The Onion Girl (17 page)
Authors: Charles de Lint
This Is Where We Dump Them
, by Meg Mullally. Tinted photograph. The Tombs, Newford, 1991.
, by Meg Mullally. Tinted photograph. The Tombs, Newford, 1991.
Two children sit on the stoop of one of the abandoned buildings in the Tombs. Their hair is matted, faces smudged,
clothing dirty and ill-fitting. They look like turn-of-the-century Irish tinkers. There's litter all around them: torn garbage bags spewing their contents on the sidewalk, broken bottles, a rotting mattress on the street, half-crushed pop cans, soggy newspapers, used condoms.
clothing dirty and ill-fitting. They look like turn-of-the-century Irish tinkers. There's litter all around them: torn garbage bags spewing their contents on the sidewalk, broken bottles, a rotting mattress on the street, half-crushed pop cans, soggy newspapers, used condoms.
The children are seven and thirteen, a boy and a girl. They have no home, no family. They only have each other.
The next month went by awfully fast. Annie stayed with meâit was what she wanted. Angel and I did get her a place, a one-bedroom on Landis that she's going to move into after she's had the baby. It's right behind the loftâyou can see her back window from mine. But for now she's going to stay here with me.
She's really a great kid. No artistic leanings, but really bright. She could be anything she wants to be if she can just learn to deal with all the baggage her parents dumped on her.
She's kind of shy around Angel and some of my other friendsâI guess they're all too old for her or somethingâbut she gets along really well with Sophie and me. Probably because whenever you put Sophie and me together in the same room for more than two minutes, we just start giggling and acting about half our respective ages, which would make us, mentally at least, just a few years Annie's senior.
“You two could be sisters,” Annie told me one day when we got back from Sophie's studio. “Her hair's lighter, and she's a little chestier, and she's
definitely
more organized than you are, but I get a real sense of family when I'm with the two of you. The way families are supposed to be.”
definitely
more organized than you are, but I get a real sense of family when I'm with the two of you. The way families are supposed to be.”
“Even though Sophie's got faerie blood?” I asked her.
She thought I was joking.
“If she's got magic in her,” Annie said, “then so do you. Maybe that's what makes you seem so much like sisters.”
“I just pay attention to things,” I told her. “That's all.”
“Yeah, right.”
The baby came right on scheduleâthree-thirty, Sunday morning. I probably would've panicked if Annie hadn't been doing enough of that for
both of us. Instead I got on the phone, called Angel, and then saw about helping Annie get dressed.
both of us. Instead I got on the phone, called Angel, and then saw about helping Annie get dressed.
The contractions were really close by the time Angel arrived with the car. But everything worked out fine. Jillian Sophia Mackle was born two hours and forty-five minutes later at the Newford General Hospital. Six pounds and five ounces of red-faced wonder. There were no complications.
Those came later.
The last week before the show was simple chaos. There seemed to be a hundred and one things that none of them had thought of, all of which had to be done at the last moment. And to make matters worse, Jilly still had one unfinished canvas haunting her by Friday night.
It stood on her easel, untitled, barely sketched in images, still in monochrome. The colors eluded her. She knew what she wanted, but every time she stood before her easel, her mind went blank. She seemed to forget everything she'd ever known about art. The inner essence of the canvas rose up inside her like a ghost, so close she could almost touch it, but then fled daily, like a dream lost upon waking. The outside world intruded. A knock on the door. The ringing of the phone.
The show opened in exactly seven days.
Annie's baby was almost two weeks old. She was a happy, satisfied infant, the kind of baby that was forever making contented little gurgling sounds, as though talking to herself; she never cried. Annie herself was a nervous wreck.
“I'm scared,” she told Jilly when she came over to the loft that afternoon. “Everything's going too well. I don't deserve it.”
They were sitting at the kitchen table, the baby propped up on the Murphy bed between two pillows. Annie kept fidgeting. Finally she picked up a pencil and started drawing stick figures on pieces of paper.
“Don't say that,” Jilly said. “Don't even think it.”
“But it's true. Look at me. I'm not like you or Sophie. I'm not like Angel. What have I got to offer my baby? What's she going to have to look up to when she looks at me?”
“A kind, caring mother.”
Annie shook her head. “I don't feel like that. I feel like everything's sort of fuzzy and it's like pushing through cobwebs just to make it through the day.”
“We'd better make an appointment with you to see a doctor.”
“Make it a shrink,” Annie said. She continued to doodle, then looked down at what she was doing. “Look at this. It's just crap.”
Before Jilly could see, Annie swept the sheaf of papers to the floor.
“Oh, jeez,” she said as they went fluttering all over the place. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that.”
She got up before Jilly could and tossed the lot of them in the garbage container beside the stove. She stood there for a long moment, taking deep breaths, holding them, slowly letting them out.
“Annie â¦?”
She turned as Jilly approached her. The glow of motherhood that had seemed to revitalize her in the month before the baby was born had slowly worn away. She was pale again. Wan. She looked so lost that all Jilly could do was put her arms around her and offer a wordless comfort.
“I'm sorry,” Annie said against Jilly's hair. “I don't know what's going on. I just ⦠I know I should be really happy, but I just feel scared and confused.” She rubbed at her eyes with a knuckle. “God, listen to me. All it seems I can do is complain about my life.”
“It's not like you've had a great one,” Jilly said.
“Yeah, but when I compare it to what it was like before I met you, it's like I moved up into heaven.”
“Why don't you stay here tonight?” Jilly said.
Annie stepped back out of her arms. “Maybe I willâif you really don't mind ⦠?”
“I really don't mind.”
“Thanks.”
Annie glanced toward the bed, her gaze pausing on the clock on the wall above the stove.
“You're going to be late for work,” she said.
“That's all right. I don't think I'll go in tonight.”
Annie shook her head. “No, go on. You've told me how busy it gets on a Friday night.”
Jilly still worked part-time at Kathryn's Café on Battersfield Road.
She could just imagine what Wendy would say if she called in sick. There was no one else in town this weekend to take her shift, so that would leave Wendy working all the tables on her own.
“If you're sure,” Jilly said.
“We'll be okay,” Annie said. “Honestly.”
She went over to the bed and picked up the baby, cradling her gently in her arms.
“Look at her,” she said, almost to herself. “It's hard to believe something so beautiful came out of me.” She turned to Jilly, adding before Jilly could speak, “That's a kind of magic all by itself, isn't it?”
“Maybe one of the best we can make,” Jilly said.
How Can You Call This Love?
by Claudia Feder. Oils. Old Market Studio, Newford, 1990.
by Claudia Feder. Oils. Old Market Studio, Newford, 1990.
A fat man sits on a bed in a cheap hotel room. He's removing his shirt. Through the ajar door of the bathroom behind him, a thin girl in bra and panties can be seen sitting on the toilet, shooting up.
She appears to be about fourteen.
I just pay attention to things, I told her. I guess that's why, when I got off my shift and came back to the loft, Annie was gone. Because I pay such good attention. The baby was still on the bed, lying between the pillows, sleeping. There was a note on the kitchen table:
I don't know what's wrong with me. I just keep wanting to hit something. I look at little Jilly and I think about my mother and
I get so scared. Take care of her for me. Teach her magic. Please don't hate me.
I don't know how long I sat and stared at those sad, piteous words, tears streaming from my eyes.
I should never have gone to work. I should never have left her alone. She really thought she was just going to replay her own childhood. She
told me, I don't know how many times she told me, but I just wasn't paying attention, was I?
told me, I don't know how many times she told me, but I just wasn't paying attention, was I?
Finally I got on the phone. I called Angel. I called Sophie. I called Lou Fucceri. I called everybody I could think of to go out and look for Annie. Angel was at the loft with me when we finally heard. I was the one who picked up the phone.
I heard what Lou said: “A patrolman brought her into the General not fifteen minutes ago, ODing on Christ knows what. She was just trying to self-destruct, is what he said. I'm sorry, Jilly. But she died before I got here.”
I didn't say anything. I just passed the phone to Angel and went to sit on the bed. I held little Jillian in my arms and then I cried some more.
I was never joking about Sophie. She really does have faerie blood. It's something I can't explain, something we don't talk much about, something I just know and she denies. But she did promise me that she'd bless Annie's baby, just the way fairy godmothers would do it in all those old stories.
“I gave her the gift of a happy life,” she told me later. “I never dreamed it wouldn't include Annie.”
But that's the way it works in fairy tales, too, isn't it? Something always goes wrong, or there wouldn't be a story. You have to be strong, you have to earn your happily ever after.
Annie was strong enough to go away from her baby when she felt like all she could do was just lash out, but she wasn't strong enough to help herself. That was the awful gift her parents gave her.
I never finished that last painting in time for the show, but I found something to take its place. Something that said more to me in just a few rough lines than anything I've ever done.
I was about to throw out my garbage when I saw those crude little drawings that Annie had been doodling on my kitchen table the night she died. They were like the work of a child.
I framed one of them and hung it in the show.
“I guess we're five coyotes and one coyote ghost now,” was all Sophie said when she saw what I had done.
In the House of My Enemy,
by Annie Mackle. Pencils. Yoors Street Studio, Newford, 1991.
by Annie Mackle. Pencils. Yoors Street Studio, Newford, 1991.
The images are crudely rendered. In a house that is merely a square with a triangle on top are three stick figures, one plain, two with small “skirt” triangles to represent their gender. The two larger figures are beating the smaller one with what might be crooked sticks, or might be belts.
The small figure is cringing away.
In the visitors' book set out at the show, someone wrote: “I can never forgive those responsible for what's been done to us. I don't even want to try.”
“Neither do I,” Jilly said when she read it. “God help me, neither do I.”
LOS ANGELES, WINTER 1998
It's easy to be nobody in
this city. At eight million plus, it's twice the size of Newford. Hell, I don't even want to think about how much bigger'n Tyson it is. All I know for sure is, you want to get lost, this is the place for it. You can just disappear yourself into the woodwork and nobody gives a good goddamn.
this city. At eight million plus, it's twice the size of Newford. Hell, I don't even want to think about how much bigger'n Tyson it is. All I know for sure is, you want to get lost, this is the place for it. You can just disappear yourself into the woodwork and nobody gives a good goddamn.
I look back now and I understand I was fighting me a big-time depression once I done my time and got outta the county jail. Aw, who'm I kidding? I wasn't fighting it none. I was just three years or so a-laying in bed most of the time, when I weren't laying on the sofa. I watched me more soaps and talk shows and game shows, not to mention those damned videos of Pinky's than you'd think it'd be humanly possible.
I don't know why I watched them videos of Pinky's. All they'd do is make me want to cry, 'cept I couldn't cry. I'd get me a burning up behind my eyes, and my chest'd feel like it was damn near gonna crush me, it was so tight. But the tears wouldn't come, not nary a one. I hadn't cried me
none since my sister left me and after that I swore I'd never cry again. I tried to take it back during them years of being depressed, 'cause I had the feeling that crying'd help, but something deep inside me went and took that oath seriously. Whatever that piece of me was, there weren't no give to it. Which is more'n I can say 'bout the rest of me.
none since my sister left me and after that I swore I'd never cry again. I tried to take it back during them years of being depressed, 'cause I had the feeling that crying'd help, but something deep inside me went and took that oath seriously. Whatever that piece of me was, there weren't no give to it. Which is more'n I can say 'bout the rest of me.
So I couldn't cry and I couldn't barely get up offa my ass and when I worried on it, I didn't know what to do. On the talk shows, they was forever talking about this therapy and that drug, but you need money to buy you your Prozac, and I just couldn't see myself paying anybody to listen to my troubles. When Pinky went to work, I had me the four walls of our apartment to do that. But I didn't lay none of my troubles on her.
Where'd it all go wrong? Damned if I know. It just did. Karma, I guess, if you want to use fancy words that belong to some foreign religion. Payback's what they'd call it back home in Tyson. It's like whoever's in the big upstairs of the sky is making sure I get my due for all them folks I robbed and hurt. Funny how there was no one looking out for me when it was me that was being hurt, back when I was just this little kid.
I can't imagine it now, but I must've been innocent at some time in my life. A baby don't just get itself born bad, do it?
But it's the same difference now, I guess. Born bad, grew up badâwho cares how it happened? It's all gone now anyways. I got no spine, got no skill, got nothing of worth to nobody, leastways my own self.
Sometimes I think back on that night in my bedroom when I took the knife to Del. I never did nothing like that again. Never had to. Or maybe I just never got me into another situation where I had to. I pulled a knife on more'n one fella, pulled a gun, too, but I never used neither.
Time was, I'd consider that night with Del and I'd know this as sure as anything: the darkness that woke in me then, it weren't never going away. I always knew that I could do it again, do even worse, if I had to. The capacity I had in me for violence was this dark secret that only Pinky shared and I thought for sure I'd carry it to the grave. But in those days of my depression â¦
Hell, I was lucky I was able to kill me a 'roach when it went skittering 'cross the floor.
Pinky, she worried something awful over me and that just made me
feel worse. But there weren't nothing I could do. I just went a-moping around. I didn't put on no weight, though. If anything, I just got scrawnier, 'cept for my chest and that was getting an old lady's hang to itâon account of there being no meat on my bones no more, I guess.
feel worse. But there weren't nothing I could do. I just went a-moping around. I didn't put on no weight, though. If anything, I just got scrawnier, 'cept for my chest and that was getting an old lady's hang to itâon account of there being no meat on my bones no more, I guess.
When we first come to L.A. I thought the bigness'd work for us. We could run our scams all we wanted and then, just fade back into the crowds. But it weren't the same as back in Tyler, or even in Newford. Everybody's hustling here and if you ain't in the know, you're never gonna connect with the high rollers. No point in ripping anybody off they ain't got much more'n you, but it got so's I was even doing that.
When I was in the county lockup for that six months is when Pinky up and took charge. Got her turn on the casting couch and I guess she must've impressed 'em, 'cause for a long time there she never run outta work.
I think what she liked best about the adult film industry was the trade shows. They'd set her up at a table and she'd just sit there a-smiling and meeting her fans, signing posters for 'em, or the covers of her videos that they'd bring clutched in their fists. I didn't want know where them hands'd been or what they'd been doing, but I could make me an educated guess.
They'd get their picture took with her, too. That was my job at them shows. I'd stand 'round behind of where she's sitting at the table. I got me this old Polaroid and I'd snap away. We didn't charge noneâit was all promotionâbut it got me thinking that there was money in there somewheres, you look hard enough. I just didn't like the idea of it being Pinky's ass we'd be exploiting, don't matter she loved the work.
Or maybe it was just the attention she liked so much. Hell, we'd finish up at one of them shows and she'd be grinning from ear to ear like some old coon hound, treed himself a critter. I guess it was 'cause that was the closest she was ever gonna come to living her dreamâbeing a movie star, I meanâand we both knowed it.
She was after me all the time to give it a shot my own self. I wouldn't even have to do some guy, she'd tell me, we'd just do each other. But it weren't anything I allowed I could do. I mean, we did it a time or two with each other, but it was only when we was drunk or bored and there weren't no men around.
Don't get me wrong, here. I ain't no prude. I'd have me fellers whenever I wanted 'em afore my time in the county lockup. I just didn't want
no strings attached. Nothing complicated. If I was going to put out, it'd be for fun, not for profit. I can't explain why. It's all tied up in the business with Del, being told what to do and when and how and no never mind how you feel your own self.
no strings attached. Nothing complicated. If I was going to put out, it'd be for fun, not for profit. I can't explain why. It's all tied up in the business with Del, being told what to do and when and how and no never mind how you feel your own self.
Anywise, this depression of mine went on a couple of years, I guess, till finally I knew I had to do something or I might as well just lie in the bath, cut my damn wrists, and be done with it. Since I was no good at scamming no more, and I sure as hell wasn't ready to peddle my ass, on film or on the street, I went and got me a job.
You shoulda seen the look on Pinky's face when I told her.
“You're doin' what?” she says.
“I'm working in a print shop.”
“What do you know about printin'?”
“What's to know?” I say. “They got these big ol' machines do all the work. Only thing I gotta do is feed in the paper and collect the copies when they're done.”
“You like this?” she asks.
“I dunno. I just got to be doing something.”
But I kinda did like it. Place I worked was open twenty-four hours and I was on the midnight shift, twelve to eight in the morning, Wednesday through Sunday. I wore me some baggy cargo pants and sneakers, big floppy Ts or sweatshirts. Didn't have no makeup. Didn't do nothing with my hair 'cept tie it back. I looked like some little ol' mole gal, all small and dark and quiet. People didn't pay me no never mind. Hell, in the City of Angels where there's more pretty people per square inch, nobody saw me at all, and that suited me fine.
I was there maybe seven years when this guy named Hector Rivera come in and started in on a-working that late shift with me. He was like the boy version of me, all small and dark and baggy-clothed and all, 'cept he was smarter'n hell, especially when it come to computers. I liked to listen to him when he'd talk about these programs he was writing and what the future was gonna be like when everything had it a little machine brain giving it orders. Toasters, washing machines, TVs, hell, you name it. 'Spect they'll come a time when they'll just be sticking chips in the heads of the newborns, soon's they pop out.
I hear people calling Hector a spic and shit like that and I'd get pissed, but never enough to do nothing. What was I gonna do? I was just
going through the motions of being alive my own self, wasn't like I could take on the trouble a someone else, too.
going through the motions of being alive my own self, wasn't like I could take on the trouble a someone else, too.
But we got along, him and me. He grew up dirt poor, too, 'cept it was in the barrios here. I asked him how he got to know so much about computers and he told me 'bout how it was in this school of his. The way he'd stay outta the way of the gangbangers and all was by hiding out in the computer labs. He spent him so many hours in there, wasn't much he didn't know about them machines in the end.
Part of his job at the copy shop was working at the computer, making people's newsletters and resumes and the like look like they was made of gold. But whenever he had the timeâand let me tell you, we had us a lotta free time most nights, 'specially on the weekendsâhe'd work on his own stuff. He had him this little computer no bigger'n a hardcover book when you folded it closed. He'd have that sucker plugged in and running first thing he did when he come in and every spare chance he'd be doing his own work on it. He had everything on there, all his files and the programs he was working on.
I thought it was like magic at first, but then he started in on showing me a thing or two and I got me pretty good with it, too, though for a long time I was like some old hen on the keyboard, hunt and pecking the letters with two fingers. But I got better and I liked the logic of the machines. They do what you told 'em to, and that's all they do. Sure them machines is smart and fast and all, but they're dumber'n fenceposts, too, 'cause you forget you just one little period or letter, and that program you're writing don't come out right. Weren't like people. People, you never know what they're gonna do, one moment to the next. Machines don't take advantage of you like Del done, and they don't go all to pieces like I done, neither. They just do what they're told. And when I learned me about going on-line, well, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for me and I started to get some of that old Raylene Carter confidence back again.
It was Hector helped me set up Pinky's Web site, a year or so after we started working together. We was cutting edge, let me tell you. Took a few years afore the rest of the world caught on. But porn's always driven technologyâthat's what Hector told me. Weren't for porn, there wouldn't be a VCR in most every house. Was gonna be the same thing with the Internet.
When we started, that site of Pinky's was pretty primitive compared
to what you can get you now. Weren't much to see there, just teasers, but they did the job. We'd print up glossy eight-by-tens on the color photocopier, using quality paper, and mail 'em out to all these losers thought they was getting a piece of Pinky for their five or ten bucks. They could get 'em signed, too, 'cept it was usually me or Hector putting her name on 'em. We tried doing T-shirts, but they didn't pan out the same. Most of them customers of ours just liked something they could hold in one hand while they kept busy with the other. We was gonna sell videos, too, but them sleazebag companies Pinky was working for wouldn't give us a break on the wholesale price. The plan was we'd make some of our ownâfake outtakes and bloopers and crap like thatâand we was also setting up distribution for these programs Hector was writing, but then reality up and kicked me in the face again.
to what you can get you now. Weren't much to see there, just teasers, but they did the job. We'd print up glossy eight-by-tens on the color photocopier, using quality paper, and mail 'em out to all these losers thought they was getting a piece of Pinky for their five or ten bucks. They could get 'em signed, too, 'cept it was usually me or Hector putting her name on 'em. We tried doing T-shirts, but they didn't pan out the same. Most of them customers of ours just liked something they could hold in one hand while they kept busy with the other. We was gonna sell videos, too, but them sleazebag companies Pinky was working for wouldn't give us a break on the wholesale price. The plan was we'd make some of our ownâfake outtakes and bloopers and crap like thatâand we was also setting up distribution for these programs Hector was writing, but then reality up and kicked me in the face again.
After my sister run off, I promised I'd never get that close to no one againâ'cept for Pinky, I guess, but we was more joined at the hip than anything else. I mean, Pinky was always there, right from when we was knee high to a minute, and I figured she always would be. I just wasn't letting nobody new into my life again.
Wrong on both counts.
I don't know how it happened with Hector. He weren't nothing like them cowboys I'm usually attracted to, and in those days, it's hard to believe anybody'd be liking me none. I remember thinking I'd have to gussy myself upâto get him to like me enough to teach me stuff on the computers, I mean. I figured computer nerds just didn't get none at all, and he'd be grateful enough for some flirting, but I wasn't looking forward none to the cleavage and short skirts. Don't ask me why. I still felt I was white trash, pure and simpleâinside, likeâbut I couldn't look the part no more. Didn't know if I could act the part.
Turned out I didn't have to.
Hector he liked me just like I was, go figure. And the damnedest thing was, I took to liking him back. No, the damnedest thing was, I was all shy and holding back with him. Not on purpose, mind. It's just how it happened. But we got along fine. Talked lots, something I never did with no man afore.
We talked about every fool thing you can imagine, I guess, but mostly
we talked about computers, seeing's how he plumb loved them machines. I was interested anyways, so I didn't mind. He showed me stuff on that computer, taught me the inner workings so that I'd find myself understanding these programs he was writing. Hell, it come to that, I even started in on writing a few my own self.
we talked about computers, seeing's how he plumb loved them machines. I was interested anyways, so I didn't mind. He showed me stuff on that computer, taught me the inner workings so that I'd find myself understanding these programs he was writing. Hell, it come to that, I even started in on writing a few my own self.
Mostly it was just these little utilities, ways of making things work a little quicker, a little smoother, fixing bugs in programs that already existed. We'd work on that, late at night when only the odd damn fool'd be coming in for any photocopying. After a time of this, we took to necking in the back. We'd be kissing and stuff for hours. I can't remember ever being with a guy afore that where we wasn't having sex of some kind within an hour or two of meeting. But with Hector it was a good year and a half afore we got down to it, right there behind the counter, the door not even locked or nothing.
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