Deliver Me From Evil (9 page)

A
s dull and out of touch with reality as my parents were, I was surprised that Mama bought me a blue suede jacket that was too stylish and cute for words for Christmas this year. It was a nice change from the mammy-made, dull-colored things she usually bought for me off the discount-store racks. That was the main reason I got so caught up in shoplifting.

My parents rarely came into my bedroom, and when they did they had no interest in what was in my closet, but I kept it locked anyway. When I wanted to wear one of my stolen outfits, I waited until my parents were in bed. When they stayed up later than they usually did on a night I had a party to go to, I left the house dressed in one of the frumpy outfits Mama had bought for me. But my party clothes were in my backpack. Half of my closet was full of hot “hot” outfits.

It was a cold and dreary Saturday evening, with puffy black clouds sliding slowly across a sky that looked like a gray blanket. I had just gotten over a cold that had been so serious, I hadn't even been able to crawl out of bed for the last two days. But on the third day, I was well enough to hit the streets again.

“Mama, can I go over to the skating rink and hang out? I want to show my friends the new jacket you got me for Christmas.”

My mother was in the kitchen, washing dishes. She turned and looked at me with a blank expression on her face, which had become so familiar over the years. “Ummm,” she muttered. “You can do whatever it is you want to do.”

I already knew that. But out of respect and because I knew that it was the right thing to do, I asked, anyway. Neither one of my parents really cared about what I did. No matter what it was. I could skip school, ignore my household chores, eat junk food for days, stay out all night if I wanted to, and not have to worry about any consequences. Even though some of my friends lived in neighborhoods rougher than mine and had parents that drank, fought, and abused them, they had curfews and rules that they had to follow. To them, I was living a kid's dream. And, it was fun, but only up to a point.

I was still in middle school, and I didn't know what to do with myself most of the time. It was an awkward time for me. I was so confused, I didn't know if I was coming or going.

As much as I hated school, I liked going sometimes because my teachers made sure I followed their rules. Even though I bitched and moaned about it, it made me warm all over when one of my teachers scolded me for not turning in my homework or for acting up in class.

Two weeks after Christmas, I came home after hanging out with a few of my friends a few hours later than I normally did. All of the lights were out. The old Chevy that my daddy drove was not parked in front of our building like it usually was this time of night, and my parents were not home. They had no friends that were close enough to visit, so there was nobody for me to call except the man that they worked for.

“Mr. Bloom, this is Christine Martinez. You seen my mama and my daddy?”

Mr. Bloom coughed for a full minute before he spoke. “Reuben's girl?” he asked, clearing his throat.

“Yes, sir,” I muttered impatiently. “Are my mama and daddy still at your house?”

“Why, no, sunshine. They are supposed to be in Gilroy for some kind of festival. They bugged me about it for a week before I finally told them they could take the weekend off to go. Did you not know that?” Mr. Bloom asked, sounding surprised. I didn't really care that much for Mr. Bloom, with his big red face and wiry gray hair. It didn't matter to me that we lived rent free in one of his buildings. I thought that he took advantage of my parents, making them work long hours and paying them low wages. I usually hid, ignored him, or rolled my eyes at him when he came to the house. He knew I didn't like him.

It was no wonder that he was surprised to be hearing from me, and just as surprised to hear that I didn't know where my parents were. But he was not as surprised as I was that they had not mentioned the festival to me, invited me to go along with them, or even left me a note telling me their plans.

“Oh yeah! I remember now. Ha ha ha! Dummy me! They did tell me they were going to that festival in Gilroy. It's some kind of celebration that the black people from Guatemala get off into every year.” I sniffed. “Mostly old folks. I didn't really want to go. I told them that I wanted to spend some time with my friends.”

“I see,” Mr. Bloom said. A stony silence followed. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Uh-uh.” I hung up and sat on the hard sofa in our living room for several minutes, wondering what I should do next. And that's where I ended up sleeping that night.

As many friends as I had, and as much as I got myself into, I was a very lonely child. That's why when I woke up the next morning, I wandered over to People's Park, where there was always something exciting happening.

Even though the park was not that far from downtown, people put up crude tents, which they slept in until somebody killed them or until they got thrown in jail. People got drunk or stoned, fucked people they didn't even know, and even walked around naked. One drunken woman had even given birth during the middle of an orgy one night. It seemed like every time I looked up, People's Park was in the news. Most of my friends were not allowed to go anywhere near that place, because in addition to the occasional murders and rapes in or near the park, there were a lot of fun activities going on there that involved drugs.

There were a lot of white kids in the notorious park, some even younger than me. Most of them had run away from home. A lot of them were the kids and grandkids of the same hippies that had slept, fucked, and got high in People's Park back in the day. These were the kids who always had the best weed.

I saw Wade before he saw me, but I had no intentions of acknowledging that sucker. He was with some big-butt white girl, anyway. I was stunned when he galloped over to me, with a cocky grin on his face.

“Hey, Christine,” he greeted, squatting down on the ground where I was sitting. I hid the joint that had just been passed to me behind my back.

“Do I know you?” I asked, with a profound smirk. It pleased me to see the hurt look on his face. Now he knew how I'd felt that day at Giovanni's when he'd disrespected me in front of his friend.

Wade stuck out his bottom lip, and for a moment, I thought he was going to cry. “So it's like that, huh? You treat your brother like a piece of shit when you with your
Caucasian
friends.” He said the word “Caucasian” like it was a cuss word.

“I don't have no brother,” I snapped firmly, giving him a hot look. All the other kids laughed, and that seemed to make him madder than everything I'd said.

“I'll see you around,” he said in a weak voice, grabbing the white girl who had come to the park with him by the hand and leading her away.

“That a friend of yours?” one of the kids asked me.

“He used to be,” I said sadly. I watched him until he had disappeared from my sight.

O
ne of the white boys who had been with me when I'd clowned Wade in the park that day invited me to have dinner with him at a Greek restaurant a few blocks away. He planned to pay for it with a credit card that he'd stolen from his uncle's wallet the day before.

“Order whatever you want. You can even order something to take home, too,” he told me, waving the gold American Express card in the air. We plopped down in a booth close to the door in case there was a problem with the credit card and we had to leave in a hurry. Like if we had to jump up and run out the door before the manager showed up.

“Can I get me a steak and a lobster, uh, dude?” I didn't even know this boy's name. But “dude” was so universal that people who didn't know my name called me that, too. “And I'll take another steak to go.” Anyway, my mysterious friend had long, silky hair that was as white as snow and a nose so long and narrow, it looked like a clothespin. Whatever his name was, he was a lot of fun.

After dinner I sat on the ground in front of a liquor store near my street, smoking Newports with the same boy. He was as gay as an Easter basket, so I didn't have to worry about having to fuck him or suck his dick like I had to with so many of the other boys I'd recently met. Unlike me, this boy had a nice home in Silicon Valley to go to. But he didn't want to, and I could understand why. His daddy was a big shot in the marines and wasn't about to tolerate a sissy for a son sashaying around his macho friends, making him look like a punk, too.

I gave the steak that I had ordered to go to a homeless man who wandered by. When the white boy left, I felt so alone and unloved. I wanted somebody to hold me, and I didn't care who that somebody was. If Wade had come back around at that moment, I would have mowed him down like a steamroller and clung to him like paint. I regretted what I'd said to him in the park and decided that I would apologize as soon as I saw him again.

I didn't go home that night. One reason was, I didn't like being in the apartment alone. I felt safer on the street with a bunch of strange runaway kids than I did in our apartment.

One night last year, I woke up in the middle of the night, and there was a man standing over my bed. He was dressed in dark clothing, and there was a ski mask covering his face. Before I could scream, he clamped a gloved hand over my mouth. He smelled like a combination of kerosene and underarm funk. I threw up, but since his hand was over my mouth, I almost choked on my own vomit. Somehow I managed to whimper loud enough for Mama to hear me when she got up to go the bathroom, which was across the hall from my bedroom.

As soon as she entered my room and clicked on the light, the intruder fled. He sprinted across the floor and jumped out of the open window.

“Girl, don't you get tired of entertaining your friends? Do you know what time it is?” Mama hollered. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Some of us have to get up and go to work in the morning.”

I was so afraid, it took several attempts for me to get my words out. “He wasn't my company, Mama.”

“Then why was he in this room? Why did he run off like he did?”

“A crazy man broke into my room!” I blurted. I jumped out of the bed and ran to the window and closed it so hard and fast, it cracked. “Mama, we have to call the police!” I yelled, whipping my head around so abruptly, I almost fell to the floor.

“Did he hurt you?” Mama asked, sounding concerned, looking around the room.

“No, he didn't hurt me, but he broke into my room, so I know he wanted to!” I wailed.

Mama stood there looking at me for a long time, like she didn't know what to say or do. Her hands were shaking, and I couldn't describe the look on her face. She seemed to be just as frightened as I was. “Are you all right?” she asked in a low, shaky voice. I could barely hear her, and I was in the same room with her, so I was surprised when Daddy stumbled into my room.

“What's all this ruckus?” he asked, blinking his owlish eyes.

“If I've told this girl once, I've told her a thousand times to keep that window locked,” Mama said, with a heavy sigh. She turned to me, with a look of pain on her face. Like a woman in labor. For a minute, I expected her to remind me about the forty-eight hours of labor she had endured to give birth to me. But she surprised me this time. “We worry about you all the time,” she said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “We don't know what to do with you anymore.”

I bit my bottom lip and looked upside the wall. That wasn't what I'd expected her to say, but it was close enough.

“Well, maybe now she'll do just that,” Daddy said. He strolled up to me and felt my forehead. “If he comes back, you holler,” he said to me, rubbing my back. Then he turned to Mama. “Juanita, remind me to put some bars on this window. All we need is to get our names in the paper.”

I stayed up the rest of that night, with the light on. The man didn't return, but the next morning I found a ladder outside my window, which the man had used to climb up to the second floor. I knew that it belonged to Mr. Royster, the old man who owned the shabby house next to us, so I removed it and dragged it back to his property.

I didn't even bother to tell my parents about the ladder, but when I told old Mr. Royster about it, he had one of his sons come over and chop the old ladder to pieces. When he realized how scared I was about what I'd experienced the night before, he told me that from now on, he'd leave his back-porch light on and his pit bull in the backyard. I wanted to cry when he gave me a big hug. The only reason I didn't cry was because by now I had learned to hide my true feelings. Mr. Royster didn't like my parents, so he didn't bother to tell them what he'd done with his ladder or anything else that he had discussed with me about my traumatic experience. And neither did I.

But that same day Daddy replaced the window that I'd cracked, and he installed some bars. The day after that, he gave me a baseball bat to defend myself with in case some intruder got into my room again, anyway.

A couple of nights later, something happened in my room that shocked me almost as much as the man who'd broken in. As I lay there in the dark, with my eyes closed, I heard my door creak open. A few moments later, I felt a warm hand touch my cheek. I was still playing possum when a pair of rubbery lips kissed the side of my face.

I
forgot all about the intruder, and before long things were back to normal. I had fun bringing some of my friends to the apartment to show them the bars on my bedroom window. The bars made me feel safer, but I still had some concerns about sleeping alone in the same room where I might have been raped or murdered if Mama hadn't come in when she did. When I asked Daddy if I could start sleeping on the sofa in the living room with him, he didn't even answer me. He just looked at me like I was crazy. I didn't even bother to ask Mama. One rejection was enough.

I still didn't know which one of my parents had come into my room that night and kissed my cheek, and I didn't care. It made me feel good just to know that one of them had taken at least one step forward. I couldn't even begin to imagine what my life would have been like if my parents had shown me more affection—and out in the open. But I was glad to get any affection at all.

When nobody paid any attention to me I felt alone and unwanted. And the only times those feelings didn't bother me was when I was drunk or in somebody's arm. If somebody gave me some attention I felt better about who I was. And I didn't care how I got that attention or who gave it to me.

I spent so much time helping Maria take care of her baby brothers they had started to call me Aunt Christine.

By the end of that year, I had slept with more than a dozen boys, and I'd contracted gonorrhea three different times, twice in the same month. Even with several free clinics throughout the Bay Area, each offering free birth control, I only went when I needed a shot of penicillin.

When I slept with a boy who told me
after
he'd fucked me that he thought he had some type of disease, I sucker punched him so hard a crown fell off his front tooth. The only reason he didn't hit me back was because I threatened to say he'd raped me. I noticed a smelly discharge in my panties the very next day so I made another trip to the clinic. Then I almost hit one of those smart-mouthed bitches at the clinic who had seen me in there one time too many. “If you insist on sleeping around you should be a little more careful,” that heifer had told me with a smirk on her face. And that was while I was on my back, propped up with my feet in stirrups and with every hole on my body below my waist exposed so I was already in a funky mood.

“You need to mind your own fucking business and just do your job. I didn't come out here to get lectured,” I hissed. “Give me my shot, or whatever it is I need this time so I can get the hell up and out of here.” When I needed to be treated again two months later, I went to the clinic in Oakland. Somehow I had managed to avoid getting pregnant, but almost every girl I knew had had at least one abortion. Maria had had two. The free clinic offered free and confidential abortions, anyway, so the possibility of getting pregnant didn't even faze me.

I don't know how I managed to graduate from middle school, but I did. And with a B average! The kids I knew were excited at the thought of the upcoming summer, but I was not. To them, it meant having a lot more freedom, but I already had more freedom than I knew what to do with. There was very little left for me to get into. I was already doing drugs, smoking two packs of Newports a day, and fucking every boy who asked. There were times when I got so lonely that I did the asking.

I drank when I could get my hands on some alcohol. And, when I got really bored, I shoplifted things, which I usually sold or gave to cool kids so that they would want to hang out with me.

I got caught stealing a bag of potato chips in a liquor store one afternoon. I was relieved that somebody was finally going to chastise me and recite that story to me about how they were going to punish me for my own good. But even that backfired. Instead of calling the police, like I'd wanted him to so that I would know what it felt like for somebody to try and steer me in the right direction, the store clerk just gave me a stern warning and sent me on my way. I stopped at another liquor store on the way home and stole some cigarettes and some Doritos.

I went on a shoplifting rampage that summer. I even stole things right in front of some store clerks' noses. The one time that a store manager caught me and called the cops I cried so long, loud, and hard they didn't arrest me. But even though they read me the riot act and told me that the next time I wouldn't be so lucky, they escorted me home.

When the cops told my parents that I'd been caught stealing make-up and a Rick James tape, all my mother said was, “Well, at least she didn't kill nobody or rob no bank.”

The two young officers gave me a puzzled look, shrugged, and told my folks I shouldn't be out so late, and then they left. Ten minutes later, I waltzed right through the living room, past my parents, toward the door.

“Hey!”
my daddy yelled. I wanted to stop, but I didn't. And, neither he nor my mother attempted to keep me in that night. I made a beeline to the park, where I knew a lot of people would show me some love.

I still saw Wade around the neighborhood, but he ignored me just as much as I ignored him. He had a steady girlfriend now, and he seemed happy with her. A relationship with one boy was what I wanted, but that didn't seem like something that was going to happen for me anytime soon. None of the boys I slept with wanted to see me after three or four times. And none of them ever took me to a movie or home to meet their parents. I expected that kind of treatment from the white boys that I'd fucked, but not from the brothers. As a matter of fact, a couple of the white boys that I had fooled around with eventually invited me to parties and other gatherings. But by the time they did, I'd already lost interest in them.

 

High school was an exciting time in my shaky life. Kids were more focused, even me. Most of us knew what we wanted to do with our lives. Some of my classmates wanted to attend UC Berkeley. A lot of the others wanted to join the military, or get married. I just wanted to experience a normal life, which to me meant, I wanted someone in my life that really cared about me and showed it.

Even though my parents rarely showed me any affection, I was convinced that they loved me in their own strange way. They just didn't know how to show it. When I won a citywide spelling bee, a reporter from a local newspaper came to our apartment to interview me and take my picture. Everybody in our building and on our block got excited. I was at a nearby grocery store, helping Mama shop for groceries one day, and several adults came up to Mama and told her she should be proud of me.

“Oh, we are very proud of this girl,” Mama said, patting the top of my head. She looked at me in a way that she had never looked at me before—at least not while I was awake. There were tears in her eyes, but she did as much blinking as she had to to hold them back.

We walked home in silence, like we usually did. But later that evening, Mama stuck her head into my room and said, “I meant what I said back at the store a little while ago.”

“About what?” I asked, not even looking up from the
Playgirl
magazine one of my friends had passed on to me. I was so used to her and Daddy not showing any interest in me that I honestly didn't know what she was talking about.

“I am proud of you. Your daddy is, too,” she muttered in a meek voice. “Me and Reuben, we didn't get too far in school. Nobody in our family did.”

I looked up. “They have school programs for people like you and Daddy,” I offered. “Do you want me to go to the library and get some brochures? Maybe some day we can all visit Guatemala, look up some of our family, bring them to the States, and get them into school, too.”

My mother looked at me like I had just spewed out some pea soup.
“We can never ever go back to that place,”
she said in a voice just above a whisper. Then she clicked off my light and left the room. Her going back to school was never mentioned again. Nor was the fact that she was proud of me.