Into the Valley (12 page)

Their motel room that night had a single queen bed with lumpy mattress, dripping faucet, cracked plaster walls. The girl fell asleep immediately while B. lay next to her aware of every breath, of the heat radiating off her brown arms and legs. She tried to count the cracks in the ceiling. The carsickness still remote; the banks abstract and unsubstantial in her thoughts.

She took the girl's hand and held it. The girl inhaling and exhaling so easily.

25.

They woke late again. They stopped for lunch and the girl devoured a meatloaf sandwich, two scoops of chocolate ice cream and an orange soda. (B. had coffee and bits of Danish.) Afterward they drove aimlessly on the small roads. It seemed easier now for B. to drive without speaking, to follow wherever the road took them, the girl's feet up on the dashboard, hot wind through the windows. (The heat itself now a welcome stupor.) The carsickness was still subdued. Maybe if she could stay this way with the girl. Maybe, she thought, something with her had cured it.

When the sun was just above the western hills, they intersected the freeway again and came on a small carnival by the side of it. The girl perked up.

“Can we stop?”

The rides were old and ramshackle. But B.'s lower back ached from driving and the girl was too excited.

“Okay,” B. said.

The girl bounced in her seat until they parked. She asked B. for money and went to the entrance without waiting. It was all seedy: the half-dozen rickety rides with rusting metal and flaking paint, the faded concession stands, the operators' road-weary faces. The music
oomped-oomped
and the dingy bulbs winked. There was a whirling tilted octopus ride, bumper cars, an airplane merry-go-round for small children, a spinning column of swings. But no Ferris wheel. B. would have liked to go above the valley again; she would have liked to compare it with the buttes. The girl made her ride the bumper cars, the clanging and crashing and sparks of which B. hated, and then the octopus, which made her neck ache. When the girl insisted on riding the spinning column of swings, B. refused and she watched the girl go around, long braids and feathers sailing, face indecipherable. B. bought her a caramel apple and an ice cream cone. (The girl had not refused anything since the doughnuts.) She bought herself a bag of popcorn and they walked along the midway as the last blue in the sky blackened.

“He doesn't understand that sometimes a person just wants to see something pretty. What's wrong with that. The ocean, for example. And I thought the governor's mansion would be like Pasadena. Once on a field trip we visited a grower's mansion and I'll never forget the long curtains like silk or velvet or whatever, all soft and shiny
. . .
A person just likes to see that.”

Any sudden effusion was related to Jed, B. now understood. “I don't think you have to explain yourself,” she said.

The girl was staring at her. “Can I wear one of your dresses?” she asked out of nowhere, chocolate ice cream in the corners of her mouth.

B. took the girl in, with her cutoffs, wearing only a lace-topped camisole and the leather choker around her neck, large turquoise in the center.

“They haven't been cleaned in a while,” B. said.

The girl shrugged. “I don't care.”

B. had a brief vision of the girl in her dress, on the bus through Chinatown, at the beauty salons. She held the irrational thought that perhaps the girl would understand then. Maybe then she could tell the girl about the walks and the crocus. They went back to the trunk of the Mustang, the organ music whining behind them. B. pulled the powder-blue dress from the travel bag. (She had put back on the ivory; she only wanted the ivory sheath now.) “I should really hang them up in the back,” she said. “I don't know why I don't.” She didn't have another pair of heels; the girl would have to wear her sandals.

“I can fix your hair and makeup,” B. offered.

“Alright.”

The girl changed in the backseat while B. got out her brush. When she stepped out the hard nipples were pressed against
the bust of the dress. B. tried not to look. She removed the braids and feathers and brushed through the girl's hair, pulling out tangles. “Ouch. Ow!” “I can't help it, your knots are horrible.” The girl's hair was too long to keep any kind of style so B. twirled it up on top of her head and arranged it like a crown with her bobby pins. Then she painted the girl's eyelids black with liner and mascaraed her long lashes and drew on the pink lipstick. B. unhooked the diamond brooch from her own chest and pinned it at the girl's collarbone. The girl eyed B. “I've never worn a diamond before.” She gazed at herself in the car windows, fingering the brooch. “Like a movie star,” she said. The girl's shins were still blotched white with calamine. She needed stockings, a handbag, B. thought vaguely.

They went back to the midway and walked under the winking bulbs. The girl's neck looked long with her hair up. B. watched the farmers grin but the girl did not seem to notice.

“Let's have some beer,” the girl said.

B. bought two bottles and it appeared that whatever substances the girl had imbibed in her short life, she had not had much beer. She seemed immediately drunk. They sat on a wooden picnic bench and watched the crowd in the jangle of the midway and the girl babbled on about her favorite rock groups, the first time she took acid, an ice cream parlor in Fontana where her mother threw her a “goofy” six-year-old birthday party. The crowd, B. observed as the girl talked, was sunburned couples and sunburned teenagers and a few Mexicans. No other women with hitchhiking girls.

The girl kept smoothing down the wrinkles at her lap. “You must feel like a
lady
in these getups. Who wears this stuff, anyway? Hello, I'm Mrs.
Lady
.”

The girl insisted on doing the swing ride again in the new outfit. But by the time she returned to the picnic bench her expression had changed back to the indifference. She slumped next to B., her head leaning to the side, a new bottle of beer somehow in her hand.

“It's too tight on me. I can't breathe.”

“It fits perfectly.”

The girl drank the whole beer. “You should wear my clothes now,” she said.

B. did not respond. She had, in truth, wondered what they felt like, the suede and the bare legs and the leather choker. But only in passing.

“You too good for my clothes?”

“I just don't feel like changing right now.”

The girl grabbed B.'s bottle out of her hand and drank that too. “You're one of those snobs,” she hissed. Her eyes seemed only able to land in some middle distance beyond B. “Snobby cunt won't wear my clothes.”

“It's getting late,” B. said. “We should find a motel.”

“Blah blah blah, you think you're too good, that's it. You think you're just driving around this shit valley for the sights or something. What
sights?
Like this?” She gestured mockingly at the midway.

“I know what you're doing,” the girl went on, tossing the beer bottle in the dirt, looking slightly addled now with hair falling out of the crown, lipstick smeared. “I'm not stupid. I've seen things on the road. I want in on the action. Jed and me need the dough.”

B. kept her eyes level on the midway. “I don't know what you mean.”

“I mean the pile of cash under your seat.”

B.'s body went oddly still, the heaving down deep where she could not feel it yet.

“Don't worry, I didn't take any.” More hair fell out of its bun as she spoke, head bobbing. “How do you set up the tricks anyway? You can't just hang out on corners like in the city. Do you offer to blow the farmers at their fruit stands or something? Out in the fields?”

“You're drunk.”

“One of those ladies who gets her rocks off hooking. Does your husband think you're on a reducing weekend or something?”

She yanked the girl up by the arm. The spinning instantly and violently back now, a searing tightening in her head that made her knees almost buckle. The girl let herself be guided back to the Mustang, mumbling incoherently. In the car, her eyes closed and her body went slack, but the muttering continued. “Snob! Snobby driving cunt
. . .
They won't get him, goddamn whores. Don't you understand? He's meant to be with me. Pack of goddamn whores.”

By the time B. found a motor lodge, the girl was comatose. The night manager said nothing as B. paid in advance, parting with her precious bank bills, and then watched as if he had seen it all before B. lift the girl to her feet, string the brown arm around her shoulders and drag her to the room. She dumped the girl on a bed still in the dress. The girl looking now like a beat-up doll, face placid, hair askew, eyeliner wiped up her cheek.

B. kicked off her heels and went into the bathroom. She put her hands to her forehead against the spinning. In the mirror she saw her reflection: blackened eyes, greasy hair, pieces of sunburned skin flaking from her shoulders. Slowly, in a trance, she began peeling away the dead patches of skin. She peeled until her shoulders were raw, until translucent patches curled in the sink.

When she came out of the bathroom, the girl was up. She was squatted next to the bed flicking cigarette ash onto the carpet, mumbling again. The powder-blue dress lay crumpled on the floor. She was not wearing any shirt or underpants, just the jean cutoffs with her knees jutted out so her pubic hair showed, her small breasts two white circles against her brown tan, her eyelids fluttering open and closed. She had tried and failed, it appeared, to put on the turquoise leather choker—it lay over
her shoulder, ties hanging down. (“I got it from an Indian lady at a concert. The real-deal stuff, no fakes.”) B. noticed then the girl was wearing the bone-colored heels. Squatting naked in the bone-colored heels. With a surge of anger, B. shoved the girl on her bottom, yanked off the heels and threw them across the room. “I sa' put back on my own clothez,” the girl slurred, up on her elbows, breasts upright. “Mise own clothes better.”

B. pulled the girl up from the floor and pushed her back on the bed, flipping the bedspread to cover the dark nipples. “Go to sleep!” she yelled. The girl closed her eyes, her expression instantly serene. It was only then B. realized she must have taken something with the beers. Some hippie tab or root. B. retrieved the heels and, face hot, brushed them harshly with her fingers, as if this would remove the dirt and gouges. She hid them under her bed. She shook out the powder-blue dress and laid it over the television.

She went to the knapsack.

She took out the crumpled
LIFE
magazine, the wedding dress stained and the couple's faces now ripped beyond recognition. The carsickness was in every part of her body again, crushing her like a vice. She dropped the magazine in the trash.

It was a juvenile kind of writing in the notebook, bubbled letters and hearts dotting the i's. The entries just like the script, childish, stolid, complaints about her parents and Fontana, about Jed and the other women. This one was a “square,” that one was a “phony,” “a goddamn bummer.” There was a creased flyer for a rock concert with obscene doodling. A list of highs, ranked.

Halfway through the girl had written an essay. The type a student might write for a junior high school English class, with centered underlined title: Why I liked the Governer's [sic] Mansion. “The pretty cups for tea,” “a place for quiet for the governer to think.” “What did you learn from this experience?” the girl wrote in conclusion. “Everyone needs his proper home.”

B. clutched the page. Inside the crushing an inexplicable sadness rose. She thought of her own essay, what could it say. Why I Like the Valley. “The sights, the agriculture
. . .
The variety of the region's banks
. . .
The nothingness, the non-walks, the erasing heat
. . .
the driving
. . .
To keep driving.”

She dropped the notebook to the floor. Still in a trance, she went to the knapsack and pulled out the suede vest, heavy with tobacco and body odor and musk. She unzipped her dress and stepped out, unhooked her bra. With the vest she hung a string of painted wooden beads around her neck. She placed one of the feathers in her knotted hair. The girl's blue jeans were too small over her hips; she sat in her underwear and lit one of the girl's cigarettes.

She tried to hum the rock song. The man's silky smug words commanding her not to hesitate, not to wallow. She got up and found the antler bone in her purse and sat with it in her lap. She tried inside the violent spinning to daydream: she was on the side of the highway, thinking of Andalusia, of the Indians, unconcerned, uninhibited, waiting for nothing, expectant of everything. Free.

The spinning broke through all of it. The drumming nausea. Her breasts sagged against the vest. She dug her nails into her palms. She tried to recite some of the Indian prayer. It was ridiculous. It was impossible.

The girl had come too late. The girl and her chants and her looseness. The sadness pooled at the bottom of the spinning. She lay down on the floor. The antler tumbled off. She stroked her cheek back and forth against the carpet. The only thing was the banks. The only irrefutable truth. Lying on the carpet she heard the
tick tick tick
of the clocks above the vault, the whoosh of paper across the counters.