by Dana Johnson
Hi, she say, but thats all she say.
Come on, I say. Come to my room and look at my magazines.
Go head on, her mama say. Stop hanging all on me. Miss Bonnie push her away and run her hands over her bun like she checking if a hair out of place. She still pretty. Light brown hair like Cassandras. I see how her fingernails match her lipstick. Bright red like orange. So Cassandra come to my room. We sit on the floor and I show her Robbie Benson and Leif Garrett pictures, but she dont like them. She say, They ugly. I say, What else you want to do then? Nothing, she say. She get off the floor and then sit on my bed. She sit perfect and straighten out her yellow dress.
Lets go outside and run around then, I say. Come on. Lets go. I grab her hand. We can run around in my yard. Its big.
I cant, Cassandra say. She smooth her hair just like her mama. I cant get dirty.
Why is she being so boring? I dont know what else to do so I just tell her, Im going back out to the kitchen.
But everybodys outside sitting on the patio, they not in the house anymore. I get a chair and pull it over to Cassandra’s mama. Come on over here, Miss Cassandra, Mama say. Sit next to me. And Cassandra does. She sit and kick her legs back and forth, and I stare at the shiny dress shoes she wearing. Cute, Mama says. Aint you looking cute? She looks alright to me. Not all that cute.
The grown folks are drinking and Mr Channey and Dash keep getting louder and louder. Dash got on a lot a jewelry. Lots of chains and a shiny red dress shirt. Its not orange red, though. Its red, red. He keep cussing real loud and Daddy say, Dash we got to keep it down out here, they real particular bout noise around here.
Oh, alright. Thats why you got Aretha playing so low we caint even hear her. Man, Dash say real loud. Fuck these white folks, and Mama look at Daddy and Mr Channey look at Miss Bonnie, like you better tell him something. Plus, Aretha is not playing low if you ask me. She loud. She sound mad. Some people want! she holler. But they dont want to give!
Dash, she say. Come on now. You done had enough I think.
And Ima have some more! he say. Why yall leave the bottle inside? He gets up and almost fall. He walk to the sliding glass door but when he get to it he dont stop. He walk right into it. Goddamn! he say. I thought this shit was open. Thought I was just gone walk through it. He rub his forehead and then Daddy standing right next to him. I didnt even see Daddy get up, but he there.
You all right man? Daddy put his face close to Dash face. Look like you already getting a knot above your eye.
What you a doctor now nigga? You gone diagnose some shit?
All right, now. All right, Mr Channey say. He get up too.
Yall leave me alone. Im cool, Dash say. Ima get me another drink, though. I know that much. He pull on the door but its locked.
Let me show you, Daddy say. You got to switch this latch thing right here.
I know, man. I know, Dash say. You think I dont know how to open a door negro? But he try it and it dont work for him. He keep trying but that door stay closed.
Here, Daddy say. He flip the lock real quick and slide the door open. Dash walk in but Mr Channey right behind him telling him he aint getting no more to drink and right after that, everybody else get up and they leaving.
Im glad, though. Dash scary. He make too much noise. And Cassandra is boring anyhow.
Mama says, Well. Dash crazy but I wish they could have stayed longer than what they did.
Maybe Jonathan and Bonnie could have stayed, Daddy say. He pour himself some more J&B. He take a sip. But, uh uh. Daddy shake his head. Dash need to stay his ass on 80th Street.
8
BRENNA IS COMING over, even though Massimo will be home later in the day. I didn’t tell her he would be back today because I’m tired of being referee. Let them figure each other out. I am trying not to make that my job anymore. She does not like him. They were enemies from the start. Her big American mouth full of confrontation and opinions offends Massimo’s expectations of sophistication and femininity. “She’s common,” he has said. Once I pointed out to him that when we met, I was not sophisticated nor easily feminine. I’m common, too. I had big gaps in what I knew and what I should know. I didn’t know what words like “al dente” meant. Or what grappa was. I liked to drink cheap wine with Twinkies, chase my Mountain Dew with a shot of vodka. “Still,” Massimo said. “I have a jeweler’s eye. Rough diamonds, I can see. And anyway, you are too strange to be common.” In Brenna, he sees roughness only. No diamonds. Sometimes, even trash. He’s just a little classist, I once told Brenna. “What?” she said. “That’s like saying someone’s just a little bit of an asshole.”
After that very first time she saw him at the Formosa, she had already dismissed him. The next morning she asked, “How did money bags turn out?” She was eating a bowl of Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, the kind of food that I have tried to outgrow, living with Massimo, aside from the covert Twinkie or fried Spam I still love every now and then. Such food is what Massimo calls plastic. Everything I ate was plastic to Massimo. Now I eat food that Brenna mocks. Poached eggs. Veal. English tea with milk and honey. Expensive pastries from the gourmet shop down the hill.
“How do you know he has money?” I had asked, though this is something that I now know easily and clearly by looking and listening to a person. Still, that night, the possibility of a man with real money, interested in me, oddly had never occurred to me. If you never experienced something in the flesh, how can it possibly exist? How could it be possible? It was something I had heard of but never seen.
“Please,” Brenna said. “Those clothes. The way he talked to you.”
“You didn’t hear anything he said to me.” I was lying in bed, staring at the portrait of me and Keith. It was crooked, and so I got up off my futon and cradled the phone while I straightened it.
Brenna said something that was muffled and then I heard a bowl hit the table. “You just drank milk out of the bowl,” I said.
“It’s Cap’n Crunch,” she said. “The milk’s the best part. And I didn’t have to hear him say anything to you,” she said. “I saw him talking to you. The way he moved in, leaned into you and touched you while he was talking to you. He was handling you,” Brenna said. “People like that, these fuckers with money, they’re always handling somebody.”
“Pink Oxford Shirt looked like he had money,” I said. “You should have been a lot nicer.”
Brenna snorted. “I’d rather suck ten dicks for free than have to sit through his bullshit over some fancy meal.”
I laughed. This was the kind of talk that made Massimo crazy. But all our lives, this has been the source of my admiration for Brenna. She is never, has never been, handled. As for me, she says she likes my malleability, though she doesn’t call it that. It’s my blendability. My ability to play it straight. Play dead. Whatever is necessary. Brenna calls me her mellow bud. Awesome Pay, she took to calling me in junior high. Possum in pig latin, and this name has stuck through high school and even college, when I went off to USC and Brenna stayed home because she made choices that no one understood. I have always known Brenna and she knows me as best as anyone could.
JOAN HEARD ME say some things I never, ever say. When we leave Joans house we stand in the middle of the cul de sac and it got to be one hundred degrees and nobody wearing sunglasses so we squint at each other. I think cool the sack, cool the sack, and it sound better than the real word that I learned it is. Cool the sack, cool the sack. I let my mouth make the words but I dont say them. I think about what Joan hear me say, and I think about the way she look at me. I think, Asshole. Shit. Nigger. Honkey. But I dont even let my mouth make those words. My lips are closed but my mouth feel full like I need to swallow so thats what I do. I swallow them words. My house is just three houses away from Joans, right in the middle of the cul de sac, and I wonder why they build a house on a dead end where there be only one way to get in and one way to get out. Not like the corner houses where you can go up and down the streets to your left, to your ri
ght, too. It is good to think about something else, not about being at Joans. But I dont want to be at home, and I dont want to be at Joans. I just want to stand still and practice words in my head.
Are you talking to yourself you spaz? Brenna say.
Yeah, she is, Keith say. She always do that. Pardon me, Keith say. He tilt his head back so his nose is high in the air. Will you pass the Gray Poo Poo? He makes the Ps sound hard like he spitting something out of his mouth, like polly seeds. Brenna thinks this is funny, and I dont like when they always do two against one on me. Here come the words. Fuckers. You fuckers. But I swallow that too and change my face like Mama tell me to when I get mad at her and show it on accident. Better straighten up that face before I smack it straight, Mama always say. So I fix it. My face is straight. Just like Im playing dead. And the sun is so hot but we just still standing around.
Uncle Darnelle is gone beat your ass when he find out what you said to Joan, Keith say.
You a lie. My face change just a little bit because Keith scare me. I didnt say nothing to Joan. I said it to you. And to Brenna.
Still, Keith say. Still.
Why do he have to find out? I make my face as straight as possible like I dont care. I dont even say what I want to say to Keith to mode him: My daddy dont hit me. He never hit me. Only Mama, and thats because she make him, because she starts the fights. If she would just be quiet and not yell and scream at Daddy, she wouldnt get hit. I say it again. Why do he have to find out?
Brenna look back and forth between us like something gone happen. Some sweat roll down the side of my face but I dont even wipe it. Cool. Im cool the sack and them words make me smile because I think they sound funny right now and so Keith smile too. Awright, he say. Nobody have to know nothing. He stand next to me and kick his leg behind him so his foot hit me in the butt.
How bout this? Brenna say. Anybody got to know bout this? She pull a watch out of her pocket. Its small and silver with a teeny tiny face. Keith lean in to look at it and take it out of Brennas hand. We all knock heads trying to look at it. Where you get this old ass watch? Aint even digital, Keith say.
Brenna snatch the watch back. I got it just now, she say, when we left. It was on the kitchen counter so I swiped it.
I stare at the watch in Brennas hand. We are gone get in trouble. I already know this. Why she mix me up in this? Now I have to worry about what I said in Joans house plus this. She push it around with her finger like she playing with a worm and it shine in the sun. I thought it was pretty, she say. And its better than digital, dumbass, she say to Keith. Any moron knows that old stuff is better, she say. But me and Keith look at each other. Anybody know that new stuff is better. Nobody that we know want old stuff. Everybody we know want new things that are clean and work and look nice. Keith shrug and do his eyebrow at me like, Dont even try to figure out crazy Brenna. We too busy checking out the watch to know that Joan aint but two steps from us. She grab Brennas arm so hard the watch drop on the ground. She pick it up and look at us hard like she making a memory. She look at us like she counting careful, like one—thats me. Two—thats Brenna. And three—thats Keith, and she look at him the longest before her eyes pass over all of us again. We one, two, and three.
Okay, she say. Who did it.
I knew it. God Brenna is stupid. Nobody answer but we look at each other trying to figure out a story. What is the story?
No, Joan say. Look at me. And she make that word me sound hard like when she say No. She say. Im asking you, Avery. Who. Took. The watch. She has a scarf in her white hair. A blue scarf that match her eyes, and I look past her at her house that has orange roses in the front looking like frosting roses and her grass is green green green. Not like ours thats part yellow because water cost money, Daddy always say, and our yard is up high off the driveway so cant nobody see it no how.
And I think, Fucking Brenna Goddammit You Dumbass! Now look. But I say nothing for a long time until I say, Keith, and I say Keith because he steals all the time and nobody will care if its him, but if I say Brenna then maybe we wont get to play with each other again, and shes the only friend I have here, but Keith and I will always be together because. Because we family and you cant really keep no family apart.
Keith dont say anything, and I knew that was gone be how he did it because he stubborn. He dont care what people say about him. He steal and his mama beat him and he steal and his mama beat him and he steal.
Joan say to Keith, Is this true?
Keith stare through Joan like she clear, like a window. She stare at him, and what she thinking be in her eyes that look down, her mouth that turn into a white line across her face, and her fist that squeeze that watch in her hand, but I still dont know what it is she is thinking, exactly.
She look at Keith and then she say, If you are going to steal from me, you cant come to my house. But if you dont steal from me, you are welcome, and she say it like she struggling. Im surprised at you, she say soft, but it sound like she dont really mean what she say, like she not surprised at all.
I ask Joan, Are you gone tell?
She slip the watch on her wrist and turn her wrist back and forth. I dont know. Maybe. She talk to Brenna. Who is your mother? she ask. Brenna look serious. Shirley, she say. Shirley Jones.
What street?
This one, Brenna say. Down the other end.
And Joan satisfied with that. Dont know nothing about the Partridge family. She wipe her face with the back of her hand and give us the one, two, three. But she done. She just turn around and walk away.
Dude, Brenna say to Keith. Avery seriously dogged you out. Sorry, she say, and hit him on the shoulder.
Fuck you, Keith say. You didnt stick up for me neither, and because Keith have a point, Brenna shut up. Im tired. Tired of standing in the hot street. Tired of Brenna and Keith. Keith scratch his head and say hes going to go watch TV. Brenna say she going home, and I dont want to go home or to Joans or to Brennas. I dont know what to do except stand in the middle of the street.
9
I SIT IN a lawn chair and watch Brenna swim the pool end to end. She has the matter-of-fact physical beauty that, for a long time, I learned to prefer. Her legs are long, her breasts are large, but, because she has a narrow waist, her yellow bikini and red hair make her look like she should be on the cover of a Beach Boys album. I used to think her big breasts didn’t desexualize her and mammy-fy her in the ways that I assumed mine did whenever I got heavy. That’s what I used to think, that the difference between getting fucked and being the shoulder to cry on, the ears to listen on and on, was about thirty pounds.
We play Led Zeppelin and it always makes us nostalgic for junior high, the hours we would spend in each other’s bedrooms, talking about how foxy Robert Plant was—even though I was becoming even wilder for David Bowie. To me, Bowie sounded black when he sang a song, which made him like me. And when he was Ziggy Stardust, he seemed to be something I couldn’t name. He wasn’t a man or a woman. He wasn’t even from this planet. Because he was anything that we wanted him to be, he could be with anything and anyone he wanted to be with, with someone who was whatever she wanted to be, somebody like me, so many things rolled into one. With Avery. He’d be with Avery. Robert Plant, tight jeans and cock trailing halfway down his legs, he wasn’t for nerdy little nappy-headed girls like me, though I wanted him to be. Longed for him to be. The irony of Plant singing the blues—and my feeling excluded from the blues—was lost on me then, but not now.
Keith loved Zeppelin, and Bowie too, because his friend John liked them. When we first saw Bowie, we got the shock of our lives. He was on Soul Train, and my family was visiting Keith’s family in Victorville. We watched Soul Train like it was church. We needed to dance like those people going down the line. We just knew we were black swans that were going to look like them one day. Faith. We had it. “People all over the world,” we sang along with the theme song. “People all over the world!” But we didn’t know what that meant until we saw something that m
ade us think our eyes were lying. Everybody loved Bowie’s “Golden Years.” But when we saw him on Soul Train, we freaked out. “Avie!” Keith called out. He was adjusting the hanger, which served as an antenna, on his black-and-white television set in his bedroom. “Look!” Keith said. “Trip out!” I ran to his room and looked at the thin white man singing on Soul Train. Bowie was wearing a dark suit with a light shirt. He was moving very slowly, as though he were high or drunk or too cool to sweat. “He sing ‘Fame’?” I said. We loved that song. “I thought he was black.” We stared at the television as though we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I’m trippin’,” Keith kept saying. “I am really trippin’.” “Me too,” I said. “He white?” “I don’t care,” Keith said. “He bad. He a bad dude.” We were traumatized and amazed. Who was this man who wasn’t anything close to what he looked and sounded like? Who let him do that? Who let him be white and weird and on Soul Train?
Brenna climbs out of the pool and lies next to me in a chair. She says, “You got any booze? We should go get some if you don’t.” We don’t have any alcohol in the house since Massimo has gone. It’s my way of policing myself, since I have taken to drinking much more than I should. But now I would like to have a drink. It seems appropriate today.
We leave the music playing and go get vodka for Brenna and Chardonnay for me. I have to back out of the driveway and then turn carefully so that the car doesn’t get too close to the edge of the hill and roll down it. Then, we have to drive very carefully down the hill, which is very narrow and barely allows for two cars. Brenna vigilantly looks for cars coming around the bend, even though I am always careful up here.
“Why,” Brenna says. “Why come way up a hill like this? It’s crazy.”
“I don’t know.” I hunt for a CD and put it in while I’m driving with one hand. After a moment, Michael Jackson sings about making pacts and bringing salvation back.
