Butterflies suddenly filled the cab of the van — swallowtails, monarchs, buckeyes, cabbage whites — the fluttering wings of my too many feelings, too many memories, I didn't know how Rena could see through the windshield for the heartbeat gossamer of their wings.
It was less than a year, I told myself. Eighteen and out. I would graduate, get a job, my life would be my own. This was just a place to live rent-free until I could decide what the next act was going to be. Forget college, that wasn't going to happen for me, so why set myself up. I sure wasn't going to let myself get disappointed again. I never let anyone touch me. Damn straight.
I concentrated on the shapes of the downtown towers as they emerged from the gloom, tops in the clouds, a half-remembered dream. We turned north on the 5, following train tracks around downtown, County Hospital, the warehouse area around the brewery, where the artists lived in their studios — we'd been to parties there, my mother and I, a lifetime ago, so long it seemed like someone else's memory, a song I'd heard once in a dream.
Rena turned off at Stadium Way, and there were no houses now, just tangled green freewayside foliage and concrete. We paralleled the 5 for a while, then passed underneath, into a little neighborhood like an island below sea level, the freeway a wall on our left. On the right, through the rain-smeared windshield, street after street rolled by, each posted No Outlet. I saw cramped front yards, and laundry hanging wet on lines and over fences in front of Spanish cottages and tiny Craftsman bungalows, bars on all the windows. I saw macrame plant holders hanging from porches, children's toys in bare-dirt front lawns, and enormous oleanders. Frogtown, the graffiti proclaimed.
We pulled up in front of a glum cocoa-brown Spanish bungalow with heavy plasterwork, dark windows, and a patchy lawn surrounded by a chain-link fence. On one side, the neighbors had a boat in the driveway that was bigger than their house. On the other was a plumbing contractor. It was exactly where I belonged, a girl who could turn away from the one good thing in her life.
'No place like home,' said Rena Grushenka. I couldn't tell if she was being ironic or not.
She didn't help me carry my things. I took the most important bags — art supplies, the Durer rabbit with Ron's money hidden behind the frame — and followed her up the cracked path to the splintered porch. A white cat dashed in when Rena opened the door. 'Sasha, you bad boy,' she said. 'Out screwing.'
It took a moment to adjust to the darkness inside the small house. Furniture was my first impression, jumbled together like in a thrift store. Too many lamps, none lit. A dark-haired plump girl lay on a green figured velvet sofa watching TV. She pushed the white cat away when it jumped in her lap. She glanced up at me, wasn't impressed, went back to her show.
'Yvonne,' Rena said. 'She got more stuff. You help.' 'You,' Yvonne said. 'Hey, what I say you? Lazy cow.'
'Chingao, talk about lazy.' But she pushed herself up from the too-soft couch, and I saw she was pregnant. Her dark eyes under the skimpy cover of half-moon plucked eyebrows met mine. 'Have you ever came to the wrong place,' she said.
Rena snorted. 'What you think is right place? You tell me, we all go.'
The girl gave her the finger, took a sweatshirt from the old-fashioned hatstand, lazily pulled the hood over her hair. 'Come on.'
We went back out into the rain, a fine drizzle now, and she took two bags, I took two more. 'I'm Astrid,' I said.
'Yeah,so?'
We took the stuff to a room down a hall, across from the kitchen. Two beds, both unmade. 'That one's yours,' Yvonne said, dumping my bags onto it. 'Don't touch my stuff or I'll kill you.' She turned and left me alone.
It was a mess without precedence. Clothes on the beds, the desk, piled up against the walls, pouring out the open closet. I'd never seen so many clothes. And hair magazines, photonovelas in shreds. Over her bed, Yvonne had pictures torn out of magazines, girls and boys holding hands, riding bareback on the beach. On the dresser, a Chinese paper horse with trappings of silky red fringe and gold foil guarded a bright yellow portable radio, a fancy makeup kit with twenty shades of eye shadow, and a picture of a young TV actor in a two-dollar frame.
I gathered the stuff off my bed, a wet towel, pair of overalls, pink sweatshirt, a dirty plate, and tried to decide which would be less offensive, throwing them on the floor or the other bed. The floor, I decided. In the dresser, though, she'd left two drawers empty, and there were a half-dozen free hangers in the closet.
I ordered my clothes into neat piles in my drawers, hung the best things, made the bed. There was no room for the rest. Don't touch my stuff or I'll kill you, she'd said. I'd spoken exactly those words myself. Now I remembered my room at Claire's, seeing it for the first time and wondering how I would ever fill it up. She 'd given me too much, I couldn't hold on. I deserved this. I arranged my things in the shopping bags and slid them under the metal frame of the old-fashioned bed, all my artifacts. All the people I had been. It was like a graveyard under there. I hung the cartoon that Paul Trout had made of me over my bed. I never let anyone touch me. I wondered where he was now, whether I would ever hear from him again. Whether someone would love him someday, show him what beauty meant.
After I'd unpacked, I crossed the narrow hall to the kitchen, where Rena sat with another girl, her dark- rooted hair dyed magenta. Each had an open Heineken bottle and they shared a filthy glass ashtray. The counters were all dirty dishes and takeout debris. 'Astrid. This is other one, Niki.' Rena turned to the magenta-haired girl.
This girl sized me up more carefully than the pregnant girl. Brown eyes weighed me to the tenth of an ounce, patted me down, checked the seams of my clothing. 'Who hit you? ' I shrugged. 'Some girls at Mac. It's going away.' Niki sat back in her mismatched dinette chair, skinny arms behind her head. 'Sisters don't like white girls messing with their men.' Tilted her head back to sip from her beer, but didn't take her eyes off me. 'They give you that haircut too?'
'What, you're Hawaii 5-0?' Rena said. 'Leave her be.' She got up and fished another beer out of the battered refrigerator, covered with stickers from rock bands. A glimpse of the interior didn't look promising. Beer, takeout cartons, some lunch meat. Rena held a beer up. 'Want one?'
I took it. I was here now. We drank beer, we smoked black cigarettes. I wondered what else we did on Ripple Street.
Rena searched for something in the cabinets, opening and slamming the chipped beige doors. There wasn't anything but a bunch of dusty old pots, odd glasses and plates. 'You eat chips I buy?'
