a wool cap, gray sweatpants, thick socks, the blue shirt with the cherry buttons because she always uses gifts the minute she receives them. “The high altitude’s giving me a chill,” she says, and pulls the blanket around her.
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Pia lives in New Orleans with her husband and son who have driven to Baton Rouge in the rain to watch LSU play football, leaving her alone to write her novel, eat Cheez-Its and reverse Oreos, drink some wine, nap on the couch. This story originally appeared on a site that's gone away - Reinventing the World. There's more of her at www.piaze.com
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