Chloe Doe
Copyright © 2007 by Suzanne Phillips
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.lb-teens.com
First eBook Edition: October 2008
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-04096-9
Contents
This is the Place you Become Miss America
For the sake of clarity, I’d like to take a moment to define what may be unfamiliar terms for my readers outside the United States. John/Jane Doe are terms applied to unidentified male/female bodies. Johns are the male clientele of prostitutes. Janes are women without identity, those who are seemingly invisible to the rest of society.
For my readers unfamiliar with the Spanish language, the following definitions may be helpful:
niño/niña
—boy/girl
abuelita
—grandmother
ramera
—prostitute
muchachas
—young women
lo siento
—I’m sorry
cria
—baby
puta
—whore
ataúd
—coffin
I hope this makes for smoother reading.
This is the Place you Become Miss America
A
t four p.m. the music plays in rec. This is where we learn a new talent. We will all learn dance or it’s back to our rooms for solitude, to think about why we don’t want to learn the merengue, to think about why we don’t want to hold the sweaty, fat hand of Dolores or Tina, why we don’t want to swing across the floor in the arms of one of our own.
They want us to say we were no good but now that’s changed and we’re ready to go out and work a real job. The nurses, the doctors, our social workers here at Madeline Parker Institute for Girls with Real Problems, they want us to say, Sure, I’ll take that job at Burger King. I’ll be happy to. And leave our lives on the street behind. No more turning tricks. There’s a better life for us. But Burger King doesn’t pay the rent, not even on that crackerjack apartment on the Amtrak. It doesn’t buy food. It doesn’t give us an opportunity.
They think we’re out there never seeing tomorrow, but that’s all we see: Maybe
mañana
things will be better. Maybe
mañana
I’ll win the lottery. Maybe
mañana
I’ll meet my one true love.
Things can change that fast.
In the meantime, we paid the rent and ate Hostess cup-cakes from the 7-Eleven, and maybe a Slurpee, because it’s something we always wanted but were told, No, not today. Which meant not tomorrow. Not Tuesday of next week. Not until you can pay for it yourself. Not unless you know your way around the counter, around the night clerk.
The first question the cops ask you, the first time they pick you up: Where did you live? The time before now. The time when you had parents and maybe brothers and sisters. Where did you live?
How old are you?
Dieciocho.
You’re not eighteen. Do you have proof you’re eighteen? Show me proof you’re eighteen, and this time I let you walk.
What state did you live in? Come on, honey, give me at least that. What state?
California,
mijo.
You don’t sound California. What state?
Do you have a telephone number? From the time before now. Do you know your parents’ telephone number?
No
familia. Está no familia.
My family died in a house fire; in an automobile crash; in a boating accident in the Pacific Ocean. Or one after the other to some disease, cancer or AIDS. Or you tell them they moved leaving no forwarding address one day when you were in school. This is the best response. The easiest. No questions asked because you don’t have answers. No death certificate, no hospital papers. You say your family vanished.
They call it cultural blending, the way I substitute the
español
for the English. To emphasize. They say I do it to words that need an extra understanding. And maybe I can get away with it, with my dark hair and almond-shaped, beer-bottle-brown eyes. But my skin is too pale. It’s no good. What am I hiding behind the words, the words in Spanish? Why, Chloe, won’t you say it in English?
They ask, like I have a secret. Like I’m the Great Houdini slipping out of my former life.
Was it so bad growing up Chloe-white-girl with an education and maybe a good family? Or maybe not a good family. Maybe a very bad family. Is that why? Did your father beat you? Did he touch you like he wasn’t supposed to? Did he molest you? Did your father take you into a dark room, maybe your brother’s bedroom when he was at school or band practice or sleeping, and anyway, too young to know? Did he take you and take you and take you? And is that why?
I don’t live in the streets. Not anymore. Some are disappointed — those who want to know a real ticker. A bomb set to blow any minute.
I have better control than that. I lived in a closet with a toilet and a sink, near the Amtrak. The building roared, the walls pitched with each passing train.
On the street you have to watch out for yourself. I did what I had to to get by. You’d do it, too.
No doors open in this city after eleven p.m. Except car doors, swung open from the inside and a body broken down over the front seat, looking for a little coochie:
Twenty dollars? Thirty dollars? Gets me how much?
The place they send you when you have the last name Doe isn’t bad. Quiet, like the street right after a car backfires, at night, when the sound can travel for miles or hours. The quiet following a sonic boom. Following anger’s passage from a closed room. Following a death of any kind.
Quiet that strips the paint from the walls. Here, bird-shit-gray walls peeling like cut hair, curled on unwashed floors and pushed aside from foot traffic.
Madeline Parker Institute for Girls.
Tight-faced Janes, we sit here molting. Yellow, black Janes. Sit in the chair. Sit there. Tell us your sorrows.
They think a little talk will do us good. Confession is the first step to recovery.
They tell us, This is the place that’s better than the streets. Better than Manny Marquez and a box with no windows to sleep in. To piss in. To bathe standing at the sink. Ninety-eight dollars a week and you can own this lovely
ataúd.
Be careful it doesn’t blow down with the wind. Careful you’re not in it when the earthquake comes. Careful it doesn’t fall on you like a fate.
This is the place that can change you. Come in. We have a bed for you. We have hot food, as much as you can eat. We have a shower and a window. For you. We have doctors. That rash you have? Gone. The crabs, the herpes? Gone.
This is the place where lobotomies are practiced. Hypnosis: You are no longer a whore, a
puta.
You are a woman. A good girl-woman. When you wake up you will believe this.
Let Dora do your hair for you, a fine braid down your back. Like all the other contestants, in our gray-green gowns. Single file to the dining room, to rec. To group: Talk. Tell us how you’re feeling today. Don’t be shy. Well, it’s OK to be a little. But don’t stutter. Points off for stuttering. For touching your hair. For resting your chin in your hand. No points at all for nothing. No TV. No vote on chocolate cake or canned peaches for dessert. How are you feeling today?
Fine.
Fine?
Better.
Better? Than what?
Cross your legs. Fold your hands like the Mother. This is the place that’s better than the streets. This is the place you become Miss America.
M
y sister, Camille, and I play Cleopatra and Mark Antony. I’m always Mark Antony, and sometimes a slave-girl, too. Camille is always Cleopatra and only Cleopatra.
She likes the dying scene best.
“Together we built this empire,” Camille says, sitting on the front step, on the pillows we took from our beds. “Mark Antony, you are king and I your queen.”
“Yes, Cleopatra, Queen of all Egypt.”
“But look, Mark Antony, our enemy comes. With thousands more than our own army. We’re done.” She sighs and her green eyes look like they might cry. “Let’s drink our last moment of life, then drink from this cup.”
She lifts the silver wine goblet our mother bought for fifty cents at a garage sale. The bottom is uneven and it won’t stand. Camille holds it above our heads.
“Together. We must go together. Hold my hand.” She reaches out from under her yellow bathrobe and takes my hand. “Drink, Mark Antony. Drink!”
I’m supposed to pretend-sip, then gasp, like something is burning in my throat, then grab at my chest and sink to the ground at her feet, twisting in pain. When Camille pretend-dies she just slips off the pillows and lays herself over my stomach.
Sometimes Camille doesn’t drink, but lives on, ordering her slaves to remove my body.
“Take him,” she says. “You may throw him in the river.” Then she walks away saying, “Stupid, stupid man.”
Camille models our mother’s favorite nightgown, the one that’s put away in her hanky drawer, separate from her others. It’s a see-through, gauzy, aqua material with a satin bow in the center, where Camille is developing breasts. Our mother says she wore it on her honeymoon with our father, which was a weekend at the jalopy motel in Borrego Springs, in the middle of the Southern California desert. She has a picture postcard of the motel in the family photo album. There’s a swimming pool in front and short bungalows in back. There are palm trees and red lounge chairs and a blue neon sign that reads
HONEYMOON HAVEN — NO VACANCY.
Whenever I look at the picture, I see my parents in the pool, laughing and slapping water at each other. I see them sitting on the lounge chairs, holding hands. Our mother says they were happy, at first. That they held hands and had eyes only for each other. I want to fall in love like that one day. I don’t say that aloud anymore. When I do, Camille calls me a baby and purses her lips like I’m something bad to look at. I’m in the fifth grade. Next year I’ll be moving on to the middle school, and Camille says she won’t even notice me if I don’t grow up. She’ll be in eighth grade and has friends who talk about real love and, she says, holding hands doesn’t measure up.
“What do you think of this?”
Camille has changed into our mother’s Friday office dress, the one that can be worn out to drinks when she adds a scarf and hoop earrings. Camille stands in front of the long mirror behind our mother’s bedroom door. Her feet fit perfectly into our mother’s size seven high heels. She turns, pulls on the hem of the skirt, looks over her shoulder for the rear view, turns and watches her profile through a series of smiles and hair adjustments, examines and pokes breasts that aren’t really noticeable. I tell her this.
“I have more now than you’ll ever have,” she says.
“I don’t care.” But I’m starting to.
“Yes, you do.” She’s so confident about this, she thinks I’ll cry when I’m slow to develop. “Skinny girls are always the last to show on top. You’ll have to stuff your bra.”
“No, I won’t.”
Then she picks up the box of tissues from our mother’s bureau and begins stuffing them into the front of the office-to-evening dress she’s modeling.
“You stuff your bra,” I say.
“Of course.” And that tone is in her voice, the one that says there’s no hope for me.