“Is that you—Lisa?”
She laughed to cover her blush. “Don’t stare … come in!” She turned and yelled, “Mama! It’s Alex!”
The reply was muffled, but Lisa led him into the kitchen. As usual, the unwashed dishes filled sink and counter. Lorraine was in a housecoat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. She rose to hug him with real affection, apologized for her garb and the condition of the house—as if the dirt and clutter were unusual. “Sit down … down. My goodness you’ve filled out,” she gushed, feeling his biceps like a little girl. It made her daughter blush.
“I’ve filled out—but not as much as Lisa.”
The girl colored even more.
Lorraine made a twisted face, saying silently that Lisa caused her worry because of her blossoming. “I thought Teresa hypnotized the boys—but this one…”
“Mama … please.”
“Get Alex some coffee.”
As Alex put in the cream and sugar, he told them about getting paroled yesterday and that he was living with an aunt and her husband. He also realized that this unkempt house enfolded him in more human warmth than did the house of his relatives. There was something cold about Ava and Ray. Their sternness (he knew they were holding some of it back) was unmollified by warmth and love.
“Oh Alex,” Lisa said, “I have to go to school. I really would like to stay and talk.”
“You have to see the eye doctor, too,” Lorraine said. Then to Alex, “She might need glasses.”
“I’ll never wear them.”
“Yes you will.”
Alex laughed. Even this trivial family argument warmed him. It was so utterly different from the world he was accustomed to. His laughter brought a truce between Lisa and her mother. The girl kissed his cheek and departed.
Two cups of coffee later, he learned of events during his absence. JoJo had been paroled from Whittier six months ago and was now living with a maternal uncle in King City, a farm town an hour southeast of San Francisco; he was working in a gas station. Lorraine would give Alex the phone number if he promised not to give it to Wedo.
“How come? You always liked Wedo.”
Lorraine’s eyes dropped, and either sadness or hardness masked her features. Instead of speaking, she silently made a gesture of pumping her right hand toward the inner aspect of her left elbow. It took a few puzzled seconds before Alex realized she was depicting that Wedo was “shooting” with heroin. It stunned Alex, and then, very clearly, he thought: That isn’t the end of the world. I know junkies and they aren’t zombies.
“What about Teresa? What’s with her and Wedo?”
“Her father will call the police if he tries to see her.”
“What does she say about that?”
“What can she say? She just cried.”
One reason Alex had come here was to locate Wedo. This was where he could pick up the trail. Or so he’d thought before. Now he didn’t know—and didn’t know if he wanted to see Wedo.
“Are you sure it’s heroin? What about pills and pot—or booze?”
“No, no, it’s—that! He used our bathroom and didn’t come out. When we finally went in—Teresa first and she screamed—he was out on the floor with dried blood on his arm. The kit—”
“Outfit,” Alex corrected.
“Okay, the outfit—was right there on the floor. He was out cold and gasping like he was dying. My husband called an ambulance, but before it got here Wedo woke up—sort of. He was still woozy and goofy, but he wouldn’t wait for the ambulance. He got out the back door. When he called the next afternoon, my husband told him to never show his face or we’d call the police.”
“That’s too bad,” Alex said, having learned a little guile, wondering how he’d locate Wedo. Teresa might still have contact without her parents knowing. It was probable, knowing her, for loyalty was one of her strong traits. But it was just noon, and she wasn’t expected until after four P.M. That was too long to wait, not if he had to just sit with Lorraine doing nothing. Freedom was still too new. It was unlikely Wedo, now nineteen, still lived in the smelly room with his mother, but she still might be there, and wherever Wedo was and whatever he was doing, he would be in touch with his mother. Even a junkie could be a loving and dutiful son.
* * *
Alex hitchhiked to half a mile from the decrepit firetrap of a rooming house. Both rides took him in immediately after he raised a thumb, but it was still nearly three hours until he was walking the last few blocks of the journey. Los Angeles was already the sprawling bête noir of public transportation, and traveling this route would have taken yet another hour and four transfers; the miracle of the freeways was still in the future. Thus he trudged the last half mile under the mellow hues of afternoon sun, wishing he had an automobile. It was still warm enough to make him sweat, but he bought a Pepsi, drank it on the move, and had the quiet affection of familiarity with the area, which was blighted for living in while blooming for business. He enjoyed passing the clusters of people around vending trucks outside the garment factories—so many old women with seamed, strong faces of several colors; children and the old had no race other than human. In the empty lots littered with wine bottles and beer cans played mostly olive-skinned, dark-eyed children with dirty faces. Toward them Alex felt like an adult. He passed two Chicanos about his own age. They wore the khaki pants and perfectly pressed Pendleton shirts that had become the newest uniform of East Los Angeles barrios and gangs. They looked hard at him, a Paddy in a non-Paddy neighborhood, and he looked away—not because he was afraid, although locked stares would have led to words, and from there to a fight, but because his mood was too good to spoil with anger and violence. He knew it wasn’t their turf; theirs was two blocks away, around Clanton Street. This lacked enough dwellings to spawn a gang claiming it.
When he reached the dismal second-floor corridor of the rooming house, nobody answered his knock, nor did he see anyone to ask if Wedo’s mother still lived there. Knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask questions wasn’t done here. At best he would find a woman who spoke no English, or someone who would glare suspiciously from behind a door chain.
At a liquor store on the corner, he bought gum, a newspaper, and another Pepsi, and then felt justified in asking to use a pencil and a piece of paper. He left a note with Aunt Ava’s phone number under the door.
As he walked away, looking at everything with the same open hunger as a tourist, he felt something entirely new. It was the first consciousness of his own strength. Always before he’d been a frightened boy, helpless before the whims of any adult. This had been especially true in those hours after midnight when children didn’t roam the city’s streets, and anyone who saw him would know something was amiss; any adult might play concerned citizen and grab him or call the police. In the last year he’d grown and filled out. He would grow even bigger and stronger, but he was already beyond where just anyone could grab his arm and take him along. Although he would turn fifteen in six weeks, he could claim eighteen, albeit a young-looking eighteen. He felt a surge of manhood as he walked through the mellowing afternoon sun. It warmed his back. He bounced on the balls of his feet, feeling the thigh muscles flex and harden. He rolled his shoulders and twisted his torso. He felt good, really good, strong and quick.
21
As the bus whooshed to a stop, he saw it was packed, standees bumping into each other with the sway. He hesitated while others boarded. He loathed being pressed in like a sardine. Then he suddenly realized that the jam meant the rush hour. It was an hour later than he’d thought, and he already expected words from Aunt Ava for being late. He swung up and on; the fare had risen a nickel during his last incarceration.
While he held on and the bus crawled across the sprawling city, the night came. Neon and street lights grew to brightness as they had more darkness to feed upon. Although Alex disliked the press of bodies and their inevitable smells, he enjoyed watching the faces and hearing snatches of conversation. It was as different from what he was accustomed to as a
bus in Peking would be to the average citizen.
When he got off there was a warm wind, endemic to southern California and called a Santa Ana. It rustled the palm trees as he trudged the last block to his aunt’s house. He knew the late hour would require a story. He would say that after signing up for school he’d gone looking for a job. He would become indignant if they pressed to have specifics. The bungalow’s lights were on when he turned in. Through a partly raised window he could hear the radio and recognized the voice of radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn, who was analyzing why the country was in a postwar inflation and recession.
The front door was unlocked, so Alex went in. The front room was empty, but the radio voice and other noises came from the kitchen. Alex went in and found his aunt with green ledgers, receipts, the cash register tape, and a metal box of cash.
He rapped on the door frame. “Hi,” he said.
“Oh!” She jerked upright; then a narrower look came to her face, reflecting a new thought. “Where have you been?”
“Looking for a part-time job.”
“Did you sign up for school?”
“I went there and they told me to wait. So I sat for a couple of hours, and then they said somebody was sick and it’d be better if I came back on Monday.” His eyes told him that his words weren’t having the desired mollifying effect. Her expression was even more sour, and a knot of dread in his belly became a balloon. Although something was obviously wrong, he had to play out the hand as he’d started until he knew what was going on. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Anything to eat around here?”
“You should’ve been here when the café was open, instead of gallivanting around everywhere.” But she paused in her accounts long enough to fix him a fat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a big glass of milk with Ovaltine. It tasted good, or maybe it seemed so because he was hungry. Institutions fed three times a day, but the food was nearly inedible, so now this was especially good, if simple. Moreover, today he’d eaten nothing since breakfast, and his body was accustomed to a routine of eating something three times a day. As he ate, he forgot his aunt’s attitude when he came in.
The last of the sandwich was in Alex’s mouth when the front door opened. Ava was already in the living room.
“Did he show up?” Ray’s voice asked.
“In the kitchen.”
“What’d he say about school?”
Ava’s reply dropped below Alex’s ability to hear the words, but moments later Ray’s footsteps sounded louder and the boy readied himself for confrontation.
“So you went to the school?” the man asked.
“Yes. I told Aunt Ava.”
“You’re a dirty little liar!” Ray spat it out, dripping contempt, his face flushing with his outrage. The fervency was like a physical blow, and although Alex had had premonitions, he was still thrown into a temporary blankness of emotions and thought, staring at the shirtfront of the husky man looming over him.
“Your parole officer came by just after you left … not ten minutes. We sent him to the school. He went to find you and came back two hours later. He didn’t find you, and they didn’t know a goddamn thing about you. He wants you at his office tomorrow morning.”
Ava was in the doorway behind her husband. “We were so embarrassed.”
“You made fools and liars of us,” Ray continued.
The first accusation had stunned Alex and brought pangs of guilt. But when Ray kept standing over him with implied threats and actual accusations, the guilt turned into a small flame of angry rebelliousness that they inadvertently kept fanning.
“If it wasn’t for your aunt,” Ray said, “you’d still be in Preston Reform School.”
“I know that—”
“Shut up!” The man jerked forward at the command, a move that made Alex flinch reflexively and then resent the man even more. He smoldered because he’d flinched. His values already equated fear with weakness and cowardice.
“Your parole officer told us to call him when you don’t cooperate. He’ll send you back any time … for your own good … before you get in real trouble again.… My wife cried with worry when you didn’t come back today. I’m not going to let that happen again. If you wanna stay out here you’re gonna play by the rules. You’re going to school every day. You’ll stay home on school nights, and be in by midnight on weekends. You’ll work in the café on Saturday—”
“Remember church,” interjected Ava.
“Right!” said Ray. “You’ll attend services with us on Sunday. It will do you good to hear the Lord’s word. You’ll do what we tell you, and if I catch you in another lie I’m gonna take a belt to you.” The man’s voice was brittle with fervency if not actual hostility—and the words lost meaning to Alex, became a buzz in his head drowned by his own growing rebellious rage. This asshole uncle was the same as the men in institutions who’d brutalized him. Alex forgot Ray’s words as his rage grew, but it was a rage accompanied by fear (the parole office could send him back). Ray was a powerful adult male, thick through the chest, shoulders, and arms, and although Alex was already as tall, he was far less husky and muscular. Also he was seated, jammed down between table and wall. Ray was standing above him. Alex had had enough experience with violence to recognize his futile tactical position. While on the edge of rage, he was half intimidated.
Meanwhile, Ray kept spitting out ultimatums—though now Alex’s brain wasn’t deciphering the messages. He was on fire within, seeing this as identical with cruel authority in institutions. Ray might just as well have been a guard as an uncle. The different factor was that here he, Alex, could leave, get away, escape. There were no bars, fences, and barbed wire; the police revolvers and handcuffs were vague and unimportant here. So Alex seethed silently, waiting, knowing he’d soon have space to rise and face the powerful man on equal terms—if he had an equalizer.
The chance came within a few minutes. A knock came on the front door. Aunt Ava called into the kitchen that it was the newspaper boy. Ray stepped through the doorway, reaching into his pocket for change. Alex was instantly on his feet, rifling through the drawers under the sink until he found the kitchen knives. He removed two—the biggest and sharpest—one razor-sharp boning knife, the other a butcher knife. He slid the butcher knife to the other end of the sink, letting it lie there on the white tile. He held the boning knife against his thigh, his palm instantly beginning to sweat, his heartbeat racing.
When Ray came back his gaze went to where Alex had been seated. He had to turn all the way around to face the youth, who was standing next to the sink six feet away. The man started to pick up his ultimatum-laden speech where it had been interrupted, but he instantly sensed that something was amiss. Maybe it was Alex’s burning and unblinking eyes.
“Come sit down,” Ray said, instinctively trying to establish dominance.
Alex remained motionless, except for a twitch of lip and cheek—and the narrowing of the blazing eyes.
“Did you hear me?” Ray said.
“I heard you. Fuck you!” As Alex spoke, he blushed, for the words had an inadvertent croak.
“Whaa…?”
“I said fuck you!” Now the rage took over, wiping off indecision. “Fuck you, motherfucker—and your mother—and the horse both of you rode in on.” He clenched the boning knife harder. It was still hidden. As he saw Ray’s face register uncertainty, his brain sang with joyous rage—with the glorious feeling of rebellion and revenge. The man who had been omnipotent minutes ago was identical with Lavalino, The Jabber, and all the others. But they’d had immediate numbers, clubs and tear gas and dark, solitary confinement cells. Ray was alone, help too far away to really help until it was over. Tears of fury came to Alex’s eyes.
“See that knife,” Alex said, indicating the butcher knife. “Pick it up and let’s see how fuckin’ bad you are … dirty motherfucker! You’re too fuckin’ big for me to fight—but we can get it on—and I’ll cut your motherfuckin’ heart out and feed it to you.” Even in the middle of
rage, Alex was following a script some convict had told him—of offering the enemy a knife while issuing a challenge. It was the behavior either of ultimate machismo (a word still unheard of then) or of a madman.
When the truth seeped into the man, that this slender juvenile delinquent was honestly ready to fight with a knife to the death, the adult blanched. It was outside the realm of his understanding.
Alex wasn’t bluffing. His mind had locked in, amputating any images of consequences or tomorrow.
“You’re crazy,” Ray said, and the declaration wasn’t a full thought but a reflex, the initial reaction. It dripped fear. He had no doubts that Alex was real.
“If I’m crazy … it’s motherfuckers like you made me crazy.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The red rage flashed up, nearly blinding Alex. “Get it, punk!” he snarled, meaning the butcher knife. “See if you can back up that shit you’re talkin’! I’ll cut your motherfuckin’ heart out and feed it to you.” He punctuated the maniacal threat by raising the razor-sharp knife and edging forward. Ray flinched, put his hands up with palms forward, his eyes wide. “Don’t, Alex, don’t. God…”
“You weren’t saying that a minute ago. Where’s all that shit you were talkin’? See if you can walk that walk.”
At that moment, Ava entered the kitchen, oblivious to what had been going on.
“Get out of here,” Ray said.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m leaving,” Alex said. “I’m getting out of this garbage can with this fuckin’ asshole.”
“What’s wrong?” she nearly wailed.
“I said get outa here,” Ray said.
“You can stay,” Alex said. “This man of yours is a punk. If he was pretty I’d fuck him in the ass.”
“Alex!” she cried.
“He’s crazy,” Ray said. “Okay, okay,” he said to Alex. “Just leave.”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’, motherfucker! Get outa the way.” He gestured with the wicked knife, indicating that Ray should move away from the door.
Little Boy Blue Page 34
