The Evolution of Love

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  “Have you ever had a mango?” Binky asked.

  “Duh,” Annie said, but she hadn’t.

  “It’s like a peach, only sweeter and more perfumy.”

  He always did this—talk about their island when he was nervous. It annoyed her the way he sometimes seemed to actually think it was real.

  “Papayas are creamy. You can squeeze lime on them and they’re, like, better than soda.”

  “Lots of things are better than soda.”

  “Okay, better than donuts. I’m just saying, on the island we can be really healthy. We’ll sit in the wet sand, and it’ll be balmy, because it’s the tropics, and the frothy, warm waves will wash up over our legs.”

  “We can’t go to a tropical island.” There, she’d said it. Binky looked like she’d slapped him. She didn’t want to be mean, but sometimes you had to face the facts.

  “Come on, Annie. You know we will. You have to believe in your dreams.”

  “You sound like a Hallmark card.” It was something her grandma once had said to her.

  Binky stopped right there in the street and with the kitten still draped across his shoulders, front and back paws hanging on either side of his neck, he put his arms around her. He acted as if she were the one who needed looking after. She wanted to push him away but couldn’t. Why would so skinny a boy want to hug her? She left her face in the crook of his neck, her cheek against the orange fur, and breathed deeply. She loved his sweet smell, like vanilla soft serve. “You probably still believe in Santa Claus,” she said.

  “No Santa? What do you mean?” Binky asked, pulling away from her, his eyes wide with mock shock. He laughed and put his arm through hers. “It’s creepy here. Let’s go faster.”

  “I want gum.”

  “Okay,” Binky said. “Then we’ll go.”

  They walked another block, and had just one more to go, when Binky said, “I know that kid.”

  Two older boys, one white and one black, walked toward them. The black kid stared hard. He clearly recognized Binky, too, but Annie didn’t like the quality of his recognition.

  “Don’t, Binky,” she said, but it was already too late.

  “Hey,” he was calling out. “You got any gum?”

  “Not them,” Annie said. “Let’s turn down Channing.”

  “No, it’s cool. He and I—”

  “Faggot,” the boy said.

  “Me a faggot?” Binky said, his eyes blinking rapidly. He never talked back to people who hassled them. Why now? “You’re the faggot. I should know.”

  “Fucking A, Bink.” She pulled his arm and looked back, trying to see the interfaith table, which was a good three blocks behind them.

  “What?” Never had that one word sounded so hostile. “Say that again.” The two boys stood before them now, hatred fizzing off their skin.

  “We just want some gum,” Annie said, as if the derailed request could be put back on the tracks. “I got a dollar.”

  “Shut up, fatso.”

  The white boy twisted her arm behind her back and reached into her pockets to get the dollar. “You don’t have no dollar, pig girl.”

  “Leave her alone!” Binky shrieked.

  “Leave her alone!” the kid mocked his shriek.

  The first kick came from the black kid, straight to the groin. Binky screamed as he went down. He tossed the orange kitten to the side and cried, “Run, kitty!” The orange kitten shot down the street. The two boys forced laughter and shouted, “Run, kitty!” over and over again in falsettos.

  The white boy kicked Binky in the head. Way too hard.

  Annie yelled for help, but then, as their kicking became frenzied, she stopped because it seemed as if her voice triggered their mania. She whispered, “Please please please please mama mama mama,” and felt every blow as if it landed on her own body.

  They stood panting, looking down at Binky lying in a bath of blood. The white boy cracked his knuckles and huffed big gusts of air out his flared nostrils, his eyes rolling. The black boy spread his feet apart, forcing himself to keep looking at Binky splayed on the sidewalk, and she saw tears in his eyes. He spit to the side, as if to dispel them.

  “You’d just bounce, lard bucket,” the white boy said to Annie, and they walked away, the black boy veering away from his companion.

  Annie knelt down next to Binky. “Get up. We gotta get out of here. Come on. Hurry.”

  Binky lay on the pavement, his face in his own blood, his right knee cocked up and his left leg out straight. Both hands lay palms down above his head. His eyes were closed, his long lashes dark against his lavender eyelids.

  “I said get the fuck up, Benjamin. Now.”

  No one used Telegraph Avenue anymore except for the ferals, and now, after the beating, even they kept their distance, turning down side streets the second they caught sight of Binky on the ground. In the far distance, Annie could see the people working the interfaith table shuffling through their flyers, heads down. They were worthless.

  “Okay,” she said and sat down with her back against the bricks of the storefront. “You can rest a minute, Binky. Then we’ll go. We’ll get those cuts taken care of. Then we’re heading straight for the island. Don’t you think? I’m sick of this dump. I’ll get us plane tickets. Don’t worry, I’ll finesse it. Shit, if I need to suck a few dicks, I’ll do it. I know, I know, you said never again. But for our island? I will. Once we’re there, we’ll be home free. Coconut milk and mangoes. Warm ocean saltwater on our wounds. We’ll make us a house out of driftwood, right? Right, Binky?

  “Okay, Binky. Get up. Get the fuck up now. They’re coming back. They’ll fucking kill you this time. It’s them, Bink. Get the fuck up.”

  Annie stood up, grabbed Binky’s hands, and dragged him down the sidewalk. It wasn’t too hard, him being so skinny, but she wasn’t fast enough. The two boys strode toward her with their wrecked faces.

  She didn’t mean to let go of Binky. She didn’t mean to leave him. She didn’t mean to run.

  When she got to the church, she shoved past the line of people moving slowly in the door. Kalisha, rather than Lily, stood behind the service window serving up the trays, angrily splatting food onto the plastic. Annie leaned over a filled tray, her big fat hideous stomach smashing the food, and yelled, “Where’s Lily? Where the fuck is Lily?”

  33

  Lily stood in the church parking lot, holding her bicycle, trying to formulate the words for an apology to Kalisha about yesterday’s no-show. Leniency wasn’t Kalisha’s strong suit. Lily would be direct, just say she was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again.

  As she lifted her bicycle to carry it up the steps to the community room door, Annie catapulted across the pavement, wild-eyed, her hair a mess of unkempt curls and her leggings shredded. The big girl grabbed Lily’s arm so abruptly, she pulled her and the bicycle to the ground.

  Annie dropped to her knees, still clutching Lily. “Where have you been? I’ve been looking and looking for you!”

  Lily pried Annie’s hands off of her. The girl fell back on her butt, knees out and feet together, her legs making an O. She sobbed big wracking sobs.

  “Annie, what?”

  “Binky’s dead.”

  “What do you mean, dead?” Like there were gradations.

  “We just wanted some gum and they said faggot and then Binky who never ever talks back to anyone said you’re the faggot and there were other people right there but no one stopped them they just kicked him and kicked him and he was screaming help and I couldn’t help I tried but all I could do was hit their backs and I think he was dead like in seconds the guys didn’t even run away they just walked and Binky’s there on the pavement all broken blood everywhere and he’s broken and dead and I don’t know what to do I don’t know what—”

  “Annie.” Lily squatted and touched her foot. “Where
did this happen?”

  “Telegraph Avenue!”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday, you weren’t here why not we just wanted gum and they killed him.” Her wailing grew louder and the few early arrivals in the parking lot backed away.

  Lily looked over her shoulder at the door to the community room. Kalisha was already mad at her. She could be a tiny bit late today. She’d apologize for everything later this afternoon.

  “I bet he’s okay,” Lily said. “Come on. Get up. We’ll find him.” She tried pulling Annie to her feet, but the girl was crying too hard to move, so Lily put her hands under Annie’s armpits and lugged until she stood. “Show me where.”

  The blood had soaked into the sidewalk pavement and dried in the shape of an amoeba. “See, he’s moved on,” Lily said. “We’ll find him and get him help. Where do you two go when you need somewhere safe? I bet he’s gone there.”

  Annie pointed to a loose pile of clothing in a nearby doorway, like the bones and pelt left by a coyote. Even the black Air Jordans with the shimmering red laces were there, next to the briefs, jeans, and T-shirt, serving as a warning, a reminder. No one would abandon a fine pair of sneakers. The attackers had to be somewhere nearby, watching.

  Lily glanced around, knowing that she looked exactly like a victim. She was skinny and confused, accompanied by a grief-stricken teenage girl. At any moment, they would pluck her bike from her hands, knock her down, take her pack, too.

  “Let’s go,” she said, but the look on Annie’s face stopped her cold. The girl’s eyes were huge, but unseeing, and her mouth bunched up, as if it were filled with venom. It was hatred. Pure icy hatred.

  In that moment, Lily saw how wrath gets handed off, how cruelty passes from the torturer to the victim, how it’s impossible for it to be otherwise. The grief is too great to assimilate and it curdles into instant hatred.

  Annie was too young to absorb that much poison.

  So Lily walked over to the pile of clothes in the doorway and picked up the sneakers.

  “What are you doing?” Annie hissed.

  Lily hoped that maybe Annie had to spit out the wad of venom to speak at all. She tied the laces together and draped the sneakers around her neck. “You have to have something to hold onto Binky.”

  Here they came, two big boys, maybe seventeen years old, a team of killers. “What you doing, bitch?”

  Lily heard Annie’s hard, terrified breathing. She knew she stood to lose everything, certainly her bike and probably her life. She didn’t bother trying to summon courage. She couldn’t possibly look intimidating to the boys. Instead, she drew the deepest breath she could draw and looked the white boy in the eye. She said, “He was my son.”

  The boy took a step back, and then another. Lily saw a void behind him, a big swallowing hole, a motherlove of his own, one that either existed and caused him pain or did not exist and still caused him pain. A great swallowing filled his eyes, even as he tried to hold steady.

  Lily shifted her stare to the black boy. He spit to the side. More venom released, maybe.

  “Annie,” she said, without unlocking her eyes from the boy’s. “Do you want anything else here?”

  Annie couldn’t speak, and so with the leather shoes resting against her breasts, Lily grasped the handlebars of the bicycle with one hand and linked her other arm through Annie’s, and they walked away, her ears straining to hear what the boys were doing behind them. After a few blocks, at Dwight Way, Lily turned and looked. They were alone.

  “You two doing okay?” a volunteer at the interfaith table called out.

  Lily considered hopping on the bicycle and fleeing. She could leave Annie with these church people. There was still time to apologize to Kalisha. Just the thought gave her a dizzying rush. She needed to choose safety.

  Annie disengaged her arm from Lily’s and turned left, heading up Dwight Way. Good, Lily thought. She would watch the child cross the street and then be on her way.

  When there were ten yards separating them, Annie turned and waited, her eyes fixed on Lily. The sight of those chubby legs splayed at the knees, the dimples on either side of her mouth, the crazy hair, the trusting expectation, all tugged hard at a place under Lily’s sternum. She remembered the mugging that had felt more like a hug than an assault. Why me? Lily wanted to know and walked forward to close the gap.

  A couple of blocks east, Annie turned into a dead-end alley. Lily stood at the mouth of the alley watching as the girl hoisted herself up on the metal rungs of a dumpster and peered inside. A moment later she fell to the ground, hitting her hip hard and dry heaving.

  Lily knew without looking. She also knew that she couldn’t let Annie experience this alone. She leaned the bike against the alley wall, stepped around Annie, and climbed up to have a look.

  Binky lay in the dumpster, stripped naked and pale, amidst the garbage. His face was bashed in and his bones were broken. Flies touched down and flitted off his body. Annie had known to look in the dumpster, which meant she’d seen other bodies disposed of here.

  “Come on,” Lily said, coaxing Annie up off the dirty ground. She led her out of the alley. When they got to People’s Park, Lily made her sit on a bench. She pulled the flip-flops off the girl’s feet and pushed on the Air Jordans. They were big, but Lily tied the red laces tight. She explained that they were going to her camp and that it was a long walk, uphill. Lily had no idea what she’d do with the girl in her camp, but at least she could sleep, and they’d both be safe.

  They stopped often to rest but finally arrived at dusk. Lily unzipped the tent and helped Annie into the sleeping bag. The girl rolled onto her side and clutched her arms against her chest, the same way she’d slept in Joyce’s overgrown backyard, under the stars, only then she’d had Binky pressed against her, their unspeakable tenderness.

  “Get some sleep,” Lily said and started to pull out of the tent. But Annie twisted around and clamped her arms around Lily’s middle. She tucked her head into Lily’s neck and held her so tight they both had trouble breathing.

  Lily reached behind and grabbed both of Annie’s wrists, loosening her grip. She folded the girl’s arms in front of her chest. “Get some sleep.”

  Lily backed away on her hands and knees. She zipped up the tent and sat outside on her rock, looking down at the cities and up at the big moon rising above the eucalyptus trees behind her.

  She’d never felt this empty in her life. As if every effort she’d ever made had failed spectacularly. Vicky was building an imaginary empire with Travis. Tom was already cooing over his and Angelina’s embryo. Binky’s pale, thin body lay dead in a dumpster. She’d even failed Kalisha by not showing up two days in a row.

  Everything she’d ever believed in was wrong. Bad people do win. The bonobos were going extinct for a reason. A tiny population was left in the Congo, and soon they too would be gone.

  Lily slid off the rock and stretched out on her back in the dirt, looking up at the nothing of space. Vicky didn’t think it was nothing. Lily wished her sister were here to tell her stories about the constellations. She wished she remembered the stories Vicky had once told her; maybe Annie would like to hear them, too. When she woke up a few hours later, at the start of dawn, she rolled over on her side to check the tent. The door flap was open. Annie was gone. So was her bicycle.

  Part Three

  34

  Lily walked slowly down the hill to the library. She had no husband, no money, no bicycle, and apparently no sister, either. Vicky didn’t answer her phone this morning, though Lily had tried calling, over and over again, until her phone charge fizzled out.

  She definitely no longer had a job. She’d missed two afternoons at the church, been a complete deadbeat no-show. She supposed Kalisha couldn’t turn her away as a client, so at least she’d have dinner tonight—if she dared show her face.

  Lily ente
red the library reluctantly, as if she didn’t deserve to be there either, but soon couldn’t resist its spell. The marble stone flooring cooled the air. The big oak tables and straight-back chairs suggested the possibility of solutions. The walls of books gave the place such authority: all the wisdom amassed over the centuries, according to her third-grade teacher. Lily thought she had perhaps arrived at square one. Was that so bad?

  She gave her phone to the librarian supervising the charging stations, signed the new release form, and got in line for the computers. A clown entertained a group of children in the corner, and Lily watched the show, dismayed by how little it took to cheer her up, until she reached the front of the computer line.

  “Dear Wesley,” she wrote. Her fingers flew as she spared no detail. Why should she? She had nothing but time and stories. When her fifteen minutes were up, she hit Send and then got back in line.

  Forty-five minutes later, she sat down at another station, reopened her email program, and was astonished to find a response.

  Dear Lily,

  Thank you for writing. I like the way you talked about your friend Kalisha and burying the philosophy professor under the lemon tree, how eventually he’ll be nutrients for the fruit. I also like what you said about history being shortsighted, how the cycles of biology are a better way of viewing our relationship to earth. Or even to the universe.

  I write novels. Only I can’t, haven’t ever, finished one. I’m afraid of where every story goes. I don’t want to be caught in that cycle of painful fate. It seems like the only real truths are painful. All the stories that end well, end too soft. Your narrative was about a dead man and a grave. But the lemons…the body. I don’t know. I liked it. It wasn’t soft. It moved into the future. Biology: a different kind of fate, maybe?