Sarah by J.T. LeRoy Page B

on it and I see it’s a raccoon penis bone.
    ‘Isn’t it great?!’ Pooh says, dangling it in front of me.
    My first thought is she earned one too. Glad must’ve somehow heard of her fame and rewarded her. ‘You got one too?’ I say.
    ‘Pardon?’ she says and cocks her head.
    ‘Uh, where’d you get that?’ I try to say mildly.
    ‘I found it.’ Her smile grows bigger.
    Unconsciously my hand searches my neck for my raccoon penis bone, and then I picture myself tossing it out the window into…
    ‘Funniest thing too,’ Pooh laughs a little too loud.
    I nod and, as if I’m in on what’s so funny, I give a hollow smile.
    ‘Le Loup lets the skunk cabbage grow around the house all winter ’cause it naturally gives out more heat than a goat’s butt in a pepper patch … melts the snow real nice so I don’t gotta get out to shovel…’
    I feel a saw blade of fear creep up my spine.
    ‘But come the warm weather, he has me get out the machete and chop it out afore the stink gets worse than a hog farm in August.’
    As Pooh rambles on, my head keeps nodding like a spring-loaded souvenir doll.
    ‘So, when I was hacking away’—Pooh slices the air with her hand—‘I found this necklace in the skunk bushes. It was in the ones under the window out back, ya know, near your bed?’
    ‘Did you show it to him?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice nonchalant.
    ‘Oh, your feet are all bleeding…’ she says, pointing at them.
    I glance at them and nod. ‘I didn’t notice.’
    ‘It’s all the pitcher plants, sundews, and bladder worts. They eat flesh. That’s how a lot of bodies get disposed of around here.’ Pooh shrugs. ‘In those bogs’—she gestures to where I had just performed my miracle—‘you float on the moss, like swinging in a hammock, while them plants chew you up nice and slow…’
    ‘Did you show it to him?’ I repeat between shallow breaths.
    ‘No. Should I? What’s it mean?’ Pooh narrows her perpetually swollen eyes at me.
    I stare at the little bloody bites on my feet. ‘It just means I once worked for someone else.’
    ‘I’ve been asking around about it.’
    ‘What’d ya hear?’
    ‘Just … nothing. I don’t ask everyone. I just didn’t have a clue who it could’ve belonged to…’ Pooh blinks her eyes in rapid succession. ‘Who’d you work for?’
    ‘Just someone I don’t work for now,’ I say and turn to the glass to see Le Loup heading toward the car.
    ‘Uh-huh… Look’—Pooh takes my hand—‘I don’t hate you, okay? I’m not trying to mess you. We can work together, ‘kay?’
    I regard her and nod as Le Loup pulls open the door.
    ‘Some fucking show!’ he says climbing into the driver’s seat, while Pooh inconspicuously slips the raccoon penis bone under her shirt. ‘Those Yanks is forkin’ over like they just been shown the afterworld!’ He reaches over Pooh and caresses my head. Pooh coughs.
    ‘The plants tried to eat her up,’ Pooh says and points to my bleeding feet.
    ‘Ahh, we got a new stigmata! Sure beats the fuck out of onion tears, don’t it!’ Le Loup laughs and we drive off.
     
     
    One day Pooh starts playing Barbies with me. Le Loup was out on his recruiting trips, looking for new lizards he could lure away from their respective lot daddies. Pooh kneels down on the floor near my bed where I’m resting after a long morning of blessing truckers. Without a word she slides out the vinyl cases of dolls. She lifts them onto the bed and sits next to them.
    ‘Damn, you’ve been busier than a cat covering crap on a marble floor, collecting all these dolls,’ Pooh laughs.
    ‘They’re okay.’ I shrug.
    ‘When I was little all I wanted was Barbies.’ Pooh sighs and her eyes take on a rare distant softness. ‘When Le Loup bought me from my uncle, he promised he’d get me so many Barbies I wouldn’t have room to fart,’ she says slowly, taking out the dolls and laying them tenderly on the bed.
    ‘How much he buy you for?’
    ‘Fuck