LIVES OF GERI
Marie Hoffman
B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2004
PROJECT
Submitted in partial satisfaction of
the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH
(Creative Writing)
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
FALL
2009
LIVES OF GERI
A Project
by
Marie Hoffman
Approved by:
__________________________________, Committee Chair
Peter Grandbois, Ph.D.
____________________________
Date
__________________________________, Second Reader
David Madden, Ph.D.
____________________________
Date
ii
Student: Marie Hoffman
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format
manual, and that this project is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for
the Project.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator
David Toise Ph.D.
Department of English
________________
Date
iii
Abstract
of
LIVES OF GERI
by
Marie Hoffman
Lives of Geri is a collection of original short fiction, which follows the main character’s quest for
authenticity through ever-changing circumstances, both real and imagined. The character of Geri
is a passive young girl with an inability to coalesce the world in real time with the workings of
her imagination; thus the world constantly takes her by surprise. The fragmented structure of
some of the narrative is meant to reflect Geri’s own state of disorientation.
_______________________, Committee Chair
Peter Grandbois, Ph.D.
_______________________
Date
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………………vi
Stories
CONVICTION……………………………………………………………..……..……………1
A SPOONFUL OF CRUNCHY PEANUT BUTTER………...…………………..………..….5
GERI THE SPIDER…..……………...………………………………………….……………..8
GERI THOUGHT SHE KNEW…………………………………………………………...….19
BE A GOOD GIRL….....……………………………………………………………..……... 25
MANLEY COURT…..….………………………………………………………..…………. 36
GLITER TIGHTS……………………….........……………………………...…………….….44
v
PREFACE
The stories included in this project began as a guttural lament. Through rigorous revision they
morph into fiction. All writing is an act of translation.
vi
1
CONVICTION
Geri slid from the ripped vinyl seat and onto the pavement. She was supposed to be early
for the pumpkin patch trip, but Mike had to be to work early that day so Geri went to school extra
early as a matter of convenience. She held her mother’s camera and a sack lunch. The heavy door
closed with just too little force. The blue and white F-150 made a sharp U-turn and rumbled
away.
She went to the place she was told to meet her teacher; the same place the class lined up
after every recess. Geri would be first in line for the pumpkin patch. First the worst, second the
best, third the raspberry turd. She stood alone for a few minutes with the tetherball poles and
basketball hoops.
She walked across the blacktop and through misty halls. Small trees with no leaves dotted
the collection of brown hexagon buildings. She stood in front of her classroom, trying to look into
it. Chubby fingers framed her face. The deep brown window tints, and all the lights off anyway.
Her jacket rustled loud. Hands dropped to her sides. Silence echoed her rubber sole shoes on
polished concrete. She couldn’t remember what her teacher looked like. She returned to the still
empty playground and stood in line.
But something was wrong. There had to be a reason nobody was there yet. They all left.
They had never come. She was too early, or she was too late. A maintenance man emerged from a
hallway, surprised to see solitary towhead glowing in the fog. He turned the corner and
disappeared. She wanted to follow him and ask him if everyone left already, or would they be
coming. (Is it a school day? Do I go to this school?) But she was afraid of him.
2
She’d never walked home alone before, but she thought she knew the way: down the street,
turn at the house with the wooden pelicans on an anchor in the front yard, walk through the field,
across the railroad tracks, then home.
In front of the school, a kid climbed out of a VW bus with his sack lunch and his mother’s
camera. He did not know that nobody was there. Wait stop, Geri thought. We are too late. We are
too early. We are not going to the pumpkin patch. Everyone has forgotten us. Another car pulled
up. Another kid. Another sack lunch.
Geri would not be swayed.
She walked down the street. Cars passed. Do not trust. She passed the street that her after
school daycare was on. They were never happy to see her, the other kids or the lady, and she got
in trouble all the time for stupid stuff there. They didn’t like her even before she got caught
peeing with the door open.
Yes, the field. Path through spindly weeds. One flat wheaty color: the path same as the
weeds, a place she walked through, always deserted, so it did not feel wrong. She felt she was
almost home.
She knew the anthill was coming up. Right in the middle of the path. She always looked
over her shoulder as her Mom said c’mon Geri. Geri wanted to get as close to it as she could, to
see into their miniature underground world. A tiny gateway of a powder volcano spewing busy
creatures out, searching for dead things and dropped food. The ants knew what to do. Sometimes
she stepped on the mound, sending them into a panic. Antennae frenzy, legs and legs and legs.
But she knew that when she walked by the next day, the conic entry would be rebuilt, the ants
already forgotten the mystery of the quash. Geri knew she did not matter to them.
She saw her house across the tracks. Relieved that the truck was parked outside. Good. I
can tell Mike about nobody being there. She looked both ways on the two-lane road. She crossed.
3
She began to wonder if she would get in trouble for walking home alone. She was never supposed
to walk home alone. Not ever. Because of the world. Because that man from the state fair is out
there, the one from the dart tossing game.
Geri, stop pulling on my hand.
I wanna go to the big swings, Geri whined.
Geri looked forward to the big swings all year. She thought that the man pulling on her
other hand was her mother’s boyfriend, ready to take her to the big swings.
We will go after we’re done here, her mother said. Mike is trying to win you a prize.
The man was wearing the same color jeans as Mike. Geri was not paying attention to the
fact that Mike was playing the game.
I said stop it, Geri. You have to hold my hand, so you don’t get lost. Do you want to go hoLet go of my daughter’s hand, she heard her mother say.
Geri did not understand why her Mom yelled that at Mike. She was still thinking about the
swings. She had to be told later that it was a stranger.
Geri crossed the railroad tracks. She passed the truck. The padlock was not on the front
door. She knocked. Mike opened the door and looked over her head. He jumped a little when he
looked down.
Why aren’t you at school?
Nobody was there.
Did you walk home by yourself?
Nobody was there. I think they already left.
I told you, you were early. You got there before everyone else. Now I have to take you
back, which makes me late for work, and we don’t have a phone so I can’t even call.
4
Sorry.
They climbed into the F-150. It had one primer door, a camper shell and a seat in the back
for Geri that never did get bolted down.
Now you might miss the bus to the pumpkin patch.
He started the car and looked at Geri sideways.
Kids swarmed the playground, but nobody was in line.
5
A SPOONFUL OF CRUNCHY PEANUT BUTTER
Under the split-level staircase, Geri sang to herself. She traced her finger along the bits of
gravel cemented into the top of the brick and mortar platform. Cars slid by in the background,
trailing soft air swishy sounds and light motor rumbles.
A spoonful of crunchy peanut butter, she thought. That’s what I want.
She looked at the doorknob, a pewter globe with a keyhole. She looked at the keyhole, at
the closed curtains, and back at the keyhole.
She found shapes in the gravel the way she found shapes in the tiles on the shower walls, or
in linoleum speckles. A dog, but not just any dog, Goofy. Or maybe it was Pluto. Those two
always seemed to pop up. An ice cream truck jingled by. Colorful stickers advertised sherbet
push-pops and pillowy cartoon heads with bubble gum eyes. She looked at the closed curtains
again and traced a couple figure eights with the tip of her finger.
The neighbor opened the door that faced her family’s apartment. White leather tennis shoes
tied tight. She looked up to a new face. These neighbors were new. Most of the neighbors were
new.
You’ve been out here a long time, are you okay?
Yes, I’m waiting for my Mom.
Do you know when she’ll be here?
No, she’s at court today. She told me to wait for her.
Do you need a drink of water or anything? It’s hot out here.
(Geri thought about saying yes, but her mother held a rabid conviction about Geri never
talking to strangers for any reason. Even the old lady who lived alone next door could be
conspiring with kidnappers).
6
No, she’ll be here soon.
Okay, he crinkled his brow smiled with one side of his lips.
Well let me know if you need anything.
The deadbolt clicked into place. Geri was again alone on the doorstep. She looked at the
closed curtains. Any minute now.
There would likely be no juice boxes or jars of sun tea. They had not slept at the apartment
in a couple of weeks. Perhaps her mother would send her to the grocery store on her purple
bicycle. They used to walk together, pulling the red Radio Flyer wagon with April and Mikey
across busy streets and through a neighborhood with no sidewalks. They had to go slow and
steady or spill the margarine, the ground beef, the frozen beans, and the babies out into the street.
It was a tricky mile, and her mother did not drive.
They’d been staying at her mother’s friend Patty’s. The police came and took pictures of
Little Mike’s bruises. Mikey stood shirtless and pale in the bright flash, his diaper peaking out of
the top of his brown corduroy shorts. Mikey’s bruises turned yellow, and now they were almost
home. Geri looked at the keyhole and the closed curtains. Her mother told her that morning to
take the bus home like usual. Finally, like usual.
They might need groceries, but they always had crunchy peanut butter in the cupboard.
Geri was sure she could get a spoonful to snack on while she did her homework at the dining
table. Then she went to the closet and got out the mini ice chest where she kept all her
multiplication table study materials. After a half hour of random flashcards and a recitation of the
set they were working on (it was 9’s a couple weeks ago), Geri would play with the babies while
her mother got started on dinner.
7
She looked across the street at Mr. Foster’s fish heads nailed to the tree, taut leathery scales
and bone. Some of them still had their eyes, the lips flaking away. It was the last week of school,
and it was hot. Bored with tracing patterns in the pebbles, she sat with her legs folded like a
pretzel, and started plugging the ends of her shoelaces into the holes of her shoes. She did not see
the lady approaching.
Geri?
Geri recognized the lady who lived across the street, next door to Mr. Foster. Her mother
had introduced the two of them once, but Geri couldn’t remember her name.
The first thing Geri saw when she walked into the room was the back of a television. The
opening notes to a court show theme song started. Mikey and April lay on their pastel blankets
against the dark brown carpet. They had the red snotty faces of babies who had just cried
themselves to exhaustion.
There isn’t any more formula in the bag, said the lady.
Geri sat on the sofa and fished in the diaper bag. There were a couple cloth diapers, rash
cream, powder, changes of clothes. No more formula. Through the shear curtains, the sunlight
and the tree in their own front yard across the street looked how it did at dinnertime. The lady
brought it out to her in an amber plastic cup, like the kind they had for sodas at pizza parlors.
Yeah, I don’t know much, said the lady. Just that there was some sort of accident. I don’t
know how serious or what.
The lower shelves of the entertainment center were lined with meticulously labeled soap opera
episodes: “Gary and Karla’s Wedding -1986” and “Christmas 1985.” The top shelf dedicated to
knick-knacks: a miniature Mount Rushmore, a plastic house plant. Two ceramic puppies
tumbling.
8
GERI THE SPIDER
The tripod and home movie camera were set up near the fireplace, the whole elaborate
system hooked up to the old console television in the corner of her grandparents’ living room.
Geri watched herself on the screen, first looking very serious with crossed legs and her hands in
her lap, then pushing the tip of her tongue through an empty spot where her baby tooth just fell
out. The rust colored rocking chair dipped forward when she uncrossed her legs, wet hair combed
to one side,
Okay, Geri we’re just about ready.
Geri slumped her shoulders and sat with her knees locked together. Grandma stood with her
hands on her hips next to Grandpa behind the camera.
Does Jo ever hit you?
Yes.
Does she hit you when your Dad’s not home?
Yes.
Her teenage uncle Paul started asking her about whether or not Jo hit her earlier that day.
They were swimming in Grandma and Grandpa’s doughboy, Geri up to her shoulders in the water
doing back flips. Paul talked about some new skateboard ditch he and his friends found. Grandma
opened the slider door.
Paul, you’re rice is ready.
Can you bring it out?
9
He walked around the pool eating the wild rice pilaf. He teased Geri that it was made of
tiny slugs. A grain stuck to the end of the tines, he held it out.
Try it Geri, try a slug.
She dunked her head under and popped back up a few feet away. That’s when things turned
serious.
Hey, how do you like living at your Dad’s?
It’s okay.
It had never occurred to Geri that she could form an opinion about where she lived.
Does Jo ever hit you?
Geri pulled her feet up and bobbed in the water. She tilted back a little and blew some
bubbles.
Yes, she said. This was the truth. When any of the kids got into trouble, they usually got a
spanking, and Jo was usually the one to do it.
Where is your Dad when she hits you?
Geri floated backwards, propelling herself with light kicks.
Um.
Is your Dad at home, does he know?
She thought about it, she supposed her dad knew. But where was Dad when they got in
trouble? It seemed like he was at work or at his refrigeration school or something. Usually it was
Jo alone with the them, so yeah, spankings happen when Dad is not at home.
Yes, she said.
Morning announced itself with a cartoon duck screaming mid-sentence in the living room
and a stream of pee in the toilet bowl. Geri’s head felt stretched out from the fits of the day and
10
night before. The whole thing was stupid. She refused to believe that she would really be
grounded to her bed for a whole week. Her father believed her, that it was all a misunderstanding.
Maybe Dad talked to Ken and it’s okay, she thought.
Out the window, Broadway traffic passed over the sour grapevine that ran along the top of
the chain link fence.
Geri knew what lying felt like. Despite her recent reputation, she did not like to lie. Other
than the occasional embellishment to puff herself up (learned from her father), and the occasional
downplaying of involvement to preserve her rear end, she only told one lie in her life that made
her feel like a liar, and that had been a whole year ago.
Dad and Jo wanted to talk to her about her mother’s husband. Did her mom and Mike fight
a lot? Yes. In front of her? Well, no, she didn’t see it. Where was she when Mike and her mom
were fightng? Usually when her mom and Mike were arguing, he told her to go to her room. And
you hear fighting in your room? Yes.
Her father tilted forward with his hands folded in front of his knees, waiting to hear who
she wanted to live with. Jo sat next to him on the old plaid sofa, her torso just beginning to swell
with Baby Nate. Geri loved her dad too much to tell him that she loved her mother better.
The back door was open. The other kids splashed around in the pool. She broke the silence
by saying: you. Lying felt awful.
Jo caught Geri halfway back up the bunk ladder.
What are you doing?
I was just going to the bathrYou will ask permission before you get down for any reason. Every time I catch you off
your bed, I’m adding another day.
11
Jo believed that Geri was a liar.
On the bus ride to court she and her mother crossed over the American River.
Mom, boats, look boats!
Her towhead bangs turned around until the boats were out of sight. Her father smiled at her
when she walked into the courtroom. A yellow polo shirt tucked into his belted nice jeans.
The judge with hair like Dracula asked her name and told her she had cool purple sneakers.
Its okay, said the judge, just tell the truth.
Her hands at her sides, she rubbed her thumbs along her fingers.
She did not want to say it.
I don’t know, she said.
Are you not sure? asked the judge.
Yeah, she said now holding her hands together in front of her.
Do you want to live with both of your parents?
Yeah, I love them both, she said. (And this was the truth.)
On the bus ride home, her mother explained that the papers said everything would stay the
same with her visiting her dad every other weekend.
I have you for Christmas, your birthday, Easter, and the Fourth of July. She folded the
custody papers into her purse.
Too bad I couldn’t get you for Halloween. You aren’t going to get to trick or treat this year.
Geri loved trick or treating, but was more relieved about Christmas with her mom. The year
before, her Dad and Jo told her that the first Christmas trees were decorated with the shrunken
heads of sacrificed babies. Grandpa showed up Christmas morning with a slick plastic trash bag
12
of presents thrown over his shoulder. Grandma followed him with an armful of fuzzy red
stockings full of candy canes. Geri, Neil, Rachel, and Anna rejoiced at the fairness of the world.
Are you putting holes in my blankets?
Geri startled at the sudden shouting. Wanting to neither see nor be seen, she peeled back
the blanket from her mattress and hung it on two bent nails, creating a pocket in the corner of the
room that could be her own world. She had been whispering songs watching Broadway traffic.
She looked up at the nails. It had not occurred to her when she hung it that she was damaging the
blanket.
It already had holes in it, she said.
Why would you poke holes in my blankets? Take it down now.
Geri lifted the corners off the painted-over nails. She crouched herself into the corner, now
exposed to anyone who walked into, through, or by the room. Jo was still looking at her. A fresh
burst of tears squeezed through her puffy eyes. Don’t, she told herself.
Quit playing around. Think about what you’ve done.
She could not think about what she’d done. Not as long as she could hear Mary Poppins
tidying up the nursery, and see Rachel and Anna lounging on the couch in their underwear eating
ice cream.
Geri hopped down and closed the door.
Oooh, Rachel said from the couch.
Your mother had custody of you for the first nine years of your life, so its only fair that I
have custody of you for the next nine years of your life, does that make sense?
13
He kept the Polaroid hidden from Geri. She watched the white trimmed, black square as it
passed from her father to the bailiff to the judge who studied it down through bifocals.
Full custody granted.
Yes, Geri supposed that made sense.
Geri climbed down and ran to the dresser. She grabbed her Children’s Book of Bible Stories
and jumped back on her bed. They would not yell at her for reading this. The book opened as if
by command to Jonah and the Whale. The peculiar illustration fascinated Geri because the whale
was quite clearly a shark. People weren’t swallowed by sharks, they were eaten by them. It made
the story seem a little more dramatic. (Geri shivered in fear during her bath time after seeing
Jaws).
The book had also been open to Jonah and the Whale months earlier when her mother
caught her reading it from the carpetbag her father had given her to hold all her church books so
she could study at her mom’s house.
April sat on her mother’s hip wrapped in a towel. Mikey played with brightly colored
plastic rings on the floor next to Geri.
Why are you reading that? You never read those. She eyed the open carpetbag.
They’re brainwashing you, she said.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges.
Good, said Ashleigh. What do you think about adding two more this week: Samuel I and II
and Kings I and II.
14
She wrote Samuel I and II and Kings I and II on the chalkboard. The two of them recited it
together. Ashleigh assigned the Tower of Babel for next time, and then Bible study was over.
Geri met Ashleigh at a more grown up Bible study that Ashleigh’s parents were hosting.
Has anyone seen any good movies lately?
The question surprised Geri. Usually they talked about boring stuff like Armageddon. Her
hand shot up.
Beetlejuice! she said. But everyone pretended not to hear her.
I watched it at my Mom’s house, have you seen it? Geri asked Ashleigh.
No, and I don’t want to. It’s disgusting and it doesn’t speak the truth.
Her skipping breaths became an exhausted lullaby, first in measured beats of four, then
three, and dwindling to regular. Stinging eyes opened to the dark and blink. The spine
straightened itself upright. She looked out the window. The billboard in the lot next to their house
lit up. Headlights passed over the sour grapevine.
A shadow muted the glow of prime time underlining her closed door, followed by the click
of the old knob shank.
Geri?
The floorboards absorbed her father’s rounded silhouette. A chunk of mussed hair fell from
a loop on top of her head. He rested a fat hand on the wood bunk railing and looked up at her, all
piled up on folded legs. Still coming down from the upset.
Honey, dinner’s ready.
Three rapid sniffles. Okay, she looked down at her rumpled blanket. She had to be careful
here, talking could initiate a new outbreak. He patted the top of her foot.
You know I believe you.
15
Uh-huh (because “yes” would surely start the tears).
I’m going to go talk to Elder Roth tomorrow morning and tell him your side of the story,
okay? I think he’ll understand, I really do.
He squeezed her foot.
C’mon.
Neil flung mashed potatoes onto his plate. Rachel and Anna already had a bright red KoolAid stains on the corners of their mouths. Jo came out of the kitchen with a pile of Shake-n-Bake
pork chops and a pan of some sort of vegetable.
What are you doing up? The panhandle spun in a half circle on the rough picnic table.
Everyone looked at Geri. Nate closed his eyes and raised his hands.
I just told her dinner was ready, Jo. She can’t eat dinner on her bYes she can. Jo’s raised her voice.
Geri’s pomegranate face contracted, her chin a rough dimpled patch.
Come on let’sShe’s a liar Nate. She’s lied about me, and she’s lied about Ken and she’s going to lie about
you next.
Geri ran back to her room and stuttered apologies in the dark.
Oh no. I don’t want to go to the Roth’s.
She said it. But she meant it as an ironic statement. Geri did not yet know the phrase “ironic
statement.” “Kidding” is a word she would have and did use (which further escalated the
situation).
Sister Eunice’s coiffed perm and glossy lips turned to the back seat.
16
Why don’t you want to go over to Ken Roth’s house?
The car slowed to a stop at a red light. Eunice was waiting for an answer. The car was
silent.
Cause Ken tickles and chases me, Geri replied.
The van made pleasant and feathery motor rumbles. Geri could tell they did not get it. She
was very much looking forward to going to the Roth’s. After the recitation of all the book names,
she hung out with the Roth kids or jumped on the trampoline and watched cartoons. And if Ken
was home, he would take a few minutes to play with her. He reminded Geri of her uncles. She
loved Ken like an uncle. His family had been extra nice to her since her mom was first in the
hospital.
She looked down at her Bible and literature. Perhaps the delivery was too deadpan (another
concept she did not yet know). The car was silent. Her face burned. She wanted to disappear.
Eunice was still turned around.
Does he do anything else?
Geri thought about it.
Well, sometimes he holds me down.
Eunice touched her fingertips to her mouth and looked at Brother James.
The words would not work. Eunice asked and Geri answered. When adults ask questions,
kids have to answer. Having your hands held down was a part of any good tickle fight. It forced
the tickled to explode in laughter, which was the whole point of being tickled. But the air in the
car had changed. Geri quit trying and looked out the window.
When the car of parishioners arrived at the Roth’s house, Eunice ran immediately to Ken.
Geri was told to stay in the living room. She could see Eunice and Ken talking at the other end of
17
the house through a tunnel of doorways and furniture. Ken looked concerned. The two of them
looked up at her throughout their discussion. She wished she had not said anything at all. Geri did
not understand how to fix this. It was supposed to be a stupid joke. She felt sick to her stomach.
She could not wait until things could go back to normal. She did not mean it like that. She
understood what they thought she said. But being chased, tickled and even held down was not the
same as being touched. She could not figure out how to explain that difference to them in the car.
If she had been touched she would tell her parents she had been touched, not a van full of near
strangers that she had been tickled.
Geri froze and looked toward the house. The other kids froze and looked at Geri. A
partially deflated soccer ball lumped to a standstill.
Geri, get in here! Jo yelled, her angry face appeared and disappeared through back door.
What did I do? Geri asked.
Just get in here, Jo said again, this time from the kitchen.
Geri’s mind raced for some rule she might have broken, some piece of incriminating
evidence Jo might have found. Cautious steps carried her through the laundry room and into the
kitchen. She could not think of any reason. Since being grounded to her bed for a week over the
misunderstanding with Elder Roth, she’d been extra cautious and a very good girl.
Jo stood at the counter with her back to Geri. She held a large plastic mixing bowl on its
side. She turned and held out a spatula covered in chocolate.
Geri looked at the spatula, uncomprehending.
It’s a treat for you. You’ve been good lately, Jo said. I just made it sound like that so
nobody else would come in here.
18
Geri took the spatula. Jo placed the tall plastic lid over the cake and clicked the handle
down. The counters were moist with a dishrag sheen. It smelled of powdered sugar and warm
cocoa. Geri licked the biggest mass of whipped chocolate. It melted over her tongue and in
between her teeth.
Mom!
Somebody stomped through the back door. Geri sidled in behind the microwave cart to
keep the spatula from view.
19
GERI THOUGHT SHE KNEW
Geri saw the yellow “End Pavement” sign approaching. The baby hairs lining the edge of
her scalp streamed back with the evergreen air. Her father looked to the driver seat at Jo and said
something about gas and meeting up somewhere with the 17. The car did not slow down.
Geri did not know where they were headed. She began to wonder if they would turn around
and drive all that way back. They had gone further than ever this time, too far, she thought. And
they hadn’t stopped yet. They used to take hikes on Sundays after they stopped going to the
church. Now they just drove through the endless blue mountains.
Anna quietly sucked on some fruit candy she saved from the day before. Rachel passed in
and out of a light snooze. Neil reclined in the back of the wagon with his arms behind his head,
propped up on a bent out of shape laundry basket. His elbows were spotty with dirt. He stared out
the window. Baby Nate sat between Big Nate and Jo in the front seat, all but invisible to the
occupants in the back.
Often they poked around for vacant houses to let. They learned to be more careful about
doing this since the lady appeared on the porch at the old trailer (the big trailer, the real trailer)
asking after her toys. Jo stood at the open door. The looted wooden blocks and old tin truck
displayed on the entertainment center over her shoulder. Private Property, the lady said. Jo turned
and told Geri and Anna to go to their rooms. The girls stood in the hall and breathed as quietly as
possible.
The lady’s cabin had enchanted Geri. Pale, weathered green with dusty ripped screens
covering large picture windows. It reminded Geri of an old movie she liked about girls at a
summer camp. While the family looked for a way in the house, Geri wandered to the edge of a
20
slow mountain-fed stream. Clouds of feathery green algae floated in fixed places among the wet
pebble bed. A large tree bore furious deep scratches.
That’s how a bear marks his territory, Big Nate said from the screened porch.
A steep metal roof poked out of a clearing just off the road. The wagon slowed to a stop,
and Big Nate got out. Geri, Anna, and Neil shifted positions, waiting for a signal telling them it
was okay to swing open the doors. Big Nate walked to the edge of the road and looked down.
Hello? he shouted.
He walked a few paces and squatted down, trying to see through the branches.
Hello?
Sweat soaked the back of his thin yellow t-shirt. He waited a few seconds. All was quiet but
for the birds carrying on with the engine.
I don’t see anyone down there, he slid into his seat. A spring creaked.
Jo shifted into drive. They all sat up a little taller, scanning for details and data. Manzanita
lined the main incline of the driveway. This showed promise. Geri missed the manzanita grove
they played in at the big trailer. They each picked their favorite and pretended it was their own
little house. Neil and Anna gathered large stones and outlined a pathway between their houses.
Amenities hung in the red branches. Neil found a scrap of carpet from somewhere in the shed and
used it to lie back between two branches he referred to as the living room.
After a sharp turn, an A-frame cabin appeared. The only vehicle parked outside was the
stripped down cab of an old truck. A half-blackened floral chair stood next to a burn barrel. A
knotted old pear tree had split and fallen nearby. Brown leaves and rotting fruit still clung to its
branches.
It looks empty, Rachel said.
21
Big Nate turned to the back seat.
Everybody listen. I will enter a room before anyone else does. Everyone stay behind me.
Do you understand?
There could be wild animals in here, Jo said.
They jiggled the loose doorknob, but the deadbolt was tight. And they steadied themselves
on stumps and tried to see around curtains and cardboard.
I think this is the kitchen, Geri said. She could see cabinets and the place where a
refrigerator should be. She jumped down off her stump and was quickly replaced by Rachel.
They heard the deadbolt shift.
The door opened and Neil let them in. Big Nate rolled his eyes.
What did I just say, he said. What did I just say? Stay behind me. Hey, no come here, stand
here. He grabbed Neil’s shoulders. Neil looked up at him blankly.
Before you go crawling in vacant houses, you have to keep your eyes peeled and make sure
that it really is vacant, got it? Now. Stay–be–hind–me.
Ooo look at the ceiling you guys, Jo said. Her smile looked pretty. Geri looked up. Rich
thick beams, and planks fitted in patterns stretched out over the empty living room. Geri followed
it to the large picture window. She looked down at the pear tree and burn barrel. The driveway
continued beyond the cabin. Maybe there were more cabins down there, Geri thought. Her eyes
followed the top of the tree line and she saw planks nailed up into one tree.
What is that? she heard Nate echo from another room, she startled at the window and ran
into the next room.
Everyone leave the room please, Big Nate said calmly.
22
The brightness of the white paint contrasted with the natural wood of the other rooms, it
almost made the person on the bed glow. But not really on the bed, so much as in the bed. In the
mattress. The feet and the nose pointed up under the blue shimmer of quilted fabric.
Get out, Big Nate said, emphasizing each word.
Is that a body? Neil asked.
Big Nate put his hand up.
Jo lifted Baby Nate to her hip and they filed out, leaving Big Nate alone in the room. No
longer interested in the rest of the house, they headed for the front door. Just as they reached it
Big Nate gave the all clear.
It’s okay, he shouted. It’s nothing.
Jo stuck her head back through the front door. What’s going on Nate?
Come back in here for a second, he said. It’s okay.
What causes this? Neil asked, sinking two flat hands into the torso.
I don’t know, Jo said, her knuckle disappearing into the face. Weird, huh.
They continued on the dirt road the same direction they had been headed. Geri did not
understand how this could lead them back to camp. She picked a pop bottle off the floorboards
and swigged the last warm swig, coating her tongue and throat with the distinct sensation of flat
syrupy cola. Tomorrow was a school day. She needed to try harder somehow, tomorrow at
school. That’s what Jo had told her the day before. She waved around her school progress report.
You used to get good grades, Jo said. You used to try harder.
The girls stood around the drain and pushed wet feet into pajamas trying to keep the legs
ends from touching the floor. Rachel brushed her teeth. Geri brushed Anna’s hair and her own,
23
wrapping it up in a turban when finished. They left the soap and shampoo behind for Neil. The
streetlight next to the bathroom illuminated and bats circled against the violet sky, anticipating a
feast of moths.
Hang your towels on the line, said Jo. She sat on a milk crate in front of the fifth wheel
with a large bowl. She stirred canned tuna with yellow mustard and a few packets of mayonnaise.
Geri sat on a milk crate next to her. She stared off , and it came to her:
Somebody had died face down and alone. Then lay there undiscovered for so long, the
imprint of the body permanently sunk into the fabric. And when the weight lifted, the door
locked, and the tires rolled out of the driveway, the stuffing inflated slowly like a balloon.
Geri woke to the sound of Jo saying Oh shit. She opened her eyes and saw the plywood
base of Rachel’s bunk.
Get up, the bus is going to be here in five minutes. Jo rushed past the makeshift bunk beds
and into the bathroom end of the fifth wheel. She rummaged through stacked boxes and threw
articles of clothing at the kids.
Put these on, go, go, she yelled.
Neil threw on his clothes from the day before and booked it to the cinderblock bathroom
building at the front of the campground.
The girls crowded the aisle pulling their heads through shirts and stepping into pants.
Big Nate, at the end of the fifth wheel actually designed for sleeping, propped himself up
on one elbow and ran a flattened hand down his face. He moved his head over to look out the
small window in the door.
The bus just pulled up, he said and flopped his head back into the pillow.
24
Anna was the first out the door wearing jeans and her pajama shirt. Geri and Rachel stuffed
shoes onto their feet and ran, no time for socks. Neil ran out of the bathroom building and reached
the school bus first. They boarded breathless, and sat in scattered seats.
That trailer is your house? John Greene smirked. Several kids repeated the question.
Yes, said Geri.
The door folded shut. The bus pulled back onto the freeway. Geri watched the trees pass by
faster and faster. She knew that after a few more stops the forest pulled away from the road and
gave way to the smooth gray boulders of the river.
25
BE A GOOD GIRL
The family sat hushed in the tall cypress at the top of the long wooden staircase. Not one
minute before, Geri opened her bedroom door to Anna and Little Nate yelling the news at her
with their hands in the air. Now they watched their father and waited for him to say something.
Big Nate’s left hand hovered over the bloody spot on his blue t-shirt. He looked down the steps.
His girlfriend that week, Kori, handed the phone to him. The emergency operator was
already on the line. He mouthed to Kori that he wanted his cigarettes. He restated his emergency.
He used Kori’s cigarette to light his own. He inhaled deeply. He gave the address. He was not
wearing shoes. He told the operator he needed to talk to his kids. He set the receiver down. He
looked up at the three of them.
Now listen, he said. Grant stabbed me, but I pulled a knife first. It’s just a misunderstanding
and nothing to be worried or scared about, okay? Grant is still my friend.
What happened? asked Geri.
He took another drag from his cigarette.
Stupid, he said. Just a stupid misunderstanding. But I’ll have to stay in the hospital for a
few days. He exhaled the next sentence in smoke. Geri, keep an eye on your brother and sister.
Rocky is going to stay with you.
They heard a distant siren.
Okay, she replied.
The ambulance rounded the kumquat tree at the corner. The siren wound down and it
pulled to the curb. EMTs emerged with duffels of equipment. Geri, Anna and Little Nate stood up
from their places on the steps, sat in the living room, and waited to know what to do. After the
ambulance pulled away, they shut and locked the doors.
26
The following Sunday morning did not start with her father threatening to beat her ass if
she didn’t get up and make Little Nate pancakes. Their father was not there to yell. Geri opened
the door and looked at Little Nate looking up at her from his place in front of the television. He
sat with his knees tucked into his chest, wearing one of their grandfather’s white v-neck t-shirts.
Do we have cereal? she asked him.
He shook his head and turned back to the cartoons. She walked passed him and into the
kitchen. She pulled a near empty box of instant pancake mix out of the cupboard. The dark
refrigerator yielded a small amount of milk, some grape jelly, a couple slices of bologna. Geri
asked Little Nate if he wanted pancakes.
The door chimed when she opened it. A camera flashed from the corner when she walked
through the turnstile. She could see her small self distorted in the round convex mirror next to the
source of the flash. Milk, pancake mix, hot dogs, a can of chili, sugar and Kool Aid. She had
enough food stamps, she told herself. She was not going to shoplift or use her babysitting money
this time.
The old Chinese lady stared at her from behind the register.
She opened the tall glass door and grabbed a gallon of milk with the red top. The store
entrance chimed. The camera flashed at someone else. She put the milk in her handled basket.
The magnetic seal on the cooler door slapped shut.
How are you today?
Fine, Geri said.
A man with cornrows and dark sunglasses looked at the ice cream.
What kind should we get? he mumbled.
27
But his friend with the mustache and greased back hair was not paying attention.
What’s your name? he smiled at Geri.
Leanne, she said, not expecting the question. She had already started talking to him, it
would be rude to give no answer at all.
Do you have a boyfriend? he asked.
Yes, she said, suddenly embarrassed. She did not really have a boyfriend. He was still
smiling at her. Wasn’t he supposed to leave her alone after she made up a boyfriend? She did not
want him to know real things about her. The tips of her ears and the apples of her cheeks flushed.
Let me guess, he said. His name is Mark?
No, she said.
Her thumping pulse carried her to the other side of the market. She lingered over the
lunchmeats and tried to stay hidden from view. Mark is similar to Markus, who waited for her
outside her math class (where she emerged from being asked by one of her classmates if her
pubic hair was the same color as the hair on her head.)
Just a couple days before, on Friday afternoon, Markus walked her part of the way home
from school. They approached the freeway overpass. She pushed the cross button.
So can I start telling everyone you’re my girlfriend? he asked.
Geri had not expected this question.
I guess, she said.
You guess, what kind of answer is that? he asked.
I don’t know, she said. She didn’t know.
He asked her then if she would give him a pair of her underwear so he could tell all his
friends they had sex.
Okay, she heard herself say.
28
Her mind reached for an answer, some way to connect these things. Did this guy with the
mustache know Markus? If so, why wouldn’t he have asked her if her boyfriend’s name was
Markus, not Mark with an emphasis? Wait. Markus wasn’t even her boyfriend.
The two men turned the corner onto the meat aisle. She picked up the cheapest pack of hot
dogs and threw them in the basket.
Do you need a ride home? he asked.
No.
You sure?
Yes, I’m sure. I live close by.
Why did she say that? Her blood swirled in her skin so much she felt numb. She moved
further down the aisle. String cheese, sour cream, yogurt. She wished she had taken up Rocky on
his offer for a ride. She told him she liked the walk, and she did. It was a chance to be nothing for
a few minutes. Nobody’s daughter, nobody’s sister. Just a person walking on the side of the road,
placing one foot in front of the other.
It’s really no problem. We can give you a ride home.
She weaved around a few rows grabbing the rest of her items. She was ready, but the men
had not left, and she did not want to leave first. She did not want to be followed. She did not want
to be forced into anyone’s car. She slowed her white canvas shoes over yellowed linoleum tiles.
She perused powder packets of gravy, wilted heads of iceberg.
When she felt she had stalled all she could, she made her way over to the candy racks by
the front of the store. Snickers, Milky Way, Sugar Daddy. Should she check out and run home or
wait for them to leave first? She picked up packs of gum just to look at them. The camera flashed.
The old Chinese lady stared at her from behind the register. Good she thought. Please be real.
29
You sure you don’t want a ride?
Yes, I’m sure.
The register made intermittent beeping noises.
I’ll bet your daddy spanks you. Does your daddy spank you?
No.
She thought of her Dad in the hospital, stabbed in the gut by Grant, a person she knew. She
placed a box of breath mints back in its row.
If I had you for a daughter I would spank you.
Only two feet away, a wire rack of candy, a gallon of milk, a pack of hotdogs, her pink and
white striped sweatshirt and jeans. The cash drawer opened. Reese’s, Zig-Zag, Mr. Goodbar. This
is okay, I am okay, she said to herself. She watched the blue Camaro back out of the parking
space. She saw it take off West on Broadway. She pulled out the food stamps and paid.
Geri locked her bedroom door with a hook and eye and pushed the play button on top of the
boom box. She bought cassette singles from a strip mall boutique called “Mainstream Music.”
They were cheaper then full album cassettes. CDs were what rich people bought. Geri knew she
would never have a CD player.
A collage of shopping bags hung on the wall. The centerpiece was a yellow and red Tower
bag. When she lived at Grandma and Grandpa’s Uncle Paul would wake her up late at night and
they would g to Tower Books just before it closed. Paul looked at car magazines, skate
magazines, and sometimes boating magazines. When they got home, he would start doing
calculations; how fast could he save money to paint the El Camino blue and put a new stereo
system in it. He wanted to paint ‘Low and Blue’ on the tailgate. Each magazine inspired a page of
long division.
30
Geri walked the length of the magazine aisle: celebrities, gardens, beaches, Presidents,
Playboy with the black plastic sheet in front of it. She continued walking around the perimeter of
the store. She liked to look at books on Joan of Arc
But what she was really after was the true crime section. Faces of people who were born
and who lived, but then turned into terrible stories. She read the back covers and quickly put them
back before another person saw her. If an employee walked through the aisle, she casually turned
to the other side and pretended to browse psychology, even though she knew girls her age didn’t
read those.
Geri reached under her bed and grabbed a Pepsi from the flat and drank it warm. They
disappeared too quickly in the fridge, though she was all too happy to give her father one if he
came to her room and asked. It made her feel in control of some little thing.
She listened to music and drank warm Pepsi in her room and imagined showing up at
school in new outfits. She wanted one of those sports team parkas that half the kids showed up in
after Christmas break last year. She wrote fake gangster names for herself on her school paper. A
friend who she knew form her mom’s house years ago recently wrote her a letter asking how she
was. Geri wrote back that her knick name was Devil D. Mostly Geri thought about these things
when she thrashed herself quietly around her room.
She stepped as lightly as possible. One time, Dad came up from the basement and asked her
if she was okay. He was like a serious Dad, scared. He looked around and glanced in my closet.
I’ve had to kick guys out of here for saying stuff about you, he said.
Geri understood that he thought he heard someone attacking her with sex. She told him she
was just doing her exercises, which she believed at the time to be a clever lie. So she stepped
lightly, thrashed her head and neck around as violently as she could without making a sound,
31
throwing her arms out. A place in her mind where she could be whoever and her body could
rejoice.
She leaned on the dresser for a second and looked at the ceiling, catching her breath. Then
she thrust her head around and spun into a crouching position. She probably look like those old
videos of people from those religious sects that handle snakes and speak in tongues.
The days that Rocky is there, nobody else is. Maybe the stabbing scared them off. Rocky
told those few who did show up that their father was out, and they left. The house was quiet and
clean. The doors were locked, the windows are shut. The lights were not all on all the time. The
kids sat on the couch together with freshly washed and combed hair, in pajamas watching
television before bedtime.
Geri returned from school on Thursday. Her father reclined on the couch, shirtless with his
stomach bandaged up, the IV still attached to his arm, the bag hanging from a broomstick
propped against the couch.
Hi honey.
Hi, she said.
I got tired of sitting around there. I grabbed the IV and marched up to the nurses station and
told them, I’ll take this to go.
Geri doubted parts of this story. He probably told them he wanted to take a walk, but then
kept on walking. He lifted the bandage and showed her the stitches across the stab wound and a
much larger surgical incision, six inches from his belly button down.
32
He sat on the couch and sharpened a knife and watched TV all day, in good spirits, but
subdued. Not his usual wild-eyed self. He spent more time with his kids during this time then he
ever did when he when he was not stabbed.
Anna’s friend Charlotte approached Geri at the kitchen sink.
My Dad wants to talk to you, she said.
What?
I don’t know, he just said to tell you to come talk to him.
Geri walked with Charlotte and Anna two doors down. Cats slinked through flowerbeds.
Geri did not understand why Charlotte’s dad wanted to talk to her.
Dad, Geri’s here.
Okay, you girls stay outside.
A spray painted mural of double lighting bolts hung behind him. He picked up a tool and
did something at a bunch of wires as he talked.
What do you know about Terry the childfucker?
I don’t know anything about him, Geri said. She heard that he was a child molester, but she
thought that must be a rumor. She could never feel Terry’s eyeballs.
Well, I heard he’s a childfucker, and I don’t like him hanging around my daughter. I know
that you take care of everything around there, and so I just want to let you know that you better
not let anything happen to my daughter, got it?
Okay, she heard herself say.
On the walk home, Geri began to feel anger. She did not want more shit to do. She did not
want more kids to look after. And she did not even believe that Terry was what everyone said.
Never feels his eyeballs. She wondered if people only said that because he was black. She never
33
felt his eyeballs. She just wanted to put on music and thrash around her room and come out to
make pancakes and take a shower once a day.
She thought about telling her Dad, but he was stabbed, and he already almost got shaken
down for a debt a few days before. She decided against it.
Don’t ever start picking at your face, she said.
Geri watched Amy lean into the lighted vanity and pinch at dry bits of skin. Elbows bent,
cheeks big purple-red splotches. Her green eyeball a magnified pupil pinprick and focused in the
mirror.
I’m serious, once you start you can’t stop. Don’t ever start.
I won’t, said Geri.
Geri looked down at Amy’s clear plastic overnight bag. A blue and purple flowered tank
top she recognized as her smashed in with Amy’s clothes. She had asked to try it on a couple days
before. She looked at Geri in the reflection of the mirror and turned for a moment.
I’m not going to take it, I’m just borrowing it. Her voice trailed and she shoved her big
eyeball back to the mirror. Her clumped mascara days old, red around the lids. Anna came home
from school a week later to find this woman wearing one of her outfits: a polka dot pair of
stretchy pants with a polka dot shirt in reverse color scheme and pretty bows tied at the bottom of
each leg.
Amy showed up one day with her boyfriend whose mother bought him a new pair of Nikes
every Christmas, he told Geri with satisfaction. They hung out in the living room for a few days
before moving into the secret room for a little while. She curled in fetal position at his too nice
shoes. He leaned back into the wall, eyes closed. All his weight slid into his Japanese face. Hers a
34
loud sob, shameless, primal. Geri looked away from them and into the pot of macaroni boiling for
her and the kids. Swirl and tumble.
They left after Sandy from Chicago came through in a cold burst of holey jeans and red
bandanas. Sandy was black hair and muscular arms. She said stuff like, I don’t fuck around, I’m
not afraid to fight, I’m from Chicago. Her bandana alternated from around her head to around her
thigh, depending on whether she wanted to emphasize sexy or tough. She jumped up and down
when Michael Jordan came on the television. Sandy made Amy wash dishes after she’d only been
around for a few days.
That bitch doesn’t do nothing around here. You shouldn’t have to do everything, Geri. She
can just wash those dishes and shut the fuck up. Little bitch.
At night Geri took her showers. She thrashed around the bathroom too. But whenever there
was a mirror around, a strange thing happened. She didn’t do her primal thrashing. Her
convulsions looked more like sexy stripper dances. She stood on the toilet seat naked to better see
herself. The toilet wobbled. She had to be careful not to let people hear the toilet wobble. She
looked at herself in the mirror. Her boobs were already C cups, which were better than A or B
cups. She did not even realize she had them until she overheard two classmates talking about her
boobs. She was mistaken for being in her early twenties all the time. In the mirror she sang songs
and danced like a stripper with her arms above her head. The window was open, the breeze felt
good.
Shake it girl, came from the dark back yard.
She jolted back to the mildewed bathroom. What have I been doing, she thought. Dancing
sexy in the mirror in front of an open window. Someone was in the bushes. Someone who
shouted something that ended with girl. On the toilet, in the mirror, her torso was in full view
35
from the backyard. She crouched on the floor afraid, dirty linoleum (cause she needed to mop the
floor), naked toes, face red (so red.) She stood up and poked out her red head.
Hello.
But he did not speak again. She saw no one. She heard no one. She shut the window. No
more naked dancing on the toilet. Only thrashing in the bedroom. Careful so no one could hear.
36
MANLEY COURT
Geri leaned on the counter and waited for the family of Whoppers to accumulate on the
tray. Grandma was on a health kick. A few years back she lost twenty pounds by eating a
Whopper for lunch every day and speed walking up and down 63rd Street. She still had the
tracksuits and aspired to the walks again. Behind the individually-labeled sandwich chutes, an
employee in a tight-fitting uniform cap and plastic apron reached into containers of pink tomato
slices, limp pickles, and squeeze bottles of mayonnaise. Another employee removed patties from
the conveyer belt of the flame broiler. Geri glanced back at the soda fountain. Her grandfather
whistled “Mona Lisa” and filled Grandma’s cup with diet. With a paperboard box of breaded
chicken strips, their order was complete. A man with a bushy gray beard reached over the counter
and grabbed a French fry off the tray. The man winked at the employee holding the ticket.
I won’t tell if you won’t, he said to the stunned teenager.
Number sixty-two.
Geri reached for the tray and glared at the bushy bearded man. The employee looked
between the two of them. She turned and carried the tray across the brown tiles to the big booth in
the corner. She decided to not say anything to her grandparents or her siblings about the pilfered
fries.
Grandma’s wrapper always looked the same: “X” drawn over a picture of pickles and a
picture of lettuce. Grandpa ordered a Whopper with everything. Anna had a Whopper Jr. an “X”
drawn over the onions, and Little Nate had the chicken strips with barbecue sauce. Fries all
around.
The family subsisted primarily on fast foods from the various restaurants that lined
Stockton Boulevard. For breakfast Grandpa would sometimes make pancakes, but more often
37
there were McDonald’s runs, or Geri woke up with a chocolate donut placed on a napkin on her
pillow. They had long stretches where they would go to a particular restaurant at least once a day:
Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jimboy’s, and Burger King were in the main rotation
Geri took a bite of her chicken sandwich and looked out the window. A drunk turned
from the alley wall of the 98 cent store with his fly wide open and contemplated his partially erect
penis. On the other side, Geri thought she saw Regina scooting in her wheelchair across the
parking lot. Regina was homeless and Grandpa sometimes bought her meals.
How’s your sandwich? Grandma asked Geri.
Good, Geri said.
Let me see.
Geri turned the bitten edge of her sandwich to her grandmother, so she could see the
layers of grill-marked chicken, unripe tomato, wilted lettuce, and globs of mayonnaise.
I might try that next time, Grandma said.
Geri took a sip of her soda. She wondered why she kept ordering sodas when she knew
that she did not like the syrup to carbonated water ratio mandated by this franchise.
Are we gonna pick up a Whopper for Nate? Grandma asked Grandpa.
I suppose, Grandpa said watching the drunk stumble away.
Fibromyalgia.
Geri heard that word at least five times every day since Grandma’s diagnosis. It floated
somewhere in the atmosphere with breath budding little fibromyalgias on the tip of Grandma’s
tongue. She would stop rigid in the middle of the hallway, or at the bathroom sink, or at the
kitchen table, face puckered
Oohpf.
38
Geri, she called.
Geri sat on the couch watching the news with Grandpa, or listened to her headphones in
her room, or stood in the kitchen making a tuna sandwich.
What? she asked. She knew what her grandmother wanted.
Come feel this. Here, Grandma said. Put your fingers right there.
She rubbed an area of her lower back. Geri touched the spot with the tips of her fingers.
Do you feel that? asked Grandma.
Yeah.
No, press right there, she instructed.
Geri pressed. She supposed it felt hard, but could not really tell the difference between it
and a regular muscle.
It feels like a rock. Oohpf.
Yeah, it feels like a rock, said Geri.
These damn spasms, Grandma said.
Her grandmother’s other favorite words were diabetes, glaucoma, and spasm.
Where do you want to go?
I don’t know. What do you feel like.
Just make a decision.
Well, I don’t know.
Well, what do you feel like.
Geri looked down at some Jimboy’s taco sauce packets on the cluttered table.
How about Jimboy’s? she offered.
Grandpa’s eyebrows raised, he looked at Grandma.
39
Grandma pushed her lips up under her nose.
I don’t know if I feel like that, she said.
The highs and lows of the vacuum breached the entrance of the hall. From the sound of the
motion Geri sensed her Grandmother’s fury. It was late, long after midnight. The motor wound
down and was replaced by spit and mumbling coming down the hall. The bedroom door opened.
Geri, Grandma whispered loudly.
Geri feigned groggy surprise. Grandma stepped closer and dug her fingernails into Geri’s
arm. Geri opened an eye and grunted again.
Geri, Grandma whispered again a little louder, but still trying not to wake Anna.
Mm-what? Geri still hoped to get out of it.
Grandma walked to the glowing doorway and motioned for Geri to follow. The silhouette
of the vacuum waited at the end of the hall.
The bright light disoriented. The ceiling fan swayed on the highest setting. Chains made
rhythmic tink-tink sounds on the amber glass. It too seemed furious to be working at that hour.
Help me move this table, she said.
Geri turned her head toward the dining room, where the green digital numbers on the
microwave read “3:23.”
Gram. It’s a school night, can I help you with this tomorrow after school? Geri hoped that
the mentioning of school twice would get her out of it.
No, we’re vacuuming now. Shut up and move this.
She has to be the most awake person on the planet at this moment, Geri thought. Her
primary competition was Bergie Fontana in the duplex on the corner who wandered her front yard
shirtless, sagging breasts thrown out for the world, and if the world wouldn’t come, she screamed
40
until they did. Geri wondered how much of her grandmother’s late night mania leaked into the
slumbering cul-de-sac.
She grabbed the edge of the table and yanked it toward her. The orange tinted walnut
grazed her toes. Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed.
Hey, you be careful with that, I don’t treat your things like that.
She was almost yelling. Surely the other inhabitants were stirring, putting on their most
restful, angelic faces and praying she wouldn’t come for them. They hadn’t had a cleaning
episode in a while. Not since the previous summer when Grandma decided, probably also during
the three o’clock hour, to reorganize the pantry. She dragged Geri out of bed and they spent the
next hour and a half squinting at expiration dates on forgotten boxes of devil’s food, and mining
out vintage cans of peas. Usually the other family members didn’t have to worry. If she would
come to anyone for help, it would be Geri first, the oldest girl of her generation.
When Geri was younger she looked forward to visiting Grandma. At night Grandma and
Geri lay in her Grandmother’s rose-scented waterbed and Grandma acted out Goldilocks and the
three bears with a Strawberry Shortcake doll, a plush Mickey Mouse, a gangly blue Grover, and a
white teddy bear dressed as a magician. Some of Geri’s earliest memories were books, pencils
and paper placed before her sitting in the brown tile entry of Grandma and Grandpa’s house
before the clutter, learning to write her name, learning to their phone number, so she could
identify herself and call someone who loves her if she ever get lost or needed help. Grandma
made words and numbers with dotted lines and Geri traced over them with her chubby three-yearold fingers, triangle fingers Uncle Paul called them.
Geri remembered the professional quality birthday cakes her grandmother used to bake: a
Pac Man screen or Big Bird and Oscar masterfully recreated on a white confection canvas, the
envy of any kids who happen to show up at their parties. Holidays brought out the old Grandma,
41
she loved to dress as a witch and sit next to a cauldron of dry ice in the front yard on Halloween
and hand out full-size candy bars to those neighborhood kids they knew especially well. In the
cluttered hall closet, photo albums of her perfect Camellias in March and Dahlias in August.
But then the house just built up; one side of the couch preserved just as Grandma bought it,
entombed under an impossible pile of laundry. Geri did the laundry, but only when reminded. She
loaded the dishwasher when reminded also or when she played the good girl to “go watch Disney
movies at Stephanie’s house.” She made sandwiches for the kids in the morning while they
watched cartoons, the duty she least often got out of.
Geri slathered the peanut butter onto both slices of bread, a revenge of sorts. Even Little
Nate was old enough to make his own damn PB&J. But if he was going to sit on his legs with his
feet behind him watching cartoons while Geri rushed around and got ready for school and had to
stop and spend extra time to make his spoiled-ass a sandwich, she figured he could choke it down
or smack his jaws like a dog until the PB was cleared from the roof of his mouth. Little shit. How
clever of her parents to have her early so they could have a babysitter for their real kids when
they came along five years after.
Grandma pressed a toe to the vacuum and resumed. She pointed the appliance in a
direction, and Geri analyzed her desired path, clearing out anything that could possibly be in the
way, hopping over whatever to move whatever. It was a game of anticipating needs, pretending to
not be pissed off, and trying to avoid further responsibility–a test just like everything else.
Occasionally Grandma motioned with a fingernail sharpened to a point.
The forcefulness of her motions relaxed with Geri’s compliance. Geri knew that she could
act out. She could knock furniture into the walls as she moved it. If she really wanted to start a
war she could have grazed her grandmothers toes, or tossed a pile of papers out of the way too
roughly. She scowled a challenge for Geri to do just that when she got too close, correctly
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assuming Geri was pissed off to the point of sabotage, what with having been awakened in the
middle of the night to move furniture while Grandma vacuumed and gave her dirty looks. But
Geri was tired, and she knew nothing was won in these battles. It was easier to just move the
damn furniture and act like everything was normal. She wants to get this chore over with.
Grandma tapped the off button with petite toes, cutting of the motor. Geri sensed relief floating
out of the bedrooms, eyes snap shut in the dark and faces soften in case there was an encore.
Thanks, Grandma says, her eyes looking tired.
Do you need anything else? Geri asked, hoping to God there wasn’t actually anything else,
but knowing she got credit for asking.
Grandma turned to the clock.
It’s late, you’ve got school tomorrow.
From the back seat of the Buick Geri watched her father’s panicked stride up the walkway.
He stepped on the backs of his once-white tennis shoes, no laces. His legs quick in cutoff
sweatpants. The Buick stopped. Disappointment pooled in her empty stomach. Grandpa rolled
down the window.
I need the kids to help me start my car.
He leaned over with his hands resting on bent knees and looked at Anna and Geri in the
back seat. He waved to Great Grandma.
Hi Grandma.
Hi, she said back, hands folded on a crocheted shawl.
Thanksgiving at Betty’s tonight, Grandpa said.
Yeah, I know. Big Nate’s eyes darted in and out of the windows of the Buick. I’ll be there
in a little bit. I told my friend I would take a look at his dryer real quick.
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Geri unbuckled her seatbelt. Asshole.
Three sizes of hands gripped the Porsche’s bumper. She looked in the back window at the
mound of junk; paper cups with brown flecks of cola down the sides, a shapeless baseball cap, a
stuffed red teddy bear. All tangled in a mass of broken electronics, dumpster dived and
accumulated in just the three weeks since the Porsche showed up on the curb. The day before
Geri stood over her father, snoring on his gray spot in front of the television. She looked out the
front window at the Porsche on the curb and considered going into the yard and getting one of the
dog’s shits in a paper bag and hiding it in the garbage under his seat. He’d never find it. He’d
even taken the seat out of the back to fit more junk in there.
Anna was ten, Little Nate was seven. Geri knew that if she didn’t get it going on their end
of the court, they would have to turn it around and push it back from the opposite end, which was
on a slight incline. Arms extended forward, she tucked her head in between her shoulders, and
placed her feet in starting position. Muscles tightened and legs quickened. The Porsche gained
momentum. They passed Mrs. D’s cactus garden.
Mechanical grinding. Silence. Mechanical grinding. Silence. Geri looked up from her feet
and passing blacktop. They were coming up on the Katayama house. She held her breath and put
all of her hunger and hatred into the effort. The engine turned. The car kicked back. Three sizes
of hands went up. The clamor faded around the corner trailing fumes of late-night mechanical
rigging.
44
GLITTER TIGHTS
Geri stood at the microwave watching a pile of hissing pizza nuggets turn on the lazy
Susan. This was lunch for her and the kids. The kids being Anna, Little Nate, and Chaz, the
younger of her father’s girlfriend’s two boys. Rick was nineteen, four years older than Geri, and
responsible for his own feeding. At a minute and twenty-six seconds the plate stopped, the digital
numbers disappeared. She opened and closed the door. She pushed random buttons.
Did the electricity go out? yelled Little Nate from the living room.
Cockroaches of various sizes scuttled behind the refrigerator when she turned and reached
for the dining room light, which did not respond at all to the twist of the dimmer switch.
Someone yelled the house is on fire.
She stepped onto the warped floorboards of the hallway and looked into Rick’s room. His
torso stuck out the window. Sunlight reflected off his white t-shirt. A few wisps of smoke passed
in front of him. He ducked back in.
Geri’s pulse quickened.
The fucking side of the house is on fire.
They ran out the front door: Rick, Chaz, Geri, Anna. Little Nate bare feet sneakers gutter
blacktop. The next-door neighbor sat in a nylon strap folding chair with his arms crossed over a
humongous belly. They stopped in front of him.
Our house is on fire, they shouted.
He shrugged toward his garden hose.
Geri cleared a thick spider web with her reach for the spigot. The hose distended. She
started to tug, but realized it would never reach the far side of their house. She turned off the
spigot.
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Actually can we borrow your phone? she asked.
Nate ran out of the house, a fire extinguisher in hand. Kids, shut up, he yell-whispered.
Shut the fuck up, he looked around to see how much of an alarm they raised.
It’s okay, he said to the neighbor, it’s fine. Got it taken care of. He held up the extinguisher.
Get back in the house goddamn it.
Nate seethed at them through crystal blue eyes. His thinning blond hair stood on end from
his scalp. His forehead dripped with sweat. He waited, wild like this, for the last of them to file
into the house. Then he spoke.
Okay now, who was running the microwave?
I was, Geri said.
Why didn’t you unplug the refrigerator?
Nobody unplugs the refrigerator when they use the microwave. You never told us we had
to do that.
He put his hands up and closed his eyes.
Everybody listen, because I’m only going to explain this once: we are tapping electricity
for free, but we can only get so much at one time before the system is overloaded and the house
catches on fire. Now I’ve got you guys running out into the street announcing to the world that
the house is on fire and I don’t want the fire department to show up and call the utility company.
Everybody got it?
He instructed Geri to walk around and turn off all the light switches and unplug everything.
It would be a while before he could get everything back up and running. She unplugged the
refrigerator. Cockroaches of all sizes scuttled. The mostly warm pizza nuggets were waiting in
the microwave when she was through.
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She spread the tights out in front of her on the mattress. Black fishnets, burgundy fishnets,
thick Christmas red, and the latest addition white with silver glitter, a birthday present from Kate.
Geri and Kate costumed themselves in everything from flowy dresses and skirts, spike bracelets
and combat boots, flannels, vintage cocktail dresses, argyle socks, high water slacks, bowling
shirts and cardigan sweaters, plastic barrettes and baby doll dresses and of course jeans and rock
band t-shirts. The influence of little girls had become particularly noticeable in Geri’s recent
fashion choices. As if at fifteen, she was already nostalgic for her own childhood.
Kate could usually get her Grandma Nona to take them on thrift store runs. At seventy
years old, Gram Nona had just left her husband and her house and was living by herself in a small
one-bedroom trailer just off Stockton Boulevard. Her small pick up truck, the kind with a
cramped seat behind the bench in the cab, shuddered when the gears shifted. Gram Nona picked
up things like coffee mugs and turtlenecks. Gram Nona gave real hugs. They ate Jimboy’s tacos
in the living room of that little trailer, and Gram Nona showed them pictures of Eddie, her pet
squirrel who had died a couple years back.
The singer of Geri’s favorite all-girl band sometimes performed dressed as an aerobics
instructor, sometimes a little girl, sometimes in lingerie with the word ‘slut’ scrawled across her
stomach. Geri sat in her room in tights and skirts and studied album liner notes, looking for who
wrote which songs, and the names of other bands she could add to her list of obscure favorites.
She absorbed what she else she could reading interviews from backstage, and cutting out live
performance photos which she taped in collage to the wall above her boom box.
Geri put on the black fishnets first. She picked the staples from the thrift tag out of a plaid
wool skirt. She smelled an L7 shirt and threw it on. She looked in the closet mirror. The pleats of
the skirt flared out rigidly from her large hips. The iridescence of her white legs against the black
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fishnets sickened her. The t-shirt ran a little tight in the armpits. She took off the black fishnets
and put on the burgundy fishnets. No. No fishnets. And the red tights were too thick for the
weather, and she was always having to cinch the crotch back into place after it slid down to her
mid-thigh causing her to chafe, which made her feel both too tall and too fat. They went back in
the dresser, leaving the lone glitter tights on the bed; the molted skin of a shimmering python.
She knew exactly what she wanted to wear with those glitter tights. A vintage bathing suit
in a blue, green, and whit- swirled flower pattern. It grabbed her eye while she hung clothes up
for her Grandmother in an overstuffed closet. Geri’s grandparents lived in a self-contained family
archive. They never threw anything out. Geri especially treasured the fashion artifacts mined
from her Grandparent’s closets because they came with stories. Myths of the good old days: the
spotless floors, the diving trophies. How perfect Grandma walked in her high heels.
She pulled the bathing suit out from tight cluster of clothes. It shared a hanger with a few
more contemporary suits. The tag inside said “Beach Beauties, California” in a saucy red cursive
font. She held it up over herself in the closet mirror. It looked like a fit.
Her Grandma was “going through a phase” as her grandpa liked to say, dying her silver
perm blond and wearing red and white cowgirl boots with long fringe that sashayed when she
walked. She for once told Geri’s father to get out of her house, though she still paid for the phone
bill so that she could keep an eye on Geri, Anna and Little Nate. Often she took Little Nate home
with her since he, at six years old, was the baby and was least capable of fending for himself.
The new favorite accessory to the new favorite article of clothing. She spread the suit out
on the bed next to the glitter tights. The old warn down breast cups still managing to hold most of
their shape. She thought of the suit as more of a mini-dress. Not that Geri had any desire to
actually wear a mini-dress nor could she get away with it due to her iridescent puckered thighs.
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But the snow white, silver sparkle tights solved that problem. And anyway, it was a bathing suit
not a dress. She pleased herself with the innovation of wearing the tights under the suit to cut
back the chance of her too tall frame and too wide thighs rejecting the ensemble. It’s not like she
was going anywhere anyways.
When she touched a hand to the fridge to see if there was any soda, cockroaches of various
sizes scurried out from the magnetic door strip.
Whoa Geri, Connie, her father’s girlfriend, walked in.
Geri looked up at her.
Hey, said Geri.
That dress is short.
It’s not a dress, said Geri. It’s a bathing suit. She pinched the hem and flipped up the skirt
to reveal the matching bottoms.
Still, it’s really, really short.
Geri shrugged like she meant it and shut the fridge. There was no soda.
A trampled pile of mildewed clothes spilled out of the laundry room and took up the
hallway between the kitchen and her father’s and Connie’s room. None of it was Geri’s. Since
spying a pair of her underwear sitting on top of Rick’s dresser, she was more careful about
keeping tabs on her belongings. Geri balanced on one platform sandal in the mildewed mass. The
absence of a dial tone told her that Grandma must not have gotten the last bill. The dingy cord
twisted back in place.
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With the tip of a bitten fingernail, Geri turned of the music in her room. If the phone was
not working, she would walk to the gas station to call Kate. She grabbed her headphones and
purple backpack. Little Nate ate cereal in his underwear in front of the television.
Her platform sandals carried her across the overgrown lawn. Her headphones played a
mixed tape, the kind made from quick reflexes and total focus on the opening chords to every
song that came on the radio. She turned left at 44th Street. A rusty white pick up laid on its horn as
it passed. It disappeared down the street, a tiny mustached face in the side view mirror.
Geri met Kate the year before when they started the ninth grade. They traced obscene
constellations on star maps in their science class and wrote band names on the soles of one
another’s shoes at lunch.
Kate lived a ways away now with her Dad and her step mom. She ran away from her mom
and her step dad before Thanksgiving, disappeared for a week. Not even Geri or their friend Ben
knew where she went. Ben told Geri in English class that he heard through someone else that
Kate had been picked up by the police somewhere. Geri called Kate’s Grandma Nona.
Yes she’s here sweetie, how are you? Gram Nona asked.
Kate never did tell Geri where she spent that week, and Geri stopped asking out loud.
The singing in her headphones took on a demonic quality, the music stopped. Damn. She
switched it to radio mode; she could usually squeeze the last of the battery power out by listening
to the radio for a few minutes. The wooden fence before the racist house had new Norteño tags
spray painted on it.
The red and white and black flag hanging in the window. The large dog stretched out in the
packed dirt yard behind a taller-than-most chain-link fence. Something about it jarred Geri. She
50
wondered why they lived in this neighborhood and if they ever had confrontations with the
surrounding families. Tricycles on the neighbor’s lawn.
A silver hatchback beeped its horn twice as it passed, sunglasses disappearing in the side
view mirror. Then the batteries died for real. She took off her backpack and pushed the
headphones in. There was a chance Kate was at Gram Nona’s this weekend. She had been trying
to spend more time with her lately. Gram Nona was talking about getting in her truck and driving
across the United States and never coming back, maybe settle some place by chance and maybe
not. The thought made Geri sad, like looking out over a city from an airplane at nighttime. When
the twinkles are a kind of infection. Her platform sandals quickened their stride.
Another car honked, but she did not watch it pass. Okay, she realized it was short, but was
it really that big of a deal? And, yes, perhaps the fact that the sparkle part of the tights ended
lower then the hemline added urgency. But the tights cover my skin, she reasoned. And it was just
for fun anyway. Sure, prostitutes walked the area. She knew that. Some of them were about her
age too. But they mostly just wore jeans and sweats. So to hell with it, she thought. It doesn’t
matter what I wear.
She pressed the crosswalk button. Somebody wolf-whistled from a passing car. Geri
crossed her bare arms.
She stayed the night with Kate at Gram Nona’s once. They ate take-and-bake pizza and
when Gram Nona went to bed, the girls each took a dose of strong acid and snacked on sour
gummy worms while they waited for it to kick in. A portrait of Kate’s great-great-grandmother
caught their attention. The kind of old black and white portrait people paid to have colored by
hand. She wore a high-collar light blue dress and her lips had a reddish tint against dusty peach
skin. Evelyn smiled and frowned rapidly at them. They mimicked her changing face back at her
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and then at each other. Geri laughed too loud, Kate’s eyes widened and she made a hushing
motion with her finger. They quietly left the trailer to go for a walk. They crossed the pedestrian
bridge over the freeway. Sporadic three A.M traffic whipped under their feet, rattling the chain
link railing. They wandered down G Parkway, the whole town of trees and cars asleep. They
stopped at a 24-hour convenience store and got jerky.
The gas station lay just beyond the bus stop on the other side of the street. She saw a person
in a hooded jacket standing at the payphone. The sign lit up the white walking figure. She felt
strange in front of all the stopped cars in her vintage bathing suit and silver glitter tights. So many
blank and cracked windshields all stopped in a row. On sparkling legs she crossed the street. The
red hand started flashing.
She passed a man who stood on the corner with a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a
squeegee in one hand, he shielded his eyes from the sun with the other. A beat up roll of paper
towels under one arm, he exchanged brief words with each driver down the line, until the light
turned green and they pulled away.
She stepped over a crushed take-out container of fried rice and onto the walkway in front of
the mini mart. The door chimed and the clerk looked her over before returning to the tiny security
monitor behind the counter.
She did not want chips. She looked at the chocolate candy bars. She was not sure about that
either. She rounded the end cap with the mini-donuts and cupcakes. She glanced out the window.
The hooded jacket ducked into a car, and the car pulled away.
She opened a fruit chew and crossed the parking lot. She balanced her backpack on the
ledge in the booth and fished for her address book. She dialed Gram Nona. It rang twice and the
operator’s no-longer-in-service announcement began. She hung up the receiver, pushed in five
more nickels, and dialed Kate’s father. It rang. And again. And a third time it rang. Kate’s
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stepmother’s voice clicked on with the answering machine. Geri did not like leaving messages.
She put the receiver back on its hook.
She turned on her platform sandals. A man with sales tags still hanging from a crisp
basketball cap talked to a young woman pumping gas. She held one headphone speaker up to her
ear.
What I will do today is sign and date the cd, and when I make it big you’ll have that and I’ll
invite you to the VIP release party. Okay well if I make it big, but like I said, what you’re
listening to know, Russell Jones came up with that beat, and he worked with–
A car laid on its horn as it went past, she did not watch it disappear.