Almost Home

by Jessica Blank

  He’s got someone special for me today, he says. Oh goody. No, he says, he thinks I’ll really like her, but I have to promise not to give her a hard time. I don’t know why he cares; it all looks the same on his crappy webcam anyway, but he insists. No, he says, he means it: he wants me to promise. I look at him. His eyes are off the road and on me.

  “Okay,” I go. “I promise.”

  * * *

  The traffic on the 101 is like a snarl in your hair: it seems like it’ll be tangled in itself forever but if you keep on pressing eventually it loosens up and lets you through. When we get close to the warehouse Rob starts talking again. “We’re late,” he says, “and she’ll probably be scared.” I look at him like, And so?

  “She’s young, okay?” he goes. “That’s why I want you to be nice.”

  “I thought you only worked with girls who were over eighteen,” I say, just to give him shit.

  “Oh, shut up,” he goes.

  We pull up onto the gravel and park. Before I can grab my backpack and get out, Rob reaches over and smoothes my hair around my face. He seems awkward, like he doesn’t really know how to touch a person. I flinch.

  When he’s satisfied with my hairstyle he says “Okay,” and we get out. He goes in ahead of me, flips on the light and starts talking to someone. I can hear their voices, but I’m in no rush. I stay by the door and light a smoke, watching guys go in and out of the auto-body place across the street. They look like ants.

  I’m only halfway done when Rob sticks his head out the door. “Tracy,” he whispers so loud he might as well talk regular, “come on. We’re waiting for you in here.”

  I take one last drag. “You got my shit?” I ask him. I’m supposed to get it from him after but he asked me to act nice, so I figure he better do something extra for me too. It’s only fair.

  He looks at me for a second, between thoughts, like his brain is stuttering. Then he says “Yeah, hang on” and goes inside.

  After a second he comes back out with it, hands me the keys, and tells me to go do it in the car. “What the fuck?” I ask him. But he says “Just go,” and it’d take too much work to argue.

  He waits by the passenger side. Numb and sleepy, I hand him the keys when I get out and follow him inside. I finger the shit I’ve got left over, a tinfoil pebble in my pocket. “Be nice,” he whispers through his teeth as we walk through the door.

  Inside the light is dim, not buzzing white fluorescent like usual. It matches the feeling in my body but it makes me have to blink. Everything is blurry and dark for a minute while my pupils adjust.

  Then I see her.

  It’s weird how when you see someone in a place you don’t expect, your brain won’t believe it’s actually them. There’s this pause while my brain separates out from my body, and it’s like I’m in a movie and watching it, both at the same time. Then it snaps back like a rubber band.

  “Eeyore,” I go. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  She was chubby before, but now her clothes dangle off her like a hanger. She’s got all this makeup on: mascara raccooning her eyes, blending into the circles underneath, blush on her cheeks like a doll. Her lip ring is crusty and her hair’s grown out so the top half is brown and the bottom half’s purple. She smiles when she sees me in this sort of dazed way, eyes wide but too soft to be crazy. I don’t know if she’s high or what. She doesn’t answer me.

  “Eeyore,” I say again, harder, making sure she heard me. Rob watches us back and forth like Ping-Pong. She just stands there. I run outside and throw up.

  It’s forty-five minutes from Toluca Lake to Hollywood, and that’s one ride with no traffic. Hitching, it takes me almost three hours. By the time I get back to the St. Moritz I’m out of cigarettes, my eyes are sore and I’m starving.

  I wish there was a shower in my room, or even a sink: my face is crawling and sticky, my hands thick with dried sweat. But the bathroom’s down the hall, so I just wrap myself up in the yellow-stained sheets and hope they’ll rub off the dirt.

  I try really hard to fall asleep. I can tell it isn’t gonna happen. I do a little of the junk I’ve got left over, but it’s not enough to really calm me down. My blood’s still racing and my skin’s awake and prickly and I can’t stop thinking about Eeyore.

  I don’t know why I give a shit. I mean, it’s weird: you’d think I’d want someone I know there with me. I did with Laura. But Eeyore’s young. She looks even younger with the weight off, like some skinny starving kid, the kind you see in pictures of other countries. Like me. She never looked like me before.

  I lie on the mattress a long time, eyes closed, heart pounding, before I finally drift off. Even then it’s the kind of sleep that’s only on the surface, skimming the tops of your thoughts while your mind’s still working underneath. I know the feeling from when I used to sleep outside. Even if you dream, it just feels like you’re thinking.

  Underneath the thin skin of dark we curl up in my bed like spoons, me and my baby sister Ruthanne. The room is blue and I can’t see, but I know it’s her: her hands are small like little kitten paws and her hair smells soft like baby sweat and laundry. It feels like corn silk on my lips. The dark is like a fort made of blankets, an envelope holding me inside. I’ve been in this exact same place before.

  Light splits the door and then a shadow takes up everything. His big body gets between us, rough and hard like rocks: the baby smell goes and my nose fills with thick hot black air, so dirty I can’t breathe. My teeth hurt like something cracked them; I taste blood. And then I’m gone, fast, somewhere up near the ceiling, and the air opens up again.

  I know Ruthanne’s air won’t open up, though. Not without me. She’s stuck there in the black rough sludge with him; she’s too little to get out. If I made myself sink I could stretch down and drag her up to the ceiling, and then she could breathe in too. But I don’t. I stay up above them where it’s cool and watch her drown.

  The next morning the feeling of that dream stays in me way after I wake up and all I want is to watch TV or talk to someone, but I can’t. I don’t go meet Rob. I stay up in my room through ten thirty and eleven thirty and even on to one. It isn’t easy: last time I ate was breakfast yesterday, and I barely have enough junk left over to keep from getting sick. But I don’t want to see him. Actually, that’s wrong: I don’t care if I see him or not. I don’t want to see her.

  Without me there he can’t keep her more than a couple days: there’s only so much one girl can do by herself, and I know he’s too protective of her to bring some stranger in. When they run out of options he’ll just send her away and make sure he knows where he can find her later. All I have to do is wait him out.

  By two I’m sure Rob’s given up on waiting for me in the parking lot and I go down the ratty stairs. Outside the sun is way too bright, even through the smog; it forces my eyes open, pries my pupils wide. I don’t have any money.

  Up on Hollywood it takes me half an hour to spange enough for a falafel. Hot sauce burns through my nose and I forget to chew. After I wipe my hands I realize I don’t have any place to go or anyone to go with. It’s the first time that’s happened in six months at least; it’s weird. For a minute I remember finding Eeyore in her school parking lot where I was selling weed; and then my first night sleeping out with her, how she trusted me to find a place for us to lie down safe, the stars reflected on her little-kid face, and then I push it away. I don’t even know why I remember that.

  I figure as long as there’s nothing to do I might as well stay here a while with the change cup out. You never know. Eventually some guilty mom will feel so shitty for ignoring her own kids that she’ll flip me a buck, or some tourist will toss a quarter so he can say he did a good deed in the big city. You can see the “There but for the grace of God” in their eyes, those few that actually look at you. And then they drop a dollar in to make the feeling go away so they can keep on walking. I lean against the hard brick of the Fantasy Sleep Wear store, watch the feet crisscross in
front of me and wait.

  After an hour there’s four pennies in the change cup. I leave them on the sidewalk for someone to get lucky, and then start walking. I have to: without a fix or work or anyone to talk to, that dream from last night keeps rushing in to fill the space. Mostly it’s the feeling of it, the blue of the room and the pull downward toward the ugly bed, the knowing you can’t stop her drowning or else you’ll drown yourself. My mouth tastes sick. My head fills up with corn silk and diesel fumes. I don’t think of Ruthanne’s face, though. I just walk.

  * * *

  I wait another day before it’s safe to go back to work. It’s hard: I keep thinking about that fucking dream, using up my little tinfoil packet bit by bit, enough to keep the cramps away but never enough to sweep me clean. I get through it knowing she’ll be gone tomorrow and I can go back like normal to the eggs and junk and work and strangers, and forget again.

  The next morning on my way down I feel relieved. At the bottom of the stairs Rob will be waiting: I’ll see him and go back to work and just be what I’m used to, quit sitting around thinking about Eeyore and goddamn Ruthanne. I know Rob’ll give me shit about the other day, me running out and hiding in my room, but it doesn’t really bother me. I think I just won’t answer.

  He’s out there waiting, pissed; he stares me down when I walk out the door. “What happened to you?” he asks. I get out a cigarette.

  He asks again, though, and doesn’t move to unlock the car, so I guess I have to say something. “I was sick,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, I guess,” he goes.

  “Yeah,” I say. He goes around to my door to open it.

  We don’t eat. I guess it’s my punishment for playing hooky; I don’t really want to ask. On the way up to the Valley he keeps looking over at me like he’s checking something. I can see him from the corner of my eye. I watch the hills out the window all the way through Burbank, the signs tucked into different shades of green, palm trees and evergreens and weird tropical shit clumping together like we’re on some fucking island. I don’t know how they grow in so much smog.

  Eventually the ground flattens out and turns to auto-body shops and brick and wire. The tires crunch on gravel and Rob parks the car. I’m sweating and I want to ask him for my shit up front, but he doesn’t owe me anything this time and I don’t want to push it. More than anything I just want things to be back to normal, traded off and evened out. After I work again it will be, at least sort of. I follow Rob in through the metal front door. Once we’re in he turns to me and goes “Think you can handle it this time?”

  “Fuck off,” I say.

  Then I see what he’s talking about. Eeyore’s still here. She’s off in the corner of the room, crouched over, picking at her nails. He’s got a little area set up for her, pillows and a dirty blanket, and her backpack’s stashed there too. It used to be all clean, brand-spanking new; now it’s patched up, stuffed full and the zipper’s broken.

  She looks at me with those big wide spacey eyes; all the feeling of calm I had coming down the stairs at the St. Moritz this morning goes right away, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I’m pretty sure if I try to work with her I’ll just throw up again, and there’s this weird hollow feeling in my chest that just gets bigger the more she stares at me and doesn’t talk. I keep seeing her face in the school parking lot, looking so different from the way it looks now; I want to get out of this room, back to where her eyes are the way I left them. But I can’t leave. If I do, that’s probably it for me with Rob, which means no more St. Moritz and no more junk from him.

  It’ll all at least be easier if I get fucked up, I figure, so I turn away from Eeyore and holler off for Rob. If he’s gonna make me work with a twelve-year-old he can at least help me out a little. Besides, I haven’t asked him for anything in three days.

  “Where’s my shit?” I ask when he comes strolling over. He squints like he’s trying to figure me out, but I just act like it’s normal. “Where is it?”

  “That’s not our deal,” he goes. “I always give it to you after.”

  “And I always work with girls who aren’t underage,” I tell him. “It’s against the law, you know.” I smile.

  He’s massively pissed off. He knows I’ve got him, though. He tries to think of an argument but he can’t; if I called the cops he’d be in way more trouble than me. Finally he goes “Oh, fucking fine. Just wait here half an hour. I’ll be back.”

  “You’re out?” I ask. He must’ve given it all to Eeyore.

  “Yes, I’m fucking out. Just stay here.”

  “Okay,” I go.

  Once he slams the door behind him I turn around to Eeyore. My heart is beating really fast; it’s weird. “So are you gonna talk to me?”

  She just looks at me with her saucer eyes again. I can tell she’s fucked up. She never used to get high and she’s not handling it well; Rob probably shot her up so she’d stay. My chest feels sort of soft and sick; I just want her to say something. Finally I pick up her backpack, say “Come on” and lead her out the door.

  I’m not sure where I think we’re going. I don’t know my way that well; I’ve never been around here on foot. It’s just warehouses and lots, pretty much, nowhere to duck in and hide. I get us away from Rob’s as fast as I can, since I know he’ll be coming around in his car and if he runs into us he’ll kick my ass. I don’t even know what I’m doing. It’s not like I’m running away; I have to go back to him for my shit eventually. I just knew Eeyore wasn’t going to talk to me in there, and I couldn’t stand to look at her and wonder how she got that way. I have to ask her questions.

  Finally we turn about twelve corners and we’re in a neighborhood of houses. Most of them are beige. There’s a little alley between two yards; it’s probably someone’s property but it’s all paved and broken glass; I’m sure no one ever comes here but cats. I pull Eeyore in and sit her down. “So what the fuck happened to you?” I ask her.

  She looks up at me like she’s afraid she’s in trouble. “What do you mean?” she finally stutters.

  “I mean, how the fuck did you wind up here?” I almost ask her why she didn’t go home when I left, but I remember the answer to that. But you’d at least think she’d have another place to go, another person to fall back on, that someone would look out for her. When cops pull up their cars near me I know they’re just trying to meet their ticket quota for the day, but she’s the kind of kid that’s young and cute and clean enough that cops assume you’ve got a family, pick you up and bring you back to Child Services. The kind of kid that grown-ups care about.

  “Well, after you left I couldn’t go home,” she says, and gives me this look like I know what she means, and I do, and she waits, like maybe I’ll jump in and hold her hand or something, and I don’t, so she goes on.

  “I met those guys—you know, the ones we saw across the street that time—” I know she means Critter and Squid “—and then this guy Rusty started hanging out with us, and it was pretty cool for a while, and Critter, which was one of those guys across the street, was my really good friend—” and her face gets all red. “Then this asshole guy Scabius came around—” she goes.

  I stop her. “What?” I ask. I can’t believe it.

  I can’t believe a lot of things. I can’t believe she’s up here in the first place, and I can’t believe nobody stopped for her, and I can’t believe she sounds the way she does, all gravelly and scratched-up and tired and cold. I can’t believe she was out on my sidewalks with everyone I knew and I didn’t even know it, and I can’t believe she’s blushing about Critter, and especially I can’t believe she fucking hung around with Scabius. That fuck.

  “Yeah, he was super mean,” she says. “He had bright orange dreadlocks and a bull ring through his nose and all these freckles everywhere—”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say, just so she’ll stop describing him.

  All of a sudden her eyes get a lot less spacey. “What do you mean, you know?”

  I
don’t feel like explaining so I just say “I’ve met that guy before.”

  “Oh,” she goes, like she’s expecting me to go on. I don’t.

  “Yeah, so him and me sort of hooked up,” she finally says, her eyes on the gravel, “and then we kind of had this fight, and he told me to go home . . . I don’t know.” She trails off.

  I just look at her. My skin is itchy and my back’s starting to sweat. “Yeah?” I say.

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t go home. But he said to leave, so—”

  “Why’d you do what he told you to?”

  She looks at me with this dumb dog face, like she’s never even considered she had any other option. “Umm— I don’t know,” she finally goes. “It was kind of like I had to.”

  “Why?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know,” she says, and I can tell she wants me to lay off. But I don’t want to. I’m not sure why. There’s just this feeling pushing me: I’m mad; maybe not at her, but she’s the only one around.

  “Well, there must’ve been a reason.” I sound like someone’s parents.

  “I don’t know, okay?” I still don’t look away. “I guess I thought if I didn’t do what he said he would hurt me or something.”

  “Did he hurt you?” I ask her. Now my cheeks are hot.

  “I don’t know. Sort of,” she says. “Plus Critter was gone—”

  “Where was he?”

  “I don’t fucking know, okay? Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  I can’t answer. Seeing Eeyore in the first place makes me feel all soft and nervous, like an almost guilty kind of sick, and then there’s this mad on top of it, this angry which isn’t really at her, I don’t think, but it’s coming out that way. The whole thing is fucked, the way she wound up with them and then out here, so close to me, when I only knew her for a couple weeks a couple months ago. It’s like she’s following me or something, and I don’t want her to. I want her to go somewhere else, somewhere better, away from me. But she keeps tracking me, tracing a trail back to the places that I left before. It’s pissing me off. I closed a box of broken cheekbones and brick walls when I left those guys and she’s opening it back up, dragging me close to them when all I want to do is get away. Especially from Scabius. I don’t know what she was doing near him and I don’t know what he did to her and imagining it makes me feel like I’m drowning. When she says his name I can see his ugly face inside my head and feel his nasty breath. “Whatever,” I go. I don’t want to fucking talk about it anymore.