by LYNDA BARRY
I have not mentioned yet the real mystery of this story. The gruesome and bloody scene in a parking lot on the edge of the restricted area of the Nevada desert known as Dreamland. A real place. The Lucky Chief Motel Massacre. Only two known survivors. One was Cookie and the other one was me. Maybe you saw pictures in your newspaper. It was very famous. But I am jumping ahead. Because I have not even mentioned the father yet.
Julie got a major lump on her head from the nail polish remover bottle and the mother made her come downstairs so I could feel it and know the full terribleness of my personality and maybe it was cold-blooded of me to press down on it as hard as I could but there is such a thing as hatred in this world. The hippies are trying to cure it but I do not think they will be able to. No hippie could make me say peace to my sister right now, who is laying on the bed faking being asleep. She is doing her imitation sleep formations like hanging her mouth part open and breathing long breaths and slightly rolling her eyeballs under her eyelids and I will say she looks very convincing. Julie is an idiot and I hate her but she is very talented at certain things. Faking things.
I do feel slightly bad about bashing her head so hard. I feel slightly bad about so many things I have done. But I do not feel bad about killing him. Because it was me who killed him. And I’m not asking any forgiveness for that at all. It was a good idea and I’m glad I had it.
Truth plus Magical Love equals Freedom. The author knows this is a lot of details to remember for your reading comprehension but the author badly wants to give you the who, what, when, where, and how of this story right away because the author very badly wants to get to the question of why. The burning question of why she turned out the way she did and why she ended the way she ended.
Ask a burning question, get a burning answer.
Chapter 3
ND NOW the story can be told, and must be told, the truth can finally be revealed about that mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood.
The authorities said, “Who are you? Where have you come from? What tragedy has occurred?” But the child could not answer. The child’s bloody face could only stare without blinking for the child was in the medical condition known as shock, the same condition as the freaked-out little girl in the movie Them! Called Them! because that was all she could scream when they found her walking in the desert because her mind was blown out by what she had witnessed. All she could say was “Them! Them! Them!” So she could not give the authorities any information about why she was the only survivor and everyone else was laying around in hacked-up pieces. What gruesome attack by unknown forces had taken place? Them! is a great movie. They show it sometimes on Nightmare Theater, Channel 7. If you see it in the TV Guide you should really watch it because it has ideas in it that could come in handy someday if you are ever facing the authorities in the desert and you are covered with blood that is not actually yours.
And now the story can be told. And must be told. In this book the truth will finally be revealed about the horrible murders and then the author must die. And people may be sad about that and wishing there were more books by the author, Roberta Rohbeson, but sadly, it will be too late. There will be only one Dewey decimal system number for her. Sadly only one. And if they ever find her body, and if she could have a final request, that number is what she would like engraved on her gravestone.
After the authorities found us, found me and Cookie wandering, and after they spread newspapers out on the backseat of the patrol car and told us to get in, our picture was in the next morning’s Las Vegas newspaper. Me and Cookie’s picture was. We looked bad and crusty. The caption called me the Mystery Child and the story underneath told of my shocking condition and amnesia and asked did anyone recognize me, anyone in this world? The picture was of the very olden me, my hair very very short, shaved like a boy’s and my arms and legs so skinny and my expression very paralyzed, me holding Cookie in my breadstick arms. And even though most of the blood was washed off of us we were still very convincing because the newspaper photographer told the Christian Homes lady to please leave some of the blood, he did not want all of the blood showing, but please leave a little because blood was the drama and the interest but too much of it was an appetite wrecker and it was a morning paper.
So the Christian Homes lady took me and Cookie into her cement backyard, all cement but painted green, and she made nauseated faces at our condition and also at the swirling fly families that had become our devoted followers and she unrolled the garden hose and said, “Stand right there,” and then, “Take off your clothes and put them there,” and when the reality of the nude version of me was revealed, she freaked totally. Because up until then, everybody thought I was a boy. When it turned out I was a girl, that was a surprise no one was expecting.
The father taught me. Against the odds, he taught me his wisdom: No matter what, expect the unexpected. And whenever possible BE the unexpected.
Chapter 4
ND NOW a word from our sponsor. You should know about Vicky Talluso. In fact, if you are tired of your life, if you want your life to turn instantly amazing, you should KNOW Vicky Talluso. Things happen around Vicky Talluso. Incredible things. Meeting incredible people. Having revelations. Running from the cops.
I met her at school on the day of my fifth-year anniversary of the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre. Public interest had finally laid down with its arms crossed like a vampire in a coffin. No one cared anymore who did it. No one cared if I ever told the story or not. It was what I had been waiting for, but when it finally came it was slightly a disappointment. On every other anniversary someone had always called us, someone from the Las Vegas paper, some reporter asking the mother, “Has she remembered yet? Has she talked yet?” And the mother got her chance at publicity, which is something she dearly loves. But this year the phone did not ring and the mother started looking at me with a little more squint to her eyes, like she was deciding something.
I was expecting to feel relieved when the story died. I was expecting to feel proud. The father always talked about the value of being able to really keep your mouth shut when it mattered. I kept mine shut for five years. It took five years for the parade of interest to finally pass. I thought I was going to feel happy when it did. I didn’t expect the empty street it left behind. I didn’t expect the old faded trash swirling in devil-cones around me.
They didn’t find him. They didn’t find his body, but I was thinking it was still there. I was thinking that if I really wanted to, I could take the money I have hidden and I could buy myself a Trailways ticket and I could go check on him. See if he is petrified like the shiny beef jerky man called Sylvester at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe who is on display beside actual shrunken heads with sewn-up eyes and lips. Or maybe he is all skeleton now, picked clean and bleached out like the displayed bone with WHALE PENIS written underneath it. Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe is a good place to go when you are left wondering what finally became of the person you stabbed and then left in the sun.
On the anniversary of the fifth year I was thinking, What was the point? If it could all end with such a nothing feeling. If it could end with a nothing but the mother’s squint, what was the point of getting away with it? The father would have called me an idiot for asking that question. He would have said, “Clyde, sometimes I’m not entirely sure you are my son.”
Clyde is what he called me. He wanted a son to pass his wisdom to. Me being born a girl was just a technicality. The world spun a lot smoother once you understood what you were bound to live by and what you weren’t. “Clyde,” he said. “Your average man thinks he needs to grab the world by the balls. That’s why your average man will never get ahead. He grabs at what only wants a tickle and a kiss. Hell. Try it on a bull sometime. See for yourself.”
The father came from meat people. Generations of them that could be traced all the way back to the time of the monkey. “The monkey with the most meat wins,” said the father.
> I said, “I thought they just ate fruit.”
He said, “Oh no, hell no. Look at their teeth. Fangs like that? If one bit you, you’d know it. Meat people run things, Clyde. Always have and always will.”
It’s in my blood. I know it is. Meat person. I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.
Vicky Talluso came toward me across the empty track field and she was walking too fast. I didn’t really know her but she was in one of my classes and I had seen her around in the halls. It was hard not to notice Vicky. She had extravagant ways, too much makeup and very bright clothes and sort of a burnt-rubber smell she tried to cover-up with Chantilly. People automatically turned away from her. No one could really stand to look. In the Navy they call it dazzle camouflage. It was the Navy that figured out you could paint something with confusions so horror-bright that the eyeballs would get upset to where they refused to see. Battleships were painted this way and the bomber planes just passed them by. Dazzle camouflage is Navy. The father was Navy too. “Navy all the way, Clyde. Every goddamned inch right down to the end of my pecker.”
It was lunch, and I was sitting in my usual place up in the weeds on the embankment near the track field. Passing time there. Some people would call it hiding there. My school is a violent place. People need people to knock over or sock in the gut. I stand out to them for some reason.
During my first days in the weeds I was not disturbed or even noticed by anyone. And then Vicky Talluso came walking right toward me, staring straight at me, wearing shocking-yellow crinkle-vinyl knee boots with super-stacked heels and twisted purple stockings and a pink and orange psychedelic shirtdress with a lime green collar. Her long hair was swinging and she was wearing a kind of hat called a tam, a tam made out of hypnotizing red velvet and she was moving so confidently and so fast and she was flipping me out completely, freaking me extremely. I could not think of one reason why a person like her would be walking so rapidly toward a person like me. Because I am her opposite in every single way. I am about as detailed as a shadow.
I nervously started yanking up grass and weeds and made a pile out of them and when she was very close I started staring at the pile very seriously like it was a science project I was working on, but her face had already been flash-burned into my vision. She had slightly bulged-out eyes with a lot of violet eye shadow and globbed-on mascara and she had a long nose that humped up in the middle and white frosted lipstick coated thick on very chapped lips and her lips protruded forward because her twisted eyeteeth bucked-out, a defect that was weirdly alluring. One of her many weirdly alluring defects.
I smelled the Chantilly and then burning rubber and I wondered about it. What could make a person smell like that. I later found out it was from the hair-removing cream she constantly used because she is a very hairy person. Quite naturally hairy all over, her eyelashes were incredibly long but so were her arm hairs. And the eyebrow hairs of her right eyebrow. The other one was completely missing. I noticed it right away. She was very bald above her left eye. The skin there was crusted.
“Hey,” she said. I didn’t say anything back. “Hey, deaf,” she said. “You. I got your message.” She sat down too close to me and started yanking up grass and throwing it on my pile. “I received your message this morning and the answer is yes.”
I said, “Message?”
“You’re Roberta, right?”
“Yes.”
“Yesssssssss,” she said, imitating my habit way of saying the word. The mother went insane if me or Julie said “yeah,” because only idiots said “yeah.” She wanted us to say “yes” very clearly. Make the “s” very clear. She did not want to be known as the mother of two idiots.
“Yesssssssss,” said Vicky Talluso. “That’s so sick. Yessssss.”
She was yanking up the grass vigorously, yanking up roots and dirt clods and I noticed her hands were very small and wide and her fingernails were also small and wide with silver nail polish caked up in chipped layers.
She said, “You have ESP, right?”
I squinted.
“You have ESP and you have contact with an Unfortunate Being, right? You were doing the Ouija board this morning.”
I shook my head. She saw me staring at her missing eyebrow. It was inflamed looking. Slightly scabby. I was thinking of the mange creature Demodex. I said, “Do you got a dog?”
“It’s ‘have,’ ” she said. “Not that it matters. But it’s ‘have.’ You called me this morning on the Ouija board and said to meet you here because you have something you need to give me. Only you don’t know what it is. You said you needed for me to come to you and tell you what it is you are supposed to give me.”
I shook my head no.
She said, “Yessssss.” She said, “Do you have any cigs?”
I shook my head again and she yanked up a clump of grass with a huge root clod attached and threw it. She said, “I hate this place. I hate this school. I hate this world. I hate this universe. Do you have any cigs or not?”
“No.”
“And you weren’t trying to contact me this morning?”
“No.”
“Liar. Not that it matters, but liar.”
From her purse she pulled out a flat chipped metal case that made a spronging sound when she opened it. Inside behind a filigree bar were three cigarettes.
“My last ones. Do you smoke?”
“Yes.”
“Yesssssssss. That is so sick. Do you care if I steal it? Yesssssssss. That is how I’m going to say it from now on. Yessssss. Yessssss.” She offered me a cig. I took it. I took it because the father said that when anyone offers you something, including a new identity, you should always take it and see what it leads you to. Once he found a nudist camp that way.
She pulled out a lighter with USN engraved on it. Big and silver-colored. Special issue. Made for people in windy conditions. You could not blow it out. I said, “Your father Navy?”
She snorted. “My father? Not hardly.”
We sat in the weeds awhile blowing stale Newport smoke into the air. I felt a weird electrification from being beside her. Partly it made me want to leave and partly it was what made me stay when the first bell rang and neither of us acted like we noticed it. Lunch was over. We had five minutes to get to fifth period.
“You don’t need to lie to me,” she said. Blue smoke came out of her nostrils.
“OK,” I said. It was the Navy thing to say. The thing the father told me to do. Agree and agree. See what the person has in mind.
“So you did contact me.”
“Yes.”
“Yessssss.”
Five years is a long time to go around obeying and not talking and having a boring life. Maybe I did contact her. Or maybe my Unfortunate Being did, whatever that was. Maybe it was time to finally tell the story and maybe Vicky Talluso was the perfect person to tell it to.
The second bell rang. Vicky was chewing on grass, grinding down with her front teeth and then actually chewing the grass into a wad. She said, “Roberta. Roberta. Hey.” I looked up and her mouth opened and her tongue shelfed out and there was a two-inch wet black ball of grass on it.
I said, “Dag, Vicky!”
She said, “What?”
She saw me looking freaked. Possibly she was more Navy than I was. She said, “Know what is so amazing about that? About chewed-up grass?”
I shook my head.
“Milk is made of only that. Of chewed grass and nothing else. Grass is the milk’s Unfortunate Being. Get it? We’re skipping fifth, right? You’re skipping with me.” She picked up her purse and stood up. Some clouds behind her were doing that thing of suddenly looking all shadowed with white glowing edges. She said, “Roberta.”
“What?”
She showed me the grass wad again.
Was it me or Clyde who jumped up and followed her when she took off running?
Was Clyde the Unfortunate Being she wa
s talking about? Or was it actually me?
Chapter 5
CCORDING TO the newspaper version of the story, the father stole me, kidnapped me, snatched me up in the middle of the night and left the mother a note saying if she contacted the police or tried to find either one of us he would not hesitate to slit my throat. According to the newspaper article he was a man unhinged by recent events in his life. The hanging suicide of his own father in the meat-packing room, the failure of the family business, and the breakup of his marriage for reasons too personal to mention like finding out Julie was the child of a man the mother worked with, Dr. Cush, ancient and ugly as an unwrapped mummy, but loaded with money and looking for love. Unhinged by the events that unfolded in the space of forty-eight hours, he did what desperate men do in desperate situations. He packed up his knives and his kid and screeched out of town in a dented green DeSoto, never to be seen again.
According to the newspaper version of the story, it was a miracle I survived. The father is the main suspect in the Lucky Chief Motel Massacre. His face is still pictured in some post offices, thumbtack holes all over it from other more important notices stuck on the bulletin boards over the years. I have collected a couple of them. They are the only pictures of him I have. The mother took a lit cigarette and pushed it into every other photograph of his face that existed.
She has told me many times that she thought long and hard about what to do when she opened the newspaper and saw my picture above the caption that said, Mystery child still unidentified. A lot of papers picked up the story. The picture she saw was a later one of me sitting on the front counter of the police station in Las Vegas. Looking a little fatter. Happier. Holding Cookie but still not talking. They guessed my age to be six or seven. I was eleven and a half. The mother never could stand seeing an error in a newspaper. Maybe she called because of that.