Sarah (18 page)

There’s no response. I wonder if Sundae escaped.

Stacey nods to Pie to knock again. She does and still there is no answer.

‘Try the door,’ Stacey orders Pie.

‘Whatever you want, sir,’ Pie says and pulls open the door.

There’s a trucker sitting in the driver’s seat, his face turned from us. At first I think it’s Sundae, but the way the flight jacket strains at the shoulders makes me realize it’s someone else.

‘Put your hands up in the air and throw down your weapons,’ Stacey repeats, just like he’s heard said on all the cop shows.

‘Now you know I couldn’t do that,’ says a familiar voice. My heart constricts, thinking it must be Le Loup playing a joke.

‘I’m about to blow a new window in you, if you don’t do as I say,’ Stacey stomps.

‘Do as you must,’ says the voice.

‘I’m not kidding! I’m gonna blow you out!’ Stacey yells.

‘Stacey, I’m gonna give you a clear shot. And after that it’s my turn.’ The driver turns and stands. It takes me a fuzzy bit to recognize Glad standing there, his huge raccoon penis bone proudly dangling around his neck between his two leather pouches.

‘Glad?’ Stacey says. ‘Glad?’ He pushes the gas attendant’s gun down.

‘This is my concern, Stacey. Now I wanted this to go peaceably, but you gave chase, so I had to step in. How you wanting to end this, Stacey?’

‘Glad, I’m just, I’m just getting back one of Le Loup’s.’ Saying Le Loup’s name visibly emboldens Stacey. ‘I got to bring him back. What business is this of yours?’

‘He’s one of mine, Stacey. Now, you know a little of what I do to those that mess with one of mine…’

‘He’s yours? This is yours?’ He points at me. ‘You went to all this trouble to get this back?’

Glad nods solemnly without looking at me.

‘He’s yours. Le Loup might not be too happy ‘bout it, but if you say he’s yours then…’

‘Good to see you again, Stacey.’

‘You too, you too,’ Stacey says dispassionately. ‘Okay, well.’ He waves at his men standing there looking bewildered. ‘We gotta get back. Wouldn’t think you would bother with that one.’ He points to me again. ‘He’s as worthless as tits on a boar hog.’ Stacey turns and starts to head off with his men.

Glad stands there watching their retreat and doesn’t turn to look at me until Stacey’s trucks disappear onto the Interstate. He looks me up and down, up and down, and finally shakes his head woefully.

‘I wanted a bigger bone,’ I say in an unsteady voice.

He nods.

‘Looks like you got it,’ he says.

I shake my head no.

‘I need a drink bad,’ I say weakly.

He nods but says, ‘You’re gonna have to sick it out.’

I nod.

‘I wanted to be a real lizard, like Sarah.’

‘Looks like you got that,’ he says, leaning down to lift me. He scoops me up and I let myself collapse into his arms.

I don’t remember most of the ride back to The Doves. I just remember asking for drinks from Pie’s thermos and spraying out a mouthful of plum tea every time.

I vividly remember the stories of Stacey. I saw them more than heard them. Glad’s tale became graphic movies in my semi-hallucinating state.

Stacey had worked at the Doves. He was once one of Glad’s star lizards. This was back seven years ago when Stacey was thin and lithe as a doe. I succeed in picturing Stacey with hair only to realize later I had actually visualized a hedgehog.

‘Stacey won many a heart, was a sweet little girl,’ Glad says. ‘One day a young man had a date with Stacey and fell in love. He swept Stacey off with him to marry,’ Glad sighs. ‘Well, not a month later Stacey came back all bruised, crying, saying her husband had done sent her back. We welcomed her and all went back as it was.’ Glad’s voice gets restrained. ‘Not too long after my girls started to get sick. Puke the color of pitch, eyes rolling back, barking like dogs, speaking in tongues. Folks started saying The Doves was cursed. That my magic was evil,’ Glad grunts.

‘Finally I sent for an old Choctaw medicine man. He looked at the girls, looked at their blue urine, and he knew. Somehow they were consuming poison. Someone was taking ground-up raccoon penis bone and giving it to my girls.’ He shakes his head.

‘Didn’t take me but five minutes to spy on Stacey sitting there in her trailer, pouring out the powdered dick into the liquid lip gloss all the lizards bought from her for its luminous magical shine. Didn’t take me but another fifteen minutes to find out her husband, who fancied himself a pimp, wanted to do in the competition.’ Glad grinds his teeth as he talks. ‘He was buying up every road kill, hunted, and pet store raccoon from here to Louisiana. I didn’t let on I had found out. I just quietly got my girls to quit using Stacey’s lip gloss. I gifted Stacey with a tin of the most irresistible fry breads, which she gobbled right up.’ He claps his hands together. ‘Well, the short of it is, I gave Stacey quite a dose there, mixed with a few other gifts from the medicine man. Blew up her balls as if she was a breeding bull.’ Glad chuckles. ‘I turned her back to her husband, knowing he couldn’t just pretend his wife’s genitalia weren’t there anymore, which is what I heard how he had handled it. That’s how I know Stacy and that was my dealings with Le Loup, her husband.’ Glad brushes his hands together as if smacking off dirt. ‘That’s why Le Loup makes a big production of proving his virility with all his female lizards. Makes it a goddamned holy celebration. I’m sorry you got to experience that,’ Glad says to me.

I don’t tell him I actually didn’t. I don’t say anything much at all, except to ask for a little can of shoe glue or maybe a little jug of some shine.

I lie in bed for a month recovering. I stay in Glad’s trailer and eat Bolly’s specially-made medicinal gourmet soups. My hair grows to graze my ears for the first time in almost two years.

Pie and Sundae visit to bring me books and entertain me with the humorous tales of their latest tricks.

Whenever I ask about Sarah, however, the subject is artfully changed.

Finally one night, when I feel strong enough, I slip out the window and run to the old Hurley motel. I stand outside our room door, examining the various kick marks, the old ones, some new ones. I listen at the door and strain to hear her sleeping breath. Every fiber in my body yearns for her, to tell her I am home. It feels like we are two magnets separated by a loose-leaf sheet. Finally I knock and, after no response, I ring.

I hear a man’s voice, then a woman’s, soft and muted. I ring again, harder, I kick at the door, bang it with my fists, till finally the door pulls open and I push past the man and run into the room. Our room. I dive onto the bed, where she lies under the covers.

I hear him roar in the background but ignore it and pull back the covers, climb in, and curl as tightly and as closely as I can to my naked mother.

I don’t hear the shouts of the woman I lie against until the man rips me away and throws me against the wall. As his fists drive into me, I scream for her, on the bed, ‘Momma, Momma, Momma!’

I wake up to find myself lying on a thin mattress in a jailhouse cell. My body feels like an amalgam of misplaced bones.

‘So they’ve dropped the charges, Glad. He’s yours to take.’

The cell door slides open and Glad stands there, looking at me with a sadness that burns through me like a fever.

‘She’s gone,’ he says finally.

‘I know.’ I stare up at the cell’s peeling-paint ceiling.

‘She left with Mother Shapiro a good ten months ago. No one has heard from either one of them since.’

I nod.

‘They went to California is all I know.’

‘She always said she’d go there.’ I move my head to look at the rectangular slit of a window in the middle of the cell wall, barred with broad old rusted iron slats and a thick pane of glass.

‘It’s not gonna work’—he looks at his shoes—‘you working for me. You’re a different kind of lizard now.’

I nod. It amazes me that somehow those little light shafts still bother to squeeze through.

‘You can stay with me for as long as you like, though.’

I nod. I raise my hands up toward the window.

‘Here. Norm found this in his truck. It’s your bone.’ He leans over and places it in my raised hand.

I nod my thanks.

‘It won’t work.’

‘I know,’ I say and strain my arm up.

‘You seem a lot like her, though,’ he says with a smile, offering me a compliment that we both know is really not one.

‘I feel a lot like her,’ I say. ‘I do.’ I raise my hand higher, the bone wrapped in my palm, and watch the light dance over my fingertips.

My sincerest gratitude to the following:

Alison Anders, Astor, Godfrey Cheshire, Mary Gaitskill, Panagiotis Gianopoulos, Bruce LeRoy, Beverly Mesh, Lewis Nordan, Sharon Olds, Dr. Terrence Owens, Meaghan Rady, Christine Rahimi, Karen Rinaldi, Joel Rose, Tom Spanbauer, Speedie, Art Spiegelman, Jerry Stahl, Laurie Stone, John Strausbaugh, Lauren Stauber, Catherine Texier, Suzanne Vega.

My sincerest gratitude to the Authors Guild and to all of the following:

Trevor

All my sisters of 465 Friendly Home for Girls, all the superb staff at the Health and Healing Center of San Francisco, all the wonderful people at The Moth, Layke Anderson, Michael Arias, Levi Asher, Yolanda Banks, Charleen Barila, Adrian Bartol, Julia Bernhardt, Jean-Paul Berthoin, M.J. Bogatin, Earl Brown, Kurt Brungardt, Jose Luis Carreon-Macedo, Eugene Cash, Ryan Child, Peter Coffin, Isaac Constantine - Knight of Faith, Jan and Lloyd Constantine, Billy Corgan, Devin Cutugno and family, Donald David, Deadwood season 3, Justin Desmangles, Luiz Fernando Emediato and Lidia Luther and everyone at Geração Editorial

Judi Farkas, Grant Faulkner, Jeff Feuerzeig, Christopher Frizzelle, Flemming Funch, Uwe Gabel, Nicole V. Gagné, Matthew Gardiner, Pablo Daniel Godoy-Estel, Dr. Erica T. Goode, Dalyssa Gomes, Miranda Albert Haines, Chris Hanley and Muse Productions, John Hawkes, Laura Heffron, Ron Hogan, Paul M. Jacobs, Stephanie Jankowitz-Castillo, Jo-jo, Sharon J Kahn and Kahn Media Strategies Inc., Richard Kecskemeti and Kecskemeti Remodeling, Martha Keith, Hannah Kelly, Scott Kessler, Todd Kessler, Noah Khoshbin, Julia Kim, Richard Klein and dot429, Steven Klein, Katia Kulawick

Kimberly Lau, Leigh Ledare, Hana Lee, Tequin Lelong, Lemon Magazine, Scott Lettieri, Jasmin Lim, Gary Lippman and Vera Szombathelyi, Linda Loudermilk, Paula Malcomson, Shirley Manson, Jill Manton, Trixie Marx, Damion Matthews, Karim Mayfield, David and Rita Milch and family, Andrew T. Miltenberg, Chuck Mobley, Errol Morris, Lucy Mulloy, Nancy Murdock, Dan F. Nicoletta, Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics, Jess Owens and family, Jennifer Parkes and family, Diane Pernet

Luciana Pessanha and the cast and crew of “JT Um Conto de Fadas Punk” (“JT, A Punk Fairy Tale”), Barbara Petratos, Matt Pipes, Mike Potter, Carmelo Puglisi and Foyles, Nathaniel Rich, Lucinda Riva and family, Rudy Rivera, Dr. Bruce Roberts, Nilson Rodrigues and everyone at Brasilia BIFF especially Maria Alice Monteiro, Anna Karina de Carvalho, Martim Haefliger, Sophia Kossoski, Lucas Tobias da Fonseca, and Priscila Miranda do Rosario, Dr. Phillip Romero, Cynthia Rose, Henry Rosenthal, Julia Sach, The Sapporo International Short Film Festival with special thanks to Toshiya Kubo, Takashi Homma, Masami Yamagishi, and Ayanocozey Ryoma

Katrin Schumann, Alejandro Seri, Elisa Seydi and Alexandre Paul Demetrius, Adam Sherman, Pierre Siankowski, Johnny T. Silver, Sarah Silverman, Smashbox’s Lori Taylor Davis and Nina Van Arsdale-Berg, Jeff and Joan Stanford and family, The Stanford Inn Mendocino, Denise Sudler, Patti Sullivan and Jill Harris, Thomas Tillinghast, Joslin Van Ardsale, Gus Van Sant, Erin Wallen, Sascha Weiss and family, Robert Wilson, Michael Young, Georgia Zaris.

Cover art: Matt Pipes

www.mattpipes.com

Website design: Simple Cloud Works

Web & Graphic Design :: Tech and Social Media Consultancy

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JT LeRoy still lives in California and enjoys playing whiffle ball
.
JT’s e-mail address is [email protected];

homepage, http://www.jtleroy.com

“JT LeRoy’s first two books,
Sarah
and
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
, will prove to be among the most influential books of the last ten years. This is not because they are read and understood by everyone; it’s because they are read and loved, rabidly, by thousands of young and very sensitive people who believe that JT speaks for them. He does speak for them, and does so without knowing that he does, and does so with a perfect and bizarre eloquence.”

—Dave Eggers, author of
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius