Cow

I looked up the menu before leaving. I knew which combination plate I wanted and I knew how the waiter was going to feel serving it to me. Momma looked her head in the room and jiggled her eyes at me. I stood up and turned her way and she asked how I felt. I said nervous and grabbed my brush to run through my hair one more time. Because I sighed before I told her "nervous", she sighed before telling me she'd be in the car

Momma dropped me off at La Poblanitas and it was his responsibility to bring me home safe. I asked the waitress if there were any tables open instead. She looked me head to toe and took me to a table next to the bathroom. I said the booth would be fine. I looked at the floral wood carvings on of the booth seat. I looked at the baby at the table of ten in front of us. He ate rice out of his fists and stared back at me. Under their table, now smudged into the tile, there was a pile of rice and cheerios.

My legs stuck to the dark green vinyl on the booth and I stared at the combination plate selection of the menu until he arrived. I worried my skirt was too short and that he might get the wrong idea of me. I thought about how I would thwart off his advances if I needed to. It sounded fun in my head, rejection.

He barely spoke and he stared at my plate when I finished all my food before he did until I met his eyes. I almost wanted to say I missed my lunch break at work but I didn't feel like lying today I peeled myself off the vinyl and went to the bathroom. “This is for my momma, this is for daddy, this is for my own good” I stared at myself in the mirror until a woman in a pink dress came in. She held the door for me and we made eye contact and it felt too warm in the restaurant.

He paid and we left the restaurant. I asked him what he liked to do in his spare time and he said he didn’t have any. I said maybe it’s best if we don’t see each other again. At that, he finally turned to me and looked me in the eyes. Worried I made him angry, my mind began searching for words to fill the tense space in between us. We sat in his two-seater truck. I did like that he had a classic no-nonsense truck, not one of those monster trucks you see all the rich kids and their daddies drive. I couldn’t do it. I had no words.

Something about his ginger scruff on his face made me want to reach out and touch his face. I wanted to feel the heat radiating off his tanned skin and I wanted his green eyes to look into mine. I wondered what he smelled like. I could smell his cologne and it was nice, not too musky or strong. But I wanted to know what he smelled like waking up in the morning before the sun rise. I imagined myself, his cheek in my hands leaning in and kissing him passionately. But I didn’t.

He said if that’s what I really wanted then he would just take me home and lose my number. I said I think it’d be best for us both, I said I didn’t think that we were each other’s type. He scoffed at this and looked forward into the blinding 6-pm sun bouncing off the asphalt. I told him I’m sorry if I was too quiet and that I didn’t know enough about him to ask that many questions. I told him he could have tried asking me about my life, other than my job in the produce section of the grocery store. He wanted to know all about how we got our grapes and corn and what not off the trucks and onto the shelves. I thought at first he was just humoring me but it took until we were in the truck to realize that that was genuine interest from him.

He wouldn’t say anything now and rolled down his window to smoke a cigarette. I was quiet for a minute before I asked him for one. He handed me the pack without looking. I lit it and asked if he thought my skirt was too short. This made him turn toward me a bit, his eyes making contact with my skin. He said it was. I asked him if it’s because I’m fat and he told me not to say that. I told him it wasn’t a bad word and I blew smoke out my window. I watched a bird eat scraps stuck to a rice crispy treat wrapper someone dropped on the sidewalk. 

We smoked three more each in silence and he pulled out of the parking lot. We drove with the windows down and I looked at how much litter was pushed up against the sidewalks. He dropped me off at my parents house and my daddy was outside to greet us. My daddy turns to me and asks to have a moment alone with him.

I walk up the steps to the porch swing and sit next to it on mom's ornate metal love seat. I helped her stuff and sewed the cushions last summer and my body remembered the pain of sticking the needle under my fingernail. I winced. I looked around our land and thought about what they were talking about. It wasn't even close to being dark out yet but the sun cast long, spindly shadows across the yard of the red yucca plants. I don’t want daddy to treat him differently than his other ranch hands now just because it wasn’t right for us. 

They shook hands and he left. Daddy came up and sat on the porch swing. He talked about something about the fence on some acre needing repair for forty-five minutes, never knew anyone could talk so much about a fence before.