Anyways, it was enough money for me to put down first and last on my own little room at the Stella Hotel. I had to pay an extra $500 for Thug to be able to stay, but I don’t mind. He’s worth it. Can you believe it? I have my very own room. It even has a hot plate and a mini-fridge! I make soup and ravioli and spaghetti from a can. Sure do miss Z’s cookin somethin fierce, but I get by, I’m gettin by. Some days are harder than others. Some days I miss them all so much, and my heart hurts so much just to think on them that I don’t even want to be in the world no more. Sometimes I get so sad and tired that I want to lie down in the middle of a busy intersection until I’m crushed right down into the blackness and disappear completely. But then I’ll look at my dog and he’ll kinda smile at me, and I know I won’t ever leave him. I can’t. I know my girls wouldn’t want me to either. So I just keep goin. Keep on keepin on, like the song says. Yeaah. It’s okay.
The carpet in my room is dusty-rose, it’s stained and burnt and ass-dirty, but I don’t care—it’s my carpet. God, I wish the girls could see my room. Mercy would probably get some art and pretty fabrics and stuff to help me decorate, make it all sparkly and beautiful, but she’s not around to help me, so it just stays the way it is for now. Maybe I’ll buy one of the paintings that crippled guy on the corner does. He’s pretty good, actually. Mac would’ve liked his stuff. She was into art. All kinds. She told me once when we were drunk that she had always wanted to study art history. That she was thinkin to maybe apply to UBC once we got our condo sorted out. That girl, she could’ve done anythin, eh. She could’ve been anythin. But then, somehow, so many things went wrong so fast. And I didn’t know how to make them right again. Now they never will be. They never, never will be.
But when I think on Mac now, I like to think she’d be proud of me. For gettin straight, gettin my own place, meetin new people, all that.
The other people who live at the Stella Hotel are mostly junkies. But everyone’s pretty nice. They all say hey to me and Thug when we go by in the hallway. My next-door neighbour is a crackhead named Henry who likes to do science experiments. He’s always askin me to come over and check out his latest results. He showed me how to make a volcano with vinegar and baking soda and red food dye. Henry’s real nice. Like when there’s a line-up for our bathroom—cuz everyone on our floor shares the same bathroom—and he’s in front of me, he always lets me go ahead of him. Once, when I saw a cockroach in my room, I started screamin cuz it was so big and ugly, and Henry came right over and banged on my door and asked me, What the hell’s the matter? So I told him and he said, Is that all? I thought you were dying in here. And then he scooped the roach up with an empty Zoodle-O’s can and chucked the whole thing out the window. Henry says not to worry even a little bit about them roaches because even the cleanest, richest, tidiest mansions get cockroaches sometimes, and you can’t do nothin to stop them. They can even survive nuclear war, he says.
Henry shares his smokes with me sometimes, if I’m runnin low. And I’ll give him a couple of mine if he’s out. I guess that means we’re friends. But if I don’t feel like talkin to anybody, I can lock my door and put the chain across and no one can come in. If I don’t feel like leavin my room all day, I don’t have to. I can just hang out in my pyjamas, drink tea, and look at magazines. Just like we would sometimes do at the gang house if it was a real piss-pouring day. I always wish Kayos was around to make Jiffy Pop and watch a movie with me on those nasty days. She’d crank the music and demo her new ninja moves for us, eh. God, I’d give anythin to see one of her tornado spinnin kicks right now. Ha ha.
The heater in my room is real old, probably from the 1900s, but it works, and it gets real nice and toasty-warm in my room when it’s all cold and rainy outside. Thug likes to curl up beside the heater and just sleep for hours. It’s his favourite spot.
My favourite part of my room is the balcony. Well, it’s not really a balcony, it’s just the landing on the fire escape, and I have to crawl out my window to get onto it, but I use it like a balcony and go out there and sit on it and have smokes and whatevers. I like goin out there at night and just watchin all the lights of the city. And sometimes, when it’s not too cloudy, I can see the stars; they’re far away and they’re faint, but they’re there.
I even have a job. A real, legit job. The fat white worker lady at the Carnegie helped me get set up with this Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program. I had to go to a bunch of meetings with an employment counsellor so we could figure out what I should do. Not just what I can do or what I’m good at, but what I actually want to do. I love animals, all animals, but dogs especially. So now I’m a professional dog walker. My company, ha ha, that sounds funny but it’s true, it’s called Luckydog Dog Walking. I guess I’m the CEO, ha ha. I even printed up these little business cards on the computer at the Employment Centre, and the counsellor chick helped me design these cute posters that I stick up on bulletin boards around the rich neighbourhoods. You wouldn’t believe how many people have dogs but don’t have time to walk them. My phone is always ringin. Most of my clients are in Yaletown, some are in the West End, and a few are in Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy is actually where I like to be walkin dogs the most cuz then I can keep an eye on Kayos’s little sister, Laura. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m always in Shaughnessy to walk this beautiful Irish Setter named Sedona. She’s a real gorgeous dog, all friendly and lovin. Sedona’s house is just a few blocks away from Kayos’s, so I make sure we always go past it at least twice. Sometimes Laura is out in the yard, playin with her dolls or drawin on the sidewalk with coloured chalk, kickin a soccer ball around with her mom or dad or whatevers. She’s gettin real big now. She looks good. Healthy. Her hair is gettin long. It’s bright red like Kayos’s was. Spittin image.
The other day, Laura ran up to me all bouncin around with her bubble-wand. She wanted to pet the dog, eh. But her dad caught her by the arm and told her not to ever touch strange dogs without askin their owner if it’s okay first. So then she looks up at me with all this watery hope in her eyes and says in her little kid voice, Can I pet your dog? Please?
Sure, I said. Go ahead.
Is she nice?
Yeah, she is. She’s really nice.
Okay, she said, and reached out her hand.
And the crazy thing is, Laura will never know who I am, she’ll never know about the Black Roses, all we did together, how much we loved her sister, but I will always, always look out for her. Forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU: Ben Parker, my first reader and secret weapon; David Chariandy for encouragement and kindness; Dennis E. Bolen for enthusiasm and moral support; Cathleen With for inspiration and conversation; Michael Christie for paving the way and lending me Henry; Gabe Schoenberg and Graffiti Tours New York for the tour and coco helado; Timothy Taylor for “graffiti as gifts”; Michael Chettleburgh for Young Thugs, which spawned the idea for this novel; Mark Kingwell for Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City; Odd Squad Productions Society; Misha Kleider, Alex Kleider, and Corey Ogilvie for Streets of Plenty; Chris Haddock for Intelligence (I’m still waiting for Season 3); Paul Schrader; William Monahan; Oliver Stone; Geoff (Tippi) Tomlin-Hood for locals only info, driving me around Strathcona, and always making time to hang when I’m in Vancouver; John Harkin for Vancouver info; Ron Little for car-starting info; everyone who shared their experiences of the street with me; the OGs; my agent, Hilary McMahon; the crew at Arsenal Pulp: Gerilee McBride for the book’s design; Susan Safyan for making the editing process painless; Cynara Geissler; Brian Lam; to my family, thanks for being in my corner, especially my parents, John and Jennifer Little; and thank you, Warren, for food, shelter, and TLC, but thanks especially, for being down for life.
GLOSSARY
9: 9 mm gun
24’s: 24 inch rims (on cars)
Alouette: Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, a women’s maximum security prison
bill: $100 dollar bill
blunt: a cigar that has been emptied o
f tobacco and filled with marijuana
burners: disposable cell phones
connect: supplier of drugs
cooking: making crack
cop: pick up/buy drugs
deets: details
down: heroin
fiend: a person who craves a drug, e.g., crackfiend; fiending: craving
G: gangster
G-pack: a street-ready package of drugs worth $1,000
gat: gun
ghost car: undercover police car, usually a sedan, easily identified by the lack of hubcaps and a large antennae on the roof
ground-scores: things of value found on the ground; ends of cigarettes, change, lighters, etc.
H: heroin
Hastings shuffle: an erratic style of walking commonly seen in pedestrians on East Hastings Street, often includes arm flailing, pocket checking, and scratching of the skin, generally brought on by a drug-induced psychosis
hella: to describe a lot of something; similar to “very” or “really”
hotshot: such high purity heroin that a “regular dose” is lethal
hundy: $100
juvie: Juvenile Detention Centre
K: short form for thousand; or Ketamine, a psychoactive drug
key: kilogram
kiff: Second-hand items (usually stolen) that street people sell to make money; watches, jewellery, DVDs, frozen meat, etc.
L.C.: Lucifer’s Choice Motorcycle Gang, a (fictional) highly organized and very violent international crime syndicate dealing mainly in narcotics, weapons, human trafficking, racketeering, and illegal gambling operations.
low pro: low profile, undetected
OG: Original Gangster; term of respect for long standing gang member
OPP: Other People’s Property; a reference to Naughty by Nature’s rap song
Oxy/Oxycontin: a semi-synthetic opiod analgesic prescribed to patients with chronic pain, when crushed up and snorted/injected for street use, it produces a quick and powerful high similar to heroin
PCP: Punjabi Canadian Princess
PoCo: Port Coquitlam, home of pig farmer/ serial killer Robert Pickton
rags: bandanas; often seen worn by gangsters portrayed in the media
re-up: reload supply of drugs for street sales
rig: a needle or syringe used to inject drugs
rock: crack cocaine
Slurrey: derogatory name for Surrey, BC, a suburb of Vancouver notorious for gang violence
sick: awesome, cool, amazing
SRO: Single Room Occupancy apartment
U.P.: Unified Peoples, a (fictional) powerful street gang
Vancouver Special: a term used to characterize a particular style of common, cheap, box-like houses built in Vancouver from 1965–1985
PHOTO BY JOHN HARKIN
ASHLEY LITTLE
studied creative writing at the University of Victoria (BC). Her debut novel, Prick: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist (Tightrope Books) was shortlisted for the ReLit Award and has been optioned for a film, for which she is writing the screenplay. She is also the author of the young-adult novel The New Normal (Orca Book Publishers). Ashley lives in the Okanagan Valley.
ashleylittle.com
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