The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  I figured she’s—

  I’m scared about Lily, the Queen said. Lily makes me scared. I can see her going down and down . . .

  And Beatrice, too, he said.

  Thank you for sayin’ that. Yes, and Beatrice, too. Anyway, Lily she like to stay by herself at the Lola Hotel, Room Twenny-Six—

  But you weren’t sad when Sunflower died . . .

  It was her time. You thinkin’ Queenie don’t have no strength nor knowledge? You thinkin’ Sunflower wasn’t ready?

  Lily reminds me of Sunflower. More than my pretend Irene . . .

  But Lily’s still Lily. She still got some Lily things to do. Sunflower was finished. She went beyond all that. When she passed away, Henry, she was already pure sunny happiness. Do you believe what I’m tellin’ you?

  I don’t know, said Tyler. That’s the honest truth.

  How can I condemn you for that? You don’t put on airs. You know you don’t understand. It’s all right, child, ’cause I never yet laid my hand on your eyes to make you see.

  Are you going to do that to me?

  You want it?

  I trust in you to do what’s right for me, he said in a low voice, so that the other alcoholics wouldn’t hear.

  She took his hand. They sat together for a while in that bar which was darker and shabbier than the snotty cleanliness of the Cinnabar on Ellis and Jones, whose bar’s wood-grain spread itself under a million coats of plastic while Diana Ross and the Supremes on the jukebox sang It hurts so bad—the Wonderbar was the best.

  When the Queen went to the ladies’ room, he tore off a scrap of his soggy napkin and wrote on it AFRICA I LOVE YOU. Then he clenched it tight in his hand.

  Domino had left her little silver purse on a barstool when she went back with Heavyset, whom she actually valued in a way because although in her years of growing older she had learned enough to avoid any barmaid’s eye so that the barmaid could not immediately sell her another three-dollar beer, still, that strategy could preserve a girl’s finances only so far, and when she inhabited the Wonderbar waiting and waiting for some trick to wander in, her expenses rose faster than cracksmoke because she really could not afford to alienate Loreena; but as long as she permitted Heavyset to bear her away to his little “office” whenever the fancy struck him, then afterward she could sit for as long as she liked beneath the nice mural of the girl with nipples like Hershey’s kisses; and maybe even shoot a little pool or watch football or hockey on the screen, saving up money and thirst until she was ready to drink the kind of classy bottled beer that made her spit thick. Now it was time to pay. Loreena would look out for her, she thought, but then she suddenly viciously distrusted Loreena and would have gone back for her purse; however, Heavyset, misconstruing her reluctance to be something less trivial than that, whispered in her ear that he had some crystal meth in his office, at which any other ideas which the blonde might have had went rushing up through the ceiling. So there lay her purse. Toilet paper, condoms, keys, lipstick, spermicide, a pocket mirror, change and three self-defensive razorblades had long since forced apart the zipper’s broken lips, so that the purse presented to the world a defiantly overt character not unlike that of its owner. Tyler worried about Domino sometimes when he saw that purse because its silveriness and inviting openness seemed to him to offer an invitation to evildoers, but doubtless Domino knew best. Picking it up by one safety-pinned strap, he slid it across the bar to Loreena, who was working the register, and asked her to keep it safe for the tipsy girl. Loreena nodded wordlessly and stuffed it behind the beer keg where only she could reach it. Returning to his spot, Tyler encountered Domino’s john, who’d dug both hands into the Queen’s shoulder, trying to date her. The Queen was smiling.

  Tyler drained his drink and put the balled-up napkin in the Queen’s hand. He said to her: Maybe this will come in handy. —Then he went out.

  Just as he reached the swinging doors, he heard Domino’s john say sneeringly: So what the fuck did that turkey give you, a get out of jail free card?

  | 213 |

  What the doctor sees on the other end of the speculum is your cervix, explained the woman in the blue jumpsuit who now was washing Domino with Betadyne. —Do you want to see?

  Sure, grinned Domino, and the woman tilted a mirror until Domino could see the brown stain around her vulva through a hole in the plastic. The woman in the blue jumpsuit sounded the depth of the os to determine how far along she was.

  You’ll feel a little pinch now, the woman in the blue jumpsuit said.

  The needle entered the hole in the plastic and quivered like a mosquito. It twinkled and hummed. The efficient woman in blue stood over her, hands spread; the needle slid in slowly, deeper and deeper. Domino was enjoying the woman’s attentions, perhaps because the woman was so tense-faced, determined, probably quick to take offense. The blonde had already sized her up back in the waiting room where all the very quiet women kept watching each other out of the corners of their eyes and the woman in blue, placidly brushing back her hair, explained: And this is a canula. You notice that it is plastic and it is flexible. —The patients watched the ring on her hand move, all of them sitting cozy together. It was Domino’s pleasure not to offend her, for now. Moreover, she liked the stinging of the needle, which she pretended was a part of the woman in blue’s body, that the woman in blue was entering her lovingly, sexually and above all subserviently.

  Now, the tinaculum clamps into your cervix to keep it in place, the woman in blue said.

  Domino smiled slowly.

  And then we dilate you like this with the flexible plastic canula. There may be a little cramp when that tube goes through. Are you okay?

  Domino smiled and licked her lips. —Not really, she said. I got raped by a bad man named Henry Tyler. That’s why I’m here today. He’s a misogynist. He treated me just like I was a piece of meat. Does it look like meat to you down there between my legs?

  I’m so sorry, the woman in blue whispered, flushing.

  Domino glowed with pleasure.

  The doctor turned on the machine, which hummed like a refrigerator, and Domino began to feel intense pain as very dark red bars of fluid came out. The doctor turned the canula around and around. There was a slurping sound. Something was red through translucency against his white gloved fingers.

  Is there a cramping? the woman in blue said.

  Please hold my hand, Domino said, her legs spread like wings. She wanted to drink the woman’s buttock-juice.

  You see, your uterus clamps down when the fetal tissue is removed, the woman in blue explained, digging the canula in, around and around. Fluid ran out of Domino’s cunt.

  Now we’re going in one more time to check, the doctor said.

  Please don’t let go of my hand, said Domino, staring at the tiny implements. She suddenly felt a sensation as strange as seeing black shoe-heels percussing across a glass ceiling; she couldn’t remember where she’d seen that but she knew she had.

  After he puts the speculum in, he’s going to rinse out your vagina with Betadyne, the woman in blue said, very efficient and tall. Later Domino, craving more of the lovely and very tiny novocaine injections, would vaguely remember a cotton ball, and the drip of Betadyne through the plastic hole.

  Now put your hand on your tummy over the uterus to calm the cramp, the woman in blue said.

  Would you do it, please? whispered Domino through half-closed eyes. Oh, it feels so good when you do it.

  I think you may be in a little bit of trouble, the woman in blue said. I’m going to refer you to one of our counselors. She’ll be able to help you.

  I want you to do it, said Domino with a sleepy, wicked, toothy grin, and savored the woman in blue’s long slow flush.

  | 214 |

  Domino’s first abortion had been much easier than that, at least in the spurious fashion which lent itself to sugarcoating in her recollections, so that she could complain about subsequent procedures, saying, in one of her typically obscene mixed metap
hors: These assholes just want to fuck women up! They’re butchers! It’s a government plot to sterilize us to save money. And they call this a free country. Don’t even get me started, Maj . . . —It had been before Christmas, which to Domino was already becoming as irrelevant as all the other holidays because the only presents she’d ever received were those she’d stolen for herself, seizing them from life’s jaws and running somewhere deep and dirty to hide, to gloat. And yet in those days (she was seventeen) Christmas retained the power to disappoint her; in other words, it was not entirely irrelevant yet. The Christmas present one of the boys had given her grew brutishly in her belly. If she didn’t do something fast, it would quicken inside her and then she’d be a murderess. Moreover, she preferred not to be pregnant when she was at home. Not that she wanted to be home, either, but a former friend of hers now on the streets had informed her in weary exasperation that her sister was in jail and her father was dying of liver cancer, so Domino, burdened, hence affronted to her usual point of martyrdom, made up her mind to go back for the last time to see those losers, and it had truly been the last time. She’d dyed her hair brown because she was not yet a fulltime prostitute and it was an experiment of hers to learn whether men would defile her with fewer up-and-down stares of fishy-eyed lust if she denied her blondeness, but the results convinced her once and for all that she was doomed to that, at least until she became a hag, so she’d let blondeness creep back into the roots of her brown hair as she sat in the hotel room trying to be unconscious of that qualmish feeling in her uterus. She was supposed to arrive in Vacaville in three days. Her father would have erected the plastic tree if he were well enough, but there’d be nothing beneath it. (What dully studied comparisons come to mind? Did this hollow celebration of Christ’s birthday thus emblematize His empty tomb? Would seven-year-old Domino, instead of squatting bitterly by the tree in her pajamas all night, gnawing angrily at her blonde pigtail, have done better to gaze up at the ceiling in search of presents? By the time she was ten, she’d already sucked a boy off on a dare, and when his manna spewed into her mouth, she vomited. But her control improved over the years. Just as a soda jerk leans, scraping and twisting the tall stainless steel cup upon the rod, so Domino would waggle her lips and tongue about a man’s organ if she had to, although she rarely denied herself the pleasure of stopping halfway through to engage in negotiations of a deliberately aggressive nature, until the man had lost his erection. After a man had passed his mid-thirties he could not as a rule get hard and soft and hard in quick succession more than three or four times. It gave Domino more than a little satisfaction to leave her customer unfulfilled, frustrated, and [American male socialization being what it was] humiliated rather than angry at his failure—although this was a delicate game; every now and then she got a black eye. —Well, this won’t work, she would tell her customer brightly. I don’t know what your problem is. Maybe you just don’t like girls. As for me, I don’t have all night. If you want to try again sometime, pull up under my window and honk four times.) Her father had sounded surprised and glad when she’d telephoned him collect from the booth on Eddy Street. His surprise reproached her, and his gladness infuriated her. He said he’d meet her at the Greyhound station. —Yeah, that’ll work, the girl said curtly, breaking the connection. She was very conscious of her uterus. It just felt as if it were there. For a month now she’d persisted in hoping that that unsought sensation would vanish, but every morning it grew more present until it stood for already not merely a mass of tissue inside her but an inimical being whose purpose it was to weaken and confuse her, then drag her down. —You’re dead! laughed the blonde, punching herself in the stomach. She asked her aunt to send money. It was about a hundred and eighty dollars. Her aunt reminded her that they had mutually agreed that the previous time would be the last time, but Domino wept most fluently on the telephone, pleading that she’d made another mistake, that this emergency was the worst ever. A year or two later, she would have known enough to lie, using the magic word rape, which opened so many tear-ducts and money-ducts when carefully invoked. She was in the fifth week. A girlfriend came with her—not a friend, merely a girlfriend, a dumb bitch who wasn’t in the life,* because Domino supposed it would be prudent to have someone drive her back. The girlfriend, whose name she could no longer remember, had borne two babies, one when she was fifteen and the next when she was sixteen. Each time she’d refused to open her eyes when the doctor raised up the child before her, raised up the bloody little rabbit. What was the point? They were both carried away for adoption. She said to Domino: Does he love you? to which the blonde replied, rolling a joint: That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. —Her girlfriend, broodingly sensitive, lowered her eyes. Neither of them had ever gone to an abortion clinic before. The girlfriend was pro-life, but she was a friend, except of course that she wasn’t a friend because even then Domino had no friends.

  The place was of a pale green color, with nothing in the halls, and two examination tables. Really it was a processing plant, Domino thought, always firm in her conviction that all authority and expertise on this earth functioned either to withhold good things from her, or else to carefully crank her into the latest meat-grinder; and when she discovered that somebody had left the toilet unflushed, her gorge rose in outrage—this was the sort of place to which they’d compelled her! —but on the other hand, she would soon think nothing of the Queen’s stinking lairs where cockroaches crawled on her at night and the whores’ used tampons had stiffened into rigid dark plumes as of ancient flint knives, so may we agree once and for all that such complaints on her part were almost pleasantries, which is to say that they reflected her normal intercourse with the world?

  Everyone did everything together; it was one of those communist places. Everyone undressed together. There were lockers. It would be vacuum aspiration. Everyone woke up in the recovery room. An ocean of white bodies was what she thought (her mind being more pictorially descriptive in those days). No one looked pregnant. Most were with their girlfriends or with their mothers. Her girlfriend asked: Are you sure you want to go through with this, Sylvia? —Look, said Domino. Can’t you see that this is already difficult enough? —All the white bodies looked very young—soft bodies, pale and plump and well cared for. It had not been very long now since Domino had confessed to herself that she was a lesbian, so she was still ashamed to gaze openly upon all those pregnant breasts and pregnant cunts; for she and they were as strangers compressed naked in some elevator; they spoke in low voices when they spoke at all, trying in equal proportion not to look invasively at one another and not to acknowledge the unavoidable invasiveness of those others. The real reason that she was none too forward in getting her eyeful, a fact she afterward jealously regretted, was that her own body, hard and scrawny, already wore its first tattoo, its first abscesses, and that long white highway of a motorcycle wound which Tyler’s finger would trace in that Tenderloin hotel room twenty years hence. It wouldn’t be much longer before Domino adopted Tyler’s mode of self-protective skullduggery in the face of humiliations real or imagined, namely, defiance, but this first abortion happened long ago, when the girl, still almost a child, remained meek in her shame.

  She had to pay up front, cash. Then they took her jewelry away. She owned one Apache tear, an old piece of lapis. It was an earring. She’d lost the other one two months earlier when she’d had to run away from a married man’s house. While the other women compliantly twisted off their rings and unhooked their bracelets, Domino scowled and hid the Apache tear in her fist. She wanted something to hold. The general anesthetic wafted her down into darkness. She never heard the ringing clatter when the charm struck the green tiles beneath the table on which she lay. A nurse smiled and picked it up for her while Domino dreamed of nothing, like a thread woven into a heavy rug of darkness.

  They gave her a sheet of instructions: Don’t have sex or use tampons. Do you understand? they said. —Whatever, said Domino.

  A young woman ens
hrouded in white blankets walked by, and Domino thought: I’d like to eat her. I’d like to at least see her naked. I’d like to . . . and then the woman in white was gone.

  | 215 |

  One for our records and one for the insurance company, said the receptionist.

  I don’t have a goddamned insurance company, snarled Domino.

  Thank you very much, the receptionist said in a quick, low voice.

  The woman in the chair behind Domino inhabited a loose striped dress. She had bare, crossed ankles, a glimpse of red hair. She shifted her legs, kicked off her shoes, hid behind the newspaper. Seeing the domed belly supporting her newspaper, Domino conceived a shocking jealousy of that baby still inside it; she wanted a baby, too. But the Queen had made her do this. And Justin had held out on her and jacked her up too many times; if she’d been able to keep that money she could have raised a baby. It was Justin’s fault. And all the men who used her, and the men who refused to use her, and the whole rotten world with its trolleycar bells and sherry-colored sunset clouds over white-and-silver San Francisco . . .

  | 216 |

  A motif in Domino’s life: the clinic. One window looked out in the outer office. After that, there were no windows. How many times will a street-whore go to the clinic in her lifetime? How many diseases, babies, false alarms, abrasions, uterine traumas, inflamations, infestations, ill odors until death?

  In Vienna I once wandered inside a medical museum filled not only with such endearing oddities as the porcelain model uterus which of all things most resembled a bat, but also with ghastly things the sight of which destroyed my dispassion. I looked upon the swollen face and oozing blind eyes of a gonorrheal infant, the red sores and breast lesions of a syphilitic mother—real tissue scalpeled out of the dead, now displayed in a manner calculated to induce dread. The museum’s staff did not want me to catch syphilis. Hence they spread an atmosphere of loathsomeness and fear. To be sure, much in the place was of historical interest as well—not least the old prostheses like robot hands of black metal—but then I encountered pickled feet with what looked like bugs growing out of them—surely just some tissue deformity—and bits of tiny bones floating in the formalin, greenly meat-fuzzed. Then came pale grey ovals of other meat floating in other jars. And in one room there dwelled a black-burnt, teeth-clenched skeleton . . .