White Oleander

by Janet Fitch

  I took the plastic off, slid the dress down her arms, over the pale downy hair, pulled it along her body, zipped the back as she held up her dark ponytail. It looked just right on her. As it had never looked on me. I’d never seen the girl before. She didn’t go to Marshall. She probably went to Immaculate Heart or the French School. A cared-for girl, someone’s daughter. I held it for her as she went to the 7-Eleven to call her mother. Fifteen minutes later, an attractive older woman showed up in a butter-yellow Mercedes, black linen slacks, suede moccasins with horse bit buckles. I helped the girl into the dress again, and the woman gave me the hundred, a single crisp bill. They were going to a cousin’s wedding in New York. The dress would be perfect. I could tell from the mother’s expression that she knew exactly what it was worth.

  We went on until five, then started breaking it down, loading up the van and Niki’s pickup truck. All my things had sold. I sat on the fender of the van and counted my money. I’d made over four hundred dollars.

  “See, not so bad,” Rena said, balancing a box of plates on her hip. “How much you get?”

  I mumbled it, ashamed, but also a little proud. It was the first money I’d ever earned.

  “Good. Give me hundred.” She held out her hand.

  “What for?”

  She snapped her fingers, extended her hand again.

  “No way.” I held the money behind my back.

  Her black eyes sparkled with bad temper. “What, you think you sell all by yourself on streetcorner? You pay me, I pay Natalia, Natalia pays landlord, what you think? Everybody pay somebody.”

  “You said I could keep it.”

  “After pay me.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Niki said, looking up from where she was arranging cheap clothes on a blanket on the ground. “Go ahead and pay her. You have to.”

  I shook my head no.

  Rena shifted the box to the other hip, and when she spoke, her voice was harsh. “Listen to me, devushka. I pay, you pay. Just business. When was last time you had three hundred dollars in your hand? So how I hurt you?”

  How could I tell her? What about my feelings, I wanted to say, except what was the point? With her it was all just money, and things that could be traded for money. She’d stolen something from me, and even got me to do the selling for her. I couldn’t help wondering what you would do, Mother. It didn’t apply. I couldn’t imagine you at the mercy of Rena Grushenka, in the parking lot of Natalia’s Nails, selling your clothes, crying over a dress. I didn’t know what else to do, so I held out the hundred, the red dress hundred, and she snatched it from my hand like a dog bite.

  But as I sat in bed, listening to the noise and laughter and occasional crash from the living room, I knew that even you had to pay someone now, for your pot and your inks and the good kind of tampons, dental floss and vitamin C. But you would come up with a compelling reason, a theory, a philosophy. You’d make it noble, heroic. You’d write a poem about it, “The Red Dress.” I could never do that.

  Out in the living room, someone put on an old Zeppelin album. I could hear them singing along in their thick accents, the churning of Jimmy Page’s guitar. It was four in the morning and I could smell melting candle wax, dripping in great pools on the tables and windowsills. I didn’t need Claire’s candle magic book to see burning house written there. It was why I slept in my clothes, kept my shoes by the bed, money in my wallet, most important things in a bag by the window.

  You’d think they’d try to get some sleep — the next day we were going to the flea market at Fairfax High, to sell our sambo statuettes made of bottlecaps, trays painted with botanical nightmares, never-worn baby clothes, and all the moldy Reader’s Digests. But I could tell, they wouldn’t sleep until Monday. I hoped I wouldn’t see anyone I knew.

  I turned over the page, started another canoe. Silver on black. The door opened, Rena’s friend Misha stumbled in, posed, playing air guitar along with Jimmy, his plump red lips like an enormous infant’s. He was practically drooling. “I come to see you, maya liubov. Krasivaya devushka.”

  “Go away, Misha.”

  He staggered over to my bed, sat down next to me. “Don’t be cruel,” he sang, like Elvis, and bent to drool on my neck.

  “Leave me alone.” I tried to shove him off, but he was too big and loose, I couldn’t find anything solid to push against.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t do nothing.” He lay down on the bed next to me, spread out like a stain. The alcohol reek was a miasma, it reminded me that there were snakes that stunned their prey with their breath. “I am only so lonesome.”

  I called for help, but no one could hear me over the music. Misha was heavy, he rested his head on my shoulder, slobbering on my neck. His weepy blue eyes so close, one heavy arm around me.

  I hit him, but it was no use, he was too drunk, my fist bounced off his flesh, he couldn’t feel anything. “Misha, get off me.”

  “You’re so beautiful girl,” he said, trying to kiss me. He smelled of vodka and something greasy, someone must have brought a bucket of chicken.

  My knife was just under my pillow. I didn’t want to stab Misha, I knew him. I’d listened to him play bottleneck guitar. He had a dog named Chernobyl, he wanted to move to Chicago and be a blues guitarist, except he didn’t like cold weather. Rena gave him this haircut, the bangs slightly crooked. He wasn’t a bad man, but he was kissing my closed mouth, one hand groping under the blanket, though I was fully dressed. His fumbling hand found nothing but vintage polyester.

  “Love me a little,” he begged in my ear. “Love me, devushka, for we all going to die.”

  Finally, I got a knee up and when he shifted I hit him with my drawing board and slid out of bed.

  In the living room, most of the people were gone. Natalia was dancing by herself in front of the stereo, a bottle of Bargain Circus Stoli clutched by the neck in one hand. Georgi was passed out in the black armchair, his head leaning against its fuzzy arm, a white cat curled in his lap. A cane chair was knocked over, a big ashtray lay facedown on the floor. A puddle of something glistened on the scarred leathertop coffee table.

  Rena and her boyfriend, Sergei, lay on the green velvet couch, and he was doing it to her with his fingers. Her shoes were still on, her skirt. His shirt was open, he had a medallion on a chain that hung down. I hated to barge in, but then again, Misha was her friend. She was responsible.

  “Rena,” I said. “Misha’s trying to get in bed with me.”

  Four drunken eyes gazed up at me, two black, two blue. It took them a moment to focus. Sergei whispered something to her in Russian and she laughed. “Misha won’t do nothing. Hit him on head with something,” Rena said.

  Sergei was watching me as he kneaded her thigh, bit her neck. He looked like a white tiger devouring a kill.

  When I went back into my room, Misha had passed out. He had a bloody cut on his head from where I hit him. He was snoring, holding my pillow like it was me. He wasn’t waking up anytime soon. I went to sleep in Yvonne’s empty bed. The stereo stopped at five, and I got a restless hour or two of sleep, dreaming of animals rummaging through the garbage. I was awakened by a man pissing in the bathroom across the hall without closing the door, a stream that seemed to last for about five minutes. He didn’t flush. Then the stereo came back on, the Who again. Who are you? the band sang. I tried to remember, but I really couldn’t say.

  25

  WE SAT IN THE KITCHEN on a dreary Saturday, sewing leather bags for crystals. It was Rena’s latest moneymaking idea. Niki played demo tapes of the different bands Werner booked, but they all sounded the same, skinny white kid rage, out-of-control guitars. She was looking for a new band. “This one’s all right, don’t you think? Fuck!” She jabbed the needle into a finger, stuck it into her lipstick-blackened mouth. “This sewing’s for shit. What does she think we are, some fucking elves?”

  We were smoking hash under glass while we worked. I let the smoke fill up under the little shot glass that Niki stole
from the Bavarian Gardens, it had an upside-down Johnnie Walker printed on it. I put my mouth down to the edge, picked up a corner of the glass, and sucked the thick hash fumes into my lungs. Yvonne didn’t smoke, she said it was bad for the baby.

  “What difference does it make?” Niki said, putting a chunk of hash on the pin for herself. “It’s not like you’re going to keep it.”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. “You think that way, I don’t want you taking me to baby class,” Yvonne said. “Astrid’ll take me.”

  I started coughing. I tried to do Butterfly McQueen from the childbirth scene in Gone with the Wind. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies,” but I couldn’t get my voice to go high enough. I thought of Michael, he always did Butterfly better than

  me. I missed him.

  “At least you have good thoughts,” Yvonne said.

  Childbirth. I shuddered. “I’m not even eighteen.”

  “That’s okay, they don’t serve liquor,” Niki said, throwing a finished bag on the pile. She picked up another one that was all cut out and ready for sewing.

  Stoned, I traced a rising smoke pattern into a scrap of leather with an X-acto blade. I was good at this, better than my mother used to be. I could do a crow, a cat. I could do a cat in three cuts. I did a baby with a curl on its forehead and tossed it to Yvonne.

  The door banged open behind us, letting in a rush of cold air. Rena came in with a roll of dark green suede tucked under her arm. “Georgi sell whole thing, trade for lamp,” she grinned proudly. “Nice, huh?” Then her gaze landed on me, etching designs into the leather. “What, you crazy?” She grabbed the doe-skin away from me, thumped the back of my head with the heel of her hand. “Pothead stupid girl. You think is cheap?” Then she noticed the design and frowned, her lower lip pouted out. She held the scrap up to the light. “Not bad.” She tossed it back to me. “I think it sell. Do all bags. We make money on this.”

  I nodded. I blew whatever I made on art supplies and food and going in with Niki on dope. College had already vanished, disappearing like a boat into fog. At Claire’s, I’d begun to think of my life as a series of Kandinsky pencil sketches, meaningless by themselves, but arranged together they would begin to form an elegant composition. I even thought I had seen the shape of the future in them. But now I had lost too many pieces. They had returned to a handful of pine needles on a forest floor, unreadable.

  Sergei came in carrying a bag, his cheeks flushed pink in his handsome, wide, un-Californian face. He unloaded two bottles of vodka, put one in the freezer, set the other on the counter, and took down two green glasses. He sniffed the air. “Mmm, dinner.”

  “So who invites you?” Rena said, hopping up to sit on the counter, unscrewing the cap of the vodka. She poured three fingers into each glass.

  “Oh, these girls not starve Sergei,” he said. He opened the oven, peered in at the bubbling dish I was making for Yvonne, a broccoli-and-cheese casserole, to build her up for the baby. She ’d been stunned to watch me put the ingredients together, she hadn’t realized you could cook without a box with instructions. Sergei bathed his face in the smell and the heat of the oven.

  I cut a tiger into a leather scrap, reminding myself that Sergei was just Rena with a better facade. Handsome as a Cossack, a milky Slavic blond with sleepy blue eyes that caught every movement. By profession, a thief. Rena occasionally moved merchandise for him, a truckload of leather couches, racks of women’s coats, a shipment of stuffed animals from Singapore, small appliances from Israel. Around here, he was a constant sexual fact. He left the bathroom door open while he shaved in the nude, did a hundred push-ups every morning, his milky white skin veined with blue. If he saw you were watching he’d add a clap to show off. Those wide shoulders, the neat waist. When Sergei was in the room, I never knew what to do with my hands, with my mouth.

  I looked over at Yvonne across the table, bent over piles of little bags and leather scraps, sewing, patient as a girl in a fairy tale. Any other girl would be sewing the ruffles on her prom gown, or knitting baby shoes. Now I felt bad about making fun of her earlier. “Sure, I’ll go to baby class with you,” I said. “If you think I’ll be any use.”

  She smiled down at her sewing, ducking her head. She didn’t like to show her bad teeth. “It’s no sweat. I do all the work. All you gotta do is hold the towel.”

  “Huff ’n’ puff,” Niki said. “Bunch of beachballs blowing it out the wrong end. A real laugh riot. You’ll see.” Niki broke off another chunk of hash, put it on the pin. She lit it and watched the smoke fill the glass like a genie in a lamp. When she took the hit, she broke into a coughing fit even worse than mine.

  “None for me?” Sergei asked, pointing at the shot glass.

  “Fuck you, Sergei,” Niki said. “When did you ever buy us any?”

  But she put a little out for him anyway, and I tried to ignore the way he looked right at me as he stooped to put his lips where mine had been. But I felt my face burn right up to the hairline.

  We all ate, except Rena, who smoked and drank vodka. As soon as she left the room for a moment, Sergei leaned over, broad white hands folded before him. “So, when we make love, devushka?”

  “You sleazebag,” Niki said, pointing her fork at him. “I ought to tell Rena.”

  “Anyway, Astrid’s got a boyfriend,” Yvonne said. “An artist. He lives in New York.”

  I’d told her all about Paul Trout. I’d finally picked up his letters from Yellow Brick Road in Hollywood, on the same street where I pulled the knife on the girl who thought I was Wendy. Niki took me there after school, on the way to meeting some guys who needed a singer. I felt bad I hadn’t written to him before, I’d thought of it many times, but I was afraid. Chances were he never looked back. On the drive into Hollywood, I looked nervously at the envelope, marked Hold for Paul Trout. The hope implied. It was a mistake already. I thought of a song Rena played that I hated like death, “Love the One You’re With.” It was the tune life kept forcing on me, and yet there I was, hope fluttering like a bird in my hand.

  The shop was tiny, more crowded even than Rena’s. Comic books everywhere. Niki and I leafed through the stacks. Some of the comics were jokey, like Zippy the Pinhead and old Mr. Natural. Others were dark and expressionist, Sam Spade meets Murnau. There were racks of homemade magazines full of bad poets. Comics in Japanese, many of them pornographic. Tongue-in-cheek stories of career girls and supermodels drawn in the Lichtenstein pop style. A Jewish rodent trapped in a Blackshirt paranoid nightmare. They sold everything from the standard DCs to locally drawn, Xeroxed, staple-spined ’zines. While Niki read a gangster girl tale, I went to the counter, told myself there’d be nothing for me.

  A skinny guy in a burgundy bowling shirt doodled on the counter, pale arms covered with tattoos. I cleared my throat until he looked up. His eyes were pot-hazed. “I’m a friend of Paul Trout’s. Did he leave anything for me?”

  He smiled a little shyly, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “He went to New York, didn’t you hear?” He rummaged under the counter and came up with two letters, the envelopes so heavily illustrated you could barely see the Yellow Brick Road address. The outside was marked Hold for Astrid Magnussen.

  “No return address?”

  “He moves a lot. Don’t be surprised.”

  I left one for Paul, illustrating my life on Ripple Street. Trashpicking, our living room. I didn’t know what else to do with it. He was gone.

  In the corner booth at the rock ’n’ roll Denny’s on Sunset, I sat with Niki as she negotiated with the boys from the band, two bleached blonds and a hyperactive brunet — the drummer, I knew without asking. I was afraid to open the letters. Instead, I sketched some of the other customers. Goth girls in black tights and black ratted hair, conspiring over Diet Pepsis and double orders of onion rings. On the other side, two aging rockers in leather and studs ate their burgers; one was talking on a cell phone. It was like some kind of era-by-era fashion layout, Mohawks and
ducktails and dreadlocks, polyester and platforms.

  “I’m not paying to play with twelve other bands. What, are you retarded?” Niki was saying. “They’re supposed to pay you, not the other way around.” I sketched the blond bass player as he guiltily tongued his chin stud from the inside. The brunet spasmodically tapped on the water glasses with his knife. “You gotta play where they pay. Where you from anyway, Fresno?”

  “But it’s like the Roxy, you know?” the taller blond said. He was obviously the spokesman, the eloquent one. Lead guitar. “The Roxy. It’s like the...”

  “The Roxy,” the other blond said.

  I finally worked up the nerve to open the first letter, slitting the beautiful envelope with the Denny’s dinner knife. Inside was a series of ink drawings done in Paul’s unmistakable comic book style, bold blacks and whites: Paul, walking lonely comic book streets. Paul, sitting at a Nighthawks café. He sees a blond girl on the street with short chopped-up hair and follows her, only to have her turn out to be somebody else. Would he ever see her again? the last caption read, as he drew at his desk, the wall covered with pictures of me.

  The second envelope held a comic strip story of a prison break, three boys blasting their way out through steel doors with rocket launchers. They steal a car, the signs say Leaving L.A. They tear across the desert in the night. Next there’s a street sign in broken mosaic, it says St. Marks Place. Angular hipsters in black pass a doorway, 143. The Statue of Liberty in the background wears shades, it’s reading a comic book.

  I folded the drawings, slipped them back into the envelope decorated with lightning bolts, stars, and a girl on a white horse in a comic book sky. Hold for Astrid Magnussen. If only I’d known that he would.

  And now it was too late. I looked at Sergei across the table in Rena’s kitchen. He could care less about my boyfriend in New York. He didn’t even care about his girlfriend in the next room. He was just like one of Rena’s white cats — eat, sleep, and fornicate. Since the night I’d seen them together on the couch, he was always watching me with his hint of a grin, as if there were some secret we shared. “So how is your boyfriend?” he asked. “Big? Is he big?”