My Name Is Venus Black is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Heather Lloyd
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
THE DIAL PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lloyd, Heather, author.
Title: My name is Venus Black: a novel / Heather Lloyd.
Description: New York : Dial Press, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020823 | ISBN 9780399592188 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399592195 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Teenage girls—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION / Crime. | GSAFD: Bildungsromans.
Classification: LCC PS3612.L578 M9 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020823
Ebook ISBN 9780399592195
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Victoria Wong, adapted for ebook
Cover design and illustration: Arielle Pearl
Cover image (blue night sky): Shutterstock
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part One: Everett, Washington; February 1980
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two: Everett, Washington; Oakland, California; February–May 1980
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Three: Seattle, Washington; September 1985–February 1986
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part Four: Oakland, California; Everett, Washington; February 1986
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part Five: Everett, Washington; Oakland, California; February 1986
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Part Six: Oakland, California; Everett, Washington; February 1986
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Part Seven: Sacramento, California; Oakland, California; June 1986
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
My name is Venus Black because my dad was Joseph Black, and because on March 4, 1966, my very pregnant mother, Inez, just so happened to be watching a TV special about the Space Race when her water broke. I suppose the name Venus sounded better than Mars or Pluto.
If my mother had been reading a novel that night instead, or if she’d gone to the grocery store, I’d have a different name. If she’d had one of her famous migraines on the night I was conceived, I wouldn’t have been born in the first place.
We all feel so destined. It had to be me, we think. But the truth is, we all just barely made it here. Thousands of other combinations of your mother’s egg and your father’s sperm just missed their chance to connect, and one small change in circumstance could have wiped you out before you began.
If you ask me, we’re all born by accident and there’s no such thing as God. We travel through this life with no real trajectory, ricocheted here and there by the consequences of other people’s actions. And it works both ways, of course. The stupidest little thing we do can alter the future for so many people.
That means everything you ever did, you almost didn’t do.
I think about this a lot lately, trying to figure out how I got here. I trace my life back in time, looking for all those places in the past where, if I could change one key detail, I would never have seen what I saw or done what I did.
—Opening page of journal, Echo Glen Children’s Center,
Issaquah, Washington, September 12, 1980
I could swear I’m in some weird dream or movie, but that can’t be true because the burning sensation between my legs is way too real. Now I know how babies feel when they don’t get their diaper changed. I’m trying to hide what happened beneath my winter coat, but how long can I last?
A female cop and a cranky older detective in plain clothes are trying to interview me, but I’m sobbing so much it’s not going well. They keep saying things like, “Calm down.” “Take a deep breath.” “We can’t understand what you’re saying.”
But I can’t calm down. A bubble of horror has enveloped my brain and left me hysterical.
I make it about five more minutes before pain trumps pride. “I think I wet my pants,” I sputter, looking at the female officer.
She’s blond and prettier than my idea of a woman cop. She stands up. “Let me take Venus for a few minutes,” she says to the man. I don’t get up until she is standing by my chair. I feel like a small child as she leads me to a ladies’ room and tells me to wait inside for her.
The door locks behind me. I use one of the metal stalls, which remind me of the ones in my junior high. When I’m done, I go to the sink to wash. In the mirror, my face glistens with tears and mucus, my eyes are swollen half shut, and my hair is flying everywhere in an enormous black tangle. Then I remember I’ve been madly pulling at it.
Pretty soon, the female cop returns, holding a pair of blue pants that look like pajama bottoms with ties in the front. They’re way too big, but it’s a huge relief to get out of my soaked jeans.
When she leads me back to the interview room, calmer now, I see that Inez is seated off to the side. Has my mother been here the whole time? “I want her out of here,” I say, trembling with anger. And then louder, “I want her out! She’s the one you should arrest!”
Inez looks white as a sheet, like she’s seen a ghost, which I guess isn’t too far off. She exchanges whispers with the male cop and then leaves the room.
After she’s gone
, the police try again. They start out with easy questions about my friends at school. I try to cooperate. I admit what I did. But when they want to know details and why, I clam up. “I can’t remember,” I say.
“You mean you don’t want to,” says the old guy.
* * *
—
IN THE MORNING, I wake up at Denney Juvenile Justice Center. I’ve heard of plenty of kids getting sent here, but they were always rough, older, criminal types. The kind who dropped out of school, sold drugs to kids, or stabbed each other and stuff like that. The kind who scare me.
When I learned last night that I’d be locked up here, my knees shook like Mexican jumping beans. “I’m only thirteen,” I pleaded. “I get straight A’s! I’ve never gotten drunk, or smoked pot, or even skipped a class. At school I hang out with the smart girls’ group.” But even my biggest achievement—“Last year I was Citizen of the Week a record six times!”—didn’t change anyone’s mind about where I belonged.
At Denney, breakfast is served in a small cafeteria that reminds me of our school’s. I go through the buffet line and then find the table with the fewest people and try to send out a vibe that says, Don’t even think about sitting here.
While I eat, random, bizarre details from last night flash in my mind. Like how good it felt when one of the cops gently laid his hand on my head as he guided me into his police car. For a second there, it seemed like he was rescuing me instead of arresting me. And this one: When the car I was riding in pulled away from our house on Rockefeller, I saw the garage door wide open, lit up like a giant TV and neighbors gathered around like someone should make popcorn.
I should be too upset to eat, but I’m starving. The toast is spread with what I’m pretty sure is real butter, not margarine. I wolf down the scrambled eggs even though they come in a square that leaks water.
While I eat, I wonder what my friends are thinking—or if they’ve heard what happened yet. Who is my best friend, Jackie, going to sit with at lunch today? I’m dying to call her, but I’m sure they won’t let me.
Since I might be here for a while, I hope they’ll let Jackie pick up all my assignments from school and bring them to me. I don’t want to fall behind.
It hurts to think of my teachers, because I know they won’t understand. Over the years, I’ve always been teacher’s pet, and now I can just hear them saying, “Venus Black? But she was one of my favorite students! And always such a nice girl.”
Inez would probably beg to differ with nice. She likes to remind me that smart isn’t the same as nice. She also insists that I have two personalities, one for school, and one for at home. Every time she comes back from a parent-teacher conference, she tells me how surprised she was to hear what a pleasure I am to have in class.
So maybe I’m not a pleasure to have at home. But did she ever think there might be a reason for that?
* * *
—
AFTER BREAKFAST, A guard brings me to a room half-filled with toys. My mother is seated in one of two blue plastic chairs situated next to a messy desk.
Part of me wants to rush into her arms and plead with her to get me out of here. I want her to comfort me and tell me it will be all right. But a bigger part of me wants her to know how much I blame her for what happened.
She must feel the same way, because she doesn’t get up or try to hug me. All she says is, “Venus.”
“Inez,” I say right back.
Before I sit down across from her, I make a big show of scooting my chair farther back from hers. Like she smells bad or something. Right off, I notice how horrible she looks. Her eyes are red and raw, and her face is all puffy like mashed potatoes. She’s clutching a white hanky that belonged to her father back in Greece, which she knows I think is super gross. It’s the eighties! Who still uses a handkerchief?
At first, she is all motherly and worried. She asks how they’re treating me, if I’m okay, and if I got breakfast. For a second there, she’s my old mom again, and her seemingly genuine concern threatens to crack my anger.
“Aren’t you going to talk to me, Venus? Are you really just going to sit there?”
That’s when I realize she’s suggested a good strategy. Just because you put me in a room with Inez doesn’t mean I have to talk to her. Which is something I never thought about before, how you can force people to do a lot of things, but speaking isn’t one of them. You can’t grab someone’s jaw and move it up and down and make words come out.
Eventually I hear her say, “How could you do this, Venus?”
How can she even ask that? She already knows the answer. Clearly she’s planning to act like she has no idea, so people won’t realize how easily she could have stopped this.
I continue trying to block out her words, but it’s hard to miss when she refers to Raymond. She’s trying to explain, trying to defend herself. “You didn’t give me a chance, Venus.”
What is she talking about? I gave her all the chance in the world. I manage to tune her out again for a while, until I can tell she’s getting angry. “You better smarten up right now, young lady,” she scolds. “Damn it. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
It’s a ridiculous thing to say, because she didn’t help me when she could have. I glare at her, hoping she’ll guess what I’m thinking, but she’s looking down at her hands.
I used to think Inez was pretty, in a Cher sort of way. I was always jealous of her straight black hair because I hated my wild curls. When people said we looked alike, I thought that meant I was beautiful, like her. But now I know it only means we both have black hair, the same Greek nose, and the same darkish eyelids.
Sitting here watching Inez’s mouth move, I notice she’s been chewing on her lips again. Small pieces of flesh stick up like bits of plastic in her bright-orange lipstick. The lipstick flashes me back to when I was little and she’d ask the Avon lady for lots of those tiny white tubes of lipstick samples so I could play with them later. But that’s a happy memory, so I squash it.
“Okay. Be that way, Venus,” I hear her say. “That’s fine if you’re angry at me. But for your own sake, we need to discuss your defense.”
I want to scream, My defense? What is your defense?
How does Leo do it? My little brother is so good at ignoring people that he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. But they’d probably disqualify him, because he has something wrong with him that makes it easy for him to pretend you’re not there.
Leo is seven but acts more like he’s three or four. He has what Inez calls “developmental issues,” probably because he was born too early. My stepdad, Raymond, was super disappointed when Leo didn’t turn into a regular little boy. But Leo’s always just been Leo to me. So what if he makes weird noises and doesn’t want to be touched? He likes things to stay the same, and sometimes, he throws big tantrums. But really he’s the sweetest thing, which is hard to believe when you think about where he came from.
When I trace my life back to make it so Inez never met or married Raymond, I always get stuck here. Because what would I do without Leo?
By this point, Inez is actually crying and pleading with me to talk to her. I’m not used to seeing her this way, and it makes me uncomfortable. It’s like I have more power than she does. And in a way, it’s true. Here I’ve gone and done the worst thing in my life and she can’t even ground me.
No wonder she’s so upset.
After a while, she stops crying and begins staring at me in this weird way. When she gathers her purse off the floor, I think she’s getting ready to leave and I’m so relieved because it takes a lot of work not to talk to somebody.
Instead, she leans forward in her chair and whispers to me like it’s a secret question, “Venus, are you even a little bit sorry for what you did?”
When I don’t answer, she gets this frozen look on her face and makes a strange
little gasping sound. Then she stumbles from the room like she’s drunk or blind.
Or like she can’t wait to get away from me.
* * *
—
LEO WAKES UP in a bed that is not his bed. The bedspread is the wrong color of green. Where is his blue bedspread? He can’t stop seeing last night. His mother is crying. She makes him get in a strange truck with the lady called Shirley. He knows Shirley, but this time she has pink plastic things all over her head.
Soon the woman called Shirley comes into the room where Leo is, only now she looks different. The plastic things are gone and her hair is curly and the wrong yellow.
“Good morning, Leo!” she says too loud. “Remember me? From when I came to your house and babysat you.”
“I want my mom,” Leo says.
“Remember? She had an emergency and asked me to watch you for a while.”
Leo doesn’t know the word emergency. He ignores the lady and her talking until she asks if he needs the bathroom. He does. After he is done, he washes his hands like he’s been taught. The towel is the wrong color. Shirley is waiting for him when he comes out.
He goes back to the room with the bed. So does the curly lady.
Leo asks, “Where is Venus? Where is my mom?”
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