My Book of Life By Angel

by Martine Leavitt

  and I thought, just business

  while the date was breathing hard

  and all the breath was pressed out of me.

  I thought, just business

  while he was sweating hot

  and I was cold,

  and I was hot

  and I was cold

  and while his heart beat fast and mine was still.

  I was surprised he didn’t sink through me

  I was so nothing.

  After, when I took his money,

  he said,

  you look innocent, like a real girl,

  but you are a monster.

  Standing at my corner again

  and starting to yawn and sneeze and yawn

  because of a lack of candy,

  standing there, I thought, if I saw an angel

  maybe that would mean I was a real girl

  and not a monster.

  Next date said,

  how’d a sweet girl like you

  end up in a gig like this?

  I started to tell him about my shoe collection

  and how it all started with that green patent Mary Jane

  on the display shelf

  but he said shut up.

  And while the armrest was wrenching my neck

  and he was breathing his sushi breath into my mouth,

  while he was squeezing and pinching

  and pushing his fingers into secret places,

  I had to feel it without candy,

  had to feel him and feel my stomach aching

  and my shoulders aching

  and my hips aching

  and my stomach juice burning

  and my eyeball juice fizzing—

  that’s what you get when you make a vow

  about no more candy.

  Next date asked, how old are you?

  and I said thirteen.

  I don’t remember the first few birthdays

  so in a way I ­wasn’t lying,

  which the street preacher says is in God’s top ten.

  He asked,

  is this your first time?

  I said yes

  which in a way again I ­wasn’t lying

  because I am a plea­sure virgin,

  and not even with Call.

  Everything was quiet

  because my date had earbuds in his ears—

  I ­couldn’t hear his music

  but I could hear the pain in my brain like a drum—

  dopesick dopesick—

  and I knew I was just getting started.

  Then it was over and he asked, are you okay?

  He ­couldn’t hear my answer

  but he didn’t ask again

  because he knew what the answer needed to be.

  Little old Fred came in his little old truck,

  almost a toy truck it was so small,

  and the back part was wooden with no paint.

  Fred’s truck was a toy that got left out in the rain

  and played with hard,

  dents and scrapes all over,

  same as Fred.

  He saves up for me once a week,

  wears cologne and a tie,

  speaks nice to me.

  He is wifeless, childless, jobless,

  less, less, less.

  He always gets teary that I would really take his money.

  This time as he drove me back to the kiddie corner

  I saw him try to steal his own money,

  his little old hand in my purse.

  He saw me see, and pulled out his hand

  as he pulled up to my corner.

  I thought, what would Serena do?

  So I said, wait, I meant to give this to you,

  and I handed him his money.

  I said, this is Call’s money.

  I ­can’t do this again.

  He cried and took the money

  and I said goodbye.

  Widow saw me do it.

  She said, why?

  I said, angels.

  She said, ya there’s angels all right,

  and every time a loony-­tune chick acts stupid

  one loses its wings.

  I said, sometimes you have to walk a mile

  in a person’s shoes.

  Widow said, ya and then you’re a ­whole mile away

  if you decide to keep them.

  She said, what you did to get that money,

  what would angels think of that?

  I said, oh. That.

  Next date,

  he kept saying sorry sorry

  because his hands sweat so bad.

  He ­can’t get a girlfriend because his hands are always slimy.

  I thought, sweaty hands don’t mean much

  to a girl who’s dopesick.

  I pretended he was an alien sliming me

  and the safety of all the earth

  depended on me befriending him

  and I would unite our planets.

  Before we broke I kissed his palm.

  He said, you are an angel, and gave me a big tip

  and he didn’t even know my name.

  I told Widow with yawns and sneezes

  and the water in my brain running out my eyes.

  She said, hey, are you sick?

  And that’s when I got John the john.

  John the john is a university professor.

  He has told me about his mother

  and his first wife

  and his last girlfriend—

  he says, I ­can’t figure out women,

  and looks at me as if I know something.

  He says, tell me the truth, Angel—

  whose fault was my divorce?

  whose fault was it really?

  He never touches me, only wants me to read to him

  paradise lost by John Milton,

  has me read book nine out of twelve

  while he does his professor business.

  It is about when the serpent guy

  gets Eve to eat the knowledge fruit

  and then everything is bad after that

  and it’s all her fault,

  everything bad in the world is her fault

  and she deserves it.

  Every time Eve goes to eat that fruit,

  I say in my mind, don’t do it! it’s a trick!

  That’s the only part I understand.

  John told me his copy of paradise lost

  is a 1935 edition.

  He gives me a handwipe before I touch it.

  John gets mad if I don’t read it right,

  makes me read it again

  with a colon in my voice, not a comma,

  says, don’t read that like a run-­on sentence you

  have to put the punctuation in you don’t, read

  commas where there aren’t any.

  He said, Milton made his daughters read to him

  in Latin and Greek and they didn’t understand a word.

  If they could do it, you can.

  John said, in Milton’s day punctuation was called pointing

  because it pointed to the meaning.

  John taught me that a semicolon is a longer pause

  than a comma;

  and a colon is a longer pause

  than a semicolon;

  and a period is the longest pause of all.

  The punctuation is in En­glish

  but the rest of the book sounds foreign.

  John said, Milton liked to mix up nouns and adjectives . . .

  we would say, pretty young girl,
>
  but Milton would say, pretty girl and young.

  I said, oh.

  He said, is that all you have to say?

  I said, oh terrific that is.

  John said, terrific?

  You ­wouldn’t have that word without Milton.

  He made that word up.

  I said, you can make words up?

  He said, Milton added 630 words to our vocabulary.

  Before Milton there was no

  fragrance

  or lovelorn,

  no debauchery

  or stunning,

  no unprincipled.

  I said,

  you can make words up?

  He said, some of the words didn’t catch on,

  like opinionastrous, meaning opinionated . . .

  I said, you can make words up?

  He said, book nine.

  So I read

  Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile.

  What fear I then, rather what know to fear

  Under this ignorance of good and evil . . .

  I read and read.

  And John liked it so much

  with him doing so much hard breathing

  except when I did it wrong,

  which is easy when you don’t get it,

  when they’re just words stacked up,

  words like dismissive

  and didactic and complacency,

  all words made up by Milton,

  words one after another

  with commas and periods

  and adjectives and verbs

  all not making any sense added up.

  But then none of my dates made sense,

  and none of them paid as good as John.

  Widow saw how much money he gave me.

  I said, I have enough now to make Call happy.

  Good night, Widow, have an eve­ning good.

  She rolled her eyes and said,

  that John dude is one sick puppy what he’s doing to you.

  I said, don’t forget you so beautiful look

  and I left to meet Call at Kayos.

  As I walked my feet beat dopesick dopesick

  and my hip joints ground bone on bone

  and my lips stung

  and I felt like my eyeballs had rolled back into my brain.

  I could see my brain thinking

  you ­can’t leave,

  you think you can go home

  but this is your life now,

  this is what you are and what you’ve done.

  Eyeballs ­can’t blink back there.

  They had to see that I got myself ­here

  that I didn’t care bit by bit.

  On Call’s candy the universe seems a friendly place,

  but without it, it shows you its grumpy side.

  It ­doesn’t like you to have opinions or too many shoes.

  It frowns at you

  and shows you how stupid you’ve been.

  I got to Kayos same time as Asia and his new girl—

  he ­wasn’t letting this one out of his sight—

  and Call and the other businessmen ­were eating

  and a big hot fire was burning in the firepit.

  Call and the others had barbecue pork ribs,

  the juice running down their chins,

  and Asia’s new girl laughed like Serena never was.

  I didn’t have the special.

  In honour of Serena

  who nobody was talking about

  I ordered angel food cake

  which they did not have but I ­wasn’t hungry anyway.

  I said to Asia’s new girl, I think Serena will be back soon.

  Serena was my friend. Everybody loved Serena.

  Asia’s girl frowned at me.

  Call said, I have an idea.

  I’ve talked to some people,

  important people.

  He said, the missing women,

  they’re getting press now

  and we could cash in on that,

  make it work for us,

  tell people we have a way

  to get them off the streets.

  I mean, we could go legit, have a store.

  Asia laughed, but Call said,

  I’ve been looking into the pro­cess . . .

  he said, I have backers with cash.

  They are offering money to pay for a lawyer.

  We would have to lobby for decriminalization.

  Asia said, what are you talking about, man?

  Call said, I mean we could or­ga­nize ourselves,

  work together to get the business legalized.

  Then we could set up shop anywhere, advertise on TV—

  we’d be entrepreneurs.

  We’d be dignified.

  Asia said, with all the others watching, silent,

  they’ll never go for that.

  Call said, wiping his red mouth,

  this is a seven billion dollar business,

  they ­can’t ignore us.

  What we do, it is a necessary ser­vice.

  We gotta clean up our act, bind together like brothers.

  Call said, it’s a matter of supply and demand.

  He explained how he would draw up a petition,

  the men could all go out on the street to get signatures

  and take them to town hall and the mayor.

  Asia said, you do it, Call baby.

  You do it. ­We’re behind you.

  I thought, the missing women getting press?

  what did that mean?

  what did the press care if they ­were just running away

  or checking into rehab or going to jail?

  I thought, what if Widow was right?

  what if Serena was dead gone, not missing gone?

  what if there was a Mr. P?

  While Call and Asia and the other businessmen laughed

  and ate their barbecue pork ribs

  I tried to imagine being dead,

  and what if it was no feeling, no dreaming, no nothing,

  just not existing?

  I closed my eyes, and what if she got suffocated?

  I held my breath until I ­couldn’t stand it,

  but she would have had to stand it

  all the way to being dead.

  I had to stop because dying is not a thing you can do

  with your imagination.

  When I opened my eyes Asia and his new girl

  ­were looking at me, and I said again,

  Serena will be back soon.

  Asia said, what’s wrong with her?

  Call said, we have to go,

  she skipped a dose,

  she’s bringing the mood down.

  I’ll call you about the petition.

  Walking back to his place I said to Call,

  the press says about the missing girls?

  Widow says there’s a Mr. P—

  what if he got Serena?

  Call said, Mr. P—­that’s just street talk.

  Cops say one person could not get away with it that long,

  that many girls, all those bodies.

  What could he be doing with all those bodies?

  Call said, you see the police every night driving around,

  you see their cars and them inside.

  Have you ever seen Mr. P?

  He said, but anyway, it will get people to sign my petition.

  Call believes in the police—

  they are clean and pressed in their uniforms

  and polished boots

  and firearms and badges

>   and pins.

  Call is respectful of them, jokes with them on the streets.

  But I thought,

  would Serena go away without telling me?

  would she leave without her running-­away money

  which is still under my mattress?

  At his place, Call said, you just need a little candy,

  that’s what this is all about.

  I said, no thank you

  and he said, what’s going on?

  you getting ideas?

  I said, you have to be pure

  if you want to see an angel.

  He laughed, said, pure?

  I nodded

  and my brain went slosh slosh

  and the juice in my eyeballs fizzed.

  Call sat on the broken-­bone couch

  like nothing was wrong with it,

  tipped sideways on it like he was straight

  and all the rest of the world was crooked,

  and he wrote something and said it was a letter

  and he made me sit beside him and read his letter.

  Dear Mayor.

  Every year our municipality, spends valuable tax dollars, monitoring

  the activities of sex trade perpetrators. Every year hundreds of young women, are killed because of violence; many more: die of disease and

  drug related health problems.

  Imagine a world: where this ser­vice was legalized; where women ­were required to go for regular medical checkups: this would make patrons much safer. I propose: a community where these activities are contained; and where everyone benefits from the millions of dollars of tax revenue that could be reaped from this industry.

  We are starting a petition and would like to arrange an appointment to meet with you, to discuss some of our lobby group’s ideas for change.

  Sincerely,

  C. B. Jones,

  Entrepreneur

  Cell 604-­555-­0199

  Call was impressed with all his extra commas

  and colons and semicolons.

  He said, what do you think, Angel?

  I said, opinionastrous.

  Call said, someday we’ll have a duplex and a dog

  and cut the grass in the eve­ning

  and invite the neighbours to a barbecue.

  He said, you make enough money,

  and we’ll be folks, we’ll have a baby.

  He picked up a magazine and showed me the ads