by Lisa Teasley
Magda puts some cold eggs in her mouth, then spits them out. Tony has finished his rice.
“Get the check, already,” Magda says to Tony. Tony whistles and the waitress comes out glaring at him harder than Magda does. She puts the check down so it whips the table.
“What-Ev,” Tony says to the waitress’s back, rolling his top lip up so the gums show. “No one else has been this fuckin’ rude. She isn’t gettin’ shit for a tip.”
“I’ll decide what she gets of my fuckin’ money, Tone,” Magda says. Decker gets up and stretches, then Tony does too. Magda digs in her breast pocket for the cash, sucks her teeth, and pulls out a ten dollar bill.
“That oughta be enough,” Magda says, putting the money down, then holding out an open hand to Decker. Decker slaps the keys in it.
“Let’s go,” she says. Magda gets up, smoothes her skirt over her ass, walks in the wrong direction until Decker pulls her arm and turns her toward the right one.
“Got anymore blow?” Decker whispers in her ear, and she cringes her shoulders. “Woman are you on the rag, or what?”
“I wish I was on the rag,” Magda hisses, then glares at him. Decker turns from her.
“Dude, you got the toot?” Decker asks.
“Nah, man. Magda dusted the shit this morning. I tell you dude, you better watch your chick, man. She’s fucked up,” Tony says. He spits on the sidewalk, and an old lady tourist sneers at him.
“Up yours, you old reppy,” Tony says. The lady doesn’t turn around. “So what’s with all the reptiles in Rosarito this week, dude?” Tony asks.
“Who knows, man. This reppy slams on the brakes this morning, for no fuckin’ reason other than he can’t see shit. I had to swerve into the sidewalk, almost wasted a couple Mexican kids, man.”
Magda opens up the truck door and gets in the driver’s seat. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and sniffles when she turns on the ignition.
“So yall wanna pull outta here now?” Decker asks.
“Yeah. If we make it before noon, check out time, we don’t have to pay for tonight either,” Tony says.
“No fuckin’ shit, Tony, you dumbass. You aren’t payin’ for shit anyway,” Magda says, backing up like a farmer in a tractor.
“Hey, watch the boards, Mag,” Decker says with alarm. He starts playing with her hair then stops because he is too squished between her and Tony to maintain the awkward position. Tony reaches across Decker and honks the horn.
“Will you mellow out, Tone! Like, who is the fucked up, uptight thing around here?” Magda says going the road, looking at both sides of the street at the baskets, ponchos, stone figures.
“You sound like such a fuckin’ Val,” Tony says, lighting up a cigarette he had rolled over his muscle in his T-shirt sleeve. Magda slams on the brakes and then pulls into the side on the dirt. She reaches across their laps and opens the door on Tony’s side. He laughs, blows smoke, but then she looks straight at him.
“What the fuck are you doing, Mag?” Tony asks.
Magda pushes him hard with both hands, so that the cigarette flies out of his mouth as he lands on the ground.
“Close the door, Deck,” she snaps. Decker does it. Then she pulls off. Tony gets up and dusts his ass, starts running after the truck but Magda floors it. The dust rises and covers all trace of Tony behind them.
“Fuck, Magda. All he did was call you a fuckin’ Val, for Chrissakes. I mean, you are a fuckin’ Val. What’s the big fuckin’ deal?”
“Just shut up,” she says. Magda keeps driving, doing eighty. “You closed the door when I told you, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but …”
“Then shut up!”
Magda is doing ninety, and Decker puts both hands on the seat, gripping hard.
“MAGDA, slow up, will ya? You don’t speed with a brother in your car, especially when it comes to the Mexican police. They could throw us in jail for the least fuckin’ thing!”
Magda keeps jamming up the road, almost taking the wrong turnaround to Ensenada, but remembers the motel is just past what seemed to her to be the last of civilization.
“So, where’d you go, Deck?” Magda asks, grinding her teeth. Decker, intimidated by the look on her face, takes his time.
“Told you. Went down to watch those dudes from San Mo.”
“At four in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Expect me to believe that?”
“Yeah.”
“What about all the ‘babes’ that were hanging with them, camping out in the grass near the motel?”
“What about them?”
“I didn’t hear them get to sleep all night.”
“Just as you mustn’t have ever got to sleep all night.”
“Look Deck, you had me up ‘til four, or don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, but who had you up past that?”
Magda pulls into the driveway of the motel with a wild swerve, swinging the truck so the boards crash in back.
“Fuck, Mag, the boards!”
“Tony did,” Magda says, glaring at him as she pulls into a spot.
“Tony did what?”
She puts the emergency brake on, and turns off the ignition. Magda turns her face slowly to his.
“Tony had me ‘up past that,’” she mocks with Decker’s voice. “He found me in the bathroom pukin’ and he helped me back to bed. Then he fucked me.”
Magda gets out of the truck. Decker’s mouth is wide open, his lip just hanging there, as he sits in the truck. Magda walks on, her ass moving from side to side.
Decker finds her in the room, throwing the few clothes she has into the yellow duffel bag. Decker grabs her by the arm and squeezes, yanking her from her bent position.
“You’re lyin’,” Decker says, his teeth grit, his eyes red.
“No, I’m not.”
Decker slaps her hard enough for her to land on the bed. Then he takes the keys from the broken dresser, and is out of the door. Magda rolls over on the bed, and takes a piece of lint from her tongue. Then she spits on the bed. She sits up, and looks around. From where she sits, she can see the cold, ice grey ocean out of the window. She closes her eyes, and rocks a little, but it seems like hours to her.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing back there?” Tony asks, standing in the doorway.
“Didn’t Decker catch you on the way in here? How’d you get by him?” Magda asks, opening her eyes, no surprise nor malice in her voice.
Tony enters the room and stands in front of her, his white T-shirt with the “Rip and Tear” on the corner of his chest, a little dirty from his fall. He’s red in the face, his narrow eyes piercing.
Magda starts laughing, cackling, then clapping her hands.
“What is so fuckin’ funny?”
“You,” she says in between breaths. “How’d you get here so fast?”
“I hitched.”
“You must have just been dropped off the minute Deck was out of the driveway.” Magda wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
“I don’t think your shit is funny.”
“Oh. He doesn’t think my shit is funny,” she taunts. She laughs again, her clear grey eyes half open in a witchy squint, as she rocks. One of her buttons loosens with her laughter, her pink nipple bouncing out every time she comes up.
“I told Deck you fucked me.”
“You what?”
“I told him you fucked me this morning after he left.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. You’re supposed to be my friend, Tone. But you’re fucked.” Magda gets up and walks over to her small, olive green backpack. She unzips it, then clutches it in front of her crotch.
“Magda, you’re fuckin’ crazy. Deck is going to …”
“Kill you.”
“You mean come back and kill you. He doesn’t give a shit about your ass, anyway. Not a shit. I was your friend long before you met him.”
“My friend,” she mock
s. “My friend? You mean you’ve been my friend ever since you found out who my father was. You don’t give a shit, Tone, about me. You’re just star-fuckin’.” Magda digs into the smaller pocket of the backpack, grabs the small, thin black case, keeps it tight in her hand.
“What makes you think Deck isn’t just star-fuckin’?”
“Because Deck is a star.”
“In your dreams, Mag. Decker’s no star anymore. You’re sick. You’re fucked up. With your old black, has-been surf punk, you think you have your shit together. And I’ve been your friend all this fuckin’ time.”
Magda jacks the knife out of the case and gets up to hold it to Tony’s throat.
“Open your mouth, Tony,” she says, digging in her breast pocket for change with the free hand. “Open your mouth, goddamn it, or I swear, I’ll ram this in your neck.”
Tony’s brown eyes are bugging out at her, his skin a hot pink, his hands clammy as he opens and closes his fists.
“Magda, what the fuck?!”
“Do it, Tony. Do it! Open your mouth!”
Tony opens his mouth and Magda shoves the coins down his throat.
“Eat it, Tony! It’s what you want, you fuck!”
Tony is choking, bent over, coughing the coins out, his eyes stinging from the metal and filth, his mouth running saliva all out on the floor. Magda takes the knife and slices into the back of his neck, as he’s bent over, the blood spurts and runs.
He screams and grabs her legs. Magda kicks, knocks his head with her free fist, not letting go of the knife. Tony tries to grab her neck but she slices his hand, and she flees.
Magda runs out of the door, past the courtyard facing the ocean, past the bar, and finally the motel, until she’s running on the dirt road, her thin, blue Indian skirt flying, whipping in the wind as she goes. Halfway down the road the spit works up her throat in that nasty way and she knows she has to throw up. She bends over, gets rid of the little nothing she has in her, the taste of stale beer nearly knocking her out.
She gets up again, runs. There aren’t many cars that pass her since the motel is so far from town. Once she gets to the first stand, a little bakery, she stops and sits on the road, sees Decker hauling in the truck to get her. She lets herself be pulled in. By this time she’s not sure what Decker’s saying.
“I’m not even going to stop for your fuckin’ things. We’re getting the fuck out of here. Leave Tony out on his ass.”
In spite of his fury, Decker drives carefully. Magda is slumped down in her seat, her butt almost off the edge.
“You okay, Babe?” Decker asks, softening, turning back and forth from her to the road. Magda barely flips her hand, tries to work the spit for her tongue, but she’s too dry.
“I couldn’t find Tony. The fuckin’ dick disappeared … Hey,” Decker takes his eye off the road completely. “Magda-Babe,” he says pulling over. “Magda?” he says turning her face in his hand. White goop in her eyes. “MAGDA!” he yells, shaking her. When she still doesn’t stir, he stops, not knowing what to do next.
Los Angeles
What the Fertility Goddess Brought
Zen and Lourdes said there was always a sign on the trunk of the tree that said “NEW ORLEANS,” “MONTEREY,” or “2 5,000 PESOS TO THE BORDER.” They never asked the old man if he was the one that put them there, but they knew he was. They’d pass him on the way back from the store; he sat on the front steps of the building on Gramercy Place, and Lourdes would say hello. He’d stare at her, his eyes looking wet with the black of his skin, the wrinkles in his face, the white beard and moustache growing into his mouth, like an Indian Raja. He would respond to Lourdes in Spanish, and she would laugh, grab onto the bag of groceries a little tighter, flip her hand dismissively when Zen asked what it was that he said.
Sometimes Raja would be outside with the baby, but most of the time not. When Zen said a child should never be left alone, the old man said the best way to screw up a child is to stick under its ass. He said his wife had done that to his son, and that’s why he was dead now. He said the good-for-nothing mother of the baby was like spoiled, bleached Wonder Bread, and that’s why she flew off to Berlin, or wherever the hell she went, and left the baby with his son. And that’s why his son was dead. They said this all made perfect sense to him.
Zen and Lourdes had their hands full by the time they moved to Gramercy Place. It wasn’t much better being just north of Hollywood Blvd., but Zen had finally gotten somewhere with the food technology degree and Lourdes had given in to her father, and so began managing the flower shop. There were no more of the all day lunches at Griffith Park, lying out under the sun and the trees, and wondering whether they’d get it together. But even with work, Zen offered to keep the baby every once in a while. Lourdes did not understand it, but she let him do it and she stayed out of the way. She worked later at the shop, and sometimes she’d go to her folks’ place on Wilton, a loud lime-green house with tropical flowers growing as high as the roof. Then her father would ask her when she was going to give up the nigger and marry someone fit for her Mayan blood. And before Lourdes would leave, swearing she was never coming back, she would tell him where and how far he could shove it.
Vacation time came, and Lourdes was sick of Zen keeping the baby, complaining about IHOP and putting off a trip. She bought the tickets for the flight to Cancun so he could see her family’s roots in the Yucatan peninsula. She said that Raja could watch their place and keep the plants alive. Zen agreed and said the baby liked their space and would enjoy staying there. He seemed to want to go for that reason.
Zen was useless by the time they’d taken the ferry to Isla Mujeres. Said he didn’t like to lie on the beach, nor the way people stared at him. Zen and Lourdes would hang out eating shrimp, her eyes on the boats and his on the people, with his lip curled, his brows meeting off center. Lourdes said it was fine with her if they left, since he would probably like the ruins in Chichen Itza better. They took a second class bus full of Mexicans, and Zen complained that he couldn’t stretch his legs, the children were staring, and the men were hostile. Lourdes cursed to herself in Spanish, and she let him fall asleep on her shoulder, as her neck cramped. He woke, startled by fires blazing in the jungle just off the road every few miles, then he’d hum himself back to sleep. She was sweaty and her hair was matting together, feeling stiff, dry, and thirsty; she hated Zen, and her father even more. The ashes came in through the window, and she thought about Raja and the plants.
Zen climbed the stone steps of the pyramid like an athlete in his prime, stopping only to look back at her as she pretended she wasn’t scared. Birds flew out of the dark entrance like bats from a cave and when Lourdes screamed, Zen kissed her like the first time they’d met. When they got to the small cafe in the middle of the jungle, they bought Squirts to drink, and a fertility goddess for Raja. Zen packed and unpacked it, wrapping it four times over to make sure it was okay through the traveling. By the time they got to Merida, where Lourdes thought Zen would feel good in the city, they were both ready to go home. There were soldiers on every corner, even more by the cathedral near the Palacio Gobierno, and Lourdes tried to explain. But Zen wouldn’t listen, said he missed the baby.
When they got home they found a bleached-haired, white girl lying unconscious on their living room floor. Lourdes screamed, said fast prayers in Spanish to herself, the tears and sweat breaking at once. Zen was quick on the phone, his lips in a straight line, his voice in control, with a strong hand on Lourdes’ arms. She was crying when the ambulance came, and later when the police arrived. Zen went over the story again and again, how they did not know who she was, how they found her, nothing was broken in the place, they hadn’t even unpacked, just back from the airport. He never mentioned Raja’s having the key. Lourdes was staring at Zen’s yellow pants, and she couldn’t look at his face. The police left and Lourdes kept crying, staring at the carpet where the girl had been lying. Zen said nothing and slowly started to unpack. When he got to the fertility g
oddess, he said he’d better take it on over to Raja, and that it would make them both feel better if they saw the baby. Lourdes repeated she didn’t want to go as they were walking out of the door and up the steps to Raja’s place. Zen held her hand, smiled at her with his one dimple, and suddenly she remembered him the way he was four years before. When Raja opened the door, looking older than before they left, she felt everything tighten up. Then the baby started crying as they gave Raja the fertility goddess.
He didn’t even say thank you. The first thing out of his mouth was, Is that white bitch in your apartment dead yet?
White Picket Fence
They are married lovers, still. Every afternoon Frank and Ellen take a long walk down Crescent Heights to Melrose Avenue, then up Fairfax and back to their duplex in an old Jewish neighborhood, LA. Frank holds Ellen by her small, blue-veined hand, leading her as she jaws to herself; she tugging the tip of her blue baseball cap, down to the few hard strands of brassy white on her wrinkled, freckled forehead. Ellen is thin and walks with her head down, making sure her legs are keeping her up. Frank is tall, with an Adam’s apple at the back of his neck. He wears grey slacks and Nikes; he has all of his thick, light blue hair.
Frank likes pot roast and macaroni so he makes it three times a week, eating the macaroni with a spoon from the pot because it’s always ready first. There at the table Ellen sits, chewing on her tongue and the last of her jaw teeth, sometimes spitting out the food when he puts it in her mouth. Frank kisses her tenderly on the forehead when he takes the cap off her and she closes her eyes with a shiver, then a shudder. She puts a shaky hand on his shoulder and makes a gentle sucking sound with her tongue and the roof of her mouth.
When Frank has to go somewhere alone, carefully he takes Ellen downstairs, out to the front lawn. When he closes the gate of the white picket fence, she is right there behind it, staring at the make-shift lock, the wrinkles in her forehead moving deeper, closer together. Then she screams as he goes down the block. When he’s out of her sight, her screams settle down to a hoarse holler, then she starts pacing the lawn back and forth, now jawing to herself quietly, until he gets back.