The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [55]
I take my seat near the back of the bus, drift off easily and jerk awake. We pass the vast slaughterhouse near Tracy, the smell of manure and death. I drift off and jerk awake. Hours of barren yellow, no bricks. I’m holding a mason jar of Sierra wildflowers in my lap, a couple inches of lake water to keep them alive. Dorothy insisted I take Gerald’s brown knit sweater for the journey, too—woman can’t keep a gift, apparently—but the morning chill has already blown off, so I’m holding that, too. I need to find a Laundromat or some new clothes in L.A. One or the other. I wonder who’s got my duffel—if anyone’s got my duffel. I want my saint book back. I’ve been scrawling myself stories on paper napkins and in my head, and there’s only so much of that a girl can do before she starts feeling orphaned and homeless. I drift off and I’m somewhere else entirely. Uniformed guards line a white wall. California has enacted a voluntary death penalty. Barbaro and I wait in line for our chance to sit in the electric chair. A white-bearded old veteran rants as they strap him in. The currents charge through him and his body jolts, then goes limp. Next. A tantruming little boy cries, stomping his feet. Barbaro and I exchange a quick glance. We’ve changed our minds. We grab the baby and leave, go swimming at a red clay–banked river in Humboldt County. I jerk awake.
The guy sitting next to me smells of turpentine.
“Morning,” I mumble.
He doesn’t look at me. “Pretty well afternoon by now,” he says.
At the station in L.A., I can already see the creeping disappointment on the teenage runaways’ faces. Just a bus station in some seedy neighborhood that in so many ways might as well be Stockton. I smile as I pass them. What more can I do? They’re still too aloof to accept help, to even know they might need it. What could I offer them, anyway, beyond a nod of good luck? I make my way out into the balmy afternoon alone.
Los Angeles: I’ve always secretly loved this city. This Black White Asian Native city that should have stayed part of Mexico. The fake tans covered in sunscreen and the traffic jams made of off-road vehicles. The odd geography of desert meeting ocean. The smoggy light dusting everything with tragedy-tinged enchantment. Makes me thirsty.
I have to take two Metro trains and a bus to get where I’m going. “About an hour,” the guy at the station told me. I figure he means two. I’ve been through L.A. often enough to know the residents can’t handle their own congestion, are forced to lie about it just to maintain sanity. Even so, it’s only four o’clock. L.A. denial accounted for, and I’ve still got plenty of time.
I’m getting hungry, but I just buy a bottle of Calistoga water and some sugar-free gum from a corner kiosk.
At a dumb boutique where headless mannequins wear yellow miniskirts, the saleswoman fawns over me. “Oh, honey, you need something to show off your figure!” I can’t tell how old she is because the muscles in her face are frozen like she’s had a stroke or too many antiwrinkle injections, but I can tell she’s disappointed when I choose a long white cotton sari dress with pants to go underneath. “Your figure,” she whines.
Ferget all aboutcha.
On the Metro train, I stare at an old Latino guy across the aisle, am convinced I recognize him from some eighties sitcom, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“What the hell you looking at?” he finally asks.
On the bus, I watch out the window, trying to mind my own business. The vining bougainvillea and flowering jacaranda trees; snaking traffic at the end of the continent.
I remember a rainy night in Tacoma. Madre had family in the area, sent her parents and grandparents yellow-flowered invitations to our 7:00 P.M. show.
She’d said she didn’t think they’d come, shrugged it off, but she waited in the wings, peering out from behind the curtain as our small audience filed in. Usually strict about getting the show started on time, she said, “Let’s wait another ten minutes, people might be running late with the storm.”