Elsewhere, California

by Dana Johnson

  Closer, Brenna says. Stand next to Avery, April. Get in tighter. Everybody does, and I can’t wait to see that picture when Brenna gets it developed, April standing next to me like some sister separated at birth, raised by somebody crazy. When April leaves, Mom stares after her and then shakes her head. Why she mess up her head like that? What she supposed to be doing?

  She’s an artist, I say. She has an art degree now.

  An art degree? Mom says. That don’t spell nothing. She gone eat her art?

  Do, and she’ll be hungry, Dad says.

  Need to spend some money on getting her head done right, Owen says.

  It’s the only thing my parents agree on, after hello and how you doing, since they no longer are together. And they would agree, too, that they’re both doing so much worse for money, now that they aren’t working, together, on that progress we started when we moved to the suburbs, into that nice house with the yard I loved, a million years ago. But today, they agree. It is a great day, the beginning of a good life.

  They don’t know that my job has nothing to do with my degree, that education and business are far apart. We stand around and they linger, as if they don’t want the day to be over, when I want it to be over so that I can stop feeling like a liar. How much money you gone be making, Dad asks me.

  Um. Not that much to start, around thirty, I lie. But then the longer I’m there, the more I make. I don’t need a lot of money anyway.

  Don’t need a lot of money? My father and mother and Owen trade looks.

  I say, School is more about the education you get, not the job.

  Uh huh, Dad says.

  And I look down at my shiny black pumps because I only half believe that. I remember how much I wanted my own television freshman year. A nice downy comforter and not to worry about money at all in Palm Springs. And all the reminders of the importance of money since then. I don’t dare tell my parents that my credit is already ruined because of money I spent that wasn’t mine. I tell Dad that I don’t owe that much in student loans, which is a lie. I owe a lot. For me. For us.

  That’s all right, Owen says, slapping me on the back. You one of them educated negroes now, he says, laughing. And I try not to think he is somehow making fun of me, because he refused to go to school and he and his family are absolutely fine because they have done what all my family has done since the beginning of who we have ever been in America. Work. None of us disagree about the success of this strategy, for the most part. We only disagree on what work is, and whether or not everyone gets equal pay for equal work.

  Everyone wants to see the degree in my hand, the one they handed to everyone when they called our names. Let me see, Brenna says. Open it up, Dad says. Hurry up, Owen says. Let’s see this thing. I pull off the red satin ribbon to keep it in a tight scroll. I unroll it and we all look at it. The bright sun glares off the white paper. It’s blank. Nothing is on it.

  Bogus! Brenna says. That sucks. Mom frowns and Dad puts my cap under his arm and leans in to look closer at the blank paper.

  Mom says, Anyway, I don’t care. Brenna, take our picture with Avery and her degree. So Brenna does. Mom and Dad stand with me in the middle, holding my blank piece of paper.

  Be sure to get that to me, Brenna, Mom says. I bet it’s a good picture. I bet it look like we all going somewhere in that picture, she says and squeezes my arm tight. We proud of you Avery, Mom says. She nods like she’s agreeing with herself, as though a question has been confirmed.

  I roll up my fake degree. I say, Don’t worry, you guys. It’s not supposed to be the real one. The real one comes in the mail.

  25

  MY DEGREE CAME in the mail about two months after I dragged Brenna to the Formosa for a night of escape and Hollywood glamour, a place from which she fled and drove the whole forty minutes back home to West Covina that very night. But that night changed my life, the night I met Massimo at the Formosa, Massimo who looked at me as though he understood my worth, who lived in such a beautiful house, very much like homes I had seen elsewhere all my life on television. Lovely, his house is lovely, and living in it feels so good and comfortable when I forget a lot of things, try to forget a lot of things, like how tenuous it all is, a shiny mirage in the desert, just within reach, if all the circumstances of one’s journey are just right. I told my therapist this. I said, “The people who think they know Keith now, I wish they could have seen him when he was younger. We were exactly the same. Exactly. Except I didn’t have any courage and he didn’t have any fear and we never could even it all out so that everything would be equal and fair, no matter what life threw at us.”

  26

  ALREADY, THE TINY gallery is full of people. There are three other people who are showing too, and most of the people are here for them. The stark white walls and the lights illuminate everything sharply. All the voices together in this small room fill my ears like a distant roar. My eyes fall on important-looking people with severe eyeglasses that look like art in and of themselves. Smart, crisp suits and billowy feminine dresses draped over bodies completely covered in tattoos. Black. So much black, and hats of all kinds. I remember a time when I would have been completely absorbed by all of this, wanting to look the part, but now, I just put on my Dodgers cap. I had it in my purse, not thinking I’d have the guts to show up at my own show as if I had just wandered off the street or from some hike, down from the hills. But I have the guts. It’s just a baseball hat, but still. For the only other real showing I had, two years ago, I dressed down. I was embarrassed. It was art, after all. Not a real job like the ones my mother, father, and brother have always had. “Not a real job,” my brother Owen always reminds me. So I dressed down to show people that I didn’t think too highly of myself, did not think I was better than anybody else, even though I lived in a big house on a hill with a European. My art and I were no big deal. But I forgot the nuances of the situation, thought my family would approve because I’d be showing them that I did not think I was better than anybody else. But the guests kept asking, “Where is Avery Arlington?” No one could seem to find me.

  At the end of the evening, my father asked me, “Why in the world did you wear jeans to something like this, Ave. Looking like you just walked in off the street. I thought you knew better than that.” He straightened his tie, which was much too formal for my hole-in-the-wall show. I can imagine what his expression will be when he sees I am wearing a cap. Disappointment. So no, it’s not merely a baseball hat.

  I stand against a wall, watching people, and occasionally glance at my corner of the gallery. I only have four pieces, and if you listen carefully when you stand in my corner, you can hear two things: the crack of a baseball bat followed by the roar of a crowd, and, afterwards, the strains of a young Elton John singing about being young, gifted, and black, the most ironic version of a song ever recorded. And yet, ultimately, knowing that it is not meant to be ironic makes it even more a treasure. British, white, male, gay, to be young, gifted, and black, and that’s a fact. It loops over and over as you linger at my art. First, placed on the table, is a white, crisp oxford shirt, so white that it’s got a hue of blue. A red tie encircles the neck. The tie is extra long and extends with wire so that it resembles a noose. On one side of the shirt is a hole that looks like a bullet could have made it, and on the other side of the shirt is a red lipstick print. One painting is a portrait of myself, Keith, and Brenna, as I imagined our alter egos, in some other world of opposites, the world in which Elton John is young, gifted, and black. I’ve combined myself with an image of Shirley Temple, with brown skin my exact match and her trademark dimples just below either side of her bottom lip. Instead of my closely cropped hair, I have blonde ringlets on the sides and a tiny mohawk in the middle of my head. Next to me is Brenna, wearing a white three-piece suit just like Pam Grier did in her most famous blaxploitation, Foxy Brown. Brenna’s afro is just as high, but looks like a bright red fireball. Her gun is pointed directly at the viewer. Next to Brenna is Keith, who is wearing a
white letterman’s sweater. He has red Richie Cunningham hair and carries books under his arms. My other piece is a mountain fashioned out of wire and clay. I glued on all kinds of images that I drew on thin vellum paper, which make up a collage. There are all my Teen Beat and Tiger Beat idols, foods like greens and ham hocks and pigs feet and baloney and artichokes, houses like shacks and mansions and apartment buildings and Victorians. And on top of the mountain, I made a baseball stadium out of Popsicle sticks and toothpicks. I painted it blue and called that installation Three Strikes. The last is a self-portrait. Just my plain face from the shoulders up, with a background of white. No smile. No expression at all. I’m just looking at you so that you can look at me.

  I see Massimo in the very back of the gallery, distracted by a friend. This friend, Justina, I have never liked. I see Massimo laughing, his head thrown back, already with a plastic cup of wine in his hand. The first time I met her, she was a new transplant from the Midwest, a new lawyer in Massimo’s firm. He had invited her over, and from the moment she opened her mouth, I disliked her. She had come from the office, came through the door wearing an ill-fitting, dated suit that looked like something from the ’80s. It even had shoulder pads. Her shoes were old, too. Slightly worn. Square at the toes with a block heel. That kind of shoe was no longer in style. She gave me a big hug, and I felt the cold bottle of wine she was holding touch the base of my neck. For a moment, it brought to mind Brenna and her Slurpee cups placed on my neck years ago. “Hey, girl,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you. Massimo been telling me ’bout you and I feel like we old friends, girl.” I stared at her, wondering if I was being put on by the voice coming out of this white woman, wondering just what Massimo had told her about me. She seemed confused about me, which made me confused about her. Was this how she talked at the firm? With clients? As I endured the rest of the evening, ignoring her cues, her voice began to change, the more wine she drank. No more sentences punctuated with “girl” and “child please.” She was back to being a white woman from the Midwest by the end of the evening, complaining about how fake Los Angeles was. By the time she left, in spite of Massimo’s protests that she might be too drunk to drive home, she was positively belligerent. “Well, you probably wouldn’t know,” she had said, complaining about student loans and how impossible hers would be to pay back. “You obviously come from some place where you didn’t have to worry about all that. The way you speak,” she said. “The way you carry yourself. You probably went to private school, didn’t you? A pool in your backyard? Like everyone in L.A.? A car the minute you turned sixteen? Summer vacations in Europe? Must be nice,” she had said, pushing around the asparagus that Massimo had roasted on the grill. Massimo had frowned. “Avery did not grow up that way, Justina,” he had said. “Tell her, Ave.”

  But I agreed and disagreed with her. She was confused about where I came from. She imagined her California, but couldn’t imagine mine. She didn’t understand anything about space, distance, and time. I said, “Yes. There was a pool when I was growing up. But I’m born and raised here, grown in California, as organic as this orange,” I said, tossing the fruit that served as a table setting. “If that’s fake,” I said. Then, Justina was brunette and chunky. Now she is blonde and sleek, hair extensions, shoes that are up to date. It took her about six months to transform into the quintessential California girl, worthy of a Beach Boys song.

  I look for someone else I know—who knows something of me. My father, my nephew. I scan the room, and there it is. Dae-Jung’s afro. Huge, with the pick nestled in it that drives my brother crazy. I walk to him and see he’s wearing his uniform: pants hanging way too low, his plain white T-shirt tucked in only partway. Black Converse sneakers shredded, just the way he likes them. Skateboard in hand, he’s bent over something, studying it. From the back, he looks like what some people think of when they think they know what an African-American is. There is nothing of his mother and all her people who came before her. Only his eyes, the color and shape of them, insist that one sees a hint of that distance, space, and time. I weave through the crowd, eager to get to him. I’m so glad he’s made it here, safe. I won’t tell him about my relief, because he’ll think I’m treating him like a child. At every age, he’s reminded me: “Auntie Ave, I’m nine.” “I’m thirteen, Auntie Ave.” “I’m fifteen.” “I’m sixteen.” But I’ve always had morbid thoughts. I wonder. How old will he get? How old will he get before? Before something happens to him or nothing happens for him? If I were a betting woman, how would I bet on the odds? The chances? Why this feeling of needing to bet in the first place?

  I stand behind him for a moment, watching him study another artist’s installation, four sharp prongs coming up from the floor like the tines of a pitchfork.

  “Careful. That looks sharp.”

  Dae-Jung turns at the sound of my voice, smiling, and he hugs me, mindful of my baseball cap. “Things are looking up,” he says and pulls on the bill.

  “Way up. Goodbye. Good riddance McCourts. This is our town.”

  Dae-Jung grins, amused by my fandom. It’s not something that middle-aged aunts are supposed to take seriously. But that’s the thing about being in one’s forties. I’m older and wiser. At eighteen, I told my father I would be wise when I was forty. If you’re a baseball fan long enough, you know: It’s not just a game. Ask anybody who cares. Look what happens when you don’t pay attention to the game. Some people come in and make you think that what is happening is the best thing for everybody, when really it’s only the best thing for the people making the money. America’s team. Bankrupt. Until some unimaginable person comes out of nowhere to take us where we need to be. A Jackie. A Fernando. A Gibson. A Chan Ho Park.

  “What’s this supposed to be doing?” Dae-Jung asks. He reaches out as though he’s going to touch the pitchfork, and I slap his arm down.

  I don’t know what it is, exactly. All I know is that it looks dangerous. Thinking of danger, I’m reminded of Keith, who I forgot about briefly. I still don’t see him, and yet I swear I can almost feel him, close by, the warmth of a hand just about to touch my face.

  “You tell me. You were studying it.”

  He pulls on the pick in his hair. Pulls it out and shows me. “Maybe it’s one of these,” he says. “Symbolic of all the afros of the nation.” He caresses his chin and nods with mock satisfaction.

  “That’s quite the interpretation. I thought it was a pitchfork-type thing.”

  “Why?” Dae-Jung frowns. He looks again. “I don’t see it.”

  Someone touches my arm and I jump, but it’s only an acquaintance saying hello. Frannie, a student at LACC who works at The Bourgeoisie Pig, the coffee shop down the road from our house. Her blonde dreadlocks are pulled up in a dramatic, hefty bun, but the only jewelry she has on is the gold hoop in her nose. She’s got her son Levi hanging on her hip, and when I hug her, he grabs my cap.

  “Dodger fan. Yes!” When he holds his little hand up, I give him a gentle high-five. His hair is dark and straight, not blonde like his mother’s at all, but it’s sticking up all over his little head as though it’s caught up in static electricity. “How great is this?” I ask him, pulling on his wispy hair.

  “It’s crazy,” Frannie says. “Don’t ask me why it’s doing that. The air must be really dry or something.” She surveys the gallery and hikes her sliding boy higher up on her narrow hip. “There’s some kooky stuff in here. Not yours, though,” she says, color breaking out on her neck and cheeks. “It’s good to see what you do. Also,” she says, grinning, “I’m glad it’s free. I can stay a while and it won’t cost me anything.” Levi screeches for no reason, it seems. Only for the pleasure of the sound of it.

  I think of school, the days of tight budgets and maxed-out credit cards. And I didn’t even have a baby. I don’t want to think about how things might turn out for Frannie, but I do. Everything could be so hard that she gives up. Or, everything could be so hard, but she keeps going. Levi will have to be the one to tell
that story. When Frannie leaves, there are others greeting me so that by the time I turn back to Dae-Jung, he’s across the room, in the corner that holds my work, neck craned and looking at my portraits. What does he think? Above everyone else’s opinion, I want to know his, no doubt something beyond my imagination. His catching the bus from the San Gabriel Valley to the beach, for example, who knows how many times. Such love of the beach and the water is beyond me, but this kid gets on a board, paddles out to vastness with the fearlessness of someone who takes for granted that he will be coming back. Me, I’m still afraid of drowning. And ghosts.

  Again, someone is touching me, and again, it’s not Keith. It’s a man, surprised to see that I’m not a man, when I turn to face him. He recovers, though, and asks if I have seen his wife’s purse. I stare into his face, bespectacled with heavy black frames, deeply lined and tan, with unruly gray hair. He looks to be the age of Massimo, late fifties, but dressed young in jeans and Converse like Dae-Jung’s, only his are newer and cleaner. Because the ceiling is so high and the space is so small, I don’t think I have heard correctly. I lean toward him and cup my ear.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My wife’s purse,” he says more firmly, and his eyes assess me from my cap to my Vans.

  “Your wife’s purse? Why would I know where your wife’s purse is?”

  “She just put it down for a minute. She’s frantic,” he says, already walking away without answering my question. But then I see the doughy, unnecessary security guard hired for the evening making his way across the room. Thinking about chances and odds, I know before he gets to his destination that he’s going to Dae-Jung. I get to them at the same time as the man with the careless wife.