Chloe Doe

by Suzanne Phillips

  ¡Viva Los Vivos!

  Today there’s a real mariachi band. They’ll play their guitars and trumpets and we will dance.

  Mariachi bands are all male, and Mexicans are a passionate, easy breed. They’re wearing blood-red shirts and flap their arms like rabid chickens.

  We like the broad, brown faces of the men, their crooked smiles, and their hot eyes on our bodies.

  They like dance here. It kills two birds with one stone. We get exercise and recreational therapy at the same time. They get to watch, to sit back and enjoy the music, to instruct or reprimand from the sidelines. For them, work is an easier day.

  We have special antennae, us amantes. A sixth sense. We know a man from his scent. Not the cologne and sweat smell that sticks to a girl’s body, but the scent of man underneath.

  He’s vinegar, and depending on his disposition, he’s sour or he’s sweet.

  These mariachi men, they’re all right. They’re what we expect on the street, and maybe better. They have what we call religion: they’ll adore you, and it lasts as long as a prayer.

  You don’t have to worry about them hitting you. You don’t have to worry about much with men like this. They’ll take their pleasure and leave you. If you’re lucky, they’ll make you a little slice of heaven for themselves, and there’s worse you can be for a man. When you’re someone’s angel, you’re not a whore. You’re their world. A person has a way of treating their world, the best part of it, like it’s something they want to go on forever. They treat you real well. They treat you like you’re their Madonna. And that made it easier, my life on the street.

  We worked for this. Every Tuesday and Thursday in the gym for a month, with our recreational therapist, we learned the seductive moves of the dance. The mariachi will play their music and serenade us, and we will dance around them in bright skirts and white blouses the staff donated for the event from their own closets.

  Our audience is the doctors who examine us, who peel back our flesh for a look at our insides; the nurses who herd us from one activity to another, confusing our names and ailments; and the social workers who can’t imagine our experiences, who place us in recovery groups for problems we don’t have.

  They’re standing and sitting in groups, backed up against the walls to give us space. They’re watching, talking among themselves, waiting with their arms crossed over their stomachs, passing time until we begin.

  For them we learned the hopping, laughing hyena steps of this dance. For their entertainment, we’ll perform.

  The mariachis begin the light strumming of their guitars and the triumphant blasts of their horns. They drift around the room, first impressing the nurses in their pant uniforms, and then the doctors who sit in folding chairs at the edge of our dance floor. They play and bow their slim bodies toward the women, smiling.

  Mexicans have something we don’t. I’ve seen it in my chicas on the street, in the men who buy us, in the mariachi who play. It’s in their smile: life is for the living. ¡Viva los vivos!

  For the hours of TV, for our choice of chocolate cake for dessert, for a check mark next to Cooperative on our charts, we dance. We dance because it’s expected. Because the men have come for the women to dance.

  The mariachi, their eyes speak. They tell us unas muchachas bonitas. Pretty girls. Pretty girls with pretty breasts and thighs like sweet cream. And there’s expectation, like the shiny blade of a knife. These girls will dance, they will open themselves to our loving. Optimism is their only fault.

  They watch me, flung out and arms stretched above my head, turning and turning. They watch the nurses and the doctors, sitting in their folding chairs, feet pumping to the music, their eyes watching the mariachi and watching me and watching the others. But mostly watching me. If I go on, spinning, if I lose my balance and fall, all of this will be for nothing. If I spread myself out, lay myself down, if I lose myself completely, this goes belly-up.

  There’s only so far you can go in America without being gringo. There’s only so much work the mariachi will put into defeat. I would be their finest achievement, but I’m watched like a convict.

  The mariachi turn their attention to the others. The girls move sluggishly to the tempo, uninvolved in the freewheeling journey I’m on. They lift their feet: sleepwalkers. Like a merry-go-round, they get nowhere. Even those who try to keep up, trip over a chord. And the rest, they wait for a loud noise. They wait for the mariachi to scatter like crows. The little Niña especially. She is jumpy around men. She won’t sit behind a closed door with her therapist. She won’t make eye contact with any of the male staff unless she’s forced to. It’s written as one of her goals: The little Niña will, when speaking to a male staff member, make eye contact on two out of three occasions. They don’t expect perfection. Which is a good thing. The little Niña would never measure up. Now, she twirls in a circle by herself, at the edge of the dance floor. She stares at her feet, lifting them one beat behind the music. She refuses to look at the mariachi, or at anyone else.

  The mariachi notice her and leave her to herself. They weave themselves around the rest of us, playing their instruments. They brush against us. An elbow touches a breast. A hip brushes our nalgas. Anything for free.

  It’s happening for them, inside their bodies. They watch us lift our legs and move across the floor. Bright, black eyes watching us all the way, imagining things. Their skin flushes red. The muscles under their black chinos and ruffled blouses are tight. They want us, but will settle for watching, for painting pictures. They will find satisfaction in something small. ¡Viva los vivos!

  “Hey, mariachi!” I hold up the hem of my skirt. I dance my way across the floor, working to the music. “Mariachi!” I can dance. My body moves on the beat. I’m in tune. My mouth open, laughing. My white teeth dazzling. “Mariachi, come dance with me!”

  Chloe Doe is the master of movement. In dance, I’m graceful. I move like water downstream. I’m lovely.

  In invitation, I’m obvious. There’s one I’m interested in. So young, his skin is smooth. No beard, not even the start of one. A pencil-thin, wannabe mustache. And skinny. Palo. A stick. The way I like them. I dance a circle around him. He laughs and stomps his foot, and plays his guitar faster. My heels follow his lead. They stop and watch, the other amantes. They clap their hands and start to chant: “Chloe! ¡OLÉ! Chloe! ¡OLÉ!”

  The doctors and nurses are caught off guard. They stand and move closer and are frozen, trying to find a way to restore order. They all watch me, because Chloe in motion is mesmerizing.

  ¡Viva los vivos! I glow with it.

  The mariachi men smile and nod their heads. They pick at their guitars with blunt fingers. They run a bow over a violin. They throw their heads back and laugh with delight. They are men of dance and men of music, and men of food and of women, of passions.

  They’re not complicated. Not difficult to understand. The mariachi men can be reduced to one thing only: esperanza. Hope.

  We are born with it. Some with less than others. And these consume it, or they wither and die. I’m a consumer. I know it. I eat it out of their hands. I see it in their eyes and I’m snagged.

  “Mariachi, I’m watching you.” I dance away from the skinny guitar player. I look at him with big eyes and satisfaction. “I like what I see.”

  I back off before the doctors and nurses come. I drop the hem of my skirt and spin away to the corner of the dance floor. Some of the girls begin to step into the rhythm. The guitar player watches me. His eyes follow me around the floor, where I turn and laugh and hold the hem of my skirt above my knees so my legs move smoothly through each pump and twist of the dance.

  When the mariachi leave, we are called to sit in a circle, in folding chairs. All seventeen of us. The doctors, Dr. Dear included, sit with legs crossed and with pens and clipboards ready. They want feedback, to know what we think of today’s activity.

  Dr. Dearborn says, “That was fun,” and waits for our response.

  Only the little
Niña will talk. She says, “The music was nice.” But she didn’t like the dancing. “I have two left feet.”

  Chloe, they say, you had fun?

  “Oh, yeah, I love dancing.”

  And the men. The attention, the spotlight. We like knowing they wanted us.

  They doubt my word. They say, “Sometimes we hold on to the familiar because it’s all we know.”

  Hand Tricks

  I’m late. I sat on my bed and watched the big hand on the plastic travel-size clock tick-tick past ten. At ten-oh-eight the floor nurse comes in asking did I forget.

  I didn’t.

  Individual therapy is not voluntary, she says.

  She walks me down the hall. “What’s the matter with you?”

  She thought I was over this refusal. I’ve been in ten weeks now. One month in I played possum with the flu and skipped two sessions. I needed time to think. Time to accept my change of address. To decide I was worth the work, the sacrifice, the walking through quicksand.

  “I thought you liked Dr. Dearborn,” she says.

  Not today.

  “What’s so special about today?” she wants to know. Why the sudden change of heart. “It usually takes a girl to the three-month mark before she realizes the road ahead is almost too much.”

  “I’m a fast learner,” I say. It’s true. I thought a lot about our last visit and how I was held prisoner inside my own mind, and I don’t know if I can live up to expectations. I don’t know if I want to try. I’ve lived scared so long, I’m a natural. Rule number one: don’t let the fear catch you, and now he wants me to turn around and stare it in the face. That may be more than I can do.

  We stop in front of the library and she knocks, all the gold bracelets on her arms sounding like wind chimes.

  “There you go, now,” she says. She pushes the door open and nudges me through it.

  “Chloe.” Dr. Dear is smiling like I’m a long-lost friend. “It’s good to see you.”

  I sit down in my chair. Let my lip curl at the stink of his words.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asks.

  “It’s like you said,” I tell him. “Two steps forward, one back.”

  “You’re slipping?” he guesses. “How?”

  “Not slipping,” I say. “It feels more like being stuck in one place and not liking the scenery.”

  “You want out?”

  In a way. I want that place where time stops, where there’s zero gravity and I’m a floater. Except for bumping into a few things, no one’s there to bother me.

  “It’s getting harder,” he says. His face is all soft with understanding, but this just makes me want to sharpen my nails on his pink-white skin, leave a mark of my own. “You’re thinking you can’t do it.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  “I haven’t been able to eat for days,” I tell him. Nothing goes down and stays. I’m a case of nerves, damned if I do and if I don’t.

  “So let’s take it easy today,” he says. He won’t poke at anything real personal. We’ll leave family alone, and even the here and now, and work on the future. What do I see for myself?

  Where am I going? And, please, be realistic.

  But that’s the one thing I can’t be. Reality hurts worse than possibility.

  “You want me to say I’m headed nowhere.” I’m traveling a dead-end street. “Chances are, going the way I am, I’ll end up in jail.” Or dead.

  He wants me to say it. He wants it bad enough he’s willing to steer me in the direction of the morgue.

  “Chloe, most girls don’t last long on the street.” They don’t last.

  He watches how I’m taking it. Pushes his glasses up his nose to make sure he doesn’t miss a thing.

  Am I going to crack? Am I going to give him what he wants? A few tears.

  None of this is new to me. He forgets I was the one out there. I saw the girls disappear like a magician’s hand trick. Only they didn’t come back. Girls like me are not pulled out of a hat or a sleeve. When we disappear we’re gone for good.

  The doctor asks, “So what happens to them?”

  He wants me to say they’re dead. But I won’t. He wants me to say, I know where they are. All those unmarked graves, they’re girls like me. But I can’t.

  “They come here. The Hospitality Inn.”

  Here is only a resting place. Here is where you collect yourself. You were one small step from falling over the edge, and then you came here. When you leave you’re ready for just about anything. Maybe you’re ready to believe.

  “Where are you going, Chloe?”

  “I have plans,” I tell him. “I have friends. My cuates are waiting for me.”

  “Share your plans with me,” he says. “Where will you be a month after you’re out? Six months? A year from the day you leave Madeline Parker, where will you be?”

  Have you thought about it? Have you planned ahead?

  But I haven’t. Really, there’s no one waiting for me. On the street everything is temporary, even life.

  I feel like I’m six feet under, that all the air has been squeezed from my lungs. My fingers curl into my palms until I feel the sting of my nails digging into my skin and I know I am alive. But that’s not what he wants. He led me here, hoping for a change in attitude. Hoping an up-close at my name on the list of the dead would bring a willingness to start new.

  I don’t want to play his game today.

  “I think I’ll get an apartment on the beach. Live like the rich and famous.”

  “That’s expensive real estate,” he says.

  He’s disappointed. Today I’m being irreverent. He uses the big word on me, thinking I don’t understand it. He skipped over the part in my file that says I’m a born genius. That in grades three through six I attended special classes. And when the state had ahold of me, I was on the honor roll.

  “And flippant, too,” I agree.

  Something snaps in his eyes and I see I’ve been caught. He knew all along, but he turns it into a game.

  “Insolent.”

  “Supercilious,” I say.

  “Impudent.”

  “You got a thing for I’s?”

  “Exasperating.” And his eyes bug behind his glasses.

  I like seeing him like this. Sometimes I get on my own nerves; I’ve never had a shrink tell me I was pressing on his.

  “So, you think I’ll be dead?” I say, and I really consider this. If I haven’t thought about it, if I can’t do it myself, then someone else will.

  “If you don’t start taking yourself seriously,” he says.

  “And you, too, huh?”

  “You take me seriously. And it scares you.”

  I feel my eyes dry up with the pressure of looking at him. My hands twitch from wanting so much to move them.

  “What do you have that can scare me?”

  He holds out his hand, palm up, and taps it with a finger. “Your life. Do you want it?”

  Heat Wave

  Before the sun is completely gone, the moths come out. Swarms of them. They settle on the porch lights and if they stay too long, we hear the snap-burn of their bodies. In the morning we scrape them off the glass. Last year Camille and I made a house for them out of a plastic jug and cut grass, then caught them. If you don’t let them go by morning, they die.

  This year we forget about their reaction to captivity and do it all over again.

  “Mr. Portsmith’s mowed his lawn,” Camille says. Mr. Portsmith’s mower doesn’t have a grass catcher. “We can go over now. He’s inside having iced tea.”

  We walk over to where our yards border and scoop up handfuls of cut, brown grass. It’s been a dry year and June has hit us hard, with record temperatures and the air so sharp it chokes us going down. There’s been so little rain, the news warns us we may have to give up drinking water from our faucets. The government asks us to bathe in three inches of water and not to take showers. Our mother tells us to
flush the toilet only when there’s something in there no one else would want to look at. I take that to mean every time I go. Camille says it’s only when we do number two, but she flushes every time. I hear her.

  This year we take an old shoe box: Converse, black high-tops, size eleven. They belonged to one of our mother’s boyfriends. We don’t remember who. We make a bed of grass and Camille puts in red rose petals from our bushes. We use a piece of clear wrap for the lid, cut small slits in the plastic so the moths can breathe, then wander around under the streetlights.

  Camille looks like a drunk, swaying and grabbing at the air.

  Last year we filled the jug. We had thirty of them. They don’t light up like fireflies, or rub their legs together, singing, like grasshoppers do. They don’t beat their wings, frantic for escape. They lay quietly, one on top of another, and fall into a deep sleep.

  Camille says they smothered each other. There were too many of them. Or they died from the heat of too many bodies. We went to sleep with the jug on the nightstand between our beds and the light on, and when we woke up in the morning, they were shriveled up on the bottom.

  Today they’re killing the man who hurt little boys. Who dragged them off to empty fields and touched their private parts. Then he killed them.

  “How?”

  “He smashed their heads,” Camille says. “He strangled them with a leather belt.” Probably the one he was wearing.

  “He wrapped their heads in plastic so they couldn’t breathe. He’s a real sick bastard.”

  On the evening news they show groups of people holding candles in the dark. They sing hymns and stand outside the prison gates with signs that quote the Bible: Thou Shalt Not Kill. And signs that say Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right.

  Camille says they’re morons. “They don’t have children. Or don’t like them.”

  They’ll kill him tonight at one minute after twelve. His mother will watch from behind a glass wall.