Flyover States, page 15
My mind raced to catch up with La Varian’s point: he’d lied about having a wife, but I was the problem.
“What’s Oprah got to do with you lying about your wife? And since we’re getting real, your ass wouldn’t be here getting a post-doc, furthering your academic career at a top university if you hadn’t seen my picture on the brochure, Mr. Pasteurized. It made you decide that Langsdale wouldn’t be so bad after all, and it wasn’t—until I discovered you’re a liar.”
La Varian didn’t seem to have anything else to say after that. He blew out a breath. “I’m leaving,” he finally announced and went into my room. I could hear the change jingling in his pants, the creak of my bedsprings while he sat down to put on his shoes.
But I wasn’t done. The fact that he had nothing else to say made me know that he thought I was right about some things, if not all things.
“I’m glad you’re leaving,” I said, standing in my doorway. “You’ve practically been living here. You’ve moved in, been worrying me to death about helping you work on your chapter, to read it and edit it for you, lying in my bed, fucking me in more ways than one. And then you have the nerve to think you know what’s best for me, when all you’re really thinking is what’s best for you.”
La Varian stood up. “Let me by, Ronnie, before this gets out of hand.”
“You know what that makes you?” I pulled all of my dreadlocks to the front so that they were resting on one shoulder. They suddenly felt heavy.
“Let me by.” He pulled down my arm because it was blocking his exit. I put it right back.
“I said, do you know what that makes you?”
La Varian looked away and waited for me to finish like a parent waiting for a tantrum to come to an end.
And then I said something that officially made me an academic. It was something so mortifying and horrific to a person who defined herself as “us”(regular people, not overly intellectual) and “them”(academics). But I couldn’t help it, because then and there I understood that it was so true. “That makes you a colonizer.”
La Varian’s jaw dropped. Then he laughed. “Colonizer. Now, that’s funny,” he said. “Can I go now, before you really tell me off, make me cry by quoting Achebe?”
I lifted my arm and dropped it, heavy at my side. La Varian walked past, didn’t look back, and was out the door.
How did this happen? How did Cliff Huxtable suddenly change into something else altogether? How did I turn from normal, to someone who’d drop colonial discourse, the colonization of anything, into a regular conversation? I could hear myself now, talking to my family who I hadn’t seen in at least half a year: Oh, yes, my time has been colonized by having to work in the factory. The colonizing factors stemming from graduate school work are demoralizing… Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon and Edward Said might find the gap between rhetoric, discourse and consciousness interesting, but I should have said to La Varian something succinct, straight and to the point; what my brother, Mona, Ray or even Bita would say to me if I tried to drop a little colonial discourse in between the Lakers going all the way this year, record heat in the Midwest or the best shoe store in the Beverly Center: “You are full of shit.”
The 60 freeway goes on forever and ever, but I finally reach the exit and it’s only five minutes before I get to my brother’s house. I check my watch. One hour and fifty minutes it took to get here. In Langsdale, I thought I missed driving, the solitude of me and my music on the freeway. Interstates just don’t cut it. But now I wonder, what’s so great about freeways? In Langsdale, you can get from one end of town to the other in twenty minutes and be done with it, any errand can get done in less than an hour. Why is it only now dawning on me that that’s a really cool thing?
There are a lot of cars parked in front of my brother’s house and across the street. He’s barbecuing today, and always likes a houseful of people when he has a gathering. I notice my dad’s Lincoln Town Car in the driveway, and my brother’s new Mustang. There are two other cars that I don’t recognize. I never really paid attention to cars before, and now I can’t look at a car without wondering where it came from and who built the pieces inside of it.
“Factory Girl!” My brother, Joe, shouts at me from inside the garage. The garage door is always open if somebody’s home. He’s always been a big dude, so he walks slow, takes his time walking around the pool table in the middle of the garage and meets me out on the driveway. He gives me a strong one-armed hug because the other hand has a Corona in it. After he lets me go, I bend down on one knee and bow, waving my hands dramatically.
“Props,” I say. “I’m giving you your props. You’ve been doing this for fifteen years? It sucks,” I say. “Hard.”
He laughs a hearty laugh and then gestures toward his home. There’s a little sign hanging out front that says “The Williams House” and a sprinkler running in the yard. “Yeah, but it’s worth it. Come out back. Mama and them been asking about you all day.”
“Wait.” I grab his arm. “What’s the news on Dad?” We were supposed to hear today.
“Oh!” My brother’s face relaxes. “Good news. Not the best, but good. It’s not cancer or nothing like that. His doctor’s pretty sure it’s diabetes.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s what they say.” He puts his arm around my neck and pulls me toward him. “He’ll be all right. Still a pain in the ass, so you know he not worried about too much. Come on.”
I follow the plastic runner that my brother has leading from the den, attached to the garage, all the way through the living room, to the sliding glass door. My mom jumps up from her lawn chair when she sees me opening the door.
“Veronica!” She gives me a hug for what seems like days before she lets me go. She’s a tiny woman with the biggest hands I’ve ever seen. Her hoop earrings pinch my neck until she releases me. My dad gets up slowly and gives me a hug, too. “Good to see you, Ron.” He’s huge like my brother and moves stiffly, like some animatronic creature from Disneyland, the kind of man where every move is deliberate, but never a surprise. My-sister-in-law, Janice, is in the hot tub with a margarita in her hand, and two guys I don’t recognize tread water in the pool. “Hey, sister-in-law!” she calls out to me. “This is Allesandro and Javier, your brother’s friends from work.”
“Hello. Hi,” they say. Allesandro is a big guy, with long hair in a ponytail, and Javier’s smaller, with hair cut close to his scalp. Javier pulls himself out of the pool to sit on the edge and take a sip of his beer, but Allesandro stays in. Hot, I think, looking out at Allesandro, who stares at me while he pinches his nose to get the water out. I notice his brown skin, which is flashing in the sun.
“Let me look at you,” Mama says. She tugs on my hair and tells me to turn around, so I do. “You’re tore down,” she says. “And your face is puffy.”
“Ma,” I say. But too much alcohol and too much work, one crazy man, plus no sleep, does, in fact, equal “tore down.”
“Your brother says you’re working in a factory this summer?” my dad says in a tone. “Why is that?”
“Let the kid have a seat at least,” my brother says. “What are you drinking?” he asks.
“Got any Jack Daniel’s?”
“What?” My brother looks amused. “Since when? You were sipping wine coolers before you left for the country. The only thing you could hang with.”
“Thangs done changed,” I say.
“I guess so,” he says. “Hard living, girl. Hard living.” He laughs. “That’s what a job, a real job, will do to you.”
“A margarita, Joe,” my sister-in-law calls out.
“Alex, Javier?” my brother raises his eyebrows and points at Javier’s empty Corona bottle.
“Yes,” they both say. “Yes.”
It’s later in the day and more people have shown up. Nieces and nephews, some of Janice’s family. Some people are in the garage playing darts and pool, some are in the den watching TV, and a lot of folks are out back playing cards at a fold-up table, or swimming.
My father’s been like an annoying fly with his questions. Buzz around, buzz around, land, I swat the question away, thinking it’s gone for good, but then it inevitably comes back. Any questions about him, of course, he dismisses with a flick of his wrist. I’m only able to get out of him that my brother’s right. He will be fine. He’ll just have to lay off the ham hocks and fried chicken and start taking insulin. So we settle all that. I’m not as worried as I was flying out. And otherwise, it’s been just the kind of day I need. I look out at the brown mountains from my brother’s backyard. I recline in a lawn chair and check out the water shimmering in the pool. I look at Allesandro. More shimmering. I’ve been in the Midwest so long that I understand how beautiful California is. I’m sitting in a backyard with a hot tub and pool, a view of the mountains, the sun shining down on me. I’ve got a Jack and Coke in my hand listening to Stevie Wonder coming from the speakers my brother’s rigged up out here. This isn’t even Bita and Charlie, fancy-big-house-in-the-Hollywood-Hills living, this is regular, comfortable, almost-anybody-can-have-this living. Once, when I first moved to Langsdale, another grad student asked me if I had a pool. “No,” I said, “that’s crazy.” I was living in a tiny bungalow in Echo Park. The question seemed absurd. “But everyone in California has a pool,” he said, snickering. Some Cornell bastard. A medievalist, which gave him no room to snicker. And now I was loving this, this life I moved across the country to get away from, because it wasn’t enough.
“So what are you doing?” my father says. “You leave a good job and a good man to go work in a factory?”
I knew he was going to bring up Sammy. A nice man, a good man, a man I didn’t appreciate and love enough to stay for in L.A. I’d see him this trip because we were still good friends. “I didn’t leave to go work in a factory, Dad. This is just for the summer. I teach, I write, I study, that’s what I do.”
“Well,” he says, at a loss. I think he’s finally going to leave me alone until he comes back with, “I just don’t think school is the best thing you could be doing for yourself. I mean, look at Bita. She’s living in a nice house, a big house, married…”
“I like that Charlie,” Mama says. “He sweet.”
Mama and Dad have not seen Bita since we were in college, years ago, and they only met Charlie once, at a going-away party Sammy threw for me at our house, but they were always asking me how they were doing. Suddenly they were the new Cliff and Clair Huxtable, only Indian and Irish. “Bita and Charlie are doing well,” I say. “I’m glad for them, and I’m going to do well, too. I don’t need a lot of money.”
My father leans forward in his chair. “Don’t need a lot of money?” He looks at my mother as if to say, help her. “Maybe you do need to stay in that factory a little longer so you’ll see that life ain’t no game, Veronica. Everybody in this family has worked too hard for you to be the only person to go to college and mess it up.” He looks out at the pool and sips his tea. “What are folks studying that’s so important anyway?”
Multi-limbed erotica. “Lots, Dad.”
Okay, maybe everything is not meant to be “studied,” but all I know is that I’m not some dude’s baby’s mama—or in jail—but Dad was making it sound like either one of those things would be better than grad school.
“She’ll be all right,” Mama says. “Get herself somebody like Charlie or Sammy when she ready.”
Why won’t my brother come out and save me? He’s out in the garage talking shit and playing darts. I pull the back of the patio chair up until I hear it click two times and it rests at the angle I want. I look out at the pool, empty now because it has gotten a little chilly—predictable desert weather. Hot one moment and cold the next. I imagine that Allesandro is still out there, swimming his laps, his long hair trailing behind him in one neat fluid line. He is, as Prince says, a sexy motherfucker. Cue twangy porn music with exaggerated guitar licks, and I can see Allesandro climbing out of the pool, water pouring down his body. He’s winking at me and asking me when the carne asada tacos will be ready. I don’t know how in the world to make them—or anything else—but that’s okay, he’ll teach me. He’s telling our daughter, little Allesandra, to get out of the pool because it’s cold. Salte de la piscina, Allesandra. Esta frío… The warm wind stirs up little waves and the pool water shimmers and shimmers like fool’s gold. I’m thinking I’ll finally get in. Take a dip. But I hear my name.
“Ron!” my brother calls from inside the house. “Come play darts. Allesandro and Javier can’t play worth shit.”
Mama and Dad are preoccupied by one of Janice’s aunts, so I take my chance and run while I can.
Inside the garage they have a ball game on with no sound—Dodgers versus Braves—and the stereo blasting. They make jokes about women, trash their foreman, trash the president, drink tequila and make fun of me. Allesandro gets all the ladies… Stavinsky’s a racist who rides them too hard at work… President Bush doesn’t care about us… Do a shot, Ronnie, do a shot, now that you’re hanging with the big boys… They make me laugh, and I like that Allesandro shows me how to hold the pool stick. I have the best time that I’ve had in a long time, but I can’t stop thinking about essays and articles and theory that seems to speak to every little thing they bring up. Javier keeps losing at darts and talking about another foreman who doesn’t like black people, even though he’s Mexican and has only been in the States for five years. He asks me if I know about a Mexican poet who’s famous in Mexico, but I’ve never heard of him. I’m dying to tell him about this Noel Ignatiev book, How the Irish Became White, which talks about white privilege and what’s gained when ethnic folks try to get in on the privilege and point a finger to designate someone else as “other.” It’s exactly what he’s saying he’s seen with his own experience, but I don’t want to sound as if I’m trying to teach anybody anything. I just want another drink, and I think—I know—that Allesandro needs to show me how to hold that pool stick again.
“Like this?” I say, and I turn my head just a little bit so I can get a glimpse of his face. A strand of his hair tickles my neck.
“Yes,” he says. He’s got a serious, heavy voice. “I think you’ve got a good feel for it.”
“Allesandro now?” Doris says. “I guess your dad must be okay.”
“Yes.” I tell her about the diabetes.
It’s my second-to-last day in L.A., and I’m calling her from my brother’s before I drive out of the valley and back into L.A. to hang out with friends. She says she’s sitting in the dark in her apartment because of yet another storm. “I shouldn’t even be on the phone,” Doris says. “If I get electrocuted, you owe me.”
“Allesandro was just a nice distraction,” I say. “Have you seen La Varian around?” I sink down lower into the hot tub because my shoulders feel cold. The Santa Anas are blowing, dry and electric. They make me feel a little off, a little nutty.
“What’s that noise?”
“I’m in a hot tub.”
“You are? Your brother has a hot tub? I hate L.A.” She sighs. “I hate Riverside, or wherever the hell you are. I get some crazy siren going off warning us about tornadoes and you get a hot tub. La Varian, by the way, has been seen out and about with Iris a lot these days.”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, but yes.”
“What a fucking cliché.”
“Yep.”
“He attacks me for being an apologist for white people, and then he goes out with one?”
I had told Doris about La Varian’s and my insane exchange the last time I saw him. She thought “colonizer” was a laugh riot, too.
“Wow,” I say. “Iris.”
“Things fall apart, indeed,” Doris says. “I suppose being a pretentious pseudointellectual is color blind. At least it’s not some mousy eighteen-year-old white gal from the Dairy Queen.”
“I guess,” I say. “What. Ever.”
“And Sammy? How did that go?”
“Well—”
“Shit,” Doris says. “Did you hear that? I just saw insane lightning and the building shook. I’m off this phone. Call you later.”
Dial tone. Doris is convinced that she’s going to go up in a blaze of glory because of the electrical storms and weird weather we’ve had all summer. She thinks we’ll be swept up by a tornado if we don’t keep a lookout. I’m a jaded earthquake veteran though, and I’m not half as worried.
I didn’t get to finish telling her about Sammy, which was okay. Sammy, to me, was the nicest guy I ever fucked over. Handsome, sensitive, understanding. Black, even. I didn’t know how good I had it until I moved to Langsdale, and confused the packaging of La Varian with someone like Sammy. But he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do much but edit film and travel. I had to move, I wanted knowledge, which sounds corny as hell now, even though Langsdale was the smartest choice to make at the time. Now it was too late. Sammy and I loved each other, but weren’t in love anymore. And every La Varian did not a Sammy make. All black men are not created equal, to paraquote Jefferson with all the grad-school irony I can muster.
“I’m worried,” I said to him the other day. We were downtown, in Chinatown, having dim sum. “Maybe I made a mistake about grad school.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted one of his short dreadlocks around his finger. He studied me with his hazel eyes, eyes I used to get lost in.
“You’re worried?”
I nodded. I tried not to tear up. I didn’t know why I was feeling sorry for myself all of a sudden. I was having my “Auntie Em, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home,” moment.
“Look,” he said. “Who knows you better than I do?” He tipped the canister of sticky rice toward me. There was one neatly wrapped rice pouch left.
I shook my head. He pulled the container closer and began to carefully unwrap the banana leaves.
