SAMSUNG CSCYou don’t want any surprises. Say, “Housekeeping!” Say it again. Louder. A man with a watermelon belly opens the door, and another sitting on the bed says, “Hello, little lady.” He stares at the box TV. A toilet flushes, and a third comes out of the bathroom, pulling up his zipper. “Want some help?” the one at the door asks. Say, “It’s against policy.” He laughs like it’s a raunchy joke. Unload toiletries from the metal rolling cart. Wait until the men walk toward Happy Chef before going inside. Two men and a woman with hair-sprayed bangs softly moan from the TV. In the bathroom find the red, lacy bra that’s been hanging on a makeshift clothesline for two weeks. Imagine that one of these truck-drivers loves the woman who wears it, empty DD cups dangling above so many opening legs in Penthouse and Hustler on the tank of the toilet.

*

The rooms are dark, private places, like the places your Catholic mother tells you it’s wrong for young girls to touch. Families don’t stay here. It’s too rundown. Not really an inn at all. Just beds and bathrooms that suit truckers and the migrant workers who sleep nine in a room meant for four, eighteen brown eyes staring at the blue polish on your toenails. They stick creased pictures of their girlfriends into the corners of the bathroom mirror next to Mary, mother of God, and her fiery red heart.

*

Yank back a polyester bed cover and scan for dark hairs and stains. Say, “Let’s just remake it. Who will know?” (The owner and his wife live in two rooms near the lobby. “It takes longer when you clean together,” the wife complains about you and the new girl but they never check.) Use the time it would’ve taken for you to strip and remake beds to watch Guiding Light and eat cheese puffs from the vending machine. Wipe your mouth on the towels. Wish it were true when the new girl flips her dark hair over her shoulder and says, “You’re so bad.”

The men and women who arrive in separate cars with Nebraska license plates—but share rooms—always leave when the Big Rigs are idling, before the sun is up. Pluck a used condom from the floor, another one out of the tub. Say, “Can you imagine having an affair here?” The new girl can. She unlocks a room on the backside where the owner never puts any guests, where noise rises off Interstate 80 like metallic steam. An hour later her boyfriend drives away in a car that’s too wrecked for someone so far removed from his high school years. Listen while she tells you they lay first this way, then that way. He touches her here, then there. “Do you think I’m gross?” she asks. You’re still deciding.

*

When you’re alone in the rooms of men, open drawers and suitcases. Put aftershave on fingertips cracked from cleaning products. Feel the sting. Smell cologne left on shirts. Slip nickels into the pockets of your jean shorts. Take a cookie from an opened package and put it whole into your mouth. Fall backwards onto the bed and shut your eyes. Long to be behind these closed doors with someone, anyone. No one comes to mind. Afterwards, walk to Happy Chef with the new girl and sink your fork into a short stack of pancakes. Wait for your mothers to pick you up. Hers is always late.

*

Say, “Housekeeping!” Say it again, louder. Nearby, an expensive two-door car is parked in a space where weeds sprout from cement. Marvel at the incongruity. The door opens a crack, then wider and he’s naked—bare, except for curly brown hair there. “Are you coming in?” he asks. Don’t let him see your hands shake. Push the metal rolling cart that’s between you a few inches forward so that he stumbles backward. Show him that, at fifteen, you’ve seen it all before—a room where a brown wilderness picture hangs on the wall, where a lamp is bolted to a nightstand, where men watch women in spirit or in flesh joining and unjoining and yes, yes, yessing; where young girls wipe the piss and shit from an identical toilet hour after hour, summer day after summer day—until they’ve forgotten which room they’re in and what day it is and if they should stay or run away. Until they forget what it’s like to go home.

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Jody Keisner’s creative nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Brain Child, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. She lives, loves, parents, writes, and teaches in Omaha, Nebraska–smack dab in the heart of the U.S.A.

Photo by Dinty W. Moore