The Heart is Deceitful above All Things

JT LEROY

Disappearances

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things

Toyboxed

Foolishness Is Bound in the Heart of a Child

Lizards

Baby Doll

Coal

Viva Las Vegas

Meteors

Natoma Street

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Author

Copyright

For Dr. Terrence Owens
To Sarah
To Dennis
To Gus
My heart to Patti Sillivan

Praise for JT LeRoy and
Sarah

‘Extraordinarily, LeRoy manages to lace this horrific story with tenderness and humour. Not for the fainthearted, these few raw pages constitute a breathtaking debut.'
Guardian

‘Turns the tawdriness of hustling into a world of lyrical and grotesque beauty, without losing any of its authenticity . . . his language is always fresh, his soul never corrupt.'
The New York Times

‘Surprising, upsetting, offensive, and fun. It's everything a good read – or good sex for that matter – should be.'
Chuck Palahniuk, author of
Fight Club

‘An unsettling, funny novel.
Priscilla Queen of the Desert
meets William Burroughs.'
Esquire

‘
Sarah
has a strong seductive quality, and it is impossible to forget. LeRoy's ability to present trauma and tenderness simultaneously is entirely his own. “This book is nothing short of a miracle,” LeRoy has said. I have to agree.'
New Statesman

‘Like a cross between Nathanael West and Mark Twain, drunk out of their minds and collaborating on
Charlie's Angels
meets
The Headless Horseman
–
Sarah
is a wildly comic tour de force and a brilliant debut.'
Mary Gaitskill, author of
Two Girls, Fat and Thin

‘Extraordinary . . . LeRoy writes with astonishing flair and confidence, making
Sarah
a very impressive debut indeed.'
Sunday Telegraph

‘
Sarah
is weird, darkly funny and haunting. JT LeRoy has a gift, to be able to articulate his world so clearly and astringently, with grace and humor, but without glossing over the pain and brutality of it.'
Suzanne Vega

‘Full of Virginian folklore and miracles, at times
Sarah
reads like a fairy story. But it's also about abuse, addiction, and the pain of motherly rejection: a beautiful, scary, sad and funny book.'
The Face

‘JT LeRoy's
Sarah
is a revelation. It makes you realize how overused words like original and inspired have become. LeRoy's writing has a passion, economy, emotional depth, and lyric beauty so authentic that it seems to bypass every shopworn standard we've learned to expect of contemporary fiction. This is a novel gripped by an intense, gorgeous, yet strangely refined imagination, and its experience is unforgettable.'
Dennis Cooper, author of
All Ears
and
Period

‘LeRoy is exceptionally astute on the anonymous, grubby landscape of Western Virginia and writes cooly, yet profoundly, of his skewed childhood sexual identity . . . [an] amazing story.'
The Times

‘JT LeRoy has given us a beautiful, haunting tale of the survival of the spirit.'
Allison Anders, director of
Mi Vida Loca
and
My Grace of Heart

‘
Sarah
is a phantasmagorical work of extreme originality. Beautiful but perverse . . . a wonderfully executed journey into strange and unforgettable territory.'
Big Issue

‘An extraordinary novel . . . darkly comic.'
Time Out

‘This intensely autobiographical debut novel is a maverick work. LeRoy shapes his story into a tragic tale of denied childhood and relinquished masculinity. A wildly original novel that no one should miss. For once, believe the hype!'
Uncut

‘A harsh but beautiful tale: moments of self-destructive drug taking and extreme violence sit beside magic and the quirky ballsiness of young Sarah himself.'
Attitude

‘A modern version of the traditional gothic tale of sexual repression, imprisonment, evil tyrants, flight and pursuit, set against a religious background, with an added comic twist . . .
Sarah
is exciting, genuine, funny, more thought-provoking than it first appears, and is highly recommended.'
Gay Times

‘Unsettling and trippy . . . as disturbing as it is compulsive . . . Very odd, and very good.'
QX

H
IS LONG WHITE
buck teeth hang out from a smile, like a wolf dog. His eyes have a vacant, excited, mad look. The lady holding it, crouched down to my height, is grinning too widely. She looks like my baby-sitter, without the braces, the same long blond braid that starts somewhere inside the top of her head. She shakes Bugs Bunny in my face, making the carrot he's clutching plunge up and down like a knife. I wait for one of the social workers to tell her I'm not allowed to watch Bugs Bunny.

‘Look what your momma got you,' I hear.

Momma.

I say it softly like a magic word you use only when severely outnumbered.

‘Right here, honey,' the woman with the bunny says. She smiles even wider, looking up at the three surrounding social workers, nodding at them. Their tilted heads grin back. She shakes the rabbit again.

‘I'm your momma.' I watch her red, glossy lips, and I can taste the word, metallic and sour in my mouth. And I ache so badly for Her, the real one that rescues me.

I stare out at the blank faces, and from deep inside I scream and scream for Her to come save me.

When we first get back to the tiny, one-bedroom bungalow, I throw myself on the floor, kicking and screaming for my real momma.

She ignores me and makes dinner.

‘Look, Spaghetti-Os,' she says. I won't move. I fall asleep on the floor. I wake up in a narrow cot with Bugs Bunny next to me, and I scream.

She shows me the few toys she's gotten me. I have more and better at my real home. I throw hers out the window.

One of the social workers comes by, and I cry so hard I throw up on her navy blue tassel shoes.

‘He'll get used to it, Sarah,' I hear her tell my new mom. ‘Hang in there, honey,' she tells her, and pats her shoulder.

At lunch she gives me peanut butter and jelly with the crusts on. My real momma cuts the crust off. I fling the plastic Mickey Mouse plate off the table.

She spins around, hand raised into a fist. I scream, she freezes, her fist shaking, a foot away from my chest.

We both stare at each other, breathing hard. And something passes between us, and her face seals up. I don't know what it is exactly.

As my sobs start she grabs her denim jacket and leaves. I'd never been alone before, not even for five minutes, but I know something has changed, something is different, and I don't scream.

I run to my bed, curl up tight, and wait for everything to be different.

The phone's shrill ringing wakes me up. It's dark without the dinosaur night-light I used to have.

‘Thank you, Operator, it works,' I hear her say quietly. Then, almost yelling, ‘Hello? . . . Hello? . . . Yes, Jeremiah is here . . .'

My heart starts pounding. ‘Jeremiah, honey, are you awake?' she calls out, her shadow haunting my partly opened door.

‘Momma?' I call out, pushing my sheets away.

‘Yes, honey, it's your foster parents.' I run to her and the phone.

‘Oh yes, he's here.' I reach up for the phone with every muscle.

‘What . . . oh . . .' She frowns. I jump up and down, straining.

‘Bad? . . . Well he hasn't been
very
bad . . .' She turns away from me, the black phone cord wrapping around her.

‘Momma!' I shout, and pull on the phone cord.

‘Yes . . . I see,' she says, nodding, turning away from me farther. ‘Oh, is that why? OK, I'll tell him.'

‘Gimme . . . Momma!' I yell, and yank hard on the cord.

‘So you don't want to speak to him?'

‘Daddy!' I yell, and grab hard. The phone receiver flies out of her hands, bounces on the blue, sparkled
linoleum, and slides under the table. It spins like a bottle, the mouthpiece facing up. I spring for it, sliding like my daddy taught me when we played whiffleball. Just as my finger touches the dull, black plastic of the phone, it jerks and flies out from under the table and away from me.

‘Got it!' I hear her gasp. ‘Hello? . . . Yes! Yes! He did that . . . Fuck yeah, I'll tell him.'

I twist around and drag myself from under the table.

‘OK, thanks.' She smiles into the phone.

‘No!' I reach up with my arms.

‘Y'all take care . . .'

‘No!' My feet skid under me, leaving me back on my stomach.

‘Good-bye.' In slow motion she swirls like a ballerina, a grin wide on her face.

‘No!'

Her arm rises into the air, the spiral cord swinging in front of me. I grab for it, her hand sweeps backward, and I catch nothing.

‘Momma!' I scream, and I watch the receiver lowered into its cradle on the couch's white plastic end table.

I scramble to the phone and snatch it up. ‘Momma, Momma, Daddy!' I shout into it.

‘They hung up,' she says. She sits on the opposite end of the couch and lights a cigarette, her bare legs pulled to her chest, tucked under her large white T-shirt.

Even though I hear the dial tone humming, I still call for them. I press the receiver to my ear as tightly as I
can, in case they're there, past the digital tone calling to me like voices lost in a snowstorm.

‘They're gone,' she says, blowing smoke out. ‘You wanna know what they said?'

‘Hello? . . . Hello?' I say quieter.

‘They didn't want to talk to you.'

‘Hello?' I turn away from her and wrap myself in the cord.

‘I said they did not want to talk to you.'

‘Uh-uh,' I whisper. I twist more, and the receiver slips out of my hands, banging on the linoleum.

‘Don't you throw my phone!' She gets up quickly and grabs the receiver at my feet.

‘You ain't gonna be throwing things no more,' she says, and unwraps the wire snaked around me, jerking it violently around my Superman pajamas like a whip.

She hangs up the phone and goes back to the couch, crossing her legs. She twists backward to look at me.

‘I went through a lot to get you back, and you're going to be grateful, you, you little shit.'

A loud gasp pops out of me, a silent sob. I'm beyond regular crying.

When Momma and Daddy go out without me, leaving me with Cathy the baby-sitter, I always cry a while. Sometimes I even scream and lay on the wood floor near the front door, smelling the leftover trail of sweet perfume Momma left. But I always stop crying, remembering my special treats left in the top drawer for being a good, grown-up boy. Cathy and me watch
the
Rainbow Brite
video, and she reads three books to me, and when I wake up they're back, Momma and Daddy are always back in their place. ‘We always come back,' they tell me.

‘Do you want to know what they said about you?' I hear her puff hard on the cigarette. I stare at a huge water bug scurrying under the couch past her foot. I shake my head no, turn around, and go back to my bed.

I grab Bugs Bunny from under the cot where I'd shoved him, wrap my arms around him under my blankets, and between hiccups whisper in his oversize fuzzy ear, ‘When you wake up, they'll be back, they'll be back.'