Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

  That was the plan. But here was the problem: Laila was ghost. Morning heated up into afternoon, which sweltered into evening, and she hadn’t returned to her camp. Darrell told Ren to chill because this was a neighborhood like any other—people did their jobs, stuck to their routines, hell, some even went to college, then came home at night. Just because folks live on the streets doesn’t mean they don’t have stuff to do all day, he said. Which made sense until every other tent on the block was up but Laila’s was still folded behind Darrell’s carts.

  Stop your fretting, a woman from the camp told Ren as he paced. These parts, people come and go. A man sleeps next to you for two years, then up and leaves, then a year later he’s back like no time at all.

  What about Laila? he asked her, Darrell, anyone who he thought would know, anyone who would listen. What’s her schedule?

  Laila, everyone said, she always around.

  She always come back.

  Maybe always. But not now, not this evening when Ren was waiting, hoping to take her up to the Cecil, get her on the phone with her cousin, then get her home.

  It was dark and the streetlights on Crocker were out. Ren walked the block, then rounded the corner, headed up Fifth, and looped back. People were lined up on the sidewalk like casualties. They were hidden in tents and under tarps. If Laila had crashed somewhere else, for whatever reason, there would be no figuring it out until morning, if at all.

  Ren came back to his camp. He headed around back of Darrell’s carts where he’d stashed his box.

  A hand reached out and grabbed him. “Whoa, whoa, my man. Who you messing with, my man? Not your shit to mess with, you feel me?” Puppet, the little thug, was tugging and twisting Ren’s shirt. You could feel the extra energy coursing off the kid. He wore a different baggy basketball jersey and cap twisted forty-five degrees off center.

  “I’m just getting my stuff,” Ren said.

  “Not your stuff if it’s in Darrell’s cart, you feel me?”

  The last thing Ren wanted was this jumpy motherfucker buzzing up in his face. “Maybe I keep my stuff with his stuff.”

  “This is my block. I know the what-what,” Puppet said. “I know you don’t camp with Darrell. You feel me?”

  “No,” Ren said, “I don’t feel you.”

  Puppet jumped forward, his chest nearly bumping into Ren’s. “What happened to your face?” he said. “First I saw you, you were looking smooth, like these streets hadn’t touched you.”

  “What’s it look like?” Ren said. “Got beat down.”

  “Hold up,” Puppet said. “I heard about you from Uncle Darrell. He told me you got jumped by the Eighteenth Street motherfuckers.”

  “Darrell’s your uncle?”

  “Why the fuck else you think I’d keep watch over this particular block? He’s my uncle and someone messes with his shit, I’m-a know about it.”

  Ren laid his box on the ground. If only this twitchy fool would back off, he’d be able to lie down, cradle his head on his pack, allow himself this one remaining comfort.

  Puppet’s eyes were jumping from Ren’s busted lip to swollen eye. “You’re not proud of taking a beating?”

  “You have to be one dumb motherfucker to be proud to get beat down,” Ren said.

  “Uncle D said you took it like a man. He said you hard, you feel me?”

  “I’m not hard, I’m tired.”

  “You do time?”

  “I do what I fucking want,” Ren said, although that was far from the truth, especially at this particular moment. Because here he was, sleeping on the street, talking to some hyped-up junior-G, the exact type of person he’d sworn to avoid since the day he got taken away.

  Puppet stopped bouncing. His bug eyes narrowed. And for a split second Ren thought the crazy kid was going to come for him. Then he cupped a hand over his mouth and laughed. “I do what I fucking want,” he said. “I do what I fucking want. Motherfucker, you don’t mess around and you don’t take shit. You hard. For real, you feel me.” He offered Ren his hand.

  “Sure,” Ren said. “I feel you. We’re copacetic,” Ren said.

  “Cop-a-what-what?”

  “We’re cool.”

  “Listen,” Puppet said, twisting his hat farther off kilter. “You’re young. You’re smart. I can help you.”

  “I’m good,” Ren said. How the fuck this hyper kid planned to help him was something he didn’t want to discover.

  “You sleeping on the motherfucking street. Nothing good about it.” Puppet bounced from foot to foot like he was stepping over a snake. “Maybe me and my crew need a favor. Maybe we do one in return. Maybe I help you get your paper up. Everybody needs some bank. ’Specially you by the looks of it.”

  “I’m not in the favor business,” Ren said.

  “Maybe not right now, but tomorrow is another day, you feel me?” Puppet reached into the pocket of his saggy jeans and pulled out a roll of cash and wagged it at Ren. Then he tucked it away. “Your call, boy.”

  After Puppet bounced off, Ren bedded down and searched for sleep. But there were things you don’t think about after dark, things you do your best to lock away until morning. And for Ren his old, childish desire to be tough, to be a baller, to be in Puppet’s words hard was one of those things. Because if he let the memory in, he knew it would be better to stay awake than to go to sleep. But Puppet’s talk brought back the whole mess, making it come to life like a video game on the backs of Ren’s closed eyes.

  A rat found its way onto his box, tugging on his sleeve like it had something important to say. He sent the creature away and tucked his arms tight. But no matter. His skin kept tricking him into sensing the scutter of little feet, the whip of a hairless tail.

  Ren rolled side to side, searching for a second of comfort. Now where the fuck had Laila gone? Maybe the Laila who lived down here was different from the one who half assed raised him back in Brooklyn, the one who stayed out all night with her girls, sometimes coming back in the early morning smelling of sweaty perfume, sometimes staying gone for another day. Maybe this new Laila always came back, like her friends promised. But trust her to up and leave when Ren showed. Trust her to fuck stuff up for him worse than it had to be, to strand him out here with only his damn Holy Ghost for company while she got busy with who knows what. That’s the Laila he knew. Even still, he’d get her home.

  15

  BRITT, TWENTYNINE PALMS, 2006

  Prepare like it’s competition. Stay inside yourself. Nothing in. Nothing out. Know that they are jealous. Let that make you stronger. Tougher. Know that they are here to kill you. They want to take you down. Repeat: nothing in, nothing out. You are not there.

  They gathered at the fire pit. It must have been ninety with the sun gone, but Gideon kicked up a minor inferno with a couple of bunches of dried sage that sent heavy, sweet smoke into the air. Anushna passed around a mason jar of something earthy and fermented. She rubbed Britt’s shoulder. “We come from a place of love,” she said. “Always.”

  Britt wasn’t so sure. She’d seen the way the interns eviscerated one another during the sharing sessions, insulting and demeaning in the service of so-called truth—shaming one another to save their souls. And she’d joined them, feeling the visceral thrill of unbridled vitriol. And it sure didn’t come from a place of love.

  “No one does it right the first time,” Cassidy said. She wound a piece of Britt’s hair around her finger and kissed her forehead, then took a seat on the bench closest to the tall stump which was Patrick’s place.

  Another intern hung a beaded necklace over Britt’s head to allow truth and honesty to flow.

  After a few sessions, Britt had detected a sort of electricity in the air as they waited around the fire pit for the session to start. At first she’d thought this was in anticipation of Patrick’s arrival, excitement for the moment he turned his focus over to the interns. But soon she realized that this jittery current passing through the group was simply eagerness to let loose on one anoth
er.

  They watched her, their stoned eyes mining hers for any sign of weakness, any hint that she wasn’t up to the task of being insulted for an hour. She steadied her game face—drew her focus back to something only she could see. Like it was all happening to someone else or not even happening at all.

  Britt knew Patrick was coming by the way the interns shifted in their seats, put down their guitars, stopped petting and grooming one another. They extinguished their joints and tossed them in the fire.

  Patrick stood at the edge of the circle behind Britt. She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d come into her room the previous night. She hadn’t felt him leave her bed. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Your turn.”

  How bad could it be? A brutal training session might last an hour. A disastrous match in front of coaches and parents and teammates could go on even longer. How many times had Britt failed, her hands and mind and legs letting her down as the score slipped away and time ticked slowly forward? Out here by the fire, with a dozen people who didn’t really matter, all she had to do was endure.

  Patrick’s hand lingered. Britt felt his fingertips against her collarbone, pressing, probing like he was playing chords on a guitar, transmitting something she didn’t understand. The interns shifted, ready, waiting to chant the first question, holding their breath until he signaled their release. When he sat, it wasn’t on his stump where the rest of the group could look up to him but on an empty bench next to Britt.

  “Okay,” Patrick said. “Let’s begin.”

  Before he held out his hands for the first question, Cassidy moved onto his stump. She crossed her legs and pulled back her hair, her beads and bells clattering and clacking.

  “All right?” Patrick said.

  Cassidy’s smile was like that of a mother wolf.

  There was a split second of silence. Britt heard an owl calling out. She heard the one-two beat of either James or Grace sitting on one of the rockers, listening from the porch.

  Don’t make eye contact. Don’t look at them, but through them. Let them have their way. It will be over soon.

  “Why are you here?” The interns’ collective voice ripped through the fire.

  Britt knew the first question. She’d heard it repeated over the last nights, chanted until the sharer sputtered out an answer. She’d prepared. Or she thought she had. But now her mind was blank.

  The firelight licked the interns’ faces as they stared at her, enjoying her silence, counting down until they could chant again.

  “Why are you here?”

  A stick in the fire snapped, spraying sparks at Britt’s feet.

  “Why are you here?” they chanted again. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know,” Britt said.

  Then it began.

  “Britt is lying,” Anushna said.

  “Britt thinks that by appearing humble she can fool us into thinking her intentions are noble,” Cassidy said.

  “If Britt doesn’t know why she is here, she is not ready to share.”

  The responses came fast, picking up speed, until Britt couldn’t tell who was talking. She was weak. She was deceiving herself. She was deceiving the rest of them. She was wasting her time. Their time. She thought she could impress them by working with her hands, but they knew she was too scared to work on her spirit.

  She’d imagined it would be easy to sit there and to absorb the insults, let them wash over her. She thought it would be easy not to react.

  “Britt is afraid of herself,” Cassidy said.

  Britt’s head whipped round. She caught Cassidy’s eye, the unmistakable vicious joy.

  “Britt is afraid of her true self,” Cassidy repeated.

  “Shut up.” The other interns must have been drugged or doped out of their minds to accept this shit in silence, because the words were out of Britt’s mouth before she could stop them.

  Patrick held out his hand.

  “Shut up,” Britt said again.

  “See,” Cassidy said. “Britt’s fear makes her angry.”

  “Britt is aggressive.”

  “Britt only pretends to be brave.”

  “Britt thinks she can hide her aggression behind her work ethic.”

  Britt was glaring at Cassidy whose placid smile couldn’t hide the fierce delight in her eyes. She dug her nails into her thigh, distracting herself with the pain, and punishing herself for breaking her vow not to make eye contact and to let this nonsense into her head.

  But it was too late now. She was in the game. And she was losing.

  The interns pivoted into the next question. “What do you want?” They were shouting, bellowing, their voices louder than the roaring fire.

  “What do you want?” they repeated.

  “To become someone else.” That’s the answer Britt had prepared the night before as she listened to Gideon being ripped to shreds. It was the sort of vague half-truth she thought might get her through this section quickly, win some sort of approval from the group.

  Gideon leaped first. “How can Britt become someone else when she doesn’t know who she is?”

  “Britt doesn’t understand what she wants because she doesn’t want to be here.”

  “Britt thinks her answer will impress us.”

  “Britt wants to impress us.”

  “Britt thinks she is better than us.”

  Just who the fuck do these people think they are? And why do they think they know the first thing about someone they’d met less than two weeks ago? Britt stared at her feet so she wouldn’t have to see the hungry, gleeful faces leering through the flames.

  “Britt is turning away from the work,” Cassidy said. “Britt is afraid.”

  “Look up,” Patrick said.

  She tried to drown out the accusations, concentrating instead on the game itself, trying to figure out how exactly it makes you a better person to endure this. And because you’ve endured it, do you win the right to dish it out heavy and hard on the next night’s victim? And is this a game of personal improvement or a cycle of revenge? And what would she say the next time it was Cassidy’s turn to share?

  And if she hadn’t killed all those chickens and if she hadn’t danced with Patrick, would they be taking it easier on her? And if she’d accepted Gideon’s or one of the other guys’ advances, would one of them at least have let up?

  The fire was making her skin itch. She’d been staring into the flames and her eyes felt scorched.

  “Britt is just a rich college kid who thinks she can slum it for a while.”

  “Britt is blinded by her privilege.”

  “Britt believes it’s her privilege to become someone else.”

  “Britt takes her privilege for granted.”

  The interns fed off one another, their insults a never-ending riff that gained steam, came at her from all sides, accelerating with the leaping flames.

  At a nod from Patrick, the circle fell silent, took a deep breath before they pounced for the last time. “What do you fear?”

  “What do you fear?”

  Britt tried to put her mind elsewhere—in the pond, in the coop, back in Los Angeles. But the chanting voices and the fire rooted her in place.

  “What do you fear?”

  “What do you fear?”

  Britt’s mind went blank, and her mouth moved without her being conscious that she was speaking. “I fear myself.”

  The circle was quiet.

  “Britt—” Cassidy began.

  But Patrick silenced her. “Say that again.”

  “I fear myself,” Britt said.

  “Britt—” Cassidy tried once more.

  “Say it again,” Patrick repeated.

  “I fear myself.”

  Over the lick of the flames, her own heart in her ears, she could hear the interns’ ragged breath as they recovered from their verbal torrent.

  “That’s it?” Cassidy said. “She just gets to have that answer.”

  “Maybe it’s the right answer,” Patrick said. />
  “We don’t know anything about her.” Cassidy slid off the stump and sat next to Gideon, her head on his shoulder, their long dirty hair twisting together.

  “You know enough to insult me for an hour,” Britt said.

  “That’s the game. Get used to it.” Cassidy twined tighter into Gideon.

  Britt’s blood rushed, her adrenaline spiked. She had them now, she was on the verge of victory, winning their little game. All she had to do was twist the knife—go for the kill and send it home.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Now I have some questions for you.”

  “Patrick—” Cassidy said.

  “Shut up, Cassidy,” Britt said. “Shut up and listen. Or are you too taken with your own voice? Does Cassidy prefer to talk but deafens her ears to others? Is that right? Does Cassidy have selfish ears? Does Cassidy prefer the game when it’s not her turn? Well, fuck that.”

  Britt looked around the circle. Patrick had crossed one leg over the other and was encouraging her with a flicker of a smile.

  “So, question: Why is Britt here? Because Britt is a working-class kid from Pensacola, Florida, who got a tennis scholarship to USC then lost it because she partied too hard.”

  “Patrick,” Cassidy said, “this isn’t the process.”

  “She earned it,” Patrick said.

  Cassidy rolled her eyes and studied one of her braids.

  “Question: Why should you care? You shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter, except that you are happy to insult me without knowing shit about me. Like that brings you closer to the truth.”

  “But—” Anushna said.

  Patrick held up his hand.

  “Okay, so I guessed right,” Britt said. “I played your little game and I won. I fear myself. But is that really enough of an answer? Is it?”

  None of the interns spoke.

  “Don’t you need to know why?” She stared at Cassidy. “Don’t you?”