Black Tickets

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  I stand at Daniel’s door. The fear is back; it has followed me upstairs from the dead dark bottom of the house. My hands are shaking. I’m whispering … Daniel, don’t leave me here.

  I go to my room to wait. I must wait all night, or something will come in my sleep. I feel its hands on me now, dragging, pulling. I watch the lit face of the clock: three, four, five. At seven I go to Daniel. He sleeps with his pillow in his arms. The high bed creaks as I get in. Please now, yes … he is hard. He always woke with erections … inside me he feels good, real, and I tell him no, stop, wait … I hold the rubber, stretch its rim away from skin so it smooths on without hurting and fills with him … now again, here, yes but quiet, be quiet … oh Daniel … the bed is making noise … yes, no, but be careful, she … We move and turn and I forget about the sounds. We push against each other hard, he is almost there and I am almost with him and just when it is over I think I hear my mother in the room directly under us—But I am half dreaming. I move to get out of bed and Daniel holds me. No, he says, stay.

  We sleep and wake to hear the front door slam.

  Daniel looks at me.

  There’s nothing to be done, I say. She’s gone to church.

  He looks at the clock. I’m going to miss that bus, he says. We put our clothes on fast and Daniel moves to dispose of the rubber—how? the toilet, no, the wastebasket—He drops it in, bends over, retrieves it. Finally he wraps it in a Kleenex and puts it in his pocket. Jesus, he swears. He looks at me and grins. When I start laughing, my eyes are wet.

  I take Daniel to the bus station and watch him out of sight. I come back and strip the bed, bundle the sheets in my arms. This pressure in my chest … I have to clutch the sheets tight, tighter—

  A door clicks shut. I go downstairs to my mother. She refuses to speak or let me near her. She stands by the sink and holds her small square purse with both hands. The fear comes. I hug myself, press my hands against my arms to stop shaking. My mother runs hot water, soap, takes dishes from the drainer. She immerses them, pushes them down, rubbing with a rag in a circular motion.

  Those dishes are clean, I tell her. I washed them last night.

  She keeps washing. Hot water clouds her glasses, the window in front of us, our faces. We all disappear in steam. I watch the dishes bob and sink. My mother begins to sob. I move close to her and hold her. She smells as she used to smell when I was a child and slept with her.

  I heard you, I heard it, she says. Here, in my own house. Please, how much can you expect me to take? I don’t know what to do about anything …

  She looks into the water, keeps looking. And we stand here just like this.

  Blind Girls

  SHE KNEW IT was only boys in the field, come to watch them drunk on first wine. A radio in the little shack poured out promises of black love and lips. Jesse watched Sally paint her hair with grenadine, dotting the sticky syrup on her arms. The party was in a shack down the hill from her house, beside a field of tall grass where black snakes lay like flat belts. The Ripple bottles were empty and Jesse told pornographic stories about various adults while everyone laughed; about Miss Hicks the home-ec teacher whose hands were dimpled and moist and always touching them. It got darker and the stories got scarier. Finally she told their favorite, the one about the girl and her boyfriend parked on a country road. On a night like this with the wind blowing and then rain, the whole sky sobbing potato juice. Please let’s leave, pleads girlie, It sounds like something scratching at the car. For God’s sake, grumbles boyfriend, and takes off squealing. At home they find the hook of a crazed amputee caught in the door. Jesse described his yellow face, putrid, and his blotchy stump. She described him panting in the grass, crying and looking for something. She could feel him smelling of raw vegetables, a rejected bleeding cowboy with wheat hair, and she was unfocused. Moaning in the dark and falsetto voices. Don’t don’t please don’t. Nervous laughter. Sally looked out the window of the shack. The grass is moving, she said, Something’s crawling in it. No, it’s nothing. Yes, there’s something coming, and her voice went up at the end. It’s just boys trying to scare us. But Sally whined and flailed her arms. On her knees she hugged Jesse’s legs and mumbled into her thighs. It’s all right, I’ll take you up to the house. Sally was stiff, her nails digging the skin. She wouldn’t move. Jesse tied a scarf around her eyes and led her like a horse through fire up the hill to the house, one poison light soft in a window. Boys ran out of the field squawling.

  Lechery

  THOUGH I HAVE no money I must give myself what I need. Yes I know which lovers to call when the police have caught me peddling pictures, the store detectives twisting my wrists pull stockings out of my sleeves. And the butchers pummel the small of my back to dislodge their wrapped hocks; white bone and marbled tendon exposed as the paper tears and they push me against the wall. They curse me, I call my lovers. I’m nearly fifteen, my lovers get older and older. I know which ones will look at me delightedly, pay my bail, take me home to warm whiskey and bed. I might stay with them all day; I might run as the doors of their big cars swing open. Even as I run I can hear them behind me, laughing.

  I go down by the schools with my pictures. The little boys smoke cigarettes, they’re girlish as faggots, they try to act tough. Their Camels are wrinkled from pockets, a little chewed. I imagine them wet and stained pinkish at the tips, pink from their pouty lips. The boys have tight little chests, I see hard nipples in their T-shirts. Lines of smooth stomach, little penis tucked into jockey briefs. Already they’re growing shaggy hair and quirky curves around their smiles. But no acne, I get them before they get pimples, I get them those first few times the eyes flutter and get strange. I show them what I do. Five or six surround me, jingling coins, tapping toes in tennis shoes. I know they’ve got some grade-school basketball coach, some ex-jock with a beer gut and a hard-on under his sweat pants in the locker room; that kills me. They come closer, I’m watching the ridged toes of their shoes. Now I do it with my eyes, I look up and pick the one I want. I tell him to collect the money and meet me at lunch in a park across the street, in a culvert, in a soft ditch, in a car parked under a bridge or somewhere shaded. Maybe I show them a few pills. One picture; blowsy redhead with a young blond girl, the girl a kneeling eunuch on white knees. The redhead has good legs, her muscles stand out tensed and she comes standing up. I tell them about it. Did you ever come standing up. I ask them, they shift their eyes at each other. I know they’ve been in blankets in dark bedrooms, see who can beat off first. Slapping sounds and a dry urge. But they don’t understand their soft little cocks all stiff when they wake up in daylight, how the bed can float around.

  So at noon I wait for them. I don’t smoke, it’s filthy. I suck a smooth pebble and wait. I’ve brushed my teeth in a gas station. I press my lips with my teeth and suck them, make them soft. Press dots of oil to my neck, my hands. Ambergris or musk between my breasts, down in the shadowed place where hair starts in a line at my groin. Maybe I brush my hair. I let them see me do it, open a compact and tongue my lips real slow. They only see the soft tip of my tongue, I pretend it’s not for them.

  Usually just one of them comes, the one I chose, with a friend waiting out of sight where he can see us. If they came alone I can tell by looking at them. Sometimes they are high on something, I don’t mind. Maybe I have them in an abandoned car down in a back lot, blankets on the seat or no back seat but an old mattress. Back windows covered up with paper sacks and speckled mud, sun through dirty windows or brown paper makes the light all patterns.

  He is nervous. Right away he holds out the money. Or he is a little mean, he punches at me with his childish fist. A fine blond boy with a sweet neck and thin collarbones arched out like wings, or someone freckled whose ashen hair falls loose. A dark boy, thick lashes and cropped wooled hair, rose lips full and swelling a little in the darkened car. I give him a little whiskey, I rifle through the pictures and pretend to arrange them. I take a drink too, joke with him. This is my favorite time; he le
ans back against the seat with something like sleep in his eyes. I stroke his hard thighs, his chest, I comfort him.

  I put the pictures beside us, some of them are smaller than postcards. We put our faces close to see them. A blond girl, a black girl, they like to see the girls. One bending back droops her white hair while the other arches over, holds her at the waist, puts her mouth to a breast so small only the nipple stands up. In the picture her mouth moves in and out, anyone can tell. A black hand nearly touching pale pubic hair, a forefinger almost tender curls just so, moves toward a slit barely visible just below the pelvic bone. I don’t like pictures of shaven girls, it scares them to see so much. It makes them disappear.

  I do things they’ve never seen, I could let them touch but no. I arrange their hands and feet, keep them here forever. Sometimes they tell me stories, they keep talking of baseball games and vicious battles with their friends. Lips pouty and soft, eyes a hard glass glitter. They lose the words and mumble like babies; I hold them just so, just tight, I sing the oldest songs. At times their smooth faces seem to grow smaller and smaller in my vision. I concentrate on their necks, their shoulders. Loosen their clothes and knead their scalps, pinching hard at the base of the head. Maybe that boy with dark hair and Spanish skin, his eyes flutter, I pull him across my legs and open his shirt. Push his pants down to just above his knees so his thin legs and smooth cock are exposed; our breathing is wavy and thick, we make a sound like music. He can’t move his legs but stiffens in my lap, palms of his hands turned up. In a moment he will roll his eyes and come, I’ll gently force my coated fingers into his mouth. I’ll take off my shirt and rub my slick palms around my breasts until the nipples stand up hard and frothy. I force his mouth to them. I move my hand to the tight secret place between his buttocks. Sometimes they get tears in their eyes.

  In the foster homes they used to give me dolls and I played the church game. At first I waited till everyone left the house. Then it didn’t matter who was around. I lined up all the dolls on the couch, I sat them one after the other. They were ugly, most of them had no clothes or backward arms. They were dolls from the trash, the Salvation Army at Christmas, junk-sale dolls. One of them was in a fire. The plastic hand was missing, melted into a bubbled fountain dribbling in nubs down the arm. We faced the front of the room. I made us sit for hours unmoving, listening to nothing at all and watching someone preach.

  Uncle Wumpy gave me a doll. They call him that. Like his pocked face had rabbit ears and soft gray flesh. His face is pitted with tiny scars, his skin is flushed. We won at the carnival: cowboy hats, a rubber six-gun, a stuffed leopard with green diamond eyes for Kitty. We were on our way out between booths and machines, sawdust sticky with old candy and beer, to pick Kitty up at work. We passed the duckshoot. Wumpy was so drunk I had to help him with the gun and we drowned them all. Little yellow ducks with flipped up tail feathers and no eyeballs; they glided by hooked to a string. We hit them, knocked them back with a snap like something breaking. We hit twelve; the whole group popped up, started gliding by again as eyeless as before. So we kept shooting and shooting … The barker came out from behind the counter with his fat long-ashed cigar. He held it pinched in two fingers like something dirty he respected. Then he sucked on it and took the gun away. The crowd behind us mumbled. He thrust the doll into my arms. She was nearly three feet tall, pearl earrings, patent leather heels. Long white dress and a veil fastened with a clear plastic bird. I took the bird, I lit it with Wumpy’s lighter. Its neck melted down to a curve that held its flat head molded to its wings. I liked to keep the bird where no one saw it. Finally I buried it in a hole, I took it to a place I knew I’d forget.

  How I found Wumpy. I was twelve, I lived with Minnie. She made me work in the luncheonette, swab Formica tables with a rag. Bend over to wipe the aluminum legs, clotted ketchup. By the grill her frozen french fries thawed out limp and fishy. She threw them in sooty fat; they fizzled and jumped and came out shining. Her old face squinched like a rat’s, she was forty. Wore thick glasses and a red handkerchief on her head, liked the gospel shows turned up loud. One hand was twisted. She had the arthritis, the rheumatism, the corns, the bunions on her knotted toes as she walked to the shower at home. Hunched in her long robe, she fixed her eyes on the bathroom door. Scuttled clinching herself at the waist and slammed the door.

  After school I walked to the restaurant and helped her clear tables till seven. She cursed the miners under her breath. Slapped my butt if I was slow, moved her hard hand, its big twisted knuckles. Grabbed the curve of my ass and squeezed.

  Wumpy came in every night for coffee. He cut brush for the State Road Commission. Watched Minnie and me. Kitty started coming in with him. Cellophane Baggie full of white crosses, cheap speed. She’d order a Pepsi, take a few pills, grind a few more to powder on the tabletop. She winked, gave me hair ribbons, said she’d like to take me to the movies. Wumpy told Minnie I needed some clothes, he and Kitty would take me to Pittsburgh to buy me some dresses. They gave her thirty dollars.

  In the motel I stood in the bathroom and vomited. Sopors floated in the bowl, clumps of white undissolved powder in a clear mucus. I puked so easy, again and again, I almost laughed. Then they came in naked and took off my clothes. I couldn’t stand up, they carried me to the bed. Wumpy got behind her and fucked her, she kept saying words but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. She pulled me down. She said Honey Honey. In the bottom of something dark I rocked and rocked. His big arms put me there until he lifted me Lifted me held my hips in the air and I felt her mouth on my legs, I felt bigger and bigger. The ceiling spun around like the lights at Children’s Center spun in the dark halls when I woke up at night. Then a tight muscular flash, I curled up and hugged myself.

  I stood by the window and fingered the flimsy curtains. I watched them sleeping, I didn’t leave. I watched Wumpy’s broad back rising and falling.

  Wumpy would never do it to me, he gave me pictures to sell. I wanted to give him the money, he laughed at me. He had little stars in the flesh of his hands. He took me to bars. We took a man to some motel, Wumpy said he always had to watch … stood by the bed while I choked and gagged a little, salt exploding in my throat—

  The dream is here again and again, the dream is still here. Natalie made the dream. I slept with her when I was eight, six months we slept together. She whimpered at night, she wet the bed. Both of us wards of the state, they got money for us. Cold in the bedroom, she wrapping her skinny arms around my chest. Asking can she look at me. But I fall asleep, I won’t take off my clothes in bed with her. I fall asleep and the same dream comes.

  Natalie is standing in the sand. Behind her the ocean spills over, the waves have thick black edges. Natalie in her shredded slip, knobby knees, her pale blue eyes all watery. Natalie standing still as a dead thing spreads her legs and holds herself with her hand. Her fingers groping, her white face. She squeezes and pulls so hard she bleeds She calls for help She wants me. Faces all around us, big faces just teeth and lips to hold me down for Natalie. Natalie on top of me Natalie pressing down. Her watery eyes say nothing. She sighs with pleasure and her hot urine boils all around us.

  I remember like this: Natalie watches me all the time. They’re gone all day, we stay alone with the silent baby. Once there’s no food but a box of salt. Bright blue box, the silver spout pops out. The girl with the umbrella dimples and swings her ponytails, flashes her white skin. I can eat it Natalie. I can eat it all. She looks out the window at the snow. I know she’s scared. I sit down on the floor at her feet. The box is round like a tom-tom, I tip it up. Salt comes in my mouth so fast, fills me up but I can’t quit pouring it … I start to strangle but Natalie won’t look, she screams and screams. She kicks at me with her bare blue feet, the box flies across the room throwing fans of salt. When it gets dark, salt gleams on the floor with a strange cool light. Natalie stays in her chair without moving and I get to sleep alone.

  I got lavish cards at Children’s Center, I think a jokester sent them.
To Daughter From Mother At Christmas, scrolls of stand-up gold and velvet poinsettias. I used to think about the janitors, those high school boys with smirky eyes and beer breath, licking the envelopes … somehow mailing them from Wichita or Tucson. The agency moved me from home to home. Holidays I stayed at the center, they did paperwork to place me again. Every time there was a different pasty-faced boy with ragged nails, dragging a dun-colored mop. The cards came, they were never quite right. When I was ten, For Baby’s First Christmas—a fold-out hobbyhorse, a mommy with blond hair and popped eyes. I was seven, the card said Debutante in raised silver script, showed a girl in mink and heels. After I started getting arrested the psychiatrist told them to hold my mail. They said I might go to an asylum.

  Baby Girl Approximately 14 Months Abandoned December 1960, Diagnosed As Mute. But when I was three I made sounds like trucks and wasps, I screamed and sang. They think I’m crazy, this is what happens—

  I like to lock the bathroom door late at night. Stand in front of the mirrors, hold a candle under my chin. Stare at my shadowed face and see the white shape of a skull. I lay down on the cold tile floor and do it to myself by the stalls. I do it, I lay on my stomach. Hold my breath, riding on the heels of my hands I’m blind; I feel the hush hush of water pipes through the floor. Ride up over a hump into the heat the jangling it holds me. When I open my eyes and roll over, the ceiling is very high it is the color of bone, lamplight through the barred windows. I make myself good I do it. Lay on the cold floor, its tiny geometric blocks. My skin goes white as porcelain, I’m big as the old sinks and toilets, the empty white tubs. White glass, marble, rock, old pipes bubbling air. When those white streaks flash in my vision I run here. I watch her. I know she is me. She runs from stall to stall flushing toilets, she does it again and again. Slushing water louder and louder, then high-pitched wail of the tanks filling. Crash and wail. I crouch on the floor and listen. I don’t let anyone in.