Los Angeles Noir 2

by Denise Hamilton

  I don’t sleep, just close my eyes, but when I open them again, I see the pipe in my stiff fingers. Still lots of night left. I much prefer the night. Maybe that’s what I am, a vampire. Sucking smoke instead of blood. I really have to stop this, Douglas. There’s no future in it. And though you couldn’t see life without the pipe, even you should be able to appreciate my position. I’m carrying your child. You wouldn’t want “it, the unknown” for your firstborn? Well, it wouldn’t truly be your firstborn, but those poor, drug-addled tramps that carried your seed don’t count. I count. Because I’m the queen of your desire, or is it the bitch of your desire. Anyway, let’s be honest. I’m going to smoke that baby to hell.

  “Get up. You’re going!”

  Oh, it’s morning. I’m in bed and here’s Uncle Jack and the rest of his merry crew. He just yanks me up and marches me through the house to the car. And doesn’t Mother look disappointed. She slides in next to me, Uncle Jack takes the wheel, and my butterball of an aunt gets into the backseat. I guess it’s time to go to where they put people like me. To the funny farm where life is gay all the time. The garage door swings open and we pull out into the bright light of day. Mother is crying again as usual, but she wants to say something, gagging on the words.

  “How could you? We trusted you.”

  “It’s too bright. I need sunglasses.”

  “We aren’t stopping so you can run off. You know where you’re going.”

  They’re really going to do it this time.

  “We found the drugs. A whole pocket full. How much did it cost? How’d you get the money?”

  “I got it for free.”

  “She got it for free, hah. What did you sell?” Uncle Jack says. Mother is crying buckets. What a callous thing to say in front of her.

  “I certainly did not sell anything that you’re implying. I got it for free. I have ways.”

  “My God, she needs help,” Uncle Jack says.

  And here’s the hospital.

  “Emma, you park the car. I’m walking this young lady in.”

  Uncle Jack slams the brakes, stopping us right behind an ambulance, slides out from behind the wheel and pulls me along, my robe comes open but he doesn’t wait. It’s like being on a roller coaster the way he’s pulling, jerking me one way and then the other.

  “What’s the rush?” I say, digging in my heels.

  He looks at me, his brown face wonderfully twisted in a perfect sneer.

  “How could you bring that shit into my house.”

  “But Uncle Jack, it’s so expensive. I couldn’t just leave it outside.”

  His hand flashes up and smashes me across the face. I spin out of his grip and run for the sliding doors. But he has me, carries me, squirming mightily to the nurse’s station.

  “We’ve made arrangements for this young lady.”

  He’s in great shape. I’m twisting around like my dog used to do, twirling against his chest, but his grip doesn’t break. The robe opens all the way, my pink panties are for the world to see. The nurse looks embarrassed for him. Mother and Aunt Emma walk into the lobby and see me wrapped in Uncle Jack’s arms, ass out, the robe all about my shoulders like a straitjacket, and are even more embarrassed. The nurse gets it together. I’m too tired to keep up the fight so I watch as the forms are presented and signed. And everyone looks relieved to be getting the paperwork out of the way.

  “Wait a minute! They can’t commit me. I didn’t sign anything.”

  The nurse barely looks at me, instead she shuffles papers. “You’re not being committed. This is a drug treatment program. They’ve placed you in our care. The doctor will be out shortly to explain to you how our program works.”

  I nod enthusiastically. “That sounds great. I can’t wait!” I shout and the nurse flinches.

  Oh, since the papers have been signed, two big men in white suits appear, and they have a wheelchair I suppose they want me to sit in. I wonder if I could make it to the sliding glass double doors. Wild on the streets once again. But don’t I need this. Don’t I need to find out why I’m the way I am. Don’t I need to dry out for the baby’s sake, don’t I, Douglas? Isn’t this all a pathetic cry for help? Yes, I guess it is. I’m one sick bitch. It’s bright and sunny here in this lobby, with fine, sturdy, modern furniture in soothing pastels. It might be time for a change. The doctor, balding and thin, comes up. He’s wearing running shoes. He extends his hand. I extend mine. I shove hard against his chin and knock him into Uncle Jack and it’s off to the races.

  “Rika” is an excerpt from the novel Understand This (University of California Press, 2000).

  LUCÍA

  BY YXTA MAYA MURRAY

  Echo Park

  (Originally published in 1997)

  Loca friend, you’re all messed up, Girl. What we gonna do? When a woman can’t walk it’s like she ain’t the same kind of woman. You ever seen a girl’s legs when they’re all broke like that? Star Girl, she used to be my pretty chola. She was mean as a shark and she was strong enough to twist and hook a fish as big as me. But I knew she was mine.

  “I’m out of it, I ain’t grouping no more,” Star Girl kept saying now, and she had that dead light in her eyes. Almost like the sheep do after they figure things out. No, I didn’t want her different. I wanted my old Girl back.

  But I saw what that C-4 did. She showed me after I brought her home from the hospital, and she was quiet and dumb the whole ride home cause of all them pills. I wheeled her into her bedroom so she can get some rest and I helped drag her up. Before she got shot we’d got her all set up special in her own place and she had this princess-pink bed from the Lobo money, a superfancy four-poster. It didn’t look so pretty now, though. You can’t climb under the covers if you don’t got your legs working right.

  When I lifted up her shirt she looked down, and her face didn’t tight up with hurt or curl with shame. Nothing. “It ain’t bad, chica, you gonna heal right up,” I kept saying, making like it’s true. I turned the lamp on her naked skin and touched her light like I was her mama. Star Girl had this round thick scar on her back, a twisted tree-stump—looking cut. There’s white shiny skin lines like roots spreading out from where the doctors dug the bullet out. She was broke, all right. Her hands loose in her lap, like she can’t hold on. And I’d seen before how her legs looked smaller because she can’t use them no more, they was only hanging down from that silver wheelchair.

  She shook her head again. “I’m out of it for good.”

  “You’re out of it when I say so,” I tell her, trying to sound tough as nails. Like I’m still her jefa and she’s got to listen. But she don’t. She only turned her head to the window and rubbed her dry mouth. It’s all over, ésa, is what she’s saying to me. Can’t bring back the dead. Well don’t I know it. She’s looking outside at the blue-black night and what I see is her red eyes and them white cracked lips. There’s dusk colors washing down over her face that ain’t never gonna be the same.

  It reminds me of something bad, that’s right. Something I can’t forget even if I close my eyes tight. No, I don’t have no shame, but it don’t matter. I can’t ever shut my eyes tight enough to black it all out.

  So I opened them up real wide. I wouldn’t look away. Gonna get them for you, Girl, I thought to myself. You ain’t never known something better than a crazy angry woman, and when I saw her busted up, staring out by the window and the night’s coming down dark over her, something in me went SNAP. You’ve been here before, something tells me. So get loca mad before that monster eats you up.

  I started dreaming about that C-4 shooter all night long. His blank face was teasing me and when I wake up, I almost feel his steel-chain hands grip down on my throat. My teeth are chattering like I’m freezing. I can’t even think about the business no more. The only thing in my head is how my Girl’s all broke up.

  “You go and kill him, right, Beto?” I asked him. When I got back from seeing Star I wrapped my arms around his neck, trying to kiss his lips and cheeks
like the sweetest, nicest sheep he’s ever seen. I made like he’s the prince and cried on him just like a girl so he feels sorry. “You’re gonna make him hurt, eh? Can you do it for me, baby?” I cooed, kissing his hands, his fingers. Acting like a geisha, but I didn’t care a stitch. Inside I was feeling wild and mean and it took all my strength not to bash him on the head. You just DO IT, I wanted to scream in his ear, and my hands was itching and burning from wanting to scratch at his face till he finds me that C-4 killer.

  But I couldn’t. He was the boss of the Lobos now after that rumbla. It didn’t matter that it was Chico who came to me, these days Beto was maddogging his ass down the street and all the vatos was watching him. He wasn’t weak yet, like Manny got. The man was still full of fire, and it was gonna burn me bad if I didn’t work him right. “Stop your whining, ésa. Keep it down,” he’d started saying, waving at me with his hand when I’m telling him something. So I had to be more careful since he thinks he’s Mr. Bad. Fine, we’ll play it that way, I’m thinking. I’ll sheep you so hard you’ll walk weak-kneed all day. So Beto did what I want and that slick boy thought he was doing me favors. “Help me out, right?” I asked him again, and then smiled sweet. Yah, I’m thinking inside. You do for me. Tell your fools to drive on down to Edgeware and bring me home a dead man.

  “All right, linda,” he said, looking down at me and getting that big-daddy face on. He puts his hands under my shirt where it’s warm and closes his eyes. “I’ll show that vato where I’m from.”

  I should of known not to waste my breath. Beto got his homies running around asking questions and trying to get somebody from the eastside to rat out, but that didn’t do me one bit of good. “Eh, ése, you know about the C-4 that tagged a Lobo sheep? You tell me, vato, our little secret.” We didn’t get no names. Whoever tagged my Girl was hiding out where I couldn’t find him.

  I got my hopes up when Beto sent these locos Montalvo and Rudy to Edgeware on a first-class mission to get me some answers about who shot my Girl. I sat up all night by my phone waiting to hear something, watching the wallpaper and the carpet and listening to some cricket chirp outside my window. I knew my bad time’s gonna end once I get that call. But you don’t send warriors on a job like that. Montalvo and Rudy was two baby-faced hot-blooded Oaxaca brothers who wore these red shirts and flashed their Lobos sets on the street looking for fights like blockheads so they could make a tough name for themselves in la clika. Instead of asking around cool and careful, they ran down to the Avenida de Asesinos, this dirty alley where the yellow dogs deal their powder. Them two started screaming RIFA and shooting crazy as soon as they see C-4 vatos giving them bad eyes. It’s no good to me. Montalvo got hit with one in the shoulder and came home showing off his emergency-room war wound like he was a hero, and Rudy was maddogging around cause he got so close to the Avenida. But they didn’t find out who that C-4 was.

  “You got me a name, right?” I ask them after. I drove on over to where they lived, this cheapie flophouse on Savanna Street full of homeboys sleeping on the floor, flojos snoring on the couches, three tangled in a bed. There’s white paint peeling back from the shutters and these busted windows pieced with electric tape. It was a grouper crash, the place where the vatos go when their mamas yell them out of the house. I walked up and banged on their door early in the morning and didn’t even blink when Montalvo answers it and I see how one of his arms is wrapped up with bandages, a pink stain seeping through. “I know you got me a name, son.”

  “Sorry, ésa,” Montalvo says to me. He’s wearing this baglady—looking T-shirt and boxers and I can see all the red on his skin from the Avenida. But under them scrapes he’s giving me icicle eyes to show he don’t care one way or another. “Couldn’t get nothing,” he said, then shrugs.

  I knew I was in trouble when he looks at me like that, forgetting who I am. That I’m la primera. Something crawls into my belly then, sitting there cold and making me feel weak and seasick. “You didn’t find nothing because you don’t want to,” is what I say, knowing he thinks I’m just this crazy chavala who’s trying to get payback for a sorry crippled sheep. Montalvo don’t care I got Beto’s ear, one woman’s the same as the next to him. The neighborhood’s quiet with everybody still sleeping and I’m trying to make my voice mean and low, but instead it grows bigger, bending up and stretching like a howl. “You don’t want to,” I tried to say again but then I hear I’m only screaming sounds at him, crying sounds, filling up the streets and the sidewalks and the trees with my sad noise.

  Those was some black bad days. I’d look in the mirror sometimes and see this white-faced llorona, with skinny bones sticking out her face and big shiny eyes, like I’m sick. I remind myself how I used to be swinging around here telling locos what to do, not looking like some old ghost. You’ve gotta be that strong chica, I’d whisper to myself, staring at what I see. You didn’t come this far to crack your head up. It don’t matter Star Girl can’t walk none, it don’t hurt you, does it? Sit tight, woman, I’d say, and try to smile. But all my talking didn’t make the bruja in the mirror run off, she just showed me her sharp bad wolf teeth.

  A chica like me, she ain’t meant to be crazy. I don’t got time to be weak. I remember when I was a niña, tough as iron even then. Not the baby bandido hiding under the bed. I remember the one watching the world with her smart head and checking out what goes which way. There’s the busboys and slick suits walking in my mami’s house, there’s me standing out in the hall listening. And even when Manny was beating me down, I kept my nose above water. Remember to breathe, that’s what I do best. Breathe and keep living. So I didn’t know why I was going all loose now. It seemed like I couldn’t keep myself together no matter how hard I tried.

  The only thing that made me feel strong was playing payback big. And I did it till it hurt.

  “You all right, Lucía?” Chique asked me after I screamed crazy at Montalvo. I hadn’t been right in the head for a while there, shivering and talking to myself, hiding out in my house. I knew she was checking up on me. “What’s up, girl?” she said, standing over by the refri in her shiny black boots and mall-girl clothes and staring at my face like she sees something crazy there, like she sees my llorona. But she ain’t stupid. She didn’t try and touch me light on the arm, or tell me things are okay. She knew me good enough by then.

  Back when Star Girl was walking, Chique knew she was always my second. I didn’t hide that I loved Star special. I’d give her the lookout jobs and made her the main picker, the big dealer. But Chique was my right hand now. She was the one doing the lookouts and keeping her ear to the ground for me just like Star Girl used to. Girl didn’t even wanna see me no more. Every day she’s not walking she just got harder and meaner, but not like before. This was the hard you get when you lose something. She’d told me that she didn’t want nothing more to do with la clika. “I paid enough, you see that,” she’d said, turning her head up at me from her chair so I see that pale mouth, her stringy hair. She didn’t even wanna get the C-4 who banged her. “It ain’t gonna make me walk now, is it?” She wheeled herself around her place, her squeakysounding chair moving over the carpet. I thought, Give Girl time, give her time. We’re gonna patch things up right.

  Chique fit herself right into that empty space. She snugged herself by my side after the rumbla and acted like she’d always been my main gangster. And being a big head these days suited Chique good, I could tell that, turning my eyes from my wall and seeing her stand in my kitchen door waiting to hear what I’ve got to say. She just wanted to crawl up on top same as any other gangbanger, and with Star Girl gone she’d got this new shine in her eye. She’d permed her hair out curly and started wearing this butter-soft black leather jacket, a skin-tight skirt. Her skin glowed out like warm satin, and even though she was still pig-slop fat she was wearing it better, shifting her heavy ass back and forth down the street so you’d turn and look. The woman was even making sexy eyes at some of the vatos and acting tough with the sheep. She still had he
r head on straight, though. That girl could tell there was something up with me.

  But she didn’t have to worry about me too hard. I’m a woman who’s always gonna keep standing strong. After all them days looking crazy at myself in the mirror, staring at my walls and my floors, I’d made up my mind. I already knew how I was gonna get my C-4. And having that plan set into me pushed up my bones, it put a shield in my hands. I was almost feeling good and scrappy again now that I knew what I was gonna do.

  “So. Lucía. You all right?” Chique said again. She was staring at me patient.

  “Just fine, ésa,” I told her, flashing out a grin. “You go on and get me some Garfield babies and I’ll be doing even better.”

  It all comes down to Garfield, that’s where we fought our war. Garfield’s full of mainly westside Parker kids cause it’s on our side of the line but some of your C-4 babies go there too. Just walk around and look through the chain-link fence sometime. You’ll see them little niños from both sides playing recess ball and laughing on the playground, stomping the flat black asphalt and screaming down from the bars like little monkeys. They’re too young yet to know they can’t be friends, but I’m changing that. All over the school walls there’s Lobo and C-4 tags now, these big black and yellow sets tangled together and warring out over who’s the main clika. It used to be that Garfield’s nothing but a money bag for me, I’d look through the fence and only see curious-cat junior high schoolers with a little pocket change. Now Garfield looked lots different. I knew if I got them greenhorns to go with the Lobos, we’d get so big nobody could hide from me. Not even that blank-faced C-4 boy.