Dreams Underfoot n-1

by Charles de Lint

  “You little slut! Why are you doing this to your own brother?”

  Like it was my fault. Like I wanted him to rape me. Like the threeyear-old I was when he started molesting me had any idea about what he was doing.

  I think my other brothers knew what was going on all along, but they never said anything about it—they didn’t want to break that macho codeof-honor bullshit. When my dad found out about, he beat the crap out of my brother, but in some ways it just got worse after that.

  My brother didn’t molest me anymore, but he’d glare at me all the time, like he was going to pay me back for the beating he got soon as he got a chance. My mother and my other brothers, every time I’d come into a room, they’d all just stop talking and look at me like I was some kind of bug.

  I think at first my dad wanted to do something to help me, but in the end he really wasn’t any better than my mother. I could see it in his eyes: he blamed me for it, too. He kept me at a distance, never came close to me anymore, never let me feel like I was normal.

  He’s the one who had me see a psychiatrist. I’d have to go and sit in his office all alone, just a little kid in this big leather chair. The psychiatrist would lean across his desk, all smiles and smarmy understanding, and try to get me to talk, but I never told him a thing. I didn’t trust him. I’d already learned that I couldn’t trust men. Couldn’t trust women either, thanks to my mother. Her idea of working things out was to send me to confession, like the same God who let my brother rape me was now going to make everything okay so long as I owned up to seducing him in the first place.

  What kind of a way is that for a kid to grow up?

  4

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I let my brother ...”

  5

  Dilly laid her sketchpad aside when her guest began to stir. She swung her legs down so that they dangled from the windowsill, heels banging lightly against the wall, toes almost touching the ground. She pushed an unruly lock of hair from her brow, leaving behind a charcoal smudge on her temple.

  Small and slender, with pixie features and a mass of curly dark hair, she looked almost as young as the girl on her bed. Jeans and sneakers, a dark Tshirt and an oversized peachcolored smock only added to her air of slightness and youth. But she was halfway through her thirties, her own teenage years long gone; she could have been Annie’s mother.

  “What were you doing?” Annie asked as she sat up, tugging the sheets up around herself.

  “Sketching you while you slept. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Can I see?”

  Jilly passed the sketchpad over and watched Annie study it. On the fire escape behind her, two more cats had joined the black and white tabby at the margarine container. One was an old alleycat, its left ear ragged and torn, ribs showing like so many hills and valleys against the matted landscape of its fur. The other belonged to an upstairs neighbor; it was making its usual morning rounds.

  “You made me look a lot better than I really am,” Annie said finally.

  Jilly shook her head. “I only drew what was there.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Jilly didn’t bother to contradict her. The selfworth speech would keep.

  “So is this how you make your living?” Annie asked. “Pretty well. I do a little waitressing on the side.”

  “Beats being a hooker, I guess.”

  She gave Jilly a challenging look as she spoke, obviously anticipating a reaction.

  Jilly only shrugged. “Tell me about it,” she said.

  Annie didn’t say anything for a long moment. She looked down at the rough portrait with an unreadable expression, then finally met Jilly’s gaze again.

  “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “On the street. Seems like everybody knows you. They say ...”

  Her voice trailed off

  Jilly smiled. “What do they say?”

  “Oh, all kinds of stuff.” She shrugged. “You know. That you used to live on the street, that you’re kind of like , a onewoman social service, but you don’t lecture. And that you’re—” she hesitated, looked away for a moment “—you know, a witch.”

  Jilly laughed. “A witch?”

  That was a new one on her.

  Annie waved a hand towards the wall across from the window where Jilly was sitting. Paintings leaned up against each other in untidy stacks. Above them, the wall held more, a careless gallery hung frame to frame to save space. They were part of Jilly’s ongoing “Urban Faerie” series, realistic city scenes and characters to which were added the curious little denizens of lands which never were. Hobs and fairies, little elf men and goblins.

  “They say you think all that stuff’s real,” Annie said. “What do you think?”

  When Annie gave her a “give me a break” look, Jilly just smiled again.

  “How about some breakfast?” she asked to change the subject. “Look,” Annie said. “I really appreciate your taking me in and feeding me and everything last night, but I don’t want to be freeloader.”

  “One more meal’s not freeloading.”

  Jilly pretended to pay no attention as Annie’s pride fought with her baby’s need.

  “Well, if you’re sure it’s okay,” Annie said hesitantly. “I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t,” Jilly said.

  She dropped down from the windowsill and went across the loft to the kitchen corner. She normally didn’t eat a big breakfast, but twenty minutes later they were both sitting down to fried eggs and bacon, home fries and toast, coffee for Jilly and herb tea for Annie.

  “Got any plans for today?” Jilly asked as they were finishing up.

  “Why?” Annie replied, immediately suspicious.

  “I thought you might want to come visit a friend of mine.”

  “A social worker, right?”

  The tone in her voice was the same as though she was talking about a cockroach or maggot.

  Jilly shook her head. “More like a storefront counselor. Her name’s Angelina Marceau. She runs that dropin center on Grasso Street. It’s privately funded, no political connections.”

  “I’ve heard of her. The Grasso Street Angel.”

  “You don’t have to come,” Jilly said, “but I know she’d like to meet you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Jilly shrugged. When she started to clean up, Annie stopped her. “Please,” she said. “Let me do it.”

  Jilly retrieved her sketchpad from the bed and returned to the windowseat while Annie washed up.

  She was just adding the finishing touches to the rough portrait she’d started earlier when Annie came to sit on the edge of the Murphy bed.

  “That painting on the easel,” Annie said. “Is that something new you’re working on?”

  Jilly nodded.

  “It’s not like your other stuff at all.”

  “I’m part of an artist’s group that calls itself the Five Coyotes Singing Studio,” Jilly explained. “The actual studio’s owned by a friend of mine named Sophie Etoile, but we all work in it from time to time.

  There’s five of us, all women, and we’re doing a group show with a theme of child abuse at the Green Man Gallery next month.”

  “And that painting’s going to be in it?” Annie asked. “It’s one of three I’m doing for the show.”

  “What’s that one called?”

  “‘I Don’t Know How To Laugh Anymore.’”

  Annie put her hands on top of her swollen stomach. “Me, neither,” she said.

  6

  I Don’t Know How to Laugh Anymore, by Jilly Coppercorn. Oils and mixed media. Yoors Street Studio, Newford, 1991.

  A lifesized female subject leans against an inner city wall in the classic pose of a prostitute waiting for a customer. She wears high heels, a microminiskirt, tubetop and short jacket, with a purse slung over one shoulder, hanging against her hip from a narrow strap. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of her jacket. Her features are tired, the lost look of a junkie in her eyes undermining her attempt
to appear sultry.

  Near her feet, a condom is attached to the painting, stiffened with gesso.

  The subject is thirteen years old.

  I started running away from home when I was ten. The summer I turned eleven I managed to make it to Newford and lived on its streets for six months. I ate what I could find in the dumpsters behind the McDonald’s and other fast food places on Williamson Street—there was nothing wrong with the food. It was just dried out from having been under the heating lamps for too long.

  I spent those six months walking the streets all night. I was afraid to sleep when it was dark because I was just a kid and who knows what could’ve happened to me. At least being awake I could hide whenever I saw something that made me nervous. In the daytime I slept where I could—in parks, in the back seats of abandoned cars, wherever I didn’t think I’d get caught. I tried to keep myself clean, washed up in restaurant bathrooms and at this gas bar on Yoors Street where the guy running the pumps took a liking to me. Paydays he’d spot me for lunch at the grill down the street.

  I started drawing back then and for awhile I tried to hawk my pictures to the tourists down by the Pier, but the stuff wasn’t all that good and I was drawing with pencils on foolscap or pages torn out of old school notebooks—not exactly the kind of art that looks good in a frame, if you know what I mean. I did a lot better panhandling and shoplifting.

  I finally got busted trying to boost a tape deck from Kreiger’s Stereo—it used to be where Gypsy Records is. Now it’s out on the strip past the Tombs. I’ve always been small for my age, which didn’t help when I tried to to convince the cops that I was older than I really was. I figured juvie would be better than going back to my parents’ place, but it didn’t work. My parents had a missing persons out on me, God knows why. It’s not like they could’ve missed me.

  But I didn’t go back home. My mother didn’t want me and my dad didn’t argue, so I guess he didn’t either. I figured that was great until I started making the rounds of foster homes, bouncing back and forth them and the Home for Wayward Girls. It’s just juvie with an oldfashioned name.

  I guess there must be some good foster parents, but I never saw any. All mine ever wanted was to collect their check and treat me like I was a piece of shit unless my case worker was coming by for a visit. Then I got moved up from the mattress in the basement to one of their kids’ rooms. The first time I tried to tell the worker what was going down, she didn’t believe me and then my foster parents beat the crap out of me once she was gone. I didn’t make that mistake again.

  I was thirteen and in my fourth or fifth foster home when I got molested again. This time I didn’t take any crap. I booted the old pervert in the balls and just took off out of there, back to Newford.

  I was older and knew better now. Girls I talked to in juvie told me how to get around, who to trust and who was just out to peddle your ass.

  See, I never planned on being a hooker. I don’t know what I thought I’d do when I got to the city—I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. Anyway, I ended up with this guy—Robert Carson. He was fifteen.

  I met him in back of the Convention Center on the beach where all the kids used to all hang out in the summer and we ended up getting a room together on Grasso Street, near the high school. I was still pretty fucked up about getting physical with a guy but we ended up doing so many drugs—acid, MDA, coke, smack, you name it—that half the time I didn’t know when he was putting it to me.

  We ran out of money one day, rent was due, no food in the place, no dope, both of us too fucked up to panhandle, when Rob gets the big idea of selling my ass to bring in a little money. Well, I was screwed up, but not that screwed up. But then he got some guy to front him some smack and next thing I know I’m in this car with some guy I never saw before and he’s expecting a blow job and I’m crying and all fucked up from the dope and then I’m doing it and standing out on the street corner where he’s dumped me some ten minutes later with forty bucks in my hand and Rob’s laughing, saying how we got it made, and all I can do is crouch on the sidewalk and puke, trying to get the taste of that guy’s come out of my mouth.

  So Rob thinks I’m being, like, so fucking weird—I mean, it’s easy money, he tells me. Easy for him maybe. We have this big fight and then he hits me. Tells me if I don’t get my ass out on the street and make some more money, he’s going to do worse, like cut me.

  My luck, I guess. Of all the guys to hang out with, I’ve got to pick one who suddenly realizes it’s his ambition in life to be a pimp. Three years later he’s running a string of five girls, but he lets me pay my respect—two grand which I got by skimming what I was paying him—and I’m out of the scene.

  Except I’m not, because I’m still a junkie and I’m too fucked up to work, I’ve got no ID, I’ve got no skills except I can draw a little when I’m not fucked up on smack which is just about all the time. I start muling for a couple of dealers in Fitzhenry Park, just to get my fixes, and then one night I’m so out of it, I just collapse in a doorway of a pawn shop up on Perry Street.

  I haven’t eaten in, like, three days. I’m shaking because I need a fix so bad I can’t see straight. I haven’t washed in Christ knows how long, so I smell and the clothes I’m wearing are worse. I’m at the end of the line and I know it, when I hear footsteps coming down the street and I know it’s the local cop on his beat, doing his rounds.

  I try to crawl deeper into the shadows but the doorway’s only so deep and the cop’s coming closer and then he’s standing there, blocking what little light the streetlamps were throwing and I know I’m screwed. But there’s no way I’m going back into juvie or a foster home. I’m thinking of offering him a blow job to let me go—so far as the cops’re concerned, hookers’re just scum, but they’ll take a freebie all the same—but I see something in this guy’s face, when he turns his head and the streetlight touches it, that tells me he’s an honest joe. A rookie, true blue, probably his first week on the beat and full of wanting to help everybody and I know for sure I’m screwed. With my luck running true, he’s going to be the kind of guy who thinks social workers really want to help someone like me instead of playing bureaucratic mindfuck games with my head.

  I don’t think I can take anymore.

  I find myself wishing I had Rob’s switchblade—the one he liked to push up against my face when he didn’t think I was bringing in enough. I just want to cut something. The cop. Myself. I don’t really give a fuck. I just want out.

  He crouches down so he’s kind of level with me, lying there scrunched up against the door, and says,

  “How bad is it?”

  I just look at him like he’s from another planet. How bad is it? Can it get any worse I wonder?

  “I ... I’m doing fine,” I tell him.

  He nods like we’re discussing the weather. “What’s your name?”

  “Jilly,” I say.

  “Jilly what?”

  “Uh ....”

  I think of my parents, who’ve turned their backs on me. I think ofjuvie and foster homes. I look over his shoulder and there’s a pair of billboards on the building behind me. One’s advertising a suntan lotion—you know the one with the dog pulling the kid’s pants down? I’ll bet some old pervert thought that one up. The other’s got the Jolly Green Giant himself selling vegetables. I pull a word from each ad and give it to the cop.

  “Jilly Coppercorn.”

  “Think you can stand, Jilly?”

  I’m thinking, If I could stand, would I be lying here? But I give it a try. He helps me the rest of the way up, supports me when I start to sway.

  “So ... so am I busted?” I ask him.

  “Have you committed a crime?”

  I don’t know where the laugh comes from, but it falls out of my mouth all the same. There’s no humor in it.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “I was born.”

  He sees my bag still lying on the ground. He picks it up while I lean against the wall and a bunch of my drawings fall
out. He looks at them as he stuffs them back in the bag.

  “Did you do those?”

  I want to sneer at him, ask him why the fuck should he care, but I’ve got nothing left in me. It’s all I can do to stand. So I tell him, yeah, they’re mine.

  “They’re very good.”

  Right. I’m actually this fucking brilliant artist, slumming just to get material for my art.

  “Do you have a place to stay?” he asks.

  Whoops, did I read him wrong? Maybe he’s planning to get me home, clean me up, and then put it to me.

  “Dilly?” he asks when I don’t answer.

  Sure, I want to tell him. I’ve got my pick of the city’s alleyways and doorways. I’m welcome wherever I go. World treats me like a fucking princess. But all I do is shake my head.

  “I want to take you to see a friend of mine,” he says.

  I wonder how he can stand to touch me. I can’t stand myself. I’m like a walking sewer. And now he wants to bring me to meet a friend?

  “Am I busted?” I ask him again.

  He shakes his head. I think of where I am, what I got ahead of me, then I just shrug. If I’m not busted, then whatever’s he’s got planned for me’s got to be better. Who knows, maybe his friend’ll front me with a fix to get me through the night.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Whatever.”

  “C’mon,” he says.

  He puts an arm around my shoulder and steers me off down the street and that’s how I met Lou Fucceri and his girlfriend, the Grasso Street Angel.

  7

  Jilly sat on the stoop of Angel’s office on Grasso Street, watching the passersby. She had her sketchpad on her knee, but she hadn’t opened it yet. Instead, she was amusing herself with one of her favorite pastimes: making up stories about the people walking by. The young woman with the child in a stroller, she was a princess in exile, disguising herself as a nanny in a far distant land until she could regain her rightful station in some suitably romantic dukedom in Europe. The old black man with the cane was a physicist studying the effects of Chaos theory in the Grasso Street traffic. The Hispanic girl on her skateboard was actually a mermaid, having exchanged the waves of her ocean for concrete.