Lola has flustered him with her baptism by knife. He’ll be born again, wearing his leash no one can see. Maybe she’s saved a few young girls from his violent sick thrusting until he starts to feel safe and picks up his habit again. When he does get the urge to kiddie rape, and he will get the urge, he will be some other hood’s problem.
Rosie is a different story. She lives here. She belongs to Lola.
When Lola turns to her, the fierce promise on her lips is gone, and she gives the addict mother a peaceful smile. It is a smile that promises something besides violence, death, and justice. It is a smile that promises relief.
Lola holds up the bindle, so Rosie takes her eyes off Lola’s face. The drugs are more important. “Got something for you, Rosie.”
“Okay,” Rosie says, their last encounter washed from her stupid leaking brain. Heroin has erased the image of Lola with the baseball bat, poised to crush Rosie’s sick skull. Like her many mistakes, Rosie’s memories don’t linger. She will never learn.
“Just need a little favor first.”
“Okay.”
“Do you recognize me?” Lola asks.
“Yeah. Lola. Garcia’s girl.”
Lola smiles again. “That’s right.”
“You need a favor?” Rosie asks. “Just tell me. My girl works with women, too.”
“Lucy,” Lola says. “Your little girl’s name is Lucy.”
Rosie gives a vicious little laugh. “Right. You kept her. You didn’t want to give her back to her momma. Why’d you want another woman’s child, anyway? What’d you do to her?”
The implication bursts Lola open like a single drop of water exploding a whole pan of oil. She wants to rush Rosie, to feel the stringy ligaments of her neck squishing under Lola’s small, mighty hands.
“No,” Lucy’s voice, quiet but firm, douses Lola’s anger like a flood. Lola remembers God and Noah and wiping out the evil. Lucy has done all that, just now.
“Whatever,” Rosie mutters, and even wanting her fix, wanting to pimp out her daughter to get it, Lola can tell Lucy has hurt Rosie’s feelings because she likes Lola more than her own mother.
Time for the real flood.
Lola takes out the single sheet of paper she printed off the California Courts’ website the day after they met Ms. Laura. It is form GC-211, the Nomination and Consent of a Guardian.
“You’re going to sign this.”
“Fuck I am,” Rosie says and turns her ugly mean face toward the cushions.
Lola holds up the heroin, though, and it’s like Rosie can smell it. She turns back.
“You got a pen?”
A decent mother would ask what the fuck she was signing. Not Rosie. Lola hands her a red ink pen from her pocket, and Rosie signs her name in neat cursive, with a heart over the “i,” like a flirtatious schoolgirl. It’s pathetic. Lola folds the paper in four neat squares and puts it in her pocket. In the corner of the room, Lucy exhales.
“That it?”
“One more thing.”
“Okay.” Rosie does not ask Lola what that one thing is. Even if Lola were to tell her, though, she doubts Rosie would object. She keeps her eyes on the prize powder.
Lola curls to the ground, back rounding as she comes up, graceful as a dancer. She shakes her black hair back over her shoulders, out of her face, and when she comes up, she shows Rosie the green glass bottle before she smashes it against the wall. Beer backwash wets the drywall, a remnant of someone else’s too-good time. Lola thinks for a second of Darrel, of the improvised weapon she used on him. But this is different. She is not going to hurt Rosie.
Rosie doesn’t have the energy to jump in surprise at the noise. Instead, her face screws up in confusion.
She doesn’t know what’s about to happen to her.
“Lucy,” Lola says. “You have a television in your room?”
“Yes.”
“Go back there and turn it up. As loud as it goes. Whatever you want to watch.”
Lucy nods, as if Lola has given her an important task instead of a treat. Lucy’s instincts are correct—her task is to not see what’s about to happen.
Lucy skitters away, and as Lola edges toward Rosie, putting herself between mother and daughter, she holds up the fractured bottle, her hand on the neck. The blare of the television from Lucy’s bedroom lets Lola know it’s safe to continue.
“See this bottle?” she says to Rosie. “Just draw the edges across your skin. Like this.”
Lola’s words verge on the edge of breathless. Her tone plays and seduces as she turns her hand palm up and draws the teeth she broke into the green glass across the delicate skin that runs from her wrist to her elbow.
“Really?” Rosie asks. “You sure that’s all you want?”
“This is what I want,” Lola replies.
“And you’ll give me…that?” Rosie licks her lips, eyes still on the bindle. Lola nods. “Okay, then,” Rosie says. It’s clear from her tone she thinks Lola’s getting a bum deal.
Lucy’s mother takes the bottle from Lola, turning her palm to the cottage cheese ceiling, and draws the sharp teeth across the mottled flesh of her wrist.
“Deeper,” Lola says.
Rosie repeats the motion, pressing harder into the flesh, the green glass catching a reddened river of a track mark on its journey. She cries out.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Lola says. “Just a little deeper. Then we’re done.”
Rosie obeys, and now the reddened river opens up, springing blood that’s almost purple from beneath the skin’s surface.
Lucy’s mother looks to Lola, her eyes hopeful. Has she done enough? Lola smiles and steps toward her, taking Rosie’s hopeful happy face in her hands.
“Thank you,” Lola says. She rubs Rosie’s cheek with a finger. It’s a gentle caress, and Rosie nuzzles into Lola’s hand, as Lucy has nuzzled into her shoulder, unused to comfort but eager to accept it.
“I did okay?” Rosie asks from Lola’s palm.
“You did so good,” Lola responds. “Now you just have to do the other.”
Rosie pulls away from Lola, determined, and turns her other palm to the ceiling. In a matter of seconds, she has opened up the same purple fountain there, and Lola wonders if some of Rosie’s blood pulsed past the wound on the first arm, escaping, only to be caught on the other.
Rosie gives one faded smile to Lola before she starts to sink to the floor, but Lola goes with her, a strong hand under the woman’s neck. She lays her onto the shit-stained shag and whispers, “You did great.”
“Thank you,” Lucy’s mother says.
Before Rosie breathes her last breath, Lola presses the bindle into her hand. Lola sees the smile spread across Rosie’s face, her fix secured, as the last of her life escapes onto the scratchy carpet.
When Lola looks back, she sees Lucy, back turned, leaning against her bedroom door frame. Lola knows the girl saw nothing. She knows Lucy understood why Lola told her to turn up the television. Lucy understood that Lola wanted her to protect herself.
“It’s okay, Lucy,” Lola says. She walks to Lucy and kneels in front of her. Lucy buries her head in Lola’s shoulder. When she looks up, she is beaming at Lola.
Her happiness will pass, Lola knows, and this event will mix in with the laundry list of traumas she’s been through in her five years. Still, the buck has stopped here, with Lucy’s dead mother. It’s time for Lucy to have a childhood.
“Lucy,” Lola says, “the things your mother made you do. You will never have to do them again.”
Lucy gives Lola a solemn nod, believing her.
Lola gathers Lucy in her arms, and the little girl goes limp, relaxed, her tired bones no longer keeping her stiff and on guard. She doesn’t need to watch her back when Lola’s carrying her.
When Lola has made sure Lucy’s head is buried in her shoulder so the little girl can’t see her dead mother, flat bones leaking blood onto carpet, she starts out the door. The young man scum left it open in his hurry, and Lola,
feeling the confidence of a true leader, hadn’t bothered to shut it before she helped Rosie do what was right. No one in her hood would rat her out.
But it is not someone from her hood who has witnessed what just happened.
It is Andrea, holding her car keys, clicker under thumb, as if her ride is nearby and what she sees will only distract her for a moment. Lola watches the prosecutor’s eyes go from body to glass bottle to bindle.
Lola remembers the apple red car rounding the corner. Andrea’s red Audi.
“You following me?” Lola challenges. Instead of weakening her, having Lucy helpless on her shoulder has only added to her strength.
“Yes,” Andrea says, and Lola nods acceptance. There’s another pause, a stalemate, Lola thinks, until Andrea continues, “An addict commits suicide with a full bindle in her hand.”
“She got those drugs from a man who was here before you. She didn’t give him cash.” Lola shifts Lucy on her hip so that Andrea can see her worn young face. “This is her daughter.”
Lola does not have to spell it out for Andrea. She doesn’t have to explain that the man wasn’t a dealer, that he was a predator preying on an addict and her child to get his own illegal fix.
Andrea turns her back on Lola and Lucy. Lola can’t say for sure how much she saw or didn’t see. Lola hugs Lucy tighter, because she can’t keep her promise to Lucy if she’s in jail.
But Andrea doesn’t leave. She enters the apartment, bypassing the rancid meat on the kitchen counter. She does a minimal amount of digging in the few bare cabinets before coming up with a greasy square of aluminum foil. She returns to Lucy’s dead mother and bends, covering her own palm with the foil as she plucks the bindle from the dead woman’s palm.
“Get this out of here,” she tells Lola. “Without it, it’s a suicide.”
Lola nods as she takes the foil that looks like it once contained a burger. She sees drips of mustard and mayonnaise, forgotten wilts of iceberg lettuce and faded red tomatoes, now serving as insulation for the heroin bindle.
“Thanks,” Lola says, then, “Guess you’ve been through some shit.”
“Guess so,” Andrea says.
Lola is smart enough to ask an immediate follow-up. “What do you want in return?”
“Help me get the fat man,” Andrea says.
“And if I don’t agree? You charge me in this”—Lola is about to say junkie, then remembers Lucy and corrects herself—“woman’s murder.”
“Doubt I’ll have time.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we’ll both be dead.”
Lucy presses her forehead so tight into Lola’s neck, Lola can feel the glaze of sweat on the little girl’s brow.
“Deal?” Andrea says, extending a hand to Lola.
“Deal,” Lola says, her heart quickening as Andrea shakes her hand.
And just like that, Lola has an equal.
“From scratch,” Lola says, serving slices of chocolate cake on paper plates to the cooing older women of her neighborhood. They demur and deny, saying they shouldn’t, too many calories. They tell Lola she should have their pieces. She is too skinny.
Lola is pleased with the way this impromptu end of summer barbecue has come together. It is the night after she helped Lucy’s mother do the right thing. The evening air contains a bite of chill that wasn’t present a week and a half ago, when El Coleccionista crashed the first party she and Garcia had hosted. Lola’s world has shifted beneath her, and she wants all the people of the neighborhood, her people, together before she tries to conquer the two men who want her dead.
“Don’t insult me,” she says to the padded objecting women now. “Have some cake.” It is not a request the way it would have been at the last barbecue.
The women obey, taking their slices off the tray Lola found somewhere in the depths of her kitchen cabinets. Now, looking at the metal, she notes the burnt crusts of dough stuck to the surface. It is not a tray, but a cookie sheet. Oh fucking well.
As the ladies sink their teeth into the rich chocolate concoction, Lola closes her eyes and enjoys their sighs of pleasure.
“Better than mine?” The woman’s voice, equal parts anger and sadness, would once have quickened Lola’s pulse.
Now, when Lola opens her eyes to find Kim standing in front of her, hands on hips and heeled foot tapping, she feels peace wash over her in a gentle wave. Garcia’s ex is wearing too much makeup. Her mascara has run enough to let Lola know she’s been crying. Lola wonders if the tears are because Kim has figured out Lola murdered her brother, or if they are the result of realizing Garcia knew the identity of Carlos’s killer all along and never told her.
“Kim,” Veronica says, stepping forward before Lola feels the need to speak. “Why don’t you go on home?”
“It’s okay,” Lola says, placing a gentle hand on the older woman’s shoulder and moving her aside. “I’ll take care of this.”
Veronica’s silence tells Lola that’s exactly what she’s afraid of. Like everyone else here, Veronica now knows Lola is the true power behind the Crenshaw Six.
“Come with me,” Lola says to Kim.
“Lola…” Veronica again, her tone as close to warning as she dares to get with Lola now.
The doughy ladies have stopped forking moist crumbs of chocolate cake to their mouths.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” Lola says, drawing Kim closer to her. Veronica bristles like a scared porcupine at the sight of the two women standing shoulder to shoulder.
Halfway to the door, Garcia intercepts, grill tongs still in hand. “Hey. Kim. Where are you going? Stay out here. Have a beer.”
“Start the burgers,” Lola says to him. He retreats, and Lola sees Kim’s head tilt in confusion—How can he give up on me so quickly?
Inside, Lola tells Kim to wait in the living room. It is empty here, all the guests wanting to know what’s going on but not daring to come inside.
“You killed my brother,” Kim says, anger and sadness being replaced by exhaustion.
“It’s okay,” Lola says again. “You’re so tired. You can relax now.”
When Lola returns from the bedroom, she finds Kim sinking into the foxhunting chair.
“Comfortable, isn’t it?” Lola asks.
Kim nods.
“You want it?”
Kim looks up at Lola with questioning eyes. “What?”
“To set up house with Garcia.”
“He told me not to come here. He told me you would hurt me.”
If Garcia is painting Lola as the villain in this scenario, he has not told Kim the whole truth.
Lola steps toward Kim, feeling three times the other woman’s height as she stands over her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lola says. “I’m going to save you.”
Lola holds out the stack of bills she retrieved from the pile of dirty cash.
“Five thousand dollars,” she tells Kim.
“You can’t buy my silence.”
“I don’t need to. Because I already have his.”
“His?”
“Garcia’s.”
“He just found out. There was evidence, he said, in the house, that he just found…”
“He was here. When it happened.”
The realization knocks the wind out of Kim. Her shoulders slump. Her hands clasp and unclasp. She wails, and Veronica appears behind Lola.
“Lola?”
“One second.”
Lola kneels at Kim’s feet and whispers so they are the only two people who can hear.
“He knew all along. He betrayed you. Do what you want with me. I’ll probably be dead by tomorrow. But take this money and get as far away from him as you can. He’s a chickenshit. You’re not.”
Lola presses the cash into Kim’s shaking hands. When Kim collapses onto Lola’s shoulders in racking sobs, Lola finds her own arms encircling the broken woman and holding her tight.
“Veronica,” Lola says finally. “Take Kim home, please
.”
Veronica nods her obedience and takes Kim by the hand.
When Lola rejoins her party, the neighbors’ whispers turn to pretend laughs. People start to eat and drink again. Garcia grips the spatula in one hand and a beer in the other. When Lola gives him a nod that everything is okay, he is foolish enough to take her at face value.
Lola catches a glimpse of Lucy across the yard, trying to join in a game with some other neighborhood children. But the others form a line of little dark heads, blocking Lucy out of their fun, and right then Lola is determined that the plan she and Andrea hatched earlier over Rosie Amaro’s dead body will work. She must live. She has to protect this little girl, and she has to shake all the shit out of her own little corner of this world.
Lola strides across the yard. A tangle of boys trips past Lola with the thin, fiery sparkler sticks in hand. They lead the way for her, and in a few steps she has arrived at the line of black-haired bitches barring Lucy from her first chance at a normal childhood.
“Yo,” Lola says, and the line of long straight black hair turns. The girls are identical to Lola, despite their different features—round faces, skinny legs, crooked wicked smiles. “Let her play.” Lola jerks a thumb at Lucy.
“No,” one girl says, and Lola gathers from the way the girl draws herself up, tall and straight and unbending, that she is their leader. “You can’t make us.”
This queen bee is trouble, Lola thinks. She herself was never the queen bee in school. She kept to herself and her books and tried to do right by her little brother. If anyone bullied her, she didn’t notice. She had other shit on her mind. But now, with Lucy here, safe, with no older man waiting in the wings to hurt her, Lola is realizing how mean other little girls can be.
“Is it true your mom’s a whore?” The queen bee poses the question to Lucy. Queen Bee’s future flashes through Lola’s mind—straight Cs, eating disorder, high school pregnancy and shady abortion, fake nails and stinky cheap hairspray. Lola wishes she could share her mind with Lucy now, to let the little girl see the smallness of this particular queen.
Instead, as Lola fights the urge to go for the blade she always has in her pocket, Lucy says, “Yes.”
Lola Page 28
