Читать книгу Fancy Girl - Jasen Boone's Sousa - Страница 3

PROLOGUE

THE PLAYGROUND

Madelyn bursts

like water out of a gutter;

down the slide, toes up

and I sit watching her

on a wooden bench.

That’s what good mothers do.

Some girl, her heels sinking

in soggy woodchucks, still strutting

and I see it’s Alissa,

the one girl every Somerville guy

has on speed dial.

“You be Deanna, right?” she asks.

“I be, different things, to different people,” I say.

She sits down next to me, and my wandering eyes.

Short,

short skirt, and stockings, careful

not to let splinters stab her thighs.

Maddy smiles and waves

from the top of the slide, our project

building standing behind her.

“She’s beautiful,” Alissa says.

Maddy crash lands and says

to the older boy who plays

without anyone watching him,

“Bet you can’t go down faster than me!”

“She has your eyes.”

I pause before I answer, think

about what my eyes have seen.

“She has my everything,” I say.

“She was lucky being born

with all of my beautiful genes,

not her father’s.”

“I heard things have been rough

for you lately with your mom dying

and all. If you’re looking for a way

to make some extra cash, I might be able to help

you out,” Alissa says.

“I know it’s not easy to make it on these streets.”

The buildings of the Mystic Projects draw a shadow

over Alissa’s face, she looks away from me, sparks a Newport,

and blows smoke towards a setting Somerville sun.

SOMERVILLE, MY HOOD

In my neighborhood nobody really knows who they are.

Like Phil Bailey:

a 40-something-year-old dude

with Coke bottle glasses and a backwards

Bruins cap who plays ball with the kids at the playground,

and then recruits them to sell drugs for him.

Like skinny-ass Sherri:

a twenty-something-year-old lady

who looks like she is fifty, but still

dresses like she’s a teenager. A straight-up

case of what living in Somerville does

to a person’s skin, and to their soul.

Like the Sledgehammer and Zoo-Nikki:

two old school Irish cats who pretend they’re mobsters

roughing people up in their scaly caps,

jean shorts, and white sneaks with no socks

that they wear no matter what season it is.

Like Megan:

a chick in her twenties

who doesn’t have a home of her own. Her

parents kicked her out for stealing the TV

and sofa and selling them for a hit. You

can still find her roaming around her crib,

trying to find new ways to break in.

Like Cadillac Chris:

A dude in his twenties covered

with the worst tats you have even seen! You know,

the ones that are done by a friend of a friend for cheap money

at a house party. They ain’t even black, they’re like green,

Cadillac Chris with his green Cadillac

logo tattooed over his heart. Everyone needs

to love something, right?

Like me:

Deanna. A single mother who will do anything

to get out of the projects, even

if it means taking off my top, pulling down my pants, and filling

up my pockets with dirty money.

In Somerville, sometimes you just become things

to be something.

LAST NIGHT’S DREAM

My apartment infested:

cockroaches.

Stained toilet seat cover hung

half-way off,

couldn’t see water in the bowl, toilet paper,

cigarettes, funky

combination of piss and shit.

Someone stabbed

outside my door, hallway

of the Mystic Projects.

Cops and paramedics left, couple

in the apartment next door cursed

for two hours, made-up

for longer.

Became nauseous, smell

of curry floating, Indian

couple down the hall.

Heard rats run

through walls

behind my headboard,

last night’s dream,

today’s reality.

I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES

I don’t know how many times

I have looked out my window and seen

a street lamp and mistaken it

for the sun.

I don’t know how many times

I have looked out my window and seen

red and blue flashing lights

and thought they were coming for me.

I don’t know how many times

I have looked out my window and seen

cigarette ashes disappear into the sidewalk

and thought it was magic.

I don’t know how many times

I have looked out my window and seen

the blinking lights of a departing plane

and wished I was on it.

LOOKING GLASS

A boy punched

Maddy in the face

at school today.

Gave her a black eye.

I feel like

I am looking

in a mirror.

A broken mirror.

A spotted mirror

that gets smudged,

spit on and fogged

up by boys

who are no longer able

to see their

own reflection.

At some point boys

look in mirrors

and don’t see themselves,

don’t see girls anymore.

They see objects. They see things

which they don’t think are human.

They think it’s cool

to draw their initials

on our foggy skin.

I try to wipe away

the fog, the bruise,

but it doesn’t go away.

It won’t go away.

I have to get Maddy

away from here before the skin

on her mirror is broken

like mine.

PLAYING WITH A PRINCESS

Maddy tells me about a friend’s house

she went to visit after school in Lexington.

“Mommy, you wouldn’t believe it,

it was like a palace! It had shiny floors,

a huge back yard,

a pool,

and even an awesome dog!

You should have seen her room!

She had a wicked awesome computer

and a closet full of princess clothes!”

I feel like a piece of shit mother

and immediately place

a copy of the Yellow Pages

under the broken leg post on her bed

so her dreams won’t slant.

REPLACEMENT DREAMS

When you have a kid

dreams are replaced

by dirty diapers.

When you do have time

to dream, you usually

get woken up by crying,

sometimes your own tears,

sometimes tears of your child.

All of my dreams got pushed

to the backseat, next

to the car seat.

Things like being the first

person in my family

to go to college.

To be the one who finally

gets off public housing and food stamps.

To be the one who doesn’t

grow up and be a burnout.

To be something,

or at least be seen

as something.

My dreams have the best

chance of coming true now

through Maddy.

I dream she can have a real life,

and not whatever this thing is that I’m living.

A NUMBER’S GAME

Money is not easy

to come by. I wonder

what having the lights

on for the entire month would be like.

How hard could it be?

Guys do it all the time right?

That hit and run stuff. I just

need to leave my feelings at home.

I just need to think more like a guy

like my father did

with me

and not have love be part of sex.

I could stack up the

money

faster, get Maddy

out of the projects, out of Somerville.

It’s just sex, right?

Jobs are hard to come by these days.

I would be stupid if I didn’t at least try.

I WON’T MISS YOU, SLUMERVILLE

I’m going to get

up out of this place, and I

don’t care how many

nasty men I have

to bang, and blow to save enough

cash and get out of

Somerville

for good.