Freaks and Revelations (4 page)

Early 1977

THREE YEARS BEFORE

LOS ANGELES COUNTY

“Get me high, dude,” I say to Roy. “Get me high.”

I like saying that. I like how that sounds. It reminds me of Carl. I also like getting high. The older I get, the more it seems I need to stop my brain from over-thinking. I over-think a lot, which drives me batty. Sometimes I write poetry about it. I don’t tell anybody because they’d probably laugh. Sometimes, drinking or smoking is just easier than sitting in my room writing down how bad I feel.

Anyway, it’s Friday.

Friday, me and Roy like to hang out at the trailer park where he lives with his dad. It’s way the hell out and I’m not supposed to be here.

“I already told you,” Roy says, “I ain’t got nothing.”

“Where’s your old man, dude? He’d buy.”

“I don’t know. Out.”

“Come on, Roy.”

“Well, I know this one guy…”

“Let’s do it, man. Let’s go.”

*   *   *

I made the mistake once of bringing Roy home. He stayed for dinner. He was polite; he even made conversation with my parents. When he left, Mom told me I’d “better not” see him again.

“Why not?”

“He’s not like us, Doug.”

“What’s wrong with him? He’s white.”

“Don’t sass your mother,” Dad grunted.

“He’s trash, Doug.” Mom sighed like I was somehow mentally impaired. “He’s not our people.”

Yeah, right, who is?

It’s just me at home now. Carl never came back after Thanksgiving. I had to sneak his stuff out to him. He stayed with Chels and her boyfriend for a while, then moved in with some hippies in Hollywood—great, huh? Just when we were starting to get tight. My dad tried calling the cops to bring him back, but Carl’s over eighteen, so no go. The best part was when the black guy got caught again and Carl refused to testify. He dropped the charges. He made sure Chels told my parents.

“What’s wrong with that boy?” my dad raged, stomping back and forth through the living room. Mom didn’t say a word. She’d probably figured it out, like me and Chels did. Nobody walks up to a car they don’t know in the middle of the night unless they’re buying or selling something. Carl and his buddies weren’t as innocent as he pretended.

The guy Roy knows lives in a motel that looks like Dorothy’s house after it dropped out of the tornado. Lots of blacks around too, dealing drugs, hanging out with their skanky chicks. Who knows what
they’re
doing.

“Watch your mouth,” Roy advises, then changes up his walk. I do too. “Whatever you do, don’t look scared.”

He knocks on a door in the very back corner of the motel. A short dark-skinned guy opens it. Mexican. Greasy hair sticks to both sides of his face. He stares first at me, blinks and takes in Roy, then turns around. We follow him in. The room smells of pee and bleach, with some kind of rank incense burning in the corner that makes my eyes water. Off-key music blasts from a stereo perched on an orange crate. The guy squints at us, eyelids half shut. The drapes are drawn. He doesn’t say his name.

“Hell no,” he tells us, “I don’t go buy no booze.” He’s got such a strong Spanish accent, I can barely understand him. “But I got NEB onna match head, ’
migo,
you want some of that?”

“What’s NEB?” I whisper to Roy.

“Connebenol,” Roy says. “You’ll like it.” He nods at the guy. “How much?”

“What you got?”

Roy forks over ten. Poor as he is, he’s always got cash for drugs. The guy scrapes yellow goopy shit off the end of the match onto a hand mirror, then chops it with a razor, leaving a wet film on the glass. He snorts some up through a little straw and hands the whole thing to Roy. Roy snorts and passes it to me.

“Don’t take too much or your ears gonna fall off,” the guy warns, then laughs, sounding like an old car starting up. I put the straw to my nose and snort.

A second later—a damn popcorn popper explodes inside my head! My jaw drops, all by itself; I can’t close it. I drool like a stupid baby. My arms and legs go numb. I crumple back onto the couch, feel sweat trickle down both my sides. I see Roy at my side, in the exact same state. The Mexican guy’s not shitting us. I can’t move at all.

It’s
completely
scary.

It’s completely
amazing
. I catch one more glimpse of Roy then nod off.

*   *   *

I’m rolled from the couch and onto my feet. I’m not sure where I am or what the hell’s happening until I see Roy, up and wobbly too. Right. NEB. The Mexican guy. How long have we been here?

“Time to go,
mijos,
” he says, and pushes us gently toward the door. In the parking lot, there are only black faces, seems like everywhere, staring with dead fish eyes, talking shit. One of them laughs and shakes his head, reminding me of my dad. Weird. Somebody grabs my arm and I almost shit my pants until I see it’s Roy.

“C’mon.” We stumble over by a concrete wall, slump down behind a dumpster. “I can’t walk yet, dude,” he says. Me either. We hide there as the drug slowly wears off and feeling creeps back.

Something hard lands against the dumpster. A girl cries out. Roy puts his finger up to his lips and I nod. I may be wasted but I’m not about to call attention to us.

“Bitch. I tol’ you ’bout that shit,” a black guy says, and slaps her. She cries out again. He says something I can’t hear, she starts crying and then her high heels click away. He lights a cigarette, inhales, follows the girl, boots clunking on the cement.

“Damn,” I whisper.

“No shit,” Roy agrees. Nobody should hit a girl. Even a black one.

“Dude. What time is it, man?” I ask a few minutes later.

“Why? You got something you gotta do?”

This strikes me as hysterically funny. “No, man, I got nothing to do. Not a damn thing.”

*   *   *

Until two nights later.

It’s late. I’m home, downstairs, watching TV; my parents have already gone to bed. I’ve fixed myself a screwdriver and swiped another pack of my mom’s Pall Malls. Why they never notice this is beyond me. I used to try to hide it, pour water into the vodka bottles or Coke into bourbon, but why bother? Maybe they figure they already raised the two kids they planned to have. Or maybe they just don’t care. I hold my history book, which I’ve not read, and click through channels until I find Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

“Easy like Sunday morning…”

I scowl at the TV. Even homework’s better than the Commodores. I find the chapter we’re supposed to be reading and manage to drown the music out until Kirshner shows up and announces the next group.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the Ramones!”

I don’t look up until a chord sounds. Damn.

What is this?

Guys with long hair, tight jeans, clothes all ripped up, looking like skinny bikers, like they don’t give a damn about anything. One guy stands taller and skinnier than me even, with a Dutch-boy haircut, a bowl cut. I can’t take my eyes off him. He holds his guitar real low, plays his music with legs spread wide. Every once in a while he screams out “1, 2, 3, 4,” in
German
.

Who are these people?

“They are forming a straight line!”

I set down my drink and reach for a cigarette, never shifting my eyes from the television.

“These kids are losing their minds!”

“Let’s hear it for the Ramones!” Kirshner shouts.

The Ramones.

I try the name out loud. “The Ramones.”

Singing directly to me.

“It’s
Punk Rock
, man,” Roy says the next day. “Where you been?” We’re at Glenn’s house. I’m playing them “Rocket to Russia,” which I just discovered.

“I know it’s Punk Rock, asshole,” I say. “It’s just, I didn’t get it until last night.”

“What’s to get?” Roy mumbles.

“Yeah, well, if you like
them
, you need to check out the Sex Pistols,” Glenn says. He always thinks he knows everything. He shoves in a new tape before I can say a word.

“I am an anti-Christ, I am an anarchist,

Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it…”

“They’re twice as good live.” Glenn says, handing me the roach clip. He picks at one of his nasty zits. “I saw ’em in Frisco, at Winterland.”

“Like hell you did,” Roy says. I light the roach, suck at it, burn my lip, and pass it to Roy.

“I did,” Glenn says. “Sid Vicious, man. Johnny Rotten. Outrageous, dude.” He starts rolling a new joint. “They punched out the audience, man. Punched ’em out! You shoulda seen it. You shoulda seen that audience, man—safety pins stuck in their cheeks, through their eyebrows. Rings through their noses.” He lights it, takes a drag, shakes his head, remembering. “Sid Vicious
jumped off
the stage, Doug, right on top of the crowd! Still singing!” He hands me the joint. “People wore dog collars, man. Chicks walked around with leashes on.”

“I got to see this shit, man,” I say, inhaling. I feel the truth of it deep inside me. “I got to see this shit.”

1977

THREE YEARS BEFORE

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

{1}

God, his eyes are blue.

Even from across the studio, they glow; I can’t look away. He tosses his dance bag to the corner, grabs the barre with both hands, and leans into it, stretching one amazingly muscular calf, then the other. Black hair, black dance pants, black wifebeater, the best butt in the world—Jonathan Grant, the most gorgeous boy in our class. In the whole San Francisco Dance Academy, for that matter.

Does Davy know I’m watching him?

Do I care?

My body tingles. I stumble over the legs of a girl stretching nearby, mumble sorry, and wonder how the hell I’m going to do ballet feeling like this. He glances my way, catches me staring, and smiles.

Jonathan Grant smiles.

At me, just turned twelve and small for my age—
me,
the mouse in the corner, okay but not great, nothing special, one of many. Until right now, this minute. Because not only does he smile—he walks toward me. I grab the barre and try to pretend a second position grande plié—but too late. He knows. My cheeks burn.

“Hey.” His voice snakes inside my skin, wiggles up my spine.

“Hey,” I croak. We’ve talked a couple of times the past few weeks, about classes or the
Nutcracker
auditions mostly, nothing personal. Someone always interrupted—older girls especially cannot keep away from this boy. He glances in the direction of the double-door storage room, back at me, and—if this is even possible—his eyes get bluer. He smiles, a different smile, an I-like-you smile, and mouths, “After class?”

I nod, just once because otherwise I’ll have to scream out loud to everyone that Jonathan Grant wants to meet me after class. Not some stupid older interrupting girl—
me
.

I can’t breathe right for a few seconds and hope like hell Davy isn’t looking. Jonathan strolls to his usual place at the barre just as Madame Nevonski enters, gray hair tight in a bun and skirt swirling. She taps her cane twice on the floor.

“Class. To the barre.”

I love her raspy smoker’s voice, which reminds me of my aunt Dora, and her thick Russian accent. She demonstrates with arms only, then taps the cane again and eases her plump self onto the tall stool near the piano. It’s hard to believe she’s one of those amazingly beautiful dancers pictured in the gallery in the hall.

The pianist begins. As one, thirty-five kids plié into our first of four Saturday classes. Davy’s at the barre near Jonathan, competing with the better boy dancers, as usual, and being brilliant. As usual. Right now, I don’t care if everybody thinks my big brother’s the next Baryshnikov. Jonathan Grant and I are meeting in the storage room after class.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Davy asks, when finally (finally!) the longest class I’ve ever taken ends.

“Nothing.” I make a face at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“
You,
” he says, and makes a face back. I stick my tongue out. He wipes sweat from his forehead and the back of his neck, and from over by the piano, Isabelle Sanchez watches. She’s almost sixteen. Not-quite-fourteen-year-old boys are not supposed to look like my brother does, manly and powerful with his square shoulders and muscles. Everybody likes him. Even Madame Nevonski, who smiles now and nods at him as she sashays her old dancer’s body out of the room. Davy stares at me; he tilts his head the way he does when he’s trying to figure something out.

“What? I got a cramp, okay?” I massage my calf.

“Davy!” Isabelle calls.

“Your girlfriend’s calling,” I tease.

“Shut up. She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Davy, are you coming?” She sings it.

“Tell
her
that,” I say.

*   *   *

“Hey there, pretty,” Jonathan whispers when I open the storage room door. My legs go weak. He peeks through a cloud of green and gold tulle painted for the Sugar Plum Fairy. I take a sharp deep breath; this is really happening. He holds out his hand; I wade through tutus and fabric to grab it. The skin where we touch warms instantly; I imagine it glowing, embers in a fireplace.

I step over a box of fairy wings and settle on the floor beside him. He slips his arm around me and scoots me closer. His eyes!—Jesus God—I can’t quite catch my breath. He cups my face, more warmth and light where his palm caresses my cheek. He’s breathing faster now too; his eyes melt, hazy and soft. I hear Ms. Marguerite’s beginning ballet class start next door. Another world.

“I want to kiss you,” he whispers. “Can I kiss you?” I nod—at least I think I do; I can’t be sure of anything right now. He leans close, slides his hand down the back of my head. I put my arms around him. We kiss—my first kiss ever. His lips are soft, sooooo soft, his breath smells of mint, he has a faint musky odor from dancing; he’s perfect. Being touched by him goes beyond words; the only one I can find is
grand
.

This feeling is
grand
.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, my voice husky.

“Yeah,” he replies, his voice husky too.

“Is it okay, I mean, that we—” I try to smile but the muscles don’t seem to be working.

“Shhhhh. Yes. It’s wonderful.” He kisses my nose, then my lips, and pulls back to look at my face. “Oh my God, you have such beautiful eyes.” He kisses me again. He whispers sweet words, touches my face, strokes my hair, kisses me more. I kiss him back. I’ve dreamed this, I’ve hoped it, but nothing I imagined was ever huge enough to describe how it actually feels.

Grand.

Like a first taste of air after someone’s held your face underwater. Like falling off a cliff in a dream, and learning that you can fly.

I am
here
.

Like a window flung open, sharp fresh winter wind whipping through a closed-up, cluttered room, clearing it, making it new.

I am totally and absolutely
here
.

This is real.

This is me.

I note it, so that I can keep it. My body, my mind, and my heart are finally all in the same room.

Grand.

{2}

“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty…”

Davy stares across at me as Mom says grace. Under the table, he shoves Kaitlyn’s chair with his feet, once—and getting no reaction—again. We all glare at him, just as Mom adds, “Amen.”

She wears yellow tonight, her best color, a fitted shirtwaist dress I remember from last year’s back-to-school night. Brushing a lock of hair back from her face, she picks up her fork, the signal that we can start eating. Her nails are crimson red, like a model’s, fingers and toes. I used that exact nail polish one day last month when I stayed home from school. I had the house to myself. I did my feet, so no one would notice, but Mom came home early. I heard her car in the driveway and panicked. We’re never supposed to go in her bedroom. I shoved my feet in socks, ruining all my work, and forgot to put the bottle away. Kaitlyn got blamed.

“Wake up!” Kaitlyn hisses at me now.

“Mom asked how was your day?” Marianne prompts.

“It was fine, thank you,” I say, smiling. Jonathan Grant’s blue eyes float through my mind and my cheeks get warm.

Davy tips his head that way. “How could it be fine?” he taunts. “You said you hurt your leg.”

“I said I had a cramp,” I said, shooting him a warning. Why is he always trying to start trouble? I knew things about him too. “But thanks for asking.”

“Davy’s a good boy,” Mom says. Behind her back, Marianne rolls her eyes. Davy pretends he doesn’t see. He’s the favorite, but it’s not his fault and we’re all used to it. He’s a prodigy; a dancer, like Mom used to be. He could do any dance you showed him from the time he could walk. Mom took him to San Francisco to study at the Conservatory, and a year later, sent me too. I think she was hoping I’d be a star like Davy, but I’m not. Still I liked it, especially the shows—getting costumes and doing makeup and going on tour. I love it now.

It’s Davy’s and my night to clear the table. Marianne and Kaitlyn wait in the living room. When we’re done, Mom kneels to start. We kneel too. Jesus looks down on us. Jesus watches us everywhere we go in this room. He’s the biggest statue and the first thing you see when you come in our new house. I have nightmares about His eyes following me.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…”

“Our Father, who art in Heaven…”

We say our parts; Mom starts Thanks and Blessings. Davy hits Kaitlyn with a kernel of corn he stowed in his cheek. Kait sticks her tongue out and I squeeze my lips together to keep from laughing.

“O great and almighty God!” Mom prays on, “we kneel before You to thank You with our whole hearts for all the favors which You have bestowed upon us this day.…

Kaitlyn pokes Davy, who kicks his foot in her general direction and lands hard on her thigh.

“UNH!” she grunts. We all hold our breath—

“…for all those other mercies, which we do not now recall…”

—but Mom doesn’t hear. Davy spits another kernel; this one smacks Marianne dead on the cheek. My whole body is jiggling from holding in my laughter. Davy pushes Kaitlyn, she leans over onto me. Nobody falls, but the air’s disturbed, movement ripples through. Suddenly, Mom stops praying and stands up, as still as ice.

“Shit,” Marianne whispers.

“Excuse me?!?”

“Nothing, Mama. It slipped out. I’m very sorry, please forgive me?” Marianne says, her face absolutely blank. We’re all good at “blank.”

I hear a truck grind its gears to a stop at the corner light. I think of my father. The truck starts up. I wonder if it has a sign painted by my dad. If maybe I met the trucker one time, when he came to pick it up. We lower our hands and watch Mom pace slowly back and forth, searching our faces. We do not get off our knees. She doesn’t look beautiful now. She looks mean, like she could do anything at all to us and not care. I hate the feeling in my stomach and the faces of my brother and sisters.

Dad’s punishments were always a formula—three swats for cussing, six for fighting, more for the older kids, less for the younger, then it was done, over, forgotten. Mom adds them up, keeps track. We don’t make mistakes, we commit sins. That sin attaches to the one before, and those before that, and as the list gets longer, each one of us kids gets closer to HELL. I wish they weren’t divorced.

“Okay. Who started it?”

No one answers. Snitching’s okay with small stuff like being late to class, but not this. This was interrupting evening prayers. If we give up Davy, we have to give up Kaitlyn and me, and Marianne. There’s no telling what Mom might do.

“Last chance.”

Silence.

“All right, then, on the wall. All of you.” We stand, our knees imprinted with the pattern of the tile on the fireplace, and find a place along one of the living room walls.

“This is the Lord’s house.” She pauses, walks across the room like the Nazi guy on
Hogan’s Heroes
. “Respect that or find somewhere else to live. Do you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” we say as one.

“Good. Now pray that Jesus forgives you your sins.”

I stand with my nose an inch away from the shades on the window that faces the street. Mom kneels by the fireplace, next to the statue of Jesus. Mother Mary’s on the other side. This is her shrine: holy candles and small statues of saints perched on the mantel, a picture of each of us on the wall above, Jesus and Mary on the pavers in front. On a small table to the left is a tiny clear bowl, my mother’s greatest prize, holy water brought from Lourdes by Father O’Malley, just for her.

Mom prays a Hail Mary and then asks for forgiveness. “Blessed Father, I know I have sinned.” I wish she’d take her Jesus and go live in the church. We could go back to Dad’s. Except then her voice changes and she starts to sound like a little lost girl, which makes me want to hug her and tell her it’ll all be okay. But Jesus’s eyes bore into the back of my head and I don’t dare move.

I hate this feeling. I miss my dad. I blink back tears because I don’t want to get laughed at by my brother. I focus on this morning and hiding in the storage room. I think of blue eyes and sweet kisses. I try to remember how it felt to be full and there and real.

“I have many crosses to bear,” Mom prays. “Help me, Father, for I cannot bear them alone.”

{3}

Davy presses his transistor radio to his ear, closes his eyes, and lets his feet rehearse choreography. We’re on BART, heading for San Francisco. We audition today for
The Nutcracker
; Mom’s driving over later to watch.

Davy can do whole dances in his head, tapping his feet, twitching his body, practicing without even standing up. People can’t tell what he’s doing. They don’t even notice, but he wouldn’t care if they did. “Tough shit,” he’d say. I like that about him. I wish I could stand up and be loud. I actually like my brother a lot; besides my dad, he’s my best friend. We spend the most time together because of dance.

Now, as we head down through the tunnel that goes under the Bay, just in that moment of darkness before the tunnel light flickers on, I smile—because I have my brother, because it’s Saturday, and mostly because now, boys like me. Some kind of secret beacon switched on in me after Jonathan. Boys who never even glanced my way now speak as we pass in the halls; boys who’d ignored me in class send messages with their eyes across the studio as we work at the barre. Boys I admired but never talked to sit with me to chat at break. I don’t even care that Jon likes someone else now. Michael likes me, and he’s even cuter.