Girlchild (17 page)
I
never did talk to Mama about the Hardware Man. He had his threats:
don’t fucking say anything to anyone ever
. She had hers:
I’ll kill anyone who tries
. And they ran together:
I’ll fucking kill anyone who tries to say anything to anyone ever
. Even after he was gone, I kept my mouth shut. The ember tip of her cigarette was too bright. I was stuck between a scary place and a scary place, so I just waited it out, waited for questions that never came, and after it was all over, except in my dreams, I tried to forget. But one night, long after the Hardware Man and Carol had gone, after I started watching my ownself, tucking myself in when Mama worked nights, on one of the rare nights off that she stayed home, Mama comes into the living room where I’m watching
Family Ties
and stands there smoking until a commercial. And then she turns down the volume and speaks his name, and through the wail of blood in my ears I hear her say that he, “Uncle—” the blood rushes through my ears so that parts of what she says are drowned in the roar, but I hear there was a fall off a slick roof, something about rain and the roll of duct tape he’d been using to fix a leak falling down after him. And the uncle who isn’t an uncle is paralyzed from the neck down.
never did talk to Mama about the Hardware Man. He had his threats:
don’t fucking say anything to anyone ever
. She had hers:
I’ll kill anyone who tries
. And they ran together:
I’ll fucking kill anyone who tries to say anything to anyone ever
. Even after he was gone, I kept my mouth shut. The ember tip of her cigarette was too bright. I was stuck between a scary place and a scary place, so I just waited it out, waited for questions that never came, and after it was all over, except in my dreams, I tried to forget. But one night, long after the Hardware Man and Carol had gone, after I started watching my ownself, tucking myself in when Mama worked nights, on one of the rare nights off that she stayed home, Mama comes into the living room where I’m watching
Family Ties
and stands there smoking until a commercial. And then she turns down the volume and speaks his name, and through the wail of blood in my ears I hear her say that he, “Uncle—” the blood rushes through my ears so that parts of what she says are drowned in the roar, but I hear there was a fall off a slick roof, something about rain and the roll of duct tape he’d been using to fix a leak falling down after him. And the uncle who isn’t an uncle is paralyzed from the neck down.
She doesn’t take her eyes from the TV and I don’t take my eyes from her hand, steady, her fingers wrapped around a can of warm Diet Pepsi, Jim Beam inside. Don’t take my eyes from her cigarette
angling between her fingers, from her wedding ring sparkling in the blues and grays from our quiet set.
angling between her fingers, from her wedding ring sparkling in the blues and grays from our quiet set.
“Oh,” I say, because someone’s got to say something, still watching the fire burning down to the filter, wondering how it all holds together, how the ashes build on nothing, cling to nothing except maybe being warm and next to each other.
She stands that way until the commercials end, then she taps the ash off into her palm, takes a drag. “Carol is all right,” she says, pausing, “now. Thought you’d want to know.” When she says Carol’s name, I can hear it just fine, there’s no blood rushing, no fear, and it hits me that I do want to know that she’s okay. I’ve wanted to know this for a long time and my voice is thick when I say, “Thanks, Ma.” It’s my first and only thanks for all Mama did, no matter how late she did it, and for all of us she did it for, herself too. The thanks feels like a wave pushing out of me, and I watch it wash over her where she stands, looking at me now.
“Sleep good,” she says then, and turns the volume back up. The Keaton family’s voices fill the space between us as she walks down the hallway to her room, almost drowning her “girlchild” as she closes her door. And I decide I don’t need a TV mom to sing me to sleep tonight after all, so I turn off the television and go to bed.
W
hatever satisfaction Mama got about seeing my fake uncle’s taillights disappear off the Calle, she didn’t rejoice about his accident. There’s no room for rejoicing here. The only tiny bit of joy comes from the reassurance that, no matter how flawed the County is, or how blind the judgments of the State, there is a greater order at work, and like a pink morning sky, you can bet it means business. Mama did her best, short of bringing the County down around our ears, and trusted the rest of the work to the karmic police, the only force that’s ever done us any good. Everything that goes around on the Calle makes its way back, and waits at your door for you to trip over and break your fool neck. That’s why the Hardware Man’s accident doesn’t surprise Mama or me. Leaving the Calle won’t get you free of justice. It found the Hardware Man, wherever he went, and taught him the lesson he had coming. Taught him what it feels like to lie very, very still.
hatever satisfaction Mama got about seeing my fake uncle’s taillights disappear off the Calle, she didn’t rejoice about his accident. There’s no room for rejoicing here. The only tiny bit of joy comes from the reassurance that, no matter how flawed the County is, or how blind the judgments of the State, there is a greater order at work, and like a pink morning sky, you can bet it means business. Mama did her best, short of bringing the County down around our ears, and trusted the rest of the work to the karmic police, the only force that’s ever done us any good. Everything that goes around on the Calle makes its way back, and waits at your door for you to trip over and break your fool neck. That’s why the Hardware Man’s accident doesn’t surprise Mama or me. Leaving the Calle won’t get you free of justice. It found the Hardware Man, wherever he went, and taught him the lesson he had coming. Taught him what it feels like to lie very, very still.
I
f the lengths of any two sides of a right triangle are known, the length of the third side can be found. Let
ABC
represent a right triangle, with the right angle located at
B
. The altitude from point
B
to point
A
is as tall as the shadow of a man and a new triangle is created. If the legs of the new triangle are 12 inches long and 9 inches long, and a little girl is
1/2
the height of the man’s shadow at midday, use the Pythagorean theorem to answer the following question: What is taking place inside of this triangle?
f the lengths of any two sides of a right triangle are known, the length of the third side can be found. Let
ABC
represent a right triangle, with the right angle located at
B
. The altitude from point
B
to point
A
is as tall as the shadow of a man and a new triangle is created. If the legs of the new triangle are 12 inches long and 9 inches long, and a little girl is
1/2
the height of the man’s shadow at midday, use the Pythagorean theorem to answer the following question: What is taking place inside of this triangle?
(Show all of your work.)
a.
Things like this do not happen in right triangles.
Things like this do not happen in right triangles.
b.
The darkness is overcome by degrees.
The darkness is overcome by degrees.
c.
Roots are being squared.
Roots are being squared.
d.
The little girl will.
The little girl will.
“
W
hen I die this is yours,” Mama says, and this is her hope chest and this is her wedding ring and this is the bookcase with Gibran and Kerouac way at the top. And she says, “I want to be cremated,” and cremated means her body isn’t buried, because she says, “Save the land for the cows.” She says she wants her ash body taken to California and spread out on Starvation Ridge, because “God knows I deserve that,” and Starvation Ridge is where my brothers were born and might have died, and her with them, because she tried once, and failed, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here talking about her regrets. And deserve means she expects to be punished for that death wish forever, and by her nonstop talking about it, it seems like it can’t come fast enough to suit her. And finally, she says, “No machines,” and by machines she means at the hospital to keep her body alive, because the whole point of all this is that Mama is going to die.
W
hen I die this is yours,” Mama says, and this is her hope chest and this is her wedding ring and this is the bookcase with Gibran and Kerouac way at the top. And she says, “I want to be cremated,” and cremated means her body isn’t buried, because she says, “Save the land for the cows.” She says she wants her ash body taken to California and spread out on Starvation Ridge, because “God knows I deserve that,” and Starvation Ridge is where my brothers were born and might have died, and her with them, because she tried once, and failed, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here talking about her regrets. And deserve means she expects to be punished for that death wish forever, and by her nonstop talking about it, it seems like it can’t come fast enough to suit her. And finally, she says, “No machines,” and by machines she means at the hospital to keep her body alive, because the whole point of all this is that Mama is going to die.
This is her list, I know it by heart, I have for years now, but I don’t know what brings on the telling or how to make her stop. Too much pink in a sunset or breeze through a window, too much beer in her blood or not enough, and Mama’s eyes roll like the reels on a slot machine. Come up sevens and our house is afire with cursing, come up tilt and she curls up quiet to sleep, come up like
headlights over a mountain range and Mama has one foot in the grave and this list on her lips, because you can’t just give death your number and expect him not to call. Just like anyone else she ever flirted with, Mama knows he’ll be back.
headlights over a mountain range and Mama has one foot in the grave and this list on her lips, because you can’t just give death your number and expect him not to call. Just like anyone else she ever flirted with, Mama knows he’ll be back.
“
I
t’s time we had wall-to-wall carpeting, Sunshine,” Mama says over her coffee cup one morning, and since there isn’t a man worth a good shag within a hammer’s throw of the Calle any more, she’s going to do it her damn self.
I
t’s time we had wall-to-wall carpeting, Sunshine,” Mama says over her coffee cup one morning, and since there isn’t a man worth a good shag within a hammer’s throw of the Calle any more, she’s going to do it her damn self.
I never thought anything was wrong with the old linoleum-carpet mix, but Mama’s got this big idea, and her big idea means that half the living room is now particle board, and that every payday I have to go with her to the Carpet Store to guarantee the single-mom sympathy discount. The Carpet Store stinks like plastic and stings my nose, my nose that’s out of joint already because of the tightness of Mama’s jeans. She always wears her tightest jeans to the Carpet Store in case the single-mom routine doesn’t work, and because she knows when she does the Carpet Man’ll be sure to watch her leave, which means he’ll be even more sure to have a pile of samples saved for her the next time we come and might even throw in a few for free. The one time I do try to balk, I tell her that I had a rough day at school, turn on
The People’s Court
, and throw myself on the couch in my best impersonation of teenagers from television. The Honorable Judge Joseph A. Wapner is just taking his seat when Mama slings her purse over one shoulder and turns off the TV.
The People’s Court
, and throw myself on the couch in my best impersonation of teenagers from television. The Honorable Judge Joseph A. Wapner is just taking his seat when Mama slings her purse over one shoulder and turns off the TV.
“Put your shoes back on, R.D.”
I’ve already seen this episode, the one about the missing bird, but I keep up with my Carpet Store rebellion. “What’s the big
deal? You don’t need my help. It’s not like we’re choosing what pieces we get or something. We get whatever’s left.”
deal? You don’t need my help. It’s not like we’re choosing what pieces we get or something. We get whatever’s left.”
Her purse slides off her shoulder a second before she pulls it back up. She holds it firmly there and says in a voice that’s firm too, one I know better than to argue with, “That’s the thing, Rory Dawn, we always choose what we get. Now I suggest you choose to get your goddamn shoes on and let’s go.”
We bring home another stack of carpet pieces, outdated samples and remnants too short to sell, different-colored, different-styled, different-lengthed, and different-piled, and Mama gets down to it. She cuts the squares precise, the colors blending against the mortar and brick under the woodstove, against the frame of the door, and she mumbles through the nails she holds in her lips, murmurs about this green and that yellow while she hammers them in, and never after that does she ask for my help or advice, and I don’t offer anyway, and as the paydays roll past, our wall-to-wall becomes a reality.
Six pay stubs later and our living room is carpeted in the brightest blues, golds, and violets, patterned and deep. As she’s packing up her tools, Mama is all smiles and says, “See if you can pick a favorite, R.D. I bet you can’t.” I don’t think to question this until I walk across it in bare feet, sink into the plush of this square and that. I don’t think to question this until I imagine doing it myself, deciding what goes with which and making it permanent, believing in my choices enough to pound them in with a hammer.
M
ama has a red truck with an Indian name, and we drive it west through the desert and then up through the trees that separate us from Grandma’s new digs on the California side of the law. Mama only drinks her soda warm since she got the dentures that make her gums sensitive to hot and cold, and so I ride with my bare feet on the dashboard and a can of warm RC between my legs and try to get used to the idea that we are going somewhere. We cross the border that separates the State of Nevada from the State of California just about the time that the sun is fully up behind us, because she says she wanted to hit the road early, arrive early, and get a drink early, but really it’s because Grandma is “sick and needs visiting,” and that’s news to me too. Mama decided we were taking this trip last night, got down a suitcase I didn’t even know we had, told me to get to filling it with the cribbage board, a carton of cigarettes, and pop for the road, and if all of that wasn’t surprising enough, she says she wants to tell me a story about her life.
ama has a red truck with an Indian name, and we drive it west through the desert and then up through the trees that separate us from Grandma’s new digs on the California side of the law. Mama only drinks her soda warm since she got the dentures that make her gums sensitive to hot and cold, and so I ride with my bare feet on the dashboard and a can of warm RC between my legs and try to get used to the idea that we are going somewhere. We cross the border that separates the State of Nevada from the State of California just about the time that the sun is fully up behind us, because she says she wanted to hit the road early, arrive early, and get a drink early, but really it’s because Grandma is “sick and needs visiting,” and that’s news to me too. Mama decided we were taking this trip last night, got down a suitcase I didn’t even know we had, told me to get to filling it with the cribbage board, a carton of cigarettes, and pop for the road, and if all of that wasn’t surprising enough, she says she wants to tell me a story about her life.
The story begins with the splash of desert insects against our windshield, and it’s about a drive Mama took to Mexico when my brothers were small and Mama a single mother trying to make her ends meet. I don’t know if the story’s true because I know from my perch on the Truck Stop’s fridge that Mama “tells a tale to make a sale” and that “flapping lips get the tips.” I don’t know how much of what she says actually took place in the Santa Cruz Mountains
that rise over our past and how much got added in the Calle bars that make up our present. But, because this story will be mine someday, like Mama’s hope chest and all the answers that aren’t in it, I’m keeping it.
that rise over our past and how much got added in the Calle bars that make up our present. But, because this story will be mine someday, like Mama’s hope chest and all the answers that aren’t in it, I’m keeping it.
Mama met someone who knew someone. This someone needed help getting several kilos of marijuana over the Mexico-California border and Mama said she would do it. And though she had recently been arrested for the coincidence of having marijuana cigarettes in her roller on the same night that her house happened to catch fire, and though she was on probation and had four children to think about, she said she would do it because she could make a cool grand, and in 1971, according to Mama and even the State of California, a thousand dollars went a lot further than Mama’s welfare dime or her dime bags could ever dream of going, so she decided she would go very far for a chance to get it.
Mama had a boyfriend then, a man who, to hear her tell it, never wore a shirt but always wore work boots under tight-fitting jeans, a man who was hard at work at a construction site when she first saw him and whistled at him from the window of her old blue Corvair, got his phone number, and as she drove away, told her sons to sit up from where they were hiding in the backseat and help her memorize it. This man, shirtless and booted, took Mama as far as San Luis Obispo where he left her with the Driver of a Hollowed-Out Van.
The Driver of the Hollowed-Out Van was not fond of women and wanted nothing to do with Mama in particular. She wasn’t a pro, she was too young and probably too pretty to be useful, plus she chain-smoked and she never smiled, like she doesn’t smile when she tells this story now, like she would never learn to smile, even with teeth that cost as much as our trailer. But Mama gets in the
Van anyway, and because I can’t know which parts of what she says are truth and which are made up to make the trees roll more quickly down the highway, I try to fit the story into pictures I can recognize. The Van becomes Grandma’s red van with the beanbag ashtray on the console the summer it swarmed with bees, and the Van is a van that was parked outside the Hardware Man’s trailer that I have both not enough and too many memories of, dark as the taste of cigarette ash. And Mama and the Driver sit in the front of this Van and they make it across the border into Mexico, make it across easy.
Van anyway, and because I can’t know which parts of what she says are truth and which are made up to make the trees roll more quickly down the highway, I try to fit the story into pictures I can recognize. The Van becomes Grandma’s red van with the beanbag ashtray on the console the summer it swarmed with bees, and the Van is a van that was parked outside the Hardware Man’s trailer that I have both not enough and too many memories of, dark as the taste of cigarette ash. And Mama and the Driver sit in the front of this Van and they make it across the border into Mexico, make it across easy.
Mama and the Driver arrive in the city in Mexico where they’re supposed to pick up the bundles that will fill up the hollow parts of the Van that has become Grandma’s Ford Supervan inside my head as we roll along toward her house, except now, the Van is parking on a dusty Mexican street and the beanbag ashtray in the center of the console is filled with cigarette butts and the windows are alive with bees.
The Driver leaves Mama in a marketplace to consider chicles and leather goods, and when he returns he tells her to go on up the stairs of the little hotel he has just come down from and meet the man who is in charge of the Mexican side of this deal. And Mama, who is nervous but not too much, steps it up when she sees the lines of sweat that are creasing the very bald top of the Driver’s head. She has just bought puppets for my brothers, four banditos, and is considering a señorita for each, but she hands them over to the Driver. The puppets’ strings tangle as he clutches them to his chest and tells her to be careful.
Mama goes up the stairs alone. The door is open, and there is a fan spinning and a bed in the center of the room with no spread but a white fitted sheet and a white top sheet, and in between, a fat man sitting in a white tank top. The Fat Man is leaning against the pillows of the bed, which are bunched up and crowded behind his
back, and there are two more men in the room, one who answers the door and another who sits across from the door and holds the gun.
back, and there are two more men in the room, one who answers the door and another who sits across from the door and holds the gun.
The Fat Man in the bed tells Mama to sit down and points to a chair backed up to the wall behind her and she imagines the Driver sitting in that same chair and the blossoms of sweat that tickled his forehead. Mama wishes she had a cigarette in real life and in the story, and in the cab of our Indian truck she pushes in the lighter. I watch it glowing red in her hand and the way she takes a pull, as if it was her first cigarette of the day instead of her third, and it makes me think that maybe this story is true after all.
The Fat Man pulls his knees up and looks at her across the top of them, surveys Mama where she sits in the straight-backed chair. He looks her over, then he speaks. And the words that come out of his stranger’s mouth aren’t foreign, they’re American, American as baseball, and Mama knows them well: Winston Dean. Eugene Thomas. Ronald Joseph. Robert Dylan. Hendrix. Hendrix. Hendrix. Hendrix. My four big brothers who never felt so close as I feel them now, hanging by threads in the Driver’s hands on the street below. At the end of this list he says just one more thing.
“Do you understand?”
I drain my cola and look at Mama’s face. She says it again, “Do you understand?” and I realize she’s asking me, and I tell her I do.
Mama says she still doesn’t know how he knew the names of her four sons, my four brothers, who, if you do the division as the Fat Man does, with an eye on profits and losses, are only worth a mere $250 apiece in 1970s scratch. She keeps her eyes on the road, and says, “He was holding the sheet and each time he said a name he pulled the sheet up a little more over his knees. By the time he asked me if I understood, I could see his balls, his cock, everything.”
My face goes hot and I roll down the window and hang my head out. I lean back against the door, the highway wind in my
hair, and watch the side-view mirror until those words are whipped out by the wind, disappear into Mama’s blind spot, and blow away down the highway.
hair, and watch the side-view mirror until those words are whipped out by the wind, disappear into Mama’s blind spot, and blow away down the highway.
Back in the Van and a few miles before the U.S. border, Mama pulls a muumuu over her head and folds down the purple frill that circles the muumuu’s neckline, tucks the straps of her tank top underneath it and reveals one shoulder, the other, both, as the Driver slows behind the line of cars waiting for inspection. This is the reason Mama’s on this trip. This is her part to play. She covers her mouth before slipping her hand into her pocket, her hand that is holding the set of teeth that have cost her so much, and she is silent until they reach the guard shack. The guard was bored before they pulled up, tired of inspecting striped serapes and terra-cotta fountains for contraband. He would’ve liked to investigate a big sled like this from dashboard to fender, and certainly would’ve been willing to pass the time with a pretty, bare-shouldered girl caught up in the pleasure of a man in uniform, but his mood changes once Mama, who never in my entire life smiled with her mouth open, offers him a smile that is wide as the noonday sun. He can’t help but shiver at the smooth, wet gums shining back at him, and motions with his gun to the guardhouse to hurry up and let this Van go right on through the gate, free and legal.
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