My mother made the girls leave. I relaxed. I caught a show on television about inner city kids learning to ballroom dance. I cried. I watched the preview channel. All the things I could have been watching. I watched the 7:00 box move up into 6:30. 7:30 into 7:00.
Grandma tries to regain strength by lying still, not eating, by acting dead. I am waiting for when she will sit up weakly and become brilliant, channeling wisdom of relatives passed. She will tell of family who lived in Russia, eating grass, wearing seven skirts. She will tell secrets way deeper than religious texts. Almost every book I’ve ever read is better than a religious text. It’s like they didn’t even try. She stirs in her bed. I sit up straight and hold my breath. “Who is sick?” she asks me. She can tell someone is.
THE KID
At the end of the summer, the kid was assigned some drop-offs down south. The girl went with him because now she lived with the kid in his basement. She lived in his life. He left the girl with the dog in motels, flipping channels. He drove the speed limit and came to full stops at stop signs. The drugs were in plastic bags in the backseat seat lining. On the last drop-off, he left the dog at the motel, but took the girl with him, even though he wasn’t supposed to. He had a girl.
The kid had a mother that couldn’t stop crying. The girl had a stepfather she hated. Before the kid, she went out with older guys she met working at the mini mart. The kid had a freckle on his penis, so usually avoided girls. The summer before 12th grade, the girl slept in her car on the kid’s street. They knew each other from math class. He knocked on her window and she let him in and they chewed a whole pack of peppermint Lifesavers, then he took her back to the basement, which was his bedroom. Old Nintendo games littered the floor like headstones. The kid showed the girl his beagle dog, who he was in love with. The girl reached out to pet its head, the beagle stared back unimpressed. It took the dog years to fall in love. The girl could do it in about a month.
It was only a small amount, some guy last minute. They found the apartment easy. The man answered the door shirtless, a few hairs stuck out his low slung pants. There was music and the man took the girl’s hand and twirled her like they were dancing. She laughed and looked at the kid. The man took them inside where a woman was sprawled on the couch. He said the name of the kid’s brother. He said disgusting things about the woman on the couch. He said that the girl should live in the spare room and that the kid could keep the drugs. The kid didn’t laugh, because he never fake laughed. The girl laughed because she was nervous. There was an uneasy space where the kid was not laughing.
The kid went to the bathroom and there was a crystal Buddha above the toilet. The Buddha’s eyes glimmered at the kid. Rubies had been used for the eyes. He looked in the mirror and checked on his pimple. Anything inside to set free? Nothing. His hands scratched his scalp looking for the scab. Bathrooms were the only real private time. Even in a car, there are people looking from their cars. In a normal room someone can just walk in whenever. A bedroom with so many socks and sheets and things. But a bathroom is small and hard.
The kid looked into the rubies. What kind of moment was this, with the Buddha in the bathroom? A drip dropped. The Buddha was the bathroom, the non-moments. Peaceful, anxious. The scab the kid usually scratched off wasn’t there. He had neglected to scratch it and it had healed. The kid lifted the Buddha into his backpack. He took a little of the drugs and put it in a separate bag in his pocket. The girl had always wanted to try the drug and he had never let her. Then he took a shit in the toilet and looked at it. The shit slowly moved in the water and he left it floating.
The kid’s car was a quality one and his skin was white enough. He had a clean record and a nice face. He ran drugs and sometimes stolen things over state lines. The job had been left to him by his older brother who died two summers before. The kid and the girl had fallen into something. Now the boy knew it didn’t matter there was a freckle on his penis. The girl liked the kid better than the men from the mini mart, because he got sweet like a baby and held her while they slept. When they awoke, there was a blissful moment of remembering about each other. The girl didn’t need to listen to Nine Inch Nails anymore to function. She didn’t need anything.
In the living room, the man was showing the girl other Buddhas. Some were marble, some were wood. He said they were always meditating, that some had been meditating for hundreds of years, that he had won them on eBay. The kid gave the drugs and the man gave the money.
The man looked at the kid and the girl. His life was missing a sort of action that used to jump it week to week. No one had punched him out in a long time. He wanted to say something to the kids, but there wasn’t anything. At one point, there had been a string of situations. All of a sudden he’d be gunning it on a highway, some guy playing confident on the radio and the confidence would rub onto him. He’d be in a lumber yard with only a vague notion. One minute he’d be saying one thing and the next something else. There was no looking back. Now, all there were were the Buddhas. The Buddhas and the woman. The kids had a lucky stupidness, he thought. The sex they had wasn’t even sexy. It was simple, probably. Their worlds were whole like little baseball stadiums—with tiny players playing in little clean uniforms, but getting in fights too sometimes. The little players would get bloody noses, he thought. The woman on the couch made a sound. The man looked wildly at the kid. The kid said nothing.
The girl drove the kid into town and they ate at a restaurant with too much junk stuck on its walls. “Let’s just keep the money and never drive back. Let’s skip the whole 12th grade,” the girl said with her mouth full of hamburger. “Let’s live down here.” The kid agreed and then they were silent. The kid wasn’t sure if he was serious. He knew the girl was, because she would often get a quick idea and then just do it numbly, like there had never been a choice.
Outside by the curb, young street kids wove bamboos into roses. The rain ruined blouses. The kid and the girl walked through a creepy park. Benefit flyers blew in the wind. The kid found a poster that looked like the dog. On each corner was a bent-up kid trying to sell the roses. They walked over broken glass, cigarette butts, and wet bamboo roses, flattened by sneakers, dead on the sidewalk.
Back at the motel, the dog was curled between the beds. The carpet was dark with pee. The kid fumbled with the card key, but the lock was broken. He pushed open the door easily. Giddy with affection, he spotted the dog. He pulled the sleepy beagle into his lap and cooed. The dog yelped back. The kid cooed. Yelp. Coo. Yelp. The girl watched. The kid and dog held each other. “I don’t get up on this,” she said. The kid pulled his eyes from the dog and smiled at the girl. The dog licked his hand, licked between his fingers. “There’s something you two get that I just can’t get up on.” The kid smoothed the dog’s ears. The girl took off her shirt. The dog and kid looked away. She laid on one of the beds. Its thick comforter was wrapped over, trapping the pillow. She took her hair down. The kid left the dog and went to the girl. He pulled the bag out of his pocket. The girl was excited and they kissed. The kid thought of the Buddha and didn’t want to think of it, so put his fingers in the girl.
Afterwards, she filled the bath. The water was too hot and cooked their minds empty. The surface was flaked with pubic hairs and bits of dead skin. The girl’s thigh rose above it. In the numb heat, their top lips dried to their bottoms, boredom secured.
The dog was barking and that got the kid moving, the water moving, but the girl ignored it and sunk into the boredom. There was a sound and the kid jumped out the tub and pulled his jeans on over his wet legs, over his freckled penis. The knocking shook the girl’s heart, but she eased herself up. She started dressing as the door slammed open, the knob wrecking a hole in the wall. The man had the kid by the neck and the woman was laughing. The man had a gun. The woman had one too, and aimed hers at the girl. Backing into the bathroom, the woman pushed towards her until the gun was snug against the girl’s head.