These Women

by Ivy Pochoda

  Traffic’s picking up. A few people out on foot.

  Essie checks her phone. She’ll give it thirty minutes. Then head back. Figure out how to solidify the link she’s made.

  She’s at the light on Western and Sixty-Fourth, straddling her bike, one foot on the asphalt. It’s simple to imagine. Leave a victim alive. Give up the game. Get scared. Paranoid she’d remember. It’s all there, clean and clear.

  There’s a screech behind her, rubber burning road. A grind of metal. Essie braces for impact. When it doesn’t come, she glances over her shoulder and sees a bus has been sideswiped by a small hatchback right in front of Orphelia’s house. She hops on the sidewalk, doubling back, riding past the bus to assess the damage.

  The driver is out of his car. He’s at fault and Essie hopes he won’t argue so the bus can get moving. She props her bike on a signpost and walks into the street. She glances at the hatchback and then over its roof toward the carport under the facing building.

  And she sees her. A white woman standing there, watching, not gawking at the accident, but staring up at Orphelia’s window. Essie takes out her badge. She needs to cross the street. But traffic’s too heavy. And in an instant the woman is gone.

  9.

  ESSIE JUMPS ON HER BIKE. SHE BLOWS THROUGH A LIGHT. Oncoming traffic honks. But she doesn’t slow.

  She’s furious at herself. She’d done to Orphelia what Deb and the rest of them had done to her after the accident—mistrusted Orphelia because of something that had happened to her. Like she’d lost her sanity along with who knows how much blood from her neck.

  Orphelia had said a white woman was stalking her.

  No one believed her.

  But they were wrong. Essie had seen the woman. A white woman watching Orphelia. Someone who might have been watching her since she was slashed. Someone who might link the past to the present. Someone who could send this whole thing home to Deb and the rest of RHD.

  She arrives home and peers in the living room window. The monitors are still lighting up the den. Mark’s awake. The trading day is over but he hasn’t called it yet. He’s probably on a deep dive into one of the hysterical investment blogs he digests. Gold. Crypto. Next thing they’ll be trading air.

  Essie puts her key in the lock but hesitates. She takes out her phone.

  Back on social media. Back into the profiles of Morgan Tillett’s five closest friends—not her best friends, but the ones with whom she shares the most commonality; overlaps of “likes,” places visited, and petitions. Two from California have recent check-ins. Not together. But both to Brooklyn. Then she finds another who’s visiting Queens from San Diego.

  They’re congregating.

  Coming together.

  A protest. An action.

  See, there’s your answer.

  Why is an activist hiding the fact that she’s in New York? Because she’s staging an action. She’d even hinted at it. What was it she’d said? From where I’m sitting it looks like the city is about to explode. Not Los Angeles. Brooklyn. Something big.

  Essie puts her phone away. Puts Morgan Tillett out of her mind.

  People always complicate things. Essie too. The easy answer was that Orphelia wasn’t lying. But Essie had disregarded it.

  How many years had Orphelia been making her complaint? Fifteen? And no one listened. No one. Not even Essie. She’s no better than the rest of them at Southwest. It turns her stomach.

  Because she knows what it is not to be listened to. To be written off as a hysteric. Just today. It’s serial. It’s the same guy as before.

  And a brush-off.

  No one had believed her at the site of the crash. No one believed that she hadn’t been driving. When Deb arrived she’d taken control, taken Essie in hand. I’m going to make this all right for you. I’m going to fix it for you.

  But there hadn’t been anything to fix.

  Essie hadn’t been driving. Mark had fallen asleep at the wheel.

  But Deb wanted to show how blue her blood was, how she was a cop’s cop. How she did what it takes. And soon enough she was cleaning up a mess that wasn’t there. Soon enough she was swept up into a club of officers who’d gone above and beyond even the law to look after their own.

  It was Deb’s doing that everyone from the rookies to the top brass thought that Essie, not Mark, had been driving, that when she’d leapt out of the car, running toward the girls tossed in two directions on Sixth and Plymouth, Mark had slid over, taken the position behind the wheel to protect her badge. And that Deb had handled it so no shame had come to the LAPD. Deb. Deb. Deb.

  Mark had passed the Breathalyzer.

  Deb had urged the cops not to give Essie one. She’d made them look the other way even though there was nothing to see. Deb had coached them into pretending to believe Essie when she said Mark was driving. Saved themselves the headache and imagined they were saving her in the process.

  These men, saving her.

  But Mark had been driving. He’d insisted. Although he was exhausted on their trip from Big Bear. Music up. Windows down. Air on.

  He’d been driving. And he’d fallen asleep.

  Because of Deb no one believed Essie when she told them the truth. Now all anyone remembers is the cops who covered for something she hadn’t done—the cops who made it right so she could keep her badge. That’s the story, the answer to the question of what happened that night.

  Now it’s her turn. She’s the one who didn’t listen. Didn’t believe. Couldn’t believe that Orphelia was telling the truth.

  Who else hadn’t been heard?

  How many other women had tried telling their stories, giving clues, tips, answers?

  The number must be dizzying. The calls that come in to Southwest. The truths that get jumbled in with the crazies, the loony tunes, the attention seekers. How many give up? Stop calling? Take their problems somewhere else? Or nowhere? Live with them?

  Tomorrow, or the day after, the station will be flooded with calls, from everyone who has something to say about the serial killer. Everyone who mistrusts a neighbor, harbors a grudge, has a theory or a feeling.

  And in all that noise there could be a single truth. A single fact. Someone who knows something.

  Someone who has not been listened to. Someone like Orphelia.

  Essie opens her backpack. Pulls out the file. She activates the flashlight on the back of the phone.

  She flips through the pages. She casts her light over the notes scrawled in the margins. Looking. Searching.

  She’s there. Essie’s certain. Somewhere in the tips. In the callers. A voice. Someone no one listened to or believed. A person who can tie those old murders to the current ones.

  Feelia 2014

  AM I NEW AROUND HERE? THAT’S THE GODDAMN FUNNIEST goddamn question I’ve ever been asked. And shit—I’ve been asked some crazy shit.

  Am I new around here? Don’t make me spit up this drink.

  Honey, I’ve been up and down these streets more times than you’ll be able to count. Then multiply that number and I’ve been around more times than that.

  Not even come into this bar once or twice.

  What’s this shit called? Lupillo’s.

  Lupillo’s. And you got tacos, too. That’s a good hustle.

  Should have come in earlier. Years back when I used to work these streets. Yeah and that means just what you think it means.

  Tell you what. I’m gonna be back. Gonna make this my local. Even though I’m not exactly local. You won’t catch me drinking south of the 10. Not in one million fucking years.

  But let me tell you some shit. See this? See this scar?

  Now don’t look away. It’s not gonna bite. Shit’s fifteen years old.

  Got jumped on a job. Well, not exactly on a job. I wasn’t exactly working, didn’t mean I wasn’t trying to hustle a buck. Got in this guy’s car figuring it would be the usual.

  Usual my ass. Motherfucker slits my throat. Somehow I rolled out of that car and managed not
to bleed to death. Came back to life in a hospital.

  Don’t give me that look. My story’s not contagious.

  That was one motherfucking wake-up call. One motherfucking wake-up. It got me off the streets. Got me straight. No more tricking. No more easy money.

  I work now, which is hard as shit with my record. Felonies are worse than tattoos.

  Let me tell you my mantra. Past is past. I know it’s not original or anything. But it’s the truth. Past is past. ’Cept when it isn’t.

  You think I think about that night?

  Hell no.

  I don’t.

  Shit’s just easier that way.

  Except check this shit out. Today some lady detective shows up at my place. Tells me the most fucked-up thing in a world of fucked-up things.

  Let me ask you something? You think the police did a goddamn thing about the man who cut me? Do you think they found him? Do you think I was even worth a follow-up visit? I’ll give you one guess.

  So this lady detective turns up at my place. I thought she was there on some other business, but no, she’s got this bomb she was fixing to explode in my motherfucking life.

  See this scar? No, really take a look at it this time. Don’t think of looking away until I tell you what’s up.

  This shit—this shit right here. I want to see you look at it.

  This shit. This motherfucking scar. You know who did that?

  Get ready. Hold up. A serial killer is who.

  And I’m not fucking with you. I didn’t take the bus all the way up to this hood to fuck with you. To tell you lies. A goddamn serial killer.

  A serial killer who killed thirteen women way back when he cut me. You know what that makes me: a survivor.

  Wait up, wait. There’s more to this. Goddamn more. Just get me another drink first.

  You think they caught him back then? Hell no.

  But you want to hear the most messed-up thing? The worst part? Yeah, there’s a worst part.

  They knew. LAPD knew. Way back then, they knew. Saw me in the hospital and they knew.

  Did they tell me? Did they make mention?

  Not a thing. Not a goddamn thing.

  Fifteen years someone’s known it was a serial killer did this to me. A serial killer they didn’t fucking catch.

  Fifteen years nobody’s bothered to give me the news. Like I’m not worth their while. Like I don’t count. Like I don’t deserve to know.

  Had my throat slit and I don’t deserve to know shit.

  I don’t remember much. But I remember some. Like, for instance, his car. Like that he wasn’t black. That’s a start. And he had a beard. But don’t ask me. I just survived the motherfucker, that’s all. Don’t bother picking my goddamn brain. Don’t bother clueing me in to what happened to me.

  Tell you what. I’m a survivor. I survive. Just didn’t know what it was I was surviving. And that’s damn criminal.

  Bad enough some guy made me a victim. Didn’t need LAPD piling on, making me theirs, too.

  I’m not standing for that shit.

  Not standing for it at all.

  1.

  Marella Colwin, Dead Body #1: Computer-controlled, two-channel video installation with three 25" monitors stacked on metal shelving showing seven-minute programs. Duration: 8 min., 32 sec. Video, monitor, color & sound. Commissioned by the Campanile Fund at San Diego State as part of the Artist Scholarship Endowment Fund. Collection of the artist.

  DEAD BODY #1 is a story of decomposition, how life turns into its opposite. The top monitor is a study in vitality, showing women swimming in the water off La Libertad, El Salvador. In the middle is a time lapse of refuse collecting next to a jetty on the same beach. Colwin is a fatalist, turning the water not into a life force but a place of decay. The sea is usually a place of regeneration and movement, but here it is a trap, something that drains life instead of giving it. At the bottom is a re-creation of decay, as a woman’s naked body is showered in blue paint, eroding her skin and her physicality, destroying her beauty and her place in the world.

  Marella Colwin, Dead Body #2: Video, monitor, color & sound. Duration: 17 min., 36 sec. Collection of the artist.

  Dead Body #2 presents a crisis of solidity. A woman runs down a dark street. She stumbles. She continues. As she runs, she is taken back to the elemental. She loses her clothes. She is animal, wild and trying to escape. How long before she collapses? How long before her body gives in? She comes apart in pieces. Her body returning to the earth. Her journey begins again.

  Marella Colwin, Dead Body #3: Three-channel video installation with three projectors. Projection cycle: 5 mins. Video, monitors, color, found objects. Collection of the artist.

  Dead Body #3 is a cycle of femininity and fragility, as well as a study of power and subjugation. The three monitors project a loop of found photographs of women on the edge of a crisis that is never reached. In their own worlds these women project an aura of confidence. Outside, the balance is challenged and their power is stolen by the place where they seek to establish it. But the cycle continues, the dominant and the vulnerable switching places over and over again.

  IT’S A SMALL SHOW. Three pieces in a gallery on Washington. But they are strong and there’s already been a preview in the L.A. Times and in a few free weeklies plus the usual blogs. Anyway, it’s her first solo, which is not bad two years out of art school.

  But it could be stronger, always. That’s the thing. It needs to be more of a gut punch. Marella wants people walking away horrified. She wants them to take home a terror they can’t escape.

  She wants them to feel it—that sensation of being followed down the street, being watched. Except worse. Not just followed, caught. It’s too easy to walk away from art.

  Marella checks the connections and the circuits. She stares at the faces flashing back at her on the monitors of her third piece.

  This one had been hastily assembled. Edited and arranged in forty-eight hours with little sleep. It also poses a problem. The photos are not Marella’s. She discovered them on a cell phone that she found on the street outside her house. The phone didn’t have a code. It was just there, an open book.

  By the time she finished looking through the photos she knew what she was going to do. Download them, make them into her art. The photos were rawer than anything she’d captured. Dirty and honest, accessible and threatening in a way she can only mimic with her performance pieces and video installations. These photos are a truth far beyond the reaches of Marella’s creativity. As for her work—well, she can only tell stories and not even her own. Those women, the powerful mess of them. The confidence fading to vacancy. The power dissolving into despair. The challenge they pose to the viewer, the confrontation and the temptation. The strength and desperation. Now that’s art.

  Marella also knew whose camera she’d found, who had taken the photos. Julianna. And she knew that Julianna was dead. Murdered.

  It was on the news last night. Every station had the story. A serial killer in South L.A. Julianna had been one of his victims.

  Marella had watched the press conference. Four dead women in South L.A. found over the last eight months. She tuned out most of what they were saying. She needed to keep it at a distance or else she couldn’t do what she wanted to do.

  She recognized two of the faces on the television: Julianna Vargas and Katherine Sims.

  But serial killer or not, she needed those pictures on Julianna’s phone. They give her the edge she craves. They animate something she finds impossible to express in her own installations. The violence of the everyday—the violence down the street that seeps in through her windows. The casual terror. The anger. And the power over these things, albeit fleeting.

  And here it is, bubbling inside her even in the quiet of the gallery with only the hum of her thrifted monitors and the gentle clicking of a geriatric projector. Her mind flashes to black. Her fist balls. She stops herself before she drives it into the wall. Instead she pounds her thigh—deep into the
ridge of bone below flesh. A satisfying shock that radiates through the nerves down to her ankles.

  Marella exhales. The dark lifts.

  She’s relieved she didn’t damage the walls. The show opens tomorrow.

  IT’S NIGHTTIME and she can still smell the smoke from last week’s fires. But now there’s another smell in the air. Mold. Rot. The heaviness of coming rain.

  The rain will stop the city in its tracks. Cars will skid to a halt, creating more accidents than if they’d simply kept going. People will panic. The news will be dominated by the stuff falling from the sky—an exaggerated apocalypse. The dust in the Inland Empire will rise. The alluvial fan will flood. Mud will slide.

  Marella checks the zip on her backpack, making sure her computer is protected. She fumbles around, adjusting the Velcro on the protective sleeve. Her hand hits something smooth. Not her phone. Julianna’s.

  Her hand recoils as if a violent death is contagious. She needs to get rid of the phone. She got what she wanted from it.

  The rain hasn’t started, which is good because Marella’s on foot. The gallery isn’t far from the street where she grew up and where she’s been sleeping when she can stand it.

  Mostly she crashes around town. Other artists’ lofts. The family homes of classmates from SDSU. Even in galleries from time to time.

  A transient, her mother calls her when she’s angry. Marella likes the sound of that. But not the anger.

  Her parents would be horrified to know she’s walking around here even if it’s less than a mile from home. When she was small, Marella’s parents moved from one war-torn country to the next—Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador—but Los Angeles was the only place where they seemed afraid. They’ve kept her, as much as possible, in a kind of isolation from the neighborhood. Two years of junior high up in Ojai with her aunt. Then boarding school outside Santa Barbara, a scholarship student. Summers in YMCA camps by the ocean. Never played on her own block. Didn’t ride her bike. Didn’t know her neighbors. No backyard birthdays. The only time the outside ever came in was her father’s weekly dice game. And she was never allowed to be around for it. They didn’t move because they couldn’t afford to. They owned the house. And the house was nice.