“Lucy Amaro,” Lucy says, too loud, as if she has practiced.
“Well, Lucy Amaro,” Ms. Laura says, “you don’t have to play with the dollhouse. You can play with whatever you like.”
Lucy’s eyes light up to match Ms. Laura’s, and she squirms off the sofa and goes right to the school director’s desk. There, she plucks the woman’s empty Starbucks cup from its designated place next to the tape dispenser. Three seconds later, Lucy has settled onto the carpet with the cup and the tape, and Lola wants to cry.
But when she looks back to Ms. Laura, the woman is smiling at her. “She’s a very creative child. Most girls her age are already sticking to what society considers a gender norm. Dollhouses, toy kitchens, pink. Even more important, Lucy possesses imagination. She doesn’t need frills to be creative.”
Lola watches Lucy taping her way around the empty plastic coffee cup and feels her heart outside her body, even though Lola never carried Lucy in her stomach.
“It’s an advanced skill, to be able to make something from nothing,” Ms. Laura continues, her voice so firm and even that Lola has to believe her. Still, Lucy does not know how to play with a dollhouse. How sad. Lola should have purchased some toys with her drug loot. She has enough to spare on a decked-out dollhouse, one that showcases a cushy upper-middle-class life to whatever-class child frolics at its doorstep.
“I filled out the application,” Lola says, her hand shaking as she removes the folded pieces of paper from her pants pocket. “We don’t have a stapler,” she apologizes, but Ms. Laura waves her sorrow away and glances at the three crumpled pieces of paper Lola printed out last night. The woman grabs a pair of reading glasses from the coffee table, perching them on her nose to read Lola’s responses. Lola hears a clock ticking but doesn’t dare take her eyes off Ms. Laura to see where in the room time is being counted. The only other sound is Lucy, winding the tape around the coffee cup, fashioning her own version of a spiral staircase.
At last, Ms. Laura looks up. “Wonderful,” she says. “Such thoughtful answers.”
“Thank you,” Lola says, bowing her head to this woman who has welcomed her and Lucy with the same high expectations she might for her wealthy pupils.
“The school year has already begun. We’re operating at capacity, and even if we weren’t, we do have a waiting list.”
“How long is the waiting list? Couple weeks?” Lola asks. She had not anticipated this problem. She thought she could show up and enroll Lucy the same day, any day, especially with the application, typed, no less, as her insurance.
Ms. Laura bites her lip, and Lola can tell she has asked a stupid question. “Longer,” Ms. Laura responds, and Lola imagines the years stretching out before Lucy as all her would-be classmates surpass her, living and learning and loving, leaving Lucy behind in her ghetto bedroom with no dollhouse in her future.
And Lola will not be alive to help her.
“Please,” Lola says.
Again, Ms. Laura holds up a hand. “I’m willing to make an exception in Lucy’s case. We have a select spot for diversity. I can get her in next week.”
Lola feels her chest lift, thinking of Lucy here next week, even if she is not.
“I see from her application you’re not her mother. We’ll just need proof that you are Lucy’s legal guardian.”
Lola sinks in her chair. Red tape cuts like a fucking knife.
“You’re not her legal guardian?”
Lola shakes her head.
“Could you speak to her mother, then? Obtain her permission?”
“I haven’t talked to her mother…” Since I threatened her with a baseball bat.
“I’m sorry, but unless you have a paper authorizing you to care for Lucy, we can’t take her at Blooming Gardens.” Ms. Laura stands in a way that lets Lola know the meeting is over.
“Isn’t there something you could do? We have money. I know it doesn’t look that way—”
“That’s all right,” Ms. Laura says.
“I just have to drive home and back to get it. It’s cash. A lot of it.”
“No,” Ms. Laura tells Lola. It’s a firm response, simple and kind. Lola doesn’t hear the word often anymore, and she appreciates its finality. Lola knows arguing and bribing are lost causes here.
She stands. “Lucy. Time to go home.”
“What?” Lucy asks. “Is school over?”
“Yeah,” Lola says. “School’s over. Stupid to come here anyway.” She has regressed to feeling sorry for herself. Stupid Lola, to think her baby who’s not her baby could live and work and play among the semi-elite. Lucy will have to go to some ghetto kindergarten, where she will learn the beginnings of what matters to a ghetto girl—getting the guy, keeping the guy, not being too smart to scare the guy.
Ms. Laura sees right through Lola’s self-pity and gives her nothing. Instead, she turns to Lucy. “Keep the cup. And the tape.”
Ms. Laura smiles at Lucy, and Lucy smiles back, unaware of the woman’s rejection. The little girl thinks she’s attended her first day of school, and the realization hits Lola like a goddamn heartbreak tsunami.
In two quick strides, Lola has reached the dollhouse. She widens her arms to lift the two-story structure, and although her biceps bulge under its weight, she feels lighter somehow.
Ms. Laura doesn’t protest, doesn’t say she can’t, or stop that, or she’s calling the cops. Instead, she lets Lola take the dollhouse without protest. The lack of confrontation makes Lola feel she hasn’t gotten revenge at all.
But by the end of the day, Lucy will know how to play with dolls.
Lola sits up in bed, legs crossed, elbows resting on knees. She turns Andrea Dennison Whitely’s business card over and over between two fingers. One side contains the trappings of a full life—name, title, office information. The other side is blank. Lola wishes her choices were so black and white.
She wonders if Lucy is still staring at the dollhouse, unsure how to play a game where stability and happiness are the prevailing constants. Lola had wanted to show her—here’s how you imagine, here’s how you let your mind play. She had backed off, though, because Lucy had told her on the ride home that dollhouses were her favorite and she loved to play with them. Lola had realized Lucy was attempting to appease Lola, to tell her it was a good thing, Lola stealing a dollhouse from an exclusive private kindergarten.
But Lola’s loot doesn’t change the fact that Lucy will have to walk the two blocks to barrio kindergarten. Lola will have to keep her fingers crossed some starving child doesn’t steal her lunch and trade it for cheap smack money. But Lola is getting confused—what is the age where you turn down the wrong path and can’t go back? For her, is it twenty-six?
Lola shakes off the thought and grabs the landline. The phone is cheap plastic, not even portable, its scratchy connection unsuitable for business. Lola considers this a personal call. If Andrea Dennison Whitely chooses to trace it, she will find a landline instead of a burner cell.
“Andrea Dennison Whitely.” The woman’s voice leaps over the phone, not loud, just right, with a touch of breathless. Lola wonders if she’s caught the prosecutor on her treadmill.
“Hi. Um, this is Lola,” Lola fumbles. She has to play the part of the abused woman, yes, but Andrea also leaves her tongue-tied and shy.
“Yes?” Andrea says, as if the name means something to her, though of course it can’t. Not yet.
“The woman from the parking garage.”
“Right,” Andrea says, her tone warming, her voice becoming smooth and kind. “How are you, Lola?”
Not great, Lola thinks. Dead. Can’t get my kid into kindergarten. And I forgot to get that life insurance policy no company would ever offer me.
“Scared,” Lola says aloud.
“Have you considered pressing charges?”
“Oh, no. Don’t think I could.”
“That thought is very common. But I can help you, Lola,” Andrea says, and Lola knows the prosecutor must have said these
words to countless women on the receiving end of a man’s fist. “Come down. Talk to me.”
“Someone sees me at your office, I’m dead,” Lola replies. The truth.
“Okay. Let’s meet somewhere off campus.”
“Where?”
“I’m guessing we need to stay out of your neighborhood,” Andrea says.
“Would the Westside work for you?”
“Yeah.”
Andrea names a diner Lola has never heard of, but she’s expecting gluten-free artisan toast and cage-free eggs.
“I’m in court today. Will tomorrow work?”
“Tomorrow will work,” Lola says. Tomorrow might be her second-to-last last day on Earth.
Garcia enters with a frying pan, an apron over his jeans. “You want lunch? Be good for us to eat together.”
He is right, so Lola lugs her body from bed to table. Lucy carries the conversation, telling Garcia all about what she thinks was her first day of kindergarten. He listens and nods and catches her milk glass before she spills it with an arm waved in careless excitement. Lola feels a sting in her eyes thinking how she will miss these two.
When Lucy goes down for a nap, Garcia follows Lola back into the bedroom. She sprawls on the bed, turned away from him, feeling the urge to pick a fight. Maybe her death will be easier if they go out on a petty sour note. She is seeking separation. She wants to soften the blow for him.
“You should have let her spill,” Lola says.
“What?”
“The milk. She’s gotta learn.”
“Learn what? Coordination? She will. When she’s older,” Garcia says. Lola sees the flash of anger in his eyes at her own coldness toward Lucy. In that moment, she hates herself and him. Hold on to this, she thinks. It will make you ready to leave them.
Instead, her hate muscle gives out, and she softens. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
“You hear from Hector?”
“Nah.”
“Shit,” Lola says. She hopes her baby brother’s just testing her, seeking her attention in the disguise of punishment.
“Probably holed up with that girl of his.” Lola hopes Hector and Amani have the good sense to stay behind closed doors.
“I’ll find him,” Garcia promises. “You rest.”
Lola falls into the musty pillows and mattress she shares with Garcia. She can feel several of the coils below popping into her back. They should buy a new bed. Then she thinks of her ticking clock dilemma and of a fresh mattress and Kim here to share it with Garcia.
“You know where she lives?” Garcia has reappeared, his face swimming above her. He has shifted from house husband in baggy jeans and apron to banger with dangerous shit to do. Lola notes the crease between his eyes. He is getting older.
“Who?” Lola asks, because all she can think is Kim, Kim, Kim. Someone else for Garcia to grow old with.
“Hector’s girl.”
Lola murmurs, “Somewhere in West Adams.”
Garcia gives a quick nod—that’ll do—and disappears again. Lola sees her long fingers reaching after him. She forgot to tell him to be careful. While Garcia’s girl, Lola, can roam Darrel King’s territory with a mere gunshot warning, Garcia can’t show his face without becoming a target.
But Lola is tired. She feels herself sinking like a stone in water. She craves a deep sleep that a gun battle couldn’t disturb.
Unconsciousness descends faster than she would have expected. She is rooted to the mattress, the same as if someone had chained her. In this dream state, she remembers she has arms and limbs, but she can’t seem to move them.
She dreams of Lucy in school, counting to twenty, singing the alphabet at the top of her lungs because she knows she knows it. Lola dreams of allowing a snack with nuts in Lucy’s lunch box. Ms. Laura scolds her—Lola has put the other children in jeopardy. Lola promises Ms. Laura it won’t happen again. Lola dreams that everyone in the class shows up for Lucy’s birthday party. She dreams of candles and a cake, home baked after several sunken failures, and a future for Lucy outside this place. As Lucy’s dream life continues, the little girl grows in inches and pounds and words and numbers and hurt and happy. But Lola falls away from her own dream. In her stead, Kim stands over Lucy’s thirteenth birthday cake, her famous chocolate concoction that Lola can only copy. When Lucy blows out the candles, she turns to Kim for a fierce squeeze and a smack on the lips.
Fuck that bitch, Lola thinks, and when she wakes to a ringing in her ear, she is saying the words aloud, “Fuck that bitch.”
The ringing doesn’t stop, and while Lola searches with fingers and closed eyes for its source, she realizes it’s not an alarm. Nothing is on fire. It is just her landline, and when she opens her eyes, making the painful journey into consciousness, she realizes the ringing is only a slight chirp.
“Yeah?” she answers.
“He ain’t here,” Garcia says.
“At the girl’s?” Lola asks. She knows Garcia must have debated whether to make this a business or personal call. She would have opted for business.
“Says she hasn’t seen him since Sunday. When you dragged him out of here.”
“Has he called?”
“She says no.”
“Think she’s telling the truth?”
“She’s got no reason to lie,” Garcia says.
Amani might have no reason to lie, but she sure as shit won’t tell the truth if Hector has asked her to harbor him and not tell a fucking soul…especially not his traitor bitch sister who doesn’t give a shit if their mother lives or dies.
“How do you know?” Lola asks.
“I convinced her to be honest,” Garcia says, and Lola hears the whimper in the background, low and static crusted through the cheap plastic phone.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Lola says.
“Promised I’d find him.”
“But you didn’t,” Lola says, and she hangs up on Garcia. What was he doing, calling her on the landline when one of her soldiers was missing? It helps to think of Hector as a soldier instead of her little brother. But if Hector is a soldier, he is AWOL, and AWOL soldiers return to their commanders only for punishment.
Lola rolls from bed and paws on the floor for her cell phone. On it, she sees three missed calls from Garcia. Shit. She shouldn’t have hung up on him. He knew she was sleeping, but he knew she would want him to wake her to hear about Hector.
Lola recalls the dinner table, the spilled milk, her telling Garcia he should have let it fall. Lola despises herself for wanting a child to fail. She despises herself for hanging up on Garcia, who wanted to let her sleep. Even without a psychiatrist, Lola can tell what she’s doing—separating herself from those she loves. It will be easier to leave this world resenting her loved ones.
She smooths her cargo pants and checks on the sleeping Lucy. Valentine snores beside the little girl, one ear up for sounds worth waking for—gunshots, screams, doors ajar, the rattle of kibble. Lola can leave them for twenty minutes.
It is late afternoon, and the sun is giving up its light. Lola sees a sky streaked pink and orange, flames forgotten in the wake of a star. Children circle their rusted bikes in the street, toeing the potholed pavement as they spin around in a screech of ancient pebbled blacktop. Sometimes the bike tires uncover other things—empty bindles, discarded vials, cheap beer cans, used condoms—remnants of a fucked-up adult’s life.
“Hey,” one kid says to her with a respectful raise of his chin.
“Hey,” Lola says. She doesn’t recognize the kid, but she’s guessing she knows his mother. She doesn’t bother trying to place a father who must have walked out a good decade ago.
As she keeps walking, pace relaxed, hands in her hoodie pockets as if she’s just out for a casual evening stroll, she hears the crunch of rubber on pavement. The kid is following her.
“Hey,” he tries again.
Lola stops and looks at him. He’s got about twelve years under his belt, maybe fourt
een, if his mother forgot to feed him or couldn’t afford to. His eyes are large, set deep in his face, and his hair is a sheath of black silk that falls almost to his shoulders. He has to keep flicking his head to one side to get that gorgeous hair out of his eyes.
“Heard you might be looking to hire.”
“Don’t need anybody to help me cook and clean,” Lola says, her inner red flags rising.
“Not talkin’ ’bout that,” the kid says. “Talkin’ ’bout your real business.”
Lola likes being recognized.
“I’m good. I’m loyal. I ain’t gonna rat on you.”
Lola wants to tell him yes, of course, thank you so much. But she can’t. She must live the rest of her days, all three of them, out of the spotlight.
“You should be in school,” Lola says.
“Five o’clock. School’d be out even if it weren’t summer.”
Lola takes a long pause, then asks, “How’d you hear about me?”
“Word on the street.”
Lola stands, brushing off her cargo pants. She expected to feel more panic than she does at the news that her cover might be blown.
“So what? I come work for you?”
“No,” Lola says.
“Why not?”
“Not hiring.”
Lola walks away, counting her steps as she nears Hector’s apartment.
Then she hears the kid again. “It was your brother. Hector. He was braggin’ on you. Told me his big sister was tough but fair. Told me she might could help me with a job.”
Lola stops, the shocking part of this kid’s words washing over her—not that Hector’s big mouth revealed her true identity to a neighborhood kid, but that her rebellious baby brother was bragging on her, acknowledging her talent, her leadership. The words warm her insides as the night air cools off the heated ghetto vibe around her.
“Write down your number. I’ll call you if anything comes up,” she tells him. He does, and then she’s on her way to Hector’s again.
There is a single light on in the apartment when Lola unlocks the door. She has a key, but even if she didn’t, the lock is cheap and pickable with nothing more than a credit card. The lamp next to Hector’s leather sofa gives off a warm glow. In this half shadow, the apartment looks clean. Hector has always been good about putting dirty dishes in the sink, if not the dishwasher. He makes his bed every morning, even though he leaves lumps of sheets and pillow under the comforter. He puts dirty laundry in a pile in his closet. All these habits Lola taught him. Lola, not Maria.
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