Fade Into You Read online

  Since then it’s been endless birthing of blond-haired, blue-eyed, devil-could-care Darling surfer boys riding their bikes down to the shore, along the LA river, telling girls that being a Darling was no big deal. Slipping bikini straps off golden shoulders, pressing the ladies into the leathered upholstery of unlocked VW backseats. Riding crooked on the way back home, the orange sun on their peeling backs, laughing about what poor dope had to wipe their scuzz off the inside of his windows.

  Alta California, my girl. My woman. Queen. Open your legs and give birth to this dirty nonsense. This muck-rucking nest of black magic and flickering film reels. You unforgiving greedy plot of flowers. You empty desert. You cotton ball dipped in sand. My history lies with you. I’ll make hands to that. I’ll spray-paint my name across a slip of a boy to claim you. A stocky rod. A silver, shining, sad-eyed boy. Brown. White tube socks in Nike chanclas. Tiny pinpricks up and down his mocha arms. Yellow crust around the outside of his mouth. Thick tongue trying to moisten up. SGV scarred and scabbed blue into the skin. Olde English. Let’s take him. Let’s eat him alive, you and me.

  ×

  Lydia pages from the Target in Alhambra. She wants us to pick her up, and Chelo’s down.

  “I don’t know, man,” I say, lying back on her bed. The sheet with the constellation pattern on it that she uses as a curtain is pulled up and hooked on a nail. Bright afternoon sunlight cuts across our bodies like the slow lid of a coffin moving in to entomb us. “I can’t miss Arts.”

  “We won’t miss Arts, okay? It’s like,” she holds up the pager, “two thirty.”

  “By the time we go all the way to Alhambra and drive all the way back to school it’ll be past four. I can’t miss anyway. I have a monologue due.”

  “Well fuck,” she says, lying on her stomach and kicking her legs up, pulling the crust off a piece of cinnamon toast we’d made in the kitchen. “What about Lydia?”

  “What about her? No one told her dumb ass to go suck cock in Vincent Lugo Park.”

  “I could eat this shit all day.”

  “I can’t miss. If I miss I’m on probation.”

  “All right,” she says, swinging her legs to the edge of the bed and sitting up. “Lemme brush my teeth and we’ll go back.”

  “Well, don’t you have class too?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Just Figure Drawing. Nothing serious or nothing. Besides, you’re the dummy that misses academics all the time. If you paced yourself you could chill more, but each time you gotta sneeze, you skip out. This is your own fault.”

  “What the hell is this right now? It doesn’t look like you’re in class either.”

  “Yeah, but my ass isn’t on probation.”

  “Exactly, come on!”

  She gets up and disappears down the hallway toward the bathroom. I roll on my stomach and stare at the Drew Barrymore postcard taped to the wall. Drew’s hair is short and bleached and daisies are pinned in it. She’s licking her bottom lip and holding her titties. The butterfly tattoo above her happy trail looks soft and fleshy.

  “Yummy,” Chelo says, licking her fingers and holding a new piece of cinnamon toast.

  “Dude, you are majorly malfunctioned.”

  “What?” she says, getting hard with me. “Fuck you. I’m faded. Don’t get like that, I’ll pow pow you.” And she means it.

  “Just hurry up, dude.”

  “Hurry up, dude,” she says mimicking my voice. In her mouth I sound like a cartoon mouse on helium. “Like whatever, majorly mal, mal estúpida. I’ll drop you off in Sherman Oaks, dude, you can take the bus home.”

  “Probation, Chelo. Come on.”

  “Then you should have stayed at school, dummy.”

  “Please.”

  “Fine! I said I would. Chill, crazy. I’m eating, okay? It’s not even three yet.”

  I sigh and sit up, stuff CDs I brought over into my backpack.

  “Ugh,” she says, exhaling. “You’re such an elevator operator. Come on.” She grabs her Star Wars lunch box and heads for the front door.

  “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Whatever. You have to tell Lydi why we ditched her ass, though.”

  “Whatever. Fine.”

  “You’re a burn, man.”

  I’m going through Chelo’s tapes in the glove compartment looking for something decent to listen to.

  “Put on the Lilliput,” she says, reaching over my lap and fishing through the pile. I look down and the bottom pocket of her hoodie moves.

  “What the fuck is that?” I shout, jumping back. She grabs the Lilliput and shoves it in the cassette player.

  “It’s Pinwheel Loco. Chill.”

  “You brought the fucking hamster?”

  “Whatever. I’m dropping your whiny, bitch ass off and getting Lydi.”

  “So you brought your hamster?”

  “What is wrong with you today, man? Is it your moon times? Are you PMSing? Why do you even care?

  “Well, can’t he die?”

  “What?” she asks, getting all twisted up in the face. “No. Why the fuck would he die? Do I look like Lennie from Mice and Estúpidos?”

  “Well, what are you going to do with him?”

  “Put him in my backpack. He can breathe, it’s got holes in it.”

  I shake my head.

  “Just get out when it’s time to get out. I’ll call you never.”

  “Whatever, dude,” I say, leaning my head against the glass.

  “Swear to god you’re a bitch.”

  “Whatever, dude.” I look down at my nails and start to bite.

  “Don’t spit that shit in here.”

  I scrunch up my face and look at her. What? I ask without words. “You’ve got fucking Taco Bell wrappers on the floor.”

  “Yeah, but those are nails. Swallow that shit or roll down the window.”

  “I can’t believe you even eat that crap.”

  “I like the cinnamon twists, bitch,” she hisses.

  “That’s a taco wrapper, grosso.”

  “Man, why you gotta be such a bummer bitch about everything, your way or the highway, right? Next time don’t even ditch with me. I’m tired of chauffeuring your ass all over LA. Enjoy your two-hour bus ride home.”

  We pull into F lot. Chelo grabs the hand brake and the whole thing dies in a lurch. I pull the seat back and grab my stuff. We flip each other off and I slam the door. Head for the long stairway toward campus and look back, watch her white ’68 Super Beetle zoom and sputter toward Valley Boulevard. Whatever, man. Whatever by so much. Hope your fucking hamster dies.

  ×

  I drag my tired ass up the driveway toward the mailbox. Mom’s tulips are blooming white, buttercup yellow, and it’s clear and bright outside. I was so upset after my fight with Chelo I skipped Arts anyway and got on the B43 toward home. Large wayward clouds move slow over our street, detouring before they turn into pirate ships, head out toward Never Never Land. I always check for Movieline magazine or The New Yorker. We actually get six different magazines in the mail, plus the newspaper, but those are the only two I like. I’m obsessed with Movieline critic Stephen Rebello. On Sunday mornings—not so much anymore and I kinda wish we still did this, so I guess when I was younger—Sunday mornings, Mom, Parsley, and I would sit in the big oak mission chairs, the LA Times spread at our feet, like we were secret agents trying to figure out some master plan, one of us leaning over the fanned pages searching for the Style section, or the Calendar section, or the Sunday Magazine insert with the glossy touch. I still read the funnies up until our tradition stopped. Mom would make peppermint tea, a plate of scrambled eggs, chopped-up bacon, green onions, a dollop of sour cream, and some RO*TEL, and we’d scoop it up with tortillas. The entire day, sunrise to sunset in our pj’s, reading in silence with one another, together, nary a word spoken yet the afternoon consumed by words.

  There are no magazines, but there is a letter from school addressed to Mom and I can tell it’s one of those disciplinary ones,
most likely reporting that I’ve been put on probation for ditching. I contemplate hiding it, placing it in my backpack, she’ll never be the wiser, but decide to leave it, as a dare. See if she’ll do anything, say anything. Most likely she’ll blow a front but nothing will actually change. Maybe she’s a parenting genius and I’ll grow up to be some rich lawyer, the joke on me. I stick my key in the old Craftsman lock and shove the door open with my hip. Parsley is asleep, blinks, stretches, jumps to his feet, and walks in circles around my ankles. “Hey, buddy,” I whisper, leaning down and giving his head a scratch. He follows me into the yellow kitchen, his orange head and half-bitten ear like some hobo alley gato in a comic strip, bobbing along beside me.

  “You hungry?” He lets out a generous meow as if he’s been waiting all day for someone to ask. “Yeah, me too.” I pull some Thai leftovers out of the fridge but they look gross and old so I put them back and close the door. Walk to the cabinet and grab Parsley’s dry food, put a scoop in his bowl. He’s good and busy now. I walk back into the living room, pull a five out of my pocket and flop into one of the wooden mission chairs. The sun has that yellowy glow before it goes haywire rainbow before it goes navy before it goes black.

  I think about grabbing garlic knots at Pietro’s on the corner but don’t want to walk home in the dark so I put the bill back in my pocket and sit up, go into my room, open my small wooden heart jewelry box, and unwrap a roach from a napkin. I take the wallet photos of my Ramona Convent friends out and look at them, lean against the dresser. Yuniva’s quince, Luce, Marisela, and I at the Montebello Fashion Center, lips brown, eyes hard, hair bouffant. Well, except for me. I’m wearing a peach fake-cashmere Fashion 21 sweater, fifties red lips and smiling. Like some out of place turd, some Sherilyn Fenn greasy-faced nightmare. My braces all der. I look like a waitress at Johnny Rockets on Halloween. I fuck up the photo. It’s been two years since I saw any of them and their faces already seem like faces from a yearbook in a thrift store, old and dated. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve changed so much since then or if it’s because seemingly nothing ever changes and teenage girls continue on some existential loop, forever repeating the mistakes of their foremothers, their faces, eyes betraying the inner sadness of being a female human in the world. Bumped forever against a tide of information and indoctrination, the weightlessness of childhood, the supposed weightlessness of childhood, ripped like wings from the back of some disgusting bug.

  Noel Campos was the one friend who wrote me a letter after I left. I mean, I could have done it too, written first, but when something hurts I want to push it as quickly into the past as possible. It leaves a heavy lump of guilt dolloped on every old acquaintance, my inadequacy at staying in touch. In my experience, distance is a thing stretching two people further apart until they can no longer see one another properly. The supposed touchstone of teenage girlhood: the moody-broody letter. The one I always write but never send.

  Hey, COOCH, Noel’s letter started,

  Where has your stoopid ass been all year? Yeah, yeah, I know you got into that fancy art school. Hey thanks for inviting me to all those cool Hollywood parties you said you were going to invite me to. Naw, I’m just playing. But I do miss you stupid. Even if your jokes are dumb and you talk too much. You aren’t funny by the way don’t start letting people tell you that you are. Don’t go thinking you’re Roseanne Barr—Arnold?—who the hell knows, putas! All of them!

  How’s the Bikini Kill in those parts? It’s still skimpy here, as you can imagine. Antonietta is pregnant, big surprise. She’s taking next semester off. Some skunk head from Bosco. I told her, just because your ass wears a Cure shirt don’t not make you a puta. She spit at me. Trashy! What a beautiful way to exhibit your point, I told her. Fuck this place. Fuck Sister P, she’s been on a tear, she even brought a ruler to class and tapped desks, I was like, bitch, hit my knuckles, I’ll write a letter to Gil Garcetti and have this place shut down. No, but I said it in my head. Did you find the bloody glove?! Was it up Kato Kaelin’s ass? Was it up mine? Yours?

  We AIDS walking this year? I’m thinking of joining ROTC, for real. Can we talk about it soon? I might be scared.

  Noel –stinky SNATCH–

  I exhale a thin plume of perfect smoke and dig the tiny bits of burned-out roach into the backyard dirt, my fingertips sizzling, my mind now, too, a fuzzy cloud, the sun setting into that hazy rainbow, the San Gabriel Mountains starting their slow, black outline against a blanket of sky. Not hungry anymore, just stoned. I walk to the back porch and through Mom’s studio. Oasis, flower stems, raffia, Styrofoam, ceramic bowls, and her notebooks filled with intricate ikebana designs. The thing she gets paid a small bundle for. The thing she’s known for, out in Bev Hills, over on the Westside, people you watch on TV ask her to do their parties and she does. No matter what time, what holiday, or what school pageant, graduation, or special event it might conflict with, she will be there, tying lilies into the braided hair of their blond children, at important dinners, dressing their Christmas trees for a holiday party, designing and redesigning centerpieces for their grand pianos that overlook canyon verandas.

  When I was a child and there was no one to watch me she’d bring me to work. To these large, flat, midcentury modern, light-blue-and-white stucco masterpieces high above the city, bamboo walls and built-in bookshelves, brass door handles, and glass-framed floor-to-ceiling artworks, overlooking a bright, green-tiled pool. One time, a woman who lived in one of these multilevel architectural marvels, a spindly old thing with a puff of white, coiffed hair, a smear of orange lipstick, orange-lacquered short brittle nails, ironed gold slacks, and a cream-colored housecoat, handed me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “You don’t have to do that,” said my mother turning to the woman from where she stood on a ladder, hanging a Christmas garland around the room.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” smiled the woman, patting my head. Later that day, as I went searching for a bathroom, the sandwich crusts still balled in my fist, peanut butter and jelly on my fingertips and wrists, I tripped on my shoelace, caught myself on the wall and a large painting of a swimming pool, very much like the one outside, a small splash of water painted in its center, a green palm tree top swaying in a brush-struck aqua breeze. The woman hurried into the room, horrified, and yelled, “That’s a Hockney!” then grabbed my elbow, yanking me to my feet, got low in my face, and spit a warning to either sit down and remain seated and not touch another thing or wait in my mother’s car. “This is the sort of thanks we get nowadays for generosity!” she huffed. “Watch your child!” she warned my mother, and went back outside, pulling giant gold praying mantis sunglasses over her face. She picked up a small crystal glass filled low with ice cubes and dark liquor, and sat, taking small sips, looking into the dry hills, while inside I cried quietly and in a hiss Mom promised to smack me if I did not sit down.

  I walk back through my house, stoned. Parsley asleep again, I open the front door and head back to the mailbox, take the letter from school, and stand it perpendicular in the box, so there is no way that she can miss it. I take the other mail, bills, and walk them back inside, put them in the key bowl where I always put the mail, so she knows I’ve brought it in. I’ve got the itch to leave again, drive around the shrubby Altadena hills, perhaps park at Zorthian Ranch and smoke a joint. This way she at least knows I’ve been home.

  I meander aimlessly toward the back of the house, into her bedroom, and to the closet where she keeps the old seventies sewing box filled with family photos. Drag my finger along the scalloped wall, the wooden Quaker vanity, the Hopi masks that frame the bathroom doorway. When I am bored and wistful or whatever else, I spend my time on the floor searching through the pictures, getting lost in the past, before I arrived, wondering who the people are and were, people I say I love and who claim to love me in return.

  I feel my sister around me. She’s in my hands, holding an eighth-grade graduation plaque, beaming, eyes bright and full of accomplishment, my parents in an early eighties c
orduroy jacket and a silk suit dress, my mother’s artistic inclinations coming out in her bold pairing of a bright turquoise bolo tie carved into a dragon and red silk tie-dyed scarf around the purple waist of her suit. Lyla with my parents, mining for fool’s gold in the American River, not far from the commune they came and went from, all in seventies denim bell-bottoms and baseball-cut tees. Lyla holding a cup, drinking the blood of Christ at her first communion in New Mexico, eyes shining and turned upward toward the cross of Jesus—and then with me, a baby, a scowl on her face, sallow and shrinking into the yellow wall of our old home. And then she’s gone. And then it’s only me.

  In the lack my sister is heavy, ever present, and breathing, trying to tell me something. I cover my ears, squeeze my eyes, and shut her out, convinced I’ve gone crazy, and yet, still I return hoping to learn what? Something I don’t know.

  ×

  “Hey, wait up,” I call, jog down the locker hallway. Chelo stops and spins around. Her face is all yeah, what. She crosses her arms. “I’m real sorry about last week.” She rubs her toe into the hallway tile, squints at me, and is silent.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Gosh god, why what?”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I was a megabitch, okay? I’m sorry I made my ditching your problem and then was you know …”

  “An elevator operator.”

  “Yeah, okay, an elevator operator.”

  “Bringing everybody down.”

  “Bringing everybody down. God, okay, I’m sorry.”

  She bursts into a big smile and starts laughing. “Hey-seuss! You should see your face. Dang you felt real bad. Nah it’s cool. Brush ’em, brush ’em, brush ’em!” she says, imitating Jan from Grease.

  “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee!”