“You don’t gangbang?” No Good Capone screamed at Arash as he fell to the ground. “Well you do now!”
He leaned back in the car and they sped out of the parking lot. The girls said the sound of gunfire was louder than they thought, the consequences so much more real. Audrey turned around and saw bodies on the ground. Sirens started blaring almost at once.
Arash was bleeding, squeezing Nadir’s hand.
“My stomach hurts” were his last words.
He died a few hours later in a hospital in Encino, five blocks from Erica’s mansion.
After the shootout, the group scattered. The girls went back to their friend. They told her that no matter who came and asked, she was to say they’d been together that night. Erica agreed, but a few hours later, at dawn, she woke up her parents and told them to call the police. Audrey and Natalie were promised immunity for their testimonies. No Good Capone and Baby Huey would get life sentences.
—
After school I walked by myself to the Woodland Hills Mall. Everyone was there, behind the Cineplex where Arash had been shot. Students, teachers, and relatives lit candles and placed flowers. There were tears. The sidewalk was covered in spray-painted Goodbye graffiti.
“Keep smiling,” “R.I.P. from your homeys,” “We love you.”
TV and print journalists circled the pay-phone area, reconstructing the events from Saturday night.
“They think we’re a gang,” one of Arash’s friends explained to a journalist. “But Persian pride just means we take pride in our native culture. We flip signs and wear baggy pants, but it’s fashion. All kids wear baggy pants. They sell them at the Gap.”
The parking lot got crowded. Arash’s presence was in the air. He had just been there, alive, himself, doing the normal things we all did, except—I now realized—we lived in a place where normal things could get you killed. I stood on the periphery of the mourning human cluster, alone. I could not share my grief with his sisters like the other girls did. I could not say what I thought, that if his friends hadn’t noticed him at the end of that theater’s entrance hall, standing next to that awkward Italian girl—if he’d been alone with me that night, walking with no particular stride, away from that mall—he would have still been here today.
I grabbed a lonely red candle from the asphalt and left the parking lot. I walked to our ghost middle school and hopped the fence. In our classroom I lit the candle for Arash. It was almost Christmas and I was wearing a T-shirt. I thought about that—and only that: That things were not what they seemed. That winter was summer, Christmas was Easter, and death was another incongruous detail that made up the landscape of the city. I did not cry. I thought about the freckled girl from school and pulled my hair up in a ponytail. I hopped on top of the fence and looked up at the sun as it set behind the hills. “Think of the other side. Don’t think of what’s behind you,” she had said. It always worked when I climbed over with Arash. I hoped it would now too.
I left our spot and walked by rich mansions, shitty condos, and family homes. When the last rays of the sun disappeared, the street I was on suddenly lit up. A plastic Santa Claus hovered over my head with a big sign: “Ho ho ho and welcome to Candy Cane Lane. Our holiday display can be enjoyed from the comfort of your own vehicle, but please don’t feed the penguins!”
I’d heard people in school talk about this extravaganza but didn’t believe it actually existed. A manic celebration of Christmas unfolded before my eyes. The entire street was one huge kitsch holiday decoration asserting the city’s right to enjoy a jolly Christmas in spite of the tropical temperatures. A blanket of fake snow had been distributed over each home’s freshly cut front lawn. Insane sums of money and thousands of kilowatts of energy were spent on lights, plastic snowmen, and animatronic Santas. Disney-themed installations—Robin Hoods, Aladdins, Little Mermaids everywhere. Hollywood was a hill away. A life-size inflatable Santa Claus on a motorcycle chased a helicopter with candy-cane blades. Bejeweled, tired palm trees swayed in the hot wind. There were no firs in sight. The street ended under the Ventura Freeway. In front of the last house three Hispanic gardeners carried heavy generators across a yard. They looked up at me and rolled their eyes.
“Crazy, right?” One of them laughed as the other settled a glowing baby Jesus into the earth. He dug holes for Mary and Joseph to rest in, stabbing the lawn with a shovel, chuckling to himself.
At the beginning of the street, cars got in line for a tour of the lane. They couldn’t park and walk to see the show. Shooting people and celebrating Christmas: Everything in LA could be done from the comfort of one’s vehicle.
The gardeners plugged a plastivity scene in to the generator.
Mary’s electric dress sparkled like a holy disco ball. She looked so beautiful shining on that lawn, under the freeway overpass. I got on my knees, crossed myself, clasped my hands, and closed my eyes in front of the sacred family.
Dear Mary, please be nice to Arash’s soul. Help him fly away, out of the Valley, over the Woodland Hills Mall, across the canyons. Move him on a string through the western surf, into the setting sun. Plunge him into the ocean and push him through the depths of the earth, far from the coast of California. Bring him back to Persia. May he be greeted by a potent red sun and a noble lion. May the melodies of lute players from all time resonate when he enters his skies. Undress him. He is so beautiful when he is naked. Cover him in jewels. Throw his baggy pants away. Let him know I plan to join an advanced literature class next semester, a class where people read. We would have had to stop going to the abandoned school anyway. Amen.
I decided that would be my last prayer, the last chance I’d give Mary to make things right. When I reached Sepulveda Boulevard, instead of going home I kept walking. I headed to Henry’s store. I didn’t know why I felt like being with him in that moment. Maybe it was the missing ear. I too felt like an amputee, missing limbs here and there. Missing parts of my heart.
part two
return
10
Alma stood on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, shampooing. She had long curly black hair on her legs.
“Come and take your showers,” she invited my brother and me.
She poured expired body wash on our heads, massaging our skulls. We dove from the rock into the clear water. Soapy foam rolled down our spines, caressing the back of our necks and slipping off our naked shoulders.
“That’s it. Clean now!” she screamed, and dove after us into the dirty wake. It was our daily ritual, Neptune’s private bubble bath. There was no running water at home.
A tourist boat passed. There were several of them each day from neighboring islands. They circled ours without stopping to let passengers off. On the loudspeakers the captain entertained passengers with folkloristic tales of our island’s main attractions: the tiny population, the predominance of donkeys, the absence of cars, roads, and food—total wilderness. The captain honked at us as we finished our sea showers. Alma climbed out of the water and flipped him off. She hated tourists. A British woman on the boat deck screamed at her that we were polluting the sea.
Alma yelled back, “Verpiss dich!” “Fuck you” in German. “We have no running water here! How would you wash your hair?”
From the sea our island looked like a truncated cone rising vertically from the water. Like all the Aeolian Islands of Sicily it used to be a volcano, but it had been inactive for thousands of years. It was hard to believe the green pastures on the top of the crater were once fumaroles emitting vaporous liquids and lava. Everything on the island was built upward on blocks of coarse basaltic stones. The winding mulattiera, a donkey path climbing from the sea to the top of the mountain, was the only road. At the port an Alfa Romeo convertible had been parked between rusting barrels for twenty years. A fisherman won it in a lottery. It came on a boat and hadn’t moved from that spot since. There were no roads to drive it on.
It was June 1993 and we were on the most isolated island of the Aeolian archi
pelago. Our parents had decided we would spend our summer there while recovering from our difficult first year in Los Angeles. Timoteo and I knew the place. We’d spent childhood summers there in the care of our uncle.
“Don’t send them to those horrible beaches filled with deck chairs and umbrellas. Kids need to learn about wilderness or they’ll never survive in the world, let alone LA,” my uncle Antonio told my parents. It had not taken much to convince them. In Los Angeles Max was on the brink of getting money for a new film he wanted my father to direct and co-produce. They all stayed behind, supposedly to work, but I often wondered if it was just that they couldn’t afford the airfare.
At the southern end of the island was the meager port with the alimentari, bar, and newspaper stand. Hydrofoils docked at the tiny pier. The port was flanked by lavic boulders that functioned as beaches. We stayed with my uncle and his German wife, Alma, on a central plateau halfway up the mountain, about two thousand steps. It was a small village area stippled with limestone houses supported by dazzlingly white masonry columns and decorated with built-in bisuoli—benches. At the tip of the volcano was the ghost village, inhabited by a small colony of German hippies who squatted in the abandoned houses of fishermen who had immigrated to Australia at the turn of the nineteenth century. They lived off potatoes and solar energy. Alma had been one of them before meeting my uncle and marrying into “civilization,” as she said. Her face was rough from years in the sun.
They lived year-round in a sophisticated ruin perched on a cliff overlooking the archipelago. No electricity, no running water, but plenty of organized harmony. Cisterns collected rainwater. When they traveled off the island, the islanders built pipelines to steal water from their cisterns, leaving just enough for a few summer showers and occasional dishwashing. My uncle didn’t complain about it. It was the price they had to pay to live on the island, he said.
“We’re in Sicily. Do you know anybody who doesn’t pay protection money here?”
I liked the feeling of being cloistered on the island. Windless heat, cicadas, no air conditioning. After overabundance came restriction. After supermarket aisles stashed with nineteen varieties of milk, came the relaxing Sicilian communist regime: milk, cheese, bread, eggs. You had to take things at face value or starve. The “all or nothing” approach was easier than anything in between. Timoteo and I had passed through Rome for a few days on our way to the island. We stayed with our grandmother and slept on her couch. I read stories from the American literature anthology all night long because the jet lag wouldn’t let me fall asleep. The city was empty and quiet. None of my old friends were around and it was impossible for me to get my bearings. I did bump into Alessandro, the school’s Rastafarian political leader. He’d cut off his dreadlocks and was working the door at a summer disco-bar on the Tiber. He had graduated from high school, refused to go to university, and didn’t have any plans. “Rome is depressing, man. There’s nothing to look forward to here.” I tried to console him. I told him about the evil imperialist America. He’d been right. It was a place from hell. Every other store was part of a big chain. But he shrugged his shoulders and said I was lucky I didn’t have to wear ugly, itchy wool sweaters from Peru in the winters like all the other lefties from school. “Get a tan and stay away from here. You won’t regret it.” Then he stamped my wrist and let me in for free.
With almost no people on the island I focused on the animals instead. Mice were everywhere. Timoteo feared their insidious tails. He imagined them creeping into his bathing suit. From the cots in the kitchen where we slept, we heard them crawl in search of crumbs and leftovers. As a solution my uncle adopted, for the time of our stay, ten of the hundreds of wild cats that lived on the central plateau. Most lacked bits of paws, eyes, or tails.
“They are perfect. They eat everything, even ants!” Alma proclaimed.
“Better than your California sinkerator,” Antonio chimed in.
We threw dinner leftovers from the terrace at night. The cats ate the food but didn’t touch the mice. It was the kind of place where animals agreed not to recognize each other’s differences. They came in different shapes but faced the same challenges. The deal was no eating each other.
The animals I loved most lived on a makeshift farm that belonged to Santino, the island handyman. He had two donkeys, Angelina and Maradona (because he was a hard kicker, just like Napoli’s football idol), two ostriches, a cow, a watchdog, cats, and chickens. They were badly matched yet they fit together like a dysfunctional family. I liked them because they made me think of home. Santino could move fridges and furniture up the mountain—alone or with the help of the donkeys. He loaded mules with groceries and water for tourists and hauled them up the hill in exchange for cash. He lived with his wife, Rosalia, and two daughters next to a metal trash container by the sea—a miniature Sicilian trashopolis like Dharavi in Mumbai. The animals rummaged close to the trash piles, inhaling the stench of garbage and melting plastic. It yielded a thick, sickly-sweet smell under the sun.
—
Everyone on the island recognized my brother and me from the Spam commercial we’d shot in Italy the previous year. When we disembarked from the hydrofoil it was a walk of shame. Kids chased us with cameras and papers so we could sign autographs.
“The Americans are here!” they screamed.
We stopped for refreshments at the bar and were welcomed like movie stars with free mulberry granita and iced tea.
“Who’s hungry for thinly sliced vegetables on a bed of chopped meat?” the barman winked at us, quoting our mother’s line in the commercial.
The islanders cackled.
“Canned meat anyone?” another intervened.
“Can we come out to your beautiful house?” a little girl asked, prompted by her aunt.
“Macché! They live in America. That wasn’t their real house,” one of the local boys interjected.
“They’re rich! They have a house in Rome and one in Los Angeles. Don’t you know?” the little girl’s aunt answered in dialect.
They spoke their ideas out loud, talking about us as if we weren’t there. The teenage girls hissed when they looked at me. I wanted to tell them they had nothing to be envious of. Nearly a year had passed since we moved to the United States and little had changed. Part of the canned-meat company’s payment to us was a long-lasting supply of Spam. My parents had shipped the cans over to the island so Alma could feed the stray cats. Not a glamorous story so far. When they asked me if I’d seen any celebrities in LA, I told them about the day on the freeway when I passed the actor who played Eric Forrester, the powerful father figure in The Bold and the Beautiful. His custom license plate read PATRIARCH. I had also seen David Hasselhoff at a mall in Encino. I lied and told them he’d pulled in to the parking lot in a black sports car with tinted windows and a roving red sensor on the hood.
—
The boat my uncle bought from a fisherman a few years earlier had a name painted in blue on the bow: Samantha Fox IV. It was flimsy and filled with stagnant seawater, but dignity was bestowed upon her by the Roman numerals that followed her name. We took off from the small port, trudging slowly across the calm sea. Alma bailed out the yellowing seawater inside with a sawed-off two-liter water bottle. She wore crooked, imitation Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and liked repeating that the last time she bought something for herself was 1979. She clipped her toenails on board, then threw them in the sea—the usual open-air toiletry method. Her feet were permanently dirty from walking barefoot on the island rocks. My uncle didn’t speak with us much. He didn’t approve of Ettore’s move. He and Alma lived off sun and water and the vegetables they grew on the plains on top of the mountain.
“Why would anyone need more than that? Why move somewhere far away when all you’ll ever need in life is right here?” he asked my brother and me, tapping his heart demonstratively with one hand and clasping the tiller with the other, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
We shrugged our shoulders.
&n
bsp; “To make movies?” I ventured.
Alma shook her head disapprovingly.
“America!” she groaned. “Full of shit films!”
“Ettore and Serena should bring culture where it’s appreciated. Not stupid Hollywood!”
“It’s not exactly Hollywood where we live, so don’t worry,” I said.
I curled onto a wet cushion and closed my eyes in the sun, lulled by the hum of the slow motor. It seemed to repeat the same monotonous words over and over, Lay low, even out. Lay low, even out. I followed its orders and compressed my body against the spongy cushion. Lay low and make yourself small, a voice inside me said. Lay low and even out.
We anchored the Samantha Fox by the Scoglio Galera, the prison rock, a conglomeration of isolated rust-colored cliffs in the middle of the sea. My uncle opened the canopy for shade.
“You don’t need to watch movies when you can live inside them. Welcome to Jurassic Park,” he announced, smiling and looking up at the uncontaminated sky.
I hadn’t been to that side of the island in years. I’d forgotten how wild it was—a prehistoric enclave with no humans, just wild goats and large birds flying over the black lava shores. Alma removed her bathing suit top and dove into the green-and-purple algae that floated beneath the surface of the water. Timoteo, smeared in fluorescent white sunblock from America—our mother’s only recommendation was that he protect his pale skin—jumped off and paddled away with a blunted trident in search of octopus dens. Birds circled the lava accumulations that spilled from the tip of the mountain, squeaking fiercely at each other like pterodactyls, ancient wails that belonged to no other birds on earth. They picked on the wild goats hinging off the slippery rocks, and the wild goats bleated back defensively. Their interactions were like emergency calls, the bird cries strident requests to be rewound to the era they actually belonged to.
Things That Happened Before the Earthquake Page 10
