by Debra Busman
Once she gets home, of course, the girl lives in terror of what her mother might do, for she is what they call a mean drunk. Still, each night, the girl carefully and intently brings her mother safely home. One night the girl falls asleep before the time when her mother usually leaves the bar and her grandma wakes her in the early morning to take her to a neighbor’s house, telling her that her mother has been in a car crash and is in the hospital. The mother lives—a few cracked ribs, some ugly bruises. The girl never falls asleep again without first bringing her mother home.
The girl gives up her body to keep her mother alive. Yields, as children have done for centuries, to the inexorable parental pull which feeds on a child’s spirit, body, emotional being. The child’s desire to please. The child’s desire to serve. No membranes to protect these desires from the parent’s hunger. Nights when the mother is calm, drunk but not fighting mad, she lies on top of the daughter, mumbling the name of a man the daughter does not know. Following nature’s law, the girl submits, as always, to the weight of the mother, lies still, catches breath when she can, leaves her body when she cannot. Silent, she endures the musky woman scent sometimes mixed with the vomit-stenched strands of hair crossing her face. The mother moans. The girl suckles. There is no milk. Everything female is hungry and there is no sustenance to be found.
Some winters when times are tough and there is too much anger and not enough food, the girl is sent to live with her aunt and uncle across the valley. Nights, the aunt tucks the girl child into bed, gently covering her with a soft worn quilt of muted colors and familiar patterns. Nights, the uncle removes the quilt and, as always, the girl child submits to the larger force, the pull of a desire she cannot understand but can only serve, as centuries of girls have done before her. She makes her mouth into the big O shape her uncle requests, hides her teeth beneath her lips as he has taught her, and takes his thick snake swollen into her throat. Sometimes the corners of her mouth tear. She fights to not throw up whatever food is in her belly. Sometimes she has to breathe through her spine for her mouth can find no air. Sometimes he makes her swallow his milky cum, saying yes, lap it up like a good girl, lap it all up now. It is the daughter’s job to feed the uncle. Again, the girl goes to bed hungry.
When the girl begins to bleed, she leaves her mother and uncle’s homes and goes to live on the streets of the city. She joins packs of other wild girls, fighting to the death, eating from the dumpsters, charging for the sex that is being taken from them anyway. Sometimes they keep the money. Always they share with the younger girls. Sometimes the older boys steal it from them. Sometimes the boys with guns try to capture the wild girls and pimp them out for all the money. Sometimes the police trap them and then all business has to stop while the girls service the police, one by one by one by one, in exchange for protection.
The girl ranges from pack to pack, hungry, refusing to be owned, refusing to die. It is the daughter’s job to keep herself alive. She learns how to use a knife. She learns to steal and cut without a backward glance. She learns all the things a white man wants from a girl. For all her customers are white men from the owning class. Her uncle has taught her well. So the girl ranges hungry, selling the tricks of her body but refusing to be owned.
And one night she curls on the floorboard of a 1969 Cadillac Seville, servicing the beefy Texan, thinking of the food she will buy with the fifty dollars she’s earned for blowing him without a rubber, great breasts of fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, lemon meringue or chocolate cream pie. And then the man makes a mistake and speaks. Grabbing the girl’s head, he says, “Oh god girl, yes, suck me hard, suck me like my little baby girl sucks me.” And the girl’s head pulls back as she spits out his cock. And she bares her teeth and snarls. And she feels her right hand reach down into her right black boot, pulling out the thin silver blade. Pressing it hard against the Texan’s gut, the girl is hungry for the kill. She wants to cut this white hairball belly so bad she can almost taste it. But who really wants to taste such flesh?
Ultimately, the girl does not kill because she refuses to be owned, even by death. Hunger is the only master she allows and even he will not have her tonight. She draws a thin red line through the belly hairs just above the spongy, flaccid cock. A little blood runs onto the slick leather seats. The girl forces the Texan out of the car, taking his wallet, keeping his keys. She keeps his shoes, his pants and his sports jacket, leaves him standing barefoot and bleeding on the corner of La Cienega Blvd. She starts the car and slowly pulls out into the street. She drives up the freeway onramp, staying between the lines, changing lanes safely, with her turn signal on so the police won’t stop her. She knows she will have to sell the credit cards soon while they are still fresh, before they spoil. She calculates the time, wondering if the street jackals will find the Texan before he finds a telephone that works. She knows that soon she will have to dump the car, sell it cheap or send it over the cliffs of Malibu into the silver sea. She knows that soon she will be back on the streets. But for now, she drives. It is the daughter’s job to keep herself alive.
Pigs and donuts
“Hey, baby, bring us some more coffee, will ya?”
I spit in their coffee. And carry it to their table, talking to my body like it was somebody else: “Now, don’t you mess me up here, we can’t show no fear, okay. We just go in and out real smooth, no shaking, no tripping, no spilling. We just gonna set this shit down on the table real calm and professional like we’re some college girl and then we gonna get back behind the counter.” When I get my feet all talked into not stumbling and my hands convinced they gonna set the coffee down on the table and not in the faces or crotches of these motherfucking pigs I got to wait on, then I move. But it’s all gotta happen real fast, these jokers don’t like to wait. I tried for a while to talk my mouth into smiling like a straight girl but it wasn’t gonna happen so I let it slide. It wasn’t ever my mouth they looked at anyway.
So, here I am working graveyard shift at Winchell’s Donut House on Ventura Boulevard. Keeps me warm and dry at night, lets me hustle up easy daytime money. I didn’t last too long on the night streets after Jackson left. It was okay; I mean, the money was easy and it felt good to be setting the price and terms for something that was gonna get taken from me anyway. And me and the other girls, we was tight. Got us formed all together like a pack of wild dogs (they called ’em “worker collectives” in the books I read, but I knew what they meant), and for a while nobody messed with us. Some john dick or harry try and pull something too kinky or not pay you or some shit and the other girls would be on his ass like white on rice. For some of ’em that was their favorite part of the trade. Yeah, we had some good times. Those girls never did stop trying to get me into a dress, but, like my smile at the donut store, it just wasn’t gonna happen. And they still called me Mahatma and made fun of my books and I still called them queens and told ’em they’d never look as pretty as the boys round the corner in West Hollywood. We was tight. But it all got fucked up. For one thing, everywhere I looked I saw Jackson, leaning up against the side ally, looking all fly, pointing down with a grin at the boot where she kept her damn knife, breaking my heart into ten thousand pieces each and every fuckin’ time.
For another, the shiny boys who dealt and carried wanted a piece of the action. They didn’t think no females should be making that kind of money without givin’ it to Poppa, so we had some problems. Also, we couldn’t do nothing about the police. Seemed like no matter how many we sucked and fucked, they just kept coming back ’round. They fucking multiplied like bunnies. They must have had the whole damn police force working vice and narcotics so they could get laid and stoned and then make some money from the payoffs and the stash they stole on busts.
But, hey, check it out. Here I am again surrounded by the motherfuckers. Come to find out my boss has a deal with the police that if they come around his store a lot for “protection,” he (which means I) will give them free coffee and donuts. The truth is I would much rat
her be robbed than protected, in fact I was working the last two times this store went down and it was cool. These brothers came in with weapons and all and I didn’t even have to tell my body nothin’. My feet stayed calm, my hands were steady, and damn if my mouth wasn’t grinning wide and pretty as I asked them if they’d like some jelly donuts to go with the cash drawer I was emptying for them.
But that was just twice. The rest of the time, night after night I have to serve these pigs coffee and listen to them go off braggin’ about the niggers beaners spics and faggots whose heads they’ve cracked and the hippies whores and dykes they’ve raped and messed up good. Like now they’re talkin’ right in front of me like I don’t even exist except to bring them more donuts, which I guess is good since I belong to a few of the categories they like to fuck with and my friends belong to the rest. But it freaks me out to be so invisible, even though it saves my ass. It’s like I’m in some sort of Nazi spy movie and it’s only the whiteness of my skin and this thin white polyester donut uniform that keeps them from recognizing me as the enemy and killing me, too.
And I can’t help but wonder if they’re the same ones that took Jimmy away. The same motherfuckin’ ones that shot J. Edgar. I keep thinking I ought to be doing something more than spitting in their coffee. My hands say, just give us a gun and we promise you we will not shake or tremble, and in my mind I see their bodies sprawled out all over the floors I have to scrub each night. But the truth is I just stay invisible and try and keep from showing my fear. It’s all I can do to not throw up or piss on myself and I cannot stop the sweat from running down my back and sides as I sweep the floors, wipe the counters, load the glazes, and lay out the chocolate sprinkles in seven crooked rows.
Train ride
“Okay, girl. You gotta get to runnin’. Now! We’ll take care of the bulls; you just make sure you get a good grip on that number three piggyback coming up here. Then you fly on up top of that thing and lie flat till you’re out of town. And don’t you go swinging your legs around either or you’ll wind up like Eddie here, boppin’ around on two stumps.”
The first thing you need to know about riding a freight train is to listen to the old guys out in the yard. You may think you’re pretty fly and that you have hopped plenty of trains before, but when the bums take you in and teach you how to properly ride a freight train you will realize you don’t know shit.
Sitting in the dusty railroad yard camp, drinking Red Mountain and listening to these guys, you will feel happy. You figure since you’re working such a shitty job at Winchell’s Donut House, you should get some real vacations like other folks that work straight jobs. Your boss won’t like it but nobody else wants to work that damn night shift and besides he knows you know he knows you ain’t no twenty-one years old like you’re supposed to be to work graveyard and he don’t want no bait trouble coming down. So here you are with your favorite vacation package plan.
Which goes like this: Hitchhike up to Santa Barbara and if something better doesn’t happen on the ride, then get off at the Highway One stoplights and walk down to the railroad yards, stopping off for a bottle or two of their best rotgut wine. There you meet up with your friends at the yard for an evening of entertainment, and the next morning hop the grey ghost going north, dropping acid when you first get on so that by the time you’re peaking the train will be heading over the gorge bridge and you’re lying on the flat piggyback car with no load on it ’cept you and no side rails just a full-on drop off both sides down two hundred feet into the Pacific Ocean. Oh yeah, and the sun is pounding down and there is only the sound of the tracks and everything sparkles. Sometimes you won’t even take acid and then you’ll have five full hours of peace and quiet where you can just read and there ain’t nobody messing with you. Then you get off the train when it slows down outside Pajaro because the bulls are fierce and besides you really don’t want to wind up in San Jose. Then you hitchhike toward the coast. If your ride goes north when you hit the ocean, you party in Santa Cruz and maybe shake down the rich hippy kids at the university. If it heads south, then it’s Big Sur and back down Highway One and home again.
The hobos will all take real good care of you, treat you like a queen or movie star or something. You’ll drink wine with them and they will tell stories by the fire and if somebody’s language gets a little rough (like yours isn’t, right?), someone will hit him and holler out, “Hey, watch your fucking language, asshole, we got a lady present.” They’ll make sure you always get the best place to sleep, like if they can unlock a station wagon at the used car lot. Your favorite place will be the empty boxes behind Montgomery Wards. The hobos all like the mattress boxes because they can stretch out, but you’ll go for the refrigerator boxes ’cause you can crawl in when it’s on its side and then have your friends tilt it upright so you’re all curled up inside with four walls covering your back and can’t nobody try and get in without you knowing about it first.
This will be your favorite vacation. You may have others, but this one’s the best.
Lassie
The first time Taylor’s grandma almost came out to California was when she was eight years old and a rich couple rode through town in a fancy carriage and heard her singing in the church choir. They took her daddy aside and told him she was real pretty and mighty talented, and if he’d like they’d take her off his hands and give her a good life. It would have been a good deal for her daddy, since they were dirt-poor Kansas farmers and she provided the least help of all the nine kids, ever since she’d gotten bit by a rattler and almost died. But she was the baby and her daddy was partial to her, snake bit and all, so he told the couple that he was much obliged but where he came from folks took care of their own.
When Taylor was younger and heard the story of her grandma, she used to think that if a rich couple ever drove down her street looking for a kid she’d definitely figure out a way to go with them. She couldn’t sing worth shit but she could steal stuff for them and tell stories and take care of their horses. She knew her dad wouldn’t mind so long as he made a profit on the deal. He was always hustling something up, like when he talked the doctor into taking her out of her mom a few weeks early on December 30 because he heard he could get an income tax write-off if his kid was born before year end. Then he made side bets with the other expectant dads in the waiting area about which kid was going to get born first, but of course he didn’t tell them Taylor was going to be cesarean and he’d seen the doctors’ operating schedule. The other dads were pissed, but what could they do? He got their money and the write-off, too.
The next time Taylor’s grandma almost came out to California was in the ’20s. She’d married a traveling salesman/auctioneer who told her he was on to something big and as soon as he made it out west he’d send for her. But he never did and she just kept on scrubbing toilets and taking in laundry and sewing while her boy worked his ass off all day and studied theater at night. He was going to be a famous actor and then he was going to beat up his daddy for leaving them all the time and making his mama work till her hands bled.
The third time, Taylor’s grandma actually got to go to California—her boy won the “Gateway to Hollywood” contest, packed up his mama and little baby sister, and took them all out west. He never did get to be the serious actor he dreamed about, and she scrubbed California toilets and laundry for the next fifteen years. But by the time Taylor was born her uncle had married a Hollywood actress who paid his way until he got to be the super famous star of the Father of the Year TV series, and then things were going pretty good for him.
A few times Taylor got to go down to the Universal Studios back lot to watch them film the show. It was always really funny because her uncle hated the kids who played his son and daughter—called the boy a bucktooth little snot and the girl a spoiled princess bitch— and when the cameras weren’t on he’d yell at the kids just like he was a real dad. Then they’d start shooting and he’d turn into this stern but loving father that people still talked about.
/> One time Taylor’s mom got her all dressed up, tight shoes and all, to go to an awards ceremony for her eleven-year-old cousin Kevin, who had won this big citywide contest for an essay he wrote on “Why My Dad Should Be Father of the Year.” It was in the news and everything and Taylor’s uncle proudly showed the paper to all his friends. Taylor and her mom got seated right up front with her uncle’s family, and when the lights went off and her cousin started reading his essay, she almost died because Kevin was telling stories about the television character instead of his own dad and some of the stories were right out of the episodes. Taylor snuck a look at her other cousins, but they looked scared and she couldn’t laugh or anything because she could tell her uncle noticed too and he was definitely not amused. His jaw was clenched and the veins were pumping on the side of his forehead, and she knew Kevin was going to see the wrong end of the belt that night.
Taylor thought it was a pretty good joke and possibly worth a licking, but later she found out Kevin wasn’t even trying to be funny. She understood it all better when she went to live with her cousins for a while and saw how when her uncle got drunk he didn’t get all mean and violent like her mom but instead got real serious and tried to have these heavy talks with the kids, but his words always came out as lines he’d said on the TV show. It made Taylor feel creepy as hell, but apparently it was really comforting for Kevin and he loved it when his daddy talked to him that way. So he meant his essay to be sweet but he got a whupping anyway.
Taylor’s grandma was always telling stories about how great her husband was (and never about how he walked out on them all), but she couldn’t ever tell them in front of Taylor’s uncle because he was still pissed about having to be husband, father, and son before he was eighteen. One time he got a big check for doing a fancy detective movie, and it must have given him ideas because he hired a private detective to track down his daddy. After a while the detective gave him an address in Memphis. When her uncle got there he discovered his daddy living with a woman who claimed him as her husband. Taylor’s uncle was going kill him, but his wife called to say his agent had gotten him a good part on The Lassie Show and so he came home instead.