A Tiny Upward Shove, page 10
Yes. Good. 187?
Murder. That was easy.
207? She was lying on her back again.
Kidnapping. Marina reached for her. Some part of her. She wanted to feel her. Ma ignored this need of hers.
What do you do if you ever get in a fight?
Always be the first one to throw the punch.
Always. 211?
This is how she was when they were alone. Tight, overbearing, wrapping Marina in her C-grip. But when there were guys, Marina was a ghost.
Robbery, Marina said. Her hair. Reen got her hair. She patted it between her hands. Like a hamburger patty. Pat pat.
Very good, and what did I tell you to do if someone tries to kidnap you?
Kick him in the balls.
Yes. What else?
Drop a shoe.
Yes.
Marina didn’t know why she thought this. Maybe Ma thought it would help her find Marina. That her shoe would be her compass. She was always devising ways they could be torn apart and brought back together again. Whenever Marina saw a shoe anywhere—a shoe on a pole, a shoe on a wire, she knew it was there for some other reason. A street sign for drugs. Heroin. H. Shabu. But she would just as much have assumed that it was there because some poor kid was stolen away. 207.
Even though she didn’t have a calendar, Marina knew the next day was welfare day ’cause everyone was getting magulo throwing themselves around. Back and forth along Blood Alley, their butt cracks sticking out their pants, burnt fingertips, crusty eyes always searching for more and more and more.
That afternoon she sat up in her bedbug-infested cot, looked over at her closet, all different kinds of wood nailed over holes. She smoked rolled tobacco that she rescued from sidewalks and ashtrays. She heard some static on the television next door. In the room beside her lived an old junkie named Brewster or Bruiser, not sure, to Marina he looked like a sad dog. At some point, he fixed in his dick, and Marina wound up rescuing him by giving him a smack, calling in the paramedics, plucking the needle from his dick before they arrived with their strange gamot.
All around she saw streets overcome by people, their backs to the cars, hunched over protecting a small glass vial, cheeks puffed out holding in smoke. People with fast jerking movements, crooked gaits. She saw slumped sedated people, people in alleyways, people huddled in corners, people selling pork links stolen from the market, people hawking garbage, movies, tape cassettes, jewelry, blankets laid out on the ground, furniture. It was like a cluster of rat people. And the sounds, the yelling, she heard a woman yelling, I tried to fucking hang myself today fucking fuck this shit! Fanny packs clinging to shrunken waistlines. Children wriggling from strollers.
This is a place where people give no more pakshet.
BACK AND FORTH AND SIDE TO SIDE
It was the summer of 1989 and sports had made Los Angeles the City of Champions. The air was heavy with bug spray; sometimes Marina sprayed it as she walked and let it fall about her like mists. Their apartment was upstairs and smooshed in between lots of other units. And you could never get rid of the roaches because once you cleaned out all the cupboards and did a roach bomb and all your dishes tasted like bug poison, they just went next door and came back later. The worst feeling was when she opened a drawer or went to the bathroom and looked at the floor, and there beside her feet or in the drawer was a little brown empty cocoon. The shell of a roach egg. Tan-brown shiny, empty. Each roach can carry about sixteen roach babies in one egg. Each lady roach got pregnant about fourteen times in a lifetime so like four times fifty times four times fifty times four times fifty times fuckin’ forever fucking roaches.
Beside their building was a trash bin, surrounded by a brick wall. There was a small hole in the middle of the brick wall. A possum burrowed his way into the hole. Ma and Reen hated the possum. He sat and leered. He was never afraid. Since Reen was the kid, she always got the crummy jobs. That’s how it became Marina’s job to throw out the trash. She ran to the brick wall, closed her eyes, threw her arm way back, hiked her right knee up in the air to meet her right fist like she was pitching the trash into Dodger Stadium, the whole while her eyes shut tight, afraid of his leering.
Below and to one side of them lived a Mexican family. Ma and Reen always got confused for being Mexican. Marina didn’t really like being confused for other things because she had a dad somewhere who was Black, and it made her feel like maybe he didn’t exist anymore because nobody saw him in her. She dreamt about having a different life with this dad. Ma had long thick wavy hair and little Asian eyes, and Marina liked her brown skin. When they went to bed at night, she pushed their two beds together. Marina sometimes made out that there were bugs or something crawling on Ma in her sleep, and Marina would stamp them out with her hand. And Ma let her. Night was the time Ma let her do almost anything she wanted. Ma had a lot to do on her own, and she usually missed something, a bill turned pink and urgent, or the water got shut off, or there was a mess in the sink. It embarrassed Marina sometimes, but more often than not, she was scared of her. Her mother, the daytime taskmaster.
One time Ma and Marina dressed up and went to the mall to take professional photos. They posed on carpeted squares. Ma had the big airbrushed framed results in their living room. The two of them, smiling and dressed up like a family. Ma looked straight into the camera. She had those dark eyes of infinity. Marina hated the lie of that picture. It’s a fantastic power Ma possesses, to light up her face at will—shining eyes, seemingly radiant smile—forehead smooth and unlined as if she were still nineteen years old instead of thirty-one.
Beside her, Marina appeared at a disadvantage. It was as if Ma had stolen all the light. Marina had a worried look; you could see her focusing—trying not to blink, counting the seconds. Her eyes looked glassy, holding back tears. She twinkled. Look at the good-looking well-kept mother and daughter. Ma even got the picture on a payment plan that she never finished paying off. There was another one of Ma, her hair flowing over her shoulders and her eyeteeth sticking out like fangs. Marina thought she looked like a freaky vampire. One day she’d have that same faraway look on her face; she would fall into a world that smelled like sweat, spunk, armpit, and yet still the bug spray. Always the bug spray. A world of wet dark rot.
Most nights, Marina was alone. At thirteen, she was old enough to wear Ma’s clothes and begin to look like a woman. She was developing little pointy susos and would soon need to wear a bra. Young enough to be afraid of the dark. She’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of Ma’s stockings over her face, trying her best to scare herself. She’d breathe hard Darth Vader breaths and stare and stare, sweating and slobbering. Her hair plastered against her skin. Her eyes big open holes of nothing, her nose squished. Marina’d stare at herself long enough to bring up a note of panic. She called this game the Predator and it helped her prepare for all bad things that could come in the night. After, she stayed awake and imagined Ma’s demise. Imagined that she was unable to come home due to a car accident or a stabbing. The sense of guilt she developed outweighed the game’s benefits. Ma was all she had, and she was terrified of losing her.
She loved that Ma spoke to her like she spoke to adults. She didn’t have a smaller voice, or a pitched-up voice. Her mom voice was the same, except it was always full of secrets and surprises. She pulled Marina close and whispered things just for her to hear.
For extra money, Ma worked at the local park nights and weekends. Also, they let Marina go to the summer camp for free. A place where girls giggled and boys chased them, and Marina mostly saved her change to buy Tiger’s Milk bars because she thought they were the types of things women ate when they were dieting, and Ma was always dieting and a large part of Marina wanted to be just like her.
Mostly, Ma supervised the DUI classes, mostly because she thought that was a great way to meet guys. But one night a woman named Fatimah came by and asked for keys to the rec room. She was all silver hoops and flowy skirts and her hair like a rich, thick veil. She was tall and curvy and beautiful in all the ways that Marina had never thought Ma to be beautiful. She took up space in the room. Her dark painted eyes, her big apple cheeks. Close up, she was younger than Ma but definitely too old to be a girl. Her underarms weren’t shaved. There was hair there, a lot. Her shins and thighs and the backs of them were also not shaved. It was unbelievable. The hairs were like hundreds of little threads coming straight out of her skin: her noise and all its shimmy shimmy.
We don’t have a DUI class today, Ma said.
Fatimah was carrying a ghetto blaster, a Hula-Hoop, and some coined belly chains.
Does it look like I’m here to teach a driving class?
Ma scrunched her face, then looked flustered at her. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there were any other classes at night.
Fatimah gestured for them to follow her as she walked over to a small bungalow.
Inside the bungalow, all the chairs were moved to the walls. There was no one else in the class. Fatimah moved a long thin mirror to the front of the room so they could see themselves or at least parts of themselves. Then she set down her ghetto blaster and hit play. She sat on the floor, her legs out in front of her.
The music blasted—Marina knew this song. From Top Gun. Her favorite movie. It was that slow song they played when they were on the motorcycle by the beach. Fatimah slowly slinked her way up off the floor. Mutya and Marina tried to copy her. The music began to pick up pace, and Fatimah extended her arms toward the ceiling. It was like she was doing the hula to the music. Making arm movements to mimic the lyrics … then it hit the chorus … TAKE MY BREATH AWAY.
At this point, Marina had completely lost her cool and done away with all the slow movements, and she just bounced around. Mutya and Fatimah were in sync with one another. Mutya quickly becoming Fatimah’s shadow. Then the music really picked up a beat and was the poppy electronic theme song to Beverly Hills Cop. Fatimah was turning in circles and quickly shimmying her hips back and forth while keeping her torso still. Her arms moving up and down like snakes, her fingers extended and elegant. Marina thought she looked a little like she was getting electrocuted, especially in her butt.
So this was belly dancing. Not very many women showed up to Fatimah’s class. Mutya often went and they spent the time talking—getting to know each other.
Later, Marina had a dream that Fatimah ducked into a church, lowered her head, and drank all the holy water. Her skin lit up by the candles, she could see all the positions of the cross strewn like twinkle lights along the tunnels of her veins.
* * *
Fatimah’s father was killed in a flood. He worked on an oil rig back home in Qatar, and her mother depended on him to make all the money. They weren’t the kind of parents who knew how to raise a daughter. Two nights after he was killed, in the summer of 1964, after dinner, when everyone was still hungry, Fatimah went out back to get some clean water to wash her clothes for the next day. Out behind the shed with the water pump was a boy. A boy with big eyes and round lips and a soft cotton outfit. She had never seen him before, but he looked like one of the boys who went to the upper school who she would dream about and practice kissing every night. Without a word. Without a question, he pushed Fatimah up against the wall, lifted her dress, and stuck his index finger in her. Then he handed her a coin and ran off.
This happened again and again, and eventually, the word got out, and other boys would meet Fatimah behind the wall until one day, more than one boy showed up—so instead of letting them touch her, she shimmied for them. Back and forth and side to side and teased them good until their little shriveled buto got hard, and even though they were frustrated, they were delighted in this naughty thing they got to do together—they got to enjoy together! They loved the power they thought they had in humiliating this poor girl.
She saved the money. She bought makeup and scarves. And this is the way she began belly dancing. Later, when she was a teenager, and the bachelor party filmed her dancing and then on her knees, then on her back, then bent over the sink, they said she could make a lot of money. She needed things. She needed food and rent, and maybe braces. One of the guys with the camera—he was good about bringing it up close to her face and then close to her body. He would bring up this fact again, threaten her with the small canisters of film in his hand when it came time to pay her. She thought then of the red fox of her youth. How she heard stories of how they befriended the coyote, only to drink their blood later. She would do the same, push her paws in front of her on the carpet. Keep her mind filled with stories like a movie. Listen to the sounds of the nature channel on TV. She heard the fox’s catcalls.
Marina walked over to the tracks. The tracks are where the girls line up to get picked up. A line in the sidewalk separates the midtrack from the kiddy corner, then there’s also the low track. The kiddy corner is for men who like little girls, the midtrack is for girls like Marina, maybe when she first got to Vancouver, and the low track is for what she’d become.
Streetlights and people with fucked-up attire. Like women in wheelchairs who didn’t need wheelchairs, who wore high heels and sometimes clicked their way around town and men in dresses that are no longer pretty and little skinny cagey women with yellow veiny arms in short skirts and sequined tops and then there was Marina. Unsure of herself. She still desperately wanted to be fresh again. Her hair was a messy rat’s nest on top of her head. But in her mind—in her mind, it was dazzling. In her mind she was Diana Ross or Donna Summer, she was just spectacular, but her jeans were getting a little too big for her, so she rolled over the waistband and tied a string across it, and her ropey arms had some abscesses, gaping oozing holes where bright tan flesh used to be. Still, if she squinted her eyes to the thrum and swoosh of the cars passing by, she could pretend to be another woman, someone like Ma. Full of sexual mystery—open to anything. She would be your disco queen or your ho or your foxy mama whatever. When Marina was out there, she could see herself in her mind and she didn’t see the eczema, the dry skin clumps on one cheek, the messy knot of hair. She didn’t see the sweater with the holes and the no bra, her titties looked all swingy and empty, the little collection of zits popping up on her forehead. She didn’t smell herself, the scent of urine and desperation.
HAWTHORNE
Ma became a woman who went out and danced late at nightclubs. She’d go out to cheesy places. She never drank. Not even a drop. She’d go out dancing four, maybe five times a week. Marina saw how all the men fell in love with her. How they watched her. Her flirting, her glittery glinting self. She was small, five feet, but there on the dance floor is where her fantasy self and real self seemed to merge.
She’d practice dancing with Marina at home. She let Marina wear her shoes. She put on a Bee Gees record and stood tall and put her arms out, and Reen swooped into the empty cup of them, and she twirled her around, and they danced. She slid her through the middle of her legs. Flew her forward. Her warm chest gave off an odor of cocoa butter. She extended both of her arms like she was measuring yards of fabric and Marina stood tall on her tippy-toes so she could match her arms to Ma’s and then they slowly turned together, Marina’s arm gliding across the length of Ma’s collarbone until they were one long extension of each other, attached only by fingertips. It was her very favorite thing to be. An extension of Ma.
* * *
Ma began wearing more racy clothing. Stuff like little red leather skirts, and one time she went to the Contempo Casuals store in the mall and bought a black velvet dress with little perfect finger-sized holes on the top. It looked like an invitation to get poked. Marina took one look at her standing there in that dress and stuck her long finger in her mouth; Barfarama, Marina said. As Ma dressed, Marina sat perched on the sink and watched her. Sometimes Ma’d reach her hand in the front of her dress and perk up her boobs like hoisting up Hawaiian rolls. Look what you did to me, she blamed. Her nipples thick little knots of flesh. Ma didn’t miss a chance to let Marina know how her monthlong attempt at breastfeeding took the air out of her bubelya. Sometimes she’d look down at them and give them marching orders like a drill sergeant: Pick it up, girls!
Now that you and Mike are broken up why can’t we move back with Lola? Marina’d been missing Lola and making a regular point to bring this up.
Reen, you know we can’t do that. I still have school.
How much more school do you have? It seems like forever already.
I just have four more years, but if you do good in your own school you can go visit her in the summer.
Ma would see all the hope she had in her eyes if she looked up.
Promise?
Promise.
* * *
One night, Ma wound up at the Cheesecake Factory with a guy Fatimah and her friends called Sam. His given name was Yasir. Sam looked like a Middle Eastern John Travolta. Only it was the late eighties, past the time when John Travolta and VO5 and pompadours were in style, there he was in a Members Only jacket. Top buttons of his shirt undone. He looked like a disco king on the Cheesecake Factory dance floor, and that caught Ma’s eye. Ma was stuck on disco. She saw this guy and twirled her way up to him. Ma, weighing in somewhere in the high double digits, a waif of a little brown woman, slid along the dance floor like his glass of whiskey shot across the wooden bar.
The strobe light flashed, Sam moved all slow with his tight pants. Mutya lip-synced the lyrics,
It’s my prerogative!
She smiled big at Sam. Not sure exactly if they were dancing together or not. He didn’t look at her but kept his sight above her head. He sipped his drink out of the stirrer left in his glass. This was a pet peeve of Ma’s. Anytime Marina drank her hot cocoa out of the skinny red stirrers at Ma’s office job, Ma would correct her.
