Mean

by Myriam Gurba

  I reached for People magazine and saw him. He was standing behind us, manning a shopping cart. Supermarket lighting cast an aura above his shaved head. Behind him, bakery display cases showcased yet-to-be personalized sheet cakes.

  As quickly as the shopper had become him, he unbecame him. He settled back into his own features. My eyes adjusted to the similarities. The shopper’s black eyes hadn’t seen that part of me. Those nostrils weren’t the ones that had smelled me.

  I looked at the shopper’s little girl. She stood beside him in a balloon-print dress. I hoped her dad was not the kind of man who did things like those that had recently hurt me.

  Fall Semester 1996

  ANTHRO 1

  HISTORY 8A

  PHILOS 8

  WOMENST 10

  I was living in a new dorm, the one closest to campus. This girl, Yenifer, was lumbering up our hall, wringing her hands. Grease and tears slicked her moon face.

  “Yenifer!” I cried. My phone sat in my lap like a cat. My back was pressed to the fire-escape door. “Why are you crying?”

  Yenifer replied, “Be! Cuz! Tu! Pac! Died!”

  “Oh my god,” I thought. “This bitch.”

  “What’s happening?” Ida asked through the receiver.

  “Apparently, Tupac got . . .” I made gunshot sounds.

  Yenifer lived at the opposite end of the all-girls floor. It’d been a few weeks since what’d happened on the sidewalk on the way to Mom’s, and I kept telling myself it was no big deal, it was nothing.

  I was living in another triple. This semester’s roommates, Carmen and Shakira, shared the bunk beds. Both were Latina. This made me trust them. Carmen, who slept on the bottom bed, aspired to be a surgeon. Shakira, who slept on the top and did crew, aspired to be surgically attached to Carmen. They were kind of lezzy except for the fact that they exclusively dated Latin and Persian dudes.

  During the week we used to get to know one another, Carmen, Shakira, and I sat on our thin carpet, sharing bags of meat and talking. Carmen and Shakira told me they’d spent most of their summer partying at San Francisco clubs and being hit on by hairy men who glanced at their watches when asked, “How long have you been in America?”

  Carmen asked me, “How about you? What did you do over the summer?”

  I said, “I volunteered as a docent at a museum and got sexually assaulted.” I described some of my rape, contextualizing it as NBD, and when I finished, Carmen was laughing.

  “I can’t believe you chased him!” she squealed. “You are such a Latina!” She snorted and squeezed my arm. Her nipples bounced. (She was topless. She was always topless. She was unashamed of her tiny tits.)

  Carmen sounded proud of my Latinaness. This made me proud of my Latinaness. Of our Latinaness. She passed me a small bag filled with llama jerky.

  Her parents came from Chile.

  Shakira’s dad came from Ecuador. Her mom didn’t have to come. She was American.

  One Saturday, a Persian admirer of Shakira’s stood by my closet door. He stared at a picture of Mom I’d taped to it.

  “Damn,” he said. “Who’s that? She’s hot.”

  “I came out of her,” I said.

  Discomfort tightened his face. This made me smile.

  That semester, I became fixated on two things: homework and exercise. I aspired to a 4.00 and a hard body. In the cafeteria, I placed only fruits, vegetables, and peanut butter on my tray. On Telegraph Avenue, I marched into a cheap salon and asked the hairdresser, “Have you seen G.I. Jane?” She Joan of Arcly chopped the hair I’d been growing. Acne cobbled my cheekbones. I wore sweats in public. I was becoming a prophylactic.

  When I wasn’t studying, exercising, or attempting to make myself neuter, I allowed our floor’s mini-dramas to entertain me. An Indian neighbor to our left was involved in one. She was leading a campaign to get Apu, the Kwik-E-Mart owner from The Simpsons, off the air.

  “Racism!” she raged. “Apu is a racist stereotype! He is a caricature and detrimental to Indians!”

  I nodded while a bitchy voice in my head snapped, “Quit trying to bleach your beard. It’s not helping.” Of course I didn’t express this thought to the activist. Such thoughts aren’t meant to be said aloud, but I suspect everyone has them. Even saints.

  Some female saints grow beards.

  As an ethnic rite of passage, Mom taught me to bleach my moustache. Up till this semester, its yellow glow would’ve matched the Indian girl’s muttonchops. Now I allowed its darkness to ride my upper lip.

  Yenifer, the hysterical Tupac mourner, lived at the end of the hall. She intrigued me. She claimed to have been a renowned vocalist back in East Los (that’s what she called East Los Angeles), and she was dieting to get back into a pair of skinny jeans she’d worn in high school. She pinned these pants to the wall beside some Christian arts and crafts for thinspiration. Their tag read “size two,” and Yenifer’s thyroid was not going to let her turn back the clock—not without a shero’s journey.

  Yenifer and I stood by her dresser. She pointed at the pants. In her deep, serious, Chicana accent, she promised, “I’m gonna be like that again. Te lo juro.”

  Yenifer spent a lot of time scaring girls out of our floor’s study lounge. She’d lumber in there and prop three mirrors around her face on a large table. She’d lean in, run her finger along her widow’s peak, and scowl. Her T-zone would shimmer under the overhead fluorescence. She’d raise tweezers to her hairline. They’d grab and pull.

  Carmen stomped into our room.

  “La pinche Yenifer está in the lounge plucking otra vez!” she whisper-shouted.

  I set my book on my desk and tiptoed down the hall. I poked my head into the study area. There was Yenifer. That bitch was going to pluck herself cancer-patient smooth if she didn’t stop. I returned to our triple.

  “Yup,” I said. “Mother plucker.”

  I made some instant Folgers. I read History of the Franks. I got up to pee. On my way to the john, I peeked into Yenifer’s pluckateria.

  She was still there, piles of hair littering the tabletop, tweezing the night away.

  Yenifer was standing by our window. She slid off her bandana.

  “Ay, Yenifer! You’re crazy!” said Carmen. “Look what you’re doing to yourself!”

  “I just want to get it straight!” Yenifer pointed at her hairline. Angelic rays hit her scalp. Her hairline had receded by about two inches. Recently plucked flesh pulsated.

  “What should I do?” moaned Yenifer.

  “Stop plucking!” we screamed.

  All day we practiced saying bye to each other. Thanksgiving break was upon us and Yenifer stood in our room saying a real good-bye. The rest of us were leaving tomorrow.

  “Look,” said Yenifer.

  She slid back her bandana. Up sprang little black baby tufts, cubs ready to wrestle.

  “Good job, Yenifer!” said Carmen.

  “OK, hasta luego, you guys.” Yenifer turned and left.

  Carmen waited at the door, watching Yenifer wheel her suitcase to the elevator. Finally, Carmen declared, “She’s gone!” and we got to work cracking each other up by imitating Yenifer for hours. We pretended to be gifted vocalists. We tugged at our hairlines.

  Transcript of a 9-1-1 Call: November 15, 1996

  DISPATCHER: 9-1-1 Emergency.

  MALE VOICE: Yes, there is a lady being attacked on . . . the . . . Westside Little League park, by the snack bar, by two black girls . . . send help quick.

  DISPATCHER: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, where, where is this park at?

  MALE VOICE: It’s Oakley, the Westside Little League . . .

  DISPATCHER: Oakley Park?

  MALE VOICE: Yes.

  DISPATCHER: And is this the one off of Western? Or . . .

  MALE VOICE: Yes, send help quick . . .

  DISPATCHER: And they’re beating her up?

  MALE VOICE: Yes, they are. It’s two black girls!

  DISPATCHER: And they’re in the baseball dia
mond?

  MALE VOICE: Um, they’re by the snack bar . . . and they’re hitting her with the baseball bats and everything.

  DISPATCHER: They’re hitting her with baseball bats?

  MALE VOICE: Yes.

  DISPATCHER: Can you give me a description of these people?

  MALE VOICE: Well, it’s just two black girls, they’re kinda heavyset.

  DISPATCHER: Do you have any clothing description?

  MALE VOICE: Um, no.

  DISPATCHER: OK, you’re calling from West Main. How come you went so far to call?

  Male hung up the phone. Call ended.

  Battered Body Found at School: Mysterious Phone Call Alerted the Authorities

  Detectives have yet to turn up any suspects in a murder investigation stemming from the discovery of a woman’s body Friday night next to the baseball field bleachers at Oakley School, the Santa Maria Police Department reported.

  Police said they responded at 11 p.m. when a man called from the west side of town reporting a fight in progress at the North Western Avenue school.

  When officers arrived at the scene, they discovered a woman lying on concrete behind the home-plate backstop fence, between the scorer’s shack and the bleachers.

  She died before officers arrived, police said, apparently from blunt-object injuries to the head, though a Monday autopsy will confirm the cause of her death.

  The woman has tentatively been identified, but police said they are withholding her name until the next of kin are notified.

  Saturday morning, police said they had few leads to go on.

  There was a pool of blood on the ground and splattered blood on the scorer’s shack set in the middle of perhaps two acres of grass.

  The nearest house is roughly 100 yards away, and one curious boy, an onlooker who lives next to the park, said Saturday he and his family heard nothing until police arrived.

  In fact, the mysterious telephone call reporting the “fight in progress” came from a pay phone “some distance away” from the park, according to Sgt. Dan Macagni.

  The victim was described as a Latina woman, roughly 30 years old with brown hair and eyes. 5-foot-2-inches tall and weighing 130 pounds.

  She was wearing a blue blouse and a black skirt.

  Police urge those with information that could help the investigation to call 928-3781.

  Burrito

  I was home for Thanksgiving.

  I sat in the rocking chair. The local news was on. An anchorwoman said that a transient had been bludgeoned to death next to Oakley School. The only lead was that two black girls might have done it.

  “Bullshit,” I thought. “That’s total bullshit.”

  December was cold in Berkeley and hella cold at 5 a.m.

  That was when I’d get up to go to the gym. I’d pull on little boy’s swim trunks, which I liked exercising in because of the built-in mesh under wear, and I’d stretch to prepare my muscles for pain. I’d sneak bites of the protein bars I’d stolen from Shakira and hidden in my desk. Well, I actually considered them borrowed. I planned on replacing them.

  I studied. I exercised. I studied. I exercised. I walked through the dark campus at night, knowing that squirrels and rapists prowled among the redwoods.

  Eating breakfast took too much time, so I gave up on power bars and cereal.

  On an empty stomach, I laced up my Nikes and pulled on my sweatshirt. I jogged to the gym in my swim trunks while the sun rose. Its sterile atmosphere—polished walls, waxed floors, and white employees—soothed me.

  This morning’s crowd was thin, collectively and individually, and I climbed the second of six StairMasters facing a wall. On my machine I walked nowhere over and over again. I walked and ignored the queasiness multiplying in my cells. I ignored the weird fuzziness in my stomach. I hiked through my discomfort, but my lips tingled. The StairMaster beeped. Its screen blinked, “Congratulations! Congratulations!” Digitized fireworks exploded across the control panel. It flashed how many calories I’d burned. Triple digits. I dismounted and pretended to feel fine. I headed to the weight room.

  Only the diehards were there—men who worked on their physiques so hard they looked like flame-broiled chicken. A man whom I’d never seen smile was checking himself out in the mirror. He held two one-hundred-pound barbells and curled and grunted. His biceps bulged like sexy tumors, and his white goatee was like fleece against tobacco skin. His tight T-shirt announced, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”

  I straddled a machine, reached, and pulled an overhead bar to the crook of my neck. I held the bar in place then released it slowly. I wanted to have He-Man’s back. I pulled this weight down then released. I pulled this weight down then released. I let it go. A big uh-oh filled me. I tingled. My empty stomach was dying to say something.

  The nurse came to mind. You’re going to have to get over this.

  I pulled the weight down again. I saw stars burst. I thought of our national anthem. I was going to have to contend with this. Something was about to happen.

  I let the bar snap up. I stood and looked around.

  No one noticed the warning signs.

  I walked out of the weight room, down the hall, and into the ladies’ room.

  I knew what was coming. Perhaps you do too.

  I lunged into a stall, yanked down my shorts, and bent over. A liquid laser shot out of me. The hotter it cut, the colder everywhere but my butthole felt. This burning stream confused me. I’d skipped dinner last night, and for lunch, I’d had an apple and peanut butter. Was I spraying residual shit? Was this something vestigial? My mind couldn’t handle these questions. My head ached. I tried focusing on the burn. Eating it mentally. If you enter your pain instead of letting it enter you, you can eat it until it’s gone. I think that’s a tenet of Buddhism.

  Sweat dripped from my face and into the toilet. I was melting. My T-shirt was damp and heavy. I spread my legs make-love-to-me-daddy wide and bowed my head. Peaches, browns, and golds swirled in the bowl. I was suffering from liquid impalement. I’d worked so hard to empty myself, and now here I sat, skewered by electrolyte imbalance.

  I was going to pass out.

  I slid my shorts up, unlocked the stall, and wobbled toward the sinks. I sank to the ground, and tile cooled my cheek. I wanted to absorb its coolness forever.

  A lady screaming “Oh my god! OH MY GOD!” returned me to consciousness.

  She left. She returned with reinforcements.

  My hands and feet stiffened and twisted inward, lobster claws.

  Fingers dug into my shorts pockets. They fished out my ID. I lifted an eyelid and watched a uniformed blonde kneel by the sink. She opened a first-aid kit.

  I barfed.

  It felt good.

  A uniformed boy barged in. He snapped on a latex glove and unfurled an aluminum blanket on the floor. He rolled me onto it and rolled me up. Once I was fully wrapped, my bowels vacated.

  “I am a bean burrito,” I thought.

  The girl who’d taken my ID said, “We called your roommate. She’s on her way, so just hang in there.”

  I reached an arm out of my wrapper. In an I-heard-a-fly-buzz-when-I-died voice, I moaned, “I’m feeling better. I don’t want to go in an ambulance.”

  “Are you epileptic?” asked the blonde. She held my wrist and took my pulse with her finger.

  “I’m Mexican.”

  She stared at my face. “Your color is coming back.”

  I said, “I think I can stand.”

  “NO!” everybody screamed.

  The guy who burritoed me wheeled in an office chair. “We’re gonna help you into this,” he said, grabbing my feet.

  The blond girl reached under my armpits, and they heaved me onto the seat. The guy wheeled me out. He steered me past squash courts and rowing machines. In the lobby, we came to a stop and Carmen rushed toward me.

  “For Christ’s sake!” she screamed. “I thought I was coming to identify your body! This is really bad timing! I have
an O chem test today.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know what happened,” I lied.

  A woman wearing a name tag that read “supervisor” said, “Carmen, can you take your friend to the Tang Center?” That was our student health building.

  “Yes,” Carmen answered. “I’m premed.” She walked around me. “How am I supposed to steer you? This chair doesn’t have handles.”

  “Use my armpits,” I said.

  Carmen slid her hands in and murmured, “Warm.”

  She pushed me outside and navigated me down Bancroft’s sloping sidewalk. She wheeled me into the Tang Center, where I sat on an examination table and a nurse practitioner fed me stale crackers and apple juice. As I chewed and sipped, she wrote me a prescription, tore it off her pad, and handed it to me.

  I held it in front of my face and read its simple, familiar prescription: “Eat.”

  The Albatross

  The best part of Christmas is getting up before everyone else and unwrapping their presents, but that part hadn’t come yet, only the vacation part had. I was at my parents’, balancing my time between reading for pleasure and running laps around our neighborhood. Tendinitis had taken up residence in my hips, but that didn’t stop me. I looked forward to arthritis.

  Sunday night was spaghetti night, and I’d eaten a little serving of it. Tomato sauce hardened on the dishes sitting in the sink. We piled onto the couches. The TV was on.

  “More news on the murder of the transient who was raped and beaten to death near Oakley School this November,” said the announcer. “Police now have a suspect: this man.” His face appeared onscreen. “He’s also suspected in several other attacks against local women.”

  With my mouth open, I stared at his mug shot. It was unassuming, nothing diabolical about it. His expression seemed just a little bit surprised, but I’d seen it look sadistically joyful. That face. It bobbed for apples between my thighs. It wore my crotch. Those nostrils huffed my fear. His smile undressed me, bent me over, and exposed me to planet Earth and all her gentle creatures.