Dora: A Headcase

by Lidia Yuknavitch

“Why not,” Little Teena goes. “We can pretend Dora lost it and stabbed you in the eye.” He begins to glue down his mutton chops.

  I rub my mangy head. I could probably pass for a guy. But I don’t want to be a guy.

  The Farrah wig from before is at the ready. For later. After we retrieve Obsidian from the godforsaken teen halfway house hell. For the airport. I carefully fold it and stow it in my backpack.

  Marlene leaves the kitchen for a moment and returns with a soft pelt in her arms. “This,” she says very solemnly, “is for your Obsidian.” A hush falls over us all. We stare at the monumental beauty of it. A Wonder Woman wig. Big huge piles of dark chocolate locks. Then Marlene carefully explains the post-escape drama to me.

  By the time we get to Sea-Tac airport – assuming we get that far – Obsidian and I will have become two young hair show models on their way to Paris for one of the most important hairdressing industry conferences around. For those who are in search of excellence, who are always looking ahead for ways to innovate in the growing industry of hair design, this conference is a cross between the best in artistry and the best in business, featuring the top names in hair, creators who believe in a new you for every age. Marlene hands me several brochures.

  False I.D.s, false paperwork, false hair.

  Courtesy of Hakizamana Ojo.

  It doesn’t matter who you really are in the world any longer. It only matters what it says on your documents and what the rules of surveillance are on your chosen path. Houston means take off any twat or tit jewelry or you’ll be strip searched. O’Hare means add three hours to your wait in line time and don’t even think about trying to act “down” by saying “da bomb” or anything. If you have the right documentation for the particular geographic area, the right magical stamps and data and weird little tilt and glow hieroglyphics on your paperwork and identification, you can be anyone. I know the current shtick is that HOMELAND SECURITY is all over your ass, but you know what the truth is? The folks manning the security at airports are all a bunch of overworked underpaid people who just need paychecks and jobs so they don’t get deported or arrested or thrown out of their homes.

  Ironic, isn’t it.

  The paperwork is neatly displayed before us on Marlene’s kitchen table. It really is something. Artful even. I take out my purple sharpie. I write BEAUTIFUL on the surface of Marlene’s kitchen table. She smiles.

  “Now I have something to remember you by,” she says.

  My chest implodes.

  It’s time to go. My arms go numb. My mouth opens. I drop my head down and look at the linoleum floor. So I don’t have to think about not seeing Marlene for god knows how long I study the floor. When I look back up, Marlene is all business.

  “I will meet you at my north terminal surveillance hut,” Marlene says, winking, and hands me two plane tickets. She sizes me and my little sadness up. “Liebchen!” She says. “This is not the last time you will see me. Of that I am certain. This is simply the last time we will see each other as the people we are in this kitchen this moment.”

  She laughs. You know which laugh. The one from her belly. The one with all of history in it.

  “Think who you will be the next time! We will drink to it!” She exclaims.

  “Yay!” Ave Maria pipes, spinning around in a circle, her real hair shooting out like spaghetti.

  I want Marlene’s laugh to hold us like that all night – in her kitchen – wigs all over the place – the word “beautiful” drawn in purple sharpie on her kitchen table. I walk over to her and hug her and bury my face in her tits, wondering even inside my ripped up heart what her tits are made of. Socks? Silicone? They feel like perfect warm water balloons against my face.

  When we leave the back of my head itches. I’m afraid to turn back around and look or I’ll bawl like a pussy.

  But Marlene calls out in a booming manwoman voice “Lamskotelet!” So I gotta turn around one last time.

  In Marlene’s hand is a giant plastic bag filled with bacon. “For the journey!” And laughing and laughing.

  29.

  IN THE JAG ON THE WAY TO THE TEEN HALFWAY HOUSE I stare at my thighs. Then I stare out the car window. Shadows of shit pass by. It’s late. Maybe midnight. We want to control the scene at the halfway house. We’re hoping for a small staff of exhausted underpaid workers. I’m riding shotgun.

  Little Teena, A.K.A. “the caseworker,” drives. His face is partially lit up by the green and orange console lights. Ave Maria, A.K.A. “the distraught sister,” is in the backseat. I can see her head bopping up and down in the rearview mirror. Her earbuds jammed in her ears. Her Alice in Wonderland hair cascading over her shoulder. Her absurd eyepatch momentarily flipped up.

  I think into the night. I search the sky. I used to be able to find the Dippers easily. Now I don’t know what direction to look.

  No one says anything especially me.

  It hurts. The silence.

  We drive.

  I think I see some cows pass by on the side of the road but they might just be those eye blotches you get when you are trying not to cry.

  Mercifully, Little Teena saves me from my own pathos.

  “All right. What’s our motivation?” he shouts out.

  Ave Maria pulls out her earbuds. “What?” she says.

  “Our motivations. We need to know how to act,” he repeats.

  “Oh. Did we eat all the bacon?” Ave Maria says, hooking her arms over the seat so her face is up by us in the front.

  I hand her what’s left of the bacon. The whole car pretty much smells like pig oil.

  Between swine chews Ave Maria says, “Well, I’m beside myself because my sister tried to gouge my eye out witha … with a… ” she looks up at the felted car ceiling. “With a spoon!” she says.

  I have to admit, I like it. That girl has hidden talents. God knows I’ve always got a spoon with me. My mother’s.

  “But you love your sister too, isn’t that right, distraught sister? You can’t bear for anything too terrible to happen to her?” Little Teena coaches.

  “Uh huh!” Ave Maria agrees, chewing seriously.

  “I’m the sole legal guardian, is what the paperwork says,” Ave Maria goes.

  I smile. I am never going to meet anyone like her in my life again. I know it.

  “I’m wanting outta this chickenshit assignment – bucking for a reassignment – homicide. I’m looking to make detective.” He fingers a mutton chop. He waves his finger at us collectively and says, “You two are an embarrassment to me. Beneath me. I’m just looking to unload you,” he points to me, “and bone you,” he points to Ave Maria, “before it’s all over.”

  Ave Maria cracks up. I do too. The image of Little Teena A.K.A. the mutton-chopped caseworker boning little miss eye patch while the scary bald teen tries to gouge everyone’s eyes out with a spoon is worthy of an LSD dose.

  “So then let’s go over the script again,” Little Teena prods.

  “I know what to say,” Ave Maria bleats, nearly hitting her head on the car ceiling. “I’m supposed to make a big deal all distraught-y if we needa … what do you call it?”

  “Diversion.” Little Teena shakes his head up and down.

  “You say all the cop-ly stuff and give whoever is at the intake desk that whole cool pile of paperwork. Do you wanna practice your cop-y authority voice on us?” Ave Maria’s quite nearly in the front seat with us, her skinny arms and elbows poking everywhere.

  Little Teena clears his throat. “We’ ve got a live one here, I’m afraid, emergency intake. They can’t take her up at Chelan so we had to come here. Full up at Chelan. Christ. Kids these days, huh?”

  “Fuck that’s hot!” Ave Maria shouts. “Say it again!”

  Little Teena complies. Then they go back and forth for a bit in mock bad cop television show lingo. It’s weirdly relaxing.

  I look out of the car window again. I push the button and my window goes down. The night air hits my face. I close my eyes. So much like a drea
m, things are sometimes. Or a movie. If I was filming us driving I’d put a Nick Cave song in. I’d zoom in on ordinary objects in the car – Little Teena’s thick fingers on the steering wheel, the green glow of the speedometer and digital clock. Ave Maria’s Hot Tamales sticking out of the pocket of her jean jacket. And the pink plastic of my Dora purse – the safety pins for eyes – my black skinny jeans knees. It’s a claustrophobic little world the objects we own make for us.

  But then I’d pan out to the view beyond the inside of the car, because you can do that with film – you can expand or contract space – you can trick time by going slow motion so that a few seconds of silence riding in a car lasts thirty minutes. You can speed up an entire day and night so it looks like a series of retinal flashes.

  If I was filming this scene I’d go from the vastness of a night sky back to each of our faces there in the car – the way faces close up can look like their own universes. Ave Maria’s eyes are blue-green. Like the ocean. Little Teena has a cool little comma scar just under his right eye. It makes him look perpetually shy just under his badassery. My face is like a blank screen to me. I don’t know what there is about my face. Sometimes I’m scared it’s nothing.

  My ass buzzes. I pull it out. It’s a text. Ida, please call me.

  Mother.

  “Let’s just go over the steps again,” Little Teena says.

  “Yay!” Ave Maria goes.

  I laugh but nothing sounds.

  “Step one. Enter and distract intake person. Me at desk, Ave Maria hanging back with spooky sister.”

  “Check!” Ave Maria sings.

  “Step two. Engage script and hand over paperwork to move toward entrance.”

  “Check!” An octave higher.

  “Step three. Gain entrance, knock the intaker in the head from behind, get Obsidian.”

  “Double check!” Ave Maria operatically sings, then says “can I hit the whoever it is with a Coke bottle? There’s an old-school Coke bottle back here – my mom loves this little Mexican market where they sell the old-school Coke bottles.” She hold it up. “Aren’t they cute? They’re little!”

  I look over at Little Teena. Then back at Ave Maria. They continue their fake dialogue and their step rehearsals in their fake hair in Ave Maria’s mom’s Jag. Love isn’t what you were ever expecting. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. No voice I mean. I smile. Little Teena interprets the silence correctly. Ave Maria pets my sketchy hair. I shove the last of the bacon in my mouth. It’s salty and rubbery yet crisp. What is bacon but fat and gristle and thin strips of ass meat?

  Tastes like … family.

  30.

  THE HALFWAY HOUSE LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE GROUP homes for tards. You’ve seen them, usually a two-story dingy dark gray number with security bars on the windows and doors and dead grass for yard contained by a crappy-ass chain link fence.

  This one has what looks like a tall surveillance mechanism posted sentry-like near the entrance, but on closer inspection? It’s just a goddamn bug zapper.

  “Google Earth it,” Ave Maria says from the back seat of the Jag.

  Little Teena does. We’re parked about two blocks away. We put our three heads together in the back of the Jag and study the halfway house on the laptop. Pretty much one way in and out. Through the front. Though fire code probably means there’s a back door. It’s the law. It’s bad to let teens burn up. Hard to get social services funding if you, you know, bar-b-que them. So there must be a back exit.

  I delete my mother and text on my cell to Little Teena: Can you hack in? Surveillance?

  Christ. It looks like somebody’s big huge crackhouse.

  Little Teena taps away at the laptop keyboard. Bless the fingers of Little Teena. He chuckles. “All they’ve got going on is like a series of nanny cams. And electronic locks that are … lemme see … ha. Morons. The electronic locks are all controlled at the front desk. They’ve got a password tumbler from like the Starsky and Hutch years.” He continues typing code.

  “Why, it’s just a dumbass little meanness hotel!” Ave Maria pipes.

  “Oh my fucking god,” Little Teena says. “Their password? Get this. Their password is … PASSWORD. I can unlock everything from here and disable their idiotic “safety system” without them even knowing it. Fucking figures. Department of Juvenile Justice? I salute you!” Little Teena salutes the air. “Dumb douches.”

  Before we leave the car, I text them both: Hatha Breathing. They know because I taught them. We all close our eyes and hold hands. We breathe in for seven seconds. We hold it for seven seconds. We breathe out for seven seconds. We picture the ocean. We do it seven times. When we open our eyes, we are our characters.

  As we walk toward the entrance I can hear bugs die zap deaths in the bug zapper. My role is of course to look troubled, dejected, like I might lash out.

  Tough gig, huh.

  Little Teena carries his air of authority, his clipboard, his fake wad of papers.

  Ave Maria fiddles with her eyepatch. I slap her hand away from her face. “Sorry,” she goes, and then sports a distraught sister face so fast it takes my breath away. Right before we get to the entrance, Ave Maria grabs both of our arms and whisper sings, “You guys? You guys rock!” Then she kisses each of our hands and immediately returns to her role. She’s gonna make an awesome mom someday.

  Upon entering it’s clear that “intake” is bogus. Some fat ass guy in a white man jumpsuit with – I shit you not – a box of half-eaten powdered donuts is at the front desk. The computer system? Dell. You heard me. What kind of a monkeyfuck operation is this? Dell computers? This is going to be like taking candy from geriatrics.

  Little Teena assesses the situation about as quickly as I do, and launches smoothly into his spiel. “Got an emergency intake on a transport from Bellevue. They can’t take her up at Chelan so we had to come here. Full up at Chelan. Christ. Kids these days, huh?” Little Teena jams the exquisite pile of false paperwork and the clipboard at the fat ass.

  So far everything is proceeding according to the steps.

  “I didn’t get any call about an intake tonight. You just hold on here,” fatty blabs. He’s got powdered sugar on his upper lip. Man, you can’t make this shit up.

  “Whose this?” Blubbo says pointing at Ave Maria.

  Little Teena leans over the counter and points to the data on the fake forms that identifies Ave Maria as “next of kin” and “sister” and “legal guardian.” “Parents are dead,” Little Teena explains. “How these two managed to keep out of child custody services all these years is beyond me. But that one?” Little Teena points at Ave Maria. He leans over the desk and whispers to whale boy. “She’s a nurse. Candy striper.” And then he winks at intake balloon.

  I stand there trying to look as silently dangerous as possible. I shoot for a kind of Bob De Niro in Taxi Driver look. I smile, then go cold faced, then smile again. I spit on the floor and then for no reason I whistle “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

  Everyone turns and stares at me for a minute.

  “See what I mean?” Little Teena says, “We’ ve got a live one. Do me a favor and take this little teen monster girl off my hands, will ya? Mind?” he says, moving in to snag a donut.

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know … this is highly irregular,” puffy says, shuffling through the paperwork, but the paperwork is jake. Marlene is a pro. Nothing is missing. Everything has the proper signature or seal or whacked out institutional code lingo all over it. I shoot a glance up at a surveillance camera in the back corner behind the human blimp. I smile and pick my nose. I nonchalantly flip on my Zoom H4n.

  “It’s just highly irregular,” he says again. He picks up the phone. “I’m gonna have to call it in downtown.”

  You know that sound in the movie soundtrack where the record needle skips and drives a wedge through the album? It’s the oh fuck soundscape.

  Ave Maria, no doubt improvising, begins to cry. It’s a unique weeping, of course. Little hiccup sounding wh
imper lurches. He stares at her, phone in the air between his gut and his ear. Then she amps up the crying and starts this rather impressive erratic breathing thing. Her face gets blotchy. She scratches at the sides of her own arms. I swear she could do performance art.

  “Oh shit,” Little Teena says, “you don’t wanna upset this one,” he says, following her lead, stroking one of his lamb chops.

  I grit my teeth menacingly.

  “Wait a minute here, wait a minute,” the gut says standing up, one hand on his … what the fuck is that? Yeah. Should have guessed. Taser.

  I spit.

  Little Teena starts to walk around the intake desk where blubberino is. “You better listen to me or we’re gonna have a situation here,” Little Teena says. He moves behind the desk.

  “Hey!” white Fat Albert exclaims, “You can’t come back here!”

  Ave Maria shoots for a major distraction and turns the volume up to full wail. “If there’s no room here, what are you going to do to my siiiiiiiiiissssssssssster? You can’t put her in jail! Please don’t put her in jail! She can’t go to JJJJJJJJJAAAAAAA-IIIIIILLLLLLLL” wailing and bawling full force – until she’s pretty much textbook … what’s the word I’m searching for? Oh yeah. Hysterical.

  “ What the,” chub says, “hey, can you get her to quiet down? We’ve got a houseful of sensitives here – hey! Can you get her to stop that?”

  Ave Maria is rocking and crying and pulling her Alice hair making a total scene.

  Little Teena’s nearly next to lard-ass behind the intake desk. I start jumping up and down like a bunny.

  “Which one of’em did you say was the live one?” fatty goes, his eyes big blue buttons.

  “The head case,” Little Teena says pointing at me. I bite my lip until it bleeds and smile.

  “That other’s her sister,” Little Teena yells above the ruckus Ave Maria is making, “like I said. Legal guardian, if you can believe it. Sister nearly got her eye put out – but still wouldn’t let us take her without coming along. Families, huh? Buncha crackpots if you ask me.”

  “ Well all right, all right,” donut face says, and punches something into his Dell. Then he gets on some kind of walkie talkie device. Like a Toys “R” Us-looking walkie talkie. Budget cuts? Christ this place has the technology of Sesame Street.