The White Horse

by Grant, Cynthia D.

  Stood with the winos and the losers and the dying in the long lines outside the soup kitchen.

  “Look,” Sonny said, his face twitching, “that teacher will give you money. She likes you. You gotta ask her. Are you listening to me?”

  But she wasn’t asking no one for nothing.

  At night they slept in the Laundromat. Old Bert the wino watchman liked them, even though they’d stolen some clothes one time. He let them lean against the warm dryers. The place was filthy but it had a bathroom with a sink; cold water, no mirror. Bert said if there was a mirror, people hung around. He tried to remember to keep it locked when he was gone or people were in there doing God knows what. I can’t let no one sleep here, he explained; if the boss finds out, I’ll lose my job. But he pretended not to notice when she and Sonny conked out, curled beneath an old Bekins blanket.

  “Let’s hit the park,” Sonny said when they woke up. She washed her face and combed her hair with her fingers. She made him wash his face. He needed a shave. Bert gave them a few bucks to get something to eat and promised he’d bring Sonny a razor. They ate doughnuts on their way downtown.

  One way they got money was by hitting up the punks who drove to the city every weekend so they could hang out with people like Sonny and Raina, pretending to be hardcore. Rich high school kids who liked to act poor. Posers, Sonny called them, not to their faces.

  When they got near the park, he made sure the posers saw him. Then he plunged into the crosswalk, against the light.

  A truck screeched to a stop, inches from his thigh. The driver’s purple face screamed, “Do you want to get killed?”

  “That’d be tough on your insurance.” The posers laughed with him, trying to look cool in their warm leather coats, faces painted white as fluorescent lights, spider eyes, hair dyed purple green yellow, tongue studs, ear cuffs, braces on their teeth.

  The wind rattled the Christmas lights strung high above the park. Raina could not stop shivering.

  The posers bought them lattes and fancy pastries, and gave them boxes of imported cigarettes. They played CDs of bands Raina and Sonny had never heard of, and talked about drugs and anarchy and the high cost of concert tickets.

  A kid named Jason had his arm around Sonny. He was tall and blond and pretty. Sonny looked like his ghost. Jason liked people to see him laughing; to know he was having the most fun, the best dope. Gold chains and hippie shit were tangled at his throat. The big diamond stud in his ear was real.

  Sonny laughed at Jason’s jokes, but she knew he was thinking: Come on! Let’s go! He needed a shot. He’d find the dope, then Jason bought and gave Sonny some, on commission, he said. Jason said his habit was no big deal; he just liked a taste of the real stuff now and then. Liked acting big and bad. Amaze your friends. He wanted to hang around and bullshit, but Sonny was in a hurry.

  She followed them when they left the park with a girl named Wally, who looked like she’d drowned, and a boy named Gary, dressed in black with a diaper pin stuck through his eyebrow.

  Sonny had forgotten all about her. He never even turned around.

  Tourists melted back to let them pass. They entered an alley. Tall buildings blocked the sun. The wind was fierce, but Sonny was sweating in his thin white shirt with all the buttons gone.

  “You guys wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Jason looked startled. “Why? Where you going?”

  “On a cruise to Alaska. Where you think?”

  “We’ve never done it like this before,” Jason said.

  “That’s how my man wants it. You got the dough?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “What’s the matter, don’t you trust me?” Sonny was puffing one of Jason’s cigarettes. “If you don’t trust me, man—”

  “No, I do, it’s not that.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Sonny sounded bored.

  “No problem,” Jason said. His friends looked embarrassed. “It’s just, you know, he always meets us here.”

  “Things change,” Sonny said. “Do you want to deal or don’t you?”

  Jason looked unhappy. He said, “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be right back. Raina’ll stay here with you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. You baby-sit.”

  Jason pulled out his wallet and took out the money. But the way Sonny reached for it made everything change. In that split second he looked too naked, too hungry. Raina saw Jason seeing the matted hair, the lips caked with spit, the bony wrists—

  Jason put the wallet back into his pocket. “Fucking junkie,” he said. “Get out of my way.”

  Tears filled Sonny’s eyes. Then he was lying on Jason, holding a knife to his throat.

  “Jesus Christ!” Wally cried. “What’re you doing? Don’t hurt him!”

  Gary went off like a car alarm.

  “You two better shut up,” Sonny said. “Unless you want your friend talking out of his neck. You can smoke like that too. I seen a guy do it. His voice kinda sounded like Daffy Duck.”

  “This is stupid.” Raina reached into Wally’s satchel for matches and a cigarette, lit one up.

  “I’ll tell you what’s stupid!” Sonny’s face was an inch from Jason’s. “You and your friends come around here playing games, then you get tired and go home to Mom and Dad. This isn’t a game, man! This is real! How do you like it?”

  Jason was crying.

  “Now what?” Raina said.

  Sonny looked at Wally and said, “Give her the jacket.”

  “The what?”

  “You heard me. Give her the goddamn coat!”

  Wally took it off, trembling, and handed it to Raina.

  “Don’t worry, Daddy’ll buy you another one,” Sonny said. “Try it on, baby. How’s it fit?”

  “It’s kinda big.”

  “This ain’t Macy’s. You too,” he told Gary.

  Fumbling with the buttons, Gary stripped off his coat and dropped it on the ground near Raina’s feet.

  “You guys oughta thank me,” Sonny said. “Consider this an education.” He pulled out Jason’s wallet and tossed it to Raina. “You know what they say, kids: Drugs are bad.”

  He sliced off the gold chains; the hippie beads scattered. Then he leaned close enough to kiss Jason’s ear and plucked out the diamond with his teeth.

  Jason whimpered and moaned. Sonny got to his feet. “Get out of here,” he said.

  They ran down the alley.

  Sonny put on Gary’s coat and tucked the diamond in his pocket. “Shit!” he said suddenly, smacking his head. “I shoulda took his shoes. They woulda fit me.”

  “You stupid asshole!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll buy some.”

  “You were gonna take the money and split!”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Leave me with those kids!” she screamed. “You goddamn greedy junkie!”

  “Don’t say that. I love you.”

  “Fucking liar!” She hit him.

  He slapped her. She slugged him until he held her tight. “You were gonna leave me, you asshole, you junkie.”

  They hugged each other, crying. He kissed the top of her head and said, “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Chapter Seven

  Once upon a time there was a girl named Bug Brains. Teacher said: Children, it’s not her fault. They called her names because she was dirty. How’s a little kid supposed to wash her clothes? Teacher sent home a note for her mother, but the little girl’s mother was not at home. Her brothers came back. She told them what happened. They laughed and said: Don’t use my comb. She looked and looked at herself in the mirror She couldn’t see nothing wrong. Fell asleep that night waiting for her mother but the mother did not come home. When the girl woke up the house was empty. Found clothes on the floor and pat them on. But the teacher had told her: You can’t come back until your little problem’s gone. She waited and waited and waited and waited but the mother did not come home. She had to get to sc
hool! Didn’t have any money, so she went to a store and stole special shampoo. The people caught her. They called her mother. Who finally came. Said: What’d you do? They told her what happened. She got real mad and grabbed the girl and pinched her skin and shouted at her: I’ll beat your butt! And when they got home that’s what she did.

  Then the mother felt very guilty.

  She washed the girl’s clothes and her blankets and sheets. She washed the girl’s hair with special shampoo. The girl went to school feeling happy and clean but the kids called her Bug Brains until she moved.

  You’d think someone would’ve asked a few questions, like: Why did you leave this kid alone? Why is she always dirty? Who’s the mean-looking guy with the weasel eyes? Where’d she get all these bruises?

  Granny would’ve cried. For herself and the child, busted for lice, at the age of eight.

  My mother’s first bust, but not her last.

  I have described my mother as an evil dwarf. The Wicked Witch of the North. This is not accurate. Beside her senior yearbook picture it doesn’t say: Plans to marry a succession of pedophiles and losers. Hopes to have seven children and make them miserable. Career goal: dead-end jobs at minimum wage.

  The words she would’ve chosen would’ve read: Hard-working Carla will attend a four-year college. She’ll make her first million before she’s thirty, be happily married, and have two children.

  If there had been a senior picture. She got pregnant with Ray and dropped out.

  When they argue, Granny says, I didn’t want you to quit. You could’ve had an abortion or let the baby be adopted.

  Liar! my mother shouts; you said I had to keep it! Or were you always so drunk, you don’t remember?

  They rehash the past as if it were a case they were pleading before the highest court.

  There’s not much evidence from my mother’s childhood; Granny didn’t save stuff like photographs or school papers. There were too many kids, too many moves, no camera. Only one picture I used to study, my mother at ten, in a plaid school dress; her bangs haphazard, her face so solemn, you’d think she’d seen what was lying ahead.

  Granny says she was a smart girl. The teachers loved her. Did well in school. Made the honors list. But then she changed, for no reason, she—

  Liar! You knew what he was doing to me! You let him!

  No, Granny insists. You never told me.

  I did! You called me a slut, remember?

  On and on, the facts as hazy as the smoke from their cigarettes. Granny lives downtown in a studio apartment. She takes the bus to my mother’s. They play cards together. The past is a scab they can’t leave alone.

  “She loves you, Raina. It’s just hard for her to show it.”

  Granny’s treating me to lunch downtown, at a hamburger stand open to the street. We’re supposed to be talking about my life and figuring out how to fix it.

  “See, the problem was my second husband,” she explains.” He and the kids didn’t get along.”

  He beat them bloody, according to my mother. The belt buckle cut them.

  “So I married Fred.”

  Who turned out, to no one’s surprise but hers, to be another child molester. She thought she couldn’t live without a man; that a bad one was better than none.

  “Which turned out to be a big mistake,” Granny adds. As if I don’t know how this story ends. “By the time I knew what was going on, it was too late.”

  For Granny and my mother. For my mother and me.

  “Your mother doesn’t understand,” she says. Her cheeks are wrinkled. She’s only fifty. People stream past; they look like Granny, old faces with the eyes of frightened children. “Well, I’ve gotta get back to work, honey. If I’m late, the boss’ll kill me.”

  She kisses my cheek and gives me ten bucks.

  Who was the monster: my mother or Granny?

  I remember happy times, my mother laughing. Or maybe that was a show on TV. A show about a family with lots of kids. Too many kids. You kids shut up. Too many men. Lock the door, Daddy’s drunk! Fists punching through the wood. Don’t hit my mother! Cops coming. Blood streaming from my mother’s nose.

  When the welfare check came at the first of the month we’d beg her, Mom, please pay the rent. Pay the rent. They’re gonna kick us out. Buy food, Mom. Please. Sometimes she listened, sometimes she didn’t, because she’d found a way to make the problems disappear. Fairy dust, white powder, gobbled up her problems. Had her laughing in the kitchen, tossing Bobby in the air. Watch the baby, Granny said. Gobbled up all the money until the problems got so huge, they filled the house and crashed through the roof and the rain came in.

  She always found another place. She was dealing by then, bringing in two, three thousand a week. When she wasn’t in jail. Or scraping by on food stamps. Or making hash pipes with her girlfriends in the kitchen while the kids ate Sugar Smacks out of the box and the milk was gone so the babies drank Kool-Aid.

  One time I asked her: Did you use when you were pregnant with me?

  Cigarette smoke curled out of her nose. Obviously, she said.

  I spy on her sometimes, trapped behind a checkout line at Kmart, in that ugly jacket with a badge that says HELLO, I’M CARLA! HOW CAN I HELP YOU?; ringing up things on a cash register with a sign that reminds her to GREET SMILE THANK.

  She looks so beaten. She used to seem big. She used to be a kid, someone like me. A long time ago. She wanted life to be different. Then Bobby died, but that’s another story.

  Chapter Eight

  The computers finally arrived. No printers. No software. Am I supposed to create my own? On the phone half the day with the District Office, Juan and Jackie listening at their desks, grinning. Yes, Doris, the new computers came, but—no, I’ve already looked in the boxes. That’s what I’m telling you: without the programs. So we can’t, they’re just blank—what’s taking so long? Is Santa going to deliver them?

  Sara’s essay didn’t win the VFW contest. The commander (Commandant?) said they didn’t care for the topic she’d chosen, but I think they were scared because she sounds so smart. Not a kid who’ll pledge allegiance without knowing what the words mean. That and the nose ring finished her off.

  She said, I knew I wouldn’t get it. I told you, Miss Johnson.

  Half the time they’re right and I’m wrong.

  Met with Thomas from L.A. and his father. There’s a role model. In the middle of our conference he asked me for a date. Thomas just sitting there, staring at the floor. I thought I must’ve heard wrong, so I kept talking and the father says, No, I’m serious, flashing what he thinks is a winning smile. Shit, Thomas says, and he’s out the door. He’ll be heading down south before long.

  Wendy called last night. She’s coming for the weekend, maybe after Thanksgiving. It will be so good to talk to another adult. The kids look at me like I’M the child; smiling and shaking their heads while I’m talking, like: You’re really nice, Miss Johnson, but you don’t have a clue.

  Maybe I should teach in private school. It would be great to have that much parent support. Wendy said that when St. Peter’s had their open house, NINETY PERCENT of the parents came. For public schools to get that kind of turnout we’d have to offer free doughnuts and an open bar.

  I don’t want to give up, but I feel so discouraged.

  I shouldn’t think about this when I’m tired.

  The situation with Raina is bizarre. She came in late for our appointment this morning, filthy, smelling of booze and cigarettes, and handed me these wrinkled binder pages, wanting me to read them right now. Right now! Nothing else matters; not math, not her test scores. Watching me read, trying to see what I’m thinking. Then, when I say, this is wonderful, Raina, she acts like: Who cares, it’s just a stupid poem, just another stupid story about her family.

  Anyway, she said, who’d want to read it? Nobody’d pay me for stuff like that.

  Sometimes what you write is just for you, I said. To figure out what you’re thinking.

 
She crumpled up the pages real big and noisy. But she put them in her pocket, not the trash.

  “Raina, we’ve got to talk,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Your life.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing to say.”

  “Apparently there’s plenty. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Hilton.”

  “Can’t we be friends, Raina?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, you can give it to me straight.”

  She almost smiled. Her fingernails are bitten down to blood. Like mine.

  “You can’t smoke in here.”

  She flicked ashes on the floor. The ideal moment for the Superintendent to drop by, as he’s promised to so many times.

  “There are people who can help you, Raina.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “They’ll take care of you and give you a place to stay.”

  “I take care of myself.”

  “There’s the Children’s Shelter.”

  “I ain’t no child.”

  “And the foster program—”

  She scraped back her chair.

  “I know you want help. That’s why you show me your writing.”

  “I’m making up stories. That’s all,” she said.

  “Can’t you be honest with yourself, Raina? I know you want to tell me what happened to Bobby. That’s why you keep writing about him.”

  “That ain’t why.”

  “If you can’t say it, why not put it down on paper? It’ll just be between the two of us, I promise.”

  But I’d gone too far. I’d pushed too hard.

  Without another word she was out the door.

  Chapter Nine

  One of Sonny’s teeth was hurting but he wouldn’t go to the free clinic. He said the tooth wasn’t the problem; it was her: she drank up all the money. He reeled around, slurring.