GIRLHOOD IS GROWING FRUIT AROUND CYANIDE.
IT WILL NEVER BE YOURS FOR THE SWALLOWING.
brenna twohy
May, 1970
Ponyboy says, "June!" and when he hugs her she's shocked to find him taller. She's also grateful she put her purchase away.
"What's this," she says, and she holds him by the elbows like her mother did with the boys, before they moved in and would come by to visit. She liked to look them head to toe like they were aliens she'd never seen in her life, When'd y'all get so big? June's too much shorter to shake him, so she squeezes his arms instead and says, "You got taller."
"You been gone two years," he says, but he's still grinning, so at least he doesn't take those two years personally. Darry and her momma might be a different story. "'Less maybe you shrunk."
"I'm five-six," she says, and shoves him away from her when he laughs. Keeps a hand around his elbow, though, afraid of letting go. "Sheesh, you're almost as tall as Darry now. What're you doing here?"
"Came to see Curly." Same old Pony.
"I thought you wasn't getting down here 'til tomorrow." It was part of the reason she'd been unsure of where to sleep, or even how her return to Tulsa was going to go—with Pony around, she might be able to pull the wool over Darry's eyes and hide the worst of her habits. He's too smart to think she's just gotten weird, but Pony might at least buy her a few days.
With Darry, it's almost like looking into a mirror—if the mirror could show how one person could turn out so differently and the same all at once. It ain't that June looks like Darry, at least not more than the other two Curtis boys. Soda always said she and Ponyboy looked the most alike, anyways, the same expressions and short tempers besides.
June likes to think she's as similar to each Curtis boy as she is different, but she can't pretend she ain't as serious as Darry wound up. It's hard to say if it's because both of them gave up things they weren't expecting to, the winter and spring of '65 and '66 alike, or if it's that same intense Curtis quality that all of them ended up with, shared last names or no.
It's hard to say, after all. June can't un-drop out of school same as she can't bring her daddy (and his wife) back. There ain't much of a point to thinking about it. It's not like she lets herself, usually—something about these brothers of hers, though, always gets her to wondering.
Ponyboy says, "Drove down early," and leaves it at that. He did better than June fared, in terms of schooling, but Darry had them all beat with his HVAC certifications and associates, besides. Ponyboy graduated the same year she was supposed to, only the combination of a skipped grade and late birthday screwed him over almost as bad as dropping out did her.
Darry might've stomped around worse than June used to, but Ponyboy was too much of an artist to go for something as practical as an accounting degree. It didn't help that Soda had shipped out while Pony was supposed to be applying to schools. From June's understanding, a single application was sent out; Pony got in but money don't fall from trees, to say nothing of the fights they'd have about long-term plans. June's been housekeeping since sixteen; sometimes she regrets choosing dope over a man, but like most things, there's no point in wondering.
Besides, after a year of moping around Tulsa and taking art classes at the local community college, ostensibly so he could save money before transferring somewhere bigger, Ponyboy shacked up with some older broad who figured herself a Merry Prankster. He insisted he wasn't sleeping with her but June ain't stupid. She knows firsthand how these things work. Somewhere in Washington they split; June should have had him drive down to get her so they could come back for the wedding together, but that felt like a surefire way of exposing all her secrets in one fell swoop.
He's already told her he's finally starting real classes in the fall, whatever that means. June's not sure how he found the time to apply, what with his living on a commune the last six months. She tries to tell herself she shouldn't worry, since she wasn't the one responsible for keeping him from becoming a hippie, but it's hard not to. Darry will have a field day, though, considering Pony's hair, the unbuttoned-to-the-sternum shirt, and what appears to be at least three amulets around his neck, so if anything she's glad to have him around. Maybe she even missed him these last two years, too.
June says as much to Ponyboy, voice tender when she says, "I'm happy to see you," and neither can keep from grinning. She tries to shake off the emotion, but she's still got him by an elbow when she says, "You heading to Darry's, after?"
"Yeah," he says, and she marvels at how the two of them must be nearly the same height now, no matter that it makes her a little mad, too—she was taller than him, the first few months they knew they were family—"you staying with him, too?"
She lets go of him, then, and rubs at her face. She still needs a hit, despite the distraction of seeing him. Bad enough she's in town to see her big brother get married and is trying to figure out how to avoid seeing him any more than that. Worst part is she hates to do it. She says, "Ain't asked yet. Might try and see if someone I know's got a spare room."
She wonders what she looks like, for him to be squinting at her the way he is. The kid's not fourteen and naïve, anymore, his birthday coming up in two short months. June never thought they looked all that much alike, save for the chin; she sees too much of Soda in him, the kind of reckless prettiness that gets boys beat up on this side of town. Pony's reputation precedes him unfortunately, or maybe not; between that murder case, the Curtis name, and his running around with Mark Jennings and Curly Shepard, no one's going to let his flower power become him. It's probably for the best.
He could ask her why she's still unsure of her sleeping arrangements, but he doesn't. Just says, "You need a ride somewhere?" and nods when she says no. His next question hurts regardless. "How's your ma doing?"
She tries not to flinch. "Ain't seen her yet."
"Right," Ponyboy says. She doesn't like his tone, but last time she tried telling him off for it—probably a few weeks short of his fifteenth, if she remembers correctly—he dumped a lemonade over her head and then she tried to catch him in a headlock. The memory of Soda's hooting aches. He says, clearly onto her, but hopefully assuming she's on the typical hippie wave like he is, "Well. You should stop by for breakfast tomorrow."
It's past lunchtime already, not that June's eaten. The backpack slung over her shoulder is hiding the dope she just bought, and it feels heavier, somehow. She feels antsy. "They ain't moved into the new place yet?"
"Finishing up some repairs," he says, "you know how Darry is. Ain't like the house is sold yet, anyway."
"Yeah," June says, not that she knew that. She'll ask Ponyboy how he feels about it later; odds are he's written a poem about it already and can just read it to her instead. She spent a lot of time there, too, for what it's worth; odds are the two Curtis boys that remain have forgotten already. "I'll stop by tomorrow, then. I'll even do the dishes."
"Yeah, right," he says, but then he hugs her again and she's got to blink away some tears. "See you soon?"
"Yeah," she repeats, and waits for him to walk up the Shepard's porch steps before she turns away. There aren't too many people she can stay with, at this point, but there's one person who might not ask questions, or at the very least be guilted.
Sonny might've died but his momma didn't. And June's real good at getting what she wants these days.
Enedina Maldonado looks so much like Sonny it makes June sick. This year makes five since June sat in the passenger seat while some hood out of Brumly shot him dead in broad daylight; if someone had told her then that Dina the dope-fiend would still be alive in 1970 June wouldn't have believed them. She'd probably be angry to know it.
June can't afford to be angry about it right now, though, exhausted and with a faint trembling starting up in her hands. She tries not to stare at them while she stands on the front porch, her knocks far heavier than she meant to make them. The neighborhood looks better than it used to, like someone's scrubbed everything down and made things new again, bright with the promise of a good summer. There's a garden full of flowers out front.
She remembers coming here as child, before Dina ended up on the same shit that June got to herself. She was always a pretty woman, or at least she is in memories. Dina could almost pass, better than either of the Blue Thunder children that would end up half-raised in Tulsa, eyes and hair a matching shade of brown that would get her called Canela in jest. Didn't matter that she could've charmed some white man out on the Westside if she'd tried hard enough—she ended up running with Kings, too, and soon after she met Sonny's late father the two of them turned into three. Part Mexican, part Indian, just like June.
It's early afternoon and Dina's in grass-stained jeans. There's more gray in her hair than she expected. She looks like a mom. It makes something painful bloom in June's chest to see her. The feeling might nearly be mutual, if the shellshocked expression on Dina's face means anything. Despite herself, June smiles—a little meanly, even.
"Hi Dina," she says, not sounding like herself. She remembers being a child on this porch, climbing the tree in the backyard before it was hit by lightning sometime when she was in middle school. She remembers Sonny in this home before he ran off to the Kings the spring after her daddy died. "How you been?"
Dina doesn't move to open the screen door; just looks at her with wide eyes the same color as Sonny's. She has an apron on over her yellow peasant blouse, her hair in a braid longer than June can manage. She's cut it short for a long while, now, at her shoulders instead of spilling to her waist. It's easier, that way. She's got a lot of other things going on, anyway.
She says, "June," and her expression doesn't change, no matter that June's smile widens just a little.
She adjusts her bag over her shoulder. There's a duffle in her left hand, resting against her shin. All she has is clothes and letters, mostly from Ponyboy and Sodapop, before. Darry isn't a man of many words, at least not with her. Soda used to say he could talk an ear off if only someone would let him, but as far as June could discern, she wasn't his first choice when it came to socializing.
They spent at least a little time together, before she left town. Mostly while Soda was around, because he was the best at refusing whatever excuses she'd come up with, trying to avoid dinner at the Curtis home. It was hard to be there as often as it was easy. Sometimes it felt like she was intruding. Sometimes it was like she had always been there.
None of that must matter, though, for Darry to have sent out the wedding invitation that arrived for her back in March. Darrel S. Curtis Jr. and Maxine Webber… He calls her Max; June heard him say so, when she called shortly after finding the invitation in her mail. She couldn't wrap her head around it, could only vaguely remember Ponyboy mentioning a girlfriend, sometime between her leaving and Ponyboy following suit.
Darry had sounded embarrassed. She could imagine him rubbing the back of his neck when he told her, "Told Pony to give me your address. Wasn't sure you was still living in the same place, though."
It's a valid concern—she has a tendency to jump ship as needed, these days. It makes her feel like a shadow of herself, sixteen when she dropped out of school and went straight to work. Doing things that needed to be done because if she didn't, she knew no one else would. Nothing like this new version she's turned into, sticking with a shitty boyfriend to get her fix and living hand to mouth while trying to pretend it ain't hard.
It must show on her face that this is the sort of woman she's become. Dina unlocks her screen door and then June's standing in the living room with a vague sense of déjà vu. Nothing about this home feels familiar besides the act of standing there. The wallpaper is new, the floor polished in the afternoon light. Of course; Dina lives here alone and has for years. It makes her ache. Sonny ran off like the place was on fire, and here it is, still standing long after he left.
The only word June can come up to describe it is bright. No doubt Ponyboy would have a field day describing it—something saccharine, probably, something wholly untouched by all the memories that June can find here and in Dina, who steps into the kitchen with barely a word. She could do anything she wanted, she thinks. Make herself at home on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table, or maybe head into one of the bedrooms she knows the hallway to her left will lead her towards.
She won't, though. Not because she thinks it's rude, though she knows it is. She doesn't want to see how Sonny's room might look now. Can't stand to think of Dina cleaning it out and repurposing it, nor can she bare the sight of it untouched, a shrine to who he was at sixteen and every year before that. She's still surprised no one kicked up a fuss about him running off, but it wasn't like he dropped out of school until afterwards, that last summer he spent bothering June and digging deeper into King business besides.
Instead she follows after Dina, the kitchen as small and crowded as it is in her memory. The walls are painted pink, and there are flowers painstakingly sketched around the window over the sink in black and white. There are plates soaking, and it smells like jalapeños, no doubt from whatever salsa Dina whipped up for lunch. June's stomach rumbles, and she grimaces, embarrassed, when the noise makes Dina look back at her.
The smile she manages must look more like what Dina's used to, for it makes her relax for the first time since she let her in. June feels like a child again.
"When'd you get back?" Dina says. The steadiness in her voice throws June off. She can't remember ever hearing her sound so sure of herself, so untouched by whatever happened around her. She was always an unassuming woman, especially quiet as her addiction worsened. As a child she tried to teach June Spanish, since her daddy didn't speak a lick, but after Uncle Jim died the talking stopped and everything else went shit.
It's a little like what happened after Soda died, if June thinks on it long enough. Good think she doesn't.
"'Bout an hour ago," June says, "maybe two. Came in from California. My brother's getting married."
"Didn't know you knew about them." Her expression doesn't betray her. She turns back to the sink. The water stream is weak, and June watches her elbow jerk as she scrubs at a pot.
June flinches, tries not to let herself get mad. Figures the only ones who didn't have the full story were her and the boys. When she says at much, Dina snorts.
She turns around again, leans against the sink with its poorly running water. "Me and your ma was friends, once."
"That was before the dope, right?"
Dina doesn't take the bait. "Which of them is it? I hear one of them died a few years back."
"Pony's too young for that," June says, like her mother wasn't a few years older when she had her. She knows her daddy was about his age when he married his wife, too. She just can't picture Pony—long-haired, handsome as Sodapop, a dirty hippie like Darry must think of him—settling down with some girl anytime soon, or ever. He ain't ever seemed the type, even when he was some gangly junior in high school dating a girl the year ahead of him and blushing bright red when called out on it. "'S the oldest. Darry."
She doesn't like how impassive Dina's face is. Hates to be out of the loop, no matter that she's done little to deserve to remain there. She wants to be angry; yet another person knew a secret about her daddy when she didn't. But the part of her that's tired—still tired from all of 1965—can't bother to get worked up about it. Dina was friends with her mother, her mother who had a child with a married man and then kept her away from his other children. At twenty she can't make much more sense of it than she could at fifteen, even if she's had a man or two that she might have loved.
Dina says, "That why you came back, then?"
"Yeah," June says. She adjusts her bags. "California ain't all that fun, anyway."
Dina hums. It makes June feel defensive. She's had the feeling since she showed up. "Don't explain why you're here."
June is thankful she doesn't bring up the only reason why she might have stopped by. Sonny's dead. If she had to hear that said aloud, though, she might have lunged for the woman, no matter that her momma raised her to respect her elders. She thinks the last of it is somewhere in ribcage, the only thing keeping her from calling her mother and begging to come back home. Doesn't matter that she left on her volition; showing up like this, shaking apart for lack of a hit, it's as bad as spitting in her face. She can't see her mother, not right now. Maybe before the wedding. Maybe after.
She's got three weeks to get clean. Seeing Curly just now—that's just a necessity, the last time she'll do it. She digs her nails into her palm and pretends to believe it and says, "Wasn't sure if you had extra space."
Once upon a time the shed out back was like a playroom, full of Sonny's things from childhood, all of them bought on the Kings' dime. Who knows what Dina's done with it—if she's had it knocked down, like she did that lightning-struck tree, or if she's converted into something that better reflects whatever kind of woman she must be now, to no longer have that starved look in her eye that June sometimes sees in her reflection.
If she says no then she'll head back to the Shepard's. Odds are Curly will let her sleep in Angie's old room, especially if she offers to cook and clean. He's gullible like that, one of the few men not related to her that June can admit to trusting.
Dina says, "Them brothers of yours don't want you?"
June pushes her sleeve up and tries not to feel satisfied at the way it makes her jerk back. She says, smiling, "I just figured if anyone gets me these days, Dina, it might be you."