by Debra Busman
I see everything, even myself—a black girl watching the white girl ignoring the men who are watching her, wanting her. I spit and gently finger my knife. There is something slightly dangerous about this skinny white girl who strides the streets in her heavy boots and possible ignorance, half looking like she owns the territory, half looking like she’s just landed from another planet. “Jackson, baby, you just leave that white girl be,” my mama warns me. “White girl like that like to get you killed.”
Taylor laughed. “Shit. That sounds just like your mom. Always riding my sorry ass about something. You know, I think she hates me worse for being white than being gay.”
Jackson smiled. “Nah, she don’t hate you. It’s just taking a while for you to grow on her, that’s all.”
“So, you was watching me all that time, too, huh?” Taylor teased, smiling at the thought of Jackson checking her out. “But, damn, then you’re watching you watching me, and watching all the motherfuckers, too. What’s up with that? Why you gotta write it like you’re way up high, looking down on everything?”
“It’s called perspective,” Jackson said. “The bigger picture. To write well, you’ve got to be aware of everything.”
“Hell,” Taylor said, looking back over the story. “I can’t hardly keep track of my own damn shit, much less everyone else’s.”
Jackson laughed. “Yeah, well, you got a lot to keep track of, I’ll give you that.”
The girls lay back together for a while in silence, enjoying the high. Taylor heard a faint scratching and knew that J. Edger was underneath the camper, digging out a cool place to lie down. She knew that meant that the dog had been let off his chain and she listened for the creaking of hinges and the clanging of the chain-link gates as Jimmy locked up the yard for the night. She figured it had to be close to six and wondered what they should do about food. Maybe she’d sell a lid to one of Jimmy’s friends and go get them all burritos. She thought about how much she loved to feel her stomach growl when she had money in her pocket.
“Hey, Taylor,” Jackson called softly. “You awake?”
“Uh huh,” Taylor answered, pulling her close.
“Girl, you ever been on a plane?”
“A plane?” Taylor asked. “Nah. Oh, you mean like those Lear jets my rich daddy used to fly us in to Paris every summer?”
Jackson ignored her foolishness. “I’ve been thinking about what we were talking about. I was in a plane once,” she said. “When my Nana brought me out here from Detroit. All that morning it had been pouring down rain. Sleet and hail hitting you upside the head so bad you wanted to punch somebody out. Umbrellas were a joke. Cars were sliding off the side of the road all the way to the airport.”
Taylor closed her eyes and settled into the story. She briefly wondered what rain and airplanes had to do with their conversation about Jackson’s writing, but she was high enough to not care. Besides, she loved the rare moments when Jackson actually told a story out loud instead of always writing in her journal, head buried, unavailable. Jackson didn’t talk much, but Taylor learned that if she got her high enough, all that could change real fast.
“So we make it to the airport and get on this big old 727,” Jackson continued, “and it takes off right in the middle of the whole damn storm, rumbling down the runway like a motherfuckin’ freight train. Then we’re up in the air, surrounded by heavy black clouds, hail slamming all up against the windows, lightning everywhere you look, the plane bouncing around all sideways, people screaming and puking in these little bags they so thoughtfully provided. Girl, I was so scared I almost peed my pants.
“‘Nana,’ I ask her. ‘Are we gonna die?’
“And my Nana, she just reaches over, cool as could be, and pats my hand.
“‘Well, yes, sugar,’ she says. ‘Of course we are.’
“So, of course, I almost lose it right then and there and want to book, but where am I gonna run to, right? And so my Nana just smiles and says, ‘Honey, we’re all a gonna die sooner or later. That’s just the way God made us. Now, if what you are asking me is are we going to die right now, on this here plane, well then, baby girl, the answer is no. Of course not. Everything is just fine, sugar. You’ll see.’
“And then sure enough, just like she and God had planned it all along, suddenly we bust up through the clouds into this bright blue sky, sun blaring down on the silver wings so you had to squint, all the clouds gone except a sea of white below us, and everything real calm and quiet, like we were floating in space. Then the stewardess straightens her little cap and walks down the aisle with this shiny metal cart that just barely fits, smiling and asking if we’d like a soda and some lunch.” Jackson shook her head. “Hot food, too. Already cooked. And we didn’t have to pay for it or anything.”
“Damn,” Taylor said, feeling really hungry now. “Like a fuckin’ restaurant in the sky. What did they feed you?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “I think it was some chicken and gravy and mashed potatoes or something. But that’s not the point. Check it out. So, there we are up in the middle of the sky, floating along, me drinking as much root beer as the lady will pour, and my Nana, she takes my hand and points out the window. All I see is blue, no birds, no clouds, nothin’.
“‘Sugar,’ she tells me. ‘I want you to always remember this.’
“‘Remember what?’ I have to ask, feeling like a knucklehead, but knowing it’s not the root beer or the puke bags I’m supposed to be remembering.
“And Nana just keeps pointing out the window. ‘All of this,’ she says. ‘This vast blue sky that goes on forever, even when you can’t see that it does. Remember that, baby. Most people think they the clouds, sugar, but you, you are the sky. Now you promise me you won’t never forget that.’”
Taylor raised her head and looked over at Jackson. “So, you’re the sky, huh?” she grinned, cocking an eyebrow. “You been holding out on me. Damn, girl, and I thought your mama was a trip. Your grandma, she’s a fuckin’ stoner. They must have had them some kickass reefer back then, that’s all I got to say.”
“Quit foolin’,” Jackson said. “This is serious. I think about this shit all the time, trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me. It’s like what I was trying to say about my story. Perspective. My mama says it’s all about what you identify with in this world.” She nudged Taylor. “How about you?” she asked. “You think you’re more like the clouds or the sky?”
“I think you’re fuckin’ loaded,” Taylor laughed. “That’s what I think.”
Jackson sighed. “Yeah, girl, I’m high, and yeah, I do like your new herb, okay. But I’m serious. If you had to say one, what would you say? You think you’d be the clouds or the sky?”
Taylor looked out the camper window at the thick brown smog that had hung for weeks over the L.A. basin. She wondered how far up into the sky it went, if you could get on a plane and fly right up through it, up into that bright blue sky Jackson’s Nana loved so much. She thought about David, the crippled boy next door beat to death by his mom. What was he, she wondered. Was he the sky? She thought about the nights she spent out in the mattress boxes before she hooked up with Jackson, how the cardboard would get all soggy in the rain and collapse in on her as she slept, how she hated the clammy feel of it as she peeled it off. She thought about J. Edgar, chained up all day in the hot, dusty wrecking yard. She thought about their friend Jo-Jo, murdered by some punk-ass john who beat her brains in and then set the place on fire, killing them both.
“Hell, I don’t know,” she finally said. “When I’m good and loaded, maybe I’m the fuckin’ sky. When I’m pissed, then yeah, maybe I’m kinda like the stormy rainclouds and lightning. Coming down hard that time I got strung so bad on Jo-Jo’s smack, that’s for sure what it’s like to be the smog. Rest of the time, for real, I don’t think we’re either one. I think we’re all just the little pieces of shit down here on the ground that get rained on all the time.”
Jackson moved her hand up, l
aying it on Taylor’s heart. “Ah, girl,” she said softly. “I feel you. Yeah. I don’t know. I just can’t stop thinking about that sky, that’s all. What my Nana was trying to tell me. Like there’s something more than all this shit we gotta deal.”
“Maybe that just makes it worse,” Taylor said, staring back out the window. “I mean, so what if there’s a fucking crystal blue sky up there, way above this smog. What the fuck good does that do us anyway if we still got to breathe this shit every day? Like in my story, when that joker clocked me in the alley that day we met, where was the fucking sky then?”
“I don’t know, girl,” Jackson sighed. “It’s more like it’s about perspective, I think. Like how my mama always says we are so much more than what was done to us.”
Taylor felt her heart catch on something, and then a small rush of anger. “Well,” she said, sitting up. “I know what I need. I’m gonna roll me up another bit of perspective right now, with a little blue sky hash thrown in. You all are just too fuckin’ deep for me, that’s all I gotta say.” She reached over for her stash and started rolling the joint, crumbling in little pieces of hash. “I mean, what about Jo-Jo?” she asked. “What’s your mama gotta say about Jo-Jo? Is Jo-Jo more than what was done to her? Yeah, she’s fuckin’ sky, all right. She’s fuckin’ dead.”
Taylor ran her tongue along the seam, twisted the ends, and then handed Jackson the joint. She held the match as Jackson took a long hit and then passed it back.
“I just saw her last week,” Jackson said. “Two days before that psycho whacked her. She was looking good, trying to get clean, said she was thinking about getting out.”
“Yeah, she got out, all right,” Taylor said. She thought about their friend with the soft voice and loud laugh, always flirting with the gay girls, always there to help anyone who was hurting. Taylor fingered the long, jagged scar running down her right bicep. “You remember that time I got cut up so bad and she sewed up my arm?”
Jackson laughed. “Yeah, she was a regular fuckin’ Dr. Kildare, carrying around that little sewing kit in her stupid ass candy apple plastic purse, stitching us all up. She taught you pretty good, too.”
“Yeah, the best home ec teacher I never had,” Taylor said. She looked at the scars on her hands, easily picking out the ones she had sewn up herself. She remembered Jo-Jo leaning over her with such tenderness and attention, holding her rough, bleeding hand in her two clean, manicured ones, always with the bright pink nail polish, tossing whiskey on the cuts like they did in the movies and showing Taylor how to make the small, tight stitches to properly close up a wound. Even when she was strung on smack and about to nod off, Jo-Jo was a perfectionist, making tiny clean sutures and finishing off the ends with a perfectly tied knot. “Remember how she’d always say how she was gonna be a nurse someday and work at a fancy hospital?” Taylor asked.
Jackson shook her head. “Yeah. Man, that’s really messed up what happened to her.”
The girls smoked the joint down, clipped it, then finished the roach and settled into a mellow, hash-tinged high. Taylor wished they had some music and thought about the portable stereos she’s seen down at Montgomery Wards. They were pretty close to the door, she had noticed. Easy enough to steal. They wouldn’t be able to play it during the day of course, when the yard was open, but at night, if they kept it real low, it might work out.
“You know what, Taylor?” Jackson said, again breaking the silence. “You know what we gotta do?”
“Damn,” Taylor said. “That mind just don’t quit, does it?” She stretched out a bit, enjoying the pull of her muscles and the feel of Jackson lying alongside her. “What, baby? What we gotta do?”
“We gotta write Jo-Jo’s story,” Jackson said.
“How we gonna do that?” Taylor asked. “We don’t even really know what happened in there.”
Jackson sat up, excited. “No, think about it, girl. Who else is gonna say shit about what happened?”
“Probably nobody, because probably nobody else even gives a shit.” Taylor said.
“That’s exactly my point,” Jackson said. “People die out here all the time and nobody even knows or cares. Come on. Girl was straight and tweaked as hell but she was our girl. We owe it to her, baby. Just think about it. We may not know shit, but we know more about what happened to Jo-Jo than anyone else in this world. Maybe we weren’t in that room, but we’ve been in plenty just like it. Shit, girl. You know what it’s like to go upstairs or get into a car when your gut says, ‘Uh-uh, fool, don’t do it.’ You know what it’s like to be hurting or stupid enough to do it anyway. And we sure as hell know what it’s like to have a psycho trick flip on us. I’m serious about this, Taylor. We know what we need to know. The rest is just details.”
Jo-Jo rested at the top of the landing, eyes half closed, fingering a new run in her stockings while the boy fumbled with his keys. Six blocks and six flights of stairs behind her, she knew she’ d made a serious mistake the moment she hid her accent, said, “You lookin’ for a date, hon?” and agreed to fuck this first-time Johnny.
Jo-Jo’s Story
Jo-Jo rested at the top of the landing, eyes half closed, fingering a new run in her stockings while the boy fumbled with his keys. Six blocks and six flights of stairs behind her, she knew she’d made a serious mistake the moment she hid her accent, said “You lookin’ for a date, hon?” and agreed to fuck this first-time Johnny. She hardly ever had Asian tricks. They usually went for the white girls around the corner while she got the Anglo businessmen and ex-servicemen looking for something “exotic.” Fair-skinned, tonight she was trying to pass for white so she didn’t have to deal with their shit, but that hadn’t stopped her last trick—the beefy white Texan in the El Dorado—from calling out, “Oh, my little China doll” over and over in a slobbered drawl as he grabbed her hair and pumped his spongy white cock into her mouth, taking forever to come. Jo-Jo felt like spitting up the memory, but swallowed instead, popped another piece of cinnamon gum into her mouth, fingered the cash she’d gotten for blowing the Texan, and walked into the room.
She wanted this over quick. Her feet were killing her; she hadn’t eaten or slept since the day before, and she was starting to jones real bad for a fix. She took off her clothes, tucked the money into the side lining of her bag, pulled out a rubber, and glared at the boy still standing stupid and fully dressed. Damn, I don’t have time for this shit, she thought, starting to sweat and shake. You fuckin’ bitch, I’ll kill you. The neighbors’ voices tore through the walls. Get out motherfucker before I call the cops. The Texan drawled in her brain, Oh, my little China doll, oh, my little China doll. Her head was exploding. Come on China boy, just fuck me so I can get out of here. She’d seen it before. Asian guys who couldn’t get it up except for white meat. Asian guys who couldn’t decide whether to beat or fuck the half white in or out of her. The room started to spin. The kid was muttering something about wanting his money back. He “doesn’t feel like it” anymore. Christ, give me a break. Oh, my little China doll…Come here, ya fuckin’ cunt…Can I have my money back…. My little China doll…Ya wanna fuck with me, bitch…China doll… China doll…
“Shut up, you stupid chink! Just shut up and fuck me so I can get out of here.” Jo-Jo reached for her clothes. The boy was still talking, louder and louder, whining like a Texan. He grabbed for her bag. “Cut the shit, motherfucker,” she warned. The fool thought this was about money. All she wanted was to get out of there, shoot up, and sleep. The gun. She needed somehow to get the gun out of her bag. Quick, she made her move. He slammed her back onto the bed, her fingernails tearing at his eyes. She went for the bag again. She saw him reach for the phone. “Who’s the fool think he’s gonna call?” she laughed. Then the receiver crashed against her skull. The white light exploding through her head was a relief, the pain clean and clear. Don’t ever mess with a john who can’t get it up, someone was saying, they can’t tell the difference between shame and rage. By the second blow, she had left her body, blinking i
nto the scene below. She watched the boy continue to flail in slow motion long after she was dead—plastic, batteries, blood, and sweat all raining to the floor.
Free from the brutality of a body, Jo-Jo watched in wonder as the boy began to pump away into the corpse. After he came, he held the empty body’s hand for a long time and she almost wept at the loneliness of the brutal child below. Curious, she watched as he set fire to the corpse, the flames moving softly across the room to engulf him as well. His eyes looked calm. For the first time Jo-Jo wondered where she was. Is this death? She thought of her little brother Peewee—fully Chinese, most perfect number one son. How would he touch a woman when he came of age? She thought of the nine hundred dollars burning in her bag and wondered how he and her mom would get by without the money she sent them every month. She thought of her father—the white ghost vet who raped her mother, thinking she was Vietnamese, planting his pale seed just before she brought the kitchen knife down into his back. She thought of her stepfather—the man who married her mother “anyway,” hating the soiled girl child. She thought of the calm-eyed boy burning below. Would she see them again in death? She thought of resting against her mother’s breast, lilac scented and damp. She thought of a god she long ago stopped believing in. She thought she heard someone say, I come back roun’ fo you, okay? And then she thought no more.
smoke
tender lungs, sweet pink branches laced with grief ’s sticky tar. sucking misery. backhand, secondhand smoke; death’s breath everywhere the young girl turns. surrounded by smoke. smoke in the womb. smoke in the ward. smoke in the crib. smoke in the everyday kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room battles. mom smoking pall mall unfiltered, mom’s boyfriend his benson & hedges. grandma loves her winstons. uncle won’t smoke anything but camels. mario wraps packs of marlboros up tight into the sleeve of his bright white t-shirt, tucked smooth into his fresh-pressed jeans like a james dean wannabe. the girls smoke, the pros smoke, the pimps smoke, the johns smoke, the pigs smoke, the factories smoke. everyone is smoking, lighting up sorrow. l.a. is burning and the trees, tender and valiant as children, trapped in concrete circles surrounded by a smog-filled sky, browner than the earth, the trees are growing tired.