Random acts of senseless.., p.22
Random Acts of Senseless Violence, page 22
It wasn’t the listening but the wanting that racked me Anne I wanted to be kissing Iz. But she and Jude have been girls together longtime though and I shouldn’t be jealous even though I was. They were moving a lot making little gurgling sounds and shook like they chilled. The bed overheated with three of us on it so they couldn’t have been cold I knew. I wished I was doing what Jude was doing with Iz even though it’s queer. That aches me too because they prefer boys I can tell even if they don’t want them now and I don’t like boys at all. There’s nothing wrong with me there isn’t but everyone else thinks so when they know even if they don’t know. Sometimes I fear I’ll never happy proper.
It seemed like hours before they finished playing and Iz rolled off. They were breathing hard like they’d been running and I could hear them even though I was trying not to. I wanted to sleep but couldn’t and then I started crying. It was so deadhead there wasn’t any reason for boohooing I was just sad. I hate crying Anne it uglies your face and doesn’t settle you and it shames me when I cry. I never do it noisy I just drop tears. It was awful and I wished I was millions of miles away but I wasn’t and I didn’t want them to know I heard them so all I could do was lay there dead. I was glad they couldn’t hear me cry but I think Iz could tell anyway because before I fell asleep she touched my back with her hand and petted me. It was so nice to have her do that that I settled and slept then.
This morning they left. Jude went rambling and Iz went churching and here I am writing you before I study. It’ll heart me to have finals over. I used to like school so much back in September I loved going. But that was past and now I can’t wait till it’s done. My friends were fun and I loved them but they threw me. At least I have new friends now but they could go too sometime you never know though. Look what happened to Weez and Jude and they’d known each other as long as me and Lori. You don’t know who your friends are Anne until you’re not like them anymore.
I walked with Iz and Jude to 125th Street. The greenasses are stacking concrete blocks down the middle of the street making a wall with openings to let cars and buses through. That’ll easy their keeping people in or out we guessed. Then after I left Iz and Jude and before I came back here to write and now study I walked down Broadway thinking and looking skyhigh. That’s when I saw it Anne I think it was an angel up airways cloudfloating but not so high I couldn’t see her. Nobody else streeted acted like they eyed her so I peg her for my very special own angel. She was white and gold and bewinged like a bird. Even though she was far distant I saw her smile at me. Maybe it was a cloud but it didn’t dress like one it looked like an angel in a book like by William Blake. At first I thought seeing an angel signed good but now when I rethink it’s more clear and worrisome. Maybe my new name Crazy Lola is right. I didn’t tell Mama or Boob that I saw the angel and I won’t tell Daddy or Iz or Jude either, I’ll just tell you. It nerves me thinking about it.
I’ll write when I can Anne.
MAY 26
Just here quick because I’m set to blow. Miss Wisegarver told me her test I took yesterday has to be redone before she grades me. She says it’s obvious I didn’t know what I was doing and hadn’t studied. She’ll incomplete me she says and let me take it again Thursday. I did study for it I did but something racked and my mind wouldn’t hold any more. I don’t know how I’ll redo but we’ll see. Usually I do best in her class so it fears me about how I’m doing in everything else. But enough gnash back to studying now.
MAY 28
What’s wrong with me Anne. I got C on my final in Math and B minus in History. Today I took Miss Wisegarver’s test over and I spec I redid it better but I thought I aced first time through. Tomorrow’s the last test day and I’m heart-happy. Monday we find out our grades and then we gone till September rolls and I won’t have to think school till then.
Granny showed today worsening my mood twiceover but what’s to be done with her. What’s to be done with me. It’s hateful Anne it is.
MAY 29
Friday and the last real day of school and the last test in Sociology class. It’s done and I’m happied. Weekend’s here and tomorrow I’m set to meet Iz and Jude. We’ll do something somewhere though I don’t know what. Banking essential so watch out guys. Daddy’s kitchened present working over his résumé and the bills figuring what we’ll do once he’s jobless. That won’t be soon soon though because Mister Mossbacher told him yesterday he hasn’t been able to get a capable replacement yet so Daddy has to work another extra week before he’s free. Mister Mossbacher says he’ll time and a half him for every hour over fifty Daddy slaves. That’s something considering with the new money he only hauls forty a week. Mama and Boob they’re dead out already even though it’s just nine.
Daddy’s quieted overmuch and I think I better check him I be right back Anne.
JUNE 2
I didn’t come back like I said I would the other night and I haven’t writ before now because of what went down. Forgive me Anne.
When I went kitchenways I eyed Daddy chaired at tableside laying his head on his arms like he sleepied. He never drops like that but Mister Mossbacher had worked him so I think maybe it caught up and felled him. I didn’t know he had slept away yet. I shook his shoulder but he sat statued.
‘Daddy?’ I said shaking him harder but he didn’t move he just stilled. It nerved me and so I touched his head and it rolled sideways and I spied how he was, he looked but didn’t see. I knew he was dead Anne even though there wasn’t any certifying. I don’t know why and how I knew but I did. Screaming’s called for when you find people dead I always thought but I didn’t. I zipped hallways running in Mama’s room waking her trying not to stir Boob.
‘Angel sweetie what is it did you have a bad dream?’ Mama asked. ‘No Mama come here’ I said whispering. ‘I don’t understand’ she said. ‘In the kitchen please Mama lipstill and come here.’ ‘My darling you’re in such a state what is it what’s wrong?’ ‘Daddy’ I said. Mama unbedded and robed and tripped misfooting through the dark hallways. When she eyed Daddy she knelt down next to him putting her hand on his neck and then on his wrists pulsefeeling but there weren’t feelables. ‘Mama?’ I asked when she didn’t speak she statued too. ‘Angel call 911 please hurry.’ She chaired next to him holding his hand crying while I called.
The police showed and medtechs and suit people taking an hour to get there. Daddy was moldcold by then. The doctors poked and thumped and awared Mama he had a massive heart attack she told me later. ‘My darling precious it was the best way he was there one minute and gone the next’ Mama said sounding it like Daddy did what everybody do. Right before the place filled Mama had me go in their bedroom and babysit Boob keeping her in there. She woke wide eye when she heard their big boots come in going thump thump thump.
I baldfaced her Anne I said something was wrong with Daddy but I didn’t say how wrong. ‘Is he sick I want to see him’ she said. ‘No Boob they’re taking him to the hospital you can’t talk to him now’ I said. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asked. ‘Can’t say’ I said. ‘Can we see him tomorrow?’ ‘I don’t know Boob.’ ‘Why can’t I see him?’ ‘Because you can’t.’ ‘Is he dead?’ she asked surprising me because sharp as Boob is I didn’t spec she’d figure so quick. ‘He’s doing bad Boob just settle yourself’ I said. ‘Did somebody shoot him?’ ‘No Boob’ I said. ‘Then why can’t I see him?’ ‘Boob please please’ I said and she started boohooing and trying to push me off but I was unbudging finally sitting on her to keep her bedded. She howled like a monkey and a blueboy opened the door. He eyed us like we’d been caught wronging like he hated us. ‘Where’s my daddy?’ Boob shouted at him. He shut the door. Boob shoved hard and pushed me off yelling ‘I hate you I hate you.’ She didn’t unbed though she just pillowed her face crying. I sat there trying to blank my mind it was too much. I saddened fast but it wasn’t for Daddy, that wasn’t real yet. I ached deepdown because Boob never said she hated me even when she maddened before. However I tried to deafen to everything I heard her saying that. Finally after an hour or longer everybody left and then Mama came back shutting the door behind her.
‘Oh my angels’ she said and then told us about Daddy even though we knew. We held her and cried and then we bedded though we didn’t really sleep. I know I lay there hours eyeing ceilingways thinking it was awful and bizarre. Just a few hours earlier Daddy was there with us and now he was gone and we’d never see him again. However much I tried to blank I couldn’t Anne everything about Daddy blurred into his face it wouldn’t go away. What was the last thing he said to me I kept trying to remember I think he asked if I’d help him wash the dishes later and I said yes but never did. Even though I never thought about heaven before I started wondering where Daddy had gone now that he’d died, that is if he went anywhere. I felt my face getting wetter and wetter and finally I stomached flat so I couldn’t see anything even Daddy’s face.
The funeral was Sunday morning. Daddy still had Guild coverage for funerals which heartened because otherwise we’d have had to dump him somewhere I think. He was cremated in a plain wood box at the funeral home. The chimney was smoking when we got there. When ash rains grounddown now I think I’m still getting sprinkled with Daddy. Mama told me they’d had a family space clear in a mausoleum in Queens but now it’s off limited thanks to the warring so she got a new space in Woodlawn in the Bronx. Besides us and the funeral people and the Society For Ethical Culture speaker there were other friends of Mama and Daddy who came. Some were teachers and some writers and some I didn’t know. His agent couldn’t come because Mama said he was closing with Paramount. No one from Excelsior showed. Mama called Mister Mossbacher to say Daddy wouldn’t be in because he was dead. She said he sounded like he craved to shout but didn’t. Daddy was supposed to get paid Saturday because payday was shifted two days up due to cashflow problems he’d said and Mama told Mister Mossbacher we needed it. He said he’d express it and then he hung up on her.
We rode six cars going up sticking close. It took an hour and a half because the greenasses checked all running detectors over the cars before passing us through. The cars had mirror windows so we could eye without being eyed. Washington Heights and Inwood look like I expected all torched and blasted except round City College and Columbia Presbyterian. They have those rounded bout with razorwire and soldiers. Hardly any businesses are left anywhere except liquor stores and bodegas. There aren’t any cars but you see buses. It’s all Serbia up there and the people walk stoopbacked like they had enough. Army’s got the streets lined with tanks even though they’re not supposed to let them in and everywhere you look there’s thousands of soldiers armed and itchy. They’re building another wall down the middle of Dyckman Street in Inwood.
Once we Bronxed we rode a parkway to Woodlawn. At the mausoleum we sat in a little chapel and the Ethical Culture man raved on about translating goodness. Some friends of Daddy told everybody how lucked they were since they knew him. They may be lucked sure they still alive. We held each other’s hands, me and Mama and Boob. We didn’t cry except Mama did at the very end. I’d never been to a funeral before. It weirded me Anne I kept wishing it was done not because it ached me so but because I went deadhead halfway through hearing them blather and fudge. I couldn’t help it if they missed him so much why didn’t they do more to help him? Maybe they did maybe I’m just being unfair but so what. Instead of thinking of Daddy my mind fixed on Mister Mossbacher and how I hated him. If he hadn’t wronged Daddy it probably wouldn’t have happened I thought and I know I’m right. I just wanted to leap and run far away leaving them all it dizzied me so. Oh Anne if there is hell like on Christian commercials I guess I’m bound for it.
Chrissie and Mama phone each other every day since Daddy died. Mama told me today they’ve been talking about us. Boob was so unhappy even before and now Mama says it’s all so uncertained she just doesn’t know. ‘Sweetie you’re a toughie aren’t you you think we can be all right?’ she asked me. ‘Plenty so’ I said. ‘Oh angel I know you can make it and I think I can too but I just don’t know about that poor little Boobster she was already so feathery and now this’ Mama said. Boob’s chubola I think so I don’t think feathery when I think Boob but I knew what was meant. ‘Do you think she’ll be all right living with Chrissie if it can be worked out?’ Mama asked me. ‘I spec she’ll be a Chrissie clone in no time’ I said. ‘My darling that’s such a dreadful thought and you’re probably right. But think of how things are here the Army everywhere and people shooting at us and our money running out don’t you think it’d be safer there?’ Mama said. ‘If they’re moneyed so why don’t they trickle us?’ I asked. ‘Sweet darling they’d help by providing a better environment for Boob don’t you see?’ she said. ‘Safer maybe better maybe not’ I said. ‘Chrissie wanted me to ask if you wanted to come out there too and live with the rest in the bunker’ Mama said. ‘Nada never’ I said. ‘That’s what I told her sweetie but you know Chrissie. She knows better than to ask if I want to because it would be inviting murder’ Mama said. ‘We’re still housing here then?’ I asked. ‘Yes angel I don’t know what we’ll do though it’s going to be so much harder’ she said. I told her it would be all right but she just looked at me and half-smiled. I stayed floating while Mama told. It’ll never be hard enough I have to live with Chrissie.
Daddy didn’t have insurance because he’d cashed it in earlier. There was a little money we got from the Guild that he’d set aside but translated into new money it’s even less than it would have been. We’re choiceless in the matter in any event that’s all so we’ll have to earplay it and see what goes.
Iz called me Saturday to see when we could meet and I told her we couldn’t and why. She saddened having only met Daddy last week and then only momentslong before he went to work. When I talked to Iz I started crying loud but not for long, tears don’t help you. She said she understood. ‘What happened to your father Iz?’ I asked. ‘He was cancered’ she said. ‘I was little. Three or four. I hardly remember him except he had big hands and smiled.’ ‘You loved him?’ ‘Sure why you ask?’ Iz said. ‘Maybe I didn’t love Daddy enough’ I said only half believing it but thinking it possible enough. ‘Girl you mindlost what a thing to say’ said Iz. ‘I know but I wonder’ I said. ‘Lola you so crazy’ she said. ‘I know that’s my name Crazy Lola’ I said.
It’s all breaking Anne I better stop now.
JUNE 4
We’ve settled. Boob is going to stay with Chrissie. She and Mama talked and they detailed what they had to. Dopey Alan is using frequent flier miles to pay for Boob’s ticket to San Francisco. She leaves tomorrow from Newark Airport which is the only one open. She’ll be gone then. It’s not forever Mama says but who knows how long that’ll be everything’s forever when you don’t know when it’ll end. I spec one day we will regroup but there’ll be meantime changes and what we’ll be when we see each other again, that’s unknowable. I’ll miss Boob so much all the times I wished she was somewhere else but when it downcomes I don’t. But what’s to do?
This evening me and Boob. ‘What will you do out there besides school?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know but I’ll be safe’ Boob said. She held her My L’il Fetus which is just about gone now, it’s nada but a lump with a head. ‘Nobody’s safe Boob that’s truthed plain’ I said. ‘That’s what you say but I’ll be safe with Aunt Chrissie.’ ‘Maybe maybe not’ I said. ‘Nobody will get me’ she said. ‘Nobody who?’ I asked. ‘Nobody in New York. Nobody at school and nobody on the street and none of my friends and none of your friends’ Boob said. ‘Me too?’ I asked. ‘I said everybody didn’t I?’ she said. ‘What’s meant Boob?’ ‘I mean you won’t do anything to me’ she said. ‘What you think I do to you?’ I asked getting mad. ‘Don’t know but you’d do something someday I know’ she said.
Boob is going to turn into Chrissie whatever we do I think. It’s not so much that Chrissie has her own Kure-A-Kid program like what was done to Lori, it’s more genetic. Maybe Chrissie won’t harass Mama as much once she’s got Boob to rebuild. Mama said when she talked to Chrissie the other day Chrissie was again saying she was a terrible mother for wanting to keep me here with her. ‘I told her you didn’t want to go sweetie but you know Chrissie she knows everything’ Mama said. Mama said she told Chrissie she wished to God she knew what to do and she said Chrissie told her God hears the prayers of Jews but not if they live in New York. ‘She’s become so peculiar out there in the outback sweetie she was always awful to me but now it’s like she’s not even human’ Mama said. ‘But you want Boob to be with her’ I said. ‘Boob’s so fragile my darling she’ll wither if she’s here much longer she takes so after her poor father’ Mama said. ‘She’s not too withery’ I said. ‘Inside sweetie inside.’ ‘I take after you’ I said pleased because even though she flutters and she’s too medicated Mama can tough it better than Daddy could that was always how it was. ‘Oh my angel I hope not I hope not’ Mama said. After I hugged her longtime she finally dried and went on.
JUNE 5
We bussed out to Newark Airport today from Port Authority. It’s one of the worst places in town and always has been Anne. It’s on 42nd which is all abandoned and empty now to start with and wilders hang there in and out constant. City claim it safer now but there’s more living there now than there were last year. Men layabout eyeing women till they find the new ones and then make them prostitutes dog ugly ones worse than the tunnel tramps on Eleventh Avenue. Port Authority is horror plus Anne you feel greasy just walking through it.
We put Boob on the plane to San Francisco at the airport. Actually Boob put herself on the plane because the antiterrorist police wouldn’t let us terminal too far in. I wanted to word her this morning before she flew but I tonguetied and she kept forgetting making Mama double-check what she hauled so we never talked. I said I’d write but I don’t know what I’ll say. She won’t be there a month before she’s Chrissiesized and it’s racked me overmuch already Anne the way people like Lori and Katherine sideshift. Knowing somebody so long and then they sudden change disrupts so it’s not handleable anymore or at least I spec not for me. I kissed her goodbye and she statued when I did, I think she’s already season changed and it’s too late.
