Mean

by Myriam Gurba

  “That’s him,” I said.

  Herman, Ofelia, Mom, and Dad stared at the man who’d seen parts of me in ways they never will. They said nothing.

  I was on the phone with Detective Lopez. “Have you seen the news?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know why I’m calling.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you. You’ll be hearing from the district attorney soon.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up. I walked outside. I ran.

  I was killing time at our piano bench, striking keys, creating “experimental music.” A bust of Aphrodite, carved from marble, sat atop the instrument. She stared through my head, white eyes focused on the Christmas tree behind me.

  The tree’s lights were off. Overzealous ornamentation made its arms sag. An angel crowned it. She was white, unlike our nativity set’s constituents. Since our nativity set came from Mexico, its holy family, angels, magi, and livestock (there was even a turkey) were indigenous. Aztec Jesus rested in an Aztec cradle on our walnut credenza, a pretty baby born for the sake of human sacrifice.

  Outside, clouds turned the sky to gravy. Gloom pressed against the tall living room windows. White carpet couldn’t brighten the mood, and neither could the beige couches. The Christmas tree and baby Jesus were trying to make things cheerful, but the shitty weather trumped them.

  Someone knocked at the front door. I kept playing.

  They knocked harder. They rang the doorbell.

  Mom’s head appeared beside Aphrodite’s. She walked the parquet floor, peeped through the stained-glass doorframe, and reached for the lock. Whoever it was must’ve looked safe. She unlocked the door and opened it.

  “Hello?”

  My fingers rested on white keys. I heard a man ask if this was my residence.

  “Yes,” answered Mom.

  “Here,” said the man. “She’s been served.”

  The piano blocked my view of the hand foisting papers through our doorway. It blocked my view of Mom accepting my subpoena. (How humiliating to get raped and then served with a subpoena. Couldn’t they call it something less violating or phallic?)

  I listened to the man whistling as he left our brick porch.

  I watched him walk the concrete path lined with diseased rose bushes. We’d inherited these from the house’s previous owners, a frugal rocket scientist and his wife. The rocket scientist had worked for NASA and jerryrigged many things in our house with paper clips and rubber cement. His handiwork was constantly breaking down.

  “No wonder the Challenger blew up,” Dad would say as he repaired another one of the rocketeer’s quick fixes.

  Mom shut the door. She turned toward me, her face poised beside Aphrodite’s.

  I shook my head.

  She showed me she loved me by making my subpoena disappear.

  Two ideas swam circles around each other like sharks in the aquarium of my skull.

  Shark One was made up of this logic: The timing of the attacks, as reported by the news, made me first. If he’d killed her around Thanksgiving and attacked the others, THE OTHERS, that fall and December, then I could’ve stopped him. If I’d chased him into that alley, caught up to him, taken off my shoe, and beaten him with it like Mom taught me you’re supposed to do with cockroaches, then he wouldn’t have been out stalking, grabbing, and mutilating women. He might’ve turned around and killed me, but that would have been OK. Then I wouldn’t be living with this guilt. This guilt was an invisible but heavy albatross hanging around my neck. (That’s a reference to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.) I wear that bird like Björk wore her swan dress. I wave from a red carpet leading to hell.

  A different series of propositions made up Shark Two: Let’s say I did testify against him. Let’s say I cried during my testimony. Let’s say after that I went to law school and became a lawyer. Let’s say I tried to find work in the local courthouse where my case got tried. Let’s say the judges and attorneys and clerks and bailiffs who worked there when I testified went on to work there forever. That’s what happens in small towns—people work in the same place forever. Let’s say I got invited to interview for a job there and when people saw me in my suit, holding a briefcase, waiting, they remembered me. Let’s say they remembered me as the girl who took the witness stand and cried when she described getting grabbed and having things put where they didn’t belong. Could the employees of this courthouse ever take me seriously as a litigator? As a superior? As an officer of the court?

  No way.

  I’d be that girl that got raped by that cholo just like the boys Mr. Osmond fucked are still referred to as the boys Mr. Osmond fucked.

  Page: 17

  DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND REHABILITATION DIVISION OF ADULT OPERATIONS

  Death Row Tracking System

  Condemned Inmate List (Secure)

  Spring Semester 1997

  HISTORY 5

  HISTORY 88

  WOMENST 14

  WOMENST 131

  I still believed I could lose myself in homework and exercise.

  Motivated by this creed, I put on my little boy’s swim trunks and Nikes. I grabbed my Walkman, this ancient device that played cassettes or enabled you to listen to the radio, and headed outside.

  The day was gray. I jogged along College Avenue, toward Rockridge. Mozart jogged with me.

  Mozart is the sound of civilization and its decline.

  We sprinted past bungalows, a laundromat, and the Catholic church that looked like a Soviet-era construction. Trees had shed large leaves you could have swaddled a baby in. They gave the sidewalk bedding. If, from behind, someone struck me with a bat, the leaves would have cushioned my fall.

  In front of a two-story house with a menorah large enough for a crucifixion on the lawn, invisible arms encircled my waist. They held me.

  I stopped, half-expecting my pants to be pulled down.

  I turned around.

  No one was there.

  My finger rolled along the volume dial, turning it up.

  I took a step and another and I was jogging, but the hands, which I knew were not real, returned. I ripped off my headphones and spun around.

  The memory of him wanted to run with me.

  I wanted to run with Mozart.

  My History of Modern Europe class was so full I had to sit on the floor at the top of the auditorium. I pressed my back to the wall and tucked my knees against my chest.

  The doors were shoved open. A cartoonish Asian girl wearing a heavy cat eye, frosted bouffant, and chunky heels clomped in. As she swung past me, I saw up her blue skirt. Smooth thighs and a garter belt. Like William Blake, I experienced a vision: me lunging at her and sinking my fingers into her bouffant then pounding her skull into the steps. Her brains dripped down them.

  My modern Europe TA stuck a happy-face sticker to the paper I wrote on The Prince. Underneath the sticker, he wrote, “An insightful piece of work, but one question: Do you really think Camille Paglia is a direct descendant of Machiavelli?”

  An unfamiliar discomfort woke me.

  Maybe my bladder was full. Maybe this sensation was that old feeling being translated into new body language. I labeled the weirdness having to pee, got out of bed, and tiptoed out of our triple.

  I stepped into the bathroom. It smelled of farts and perfume, which reminded me of my mother.

  Sitting on the toilet, I squeezed. I squeezed and squeezed and wrung a single tear from my urethra. No reason to flush or wipe.

  I walked back to our triple and climbed into bed.

  Our dorm was quiet.

  The sensation of his pressing remained.

  His face tried to cuddle between my legs. His chin tapped my bladder, digging. I peed to get rid of him, but he drank these repellent/resplendent showers. His ghost, his memory, was thirsty.

  We sat in Yenifer’s room. I was helping her study for a linguistics final.

/>   “Ain’t ain’t a word,” I said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Those are glottal stops, I think. Do one. Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh,” Yenifer repeated.

  Peruvian music was playing on her ghetto blaster. That’s what she called it. She pointed at it with one red fingernail and said, in her deep, creepy Chicana voice, “I touch myself to Peruvian music.” An Incan wailed a solo on pan pipes. Wind chimes tinkled. Yenifer licked her lips and adjusted her headband. She added, “Sometimes, when I touch myself, I feel the spirits of my ancestors.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say.

  Yenifer asked, “What music do you touch yourself to?”

  “I don’t,” I confessed.

  “Do you want me to loan you a Peruvian CD?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. Even though she had confided something intimate to me, I was not about to tell Yenifer that when I was little I’d taken my temperature to The Diary of Anne Frank.

  The Other Women

  I ran to the phone mounted between our family room and kitchen. I was home for spring break and looking forward to harming marsh mallow Peeps.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, may I please speak to Myriam Gurba?”

  “This is she.”

  “Hi. This is district attorney Nathaniel Garcia.” He paused. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened to you on July 22.”

  Fish twisted in my stomach. “All right.” I sat on an oak stool.

  “Can you please walk me through what happened?”

  I inhaled. I said, “I’m walking up the street, on my way to my mom’s school and . . .” I relived what happened from a casual observer’s point of view, a bird looking down from a wire. I stayed present tense in my narration.

  DA Garcia coughed. In an uncomfortable but impressed tone, he said, “Thank you. That’s exactly what you told the detective. Exactly. Thank you.” He paused. “If you’re interested, I can put you in touch with a counselor who works with victims like you. She’s very good. The other women have been seeing her.”

  The other woman. The other women. Kept women. Little Women. D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. Gudrun. Ursula. Women Seeking Women.

  “Thanks, but I go to school really far away. I don’t live here anymore.”

  “OK. Well, here’s her number, just in case.”

  DA Garcia dictated it. I cracked my knuckles while staring at a bowl of seedless grapes.

  I blew off DA Garcia’s other calls.

  I was not going to go down in local history as the girl who was weirdly raped by the Mexican guy who murdered the lady in the park. I had medieval history to learn.

  Summer Session 1997

  HISTORY 158C

  I moved into a one-bedroom apartment on Dwight Way and spent my summer taking one class, dying my hair, and telemarketing. The telemarketing was paid fundraising for my school, and I greeted alumni with this shtick: “You’ll never guess who’s calling!”

  After the alumnus on the other end of the line named the child they’d given up for adoption or a long-lost lover, I’d declare, “No! It’s Myriam Gurba! From the Cal Annual Fund! Do you have your checkbook handy?”

  I gloated that summer, too. I could set personal goals and meet them. I’d already become buff and gotten my 4.00, so I gave myself a new challenge: to have sex with a married man. It seemed like a good idea to have sex with someone and ruin his family. I wanted to see whether or not my pussy had the mettle for this. Males had co-opted my genitalia to prove their destructive powers, and I felt it was time to reclaim their destructive powers for my own use.

  The married man I set my sights on was my professor. He was youngish, blond, and handsome (by Berkeley standards). He often mentioned his new baby, so I guessed he hadn’t had sex in a while. He held his office hours in Dwinelle Hall.

  I dressed strategically for these in extra small T-shirts, rubber or animal-print miniskirts, and pumps. I sat near him, gauging his tempera ture. His widening pit stains and pink cheeks told me I had an effect. He stroked his tie clip. His foot tapped the tile. These were not the moves I was looking for. I had wanted him to bust the moves.

  He was basing half our grade on a big-ass paper, and I was considering writing mine about German interwar perverts. While we were studying together at a café, Ruth told me she had a drama professor who might serve as an intellectual resource for this endeavor. He was an expert on Weimar culture and super into Anita Berber, the dykey drug addict who danced nude and became the subject of that ugly/extremely sexy Otto Dix painting.

  “Is he gay?” I asked.

  “He’s the opposite of gay.”

  “Is he married?”

  “He lives with an ex-lesbian.”

  “This could work,” I thought.

  Before work, I walked to the drama department and slid a note with my phone number into the professor’s mailbox. He called. We agreed to meet at a café near the Julia Morgan pool. I showed up in a lace slip and ordered a cappuccino. He paid. My moustache sipped foam. He leered.

  I was having an effect.

  “Would you like to meet again, my dear?” he asked when our half-hour conversation was up. “I can help you write an amazing paper.” He smirked and adjusted himself. Ruth had warned me he had a penile implant.

  “OK.”

  “Call me, my dear,” he said, winking.

  I called him.

  The professor picked me up in a Dodge and drove me to a Mediterranean restaurant in Elmwood. A waitress seated us at a sidewalk table. She brought us wine, dolmas, olives, and lamb shanks on beds of rice. Behind the professor, a movie marquee advertised a French film.

  “Want to see that movie when we’re done?” I asked.

  He turned, read the title, and turned back. “French cinema is shit,” he spat.

  I laughed. Wine stained my teeth, tongue, and uvula. Wine pickled me.

  “Those pompous movies don’t appeal to basic human nature,” said the professor.

  “What movies do?” I slurred.

  “Rambo.”

  Rimbaud.

  He poured me more wine. He talked. He was a talker. I sized him up as I let him prattle. Men like it if you let them talk. It makes them feel like teachers. That’s all many men really want. To be womankind’s teacher.

  The professor was slight. He had a Sally Field build and dark hair. Gray roots showed at his part—he must’ve dyed. Hound-dog jowls framed his mouth. He wore rimless glasses, a long-sleeved black shirt, and black slacks. Typical. I ignored my lamb, picked almonds from the rice, and finished the wine.

  I hiccupped, “So we’re not going to the movie?”

  “I’ll take you to see that piece of shit if you want.”

  He took out his wallet and set cash on the table. We got up. Diners stared. I was purple haired, hairy, wobbly, and dressed in lingerie. Steering me by the elbow, the professor led me to the theatre’s awning. He bought two tickets from a box-office girl reading the Bhagavad Gita. He hustled me past the concession stand faster than anyone could say extra butter.

  Guiding me into the dark cinema, he pulled me to the back row. I fell into a seat. He sat beside me. He jammed his hand into my crotch. He grabbed my bush as if it were balls.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked.

  I nodded. On screen, a little girl with pigtails rode a swing.

  “I hate French cinema,” he said through clenched teeth. He rubbed me vengefully.

  “Then why don’t we leave?” I asked.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to watch a little Belgian girl swing while you finger me. That’s sick.”

  A lady a couple rows up turned around and glared.

  I got up and he steered me out. We walked up College Avenue. He whispered filthy words in my ear, how my ginormous cunt was drooling special-edishly for him, etcetera, etcetera, and I concentrated on not tripping. He paused at the mouth of an alley.

  He let go of me and walked into it.

  I wasn’t going to
chicken out this time. I followed the nebbish behind a dumpster.

  “Against the wall,” he said.

  I leaned and trembled. He reached up my slip, fingered me, wiped his hand down my bare back, and said, “You’ve just been diddled by a Jew. How does it feel?”

  “Kosher . . .” I whispered.

  Fall Semester 1997

  HISTORY 4B

  HISTORY 141A

  HISTORY 166A

  WOMENST 102

  WOMENST 198

  Yeah, history class was where I got molested. Nonetheless, I couldn’t stop taking history classes.

  I really love history.

  Everything has a history.

  Even doorknobs have a history.

  I stopped bleaching my moustache.

  I had sex with one more guy—he looked a little like Hugh Grant—and then my pussy became the Michigan Womyn’s Festival. Every night was ladies’ night.

  I got a cowboy hat.

  In overalls, Converse, and a leopard-print bra, I BARTed to San Francisco. I wandered through Chinatown, past City Lights Books, and into North Beach. I walked into the first strip club I saw. I sat at the tip rail. A guy and I watched a skin-and-bones stripper crawl toward us.

  “Are you looking for a job?” she asked me as she shook her long nipples in my face.

  “No,” I said. “I’m looking for you.” Strobe lights flashed. She may have blushed. She breathed in. I asked, “Can I buy a dance?”

  She nodded.

  I stood. She climbed off the rail and led me toward the shadowy rear of the club, to a private booth. Once I was inside with her, she pulled the curtain shut behind us. She delicately pushed me down on a tiny bench. Facing me, she stepped onto the bench, climbed up, straddled my face, and spread her legs above my eyes. Her genitals became my tiara and both of us froze. The stripper was me and I was him. I was re enacting the history of that moment after the art museum from a different perspective.