This Little Light

by Lori Lansens

  I’ve been thinking about that stupid show we watch—Hot’n’Homeless. Those screechy hosts who spaff all over their makeovers, the attractive scrubbed-up homeless people—some of them are definitely mentally ill—that they pour into designer clothes, and teach how to walk in heels, or Florsheims, and do the intentionally hilarious mock job interviews with. When the cameras stop rolling, you know those people get dumped back onto the streets, where they prolly get all their swag stolen. Fuck. Why do we watch that show? Why do I watch that show? I can’t help thinking of all of the ways I’m responsible for creating an appetite for actual shit.

  Have to stop typing for a bit. Hands cramping.

  Fee’s just so pale. Even in the moonlight I can see her skin has turned gray, and she’s got huge dark circles under her eyes. Question? Is it okay to describe a person’s skin color in any way, shape or form when you yourself are not a person of color? Or is it better not to mention a person’s skin color so as to make it irrelevant, even though we all know it’s totally relevant, in hopes that society will eventually become truly color-blind? Like, last year, this new girl at school was asking us to point out Brooky on the track. Zee said, “She’s the tall one.” Dee said, “She’s the one with the blue shorts.” When the new girl still didn’t see her, I said, “The black girl near the long jump pit.” The way the girl looked at me? Like, racist much? But…wha…? Is it racist to describe a black person as black? When I told Brooky what happened, she laughed. Was I supposed to say African-American? Brooky shook her head. “Too many syllables.” We really do hate syllables.

  The thing is, I don’t wanna be a dick. The racism thing? The white privilege thing? The white feminist thing? I want to understand it all, and acknowledge it beyond the obvious, and I actually wanna get this shit right. Feels like there’s a wide margin for error, though.

  I’ve been so worried about Shelley, but Fee’s mom, Morena, is in serious trouble too. The Internet says she might be deported to Guatemala. Fee will die when she finds out. Morena’s procit card really had just expired and she hadn’t been able to process her renewal appointment online and the phones were always busy and she’d been so swamped getting Fee ready for the chastity ball and it wasn’t her fault. There are so many pitiful clips of her crying into her hands. As if her daughter’s disappearance and all the Red Market shit isn’t enough, now she’s being sent to a place she hasn’t seen in twenty-five years, where she has no family or friends. Jesus fucking Christ.

  And in other breaking news? Miles, Brooky’s brother, has been detained for questioning. Wha…? I mean, I get that they’re questioning the Hive and the parents and the witnesses from the AVB and all—but Miles? Why him? Because he’s black? Because he plays in a band? Wears his hair in dreads? What has Miles got to do with any of this?

  Also? CNN did an interview with this social media expert talking about how crowdsourcing, which has been going on since cell phones, has become one of the most effective tools of law enforcement. The guy says he’s created an algorithm to determine how much longer it’ll take to find us, based on the dollar amount of the bounty, the estimated number of people actively searching, the number of people communicating on social, the amount of TV airtime devoted to us and the likely trajectory of our escape. He says they should have us by tomorrow night. The fuck?

  He compared Fee and me to those terrorists who bombed the subway in London last year. Those guys watched the search for them unfold on their phones and taunted the authorities and responded to all the breaking news on social as it happened. The “expert” says that, wherever we are, we’re watching too. And that, just like the London bombers, we will be caught—right around the time Jonze starts his free concert.

  I can’t stop looking at this series of pics of the Hive someone posted on InfoNow—all of us at Zee Rohanian’s sixth birthday at the flagship Patriot Girls store, dressed in outfits that match our megadollar dollies, who sit beside us in wooden high chairs at the decorated table. We were all about the Patriot Girls when we were little. We wore star-spangled Patriot merch for years—so much red, white and freaking blue. For all the thousands my parents spent on them, I never really loved those dolls. They don’t want mommies, or even friends, they just want to be admired for their sketch contributions to American history.

  And I’ve been thinking of all the birthday parties and BBQs and football parties on Oakwood Circle. Somehow my half-breed Canadian Jewish family always belonged. Sherm would say he and my mom got a pass on the whole race thing because the freckled, bespectacled Millers are not the dark-eyed, hawk-nosed Friedburgs who live on the street behind us, so it was much easier for everyone to pretend we’re from the same tribe.

  Tom Sharpe affectionately called my parents “the Commies,” and Mr. Leon teased my mother about her bleeding heart when she got passionate about immigrant issues. I’d hear my parents arguing sometimes, after parties, with Sherman claiming Tom Sharpe had a point about this and that, or that Big Mike’s challenges on military spending and other economics issues had him asking himself some tough questions. Maybe it was politics that ruined them. Maybe Sherman started to lean right, and Shelley tried to yank him left, and they just tore, one thread at a time. I wish this night was over so I could stop thinking about this. We’ll have to make some kind of move, sometime tomorrow. Javier will need us to get out of here. But what?

  * * *

  —

  God…your ears really can play tricks on you when you’re trapped in a shed with people hunting your ass. I keep thinking I’m hearing my name being called in the white noise of the wind. Freaky. Keep looking out the little window but can’t see anything except the moon and stars and a few tumbleweeds blowing around near Javier’s truck.

  Couple of minutes ago I knocked over one of the suitcases in the corner of the shed when I moved away from the window, and I have to say I was pretty relieved when the noise woke up Fee and she opened her eyes a crack. I was worried she might be in a tequila coma. Then she raised her head a little, looked around the shed and croaked out, “Water.”

  She’s seriously dehydrated. This is bad.

  “I’m gonna get some, Fee. I’ve been thinking about trying to break into that Airstream if the guy leaves. I just don’t know how…with that dog…”

  “Look in trash bags?” She pointed to the bags in the corner.

  “Dude, there’s no water in the trash bags.”

  “If we turn ourselves in, they’ll give us water.”

  “Or kill us?”

  “I’m dying of thirst.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I am.”

  “You can go three days without water.”

  “Can’t be true.”

  “I’m gonna get you water, Fee. When it’s light out. In the morning. We’re gonna figure out a way to get you something to drink. I’ll break into Javier’s if I have to.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Ror?”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked like she was gonna say something, but instead she put her head back down on the balled-up blanket and closed her eyes.

  Part of me wants to piggyback her to an Urgent Care—there must be twenty of them on the Pacific Coast Highway. My mom says there was a time, not so long ago, when people were not routinely shot in the streets, in their homes and on highways. Even I remember a time when there were more coffee shops than Urgent Care Centers.

  Before I left to go get ready for the ball at Jinny’s, Shelley had called me into her room. She already had wine-face and it was only two in the afternoon. She patted the bed, where I plopped down beside her. “You know I think this ball is silly,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But I still hope you have a great time. And take lots of pics. And, you know, it’s an opportunity to start a conversation with your father. It’s time, Ror, I think, to figure that out for yourself.”

  I had figured it out for myself. I know who he is. I know what I want, an
d what I don’t want. It was like being in the therapist’s office early on, a joint session where Shelley told the guy she was concerned that her feelings about Sherman were bleeding into mine. That we were too enmeshed. Of course her feelings were bleeding into mine. And mine into hers. Unavoidable. And not the point. Enmeshed. I’d never heard the word before. I hated how it took my independence with one two-syllable swipe. Fuck. That. I am not enmeshed. And what I couldn’t say then, or wouldn’t say, was that I don’t feel the way I feel about Sherman because he left Shelley, but because he left me.

  Mommy. I’ve tried, telepathically, to let her know I’m okay. I wanna believe there’s such a thing as telepathy—that you can be so connected to another human, they can feel your thoughts. I guess enmeshed isn’t always bad.

  * * *

  —

  This pink laptop. I’ve just discovered something tragically amazing about this laptop.

  I opened up the contacts a few minutes ago. Looking for what? Someone who could help us? A name or e-mail I might recognize? I don’t know anyone’s e-mail address. Or telephone numbers. Not even Aunt Lill’s. It’s all in my phone. Who remembers numbers? Anyway, I didn’t find any contacts I recognized, but I was nosy, so I looked at the photo files.

  I’m so stupid for not connecting…I mean…This guy, Javier…I didn’t link him with the little girl that died in Hidden Oaks, but then this photograph popped up—of a smush-face six-year-old in her white first Communion dress—on a prayer card from her funeral. Nina Fernandez.

  Javier’s daughter. Nina. She was riding a scooter in front of the house her mother was cleaning up the hill from us, not far from the third set of gates to the Kardashian compound, when she fell and hit her head. Another kid who saw Nina fall said she didn’t even cry.

  Nina got up and went into the mansion, where her mother was washing the floor, to show her the goose egg on her head, and she either tripped on the threshold or slipped on the wet floor, or her injury made her dizzy and she fainted. Either way, she cracked her skull in the foyer and bled out over the travertine.

  Miller Law took on the case for Javier and his wife, suing the homeowner. But it caused a lot of controversy and conflict in Hidden Oaks. And a few weeks later, Sherman dropped it, directing Javier to another law firm without even consulting my mother. In the end, Shelley’s confusion over that decision is what uncovered my father’s affair. The owner of that house where Nina bled to death? Sugar Tits. That’s how my dad met her.

  But before Sherman dropped Javier as a client, and before he started his affair, my parents hosted the wake for Nina at our house. I was supposed to be there for it. But I was completely stressed by the start of school and cross-country, and I didn’t think I could hack all that tragedy, plus it was Brooky’s birthday and she was having a sleepover and spa day. It’s not like she was gonna postpone her birthday. My parents couldn’t stand it when I was sad, so my mom said I should go to Brooky’s but remember to stop in and pay respects.

  It’s possible that our parents are making a terrible mistake when they try to shield us from disappointment and pain and sadness. Maybe we’re supposed to feel bad sometimes. Maybe we’re supposed to feel like utter fucking shit.

  I watched from behind Brooky’s bedroom curtains that day—as one does—well, as I do—all the greasy gardeners’ trucks jamming the cul-de-sac, the nannies and housekeepers clacking around in kitten heels, and the mow-and-blow guys in new suits from Burlington. Everybody carried plates of food in foil, even though my parents had hired a caterer.

  There was this one guy, an old dude, who stood at the end of the driveway just staring at our house for a really long time. I wondered if he was too sad to go in. Then he stooped to pinch a wilted rose from the bush in front of him, palming the petals. As he headed up the path, he took the time to deadhead the roses all the way to the front door, stuffing the crisped flowers into his suit-coat pocket rather than litter our perfect green lawn. This was before Sherman left, and my mother pissed the whole cul-de-sac off, not to mention the Hidden Hills Home Owners Association, by ripping out our grass and tearing out our flowers, and replacing our landscaping with a ragged collection of drought-resistant plants adrift in a sea of crushed granite ground cover. She left the eight mature fruit trees in the backyard, though, and told our gardener to pick them clean each season and distribute the bushels of oranges and peaches and lemons among his family and friends.

  I could hear sad Spanish music floating from the speakers around our pool. I knew I should grab the girls and go over to say something to our gardener and to his cousin Javier and his wife, whom I didn’t know, but who’d lost their daughter. But I got this huge lump in my throat thinking about how heartbreaking it all was, and then I was so glad to see Brooky’s brother pull up with the smoothies.

  Fee had begged Miles to go to Jamba Juice and Miles asked what he’d get if he did. Fee said she’d do his chores for a day. Um. Static. Um. Chores? We all looked at Fee like, where are we? 1981 on a Kentucky farmstead? In Calabasas we have concierge garbage pickup. The guys get your trash from your backyard and haul it out to the trucks, rinse the bins with rose water and put the clean ones back. Gardeners rake our leaves and trim bushes, and housekeepers sweep floors and scrub toilets, and pool guys come with the scooper and chlorine and whatever. Anyway, Fee was kinda slaughtered by realizing that she was the only one of us who does actual chores. Miles got that Fee was embarrassed, so he said he’d drive to Jamba if Fee came with. For an annoying big brother, Miles can be solid.

  Later, I told my mother that we forgot about the wake and that we all felt bad. She left the prayer card from the funeral on the kitchen counter so I could read Nina’s school poem about all of the things she loved in her life. I opened the card and saw her little crooked printing but couldn’t focus on the words.

  If you’re there, somewhere in the ether, Nina, if your spirit reads or otherwise intercepts this post—I’m so sorry I didn’t go to your wake. I’m so sorry your life ended too soon. I wish I’d actually read your poem. Did you say you loved your mother and father? The pink laptop? I obviously hope I’m totally wrong about God, and heaven, and that you are there right now eating ice cream with your abuela and all your other dead family. Say hi to my Gramma and Pop. Tell them I love them.

  Soon the sun’ll rise. Then what? We sit here in this dirty shed waiting for Javier to come back with help? Like, it’s all we have right now. It’s gonna be an oven in here once the sun’s up. And Fee may actually die from thirst. I honestly don’t know if I’d find anything drinkable in Javier’s cabin even if I can find a way to break in. And what about Javier? I’m putting all of my trust and faith in a stranger whose only reason for resisting the temptation of that huge bounty is that my parents were kind to him once upon a time? I mean, they did host Nina’s wake and all—but two million dollars, yo?

  Plus, he obviously didn’t win his lawsuit against Sugar Tits. So maybe he would even wanna get revenge?

  This toolshed is so freaking claustrophobic.

  My period cramps are so gnarl right now I just wanna run them off, literally, like I always did in cross-country, stride after stride, just thinking, fuck you fucking cramps. I always feel better after a run. This is what people in jail must feel like. The urge to run. And this place, this shed, does feel like a prison.

  Maybe that’s why I can’t stop writing. This isn’t a blog anymore. It’s a prison diary.

  * * *

  —

  It’s morning. After six o’clock. Didn’t think I’d sleep a wink, but I guess I did. Fee’s still out cold, but at least she’s breathing more evenly. We survived the night.

  The quiet all around us feels a little dubious, though. Calm before the storm?

  Javier’s truck is still in the driveway. So is the drunk guy’s truck next door.

  Went online already. Of course.

  Interesting developments in that some trolls are now saying we are a hoax. That we do not exist and that nothing at all
happened at the ball last night. In fact, they say, there was no ball. Conspiracy theorists? People are fucking crazy. I wish it were true, though. I wish none of this had ever happened. On the news, they keep playing that clip of me saying, “The American Virtue Ball is going to change my life,” like it’s a suicide message.

  And Miles is back home. No harm no foul there, I guess. He posted a pic of Lark’s Head and announced a gig next week. Like, whatever, life goes on?

  The Santa Anas are trending right now, and everyone is talking about what the erratic winds will mean to the hunt for me and Fee, because copters are one of their most effective search tools. There have been a couple of near accidents since the sun came up. People are taking their machines up in a moment of calm air and then having to make emergency landings all over the place when the winds start to gust. Asshole bounty hunters are flying their GarBirds out over the ocean and the homeless encampments downtown, and at least two of them have had to make quick set-downs on freeways and golf courses when the winds start gusting. Drones can’t fly at all: the winds just blow them around.

  I feel more exhausted than I did before I slept. And thirsty. So thirsty. Never been so parched in my life. I can’t help thinking about all those homeless people out there—how just the search for water in this desert-y climate must be…exhausting…and just piss them the fuck off. Like, they exist in one of the richest places on earth and don’t have access to drinkable water? None of that is news. But when you’re the one with the want. Or need. You actually, finally, get it. Water. Just…water…

  And Fee. What about Fee? I gotta figure out a way to get us something to drink, but I can’t leave the shed and have her wake up here alone. She’d be so scared. Plus, the winds are supposed to die down again soon. Air traffic will return.

  “Fee?”