“I know your name,” he said.
“I don’t want you to forget it,” she said.
She dug the Cure, really got into Nirvana (met, fell in love with, and mourned Kurt Cobain all in one day) and Stone Temple Pilots (ditto Scott Weiland, honorable mention Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley), and couldn’t believe Michael Jackson was human. She spent hours in the thrall of Lou Reed, Billie Holiday, Aimee Mann, the Kinks, and Little Jimmy Scott. Josue played her U2’s The Joshua Tree (he sweetly figured she would respond to a work, like “Where the Streets Have No Name,” inspired by her home), which she thought was great, but pretentious. She could watch or listen to a work for only a few seconds before she knew whether it spoke to her soul, whether it had the vitality of the real or the stench of the ersatz. Her slate was that pure. There was no high or low to her, only fuel.
Josue took Pearl to see Joker at the AMC Victoria Gardens 12. Her first movie in a theater. On the way, he explained the Batman mythology to her. “Sounds like something out of the Mormon bible,” she said. He beamed. He said his dream was to do a Batman musical with a Hispanic lead (him) in which the Bruce Wayne figure starts wearing a mask as a professional wrestler in Mexico City, christening himself Hombre Murciélago, and after suffering a wrestling head injury, which causes him to sometimes confuse his own identity with the vigilante Lucha Libre character he created, ventures from the ring to infiltrate “like, the drug cartels and organized crime” as a mysterious dispenser of rough wrestling poetic justice, and to redistribute that dirty money to the people.
“Wow,” Pearl said, “that sounds so crazy. Is that possible?” He beamed some more and veered off into a synopsis of The Pillowman, which he said was the best, most underrated play of all time, and he wished she could see it.
When they got inside, he demonstrated how to mix the Milk Duds into the popcorn for a “sweet-and-sour effect.” Pearl couldn’t believe how wide the screen was; she felt like she was looking at the night sky in the desert. This was not like watching a movie on a computer or TV; this was a five-sense hallucination.
They held hands and munched snacks happily through a half hour of previews, but when the movie began, the sound was so loud and full, Pearl felt it in her stomach. She became edgy. She loved the cello in the score and the gritty, richly saturated palette of the cinematography. She thrilled to Joaquin Phoenix’s oddball physicality, his crooked half smile, and his lilting, quiet, slightly effeminate voice; the barely controlled chaos within him reminded her of Bronson, and she felt, while all the other actors were in a movie, that Phoenix might leap from the screen into her lap at any moment. Suddenly, it all got to be too much—this story of tragic, comic-book paternity and a traumatized child realizing a beloved parent is crazy and bad. And the noise, her body was drowning in it; and that cello like a knife gutting her ritualistically in melodic patterns. She ran out.
Josue found her hyperventilating by the concessions and bought her a blue slushie to calm her down.
“You didn’t like it?” he asked.
“More like it didn’t like me,” she managed to whisper. She looked like she might barf an unholy melange of Twizzlers, popcorn, slushie, and Milk Duds. Josue told her to breathe. He settled her. It felt good to run to the rescue of his distressed damsel. But he could see he’d miscalculated. She was not like others. She was pure, and her receptors were not blunted by having grown up in a world of 24/7 sensory assault. He beheld her now, charmingly unaware that her lips and tongue were slushie blue, and thought she was not so much a person as an animal, a beautiful, innocent, wild thing, like a horse, though he’d never even touched a horse. Her tear tracks had stained her cheeks. He wiped them away and turned her to look in the mirror beyond the popcorn machine, and told her to stick out her tongue. She laughed when she saw it was as blue as a paint sample strip.
“Like Joker,” she said.
“No, like Pearly Smurfette,” Josue replied, reaching for a sweeter, less anarchic comparison.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“That’s okay, we’ll get to it,” he said, pulling her into a hug. She angled her head sharply into his shoulder for comfort. He wrapped his arms as wide around her as he could, like he might take her fully inside himself, like a kangaroo, he thought, another animal he’d not met. Holding her like this, he walked her out of Victoria Gardens. They had learned a lesson. The rest of the pop culture education would take place in the safety of Josue’s small room at home.
She couldn’t get into Disney at all, or anything animated. She didn’t get Jim Carrey, but did get Will Ferrell and Dave Chappelle the most, and George Carlin. She drew a blank on Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. She had little space for fantasy; she was catching up on reality as best she could. Josue’s curriculum was scattershot and wide-ranging, varying from day to day with his moods and memory. He had Pearl watch The Sopranos from start to finish in three days; she was very sad to hear that James Gandolfini was dead. She bailed on the Sex Pistols and Sex and the City almost immediately. She liked Flight of the Conchords and Breaking Bad and Philip Seymour Hoffman. She passed on Game of Thrones (“If I see a dragon,” she told Josue, “I’m out”). She thought New Girl was okay (liked Zooey Deschanel), and Marie Kondo, and was fascinated by cooking shows; YouTube’s Tiny Kitchen made her happy as well as Chef’s Table and The Great British Bake Off. She’d never seen food like that prepared, eaten, or wasted.
Josue was a happy teacher with a willing student. Every day, after school, when they weren’t rehearsing, they were at Josue’s house, listening to music and watching movies. Josue lived kind of far away. He wasn’t supposed to be at Rancho Cucamonga High geographically, but it was way better than the school in his neighborhood, so his father had an arrangement with a guy he knew that he’d pay the guy’s electric bill so that Josue could appear to live in the right district and could go to Rancho Cucamonga. Josue saw himself as a tough street kid aspiring upward but holding true to his roots (he could see himself on American Idol as that scrappy Mexican kid from the wrong side of the tracks who fell in love with show tunes but could still channel Control Machete, Cafe Tacvba, and Marc Anthony). With his limited knowledge of her history, he appraised Pearl as an innocent who needed to be protected in the big bad city. At only fifteen, he nominated himself as that mentor and protector. He’d been hopelessly smitten with Pearl since she came singing and slinging attitude out of that bathroom stall. He’d had a couple make-out sessions with girls in the past year, but Pearl was of a different order. It was his first time falling. He knew nothing of Bronson.
One afternoon, Pearl had decided it was a good idea for them to read through Romeo and Juliet together to see how it informed their characters in West Side Story. Mr. Bartholomew had suggested this exercise. They were lying on Josue’s bed, trading lines of Shakespeare while Nevermind played on repeat. They’d kissed before and made out heavily, but hadn’t had much of an opportunity away from school to go any further. Which was fine for Josue because he was a virgin, and slightly terrified of going all the way. One afternoon at rehearsal, Pearl had found a prop sword backstage and promptly swallowed half of it as her street performer Mother Mary had taught her. Mr. Bartholomew had pulled her aside and tried to warn her of the gestural ramifications of such an act before giving up and saying, “Whatever, Miss Pearl, if you got it, flaunt it—you do you.”
But Josue had nearly fainted at that demonstration, and the rumors flew. He was sure it all “meant” something, but was not at all sure what that something was. He just knew she was coming from a place he did not know. She filled him with desire and fear. Yeah, he’d seen how to do sex on the internet, he’d seen porn on his phone, of course, and porn took away some mystery for sure, but also somehow made the whole thing even more intimidating. Those guys were really big and could really fuck forever. He was content to make out with abandon with Pearl, putting everything into a kiss; going further was a big, roiling, scary unknown. “And I swear that I don’t have a gun,” Co
bain droned. “No, I don’t have a gun…”
But now Pearl removed Josue’s shirt and lightly scratched his chest, sending shivers down his spine, literally. Pearl felt no guilt, no shame, not yet. She thought of the id she’d learned about in her psych class. She thought of Eros. She didn’t think of Bronson.
Pearl removed her own shirt and guided Josue’s mouth to her nipple.
“Kiss,” she told him. He kissed her nipple. “Bite,” she said. He did as he was told. “Harder,” she said. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he bit down and she moaned loudly. Her volume made him self-conscious for a moment, and even though both Josue’s parents were at work and wouldn’t be home until evening, he turned up Nirvana a little louder. She bit his ear and stuck her tongue inside it. Something Bronson had taught her. The top of Josue’s head felt like it blew off as the horizon of sensual possibilities expanded exponentially. He couldn’t believe his ear could be the location of such wet pleasure. For a moment, he was frozen, listening to, even listening with, his body. She was inside his head.
When Pearl withdrew her tongue, she used it to speak. “Take me,” she demanded. And by “take me” she meant, let me take it from here. Josue, the young protector, sworn unspoken in his soul to do whatever this girl asked of him, complied and let her lead. He didn’t know how she knew what he didn’t, but he knew she must. He’d heard wacky shit about Mormons and their skills, maybe this was that. She was his student of the world, he was her student in the bed. He trembled in her hands.
Afterward, sweating and still full of wonder at what they’d done together, they lay in Josue’s bed napping and kissing until the sun went down outside the window. Josue had so many inchoate thoughts, so many questions, so many insecurities he wanted remedied, but he contented himself simply with smelling her; the back of her neck where her hair fell seemed to have most of the answers he was seeking. Most—
Sin sangre. Sin sangre. There’s no blood, though, he thought.
25.
HYRUM’S MIDDLE SCHOOL, Etiwanda, was only a couple miles from the high school, but really a world apart. A wild, redheaded stranger, Hyrum had begun as an oddity to his classmates. He was small for his age, but preternaturally strong, and Bronson had taught him how to fight, as he taught all the children. After being bullied by a couple kids, Hyrum took matters into his own hands, kicking their asses in the playground one after another until there were no challengers left. After that playground tournament, Hyrum was accepted, even exalted, as some kind of badass. Because Hyrum never “snitched,” this went on mostly beyond the purview of the teachers and the parents. Mary never knew Hyrum had been getting into scuffles until she was called in one day by the school psychiatrist, Julie Harwood, and told that Hyrum probably had ADHD and anger issues. Mary couldn’t believe her luck.
Just as her scam to supply herself with Percocet through her gym friend Frankie’s forged signature was beginning to raise suspicion at the pharmacy across town, came this boon out of the fucking blue.
“Oh yes,” she said to the school psychiatrist, “that sounds like him to a T. What’s the cure?”
“Well, there’s no cure, but we have had success with Ritalin and Adderall, depends on the kid, on their chemistry.”
“What’s that? I’ve never heard of those. You see, I’ve been living off the grid for the last twenty years—those sound like dangerous drugs.”
“Living off the grid?” she said, smiling. “Oh no, not dangerous at all. Millions of kids take them. Well, of course, any drug is dangerous if abused.”
“Of course, but if you say so, you’re a doctor, if you really think it will work.”
“I do. I think it’s worth looking into.”
“I trust you.”
“Thank you,” the doctor said, and thus stroked, felt warm enough to ask, “And what was it like living in another age like that for twenty years?”
Mary told her the general outline of the whole Agadda da Vida story. The doctor was riveted, enchanted by the tale of the ex–sword swallower turned Mormon sister-wife describing an Old Testament harem life out in the desert—the hard farm work and hard lessons, the revolutionary curriculum, the children traumatized by helplessly watching one mother take two years to die. But she was also concerned about Mary as a woman, this “sister-wife” thing, as Mary knew she would be, as she slanted the telling this way and that for her post-#MeToo audience. So Mary cannily fed the prevailing narrative and leaned into exaggerated descriptions of Bronson’s unassailable male dominance.
When Mary had finished, Dr. Harwood studied the floor for a few moments, and then intoned gravely, “That would be considered trauma, no, that is trauma, what that man put you through, as part of a harem. You have to know now you are worth more than that.”
Mary looked at her through lids lowered in shame. “I am?” she asked like a little girl.
“Oh, yes,” Harwood said, and came over from behind her desk to hold Mary’s hand. Mary had a good mind to stick her tongue in the doctor’s mouth and freak her right out, but she didn’t want to kill this golden, Adderall-laying goose.
“I do get anxious,” Mary said, “without reason—palpitations, sweats, shortness of breath.” She’d read about the symptoms, but, fucked-up thing was, she wasn’t even lying.
“PTSD.”
“PTSTD?” Mary played dumb.
Harwood laughed and shook her head. “No, PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder—you see it in soldiers, battered wives, former cult members, even dogs, killer whales, elephants—sentient beings whose will has been violated and erased by sustained physical or psychological violence and lack of agency. My specialty, obviously, is children, but I’d be happy—happy is the wrong word—justified, feel just—to give you a scrip for Xanax or Ambien or both along with a scrip for Hyrum’s Adderall. I’m a child psychiatrist, but I don’t do any private practice anymore. I find this more rewarding spiritually, what I can do in a public school. I’m sorry, do you have a family doctor?”
“Family doctor? None of my kids had been to a doctor before this year. We rely on God through prayer to heal us.” Well, she knew that might be going a little far with the vaguely Christian Scientist stuff, but no, Julie Harwood ate all that exoticism up.
“Wow, okay. Amazing.” Harwood whistled. “I say Xanax and Ambien because people have different reactions, and you can choose which works better, just let me know, okay?”
“Different strokes for different folks. Different pills for different ills.”
“Precisely.”
“Do you really think I need help, though?”
Mary found herself in the odd position of being fully honest and dishonest at the same time—lying for these drugs at the same time she was sincerely asking for help made her feel very fragmented and powerful at once.
She’d already gotten what she wanted, the Rx, and yet she kept gilding the lily, going for style points even as Harwood was filling out prescriptions on official stationery and signing them so sloppily that Mary would be able to forge and get infinite refills. She’d passed some bad checks on Venice Beach decades ago; she knew how to bluff this system. “I think I can make it on my own.”
“We all need help. Prolonged abuse can alter brain chemistry, and that sometimes calls for a chemical answer. And I think it’s best to treat the family as a system, rather than individuals.” Ha, Mary thought, good luck getting Bronson in here. Harwood said, “The pills are only a beginning, though. And you don’t have to take them, sometimes just knowing they’re there is enough, knowing the option is there. Bottom line is—you need to talk to someone. Your kids need to talk to someone. You’ve all been through a war.”
“Okay. Can I talk to you?” Mary felt that she was playing a character in a play, and the longer she stayed in the scene, the more naturally the lines came to her.
“For now, for today, you can talk to me, sure, but we need to find you someone else long-term, okay? To start the real work and the real healing.”
“Y
ou’ll be my training wheels.” Mary watched a change come over the other woman’s face, and was afraid momentarily that she’d gone too far with the brown-nosing. But no, Julie Harwood was simply holding back tears. “Yes. Let me write down a few suggestions for you as well. Good people, good resources in this city.” She grabbed a tissue for herself and reached for the pen and stationery again.
“Thank you, Dr. Harwood.”
“Call me Julie. And hey, how are your other kids doing up at the high school?”
“They seem good.”
“Public school success stories, huh? We need more of those. Amazing. But we should keep an eye on the high flyers, too. Sometimes they’re the ones in the most trouble. Here.” Julie handed her the prescriptions and a list of local therapists she might go to. “Meet a few different ones, don’t jump at the first, find your fit. It’s more like Match.com for the psyche.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t … I just mean, shop around.”
But I’ve already found my fit and it’s in my hand, Mary thought. She hugged and kissed the doctor, bounded like a mountain goat out of that office, threw the list of suggested shrinks into the nearest garbage can, and drove straight to a more local pharmacy. Hyrum didn’t need it; he would figure out what being a boy meant eventually, what to do with that energy and testosterone, and besides, she wasn’t going to start the kid on fucking drugs! Are you all fucking nuts? What kind of a monster does that? You put a sane kid in a crazy world and his crazy reaction means he’s sane, not crazy! All these well-adjusted, drugged-up kids? They’re the crazy ones! Who could be well adjusted to this world of America and Trump and the twenty-first century? Put the sane on drugs—they’re insane!
There’s nothing at all wrong with Hyrum. He’s a savage boy, born as all boys are, to be wild. The world will break him soon enough; he didn’t need drugs to break him, denature him first. There’s no cure for nature, she thought, you just gotta survive it.
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