The Whiteness of Bones (31 page)

She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, harder, and this time, before she had taken away her
hand, the door was pulled opened and Vinnie said, “C’mon in.”

He was the man who played the congas. She could not see around him into the brightly lighted room. As if to prove he had nothing to hide, he stepped aside, and with a big smile, gestured to her to come inside.

It was a small room with a red Formica and chrome dining table and two matching chairs and a sofa bed and a leatherette reclining chair. One wall was mirrored, and glass shelves held dusty brandy glasses and some empty miniature liquor bottles and a bottle of Kahlúa. There was a stereo with big, professional speakers. Vinnie was playing Van Morrison. Brooke was in the recliner, her legs stretched out in front of her on the hinged footrest. She was speaking to her, Mamie thought, until Mamie realized that Brooke was talking pleasantly to herself.

Claire was on the sofa, in the corner. She was barefoot. Her head lay back against the water-stained wall, and her eyes, big and flat, stared at the shaded light that swung on its cord over the table.

Vinnie closed the door behind Mamie. He rolled down his sleeves.

“We were just talking about you,” he said familiarly, “wondering if you might want to join us. You really from Maui?” He jerked his head forward on his neck rhythmically.

Mamie looked over at Brooke, slipping into unconsciousness. She was struggling against the drowsiness, not out of any interest in the party, but instinctively fighting it as she blinked and rattled her head. There was a syringe on the folding television tray table next to her.

“What can I do you for?” Vinnie asked sarcastically.

“I think I’ll be taking my sister downstairs now,” she said cautiously. “They’re bringing the birthday cake now.”

“Is that so?” He laughed at her.

Mamie went to Claire. She bent over to pull her onto her feet, but Claire was leaden and heavy. She did not see Mamie, although she looked at her.

“She don’t want anymore sweets,” Vinnie said, taking Mamie by the arm. She took his hand from her arm.

“I’m going downstairs to get someone.”

With a sigh, Vinnie poured himself a shot from an open bottle of Wild Turkey that was on the Formica table and drank it with an exaggerated growl of pleasure.

Brooke had lost consciousness.

Claire lifted her cumbersome head and stared at Mamie.

Vinnie lazily stretched out one of his long arms and squeezed Mamie’s breast. He did not let go, smiling at her, daring her to object as he squeezed harder and harder.

She pulled away from him and ran to the door.

With a sigh of great weariness, he came up behind her just as she opened the door. He slammed the door shut with his open palm and gently turned her around by her shoulders and slapped her across the face.

“Now quiet down, cunt, or I’ll get bossy.”

Jerking Mamie after him by the wrist, Toni’s ivory bracelet caught under his thin fingers, he sat down and pulled her onto his lap. He held her wrist tightly and took her other hand and pressed it down on his penis. He was already hard and when Mamie tried to free her hand from his grasp, he effortlessly turned her over onto the floor and, yanking up her dress, straddled her from above. His one hand pressed around her throat. His knees held her tightly, as he unzipped his trousers and shoved himself into her mouth.

Mamie was afraid that he would kill her, and Claire and Brooke. She knew that she must do what he wanted until she
was able to kill him herself. She knew that they would not hear her downstairs if she screamed.

Her instinct to survive was so strong that she was able to keep her loathing, and even her terror, from overcoming her. Her brain raced as if she, too, had been shot up, but with some electrifying, generous chemical, not the stupefying narcotic that was flooding the blood of Brooke and her sister.

While Vinnie rocked back and forth inside Mamie’s mouth, he reached up and took from the table one of the ceramic tikis from the Aloha Kai. Pulling himself from her mouth, he swung his leg over her so that he was turned away from her, sitting on her. Without removing her panties, he ripped them open at the leg and shoved the tiki inside of her.

Sobbing with the effort, Mamie struggled to sit up and push him off her chest.

He spun around angrily and jerked her head back and again pushed his penis into her bruised mouth. She tried to hold her lips closed, but his hand, encircling her neck, quickly tightened around her throat when she refused him. She opened her mouth.

Claire watched them.

Mamie’s mind began to wander as she protected herself, shielding herself from her own sight. The words to an old chant, a body-slapping dance, came to her and she repeated the words over and over as other words formed and clotted behind her burning eyes. Claire has lost her shoes, who will pay the bill downstairs? “
A‘e pahu i ka moku, ua ho‘ohiolo ka ‘aha:
push out to the ship, whose sails have been let down; behind stand the Sacred Images that fill me with terror, I yearn to flee to the ship, the tall-masted ship of the white man …” This is my fault, she thought, this is my penance for the time I rode my bike too slowly past the boys in the workers’ camp,
and walked too slowly past the construction workers on Fifty-fifth Street, and because I wasn’t smart enough to understand about the hotel room in Chicago. I thought I’d be allowed to sleep alone, peacefully, in the yellow silk room. It is because I was not able to stop Sherry Alden from presenting me with her first menstrual blood, and it is because I kissed Cecil Furtado in the vegetable garden, rubbing against the rough, fragrant tomato leaves, driving him to such desire that he would shove my chafed and surprised face (yes, surprised, I promise) into his jeans, Cecil smelling like cheese and motor oil, “
e ku i ka hoe ‘uli:
I stop the boat with the steering paddle, and press it against the side of the boat, I make fast the rope to the coral, and circle my rope around and round. Yes, you’re someone now. Yes, you’re someone now.” Because of dear, beloved Hiroshi, whose cracked, sweetly soiled fingers rested on my pale, plump vagina for a few bewildering moments. It is for my McCully, most of all, my McCully, and because, really, as Hiroshi understood, I am a woman and I deserve no better. I forgive you, Hiroshi, and I forgive you, McCully. Yes, you’re someone now.

It was an hour before the drugs began to work on the man, but eventually, like Brooke and Claire, he, too, began to show signs of stupefaction. He slumped on top of Mamie, his chest on her crushed face, his legs still grasping her in their boney embrace.

She opened her eyes. It was difficult for her to breathe. The smell of the damp shag carpet, the smell of dirt and piss, and the acrid, oily smell of the man on top of her made her gag.

She waited a long time to make sure that he was not just asleep. Her vagina burned sharply and she shook with fear and
rage. She could see through the one small window that the sun had risen. To her surprise, she heard a bird outside.

She slowly slid herself out from under him, realizing as she did so that she need not fear his awakening. His head fell heavily onto the floor as she pulled away from him. She sat up. She could see the thick legs of the yellow tiki emerging from her vagina. She pulled it out slowly. She was bleeding.

Claire stirred uncomfortably, eyes finally, mercifully, closed. Mamie shook her awake. Claire wanted to speak, but Mamie quickly put her hand over her mouth. Claire tried to push aside Mamie’s trembling hand, but then she saw the blood on Mamie’s dress and the man sprawled on the floor, his mustard yellow trousers around his thin, white ankles and for once, for once, she succumbed to Mamie. Mamie held her finger to her own swollen lips, signifying silence.

Brooke, in deep, drugged sleep, could not be fully wakened, so Mamie took her by one flapping arm and Claire took the other, and they carried her suspended between them to the door and into the hallway and down the stairway.

They had to stop halfway down the stairs for Claire to vomit, noisily, but there was no one in the back corridor or the bar downstairs and no one to stop them from pulling open the heavy brass-studded door and falling out into the clear early light of Tenth Avenue.

The moment they were outside, Mamie let go of Brooke, and Claire had to struggle to keep Brooke from falling to the ground. Mamie sat on the curb and put her head on her knees. She was shaking.

“What happened to Toni?” Brooke asked, squinting and rubbing her eyes like a sleepy child. Mamie lifted her head to look at her. She lay her head back on her knees.

“What are you doing, Mamie? Are you all right?” Claire
was barefoot. She felt in her pockets. “I forgot to give you your present and now I can’t find it.”

Mamie, at the curb, looked up at them again. Her jaw ached and the membrane inside her mouth was ripped where she had bitten herself. She could taste her own blood and worst of all, most sickening of all, she imagined that she could taste the semen.

“I’m hungry,” said Brooke, looking around. She did not know where she was.

Mamie stood up slowly and deliberately and calmly smoothed down her ruined dress and pushed back her damp, matted hair. Then she began to walk uptown, not looking back, not wanting to see them, dangerous, dangerous babes in the woods. She would not take care of Claire any longer.

“Mamie! Mamie, wait!” she heard Claire call, but she did not turn back, and she did not wait.

Mamie walked to Mrs. Lee’s house. There was no answer at the front door, but she was patient, knowing now that the house was not as deserted as it appeared to be. Mr. de Beaupré opened the door. He showed no surprise at seeing her, even in her torn dress, and he led her without question into the back garden. He was having breakfast under the magnolia tree. The table was set with a lace cloth. There was a German silver coffee pot and thin toast, its crusts trimmed, in a silver rack wrapped in an ivory damask cloth, and a bowl of peaches lying in their dark green leaves. Mamie noticed different jams and marmalades in small turquoise blue Sèvres pots. The little spoons and knives were of mother-of-pearl and vermeil.

He asked her if she would like something. She said no, thank you. He was not disappointed. He ate slowly and meticulously.
There was a boiled brown egg in a gold cup. He whacked it deftly, lightly, and removed its little cracked skull.

He did not notice when she went back inside the house. She crept to the bedroom on the third floor. She had imagined as she walked across the city that the only thing she wanted was to clean herself. Now that she was in the room with its clean beds in their crisp piqué covers, she only wanted to lie down. She did not feel that she could go so far as to get under the covers, her despoiled, filthy body soiling Mrs. Lee’s linen sheets. The body that used to be her body was thankful to rest. She had been foolish to think that she had ever earned it back. She had assumed too much.

Mr. de Beaupré came in with a tray of coffee and milk. He set the tray down on the other bed and poured the coffee and held it out to her. His quivering hand made the cup jump noisily in its saucer, and coffee spilled into the dish.

“She never cared much for her own people. Take young Miss Laura, she had no interest in her whatsoever. I saw the girl try with her mother, the way children do, but it didn’t matter. You know, sometimes it is the fault of the man and the woman. They are so taken up with each other, they don’t have no time for the children, you see what I mean? But this does not apply here. She says it was because she was so crazy for me, but the fact is, she just didn’t like her children.” He laughed and rubbed his knees. He was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit and a captain’s hat with a black patent brim.

Mamie thought of her own mother.

“Why didn’t she like them?” she asked. She was shivering and he took the blanket from the chaise and put it over her. Mamie was grateful for his odd lack of interest in her. He had not asked why she was there, or why she was trembling.

“She was too smart and restless. They couldn’t hold her
attention and, to tell you the truth, she didn’t know how to talk to them. Miss Laura would bring a picture home from school for her mother, and Leonora would say, “Thank you, lamby, but shouldn’t the house be bigger than the pigs?’ You know, she just didn’t know how to talk to them nice.”

She handed him the cup and saucer and he poured more coffee and gave it back to her.

“What about her husband?”

“What about him?” Mr. de Beaupré linked his fingers and cracked his knuckles.

“Where is he?”

“He is dead and buried. Two years ago, three years ago this October. He died in this very room. I picked out the clothes he wore in his coffin. His good gray suit, that he used for meetings with his banker; a dark blue, navy blue, not your royal blue, tie. He looked sharp.”

It did not bother Mamie that Mr. Lee had died in the room that she now thought of as her room, perhaps even in the same bed. What she had not imagined was that Mr. Lee had lived in the house with the two of them all those years.

Mamie had only lately begun to congratulate herself on being able to locate that tenuous line of balance between protecting herself and accommodating society. She had begun to form a theory, not about older women in the French novel, that seemed a little academic to her now, but a theory to explain the sexual aggression that seemed to track her all through her life. It was an aggression that manifested itself in many ways, harmless as well as violent. The Chinese driver who politely asked if she was good for sucking; the boys in the camp, innocents still themselves, who turned a shortcut through the camp into a ritualistic hazing; Mr. Felix, who believed in a good diet and moderation in all things, even ejaculation; the men who whispered to her in the street. It is necessary for a
woman, Mamie thought, to be very, very careful. Always ready to run.

She had blamed herself for being naïve about Felix Villanueve, but she did not blame herself for Vinnie. She knew that there was nothing more she could have done. I was only looking for Claire, only looking for Claire, she thought over and over. Only looking for Claire.