Gold Fame Citrus

by Claire Vaye Watkins

  “Thank you,” Luz said. “I don’t deserve your help.”

  “I am not helping you,” Jimmer said. He handed the gourd to Ray and instructed him to continue smearing Ig. To Luz he said, “Come with me.”

  Outside, clouds were snagged on the teeth of the maybe-Sierras, dropping rain that evaporated before it hit the ground. Jimmer said, “Luz, we all have an obligation to the people who love us. They’ve given us this gift whether we want it or not and it is our duty to stand up and be worthy. We are not loved in proportion to our deserving, and thank God for that, for unworthies like you and me would find that life a bitch. We’re loved to the level we ought to rise, and even in returning it we are obligated to be gentle. Do you understand me? You chose her; she didn’t choose you. She came into this world unawares and not knowing better than to love full-blast. You seem to be doing your best to teach her what a mistake that is. Is that what you’re after? To make sure this little one knows what a dreadful business love can be? You’re learning that yourself, and so you think you might give her lessons while you’re at it, is that right?”

  “No.”

  “No. Because you aren’t even thinking about her. That would involve too much foresight and consideration on your part. That would imply a plan and some sitting and thinking about what would be best for someone other than Luz, and you haven’t ever done that, have you? Now, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve lost people. But you’ve thrown them away. There is an important difference. You’re waiting for someone to come scoop you up. Well, you want to know who comes along and does the scooping? Scavengers. You’re busted up, anyone can see that. But tell me why you’ve got to bust up this little one, too. Are you lonely? You want a companion down there, in the sinkhole you’ve become? Shame on you.”

  Luz touched her pocket absently.

  Jimmer ripped her hand away. “You want more? Go get more—chew yourself into oblivion!”

  “No—”

  “Go on—I mean it! Bon voyage!”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “And when you go, don’t come back. Not for Ig and not for anyone. Kill yourself quick instead of slow, and save us all the hurt.”

  “I don’t want it,” Luz told him and told herself.

  But she did want it, wanted it badly, wanted it even more in the following days, when she was not to go back to Ig. She was not helpful, according to Jimmer, or rather she would be tremendously helpful if she would just stay the fuck away. Her waking hours yawned before her without Ig to suck them up, and without the root, each day was a greenhouse for worry. But she did not seek out more. She read Sacajawea’s birth of Little Pomp and John Muir’s campaign for Yosemite until her eyes gave in to headache, until tremors began in her bowels and shuddered outward from there. Soon, her only project was making it outside to evacuate in a timely manner and back in again. Each of the four stairs rising into the Blue Bird took on its own personality, presented its unique challenges—the staggering height of the first, the tricky wedge of the third. She vomited everything she had in her and otherwise emptied herself, first in privacy and then, when she could not make it to privacy, out in the open. People gawked, but Luz did not notice them. In this way word spread that Luz was sick. One day Dallas came, and another Ray, each bringing water and news of Ig’s progress. The second time Ray came he stayed, insisting on placing a bucket beside Luz and tending to her.

  Cramps turned her inside out and, forgetting, she asked where all the pain was coming from. “You’ve been chewing a tranquilizer,” Ray said. “You’re going through withdrawal.”

  Eventually, Luz spoke only to moan apologies. “I was supposed to be better than her people, but I’m not,” she said. “Not . . . not . . . not.” Her wet head in Ray’s lap was his forgiveness.

  When Jimmer came, Ray asked after Ig.

  “Sleeping,” Jimmer said. “Dallas is with her. You’re welcome to go see for yourself. The little one would like that.”

  “I’m needed here,” Ray said, an unconvincing line from a badly written play. The truth was that anything that came out of Luz was easier than Ig’s pleading eyes, pinched between the featureless venom-fat pustules of her face, asking, Why are you hurting me?

  Jimmer allowed Ray his dishonesty. Intervention was a young man’s game, and he’d already exhausted himself with Luz, the wretch. “How’s she doing?”

  “She comes in and out,” Ray said. He touched her dank brow. “She keeps forgetting where she is. She’s always shivering.”

  Jimmer felt Luz’s wrist, then put his head near hers and listened. He placed a bundle of sticks in a shell, lit it, and wafted the smoke toward Luz, who was no longer with them but off in an arctic tube where a sourceless echo said, You are supposed to be here, and, What does that mean, babygirl, to set a bunch of uranium free?

  At dusk, Jimmer returned, empty-handed. Luz was caught in some demonic REM cycle—catatonic as a corpse, then suddenly her yellow-edged eyes open but unseeing, still watching whatever scenes played out in her mind. Each time she awoke Ray gave her water and she took it, briefly, before collapsing again. Ray told Jimmer this. And also that if he lost Luz he’d lose everything.

  “If she makes it through the night she’ll come out,” Jimmer said.

  “You’re sure?” asked Ray.

  “Let’s get her through the night.” There was something Jimmer was not saying, but Ray could not bring himself to demand it.

  And so the two of them sat quietly for some time. Jimmer grew angry at the approaching mountains and all the sorrow they brought, while Ray found himself inclined to pray. He was rusty at it, his prayers not his own but borrowed from the boys in the desert, recycled entreaties once offered to him, god of chemical reprieve. They went, Just let everything be okay, could you? I’m hurting here. Isn’t there something you can do for me? There’s got to be something you can do for me. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat—I’ve got fear like you get the shits. It comes for me in the night, a black thing. It curls around my head. Mine are little winged demons, a cloud of them. I see them everywhere. Don’t you have some way to make them leave? I only want my old self back. I can’t remember what it was like not to hurt.

  Suddenly, light invaded the rear of the bus, a riot of dust tumbling in. Ray stayed where he was, Luz’s head heavy in his lap. He would not stop touching her, not now and not ever.

  Though Ray did not look up, he knew Levi’s easy walk, the splay of his thick hands, his hard gourd of a torso. Levi approached Ray where he sat with Luz. Ray kept his gaze down, on Levi’s right foot, where his two smallest toes should have been, where a knob of jaundiced skin twitched instead. The dowser spoke to Jimmer only. “This is not a good idea.”

  Jimmer said nothing.

  “Stop this, Jimmer. It’s fucking nonsense.”

  Just then, Luz woke with one of her desperate gasps. Ray held her, whispered her all kinds of prayers. To the others he said, “She’s nearly through the worst of it, I think.”

  The dowser said, “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “I’ve been here with her.”

  “So I’ve heard. She could die. Did you know that?”

  Ray looked up to Jimmer. “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmer admitted.

  Levi squatted down beside Ray. “It’s true,” he said tenderly. He took some root from his pouch. “She needs this.”

  Luz, only half there, would surely take anything anyone gave her.

  “No,” said Ray. “You can’t do that.”

  “I have to,” said Levi. “You’ll kill her.”

  Ray said, “Jimmer, tell him he can’t do this. She’s come too far for this.”

  “He might be right,” Jimmer said. “No one has ever stopped cold.”

  “No,” said Ray, hunching over his girl. He said this many times.

  Levi put a large, soft hand on Ray’
s shoulder. “Her death will be on you. I’m not sure you’re grasping that.”

  Ray shrugged his hand off. “On me? How do you figure that, friend? You’re the one force-feeding her that shit.”

  Again, Jimmer said, “No one has ever stopped.”

  Then, from the dusty halo churning at the rear of the bus, someone said, “I stopped.”

  “Dal,” Jimmer said.

  It was Dallas, Ig in her arms, a lumpy puppet.

  “When?” Levi demanded.

  “After,” she said, an aquifer of understanding between them.

  Levi opened his mouth. But then, as if absorbing the blast wave of these two syllables, he lost his balance, tumbled out of his squat beside Ray and onto his rump on the floor of the bus. Somehow, he was still all coiled potential there. He might have sprung up in rage and embarrassment, might have shaken Dallas, might have hit her, hit Ig, might have shrieked in her face all his injured rage until the sound itself forced her out, and Ig too. They waited.

  Finally, Levi said quietly, “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t know I had to,” said Dallas.

  Then, Luz spoke. She was asking for Ig. She sat up and reached for the girl. Dallas paused, but laid Ig in her mother’s lap. Luz took Ig—swollen Ig and poisoned Ig and ruined Ig—and held her.

  Levi kneeled beside them. “Luz, you need to take this nib. You’re sick. You could die. Just chew a little.”

  Ray whispered, “Don’t, Luz.”

  Luz did not look at either of them. She kissed Ig, then muttered something into the baby’s lumpy dome. The baby began to cry, a cry crimped by her injuries. Dallas went to take her again but Luz looked up, pleading for more time.

  Levi raised the purplish strip of root. “Just a little bit, my girl, just to get you through.”

  Luz spoke again, louder. “Leave us alone.”

  Levi said, “Luz, you—”

  “Please. Everyone. Leave us alone.”

  No one moved until Dallas said, “Let’s go.”

  They went.

  —

  Hanging high above the colony, the crests of the dunes were wind-smudged, but the air outside the bus was funeral-still. Levi turned to Dallas. “You’ve always been willful.”

  “Fuck off,” said Dallas before she left. “I love you, but you have got to fuck off.”

  Jimmer glanced at Levi, then told Ray, “Keep her hydrated. And bring that little one back to me when you can.” He went after Dallas.

  Ray expected Levi to leave, too—hoped he would. But Levi stayed, watching Dallas and Jimmer until they disappeared, Jimmer’s hand on Dallas’s back.

  Levi rubbed his bare head. “Are they . . . together?” Apparently he expected an answer.

  “Jimmer and Dal?” said Ray. “I don’t know, man. I’m out of the loop.”

  Levi sighed, looked up at the dune sea, then gathered up his robe and began to piss. He was ample all the way down, Ray noticed.

  “The women in my life are turning on me,” Levi said. “Everything I do, I do for them. I think about them day and night. Everything I’ve done has been to make them comfortable. I worry for them. I take care of them. Every single thing I do is for them and they don’t even see me anymore.” He gave his penis a mournful shake, dropped his robe, and looked at Ray. “I can’t even trust Dallas anymore. I’ve lost her. She’s another person. The things I’ve done, to keep them comfortable . . .” He exhaled again and looked past Ray, to the looming toothy range. “Things are changing all around me. ‘Force-feeding.’ Did Luz say that?”

  “I—”

  “I know she didn’t say that. I’ve never forced anyone to do anything in my life.”

  “How about your little harem here?”

  “Harem?”

  Ray touched the notch of scar at his brow. “That’s why you did this to me out there. Because I’m not useful to you.”

  Levi shook this off. “The dune curates. Some are called here—”

  “Cut the bullshit, man. I’m a threat to you.”

  Levi pinched one broad brow between his fingers, then the other, as though trying to wring the irritation from them. “Do you have any idea what it would take to threaten me? That’s not rhetorical. I sincerely want to know. Because I’ve never felt threatened or otherwise afraid of anyone in my entire life and I am curious about that sensation.”

  “You attacked me because I wasn’t useful to you. Because you weren’t interested in fucking me.”

  “No.” Levi smiled, a sick crescent in the leaving light. “That we did for fun.”

  Levi turned and raised his arms to the colony around him. “The whole natural world is arrayed against you, Ray. I can hear it. There is a certain order of things here—everywhere, really. You’ll fit in somewhere, but not here. Surely you’ve felt that.”

  Ray had.

  “Luz belongs here,” Levi said. “Dallas and Jimmer belong here. Estrella, too.”

  An involuntary spasm of disgust crossed Ray’s face—a gift for the dowser. Levi accepted it. “Yes, I know about Estrella. I know everything.”

  Ray turned to reenter the Blue Bird. “Don’t call her that.”

  “You know,” said Levi, “I could find those people—Estrella’s people.” Whimsy and titillation picked up speed inside him, as if this were a spontaneous road trip he was planning. “I could find them in a day! Why don’t I bring them here and we can see what they think of you?”

  “Bring them here?” Ray scoffed. “Go ahead! Call on them. Make a day of it. Let me give you their address. Oh, damn, I don’t have it on me. But you know what? I think they’re in the phone book.”

  Levi’s amusement was almost perceptible, a living breathing thing. “Funny,” he said. “I know where I am. Do you know where you are?”

  Luz found the rootless world hot and lacking, scooped out, herself a bored husk blowing through. In her beige sobriety she clung to the idea of Ig, whose reported recuperation was the only gift life had left her. They were hardly alone together, for the sake of both their healing, so she tried to get by on conjuring the child’s oddness and affection. But when Dallas or Jimmer brought Ig for a visit, the child was staggeringly hurtful, enjoying nothing more than dropping something, having Luz pick it up, and then dropping it again. Worse, the baby was in a Ray phase these days, putting her sourness on the shelf only when he was near.

  With her newly clear head, Luz was free to feel acutely this injury and all the others she’d postponed with the root. She felt all the time. There seemed no intermission to her new stirrings—the guilt and shame and self-loathing were physical, concrete burdens, and heavy. Boredom flopped on her chest. Regret sagged in her gut. The daisy chain of Ig’s scars was a yoke she dragged from her neck. On her own and too awake, Luz recalled the corridor of her withdrawal, the arctic tube, the passageway in which she’d been trapped for such a long time. She’d come upon objects there: the scarf with its rusty stain, the bonfire circle of mostly women, mostly young, mostly pretty. She had come upon some artifacts and not come upon others. No rainbow chuckwallas or blue chupacabras in the corridor, and all the trees were wither-rooted and dead. Evidence in the corridor, breadcrumbs of reason: Jimmer the healer, Cody the grower, Nico the mechanic and the muscle.

  Objects and artifacts and evidence and epiphanies: No one’s name was their name. Everyone here was running from something.

  She managed to gain weight, thanks to Cody, who came in to make sure she always had something to eat. Luz watched him warily on these deliveries. She’d thought him an errand boy at best, but saw now that Cody was smarter than he pretended to be. One day, remembering a ruby-red orb hovering like a chandelier in her withdrawal corridor, she said, “Can I ask you something?”

  Cody said, “Will it stop you always eyeballing me?”

  “It might.”

  “So ask.
”

  “Where did that grapefruit come from?”

  “What?”

  “When I first came here, I had a grapefruit.”

  “You didn’t have no grapefruit.”

  “I did. Dallas brought it to me. We ate it with Ig.”

  “You might have imagined it. I still dream of dairy.”

  “You don’t grow grapefruits in the vans, Cody.”

  He silently conceded.

  “You don’t have citrus trees.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “So where did it come from?”

  He rubbed his tight mouth. “That’s one of those questions you’re better off not asking.”

  “I need to know,” she said.

  Cody looked at her, somber and a little angry. “Levi wanted you to have it. He really cares about you, you know.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  The kid said nothing.

  “What’s he doing out there, Cody?”

  That secret intelligence flashed in his eyes. “That’s another one of them questions,” he said.

  And that was how the last of her whole lush and infinite miracle world dissolved, finally, leaving behind only its brutal scaffolding: sun of suns, drought of droughts, no rain, no rivers, an impossible pile of sand approaching an unforgiving range. Barren and bereft and lifeless, just like the pamphlets said. Leave or die. No more complicated than that. No other dimension, no buried menagerie and no trick of the eye or ear or heart could make it otherwise.

  When Ray visited later that day, he visited a dingy solar-powered school bus in a madman’s colony, an outpost in the cruel tradition of outposts, peopled by prostitutes and loners and rejects and criminals and liars, their sheriff a con and a thief and surely worse.

  Luz felt this disillusionment severely, with no root to blur its edges.

  She stroked Ray’s temples. “Do you miss your heartcolors?”

  “More like I thought you would. I was afraid you’d be disappointed. I don’t have any desert visions after all.”

  “Me neither,” Luz admitted. “I wanted to, but I don’t.”