by John Rechy
“A castle!” Lisa gasped.
Jesse James found it in his guide. “It's just a restaurant,” he said. “You gotta be a member and you gotta wear a tie, ‘no slacks for ladies, please,’ and gorillas and monsters roam throughout the room at dinner, and they got live magic acts.”
“You're making that up about gorillas and monsters.” Lisa refused to be deflated. “Imagine! A magic castle! And a purple tree!” She closed her eyes deliriously. “And the real movie-star homes, somewhere! It's just like it's supposed to be. Just like I knew it would be. Hollywood!'”
They had dinner at Denny's Restaurant, one of many of a purple and orange chain. “Meal's on me,” Orin announced, in sudden high spirits after the reflective mood, the intent journey. Lisa ordered roast beef. Jesse had steak with onion rings. Orin had chicken. The boy's-smile of delight gracing his face, Orin asked how they would like to be treated to a movie?
“A great old one, yes!” Lisa craved, finishing her apple pie. No ice cream; she decided to be loyal to Baskin-Robbins, realizing she hadn't had one today.
Outside, from a row of propped, beaten plastic containers on skinny metal stilts, they got a paper by dropping coins into a rain-rusted slot. Several theaters in the city, and nearby, showed only old movies—two different ones each night. Lisa was in ecstasy. Her soaring happiness alighted, slightly, when Orin chose two movies none of them had ever heard of—but he liked the titles: Blow-up and The Conformist.
Her face tortured, hands pressing against the car window while a man inside looks away stoically, a woman screams soundlessly. Then she runs through a snow-blanketed forest, trees as stark as dark lines. Men are chasing her. They shoot at her. Blood colors the snow. Then there is an abrupt change in place and time. A man is propositioning another. The man who sat in the car, listens to them, listens.
It was not a “great old movie,” but Lisa watched carefully. So different from anything she'd ever seen.
Jesse had been impatient, and he groaned when Orin said, “We'll stay to see the beginning.”
Jesse began to doze, would wake up, doze again. Green, green grass, so green it looks dyed, a breeze is blowing through the trees, a woman fights with a man or coaxes him to make love—she leads him— … A series of photographs, each larger, larger, larger. A hand holding a gun, a man lurking. Larger. The “man” has become an opening within the dark trees, the “gun” is a protrusion from them. Larger. The close scrutiny has destroyed the clarity of the photograph, creating totally new forms. … Against white steps on which sit abandoned figures as a cold wind rampages scattered newspapers, a man flings his arms about himself inviting a strait jacket.
“I much prefer the all-times!” Outside, Lisa had to assert her fidelity to the old movies. It had been jostled as she watched the new films intently, fascinated by the complicated characters, the bold situations. “Much more!” she reaffirmed. “I bet you liked the part where the two girls come in and the photographer takes off their clothes— …”
“I missed that!” Jesse was annoyed.
“Those movies are not great all-times!” Lisa further forced away the strange new characters in the films they had just seen. In the car, she held Pearl, who had waited there. Lisa hardly ever carried the doll with her anymore—people didn't understand that Pearl wasn't just a doll.
“The man couldn't make up his mind which side he was on,” Orin said, without identifying which film he was talking about. “He was really on both—and that's why he couldn't act—and then he didn't know what was real, so he didn't know where he belonged.”
At the motel, Lisa took a shower first. Orin touched the television, but didn't turn it on. He looked out the window. He seemed nervous to Jesse; did he really try to avoid turning the television on, the way it sometimes seemed? The water from the shower … Jesse heard it. Lisa would be naked under it. Again he imagined the firm body, her pubic hair the color of her nipples—yes! He let his hands drop between his legs. The soap would make bubbles between her thighs, and her fingers would touch, just inside. Then she'd bend to wash— … He removed his hands from his groin quickly. He “felt” Orin's eyes. But when he looked, Orin was staring out into the night.
In her light robe, Lisa came out in a cloud of steam, which was shoved back immediately by the cool artificial air. She was glad the television wasn't on.
Jesse could smell Lisa's clean bathed body. “Gonna take my shower,” he said. In the bathroom, he locked the door, careful not to allow a sound. He breathed deeply, to gather Lisa's intimate sexual scent where she'd stood naked, right here; he detected a slight, arousing odor, like clean perspiration. He touched the wet towel, running his hands along it so he would be sure to touch the part that had dried her breasts, the part that had rubbed between her legs, the— … Then he noticed she had left her half-slip neatly hanging on the rod of the shower curtains. It was dry! She hadn't washed it when she changed into another one. His hard-on chafed against his jeans, and he opened them. Had she left the half-slip there deliberately?—for him—sensing his growing want, asserting hers? He touched the slip where it would have slid between her legs as she walked all day. Yes, she had left it for him. He moved the flimsy material over his own groin, connecting with hers. He could smell the sex, and he was very sure she had left this for him.
Or for Orin?
Orin could just as easily have come in next—but he hadn't. Jesse put the slip neatly on a shelf—and then he showered, forcing his hands away from his eager cock. He dried with Lisa's wet towel and moistened another, to leave as his, on the floor. Then he folded the dry slip carefully and replaced it where she had put it. He would leave it for Orin, extending to him the touch of Lisa's flesh—the sexual woman.
“Pretty mothers don't have ugly babies—and pretty babies stay pretty only if they don't make their mommies ugly and old, because a woman is beautiful only when she's loved. That's what Mrs. Skeffington said in one of the real all-times. … Now go to sleep, pretty Pearl.”
Lisa's childish voice jarred Jesse. There she was, a little girl again! The television set was still not on. “Your turn, Orin,” Jesse said. Orin seemed to welcome another excuse for leaving the television dormant. He walked into the bathroom. Jesse heard the water running. He wanted to ask Lisa about the slip, but if she claimed she'd left it there accidentally, that would disappoint him a lot. The water stopped in the shower.
Reddish hair dampened darker, Orin came out. He looked at the television set, still gray, silent.
“Forgot to brush my teeth.” Jesse returned to the bathroom. The half-slip was folded on top of a stack of fresh towels. And so Orin had at least touched it—and carefully! Jesse felt proud of his smart maneuver. But what had he proved? He puzzled. Later he'd figure it all out. When he came out, he heard Lisa's angered voice: “She's that other Cassandra!” She pointed to the screen.
Now Jesse wished he had masturbated. Wafted by the currents of sexuality, he had hoped that “it” would happen tonight with Lisa. But watching Orin staring at the forbidding woman on the screen made him doubt it. He felt awfully frustrated, and he sat dejectedly on a chair.
Sister Woman's hands rose, sighing material floated; the hands wove invisible pictures, seen only by her. Her gliding fingers provided shades and hues. The chiffon fainted onto her lap, her hands folded.
“You had a vision,” Brother Man said. Even in his suit, he was like a fleshed shadow of her, her echo.
The willowy hands of the woman rested like birds. “Something awesome,” she said. She widened her eyes, as if the vision were so enormous she must enlarge her sight to encompass it. “Something awesome is coming,” she breathed. Her eyes closed, and her arms rose, the blue chiffon spreading like frail wings. “Prepare now to be a part of it. Praise Jesus!” the gashed lips whispered, echoing the breath of the chiffon. “Prepare!” the rising voice ordered. “Bring me your sins—and theirs!—to burn in hell; your tears of salvation will quench the fires.”
The telephone number appeare
d on the screen. The camera pulled back on the bowed head of Sister Woman. Brother Man bowed his head, too, and imitated the placement of her hands. As the camera pulled back on the figures praying, now kneeling in the attitude of supplication, farther back to reveal a crowded traumatized audience of men and women, young and old, many with their eyes shut, quivering hands raised toward the woman's pulling presence—a solemn male voice intoned: “If you have a problem, call us; share with us; witness with us for Jesus. Send love, send a love donation to aid in his holy mission; help the blessed mission of our blessed Sister Woman.” Against the blue backdrop, the kneeling figures diminished, fading, faded. The screen blazed blue. Across it, unfurled, was the American flag—and, over it, the white shadow of a luminous cross.
Orin turned off the screen, his eyes fixed on the pinpoint of shining light that remains there for seconds. He said, “She knows I'm here.”
He stood up. The reddish blond features seemed shaded. He closed his eyes. His hands covered his face, for seconds, a minute, longer.
Lisa watched him, terrified. Jesse moved toward him. Orin seemed to have stopped breathing. Then they saw him release the pressure of his fingers on his face. His hands slid down the somber face they had covered, unmasking another one. The little boy smiled. A fragment of laughter issued.
Lisa breathed in relief. She got into her bed, with Pearl beside her. “Now don't you fuss and wake me so I look a wreck,” she admonished Pearl.
“We're sleeping together,” Orin said.
“You mean it!” Jesse stood up. Lisa's slip! That's what had done it! he congratulated himself. It had worked! And that's what he'd intended, and why he hadn't masturbated then! He understood it all now, proudly, what he'd done, and why.
“Leave Pearl there, Lisa,” Orin said softly. “She'll grow up in her sleep.”
“She's not supposed to grow up!” a childish voice answered Orin.
Orin nodded, yes.
Lisa covered the doll. Barefoot, and gladly now, feeling desire stirred instantly, she got up and lay in the other bed. She heard her heart thumping, but even that was a good sensation, warm, good, expectant—better than all that. Jesse sat on the bed and removed his pants. The light was still on; he moved slowly, half expecting—dreading—Orin would forbid. Jesse slid naked into the bed. Orin stood before them. Lisa moved to the middle, Jesse beside her; his leg didn't dare touch hers, not yet.
“Take off all your clothes, Lisa, please,” Orin said.
Naked, Lisa felt the warmth grow. She raised the sheet up to her and Jesse's necks. She smiled, the way she remembered Scarlett smiled in that scene in bed after— …
Orin turned off the light, but bright night flowed in through drawn drapes, filling the room with dark whiteness. Orin took off all his clothes. His body was thin, chiseled, translucent in that bright darkness as he stood before them. Lisa and Jesse watched him. His thick cock was aroused, firm.
Lisa moved closer to the middle, to make room for him beside her. She felt Jesse, hard. Orin lay in bed next to her. Then in one violent thrashing, he turned away from them, his face buried into his pillow. In a moment, the pillow was wet with smothered tears.
Hester Washington: “Purified Fire”
Hester Washington looked back at her house in Watts and wondered whether it would be intact when she returned. It was a neat white house in a tidy block of small houses on Grape Street—she liked the name—lawns carefully tended, flowers like parrots. Curled wrought iron, camouflaging as decoration, bolted the windows. No matter how pretty or viny the design, the iron bars were there for one nagging purpose, to attempt to protect from pillage and violence; everyone who could afford them had them. As she looked back, the iron-barred houses assumed the appearance of pretty fortresses.
Hester was a small, handsome woman, smaller than she looked because her bones were big, and she was well-proportioned. She was a healthy fifty-five years old, and had kept her weight intact for twenty-five years, 130 sturdy pounds. Her hair was solidly black—not one single devil-white hair! She dressed well and always wore a hat; white gloves in summer, dark ones in winter. She carried her maid's uniform in her bag, and she folded it neatly so that it would not crease. In Arkansas, her mother had taught her manners. Not only had she kept them, she had refined them. A proud woman, she walked with her chin held slightly up. Her eyes—the source of her one self-allowed vanity—were the color of chocolate mints.
Some other Negro, and Mexican, maids, whom the bus would collect at the various stops throughout Watts and its outskirts, assumed the authority of their employers—basking, but only in the bus, in the borrowed shadow of someone famous, rich, powerful. Not Hester; no one knew whom she worked for. That she worked in Bel Air—perhaps the thickest concentration of wealth in the country—she could not conceal from the others who transferred to the Sunset Boulevard bus, but she herself never mentioned it. She preferred to carry her own authority.
As she began her trek to Bel Air this mid-morning—her employer had called to tell her to be late—Hester looked back at the bars on her window. As soon as she could, she would get prettier ones—the flowery ones; these looked too much like stark jail bars.
People marveled—especially if they came from other big cities—at how pretty Los Angeles's black ghetto is, especially what Hester considered its “front part.” But even there, trees are not as lush, not as many, as in other sections of the city. Lawns come much closer to the streets than elsewhere. Even the flowers here grow more desperate, in splashed colors, and die more quickly—with one exception, giant-headed, ordinary sunflowers. It is always hotter in Watts, because the houses are shoved together, miles from a soothing ocean breeze.
Beyond the deceptive prettiness—which continues, lingers, never completely disappears—and into the belly of Watts—are sweaty two-storey tenements, then rows and rows of time-scarred houses, walls reinforced with sheets of corrugated, aging aluminum. Deeper in, the area resembles poor urban pockets in the black South; wooden shanties huddle among tall yellow grass. Oxidized pieces of cars that refused to budge lie dead among blades of yellowing grass. Increasingly shoving out of the thinning prettiness, the desolation and poverty become more visible through screenless windows: barren rooms, bedless bedrooms, cardboard-patched walls, houses without electricity or gas.
There are recurrent remains of houses, left abandoned, with boarded-up windows next to which half-burned trucks or cars decompose in lots choked by weeds clutching at debris; walls—slabs of former buildings—lashed by smoker gutted houses; patched ones—these are reminders of the fierce Watts riots. These remains convey a sense of a battle fought and lost and—those unhealed scars retained as monuments decorated only with angry slogans—of a war still to rage, inevitable even if also inevitably to be lost.
Hester had long arranged her almost daily journey from Grape Street to the bus stop in such a way that she avoided the sights she hated most, encountered the ones she liked, or tolerated. It was difficult to accomplish that entirely, since aspects of one intrude into the other. Hester would walk an extra block in order to avoid a wounded area. She also had alternate routes, depending on her mood, her tolerance of one view as opposed to another.
Several sights she could not avoid, no matter what the route: the grubby loan shops, their windows guarded at night by chained, iron spider webs; the liquor stores flooded with dirty light; the gnarled junkyards; and the Coors Beer signs with what she knew were white models colored brown—no Negro man ever looked that silly, with a tiny moustache, short-cropped straight hair! Intertwined throughout, however, were the usually white churches with names Hester read aloud like a prayer: “Straight Way Baptist Church,” “Fountain of Life Church,” “Mount Calvary Assembly.”
Unavoidable ambushes were the outdoor furniture “stores” and outdoor clothes “shops” they sprouted overnight on the edges of abandoned dusty lots—ugly clothes and ugly furniture offered at outrageous “bargain prices” by white—and black—“distributors.” Hes
ter concentrated on the open fruit and vegetable stands—healthy squash and golden corn, fat strawberries.
There were other sights and presences no one in Watts could avoid: the constant spectacle of dark men pushed against walls by white policemen; handcuffed men and women lying helplessly on the ground. In their cruising or speeding black and white cars, the white policemen with hate-spattered faces and ready derision rode like impervious lords. One of them had killed a friend of Hester's—a woman, on her own lawn—claiming she had been about to assault him, while she was lying facedown on the ground. The demanded investigation about to be completed would merely uphold the policeman, she knew. Now and then there was a Negro in the despised uniform, and he would try to prove he was just as mean as the white ones.
Hester looked beyond frayed trees toward the scaffolded Watts Towers. Before the city had begun—and quickly stopped—renovating the structure, Hester had been able to see the glimmering tip of the highest glass spire.
She had often walked to the Towers, delighting in the shards of patterned plates she located embedded in the cement. They reminded her of her mother's careful selection of Sunday china, much of which she had inherited. Until the scaffolding had gone up, a visit to the Towers had been part of the soft rituals that defined Hester's life. Evenings, she watered her careful garden. Each Sunday she prayed—in church, not with those television evangelists who claimed to be holy but were on the side of the devil, just draining the poor. She watched television only infrequently, with one exception, when she had followed every moment of “Roots.” It had convinced her that her heritage intersected with one or another of those great ancient African kings. Nightly, she read from the Bible, usually from her favorite book, Ezekiel; she memorized passages from it. And there were the regular visits she paid the poor, the sick, the elderly in her neighborhood, always bringing an appropriate sweet or other food. She would have made a good nurse, she knew—she enjoyed ministering to the needy; but she had married very early in Arkansas a man who brought her here and died in a car crash on the freeway only a few weeks later; and there was nothing Hester could do but become a maid.
