Elsewhere, California

by Dana Johnson

  Hey Gal! Somebody yells out of the truck. Hey big legs! Where you get them juicy legs? And when I turn my head to see who it is, I twist my leg in them platforms and fall in the ditch. I did not want to end up in this ditch, but here I am, anyway. I get little rocks and dirt all in my elbows and knees. One of my paper titties is in the ditch, like a regular piece of tissue somebody blew their nose on and threw down.

  I am stuck in this ditch and it is hard to get out of. I should have never put on these shoes that don’t fit me, but if I take them off and try to get back home barefoot, it’s going to hurt. Before I climb out of the ditch, I put my paper tittie back in. And I put the shoes on because at least I’ma get up the road, even if it don’t feel right. Even if it hurt.

  16

  I LIVE IN this house, but I do not own it. I love this house. A house with immaculate floors, bamboo, even though I am not the one, necessarily, who has cleaned them. Furniture that does not have ugly patterns and rough textures, Prairie Era furniture, I was delighted to be told by Massimo. I had never heard of the Prairie School, but my favorite furniture in the house is a barrel chair with a deep red cushion and a table made of Parkton cherry that we use as a seat, table, and footstool. In this house, it’s elegant, but it reminds me of another place and time, my dreams and memories of the country. Such furniture doesn’t have to be in this house. This furniture can fit anywhere. And something else I did not know I dreamed about until I had them: sheets that are soft but sturdy and heavy on my legs, belly, and breasts. Sheets with an impressive number of threads. I did not know that there was more than one kind of sheet. I didn’t know about sheets, but now I can’t go back to not knowing about them. Massimo, almost done preparing our early meal, agrees. But after this agreement we part ways because he isn’t grateful. Why should he be grateful? He has worked very hard. He had nothing. Now he has something. “Avie,” he says, “you had nothing. Now you have something. So?”

  “So?” I had asked him, thinking about all my people who had nothing. Who still have nothing.

  “Avie,” he says now. “Come and eat. And them. The radio. Enough. They will lose anyway.”

  I push the button on the radio. Off. “No loyalty. None at all,” I say from across the room. I see the last of the day’s light shine on his strands of gray. “Don’t you know how far loyalty goes? If you wish really hard and think really hard, what you want to happen will happen. The Dodgers will win.” And I still believe this, time after time. “But your fair-weather bullshit?” I point at Massimo. “You undercut the magic.”

  He turns down the corner of his mouth, his cigarette still holding on by the thin paper of his filter. “There is no magic. No luck. If you play hard, you win. Sometimes. The Yankees will win this year. That’s it.”

  “Listen to you.” I am amused in spite of everything and grin at poor Massimo who thinks he knows something about baseball.

  “They always win because they always buy up the best players,” he says.

  My eyes follow Massimo around the kitchen. I have nothing to say. He strikes me as being right, and I feel foolish for not thinking about baseball in this way, when now, this is one of the truths of the game. But it doesn’t have to be the only truth. Just ask the Oakland A’s. They once had nothing, but they figured it out and won. “As if you know what you’re talking about. Baseball,” I say. “We’re talking about baseball. Not soccer.” I pull a chair from the beat-up round table in the dining room. Beat-up on purpose, but still I like it. “Let me handle the American sports, and you can share your soccer wisdom with someone who cares.” I say this with anger, though I don’t mean to. Misplaced as it is, I am angry but don’t know at whom, exactly. I say, “You don’t always win because you have money. If that were the case, what would be the point of playing the game?”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “What the fuck do I care? Eat,” he says, sitting down. He points to my plate with its yellow cloth napkin sitting beside it. “Eat.” And when he says this, I always know that it’s not because he simply wants me to eat, but that he intends to show me: On my plate, there is more than meat, some vegetables. Bread. Look how much I care for you. You don’t think I do because I rant or am often gone. I am feeding you something that I made. So I care for you.

  We eat in silence, and I watch Massimo as he bends over his plate, elbows up around the plate as though he’s waiting for someone to grab one of his sausages. Such an elegant man, a man concerned with how things should and shouldn’t be done. And yet, here we sit. My back is a trick. Perfectly straight, as always. I imagine a string connected to the top of my spine, the last bone that attaches itself to my skull, someone pulling me up straight. A puppeteer. I never, until recently, thought it strange that I did not think of it as pulling myself up. My posture, keeping the posture, was a very difficult thing at first, but I’ve gotten used to it. I’d much rather slump over my plate, keep my face hovered over my meal, enjoying it as Massimo does. My space, my table, my plate, my food. This is what Massimo looks like now. This is mine. I am enjoying it very much. You will not take this from me. And no, I am not grateful, because this is how it is all the time, for everybody.

  “What?” He holds his knife in one hand, fork in the other, spread apart in question.

  “I will not call the police, and I don’t want you to either.”

  Massimo breathes through his nose and shakes his head. His utensils fall on his plate with loud clinks. “I’m not going to. I want to, but I’m not going to. I suppose I knew this from the very beginning.”

  I nod. I suppose I knew this from the very beginning, too. The fear never was about what Massimo was going to do, but what about me? What choices was I supposed to make? What was I supposed to do?

  Massimo rubs his face violently, pulling down on his cheeks so that the insides of his lower lids are exposed. He reminds me of a trick that Keith used to do when we were kids. He’d flip both his bottom and top lids up and under so that the bloody-looking flesh was exposed. He’d chase me around because he knew it disgusted me. “I am a zombie!” he’d cry out with his arms outstretched, stepping toward me with stiff legs. “A zombie! I will get you. I will get you!” and I’d scream and scream, even though he’d walk slowly like the zombies in the movies, so far away but always catching up to the living somehow. “I want to help,” Massimo says. “Tell me what to do, Avie, and I will try.”

  He picks up his knife and fork again, cuts his meat slowly, as though he’s afraid something is wrong with it. Then he stops, pushes his plate away from him, and folds his arms, waiting.

  “I just don’t know,” I say, and I allow myself to get lost in the last traces of sunlight fading from the tablecloth.

  “It’s not my place, Avie. You have to tell me. Do you want to call somebody else? Your brother? Your parents? Keith’s mother?”

  Yes, I think, Yes. But I’m too old to call on parents and older brothers. He came to me.

  “Do you want to wait? Get your show over with and deal with this after tonight? It’s impossible to do anything tonight, yes?” Massimo leans forward, hands out, as if I need convincing.

  I take my plate, reach for his, and rise from the table. Yes. It’s impossible for now.

  SOMETIMES YOU CAN’T get any dumber than Brenna. My mom agrees with me. She says all the time: That child act like she touched.

  And she is so dang bossy. She’s like, Why are you wearing that old-timey shit, or, How could you let that fucker Harry talk to you like that, or, Why can’t you just climb out of your window after your mom and dad go to sleep? She knows all this. My parents don’t have extra money and her parents don’t have extra money, but I’m not going to steal clothes like she does. So I wear whatever clothes I get and make them look as normal as I can. That gross Harry makes fun of me, and Cheri with her Jordache and her Chemin De Fers. She looks at me and says, What did the little bird say when he saw the Kmart sign? Cheap, cheap, cheap. She’s perfect. I can’t stand her. But at least I put stuff together in a way tha
t’s totally decent. Like my favorite. These light blue pants with the crease stitched on in the fronts and a green V-neck sweater with one of my dad’s old shirts underneath. Brown with little orange sunsets all over. I think they’re bitchen duds, but Brenna says I still look like Kmart. Kmart from thirty years ago! Wha-wha! she says loud in my ear. I tell her, Ha ha. So funny I forgot to laugh. But I wish I had new. I don’t. So I figure out something different. Something nobody else is wearing and could never put together in a million years because they don’t have the pieces that I have. So what? I can’t stand Brenna sometimes.

  She won’t even go in Kmart. She says everything about it is vomitus, and anyway just go to fuckin’ Miller’s Outpost and steal the shit that you want. So. She looks like she has some money and I never look like I have some money, which I didn’t even really think about until this year. Eighth grade sucks and I can’t wait until high school when I can get around some normal people who won’t even care about this kind of stuff like that greasy fat Harry or perfect Cheri. Brenna says she doesn’t care what other people think, especially dumbass Cheri, she says. She only cares about what she thinks and what she likes, and OP and Sasson is what she likes so why shouldn’t she just wear the threads she wants?

  But I care. I don’t want to hear stuff from my mom. I don’t want to get in trouble with my dad and I don’t want Owen saying nothing to me and I don’t want to be fat Kizzie like Harry calls me.

  Brenna has a plan for me. She’s gonna make me look normal, she says. It’s after school and it’s hot, and she has on pink Dolphin shorts that she stole and she stole a pair for me, too. Green ones. Dolphins are great. They are thin and light and have high splits on the sides and they are so short that your booty cheeks hang out the bottom. Brenna looks good in hers but she didn’t get a big enough size for me. She got a medium and I need a large, maybe even an extra large. But still. I like these shorts. They make me feel like somebody, like a foxy guy will have to look at me in these shorts. He’d see my booty and then it figures that he’d see me. Brenna gives me one of Tate’s old OP shirts too. Hers wouldn’t fit me because she’s flat. It’s almost like my dad’s shirt. Brown with a sunset and a bird flying against the sun. But it’s better. I don’t know why, but it just is.

  We’re in my bedroom with the door closed and Brenna is checking me out. I pull up my red tube socks. The elastic never lasts long on these things but at least my fake Vans look okay. I drew all over them with stuff I like in different color pens. Led Zep. Hang ten. Disco sucks. Peace. And this one thing I saw on a purse at Zody’s: A Good Man Is Hard to Find. So now they don’t look like imitation, they just look like all the stuff I like. I’m tired of being called Imitation. That’s what they always call me. Imitation. Because everything I wear is like something else but not the actual thing it’s supposed to be. My Izod shirt really isn’t Izod Lacoste. It’s got a horse on it instead of a crocodile. My boat shoes aren’t the real Top-Siders that cost too much money. Plus the stitching split open at the toe after the first week I had them. Every year at the beginning of school my dad buys me two new pairs of pants and two new skirts and two new shirts and underwear and shoes. It’s Zody’s and Kmart, and I don’t say anything but Thank you Dad because the last time I said I wanted something different, something better, he stopped right in the middle of putting his key in the car. He froze like we do when we play freeze tag. He said, These clothes are new. New. And you lucky to get old ones. Get in the car. It was stupid, what I said. I know. But sometimes I don’t think about what I’m saying before I say it, and every time I do that, I get into trouble. I’m thinking about that more and more now, thinking about thinking more and then saying something after I’ve worked it all out. I still wish that I had better stuff, though. All I can do is mix and match and improvise to get to something kind of cool. I can’t steal like Brenna because Mom and Dad would kill me and bury me twice. Mom always says that.

  Brenna looks better in her clothes. Why didn’t you steal one big enough for me? I ask her. Brenna puts the needle on “My Sharona” again. What a faker, goody-goody. Stealing’s bad unless I steal for you? She sings Oh my little pretty one, pretty one, when you gonna give me some time Avie! She blows watermelon Hubba Bubba and squints at me. You look rad anyway. Just do something with that hair. You look like you got electrocuted.

  I stick my hair under my Dodgers cap because that’s all I can do with it. It’s half nappy and half straight because it hasn’t been pressed in a week.

  Brenna blows more bubbles and checks me out. Imitation my ass, she says. You look all right.

  I pull the shorts out of my butt. I don’t know. She’s probably not even serious. I have to just believe what Brenna says when she looks at me. Let’s book, she says, and sings, Runnin’ down the length of my thigh, Sharona!

  We bump into Owen coming out of the room. He smells like Dad’s Old Spice. Groovy, he says, and smacks me upside the head. It’s so old. He says it like every time he sees me and Brenna together. Jan and Marcia! he always says in a stupid voice. His white voice. But I don’t mind being called Marcia, actually. Brenna is Jan, because she looks the most like Jan, so that makes me Marcia. Brenna always rolls her eyes, but she likes Owen all of a sudden. She thinks he’s some kind of big deal all of sudden. She turns her back on Owen and sticks out her ass and slaps it. That’s what I think of you, man, she says. How you like these apples?

  I think your little ass bet not talk to me like that again is what I think, Owen tells her. But he’s laughing at her until he sees me. Ave, where your clothes at?

  Don’t worry about it. I pull my shorts out of my butt again and I know I’ll be doing that all day now, pulling and tugging because they don’t hardly fit.

  Ave, for real. Owen stands in front of me, between me and Brenna. You ain’t going nowhere in them short draws.

  None your business, doofus. Brenna pushes Owen shoulder but when he turns around and looks at her like, You must be crazy, she puts her eyes on her feet and picks at her nails. I know I have to do what Owen says, but I hate it. I hate this feeling, like everything I want to do has an answer for it and that answer is always no.

  He waits until I go in my room and change into my cutoff jeans, long down to the knee. My shirt is still tight, but as long as my butt ain’t hanging out of my jeans, Owen says. I’m going to work, he says, but I got eyes in the neighborhood so you better watch out. He thumps Brenna on the head hard and it sounds like it would hurt but Brenna just flips her hair at him and says, Let’s go Ave.

  We walk down the hill, in the middle of the street until the sidewalk starts up at the bottom of the hill. That’s when Brenna takes her comb out of her sock and starts bending over and flipping her comb through her hair. She’s forever flipping her hair and keeps stopping to do it. I keep pushing all my hair under my Dodgers cap and I keep trying to think, At least the sun’s not in my eyes like it is in Brenna’s. That’s a good thing. She pulls cherry lip gloss out of her other sock and puts practically the whole tube on her lips. I don’t wear it since Harry called me bongo lips and said it made my lips look even fatter than they are. That they just looked big and greasy. Stop eating so much fried chicken, he told me.

  I kick a stone in front of me and it goes too far for me to keep kicking it. It’s in the street now. That last time I tried to look better than I look, I ended up in a ditch. Stop trying to look all slutty, I say. I pull my Dodgers cap down on my face. She rubs her hands all over her chest and sticks her tongue out like Gene Simmons. I’m not trying to look like a slut. I am a slut, she says and bumps me with her hip. I can feel the bone. Gross, Brenn. Nobody wants to be a slut. I’m saying this, but I don’t believe it, not really. This is what I think for real: What would be wrong with it, exactly? To have all the guys drooling over you and to have anyone you want, whenever? Like in Grease. Olivia Newton-John turns into a slut for John Travolta. She calls him stud and shakes her butt in his face and that’s it. It’s over for him. She tells him no. Not the other wa
y around. And everybody thinks she’s so much better in the tight black pants and those Candies. You can tell. I like that. Everybody thinking you’re what they want and you giving them what they want and all of it feeling good. I say, Two weeks and junior high is over.

  Yeah, Brenna says. I can’t even wait. And then we don’t say stuff. We just keep walking.

  I’m bored in school. I get As in everything except math—and PE, but that’s only because they make us do stuff like a thousand push-ups and jump over walls and run like eighty miles like we’re in the Army. It’s the California Presidential Exam or something. My Dad was all, How you get a C in PE? Didn’t say anything about the As, but the C in PE was like I did something terrible like stab somebody in the eye. He’s in school part-time now on the side of work because he said he doesn’t want to work in a factory putting together cars that other people get to drive his whole life. He wants to be a real estate agent. You make money in that Dad? I asked him, but he was still stuck on that C in PE. You can do better than a C in PE, now Avery, he said. I wanted to tell him how hard it was, all the work they make us do and I can’t do it. It’s too hard for me. For other people it seems really easy, but not for me. But I didn’t say anything to him. That’s talking back and you don’t do that to Dad. Or Mom.