Of course, I thought. She’ll understand. She’s a ghost.
And moving over the tracks, we heard the quarry boom, a faint explosion, like a distant thunderclap.
"It’s magic," I said, gazing at the clear sky. "They’re making thunder. That’s what they do.”
9
I hypnotized myself by swinging a Barbie arm in front of my face.
I said, "Your legs won’t itch anymore. And you won’t scratch them for four years.”
Then I hypnotized Classique and the others.
"You are sleepy," I told them. "You are so sleepy and you are sleeping. You are dreaming of trains, of Eskimo Pies and old men dancing with bears. Cut ’N Style, my voice is knocking you out. And you too Fashion Jeans. And Magic Curl. Classique, you’re sleeping. You won’t wake up until I say. You won’t know where I’m going, ever.” The arm worked like a charm.
They were snoring. They were snuggled on the blond wig. I stepped backwards from the room, watching them, thinking -- sleep, sleep, little dear ones, sleep. Then I turned and went downstairs.
Now it was almost dusk. I sat in the bus, on the ceiling, wearing the bonnet. Everything smelled of smoke, even my dress. A breeze roamed all around, blowing away some of the humidity; the air had become cooler. I looked for fireflies. But it wasn’t quite time. The sun still poked above the Johnsongrass. And the light inside the bus was slowly shifting, the sharp edges of the broken windows shimmered -- the springs, fluff, and burnt upholstery on the overhead seats radiated, orange and white.
Someone had carved into the metal wall, a corroded scrawl I hadn’t noticed before. The words were upside- down -- etched higher than I could reach -- but easy to read: LOIS YOU SUCK BUTT!
"Suck butt," I said. "You suck butt.” What a crazy thing to do. I didn’t want to think about it. "That’s dumb,” I told myself.
When my father and I walked toward the L.A. River, we often stopped to read graffiti. Whole sides of buildings were decorated with slang, sprayed symbols and designs, red and blue and silver and black, like pictures from a comic book.
"It’s all beautiful,” my father said. "People hate it.”
"What’s it mean?”
"Names, mostly. Gang stuff. I’m not sure."
Framing an entire doorway was a Valentine’s heart, full and perfect, pierced by a stiletto.
"You know what that is.”
"Love," I said.
"Yep."
We’d come back to the same building a week later, but the graffiti wouldn’t be there, just whitewashed patches hiding names and colors and massive hearts. It was gross. "They should leave it alone," I said.
"Don’t worry, whitewash doesn’t last long, not in this neighborhood."
There was a tunnel in the middle of Webster Park -- cutting underneath a pathway -- where bums slept and teenagers drank beer and smoked. Instead of crossing over the tunnel, my father and I usually strolled through it, dodging broken bottles and the occasional vagrant zipped up in a sleeping bag. And once we found a spray paint can. Silver Lustre. So my father shook the can, then painted a smiley face on the cement. "That’s you,” he said. "That’s how you look today."
"No it’s not. That’s not me today.”
"Well, it must be you tomorrow.”
He handed me the can.
"Give it a try.”
I was going to make a smiley face too, but I had the valve aimed wrong and sprayed my right hand.
"Oh no,” I said, dropping the can.
There was wet Silver Lustre in my palm; I dabbed it off on my pink shirt. I wanted to cry, but my father was laughing. He was laughing so much he started coughing. I thought he was getting sick.
My mother was waiting when we arrived home. She saw my shirt first, two silver handprints where a pink pony and a balloon should be. "What the hell happened to you?" She grasped my wrists, flipping my hands.
"I’m a robot,” I said.
Then she slapped me.
"You’ve ruined that shirt! Your hands!”
But the worst part was my father. He didn’t do anything. He just stood by the front door and said nothing. And I wanted to yell at him for laughing in the tunnel. I wanted him to explain that it was all his fault, that it was his idea to play with the can.
MOM YOU SUCK BUTT! That’s what I should’ve sprayed on the cement. That’s what I should’ve told her after she slapped me.
I scanned the walls for more carvings, but the sun had dipped below the Johnsongrass, making my search difficult. So I gazed at the pasture, where a few fireflies were already flashing.
"I’m here," I shouted. "In here! It’s me!"
Then I covered my mouth, shutting myself up. I’d been too loud. The ghost could’ve heard me. She might think I was calling her.
Glancing across the passageway, through the windows, I saw her meadow. But, because of the railroad tracks and weeds, I couldn’t see the bluebonnets or the rocks encircling the radio. Or the ghost, if she was there. And beyond the meadow, glowing among a cluster of mesquite trees, was a yellow light, a thousand times the size of a firefly blink; the queen mother of all fireflies -- I thought -- lurking in the distance, at least a mile from me and the bus. On the other side of the tracks, everything seemed bigger -- the flowers, the rocks, the rows of Johnsongrass. And the ghost.
"She can destroy Tokyo like Godzilla,” I’d told Classique. "She’d make Mom’s bed go crash.”
"She’s Queen Gunhild. Queens are always fatter than everyone. That’s how they become queens. Everyone gives her gold and food to eat and she gets fat and sits on scales in her court, so then everyone has to give her more food and gold -- it has to be the same as how fat she is."
"Queens are monsters. They need to be strangled and drowned in bogs."
I imagined my mother in the meadow, killing nettles and hurling rocks. And she knew I was inside the bus. And she was hungry. Soon she’d climb over the rise and onto the tracks. She’d be coming after me: "You miserable creep!”
The fireflies were here, floating through the windows. They flashed everywhere, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I looked back and forth, from one window to another, in case someone was sneaking outside. I tried sending psychic messages to Classique -- wake up now, wake up, I’m in trouble -- but she was dreaming of Eskimo Pies. I was on my own. And my father relaxed in Denmark. He wouldn’t help even if my mother was choking me, even if she was ripping my head off.
So I waited.
When the train came I’d run. I was near the bus door, the escape exit. My father said a person could easily outrun a ghost or a bog man or any monster.
"They only get you when you aren’t expecting them. If you’re expecting them, you can always get away."
"But they’re fast.”
"No, they aren’t fast. Dead things are slow.`You have to be alive to run. Your heart has to be pumping."
"Why?"
"Because if your heart ain’t pumping then you’re dead. And if you’re dead, you can’t run.”
"How do you move, if you’re dead?"
"You don’t. You just flutter, I guess. Like a leaf in the wind. Energy or something takes you from one place and puts you somewhere else. It’s like magic. If your dead, you need a ton of magic -- a lot more than a living person does."
I couldn’t figure it. But I believed him anyway.
"So you run when you see a monster?"
"Or before you see it. When you sense it. When you know it’s about to pop up and grab you. Not like in movies. People are always idiots in movies. They wait to get caught. They fall and look back and scream._Iust run. Then you’re safe.”