The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  Domino’s arms were crossed. She kept saying: You’re lying. You’re lying. Are you lying to me?

  The Queen turned away. Domino looked her coldly up and down and went out. A quarter of an hour later, she ran back screaming with the pimp behind her.

  | 109 |

  Look at her, said Strawberry. See her big black boyfriend standing right behind her? Not that I’m prejudiced. My main man is Justin. I suck black cock every night, so you don’t need to look at me like that. But when a big black man like that stands behind a hooker, well, sometimes the hooker’s in trouble. You know what they do? The boyfriend hides under the bed. Then while the girl’s taking care of the guy, the boyfriend’s goin’ through his pants, checkin’ out the wallet. That’s how a lot of girls end up dead. It’s like, damn, it’s like, get a grip, girl.

  The Queen said: Domino, it don’t matter if you have a hundred pimps behind you. Keep your morals. Keep your scruples.

  Let go of me, the pimp said very quietly. His eyes were as yellow as the sign for the Broadway Manor Motel.

  You think this is funny, don’t you? said the Queen.

  I’m gonna get you, the pimp said.

  Raising her head high on her slender neck, the Queen gazed wide-eyed into his face with a small smile and said: Why? Haven’t I treated you right? Fuck this. Get up on your feet, pig.

  You want me to ex him? said the tall man. This nigger’s an asshole. I’d love to ex this nigger out.

  Knock out one of his teeth first, the Queen said. Just one.

  What the fuck! screamed the pimp. In spite of Strawberry’s characterization, he was actually a slender little man, vicious and alert like a snake.

  You really want me to smack him in his teeth, huh?

  You wanna lose teeth or you wanna be a good little boy? said the Queen. Justin, don’t take his tooth out just yet. Looks like he’s fixin’ to say something.

  I know you, bitch! the pimp yelled. I’m gonna do for you!

  All rightie, said the Queen.

  This is bullshit!

  It is that. I know that, said Domino ecstatically, mincing in with a cigarette, shaking the match with her wrist back and forth so graceful, always kneeling.

  Sweetie, be cool now, okay? said the Queen. Lemme speak with this gentleman.

  Domino sank slowly down, whispering to herself.

  Sapphire, go an’ hug her, said the Queen. Go an’ give Domino a big kiss. Don’t be afraid. Go now.

  This is between you an’ me now, bitch, the pimp said.

  Excuse me, said the Queen. You talkin’ to me?

  I’m gonna be on your black ass. I’m gonna hunt you down. I’m gonna get you.

  He’s a nasty one, said Strawberry. Justin, you oughta just ex him.

  I don’ wanna be too talky now, the Queen mused aloud. We put him out on a crucifix, okay, in the middle of Ellis. Really just take him to the prom. This is out of our area.

  That’s rich, laughed the tall man, twisting the cord another turn tighter. The pimp began to cough.

  Yes, said the Queen, looking down, smoking, shaking, moving. Feels like your eyes gonna pop out, don’t it, mister? Feels like that blood’s just gonna explode right inside your ugly old head, now, don’t it? Well, you know what? It could happen.

  Burn his eyes out! screamed Domino. He raped me! He addicted me!

  I dunno—ssssh! said the Queen.

  The pimp had begun to strangle now, and that was what Domino saw in her mind later whenever she thought about her sister’s crime. He was snarling, purring, and choking all it once. It was horrible.

  There’s a lot of things I can do to him, the Queen said. But really what I wanna do is scare him. What you think, Justin? Should we put out one of his eyes? Or the tooth? Where should we start? How can we get him to listen?

  Shit, why you askin’ me? Just make up your goddamned mind. I’m sick of this motherfucker.

  Get out, said the Queen. Get out and never come back.

  The tall man let go. The pimp got out.

  Now, dearie, said the Queen. You wanna stay or you wanna go? Whatever you want, that’s cool here with us. You wanna talk with Strawberry or . . . ?

  Are you that out of whack? Domino screamed. Are you that ignorant? Haven’t you figured out that the more you help these bitches the more you’ll just be encouraging them to make some dumb illusion and crawl inside it until it’s too late while you go about your own cruel life refusing to do the one thing that they long to have you do?

  And what would that be? said the Queen, faintly smiling.

  The blonde burst into tears.

  Okay, honeypie, said the Queen. All rightie. Never mind. You can stay . . .

  There wasn’t a month before I come in here I wasn’t beatin’ up somebody, said Chocolate soothingly. Don’t even know what the heck I was doin’ it for. You wanna stay? Why don’t you stay?

  Sobbing, Domino nodded

  But later, when they were alone, the tall man said to the Queen: I don’t like her. Lemme check her out.

  | 110 |

  Papa, comprehending, sentient, and somehow tame, was still handsome. His bushy eyebrows were what had helped him accumulate the woman-memories which now protected his back. He owned the Liberty Bar on Eddy Street. There was something about him which struck the tall man as gently naked, some secret part of him whose inability to hide itself provoked tenderness, as when a woman’s T-shirt rides up her back when she bends over her pool cue. —Well, I’m a new man! a drunk was telling him. A new man, I said! He took my wife, my money, and my girlfriend.

  Papa nodded sadly.

  Can’t you just talk to her? the drunk pleaded.

  I don’t want to get involved, said Papa.

  Can’t you all at least check to see if she . . .

  No, no, I gotta take her side, Papa said. I’ve known her longer than I’ve known you. I can’t get involved.

  Papa, I swear to God, if you don’t talk to her I’m going to kill myself tonight.

  All right, son, I’ll talk to her. Come back tomorrow.

  Weary blue, those eyes of Papa’s, innocent in a way that could never be made knowing; sentient, I said, but no freer for that, no freedom like that of a bad moral actor . . .

  What can I do for you? he said to the tall man.

  You know a blonde bitch named Domino?

  Oh, don’t tell me.

  You know her? said the tall man, his words greasy, cool and inimical, like the white-painted rivets on the tunnel wall by the Greyhound station. Of course he knew already that Papa knew her. He knew quite a bit about other souls’ attachments and alliances. And what he knew about Papa, that very tenderness-provoking part of him, why, that was what excited the tall man’s contempt.

  Sure I know her. She used to go by Judith. Then she was Sylvia. She doesn’t come around here much anymore.

  Another shot, please, said the tall man.

  Still no ice?

  No.

  Two and a quarter.

  Here’s two.

  Two and a quarter.

  The tall man slid his sunglasses up his smooth brown skull and said: You tryin’ to rip me off?

  I don’t care how big and black you are, Papa said. Anyway, aren’t you asking me for a favor? You want information or not? You owe me a quarter.

  Matter of fact, Queen pays two dollars in here.

  You want to hear about Domino or not?

  Go ahead.

  Thank you. Now you don’t owe me a quarter anymore.

  Yeah, buy yourself a Cadillac.

  All right. Well, Judith was a good friend of the owner. On SSI*, you know, like all those girls. And every month she’d run up a tab with me, you know: Papa, gimme a beer; I’ll pay you when my check comes; this is all I have right now. —She’s a girl, you know, so what can you do?

  Break her jaw’s what I would do.

  And every month she did it like this. Every goddamned month. And one month when she owed me four hundred dollars she didn’t come back
.

  Bitch really screwed it to you, huh? Papa, you’re too much. You got a fuckin’ bleedin’ heart.

  Sometimes I see her on the street but she just sticks out her tongue at me. Well, that’s life. We never know what’s going to happen, much less why. Even your best friend can lie. Even your best friend can cheat. —Look, Papa went on, showing the tall man a Styrofoam cup which had been kissed by lipstick, but the tall man rose without finishing his drink and went back to the Queen to report that Domino was a cheat, a thief and a liar.

  That don’t make no difference, said the Queen. Justin, you gotta try an’ care for her, too. . .

  | 111 |

  Even those who hated Domino admitted to respecting and even to feeling awed by her crazy violence, which in the street world meant bravery, honor, worthiness. Those who lived with her were haunted by her; her soul oppressed theirs with its weight and bitter-reeking shadows, and yet they also took pride in her. In her time she’d smashed furniture and heads. It was best to avoid her wherever possible; second best to give her whatever she wanted. Domino herself sensed the limitlessness of her own acts. Deep inside her skull, she hunched and squatted, dull-eyed, scared runaway whose only hope lay in setting her presence alight to give this planet of enemies pause; they said that Domino had a “rep,” that she had “heart.” By this they really meant that Domino was dangerous. The whore from Albuquerque who’d tried to gaffle her out of a dime bag of weed, where was she now? Domino had broken a lamp over her head. And Akoub the Muslim pimp, who’d raped her, wasn’t it Domino who’d set on fire not his hotel room, which proved too difficult to reach, but the entire hotel itself? No matter that what had actually happened was that Domino had raged into the lobby with a can of gasoline which she’d begun pouring on the lobby carpet while everybody screamed and ran and then the blonde pulled a book of safety matches out of her bra, struck one and it didn’t light, struck a second which also failed her, swore, glared fiery-eyed in all directions, and fled. And the night that a man in a fancy car insulted her, hadn’t it been Domino who’d thrown one of her high heels right through his windshield? No matter that the high heel had really been a hunk of brick; indeed, wasn’t brick more ferocious still, if less expressive, less stylish? Everything she did got magnified. She had no pity and showed no fear. She was magnificent. She was as much a part of the other night people as their own tears. Cursing and scrutinizing her, they stood aside to let her follow her own path. They said: Domino went that way. They said: Watch out for Domino. They said: That Domino is one coldhearted bitch.

  | 112 |

  And Dan Smooth, what magic did the Queen work, to tame him on their first meeting?

  I want eyes as blue as ocean water, he’d whispered. I want to drink the sea and be young again, like a . . . like a dancing little ocean flower . . .

  Are you my little boy? said the Queen, instantly apprehending what he needed. Oh me oh my, Danny, you’re my little honeychild.

  After that, Smooth always loved her.

  | 113 |

  And the tall man, where he came from nobody knew. It was rumored that he’d once been the Queen’s lover, but another tale went that he’d been her pimp until she got her power and converted him into pilgrim, worshiper, and server. What had he been? Even he himself hardly recollected now. His memories of himself scarcely resembled anything which he could recognize, and he didn’t want to remember things anyhow. (Perhaps he’d been one of ever so many black men who sat on the sidewalk glaring into space.) Sentry sleeper before the tent of a prophetess, he wandered a desert partly of his own making, sometimes gaming and smiling, sometimes repelling jackal conspiracies. He leaned and meditated. He confirmed himself with his own courage. He almost never lied. He spoke or he didn’t speak. He deflected, threatened, raved, or again confirmed. To the Queen he was her wall, her flashlight, her pistol, her binoculars. He hunted the Tenderloin streets to cop the cheapest weed, the best uncut china white, the raciest speed, the highest grade ice, the purest white girl so delicious in the crack pipe, the most vicious angel dust. He waited and lived on, a fabulous, enigmatic figure who kept his own counsel and the Queen’s, cipher by choice, half-man, superman, faithful searcher, merciless gleaner. Above them all he was as an iron roof.

  | 114 |

  The tale of Beatrice, of sweetnatured Beatrice who very rapidly chewed gum with her black black teeth as she swayed herself down the curbside of life, illustrates above all else that wherever Queen Destiny marches in her lethally imperial purple, free will must fall down naked and trembling in every grovelling ritual of hopelessly humiliating abasement suffered not merely by the bitter-comprehending brain alone, not only by the heart which would be proud, but even by the entrails, for free will, stripped bare, must squat down exposing its haunches, to be kissed, whipped, or raped as sparkling Queen Destiny may please. But an uncomprehending child such as Sapphire, or a religious prostitute such as Beatrice herself, may both submit to the purple one without harm, the former because where there exists only sensation without interpretation or memory there can be no permanent emotional wound, the latter because acceptance of rape may truly for sacred natures become willed sacrifice.

  Beatrice was a fullbooded Mixteca from Oaxaca, in a village where beyond a fence made of scrap wood, the canyon continued down toward unknown places where they said that puppets well-made enough came to life and ran away from their makers, hiding amidst the lizards, vagabonds, and beautiful turquoise skeletons. Sometimes at night Beatrice heard a strange humming from that direction, and was afraid. In her house the ladders made A-shaped shadows on concrete. A toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste were wedged into the top of the doorframe. Beatrice’s family shared that toothbrush, because they were all one blood. Her Papa’s revolver lay on the concrete. He needed it to protect them. But most of the time he was gone, and the children were forbidden to touch it, so if any animated puppets had come to haunt them what could they have done? After Beatrice had gotten fat and given birth to her own child, she would have liked to inquire of her Papa regarding this point, but by then, as with most wisdom, the motive arrived too late for application. Besides, the puppets never came, so her Papa must have known what he was doing. Beatrice remembered when he used to play with her; now he worked so hard and came home worried and tired. As for her Mama, she’d died of jealousy two years ago, so nobody baked a cake for Beatrice’s name day anymore. But her Papa continued to love her; he always gave her a present on the Day of the Three Kings.

  I think I get crazy staying here, doing practically nothing, she said to her friend Juanita.

  Can you read and write? asked Juanita with a loving glance.

  Can you?

  I asked you first.

  Somebody was teaching me, but I forgot. See, I don’t have such a good memory, Beatrice smilingly said.

  Spades, picks, shovels, and empty bottles inhabited the dirt.

  Well, then, you must try for special work, Juanita said, and Beatrice did not know what she meant.

  Beatrice was not grey then and never imagined that she could be. Nor was her smile anything but white. Her black shiny hair parted itself on either side of her shiny face, which was made more vivid still by her ever-smiling teeth and the whites of her flashing eyes. She would have liked to wear black miniskirts with the slenderest shoulderstraps because she so often felt hot, but then her Papa, who’d beaten her only twice, would have knocked her teeth out. Fortunately he never suspected that she had any such desires because as her figure continued to ripen (she was fourteen), the girl took to attending church more and more, praying to the Virgin for happiness. Every time she got a few centavos, she’d go light a votive candle, and nobody ever asked what she prayed for. In the cornfield she was a hard and cheerful worker. Her skin became the color of caramelized sugar, and she dyed her hair two or three shades blonder than that.

  Juanita was thinking. Beatrice waited. But because she could never wait very long, and because she wanted to make sure that Juanita thought the right
things, she winked at her friend and said: You know what? I was gonna do the craziest thing in my life about a week ago. I was gonna go away from here.

  Me too, said Juanita. I feel that way too sometimes. But my Papa would never let me.

  My dad, he’s mean, too. Because my dad, always when he’s mean, he gets mad at me.

  The chickens laughed hysterically.

  Juanita leaned forward and whispered something into Beatrice’s ear, and Beatrice’s eyes widened and she laughed.

  Well?

  I would be very happy, said Beatrice, even though she was afraid.

  Well then.

  But, you know, I have a novio now, too, Juanita. And my father-in-law and mother-in-law, they order me. I like to do a lot of things, but they don’t let me. If I ask them, they say, you’re crazy. I don’t think they will let me go.

  Even once a week? said Juanita.

  If it’s once a week I think I could.

  I saw you that time, when my sister-in-law got married. You were dancing! You embarrassed?

  Red chickens and black chickens ran by in the sun, shaded under the planks of the roof.

  I would be very happy, Beatrice said again.

  Green trees and blue sky clothed her village. Her laundry bag hung beside her, red and purple and black. A brown spider crawled slowly up the wall. The village smelled like pigs and chickens.

  Juanita was dead now, from a shameful disease.

  Beatrice wanted to remain a good girl loved by the Virgin, so, continuing innocent of the urine-and-sweat smell of veneral disease clinics, she put the other girl’s proposals out of mind for a whole year, until the Virgin rewarded her in the person of her stepbrother Roberto (son of her Papa’s old novia), who sent her a registered letter all the way from Yucatan, informing her that if she were to ride the bus across Mexico to the grand hotel where he worked, she could earn big money cooking for the foreign tourists. Nobody at Beatrice’s house knew how to read, but the priest, who possessed power over all the churchbells, explained the letter to them and said: Girl, you must go. Roberto wants to do the good thing for you. —Her Papa wept, which made her surprised, ashamed, and pleased all at once. Then he said: Go with God. —And he gave her ten silver pesos. Her sister gave her an herb against witchcraft. And all her little brothers and sisters, who always used to pull her braids and break her toys, became very sad. Beatrice had never known that she was so important. As for her novio, Manuel, he grew very pale and wretched. He didn’t even dare to visit her Papa’s house to wish her farewell. He promised to wait for her for three years. Beatrice smiled at the deliciousness of another soul’s making promises to her. The two little Marias next door kissed her and said that they would pray for her. As for Juanita, she had been locked away by her Papa for going around with boys, so Beatrice, no matter how much she would have liked to learn more secrets and answers, was unable to tell her goodbye. Beatrice tried to be reasonable about this disappointment. Then her Papa made the sign of the cross over her and she went to Yucatan, but on the way she somehow lost the letter from Roberto with the name of the grand hotel where he was working, and consequently she never met him.