“What about Dad, what do you remember?” I say.
She starts to cough. She coughs all the time. A cough that lasts through my dreams at night. She gags sometimes, she coughs so much. Her neck puffs up, her eyes bulge and tear. She takes a drink of her drink to keep her from coughing, but she still coughs. She cannot answer my question.
* * *
The landlord won’t fix the windows. Gusts of winter wind blow through the broken glass fallen out from rotted wooden frames. Snow comes in at an angle, collecting on the floor. The cats step in it and lick their paws. My brother staples plastic to the inside of the windows. Lights from cars and street lamps are just blurs. The snow collects on the skylight. We wake up and we can’t see the sky. It’s quiet, as quiet as if we had slept in a cave.
“I hope the roof holds,” my mother says.
We are cold at night. We sleep with sweaters on and hats. The cats claw at our faces, they want to get under the covers too. We let them in and keep our heads under the covers, breathing in what the cats breathe out.
There’s a fire outside in the empty lot, but who would know except for the heat. It’s a fire seen through plastic, the flames a blur of orange. We are told to evacuate. We take the cats in pillowcases and sit on the curb in the snow. The firemen ax down our downstairs door even though we keep telling them we have a key. My brother tries to buy a coat off one of the firemen, but the fireman won’t sell. We say we would be better off inside, at least we wouldn’t be cold, our building’s brick warmed by the raging fire in the empty lot.
“What’s this? What’s this?” our mother says.
“Your hair,” we say. It’s coming out in clumps held between her fingers.
“My hair?” she says. “It never did this before,” she says. “What’s going on inside of me?” She bangs her fists on her head. “Your father did this to me,” she says. “All those years,” she says.
The firemen say it’s safe to go back in. To fight the fire out back they’ve gone through our place. The floor’s one huge puddle from their leaky hoses. They’ve pulled off all the plastic hanging, and now the wind is coming through again. The puddle freezes like a pond in our house and we take turns sliding across it wearing our coats and our gloves and our hats and the dog is with us on the ice, sliding too, barking, biting at our coattails and sleeves, trying to pull us away to the safety of shore.
We are smoked through. Our clothes in drawers, our mattresses, our furniture, it all smells like the fire did out back. We run the washing machine for days, one load after the other while the poor machine shakes and dances across the kitchen floor. What trees were out back are now just charred and when a wind comes along, cinder bits and ash fly into our window like black snow.
“A black Christmas,” our mother says, holding out her hand to catch it. It is Christmas. We have a tree with no branches at the top, only a spindly long point, and a few fuller branches at the bottom. The cats eat the tinsel and we can hear them throwing up all night. Ma Mère comes over with a basket of fruit. She won’t sit on our car seat couch unless we spread a towel there first. My mother pours her wine. “Joyeux Noël,” we all say and then there is nothing to say and we walk away and leave my mother talking French to her until dinner. After dinner Ma Mère needs help to the bathroom. We take her in there and get her pants down and sit her on the toilet. She falls over and we pick her up again. There are tears running down her closed eyes.
“Quest-ce que tu fais?” our mother asks her.
“My girdle,” she says in French to my mother and my mother tells us to help her unfasten Ma Mère’s girdle. Once her girdle is off she slides forward, her head falling back and banging on the tank of the toilet seat, the gray sparse hair between her legs visible now, as her pubic bone is pushed out toward us. My mother props her up again.
“Pee-pee already!” my mother says to Ma Mère, but Ma Mère starts to laugh and says she cannot. “Oh, damn you, peepee!” my mother says again.
“Come on, pee-pee!” my sisters and I say. We are all laughing now, and kneeling on the floor of the bathroom, trying to hold Ma Mère up.
“Pee-pee!” my mother tries to say again, but she is laughing so hard she cannot say the word. Ma Mère starts to cry, great sobs that make her thin shoulders go up and down. Her nose runs and we wipe it for her.
“It’s okay, ma cherie,” my mother says to her and hugs Ma Mère and Ma Mère cries louder and grabs onto my mother and tries to stand but she cannot and so she is just sort of hanging off my mother, her pants down by her ankles and then she starts to pee. She pees all over my mother’s legs and my mother’s feet. “Oh, merde!” our mother says.
“No, c’est du pee-pee,” Ma Mère says.
Our mother says, “C’est vrai, ce n’est pas de merde, c’est du pee-pee. Oh, damn you all,” our mother says.
Our mother is fingering the crocheted holes in her shawl, poking her bright red painted nails through, wiggling them around. She is braiding the tasseled ends and furrowing her brow. She has noticed the lines. She has held up the hand mirror and mentioned how the windfall of money she hopes to someday be hit hard with will go straight to her brow, her crow’s feet and a lift of her chin.
“We are fucking poor,” she says. She looks for things she can sell. She digs out old bullfight posters from Spain with the names of famous matadors on them she was given as a wedding present from the cousin she was not supposed to love. “If I sell these I may well have never loved him and he never loved me,” she says. “Or something like that.” She rolls up the posters and puts them back in the storage room. “Merde,” she says, “I’m going through my phases,” and then she faints on the floor in the hallway. Jesús has to help us stand her up and get in the elevator and as we go down she keeps saying she’s hot and then she asks us over and over again, “Aren’t you hot? It’s so hot. Am I the only one who’s hot?”
That night she sweats next to me in bed, and I become hot too when I wasn’t hot before, and I lay awake, thinking how it’s a sign of the transfer effect taking place. In the morning she tilts her head back, dropping in drops to rid her eyes of red. The drops spill down her cheeks and I think for a second how the tears could be real.
Our mother lights her cigarette and keeps its ember end out on the edge of a dresser. The dresser drawer is stuck open and ashes fall and collect there, a high pile of them she has never thrown out.
“Save them. Spread them over oceans, over my homeland, over patisseries and boulangeries, when I die.”
We leave for school and she is still not made up. Her bald spot not yet covered over by her teased surrounding hair, not yet drawn on and hidden by grease pencil. Her eyelashes not yet curled with the eyelash curler that is stuck with so many eyelashes lost to its clampy torturous design.
It starts to rain at the park and John tells me to stand with him under his hot dog umbrella. I stand in front of him, my belly warm up against the metal bins, while he stands behind me. Sandwiched like that I let him touch me because I’m hungry and a hot dog would taste good. Pressing up against me he tells me about his homeland.
“Go home,” I tell John, and he says not to worry, the rain will stop soon and the hot dog eaters will reappear in the sunshine.
“No, go all the way home,” I say. “See your children, see your wife.” John steps back from me.
“Move,” he says. “I’ve got to turn up the flame.”
A man below us shows loud foreign films at night for two dollars a seat. Our mother pounds a pot on the floor to make him stop. The banging of the pot, she thinks, will make him turn down the volume. You’d think it would be worse when the films are talking, but what we can’t stand is when they’re silent, the music blaring and distorted and so dramatic we have dreams of falling down ravines and being chased by black-clothed men. When it’s foreign it’s no language we can say. Swedish or Kurd, Pakistani or Welsh, we have no idea. Our mother says we should all go down there in our beltless bathrobes and storm through the doors and s
tand in front of the screen and demand they turn the goddamn thing down.
“There are laws,” our mother says, “you hear me,” she says, “laws.”
The pot bounces up and down off the floor, but no one turns the volume down.
“Maybe because the pounding of the pot plays right into a scene of the film,” Louisa says. “Maybe they are showing a film about a crazy woman hammering her way with pots through walls and floors to escape.”
* * *
Louisa has to play in a concert at school. When she comes back from the concert she’s more beautiful than ever. Her hair is in tendrils from the hot lights and sweat and her cheeks and lips are red, her eyes darting and quick from all the excitement.
“Play for us what you played,” our mother says, but Louisa groans and says, “No, I’m too tired.”
Louisa goes to bed and then our mother and I and Jody are quiet, listening for music, as if Louisa had carried the whole concert home with her on her hair and her skin and her clothes and now it’s playing back to us while she drifts off to sleep, filling our house with Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach.
Can you imagine the slut having to do it? Having to look through all the Smiths downtown? Her finger stopping at each one and then dialing, waiting for someone to answer, having to say, “This is your father’s girlfriend, do you know where he is?”
A drink by her, a tinkling one with lots of ice, and a tinkling bracelet on her wrist, the tennis kind. Wrinkles like scythes at her temples, curving down, slicing straight for her eyes. There are black things chipped in among the blue and green, so the eye seems scattered, once exploded, colors now caught in her iris, orbiting the black hole of her pupil. Her eyes dart and search the flimsy page.
“Everyone’s a goddamn Smith,” she says out loud. She stands, walks around the room holding the princess phone, taking it with her to the kitchen, the window, the mantel. She waits for answers. Some Smiths answer and they sound like Garcías or Lopezes instead. The ones that sound like girls interrupted while counting ceiling tiles she asks, “Is this Cal’s girl?” When she gets one, finally, she says nothing. She takes a drink of her drink, a loud one so the girl knows she’s still there. The girl can hear the tinkle of her bracelet and the tinkle of her ice. The girl knows who it is.
“Is this Cal’s girl?” the girl says.
“It’s Cal’s girlfriend,” the slut says.
“Just a minute,” the girl says. The girl puts the phone down on the floor. The dog comes to sniff it. The girl gets up and changes the channel on the TV. She goes around the dial more than twice, she stops it at a commercial. A swirly frosting ad for cake. The girl picks up the phone again. The frosting is chocolate spread thickly like whitecaps in a choppy sea. The girl holds the receiver to her ear and waits.
“Are you there?” the slut says.
“No, I’m here,” the girl says.
“Is this Louisa?” the slut says.
“Jody,” the girl says. The girl is not Jody. The girl is really Louisa.
“I’ve got a question, Jody,” the slut says.
“Hold on,” Louisa says. She hangs the phone by its cord off the arm of the chair. “Come here,” she says to the dog. “Too tight?” she says, and she lifts the collar off the dog and scratches the dog’s neck, the dog letting her head go limp in Louisa’s lap. Louisa picks the receiver back up.
“Oh, am I interrupting something important?” the slut says and rolls her exploded eyes to her ceiling, turning a glare to the tin tiles. Louisa puts gum in her mouth and starts to chew.
“I’ve got a question,” the slut says.
“Question away,” Louisa says.
“Have you, by any chance, seen your father?” she says.
“My father,” Louisa says, like the beginning of a story she is going to tell about her father. “My father was a Cretan. My mother was a spy,” Louisa says.
“What’s that?” the slut says.
“The beginning of something,” Louisa says. The slut goes into the bathroom. She likes the sound of her shoes on that particular tile floor. She walks around in little circles and then she puts the lid down and takes a seat.
“Are you in the john?” Louisa says. Louisa knows the slut calls the bathroom the john. “Is that the john?” Louisa says.
“Never mind,” the slut says. “Have you or haven’t you seen your father?” she says.
“When?” Louisa says.
“I don’t know when, lately,” the slut says.
“Oh, lately,” Louisa says.
“Well?” the slut says.
“I’m thinking who I’ve seen,” Louisa says. “Lately,” she adds. “There was Jesús, just a little while ago.”
“Not all the names, please,” the slut says. “This is difficult for me. You understand,” she says.
“Have you looked in the kitchen?” Louisa says, “or are you still in the john?” she says.
“He’s not here, anywhere, for days,” the slut says. “Can’t you see?”
“He’s left you, then?” Louisa says.
“Is that what you think?” the slut says. “What if he’s hurt? Aren’t you worried? He’s your father for chrissakes, Jody,” she says.
“Check your wallet,” Louisa says.
“What?” the slut says.
“Check it,” Louisa says.
The slut puts the phone down. She gets her slim crocodile wallet tanned black. After she opens it she gets back on the phone and says, “I can’t believe you made me do that.”
“Well,” Louisa says.
“I can’t tell,” the slut says. “He’s your father. The things you say,” the slut says. “Aren’t you ashamed?”
“What about the plastic?” Louisa says. “The Amex and all that. Check it too.” The slut checks.
“Here, all here,” she says. “Now what?” Louisa passes the phone to Jody.
“Hello?” Jody says.
“Who’s this?” the slut says.
“Louisa,” Jody says.
“Oh, what happened to Jody?” the slut says.
“I don’t know what happened to Jody,” Jody says.
“I thought you were looking for our father, not Jody.”
“Have you seen him?” the slut says.
“Did he really steal from you?” Jody says.
“No. I don’t know. Everything seems to be here. Listen, as I told Jody already, I’m in a difficult position here.”
“Are you on the john?” Jody says.
“Listen, I haven’t seen your father, you hear me, your own father, for days now. No note, no telephone call, not any kind of word at all. I’m, frankly, quite worried,” the slut says. “Louisa, are you there?” she says.
“I’m here,” Jody says.
“You see, really quite worried. What are we to do?” the slut says. Jody is now letting two of her mice climb up and down her arms while she talks on the phone. The receiver is held between her bent neck and shoulder. It drops to the floor when she giggles, when the mice run out to the edge of her fingertips she always giggles. Louisa picks up the phone.
“Jody here,” Louisa says.
“Jody? All right. It doesn’t matter who. Listen, we’ve got to do something, fill out some kind of report. Go to the police,” the slut says. The slut is standing in the hall now. She stands and looks down the stairwell as she talks. “Because, you see, he’s not coming. He’s not here,” the slut says. The slut holds out her hand over the empty space above the stairwell, emphasizing.
“He’s not missing from here,” Louisa says. “He doesn’t live here.”
The slut laughs and then wipes her nose with her hand. “Jody, you’re a smart girl. Aren’t you a smart girl? I’ll answer for you, because I know. Think how it looks. I’m in the station. The girlfriend. I’m telling the fat cop behind the desk I can’t find my lover, that he’s been gone for days. Are you with me? And you, now you be the fat cop behind the desk, Jody, you tell me what the fat cop says to me, the girlfriend,” the slut says
. “‘Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?’ That’s it, that’s what you, Jody, say, if you, Jody, are the fat cop. Forms need to be filled out, Jody. That’s what I’m saying,” the slut says. The slut is back in her kitchen now. She takes a dirty tall glass that holds the remnants of gin and an old lemon and she tosses the gin into the sink and then fills the glass with tap water and puts the old lemon back in the glass and then she drinks. Louisa hears her swallow.
“Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?” Louisa says.
“That’s exactly what he’d say,” the slut says.
“Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?” Louisa says again.
“You want me to answer that? Is that what you’re doing?” the slut says. “I’ll answer that. No, wait, why should I answer that? You’re smart, you Smith girls, but you’re also cruel. But never mind that now. We’ve got work to do. You’ve got to get up here. A.S.A.P. All right? Do you hear me. Hello? Hello?” Louisa goes through the channels again. A nature show shows dying elephants searching for water, their trunks looking stretched out and dragging on the ground.
“Uptown. Take the bus. Take whatever you take. The subway, it’s faster,” the slut says.
“I can’t watch this,” Jody says to Louisa. “It’s not my cup of tea.” She walks back to her room, her arms out in the style of zombies, her mice running on them.
“A cab, I think,” Louisa says, “is what you want us to take. It’s what will get us there faster. Pay for our cab, meet us at the curb with your wallet ready. And victuals,” Louisa says, “buy some in advance. We like hamburgers. Two apiece.”
“When are you leaving? Leave now,” the slut says. “Remember, it’s your father,” and then she says, “I’m hanging up now. I’ll expect you no later than twenty minutes from now. That’s plenty of time. Isn’t that plenty of time? Jody? Twenty minutes?”
Here They Come Page 6