The Tribes of Palos Verdes (14 page)

Jim yawns, turning to his side. “I'm going to sleep here tonight, Mom, go inside, it's okay.”

My mother watches, slumped against the deck.

I drag my own surfboard to the grass, and sleep with the fin between my legs.

*   *   *

The next morning, while Jim's in the bathroom, she corners me in the kitchen.

“If you're giving him pot, I'll go to the police,” she says. “I'll turn you in as a dealer.”

“I'd never
give
him pot. He'd have to pay for it, if I were a dealer.”

My mother switches tacks, like a wildly blowing sail, coming close, listing in anger.

“I heard your phone ring at two
A.M.
What kind of person would call you at an hour like that?”

“A supercool person. The kind of person who talks to me as if I'm not the number one freak of Palos Verdes—” I stop short of saying
“after you.”

Jim comes out of the bathroom, his face scrubbed red.

“Tell your sister to stop fighting me,” my mother implores.

Jim runs back into the bathroom, slamming the door. I hear the sink running for a long time. He doesn't want us to know he's crying.

Later I hear noises in my mother's bedroom. I creep near the door to investigate.

Through the crack in the door I see a bag of nacho-flavored Doritos on her lap. Her mouth is orange. She is talking on the phone, weeping, to someone at a suicide prevention center.

“You don't taste anything after the first chips. You just fill up your mouth and swallow. I can eat three handfuls at a time. They aren't as filling as you'd think. But what would you know? You're just a young girl trained to listen to other people's problems. Don't you have enough problems of your own?”

My mother laughs into the receiver, munching. She sees my shadow under the door.

“Medina, dear,” she calls out, “I seeeeee you, you little sneak. Always such a sneak, running around, spying on me. How would it feel if I got you back?”

I run out the door, heaving with speed, sprinting down the wooden steps that lead to the shore. My mother follows, standing on the top of the steps, screaming. All the surfers on the shore look upward.

She twirls around and around, the yellow bathrobe ballooning into the air. She is screaming at me, but her words are carried away by moving currents of air. Her legs are enormous, her underwear huge white expanses of material.

At first the surfers don't laugh, they only stare. There is a moment of silence until her voice floats down from the cliff.

“Did you people know Medina is a liar?” My mother jumps up and down, singing.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire, lalala a telephone wire.”

When some of the Bayboys begin to laugh, I walk into the water with my head down, and keep swimming until I am tired.

The water roars, my legs and arms whip around in the eddies as I start to go under. I see the sky tilt, like a canopy bed coming down over my head, and I see clouds of whitecaps hitting the breakwater. I see my mother still standing on the edge of the cliffs.

“Please fall off!” I yell.

But Jim comes out, ducking, pulling her quickly away.

The water is bursting and boiling, coming apart at its seams, but I am beginning to breathe again. Struggling, I swim toward the beach.

I retch a little when I climb out and hide from the surfers who watch.

Skeezer comes over, trying to help me up, but I fling his hand off my shoulder.

“It's okay, Medina,” he says. “Don't cry.”

I pretend the tears are seawater—I wipe them off with my hand.

“I'm fine,” I say, running for the stairs. “I just wanted to go for a swim.”

*   *   *

The next day there's a pack of boys I hardly know from the north side of Palos Verdes. They're gathered, whispering, on the cliff. Weird Jack Wenger follows me. He has glinting braces and hairy legs. While I wait for Adrian, he circles and circles like a shark, then moves in, asking me to go to Gull Cove with him.

“I have a boyfriend now,” I say.

He turns to his friends and laughs. “Medina Mason has a
boyfriend.
”

The other boys whisper,
“He's a Val.”

Jack comes toward me. “I heard all about your mother taking her clothes off. I guess it runs in the family.”

He knocks me to my knees, opening the Velcro fly of his trunks, pulling my head close. “Do it, you crazy girl.”

“Don't go too far, man,” Jamie Weatherby says. “Jim Mason's our friend. She's his sister.”

Jack lets off, and I head-butt him hard in the groin. As he goes down I run.

“Jesus, what took you so long?” I ask Adrian, when he finally pulls up on the curb. I climb into his car in my wet suit, unzipping it while I climb in, shaking water all over the seat.

“You look good in black,” he says.

All the guys are looking at us talking, shaking their heads grimly.

“What's with those guys?” Adrian asks, adjusting his sunglasses.

“I think one of them likes me.”

“You're gonna get me killed.” Adrian smiles, turning the key in the ignition.

“What would you do if I kissed another guy?”

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

I look at his hands opening and closing. “If you want to go with another guy,” he says, “then get out of my car right now.”

I tell him, “I don't
really
want to. I just wanted to see what you would say.”

“Don't play games like a little fifteen-year-old.”

I pick up a cigarette, trying not to smile, but I can't help it.

*   *   *

I smile all through dinner as my brother gets angrier. He's been inside all day, cleaning the house, too embarrassed to come out and face the guys.

Neither of us talks to my mother. She stomps off into her room.

“You have to stay in and help me take care of Mom now,” he says. “We've got to stick together.”

I tell him I couldn't stand to be locked up all day with her, and he shouldn't either. I tell him he isn't her husband, even though she treats him like he is.

His eyes narrow. “You'd just rather be with that Val,” he says, suddenly merciless, pinning my head against the wall. “You don't care about anyone but him.”

I look at him and say, “At least I go out. I don't clean toilets for Mama.”

When he punches, I fight back. My mother comes from her room, separating us with her hand. She slaps me in the face, hard, and says, “Get out of my house, girl.”

*   *   *

Adrian's fumbling around in the ashtray for a joint, lighting it, putting it in my mouth, then in his. I ask him why he likes me, because I'm not even pretty.

“You're not pretty,” he says, drawing on the joint, “but you're beautiful.”

Later when we're stoned, he tells me again how beautiful I am, how he can't stop looking at me. I shrink back in the velour seats and laugh.

“I'm like a man, and men aren't beautiful.”

“You are, man,” he answers. “You're like the most beautiful man I've ever known.”

At midnight, he tries to start the car. I grab the keys and throw them out the window, admitting the truth.

“I'm sure my mother locked the doors. If I go home I'll have to sleep in the yard in a sleeping bag,” I say, flushing, not looking at him.

He holds me close, tells me it's okay, we can sleep in the Mustang tonight.

“I've never slept in a boy's car before.”

I recline on the seat, stretching toward him.

“Also, I've never had sex before,” I say, looking down. “At least not really.”

He sits very straight, stiff like a wax statue, all of a sudden flushing red.

“You're not a virgin, Medina. You don't have to pretend.”

“It doesn't count if you don't like the person,” I say.

All he says is, “Goodnight.”

Twenty minutes later I'm almost asleep, warm under Adrian's coat, lulled by the soft sway of the waves. I feel his hand on my neck and lean toward him, stretching my body over the seats. His hand moves across my face, pushing the jacket aside, touching my shoulder. I bite his finger softly and then suck on it until he moans.

“Do you like me more than the rest of the girls?”

“Yes,” he says. “I like you more than Tina, Joan, Mary, Darcy, and Constance.” Then he laughs, low and teasing.

It isn't easy to lie back in a car, even in the comfortable velour backseat of the Mustang. We slip our hands into each other's clothes, sweaty, breathing hard, fogging the windows with heat. I move against his hand, swaying to the sound of the water for twenty liquid minutes, faster and faster, until it happens.

“That was so cool,” he says. “You should have seen your face.”

I laugh, and tell him I
have
seen my face. “I've looked in a mirror while I'm doing it to myself.”

He stares at me, raising an eyebrow, then lets his breath out slowly. “There's no one like you,” he says, pulling me roughly on top of him.

We wake at dawn, to the sound of firetrucks whirring and zooming past. We peek out sleepily and then fall back in the seats. A policeman taps on the window at six thirty.

“All right, Miss Mason, move along now,” he says, surveying the car with his flashlight.

Adrian starts the car, cute, blinking like a frog in the raw morning light.

My brother is waiting in my room, eyes red and swollen. I crouch low in case he punches. Instead he smiles at me. “I've been up all night. I thought you ran away for good with that Val.”

“I'm sorry about last night, Jim,” I say, wrapping him in a blanket. “I shouldn't have said that about the toilets.”

He waves his hand as if clearing the air between us and tells me to forget about it. He tries to snap me with the blanket, and misses.

“So are you gonna come surfing with me, or are you gonna lie around all morning like a troll?” he says, connecting.

*   *   *

Jim and I are surfing close to the rocks when he falls, hitting his head on the reef. I jump off my board and swim to him fast. The salt water is red with his blood.

“How come I always fall now?” he says, face very white, flicking blood from his hand into the waves.

“Everyone wipes out, Jim. It's no big deal.”

He swishes the water, watching drops of blood mingle with the tide and slowly float away.

“You never wipe out,” he says. “You're better than me now.”

He giggles strangely, says maybe he's more like our mother, a freak.

I'm careful not to insult her, not wanting another fight. “I thought I was the freak. Isn't that what everybody says?”

When he doesn't answer, or even look at me, I splash him gently. He watches the dots of silver water arc upward, flinching when they hit him in the face. Then he shakes his head, as if waking up from a heavy sleep.

“I'll tell you a secret.” His eyes suddenly focus on me, deep green, violent. “You're the strong one, Medina.” He laughs again, a deep belly laugh, as if he'd just told a funny joke.

Then he tells me everyone knows it, especially our mother.

As we take the next wave to the beach he rides close to me, rubbing his face with salt water to clean it.

The rest of the day at the beach he is mellow, cool to me. I sit right by his side and talk to him. He takes three black pills, swallows them, deliberately looking at me. Then he tells me again how sorry he is about last night.

“I get so mad. Sometimes I wish everyone would just die.”

I look at him, scared. He continues talking.

“And being around all these perfect P.V. people makes it worse.” He gestures to the pretty girls sitting in a ring on the beach.

“Forget them, we're our own tribe, just me and you. They don't understand anything about us.”

My brother relaxes a bit, even smiles. “I think about that a lot—about sticking with your tribe until you die.” He puts his head against my shoulder, yawning. His eyes are peaceful. Then he closes them.

When he wakes up, we have a long sandfight, and then we go surfing again. In the water I ask him about the pills.

“They're trippy,” he says evasively. “They make you feel really good.”

“Can I have one then?”

He tells me no, they're only good if you need them. “You don't need them, Medina, you never fall.”

I want to ask him more details, but I'm afraid it will spoil the good mood between us. Instead I tease him, pointing to a blond girl in a white bikini.

“Are you sure you wouldn't rather hang out with a nice girl like her?”

“I'm tired of plastic girls,” Jim says, looking at Cindy Spink as she walks past. “You don't know how tired.”

*   *   *

The next day Jim and I practice swimming from one end of the pool to the other without taking a breath. He dives deep under the water when our mother calls to him through the window.

“Pretend you don't hear her,” he whispers, motioning me out of the pool.

We go to my room and I blast the music really loud, getting ready for a surf session. We dance around to punk rock, getting amped before running out my sliding glass door, racing each other to the cliff stairs. But when we get there, I see Adrian's car parked at the cliffs. I smile nervously and wave to him. Jim shakes his head.

“It's never gonna be like it used to, is it?” Then he walks off. When I run after him, he tells me to go away, surf with my new boyfriend, see if he cares. But it's easy to see he's glad that I won't.

At Pratt Point, he doesn't go in the water. He throws rocks at it instead.

*   *   *

The waves are unbelievable today, another storm from Mexico. I run to my brother's room, excited. A heavy camping-sleeping bag is tied over the curtain rods, held in place with duct tape. It is so dark that at first I don't see him. Then I hear him rustle in the bed, a lump under the army blankets on the far side.