SKINLESS

Renny’s phone privileges were revoked when they discovered a swastika carved into his bed board. He had been at Ocean House for three days. The staff, arguing in the Off-Limits Room with their hands warmed by white Styrofoam coffee cups, took an hour before they decided on this as a punishment. Jill Cohen, the activities director, went into his room while Renny was playing pool with Damon, the one who’d stabbed himself in the thigh, and turned the swastika into four boxes and then put a roof and a chimney on top. She wanted to make smoke coming out of the chimney, but the fork did not carve curls well, so she left the hearth cold.

Jill drove forty-five minutes every other day to run the evening activities for the group of runaway teenagers living at Ocean House. This was her first job out of college, and she had been thrilled when they accepted her. “The kids are supposed to be really troubled but really great,” she’d told her college roommate, who was silently walking out the door with a banana box filled with books in her arms. “Good luck,” they had said to each other, and then college was over. Jill had a new boyfriend named Matthew who liked to eat foods so spicy they made him cough. His body was covered with fair, shining hair, and in bed, with the side lamp on, he seemed to almost glow. When he held her while they made love, she would sometimes imagine scratching off his skin, scratching repeatedly with her nails until the layers peeled off and she discovered that beneath that sheath of flesh, he was made entirely out of pearl.

How? she’d splutter, and he’d laugh and kiss light into her mouth.

She often remembered the day she first grew breasts, how her usually olive skin was covered with red, crisscrossing stretch marks, like a newly revealed secret map to the treasures of her body.

Renny ran away from home because his older brother Jordan came to visit. Returning home from a friend’s house one afternoon, Renny found Jordan’s green truck parked crooked, taking over the driveway. Renny kept going as if he didn’t even recognize the house. As he walked, he gathered a globule of spit in his mouth in case he saw anyone who looked, in any way, dark. He walked straight, over an hour, to the sagging framework of Ocean House because you only had to stay for a couple weeks, the food was supposed to be decent, and if you were lucky, he’d heard you might even meet other members of the Resistance there.

Jill hung up the phone with her mother, and looked searchingly at Matthew. He was sitting on the sofa, balancing the remote control on his knee. “You know,” she said, “that if we had kids, they’d be rightfully Jewish. You know that, right?”

He nodded. His eyes were on the TV.

“I think it would be okay with me, as long as you don’t think it’s totally important to teach them all about Christ, do you? You don’t believe in Christ, do you?”

“Not really, but Jill, we’re not getting married.”

“I know,” she said, pulling on her earlobe, “but just in case?”

“Jill,” he said, “we’re not getting married.”

But she couldn’t get the wedding out of her head. There would be both a rabbi and a priest, and the priest would have no hairs on the backs of his hands, like a young boy. She walked over to Matthew, eyebrows pulling down. “If you know that for sure,” she said, “then why are we going out?”

Matthew drew her onto his lap. “How long till you have to leave for work?”

“Half hour,” she said, absently rubbing the top of his wrist. “Just in case,” she said, “it’s mainly a cultural thing.”

“Half an hour is plenty of time,” he said and he reached his hand up her shirt. “Shhh, Jill, sshh.”

Renny’s father was dead, but his brother was eight years older, in the army, and handsome. He wrote home once a month, one side of one page, from a country with unusual stamps. Jordan was well loved by women, and had three illegitimate children spread over the country. He never called them, met them, touched them.

At thirteen, Renny captured his brother’s little black phone book in an effort to find information on these mothers. He carefully copied their names and numbers onto the inside of his closet door.

“Little shit,” Jordan said to Renny when he found him frozen in the closet, phone book in lap, “what are you doing with my book?”

Renny leaned his back carefully against the door, hiding his writing. “Just looking at all the people you know,” he said, half-holding his breath.

“Impressed?” Jordan asked, looking down and smiling.

“Oh yeah,” Renny said, “lots of girls.”

Jordan pulled his brother up and put one big hand on Renny’s neck. “Just don’t fuck with my stuff, little brother, okay? You ask first.” He tightened his grip, then let go. “Nosy fuck.”

Renny sank back to the floor. Jordan went into the backyard to smoke a cigarette. Renny waited until he heard the screen door slam, and then turned around to look at the numbers. They were smudged, but still readable. He leaned his forehead on the wood of the door frame and breathed in the bitter smell of the lacquer.

Jill’s mother, in phase three of her career, was the owner of a Jewish dating service. She tried to meet at least three new Jews a day and convince them that she held their ticket to marital bliss. Often, she did. Her agency had something like a 75 percent success rate because it only accepted customers who were willing to work and commit, and who had abandoned their Prince Charming/Virgin-Whore fantasies. Jill worked there during summers and had met every available Jewish man in Los Angeles. She dated some, liked some, but was required by the agency to fill out a date report after each encounter. Her mother liked to supplement her daughter’s questionnaire with new, handwritten inquiries, like: What do you appreciate in a good kiss, Jill? At first she answered these questions openly, believing it was part of that mother/daughter “we are now best friends” syndrome. But suddenly, her dates began to execute these perfect kisses, and the third time a man tipped up her chin gently before he laid his lips on hers, Jill ran, yelling, to her mother and quit the job. Her mother did not understand. But Jill remembered that the woman was, in fact, not her best friend but her mother, and proceeded to divulge the kissing facts only to her friends, telling her mother instead about her intricate opinions on all the recently released movies.

On Saturdays, when rates were lower, Renny called Boston, Atlanta and Hagerstown, Maryland. Often, the mothers were home taking care of their new babies, usually crying in the background.

“Hello, Mrs. Stevens,” he said in his best older voice, “I’m calling from Parents magazine, may I have a few minutes of your time?” If they said no, he plowed ahead anyway. “Is your baby happy? How old is your baby? Would you describe your baby as a fun-loving baby or a serious baby? Does your baby more resemble you or the father?” Sometimes he slipped up and asked questions too personal, and the women began to fall suspect, and hang up. He called them, on average, every two months. Sometimes he was a contest man, asking them to send photos to a P.O. box and enter My Baby’s the Cutest! contest. Maybe they would win $100,000! Sometimes he just pretended he’d gotten the wrong number. He liked to hear their voices. They sounded tired, but kind.

“We’re drawing our dreams tonight,” Jill announced to the group of seven teenagers in front of her.

“You must’ve been such a geek in high school,” Trina said.

“No hostile comments,” Jill said, smoothing down her red Gap T-shirt. “If you’re mad about something, maybe you should tell the group.”

“I don’t think any of us want to be here for that long,” Trina said. She smiled at Damon. “And it still wouldn’t change you being a geek in high school.”

Jill passed out pencils and papers. “I was not a geek,” she said. “Do you want to do this or not?”

“Go ahead, Jill,” said Damon, smiling. “Dreams. Cool. Trina’s a geek too, she just doesn’t want you to know.”

“Oh, shut up, Damon.” Trina rolled her foot into his lap. No sex was allowed at Ocean House, guests would be expelled. Damon circled her ankle quickly and gave it a squeeze. Trina pulled it out, and relaxed.

“Any crayons?” George asked. No one liked him. He smiled too much and made jokes about cyberspace that were either stupid or confusing. Jill pulled a 64 crayon box out of her huge, denim purse.

Renny watched her carefully rezip her purse. Then he leaned back and drew circles on his paper. He put the eraser end of his pencil in his stomach and pushed it in until it ached. He imagined Jill, emaciated and naked, her hair in strings, trying to speak to him in German, begging him for mercy.

“Did my drawing, Jilly,” he said.

She looked it over. “You dream about bubbles?”

“Ha ha.” He looked at the other residents who were, mostly, doodling. Damon was drawing a big eye.

Renny leaned over. “Eyes the color of sky …?” he asked. He hadn’t pegged Damon for the Resistance because he talked to Trina, the black girl, so much, but you never knew.

“You a poet?” Damon said, turning around to face Renny. “I never knew we had such a wonderful poet among us.” Renny leaned back. No one here but him. He filled in the circles with black crayon.

“I dream about the insides of olives,” he told Jill. “I dream about big black holes.”

One mother sent a photograph to Renny’s P.O. box. The baby was a girl, half black, dark, dark eyes and a serious face. Her arms reached toward the camera, wanting to play with the lens. “Nicole Shaw,” it read on the back, “ten months old.” Renny took the picture to the park with him and stared at his niece for an hour. He could feel her, how heavy she would be in his arms, how she would fall asleep and curl her head into his chest, enamored by the unfamiliar arms of a boy. Are you my daddy? she would ask. He looked into her eyes, and he could see in them, already, already, that death of loneliness, covering her like a thin gauze, impossible to remove. He picked up a twig and scraped at her face. The colors eased off, thin white stripes crossing through her tiny body. He erased Nicole and her arms and her eyes until she was just scratches on a piece of film.

•   •   •

Matthew broke up with Jill because she wouldn’t go on the pill. She said she’d go on the pill only if he would move in with her, and he looked at her like she was crazy, and said he hated condoms, they had to have a change. I get bladder infections, she told him, I can’t use a diaphragm. Let’s wait a little while, and maybe I will go on the pill, if it seems like we’re more serious. I’m not serious, he told her, I don’t want a real relationship now. Maybe you do, but you’re scared, she said. Maybe I’m not, he said back. I think we want different things. I have to go to work, she said. In a half hour. Go early, he said, maybe there’s traffic.

“We’re going to do trust exercises today,” Jill stated.

“Fabulous,” said Trina, glaring at Damon.

Jill cleared her throat and continued. “One of you is blindfolded, and the other leads the first person around the house and the backyard, being gentle and trustworthy, and then you switch. It’s scary because you’re used to using your eyes so much, but it’s a nice way to learn about trusting each other. Okay, pick partners.”

Trina and Damon were an obvious pair. The two cocaine addicts who giggled a lot and were pretty nice to Renny grabbed hands. George, the outcast, looked toward Renny who looked away, realizing there was an odd number; George was paired with Lana, the very quiet, beautiful one who moved in slow motion like she was underwater and never told anyone why she was there.

“Did your math wrong, Jilly,” Renny said, kicking out his boots and running his palm over the smooth splinters of hair poking out of his skull.

“No, you’ll be my partner, Renny,” Jill said. He blanched.

“I don’t want to do it,” he said.

“It’s tonight’s activity,” Jill said. Her eyes were tired from crying about Matthew. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”

“You go. Get blindfolded,” Renny said. She selected a blue bandanna from the stack. “Do you trust me, Jilly?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, tying the cloth at the back of her head and letting the triangles fall over most of her face. She stood directly in the middle of the room, arms straight down her sides. “Please don’t call me Jilly, Renny. Lead me around. I trust you.”

Her mother had taken her to lunch that day. Jill hadn’t wanted to mention the breakup with Matthew.

“I forget, honey, is he cute?” her mother asked, bright eyes boring into her daughter. Jill had never brought Matthew home to be scrutinized.

“He’s not blond,” Jill said, “if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” her mother said, “I’m sure he’s a very nice boy. His parents come from where, again?”

“I don’t know.” Jill wished she could lay her cheek down on her plate and just rest there with the cold porcelain. “Whatever. It’s not serious.” Her voice was fading.

“But do you want it to be?” Mrs. Cohen asked, a piece of French bread stilled in her hand.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it, whether or not I want it to be. It’s not.”

“Well, it could always become serious, right?” She scooped up some white butter with her knife and spread it on the bread. “Does he talk about commitment?”

“We broke up yesterday, Mother,” Jill said finally. “It’s not an issue. We’re broken up. Stop asking questions.”

Jill’s mother took a bite out of the bread and chewed for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and smiled.

After he got the photo in the P.O. box, Renny painted the inside of his closet door with white paint. He painted slowly up, then down, until the numbers had vanished, and the paint would never flake away. He went into the bathroom and tried to throw up, but he couldn’t. Grabbing the leftover paint, he walked down to the train station. There was an empty cave where his older brother used to fuck girls, or smoke pot, or whatever he did before he left for the army. Renny painted seventeen swastikas, one for each year of his life, all over the cave and then curled up underneath them and went to sleep. The swastikas looked like spider boomerangs that he could fling out into the world. They would clear a path, and then come back, to guide him to safety.

•   •   •

Renny led Jill through the kitchen.

“Counter’s on your left, fridge on your right,” he said.

“Thanks.” She walked up the stairs and down the stairs and through the back door into the yard.

“So do you like it here, Renny?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. “Step up. Just walk straight here.” They reached the cliffs overlooking the beach, across the street from Ocean House. He could see the distant figures of the other residents, their tentative arms. He heard Trina laugh.

“Are we going too far?” Jill asked.

“We’ll switch soon.”

He stopped her at the edge of a cliff. The ground beneath them crumbled down for thirty feet, and then led into the sand, and then the water.

“We’re at the edge of a cliff, Jill,” Renny said, standing behind her, his hands cupping her shoulders.

“I’m trying to trust you here, Renny,” she said. The wind blew her T-shirt to her skin. She watched the strange colors underneath her blindfold, and pictured Matthew’s back growing smaller and smaller and how the world seemed to close in on her then.

“I hated what you did to my swastika,” Renny said.

“Well I couldn’t just leave it there,” she said back. The palms of his hands were on her upper arms, warm. “I hate swastikas.”

“See, Jill,” Renny said, “it’s eyes the color of sky, not of earth, that’s what it’s about, see, that’s what we say. Eyes the color of sky, not of earth.” He stared at her hair; it was dark and long and felt soft where it touched his hands.

“But Renny,” she said, “your eyes are brown.”

He gripped her shoulders. He wondered if by the time the two weeks were up, and he returned home, Jordan would be gone.

Jill pictured the wedding again. Except now the priest was nowhere to be found, the groom was nowhere to be found, and it was just herself and the rabbi. His arm was tan and thick with black hair. See our skin, the rabbi was telling her, this skin was made for the desert.

“It’s a long way down,” Renny said.

She imagined scratching at the skin on the rabbi’s arm, scratching at her own arm, scratching them down, until underneath the thin layers of flesh she found out just what exactly they were made of.

“Are you scared?” Renny held her shoulders tightly.

“Should I be?”

Renny didn’t answer. Jill shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, “a little.”

He put his arms around her chest, and brought her closer to him. One thumb very gently brushed against the side of her nipple, standing up from the chill. She was quiet.

“Is that okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She breathed out, and closed her eyes beneath the blindfold. Her skin was rising. I am made out of dirt, she thought.

“Do you want to switch?” Renny asked quietly. His hand was light against her breast.

I am made out of gold.

“No,” she said, “do you?”

“No.” He hugged her in closer and listened to the water rush at them from far away.