“Holy shit, I’m wasted.” Crystal giggles and grabs hold of my arm.
Jill takes Crystal’s other arm. “Jesus, didn’t you eat before you came out?”
Jill’s a little drunk too, but nobody looks as bad as Crystal.
“Sure I ate. One piece of dry toast and half a grapefruit,” Crystal slurs. “I’m doing this grapefruits diet, man. You should try it.”
“Why,” Jill asks her. “So I can be an assless wonder too?”
Crystal giggles. “You’re just jealous. Do you know what size jeans I wear? Grapefruits, grapefruits, grapefruits.”
The cop with the dog trudges behind us and the other one stands at the top of the path, giving us each the once-over.
As we pass him, Crystal holds up my hand and slaps her car keys into it. “Designated driver!”
When we find the car, Crystal gets into the passenger side. Jill sits in the back and takes out her cigarettes.
On the driver’s side, I buckle my seat belt and stare ahead through the windshield for a couple seconds. “I don’t have my licence,” I say.
“You do so,” Jill bellows from the back. I can hear her lighter flick and a quick inhale before she blows smoke and says, “You started going to those classes, like, the day you turned sixteen.”
“Oh yeah!” Crystal squeals. “I saw you staying after school for driver’s ed. I thought you were such a fag.” She cackles her ass off and then in a booming announcer’s voice says, “Young Drivers of Ca-na-da!”
I took those classes all right. I caught the bus way out to the east burbs—Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody—so I could pull off enough drugstore returns for the fee. They held the in-class stuff in Mr. Walters’ Trades Math room. Then we did another three weeks of actual driving in one of those freaky cars with two steering wheels. I loved it. Driving was like growing wings. I was determined to get my licence. Then things went off the rails with Marlene.
I turn the ignition.
Crystal screams. “Fuckin’ Sammie! You don’t care about anything! You’re so fuckin’ cool.” She looks over at me with watery eyes and slurs, “Seriously, Sammie. I just didn’t get you before, but you’re …”
Jill pushes her head between the front seats. “She’s the baddest chick in town.”
Peels of laughter from Crystal. “Foxy fuckin’ Brown!”
I’d like to slap Crystal. I can almost feel the heat of the slap in my palm as I adjust the rear-view mirror.
I’d give anything to have Drew with me now. Drew has his licence. An image of him flashes in my mind, bent over the steering wheel, carefully putting his father’s car into drive.
ELEVEN
I’M ON THE couch with Jill. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon and we’re still not dressed because it’s pouring today. Pissing sideways.
I’m kind of happy, though.
Lou came home from work a minute ago. He stood here in the living room, taking up the entire door frame, and said, “Sammie, I understand you had to drive the girls home from a party the other night. Some drinking involved.” He scowled at Jill.
“Daddy! It was Crystal, not me!” Jill sounds like a six-year-old in a tutu when she sugar-talks her dad.
Lou looked back at me. “I just want to say that I appreciate you trying to do the responsible thing, Sammie. But I don’t want you driving without a licence. So if you want to make an appointment to take your road test this week, I’d be happy to give you a lift.” Then he lowered his head in that funny, bashful way he has and went upstairs.
I feel as if I’ve got sparklers in my gut right now. Nobody else except maybe those born-again kids talks like Lou, makes out like I’m a good girl, a dignified kind of person.
“Sammie, you’re blushing.” Ruby smirks. She’s sitting kitty-corner to us on the other couch, sewing the hem on a pair of Lou’s pants.
Whenever a person tells me I’m blushing, it just gives me an even bigger lobster-face. Lou’s so nice it’s embarrassing.
Jill is in her fuzzy purple bathrobe. I’m in my pyjamas and a beat-up University of British Columbia sweatshirt that once belonged to Jill’s ex-boyfriend, Roman. Roman used to play basketball for UBC but he was flunking so they kicked him out. He was way older than Jill. Twenty-two. I asked Jill once why Ruby let her go with a guy that old and she said, “I do what I want no matter what she says. And she’d rather know the truth than have me lie.”
Staring at the TV screen, Jill says, “Man, is Billy Dee Williams not the finest looking man you ever saw?”
We’re watching some old movie called Mahogany.
He looks a bit slick if you ask me. Like a hustler who doesn’t know enough to downplay it. “What else has he been in?”
“You never saw Lady Sings the Blues?” Jill says, as if I must’ve been raised by wolves.
She’s got the soundtrack from Lady Sings the Blues in her bedroom. The Mahogany one too. Diana Ross singing her guts out. Jill must have a dozen Diana Ross albums.
“If I married him,” Jill says, mooning at the TV, “I wouldn’t even have to change my last name. Jill Williams, meet Billy Dee Williams. Why, hello, Jill. You are one hot mama and I think we would have beautiful babies together.”
“Better watch it,” I tell her. “Maybe he’s not just any brother. Maybe he’s your brother.”
Ruby titters. “I think I’d remember that,” she says.
Hardly any black people live in Burnaby. Or Vancouver either. There are only two black kids in our whole school, which is probably why Jill’s so fascinated—she thinks it’s exotic.
I wonder what Jill’s dad thinks. My dad is pretty weird about black people. His friends are too. Marlene told me about this thing that happened before I was born. She said that she and Sam were over for drinks at another couple’s place: Peggy and Mike. Peggy—she’s now with my dad—was going out with a loan shark called Mike McGee back then. They were sitting around drinking wine and talking about how the white neighbour lady had gotten married to a black man.
Peggy didn’t think it was such a big deal.
Her boyfriend, Mike, said, “That sounds okay to you? Would you sleep with one of ’em?”
Peggy said that it depended.
“Would you sleep with a nigger or not? Answer the question.”
Marlene flashed her a look, trying to signal Peggy to say no.
But Peggy answered, “Maybe if I fell in love with one of ’em.”
Mike slapped Peggy in the mouth. Then he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her off her chair and called her a whore and a slut.
Marlene and Sam got out of there. Peggy was on the floor and Mike was waving a gun around before they left the house.
I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Makes me think I was raised by wolves.
Sitting here in the living room now, I watch Ruby’s sewing needle poke in and out of Lou’s jeans. Lou would never talk the way Sam and his friends do.
Diana Ross is singing on TV, asking whether you know where you’re going to and if you know what life is showing you. I hate this song. It’s the most depressing song ever written. It doesn’t even have a proper title, just “Theme from Mahogany.”
Jill is warbling along.
This song is an even bigger drag than “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” and that is an all-time wrist-slasher if I ever heard one.
The doorbell rings.
Jill looks at her mother. Her mother looks back.
“You get it,” they say in stereo. Then they both turn to me. “Sammie, you get it.”
The two of them are still giggling their asses off when I get up and open the door.
Standing on the porch is Drew, soaking wet.
My stomach drops as if I’m flying down the first hill on a roller coaster.
“What are you doing here,” I whisper, slip outside onto the welcome mat and pull the door behind me. Beyond the overhang, rain is pelting the steps.
“I looked up Jill in the phone book.”
I can just make out
that stupid shitty Mahogany song still plinking away in the living room. When you look behind you, Diana says, there’s no open door. What are you hoping for?
“I was going to just phone you but—” Drew pauses. “That thing in the supermarket, I just—” He sputters, “P-p-p,” as if he can’t make words for a second or two. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?”
“I’m sorry. I’m—” I feel the goose egg in my throat again. It’s ready to burst. Inside the house: Do you know where you’re going to? Over and over. I can’t talk.
“I don’t get you. What did I do?”
“It’s not about you. I’ve got other stuff going on.” I look down at the weather-beaten porch between my bare feet. “I’m not even dressed.”
He looks away, shaking his head like he can’t believe it. For a second I think he’s going to walk down the stairs, back into the rain, and be done with me.
Instead he says, “I came here because you’re not home. I mean—” He sighs as if he’s collecting himself. “I thought I should find you because, um, because I think something’s wrong with your mom. She called my place yesterday at, like, five in the morning. My mother answered and told her I was still sleeping. So then she called again at seven. My mom was so mad.” He laughs nervously because Drew and his mom don’t get along.
Then there’s a long pause until he says, “She was pretty revved up. She had this whole idea—your mom—about making you famous. I’m supposed to take a picture of you with tons of pink roses in a pink Cadillac. She said she drew me an illustration. Everything has to be pink for it to work. Then we’re supposed to send the picture to Phil Donahue, the talk-show guy. Everyone in the plan is Scottish, she said, so it would work because of the pattern. Because you’re Scottish, and I’m Scottish, and she’s Scottish and Phil Donahue’s Scottish …”
I move past him to edge of the porch. A drop of cool rain slants in and snaps my face. I wrap my arms around my ribs. I shouldn’t even have a friend like Drew. Drew is going to heaven. Me and Marlene are not.
He leans against the railing. “She kept asking if I could see the pattern. It was like she’d decoded the pattern and she could see it and nobody else could. Um. I said that sounded neat or interesting or whatever. Maybe we could talk about it later. So, I called her last night to see how she was doing and she had a whole other plan about making a million dollars. It had to do with pills and doctors and this secret code on pill bottles. She said it would work because of everybody being Chinese. She’s Chinese and so is her doctor.”
I turn around. “She who? My mother is Chinese?”
“Yeah. And some guy named Freddy.”
I look out at the rain hitting the parked cars and the sidewalk and the road.
“Sammie?”
“Yup.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yup.”
“Do you want to hang out? Go for coffee? Or we could take the bus downtown … go to Stanley Park maybe. Lost Lagoon is kind of cool when it’s raining.”
Across the road, there is a car parked with a small cargo trailer hitched to the back. I wish I could climb inside the trailer part. I want to be where it’s small and dark and closed. Where no one can see me or hear me.
“Sammie?”
“I can’t.”
“Okay. Well, uh, well, I have something for you. It’s just this, um, poem.” He pulls a folded envelope out of his jacket pocket. He goes to hand it to me. The edges are wet. “Or I could just read it to you now. Should I?” He goes quiet again. “Sammie?”
I feel my chest caving when he says my name.
I wish I were mean and strong. I wish I could punch Marlene for this and Drew too, bust everything apart. But I just stand here on the porch, sucking inside-out instead.
“I love you,” Drew says.
Like getting my head held under water. Like a pillow pressed over my face.
I shake my head no, walk back into the house, and close the door behind me, leaving him there on the stoop holding his folded poem.
TWELVE
RAIN IS COMING down so hard it’s bouncing off the sidewalks. No umbrella. Cold drops snap my skin and stream down my face, inside the collar of my jacket, down my spine. I don’t care. Let it wash me away.
Before I left the house, Jill came downstairs to find me hiding in her bedroom. I had wiped my face but she could see my red eyes. “Who was that outside?”
“Drew. Is he gone?”
“Yeah. He went trudging down the steps like someone just drop-kicked him.” She sat beside me on her bed, almost whispering. “Did you guys break up?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Did he say something shitty to you?”
“I want to go home.”
“Oh, Sammie.” She put a purple fuzzy bathrobe arm around my shoulders and tried to hug me close. “It’s going to be okay. Come on, Sam.”
“Don’t call me that.” I pulled away. “I’m not Sam.”
Ruby clomped down the stairs and pushed the beaded curtain aside. “What’s wrong? Who was that outside?”
“Her friend, Drew. She wants to go home.”
“Sammie honey, that’s not a good idea.” Ruby came into the room.
“I want it how it was,” I said. I got up off the bed and folded my arms. “There’s nothing now. It’s all nothing.”
Ruby put her arms around me and squeezed. I went stiff and tried to wriggle away from her round soft self. She hugged tighter.
When she finally eased her grip, she said, “You don’t like to be touched, do you, Sammie. Seems as if you didn’t grow up with much affection. Don’t you need a hug now and then?”
Why does everyone think they know what the hell I need?
I had loads of affection. Maybe not from Sam, but Marlene was a blue-ribbon mush-pot, always petting and kissing me. When I was a kid sometimes I slept in the same bed with her. Especially when we were on the road, Marlene, Sam and me—Sam didn’t want to spring for an extra bed. Late at night, Marlene used to play a game where she wrote words on my back with her finger and I had to guess what she’d just written. It felt so yummy to have my back tickled that I would slide into a stupor every time.
“I don’t know,” I’d say, “write it again. Write me a book.”
Made me want to bawl thinking of it there in Jill’s bedroom, Marlene’s fingernails grazing my skin.
“I’m going out,” I told Ruby.
Jill glanced at her mother. “Do you want company?”
“I’m not going home, okay, I just want to go for a walk.”
Ruby’s tone went low and careful. “I don’t know what all’s happened to you, Sammie, but I just want you to know that we love you.”
Jesus Christ! Love, love love.
Anyone who says I love you is just trying to hold you hostage. Drew should knock it the hell off, too, I thought. He should take it back.
And just like that, the phone rang again. Ruby, Jill and I looked at the bedside table. Ruby picked up, said hello and listened.
“Just a moment.” She held the receiver out for me.
“Sammie?” Drew’s voice was strained and huffing, as if he’d been running. He must have been at a phone booth. I could hear the traffic. “I’m sorry. I meant like a friend. You’re my best friend. Like that, okay? I love you like that.”
“I have to go,” I said, and hung up the phone.
Rainwater drips off the ends of my hair. People passing by with umbrellas look at me as if I’m a complete berserker, out in a downpour like this.
Is it turkeys that tilt their heads back in the rain and drown?
I keep hearing Drew. I love you. Marlene too. I love you. Makes me want to dig out my skull with a spoon.
Marlene claims to be selective about the love stuff. She doesn’t say that to just anyone, she says. Mind you, she also says, “Tell the truth and shame the devil,” whenever she’s trying to get something out of me. She hates all that God stuff and then she comes out with c
razy shit like that.
I love you, Marlene says, and then she buggers off and doesn’t even leave a note. It was just her and me. Me and her. She used to understand that. She used to always leave notes.
One time, I heard her out back at two in the morning with some jerk. My mother has the worst taste in men.
“Come on, Jack, just for a minute,” she kept saying. Her s’s were sliding all over the place. The guy’s voice was too low to make out. Marlene got louder. “Look at me, Jack, please?” Right outside my bedroom window.
Made me sick to hear her beg like that. I pulled the pillow over my head.
Suddenly, clippy footsteps came down the little cement path beside our balcony. And then I heard the Romanian accent of Nadia, the caretaker’s wife.
“Marlene!” she said in a loud whisper. “You are waking up half the building.”
I wondered why it was Nadia and not her husband, George, coming out in the middle of the night. Seems like Nadia always had to do the dirty work.
“This is my goddamn place,” my mother said to Nadia, “and I’ll do whatever the hell I like.”
I peered through the crack between the curtains. I saw parts of Nadia—short, choppy hair, pyjama pants, and her elbow jumping around in a woolly sweater as she jabbed a finger toward Marlene.
“Get inside your goddamn place,” Nadia hissed, “or I will call the police!”
Then the jerk spoke up. “Let’s calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” That was Marlene, of course.
I listened until our apartment door opened and closed. There was scuffling and bumping, my mother saying, Oops, and giggling.
I tried to let my brain fade into sleep. After a while, my mom’s voice came high and needy again, like a baby, like a Siamese cat.
“I love you, Jack. I love you.”
That was the capper.
“I never even said I love you to your father,” Marlene had once told me. “Only you. The second you were born I loved you.”
I’d never even heard of Jack.
I opened my bedroom door and stood there, looking into the living room, where my mother was on the couch pawing the guy’s face. Jack was all leathery brown and skinny like a science project. I swear to God, he was like one of those bog-men who gets preserved in peat for a hundred years.
One Good Hustle Page 8