Plush (3 page)

I roll into the garage with Donnie. It’s hard to rehearse without the guitar. I pick it up and try but I’m not as good as Jack. Jack is magical. I’m magical with him but not when I’m alone. My solos are sloppy but my rhythm is good. I’m surprised I know how to play all the general guitar parts, despite not really playing them before. But, I got an ok ear and enough of one to get the bends and pull-offs to sound like Jack’s. We rough through a few numbers, then I put the guitar down.

“Try this out!” Donnie screams. He plays a fast wild tribal beat. My body goes into a wicked dance trance and I lift my arms up. My shyness fades away. I leap up and down and growl into the mic like an animal. Donnie laughs. Hair flying up and down with his headbanging. He looks so good, so good, so good. His sticks slip from his hands, and before I can think, he lifts me up against the wall, lips on mine, hands on my ass, pulling me close. I hold his neck; I feel his mouth move down onto my neck. I want this but I don’t. I want Jack back. His hands squeeze; I moan. The broken cement in the garage. The twine, the band posters, the X-mas lights, the almost night. Oh – my neck – I feel I’ll say yes to anything the way he’s kissing it. He puts me down, whispers, “Let’s go to your room,” as a hand slides under my shirt onto my stomach. I don’t know what to do, where to go. His eyes so intent. He wants me. I want to be wanted. I need to find Jack. I need to…

He’s leading me inside – my feet following – through the living room when I’m jolted out of my sexuality and into the horrors of family. I see her. Mermaid hair and all. Pulling the TV off the wall.

“MOM? What the fuck are you doing here?”

Her head flashes guilty back, like a criminal in a helicopter spotlight on a cop TV show. She looks older. Sadder. I haven’t seen her in a year or so…

“That mutt your boyfriend Hayley?”

NO, NO, NO! Please don’t embarrass me. Kill me now!

Donnie drops my hand; his eyebrows throw up ski-lift high, like he’s confused and disgusted and doesn’t know what to do. So he whispers, “I better go.” And he disappears along with my hope and Mom looks back at the TV set and throws it on a dolly.

“You don’t even have food here? Look at this dump…” I can feel my gut sink to cement in my feet. The dirty couch so sad. The reality hits too hard.

Everything is falling apart.

Her eyes scan my body like a robot in one of those red-eyed-lasers old 80’s movies. Up and down and the disappointment on her face is impossible not to see. Her accent is so thick. Way thicker than my dad’s. She’s got one of those voices that you hear comedians do when they are imitating poor white trash trailer park folks: “Hayley hon, I thought you’d have boobs and some height by now. I mean at least a girl like you can help herself out by getting a real full on, you know, padded bra.”

My face drops. I can’t hide it. She’s pointing straight at my chest. “I mean, just ‘cause you didn’t inherit my genes …” – she caresses her hips, fingers sliding up – “doesn’t mean you have to give up the fight. You don’t have to look like an 11-year-old boy.”

I try not to cry. But one of the tears does not listen to my will and it sneaks out. Her face changes from bossy-know-it-all to something like oops-a-daisy pity. For some reason I feel I can get mad at my dad, and around her I just feel like a failure and clam all up. Like everything I do is wrong, and I will only disappoint her with whatever I say. Shhhh.

“Oh. but look at these bright red bracelets I got you.” Mom yanks off some cheap plastic bangles, puts them on the TV tray, and puts a smile on her overdone aging face. Mom. That word sits like bad, week-old Chinese food in my throat, spinning the carousel of my rage into silence.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this… If your dad would just, you know… pay up…” She looks away, fake wipes a tear, then pushes the metal dolly. I follow her outside to the front where Trey is in his now dented-up Cadillac sputtering soliloquies of denial. Then Trey the crow swoops out, engine still running, then grabs the TV and thrusts it in the backseat.

“Mom?” I almost say. But I feel so quiet. Sometimes my screams are so silent and eat away at me, so I just say nothing. Who am I to say anything anyway? Jack would know what to do. Jack would punch Trey and take food money out of his wallet, then swing me into the air and take me shopping. But me, just me: skin, bones, uncertain soul. I don’t know.

“I was supposed to be a big fucking somkebody ‘til your dad ruined my body, and I was convinced to…” I see her lips moving but I go deaf. She climbs into the Caddy and disappears in the dust.

I am a mouse.

So small.

I have shrunk.

So close to the ground I can’t even see the sky or feel alive. Mouse Hayley. Silent Hayley. I’m all wrong. My life is not what I want. Little mouse I am with whiskers. Scurrying about. I have no control over my life. Everybody makes my decisions for me. Fuck my family. Mousey me. Dust on the road. So small. Blackness. Cold.

I don’t know where I went to, but when I come to it’s 11pm, and I am on the floor alone in Jack’s small room staring at all the old mattresses nailed to the wall for soundproofing. He’s still not home. Nobody is. I think it’s now Wednesday. Crusted tears are on my cheeks. Sometimes I think nobody will ever love me except Jack, and when Jack leaves I have nothing and am a nobody. I read some of the writings on his wall in big, crazy letters and different colors.
“I have become what I have always sought out”:
right above the mattress on the far wall.
“Love letters from hell to myself”
is written close to the painted, stained, and burned-up carpet.
“Our broken bodies painting the earth”:
on his ceiling between his magic marker drawings of aliens and insanely detailed flowers. And below his collage of Rimbaud and his guitar heroes tied together with glue and rope:
“an ever slowing dance with hope.”
And the one he wrote with me stares me down:

“even death won’t do us part…

Jack & Hayley 4ever”

I sink. So deep inside. I don’t know if there’s anymore light. Guitars on the floor.. A laptop. Papers with words everywhere. A small cheap mic I record our demos on. I hit play and Mazzy Star’s Mary of Silence comes on. I search the papers for a clue of where he might be, what he is doing, rifling through his unfolded clothes everywhere. Under the sheets on a dirty twin mattress on the floor I find little plastic baggies – empty. A pipe. Lighters. Blades.

I wonder how bad he’s into drugs or if it’s just a little. As much as Jack and I share everything with each other, he never tells me how bad he gets when he feels down; and I hide my sadness, but share the rest of myself permanently with him. We have one heart but separate limbs.

The girl’s voice on the speakers séances my bones. I pick up a poem on the floor written in scattered scarlet red:

“there’s lipstick all over my face

I just wanted a taste

Night crumbles 2 day.”

It’s almost a clue. But not enough. The paper cuts me and I start to bleed a fine line. I bleed on his words – then start sucking on my finger. I pick up another one:

“hello uncertainty

u always seem 2 follow me

I’m not quite lost & not quite losing

just tell me where 2 go

tell me who 2 b

hello uncertainty

the pain is not 4ever”

The girl’s voice in the song moans through guitar feedback on the speakers. I take an X-Acto blade – my lucky blade – from my pocket – the one I keep in my silver glitter wallet – I got it from a thrift store – and curl up on the floor on top of Jack’s beautiful, beautiful poems.

My arm is so small,

Just bones and bones.

I stick it in hard a few inches below the inside of my elbow

And pull down.

Rich scarlet flows.

I zig zag left,

Do a dance with that steel

Like the inside of a drawn broken heart,

Feel all my pain inside me fade away, and only the stinging of my arm.

Slow slow dance of blade.

My skin screams,

But I’m not

Not anymore.

It flows thicker, redder, and further down.

Sometimes when I’m sad

I pretend aliens come to rescue me & Jack from our lives,

And somewhere on that other planet out in outer space

We are understood

And we are happy

With each other.

I bleed.

I bleed.

Sweet scarlet symphony,

Free me.

BAM!
The door kicks open. “Where the fuck is Jack?!” Dad yells. He’s in a wife beater and his breath smells like tequila, worms, and broken buildings. So dirty. I drop the blade and hide my arm. Curl up further in a ball.

I don’t know when the last time Dad was in Jack’s room. Jack keeps it locked. Dad and Jack barely talk. I really fucked up. I forgot to lock the door. Lock out the madness. Lock out the truth of the world of wars. “AND WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?! This looks like a padded cell in an insane asylum!” He’s seething, breathing hard, drooling down the left side of his mouth. I can tell he is spinning, grabbing onto anything he can for answers; holding on the door frame to not fall over from too much booze and losing.

“WHY THE FUCK IS THIS ROOM LIKE THIS… YOU KIDS are CRAZY!”

Fires spit out of his dragon jaws.

“NO SHIT DAD – THAT’S ‘CAUSE YOU MAKE US FUCKING CRAAAAAZZZYYY” I’m banging my head against the mattress on the wall while I’m screaming. I don’t know what but something like: get out get out get out all my demons out of me. And the door slams. And my head just keeps slamming. And then I fall, like Troy, like Caesar, like a hut under a tsunami. Collapse all the stars. Black holes. Black words.

6

Ring drinka binka
. My phone goes off: it’s Donnie. I pick it up. “No, I still haven’t found Jack… Yes could we go look?”

Riding in the Texas night. An occasional small neon bar light. Little alleys. Mexico is just on the other side, but it’s too dangerous for me to go there. Girls are kidnapped and raped too often. We ride through the night, through the dust, through the empty spaces. Farms. Jack where are you? Not to be found. Donnie is making me laugh, and all I want to do is forget my life and stop searching. All this searching for what’s right, and all this not knowing what’s next – what’s around that bend. I want to forget about the prophecies of a junkyard princess and Donnie is helping me forget all the sores. My arm still hurts. I had to get out. I had to disappear. Dad was too crazy. And not knowing where Jack is right now is killing me. Leopard stalk me, prey in a tree.

Donnie slows his moto down into a grass field. The stars are so bright, they burn and sway white all over the canes of sugar stalks. We come to a stop. I get off the bike. “Where are we?” Donnie’s hair so straight tangles in the soft wind. He winks, pulls out a blanket, and lays down. He hits play on his iPod and a sweet woman’s voice roams into a cover of a Bowie song.

Donnie: “Come look at the stars… You need a break from the worry.”

I lay down in that field, on that blue, worn-out, soft blanket. Stalks all around. Silence. Stars quiver, drunk on themselves. Purple UFO’s and satellites – everything so clear, so close, and so far. Donnie’s arm comes around me. Before I can blink, his lips are gold-fishing me, the zipper of his jacket digging into my chest. And before I can decide no or yes, my shirt is off hanging on a nearby stalk. His jacket thrown: “You never do what you know you oughta. Something tells me you’re the devil’s daughter…” She sings through beat up baseless earbuds on full blast at our feet. He’s sucking me down – and all my misery. His mouth is on my stomach. He pushes together my tits. I am wet and lost and loving it. And nervous. If I let him take my pants off am I a slut? I moan. He raises his head up and pushes his shirtless, chiseled, fine-boy body against mine. His knee in between my legs throbbing me, I feel he’s hard. Though my pants are still on, it seems like sex almost the way we move together. Oceans of desire crashing into each other. Rolling hills, mouths, mountains of hope and desperation. When Jack and I were kids, we used to lay naked together and pretend we were married.