The Royal Family

by William T. Vollmann

  We can’t let some goddamned trick be our boss, know what I’m sayin’? ’Cause that go against our pride.

  The two women nodded, downcast, afraid of a rage from nowhere.

  Tell you a story, the tall man said, as Strawberry lit her crack pipe. You wanna hear a story?

  Always, Strawberry said, laying her hand gently on his.

  The tall man was feeling majestic and wise. He believed that within his head and heart and soul was gathered a hoard of hard, gleaming jewels which it would cost him nothing to pass around. His eyes scuttled rapidly across their faces. He longed for admiration.

  He said: All right, so once upon a time there was this homeless guy walkin’ down the streets with a bike, walkin’, walkin’ . . .

  Suddenly he realized that he was not at all certain what would happen in this story. He could not remember where the homeless man and the bicycle had come from. Had the homeless man been himself? He had hustled and lied for so long that he scarcely knew anymore what was true about himself. —Gimme a hit off that, bitch, he said to buy himself time to think. He took a long, sweet toot, feeling alert and happy as the two women gazed at him with puzzled attention.

  Listen up, he said. I ain’t talkin’ just for the hell of it. You know what makes me feel so sad? I . . . Well, you got to understand this was a nice old Schwinn Varsity bike from maybe 1960 or 1970 that was maybe somethin’ rusty but it ran good. I’m telling you it ran like a dream. Took that guy everywhere. And as long as it stayed rusty and crappy it was safe and he was OK but he loved it so much that one day he painted it and then it got stolen, brother. It got ripped off. You hear what I’m telling you?

  Yeah, so you lost your bike, sneered Domino, scratching her ear. Hey Strawberry, give me a hit off that.

  Don’t make no difference if it was me or if it was not me, the tall man said. The thing is that it happened.

  So what’s the point? Let’s move things along. Hey, Strawberry, I said I could use a hit.

  Domino, I got everything I own in this plastic bag, and this plastic bag’s almost empty, and I’m tired.

  So you’re not going to give me a hit. Is that what you’re saying?

  Fuck your whinin’ ways, Dom. Don’t talk shit. I’m tryin’ to tell you somethin’ . . .

  I’m all ears, said the blonde, her self-protective words and thoughts resembling concertina wire rolled loosely around barbed wire above high concrete walls. —You’re telling me we’re supposed to hide what we’ve got and dress like junkyard dogs, right?

  I’m tellin’ you, beware of golden aspirations. You already got the easy life, bitch, so—

  So you’re afraid to aim higher than crappy old Maj. Well, fine. Why should I give a shit about you? But—

  ’Scuse me, said Strawberry to Domino, and the tall man actually permitted her to interrupt him because he still for the life of him could not remember the punchline of his own story, and he was ashamed.

  What? You finally going to let me have one teeny-weeny hit from your precious pipe? Just tell me what hoops I have to jump through.

  Strawberry shook her head until her hair whirled. —You actually owe me a rock, hon.

  I goddamned well do not!

  From before you was in the joint. Remember? You shorted me that time with the fat trick, you know, that old white guy with the bad breath . . .

  Do not insult me with your bullshit anymore, you fungus-encrusted old cunt!

  At this, the tall man, smiling grimly, clapped his palms echoingly together so that the whole world almost collapsed like a beer can ground under someone’s heel, and he said to the blonde: Yeah, bitch, don’t get smart with my bitch. You heard what she said.

  Well, lordy lordy day, as Maj would say. Ain’t he in a grand mood? Did your bitch let you cornhole her today, or is that just for fifty-dollar Japanese johns? Is that why she’s so uppity? They call her Strawberry because of her big red ugly nose . . .

  The tall man punched her straight in the face. To Domino it was as if she were sitting on a stool in the Wonderbar and then suddenly came the earsplitting slam of dice on the counter as a cheater shouted: I’m clean, I’m clean! I just paid you! Only the shock of it assaulted her at first. There was no pain yet. But she went down and stayed down for a long time. Then the pain arrived—she knew that part so well because pain was and always would be her offering to the Canaanite idols—and then the shame, rage and sick sadness of the assault began to settle weirdly down upon her shoulders like a crowd of fruit bats coming home, and she felt more alone than she had ever felt since she’d joined her Queen. That night at the Lola Hotel when the Queen had georgia’d her—that was what it had been; rape is rape no matter how many orgasms the rapist chokes down your throat—had commenced the withering of her affection for the Queen; and yet she still loved Maj more than anyone else and had trusted her by trusting the tall man and her other sisters, even Chocolate, from whom she had expected the first backstab to originate. And now with this one punch the tall man had forced her to don once again the scarlet mantle of the outcast. Now she must make her own way over the hard flat plain of grief, across which irrelevant caravans pass into winter. She felt appalled.

  Slowly, warily, she rose to her feet, breathing heavily, with blood trickling from her mouth. She spat a bloody tooth into her hand.

  I s’pose you’ll go to Maj with this, the tall man sneered. Go ahead, bitch. Do your worst. I know I broke the rules.

  Domino laughed in his face. —There are no rules now.

  Don’t bet on that. There’s rules about snitches, know what I’m sayin’? Strawberry, step back from this dangerous bitch. We gonna make her fade now. This be our room.

  Domino stood fixedly. Her face of course was expressionless, but they could both see the throat working. Domino had always been very pale anyhow. In those last months of the Queen’s reign she seemed worse. Strawberry suddenly found herself imagining that the blonde had kept her aborted baby and was suckling it. For some reason she wanted to gaze upon Domino’s snowy chest. The blonde’s pallid face had gone paler still with hatred, then paler yet again in contrast with her greying hair, and her eyes gleamed so that she seemed almost like a vampire. Her pale face became paler still against her hair. Strawberry’s heart pounded with fear.

  The blonde walked downstairs, passed through the heavy grating that stood between her and the night, and posted herself at Eighteenth and Capp, wiggling her hips at the slow-eyed cars, grinning crookedly into the glare of headlights, her face covered with blood. All night her teeth rattled like glass ampoules rolled together in a drug pusher’s palm.

  | 468 |

  I’m sorry for my part in our misunderstanding, Strawberry said when Domino was emerging from a strange man’s bedroom. —I hope that you are for yours . . . —for of course it had all been Domino’s fault.

  Not really, said Domino with a dry laugh.

  Well, I like you and respect you and want to get on with you, but if it’s not going to work out then maybe I should steer clear, no hard feelings . . .

  Well, I’m a muller. I’ll have to mull it over, said Domino, walking away.

  | 469 |

  That bitch is scandalous, said Strawberry. I hate that bitch.

  Why, what she done to you now?

  What hasn’t she done?

  You make it sound like it goes way back, Chocolate replied cautiously. Like a citizen of a totalitarian country, she knew better than to launch any criticisms, however supposedly secret, of those who had the power to hurt her—which in no way implied that she might not under certain very controlled circumstances acquiesce in the complaints of others. Unable to forget that she had wronged the blonde, she feared her accordingly—even more now after her lapse on Mission Street not so many months before when she’d screamed at Domino and threatened her—and Domino had forbearingly not cut her with that naked razorblade.

  We was in the joint together, an’ she snitched on me when I drank my homegirl’s methadone. You ever tried that shit
?

  I don’t like them downers, said Chocolate.

  Fuckin’ A, girl, it’s better than heroin. Lasts longer, too. Makes me feel so good and dreamy, I can hardly tell you. And my homegirl loved me. Her name was Denise. Shit, she was one good bitch. She let me drink her methadone ’cause she loved me. And that bitch Domino snitched on me. And now she snitched again to the Queen, when Justin took up some business with her, just protecting me from her bad vibes.

  Now, that I can believe!

  She was threatening me, Choc! And then she snitched me off . . .

  (Of course none of this was true, although Strawberry believed it—or rather, she believed in its future likelihood, and so rounded a half-probability up into a certainty. It was Strawberry herself who would snitch to the Brady’s Boys only two nights later.)

  With all respect, that’s a strange one for me to get my head around, girl. Domino, now, she’s hard and mean, but I ain’t never seen her snitch.

  Well, I’m tellin’ you, Choc, that’s what she did.

  You sure?

  Yeah.

  And you tole the Queen?

  Shit, what the fuck’s the point of dragging in Maj for? She’d only take Domino’s side anyways. Domino’s her little blonde pet. Besides, she snitched to Maj, which puts me in the wrong . . .

  You swear she snitched on you?

  I swear it, said Strawberry with a trembling voice.

  Chocolate cleared her throat, then insinuated: Why don’t you give her the snitch mark? Where I come from, that’s what we do. I promise not to tell . . .

  Mm hm, said Strawberry noncommitally, unwilling to admit that she didn’t know what a snitch mark was, but Chocolate, perceiving her blankness, rushed proudly to fill the breach in her knowledge, thus: What you do, see, is take a straight razor, and you cut her real slow and deep from her mouth to her ear, so everytime for the rest of her worthless life she gotta look in the mirror, or in some stranger’s eyes lookin’ at her, she gotta see the connection between snoopin’ and snitchin’, an’ hopefully she’ll learn to shut the fuck up about another girl’s business.

  I see, Strawberry said palely, afraid to take this wrongful and irrevocable step.

  Then the Brady’s Boys had caught her.

  | 470 |

  Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Come on out here and fight, bitch! You stole my trick, you lowdown stinking bitch! I’d commit suicide before I passed up my revenge on you, bitch! Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! You fuckin’ bitch! You put every nigger dick in the Tenderloin in your mouth, bitch!

  Then Domino, drunk, coked up and methed up, finally came staggering furiously out of the Overflo bar to rebut these words of Strawberry’s, and she was pounding the sidewalk with somebody’s padded crutch. —You stole my wedding ring, fucker! she screamed. You ruined my life! And the Queen’s gonna . . . Queen’s gonna . . .

  But then Strawberry lunged, snatched the crutch, and smashed it down onto Domino’s head. Domino started screeching like a vampire into whose heart a stake is being pounded, and Strawberry dragged her down to the sidewalk, beating her and choking her. The pimps came from across the street and stood around watching the fight. Strawberry raised the crutch and walloped Domino’s forehead again. Finally the tall man strode out of the bar and wrenched the crutch out of his sweetheart’s hands. —Knock it off, bitches, he said. Queen’s not gonna like this.

  In her rage, Strawberry tried to lay hands on him, but he threw her off, kicked her away from Domino, and said: Don’t you ever hand me like that, you stinkin’ ho.

  Actually he was delighted. Strawberry had shown heart. She was his mean, ruthless street bitch.

  Domino leaped up from the sidewalk, weeping with rage and humiliation. Her head was bleeding, but it didn’t look serious. She ran at Strawberry, but the tall man interposed himself with an almost kindly impersonality, walling her off from further self-mischief. —Leave her be, Domino, he said. Domino! Domino!

  The girl struggled in his crushing arms.

  Listen to me, Domino, said the tall man, his eyelids sinking down like twilight warehouse gratings. —Quit your foolishness. You been beat and you know it. Just let it go an’ I’ll keep her off you. Queen’s rules.

  Then they all saw the Queen standing there with her hands on her hips, shaking her head and weeping as she had wept over them so many times before, but this time it meant nothing to them; she was only an old woman crying.

  | 471 |

  And those two niggers that georgia’d Domino, I know where they both is at, said Chocolate.

  The sun glanced blindingly off a white-painted driveway gate on Folsom Street as Tyler walked past, and struck his cheek. He wondered what species the pretty trees garlanded with fernleaves at heads and hips might be.

  I only told ’em about South Van Ness, I swear, Strawberry said. She was crying. —Justin? Justin? I was so so scared.

  We be holdin’ it down for our Queen, said Chocolate out of habit. And Justin got him a shark killer. You know what I mean? Shoot one shotgun shell from a tube . . .

  I wanna get high, whined Strawberry. I want some liquid juice.

  You better stop causin’ us static, said the tall man. Henry, you packin’?

  Sure.

  You told me you sold your gun.

  That’s right. And just now I told you what you wanted to hear.

  Reality will get you, the old acidhead Californians liked to say; reality will obtrude itself. If you’re in a cattle car bound for Auschwitz, you can’t wish your destiny away. —I grant that fully, said Tyler to himself, but isn’t it also true that after reality has done its worst I cease to exist, which means that reality ceases to exist? So if I want to wish upon a star or a Queen, all I need do is steel myself against the worst possible pain. —This had been his attitude until the Queen had spoken of Sunflower’s pain, and then he’d begun to wonder whether steeling himself might be wrong and even unworthy; shouldn’t he let the pain in, feel it, be destroyed by it, and thereby get his blessed ending? Like a woman’s dress on a hanger under a whirling fan, sleeves patiently gesticulating in the breeze, endlessly touching and stroking the limp form they came from, so his thoughts moved, but not really to any purpose, like a naked woman’s fidgeting legs, the flesh so perfectly and unconsciously obeying impulses which the mind probably wasn’t even aware that it had; if the woman lived to get old, her legs would ache and fight her even if she stirred them in a necessary and deliberate cause; reality would have gotten them then.

  Okay now, the Queen whispered. This is it. Now I gotta visit with everybody in private, give everyone a chance to remember an’ to cry.

  (You think I’m crying? sneered Domino.)

  The Queen said: Strawberry, you remember when the black-and-white almost picked us up an’ we pretended to be fighting?

  An’ you slapped me in the face, Maj, an’ I called you a bitch! Remember that? You’re the one I love so much an’ I called you a bitch!

  ’Course I do, sweetie, laughed the Queen, butterfly-tapping her so lightly on the shoulder.

  If the vigs come in here then we gotta run back out again. Maj, I’m so sorry . . .

  You didn’t tell ’em nothin’. Don’t worry you head, child. Vigs wanna find me, they gonna find me. An’ they forced you. An’ I have so many places to go, let ’em scour South Van Ness high an’ low . . .

  This, uh, Maj, is this goodbye? I don’t see any vigs.

  ’Course not, Strawberry. This ain’t no goodbye. I’ll always be here.

  Next came the blonde, so hate-strong and hate-strung like a careful sinister violin and so hate-cheerful, sounding elegant chords of hatred, and she said: You promised me, Maj. You said nobody would ever rape me again. And these two niggers . . .

  Domino. Domino.

  What? wept the blonde.

  You’re lying. I’ll never tattle on you, honey, but Queen knows when you’re tellin’ the truth or not. Nobody georgiaed you this time.

  Domino whispered: I don’t trust anyone but you. But I neve
r snitched . . .

  The Queen said: You didn’t wanna be marked. Let go now, Domino. Let go.

  Am I marked now, Maj?

  Yes, baby, you bear my Mark. So don’t worry. You were my good little girl. I love you so much. Run along now.

  Domino dug her fingernails tightly into her lower lip. She sat down in a dark doorway and whispered: I’m all in. I’m cashing in on these motherfuckers.

  As for Beatrice, she merely hung her head and remembered faded sky-blue houses. Her Mama had not died yet. Her Mama went next door and asked: Are the Marias at home? The little girls reached up and clung to the railing kicking and smiling. They were the Marias. Beatrice had always wanted to be a Maria likewise, because then she would have owned the Virgin’s name.

  I think I’ll take a little walk now, said the Queen, but Beatrice cried: Don’t go out there, Maj—please!

  You know, I was fixing to go out for a minute, said the Queen. I was calling to see if Sapphire needed some help.

  What the fuck you talkin’ about, Maj? said the tall man. Sapphire she standin’ right there . . .

  And now Sapphire began to dance before her Queen, kneeling with the scraps of her torn dress flaring out on either side of her like petals of a flower. She bowed her pallid face almost to the floor and rotated a greasy piece of streetstained cardboard so gracefully like a fan.

  Look! said Kitty. Here comes Mr. Smooth!

  It was indeed old pedophile Dan in his green Prowler, circling the block and waving. Finally he parked in an alley. —Get out of here! he cried. The vigs are coming!

  Danny, said the Queen, would you kindly take Sapphire for a little ride? I’ll be speakin’ with you.

  Biting his lip, Smooth nodded. He took Sapphire by the hand. The retarded girl didn’t cry.

  Okay, guys, cried Rodrigo to the other Brady’s Boys. Watch me, guys.

  Chill out, everybody, whispered the Queen. Better do a ghost. Come on. Move. Get out of here.

  And where was Henry Tyler? Why, he wasn’t there! He was—where was he? He missed the end. Was he drunk, sad or just scared? It’s said that he was on Harrison Street kissing the false Irene.