Black Tickets (4 page)

T
HOUGH
I
HAVE
no money I must give myself what I need. Yes I know which lovers to call when the police have caught me peddling pictures, the store detectives twisting my wrists pull stockings out of my sleeves. And the butchers pummel the small of my back to dislodge their wrapped hocks; white bone and marbled tendon exposed as the paper tears and they push me against the wall. They curse me, I call my lovers. I’m nearly fifteen, my lovers get older and older. I know which ones will look at me delightedly, pay my bail, take me home to warm whiskey and bed. I might stay with them all day; I might run as the doors of their big cars swing open. Even as I run I can hear them behind me, laughing.

I go down by the schools with my pictures. The little boys smoke cigarettes, they’re girlish as faggots, they try to act tough. Their Camels are wrinkled from pockets, a little chewed. I imagine them wet and stained pinkish at the tips, pink from their pouty lips. The boys have tight little chests, I see hard nipples in their T-shirts. Lines of smooth stomach, little penis tucked into jockey briefs. Already they’re growing shaggy hair and quirky curves around their smiles. But no acne, I get them before they get pimples, I get them those first few times the eyes flutter and get strange. I show them what I do. Five or six surround me, jingling coins, tapping toes in tennis shoes. I know they’ve got some grade-school basketball coach, some ex-jock with a beer gut and a hard-on under his sweat pants in the locker room; that kills me. They come closer, I’m watching the ridged toes of their shoes. Now I do it with my eyes, I look up and pick the one I want. I tell him to collect the money and meet me at lunch in a park across the street, in a culvert, in a soft ditch, in a car parked under a bridge or somewhere shaded. Maybe I show them a few pills. One picture; blowsy redhead with a young blond girl, the girl a kneeling eunuch on white knees. The redhead has good legs, her muscles stand out tensed and she comes standing up. I tell them about it. Did you ever come standing up. I ask them, they shift their eyes at each other. I know they’ve been in blankets in dark bedrooms, see who can beat off first. Slapping sounds and a dry urge. But they don’t understand their soft little cocks all stiff when they wake up in daylight, how the bed can float around.

So at noon I wait for them. I don’t smoke, it’s filthy. I suck a smooth pebble and wait. I’ve brushed my teeth in a gas station. I press my lips with my teeth and suck them, make them soft. Press dots of oil to my neck, my hands. Ambergris or musk between my breasts, down in the shadowed
place where hair starts in a line at my groin. Maybe I brush my hair. I let them see me do it, open a compact and tongue my lips real slow. They only see the soft tip of my tongue, I pretend it’s not for them.

Usually just one of them comes, the one I chose, with a friend waiting out of sight where he can see us. If they came alone I can tell by looking at them. Sometimes they are high on something, I don’t mind. Maybe I have them in an abandoned car down in a back lot, blankets on the seat or no back seat but an old mattress. Back windows covered up with paper sacks and speckled mud, sun through dirty windows or brown paper makes the light all patterns.

He is nervous. Right away he holds out the money. Or he is a little mean, he punches at me with his childish fist. A fine blond boy with a sweet neck and thin collarbones arched out like wings, or someone freckled whose ashen hair falls loose. A dark boy, thick lashes and cropped wooled hair, rose lips full and swelling a little in the darkened car. I give him a little whiskey, I rifle through the pictures and pretend to arrange them. I take a drink too, joke with him. This is my favorite time; he leans back against the seat with something like sleep in his eyes. I stroke his hard thighs, his chest, I comfort him.

I put the pictures beside us, some of them are smaller than postcards. We put our faces close to see them. A blond girl, a black girl, they like to see the girls. One bending back droops her white hair while the other arches over, holds her at the waist, puts her mouth to a breast so small only the nipple stands up. In the picture her mouth moves in and out, anyone can tell. A black hand nearly touching pale pubic hair, a forefinger almost tender curls just so, moves toward a
slit barely visible just below the pelvic bone. I don’t like pictures of shaven girls, it scares them to see so much. It makes them disappear.

I do things they’ve never seen, I could let them touch but no. I arrange their hands and feet, keep them here forever. Sometimes they tell me stories, they keep talking of baseball games and vicious battles with their friends. Lips pouty and soft, eyes a hard glass glitter. They lose the words and mumble like babies; I hold them just so, just tight, I sing the oldest songs. At times their smooth faces seem to grow smaller and smaller in my vision. I concentrate on their necks, their shoulders. Loosen their clothes and knead their scalps, pinching hard at the base of the head. Maybe that boy with dark hair and Spanish skin, his eyes flutter, I pull him across my legs and open his shirt. Push his pants down to just above his knees so his thin legs and smooth cock are exposed; our breathing is wavy and thick, we make a sound like music. He can’t move his legs but stiffens in my lap, palms of his hands turned up. In a moment he will roll his eyes and come, I’ll gently force my coated fingers into his mouth. I’ll take off my shirt and rub my slick palms around my breasts until the nipples stand up hard and frothy. I force his mouth to them. I move my hand to the tight secret place between his buttocks. Sometimes they get tears in their eyes.

In the foster homes they used to give me dolls and I played the church game. At first I waited till everyone left the house. Then it didn’t matter who was around. I lined up all the dolls on the couch, I sat them one after the other. They were ugly, most of them had no clothes or backward arms. They were dolls from the trash, the Salvation Army at Christmas, junk-sale dolls. One of them was in a fire. The
plastic hand was missing, melted into a bubbled fountain dribbling in nubs down the arm. We faced the front of the room. I made us sit for hours unmoving, listening to nothing at all and watching someone preach.

Uncle Wumpy gave me a doll. They call him that. Like his pocked face had rabbit ears and soft gray flesh. His face is pitted with tiny scars, his skin is flushed. We won at the carnival: cowboy hats, a rubber six-gun, a stuffed leopard with green diamond eyes for Kitty. We were on our way out between booths and machines, sawdust sticky with old candy and beer, to pick Kitty up at work. We passed the duckshoot. Wumpy was so drunk I had to help him with the gun and we drowned them all. Little yellow ducks with flipped up tail feathers and no eyeballs; they glided by hooked to a string. We hit them, knocked them back with a snap like something breaking. We hit twelve; the whole group popped up, started gliding by again as eyeless as before. So we kept shooting and shooting … The barker came out from behind the counter with his fat long-ashed cigar. He held it pinched in two fingers like something dirty he respected. Then he sucked on it and took the gun away. The crowd behind us mumbled. He thrust the doll into my arms. She was nearly three feet tall, pearl earrings, patent leather heels. Long white dress and a veil fastened with a clear plastic bird. I took the bird, I lit it with Wumpy’s lighter. Its neck melted down to a curve that held its flat head molded to its wings. I liked to keep the bird where no one saw it. Finally I buried it in a hole, I took it to a place I knew I’d forget.

How I found Wumpy. I was twelve, I lived with Minnie. She made me work in the luncheonette, swab Formica tables with a rag. Bend over to wipe the aluminum legs, clotted ketchup. By the grill her frozen french fries thawed out limp and fishy. She threw them in sooty fat; they fizzled and jumped and came out shining. Her old face squinched like a rat’s, she was forty. Wore thick glasses and a red handkerchief on her head, liked the gospel shows turned up loud. One hand was twisted. She had the arthritis, the rheumatism, the corns, the bunions on her knotted toes as she walked to the shower at home. Hunched in her long robe, she fixed her eyes on the bathroom door. Scuttled clinching herself at the waist and slammed the door.

After school I walked to the restaurant and helped her clear tables till seven. She cursed the miners under her breath. Slapped my butt if I was slow, moved her hard hand, its big twisted knuckles. Grabbed the curve of my ass and squeezed.

Wumpy came in every night for coffee. He cut brush for the State Road Commission. Watched Minnie and me. Kitty started coming in with him. Cellophane Baggie full of white crosses, cheap speed. She’d order a Pepsi, take a few pills, grind a few more to powder on the tabletop. She winked, gave me hair ribbons, said she’d like to take me to the movies. Wumpy told Minnie I needed some clothes, he and Kitty would take me to Pittsburgh to buy me some dresses. They gave her thirty dollars.

In the motel I stood in the bathroom and vomited. Sopors floated in the bowl, clumps of white undissolved powder in a clear mucus. I puked so easy, again and again, I almost laughed. Then they came in naked and took off my clothes. I couldn’t stand up, they carried me to the bed. Wumpy got behind her and fucked her, she kept saying
words but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. She pulled me down. She said Honey Honey. In the bottom of something dark I rocked and rocked. His big arms put me there until he lifted me Lifted me held my hips in the air and I felt her mouth on my legs, I felt bigger and bigger. The ceiling spun around like the lights at Children’s Center spun in the dark halls when I woke up at night. Then a tight muscular flash, I curled up and hugged myself.

I stood by the window and fingered the flimsy curtains. I watched them sleeping, I didn’t leave. I watched Wumpy’s broad back rising and falling.

Wumpy would never do it to me, he gave me pictures to sell. I wanted to give him the money, he laughed at me. He had little stars in the flesh of his hands. He took me to bars. We took a man to some motel, Wumpy said he always had to watch … stood by the bed while I choked and gagged a little, salt exploding in my throat—

The dream is here again and again, the dream is still here. Natalie made the dream. I slept with her when I was eight, six months we slept together. She whimpered at night, she wet the bed. Both of us wards of the state, they got money for us. Cold in the bedroom, she wrapping her skinny arms around my chest. Asking can she look at me. But I fall asleep, I won’t take off my clothes in bed with her. I fall asleep and the same dream comes.

Natalie is standing in the sand. Behind her the ocean spills over, the waves have thick black edges. Natalie in her shredded slip, knobby knees, her pale blue eyes all watery. Natalie standing still as a dead thing spreads her legs and
holds herself with her hand. Her fingers groping, her white face. She squeezes and pulls so hard she bleeds She calls for help She wants me. Faces all around us, big faces just teeth and lips to hold me down for Natalie. Natalie on top of me Natalie pressing down. Her watery eyes say nothing. She sighs with pleasure and her hot urine boils all around us.

I remember like this: Natalie watches me all the time. They’re gone all day, we stay alone with the silent baby. Once there’s no food but a box of salt. Bright blue box, the silver spout pops out. The girl with the umbrella dimples and swings her ponytails, flashes her white skin. I can eat it Natalie. I can eat it all. She looks out the window at the snow. I know she’s scared. I sit down on the floor at her feet. The box is round like a tom-tom, I tip it up. Salt comes in my mouth so fast, fills me up but I can’t quit pouring it … I start to strangle but Natalie won’t look, she screams and screams. She kicks at me with her bare blue feet, the box flies across the room throwing fans of salt. When it gets dark, salt gleams on the floor with a strange cool light. Natalie stays in her chair without moving and I get to sleep alone.

I got lavish cards at Children’s Center, I think a jokester sent them. To Daughter From Mother At Christmas, scrolls of stand-up gold and velvet poinsettias. I used to think about the janitors, those high school boys with smirky eyes and beer breath, licking the envelopes … somehow mailing them from Wichita or Tucson. The agency moved me from home to home. Holidays I stayed at the center, they did paperwork to place me again. Every time there was a different pasty-faced boy with ragged nails, dragging a dun-colored mop. The cards came, they were never quite right. When I
was ten, For Baby’s First Christmas—a fold-out hobbyhorse, a mommy with blond hair and popped eyes. I was seven, the card said Debutante in raised silver script, showed a girl in mink and heels. After I started getting arrested the psychiatrist told them to hold my mail. They said I might go to an asylum.