The splint wasn’t a doctor’s handiwork; I hadn’t gone to the ER. After Babyface had gotten up and walked to the exit door, I’d stayed where I was sitting, bent over with pain, feeling the aftershock ringing up the bones of my hand and past my wrist. If anyone around me understood what had just happened-and believe me, I’d made noise when the bone snapped, a sound between a yelp and a short scream-they were determinedly refusing to show it. Rule number one of city life: Don’t Get Involved.
Then, as if nothing had happened, I spent an hour and a half fruitlessly looking through Medical Board of California newsletters for the thumbnail reports on disciplinary actions against doctors. Finally the pain got distracting enough that I went home, found Aries’s first-aid kit, and splinted my finger the best I could. I would have liked something stronger than Advil for the pain but didn’t have access to it.
Serena said, “You’re coming back to L.A.?”
“I ran into one of Skouras’s guys today,” I said. “The head gunny. Now he knows I’m alive and in San Francisco.”
“He recognized you?”
“More than. He broke my finger.”
“Jesus, Hailey,” Serena said.
Had Babyface guessed that what I said about being “up for a few days” was bullshit? Did he truly believe I was as frightened and harmless as I’d acted? If he didn’t, I had a problem. San Francisco wasn’t a big city. Forty-nine square miles wasn’t a lot when you had to share it with someone who’d already tried to kill you once.
Serena said, “I thought you didn’t like being in L.A. Because of you-know-who.”
“I don’t,” I said, “but it’s been a year, and besides, where you live is pretty far from Marsellus’s L.A.”
Even so, I thought grimly that, having exiled myself from L.A. a year ago, now I was making deadly enemies in the north, too. Not wise. There was always Oregon and Washington, but they weren’t for girls like me. I could never learn to walk in Birkenstocks.
“Well, you know my place. There’s always room for one more girl on the run,” Serena said. “But what’re you going to do once you get down here?”
“Research,” I said. “I think that trying to find Nidia through Skouras’s real-estate holdings is the best prospect. He’s got to be hiding her somewhere.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Serena said. “I don’t know how you learned to do this shit, prima. I can’t think of anyone else I know who could have done what you’ve done.”
“The thing is…”
“What?”
“I can’t do this alone,” I said. “If I find Nidia, there’s going to have to be a rescue mission. I can’t go in single-handedly.” I paused. “Skouras’s men are like soldiers. Criminals, but soldiers. I need the same kind of guys on my side, guys who don’t scare easy and can shoot.”
“You want El Trece,” Serena said.
“Nothing against your sucias, but this is out of their league,” I said. “Yeah, I need your homeboys. I hate to ask, Serena. This will be dangerous.”
“I know.”
“And they won’t do it for me, a white stranger. I need you to ask on my behalf.”
She was silent so long that I thought she was going to say no. Then she said, “It is a big thing, and I’ll ask it for you, but there’s something I want from you in return.”
“Anything I can do, I will.”
“Take your beating. Get jumped in.”
This was her old tease, about me becoming one of her sucias. Except this time her tone left no doubt that she was serious.
“Serena,” I said. “We’ve had this conversation before. There’s too many white people out there already trying to be something they’re not. I won’t join them.”
“That’s not what this is,” she said. “It’s symbolic. You want me to go to the guys and ask them to ride on a mission with you, first you gotta be blood.”
“That’s my point. I’ll never really be one of you.”
“You’ll always be different,” she said. “But I’m different, too. How many girls shave their heads, put in work like a guy? What made me different let me become a leader.”
“But-”
“But nothing. You’re always saying you’ll never really be one of us, but you know how often white people tell people like me to act white, to assimilate? They know we’ll never really be one of them, but if we want the good job, the big house, we’re always getting asked to make the effort. Why is it different when I ask you to make the effort?”
I stretched out on the bed and didn’t say anything.
“I won’t ask that much of you, either, afterward,” she said. “I know you’re never gonna steal cars for me and then kick it in my living room with my girls. But you want my help, that’s my price.”
There was an interesting correlation in Latin. The noun for close relative or good friend was necessarius. The same word, as an adjective, meant unavoidable. Family and obligation had been inseparable in the Roman mind. That’s what this was about: Serena was my necessaria.
In other words, home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to beat you up.
“All right,” I said. “Yeah, okay. I will.”
Part III
twenty-seven
SEPTEMBER 26
A Saturday night, after dark, Serena driving us east of the city, to a small ranch property where my initiation was to take place. The landscape around us was dry grass, pale almost to whiteness in the light of the full moon. The poles of power lines were dark silhouettes against the deep cornflower of the sky.
Gravel crunched as we pulled into a long driveway. Up ahead was a low, one-story house, and around us were split-rail fences, delineating paddocks, but I could see no livestock in them.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“Risky’s tio, Sergio. He’s not here right now,” Serena said. “So we can use it.”
She pulled around back, parking in front of a small paddock with tubular metal railings instead of wood. The gate was held open by chain wrapped tightly to the nearest post. Inside, the dirt was hard and packed, dust stirring a little in the air displaced by the car’s approach.
Serena cut the lights, but we didn’t get out of the car yet. We were early.
She said, “They’ll be here soon.”
I nodded.
“You want a drink? I’ve got a bottle of vodka in my bag.”
“No. Maybe after.”
She’d offered me the choice: Fight one of the guys from Trece, or get jumped in the more popular way, by being beaten by her girls as a group. There was supposed to be a third option, fighting Serena herself, but we’d both known that wasn’t going to happen. If I won in front of her girls, she’d lose too much face.
A few more moments of silence passed before we saw lights on the road, traveling toward us like a comet or a meteor. The car turned down the driveway and resolved into an old Buick.
More cars were pulling in now. Thug cars: an old Monte Carlo, an Oldsmobile, a Chevy Cavalier. Then an Econoline van. With a slamming of doors and a mixed chatter of Spanish and English, the sucias acknowledged Serena, throwing up their signs to her.
Then I noticed that there were guys from El Trece present as well. It wasn’t typical for them to take interest in a girls’ initiation, but this was different. This was Warchild’s old friend La Rubia, the one who’d nearly become a soldier. This was, even for the guys, an event worth watching.
I shucked off my hooded jacket and began to walk in a circle the way I used to do before fights, rolling my shoulders, ignoring the guys who were watching me. I needed to loosen up. I wasn’t just here to get beaten. I was expected to fight back, to prove my mettle. I would honor the gang by striking back at my sisters-to-be, our shared wounds creating a bond between us.