Drowning tucson, p.32
Drowning Tucson, page 32
Sometimes he told her stories of being in the war. Sometimes he told her the methods he used to panhandle because it was so tough with the downtown streets overrun by war vets who came by the busload to wait for a handout from the VA, even though they OWE it to us. His approach was to appeal to a person’s sense of values, not their sense of guilt. With so many homeless in Tucson it was virtually impossible to play the guilt card. And on top of all that he continued waiting, day in and day out, for the VA to make a decision. Even though he knew one would never come. He told her nobody ever heard from the VA. Especially not poor people. And especially not Indians like me. They always say something like check back next week, we already sent your paperwork to Phoenix and should be hearing back soon. It’s out of our hands here. We’ve done our job. Every vet including Brightstar had heard this, and most had nothing else to do except wander the city of Tucson, up and down south 4th, 5th, and 6th Avenues, Veteran’s Boulevard, within walking distance of the Greyhound bus station, where they congregated at lunchtime to see what kind of handouts the Catholic soup kitchen had fixed up for the day, sleeping behind Southgate Shopping Center or bumming change from people at the greyhound racetrack and crashing for the night beneath overpasses, where eventually the TPD shook them out and forced them to wander half-drunk until they found an arroyo to sleep in for the night, one of the only places the cops rarely went. What happened below the city wasn’t their concern. As long as the bums were out of sight, the TPD didn’t stir up too much shit.
What is the point, Brighstar often asked Rainbow, of coming to Tucson, of staying in Tucson, of doing anything in Tucson, when the VA people only pretended to care or told him we filed the paperwork already. Keep checking back. And still the numbers of vets grew. Rainbow had seen it herself downtown every time she walked past the Greyhound station where disheveled men disembarked from the buses, army duffel bags thrown over their shoulders, visibly hopeful until they left the parking lot and rounded the corner and saw the others who had come before them filling the alleys and scattered on the sidewalks and passed out on the grass of Veinte de Agosto Park where they slept in groups beneath the trees until the cops came and moved them along.
What is the point, Brightstar said, and Rainbow wondered the same thing. She too had finally given up trying to find work at the mall. No one was hiring. That fifty from her mother ran out after two weeks, so she had to rely on Brightstar for food, which made her feel guilty. She expanded her search to the businesses on Broadway and on 22nd, only to be turned down again and again. She went to Food Giant and filled out an application, hoping they might remember her from the many shopping trips she had taken with her grandfather, then walked to the produce section and stole some fruit, knowing she couldn’t jeopardize a job she’d never get anyway.
Every night, after she told Brightstar about her failed job search and he told her about his failure with the VA, she read to him until they fell asleep, and she dreamed the nightmares of her first night in the tunnels. It was always the same thing. The horrific deaths and the flood.
One night, three weeks after Rainbow’s arrival at the tunnels, Brightstar returned with an outfit he had pieced together from the clotheslines in the neighborhood—a short denim skirt and a mauve halter top—plus a pair of cute strappy heels he’d bought at Payless on sale, telling her maybe this will help. If you dress a little older, maybe they’ll give you a job. It’s worth a try, right? You keep saying they say you’re too young, so lie to them. Make yourself look older.
The next morning she took the new outfit into the mall and changed in the bathroom, washed her face with hand soap and ran her wet fingers through her hair, then brushed her teeth with a dab of soap on her finger. She posed in front of the mirror. Stuck out her breasts, pushed them up a little bit and bent over to look at her cleavage. She liked how it looked. Her breasts were so round and mysterious. Her shirt showed just enough to make people want to see more, like older girls’ shirts. And the skirt was exactly what was in fashion right now. Rainbow had seen tons of high-school girls in the mall wearing this exact same skirt, and they had boys all over them. This was the perfect thing. Just what she needed to be taken seriously.
She decided she looked old enough to maybe get a job at Dillard’s or Sears, who cares about the food court anymore? Who wants to get fry grease all over themselves and leave with the stench of burgers in her hair and all in her clothes? No. Brightstar was exactly right. This was going to work.
The first place she stopped in Dillard’s was the makeup counter. It was blindingly white. It was as clean as her old house. And the girls who worked the counters looked like angels, all dressed up in white smocks, white panty hose, white pumps. All of them had their hair pulled back and had perfect posture. These are princesses, Rainbow thought. This is where I belong. But when she stepped up and asked for an application, the woman standing on the other side of the glass counter gave her a look of condescending pity and said oh honey you could never work here, I mean look at your skin, and she grabbed a well-lit magnifying mirror and shoved it in front of Rainbow’s face and said your face is absolutely riddled with blackheads. Don’t you ever exfoliate? Have you ever even once used an oatmeal mask to clear your pores? She snickered at Rainbow and then called some of the other women over and said look at this poor thing. She thinks she can work in the makeup section. Isn’t that just the best? I mean, look at her hair. It’s like someone grabbed a handful of dyed straw and glued it to her head—giggle, giggle.
Rainbow was mortified. She looked back at the mirror, at her face magnified three times its normal size, but she didn’t see anything wrong. What was wrong with her face? What was a mask? Did the woman mean she should just cover her face? And her hair, she’d just combed through it with her wet fingers a few minutes ago. It wasn’t as bad as straw. She stood looking at the four women who mocked her, telling her they hadn’t seen pores that big and clogged in ages, that’s where Aqua Net and a complete lack of hygiene will get you—giggle, giggle.
It was the giggling that finally drove Rainbow out of the store. She would put no applications in there. She couldn’t even stomach the idea of ever seeing those women again. The giggles followed her out of the store and burrowed into her head, prodding her, mocking her. They grew louder and more piercing until Rainbow could hear nothing else and she wanted to bash her head into a wall or shove a pencil or screwdriver into her ears to rid her head of the sound. Instead she staggered back to the bathroom, chomping down hard on her tongue to distract herself from the burning clump of embarrassment growing in her chest.
Back in the bathroom she scrubbed her face repeatedly with hand soap. She pressed hard, pushing her skin against the bones of her face with all the strength she could muster, trying to dig really deep and get into the pores to clean out the blackheads she still couldn’t see—how come I can’t see them? How am I supposed to get rid of something I can’t see? Rainbow ran water through her hair and massaged hand soap into a nice lather on her scalp and cursed the women who’d made fun of her for something she wasn’t even aware was a problem. She’d seen a pimple or two on her face before, sure. But all she had to do was pop them and they were gone the next day. She was blessed with dark skin, that’s what the girls at school told her when they started getting their first zits. Theirs lingered for days, sometimes even scarred. But hers were gone the next day. She always thought that’s what made her so pretty. It was what made her different from other girls her age.
Rainbow forced herself not to cry, rinsing her hair and her face and ignoring the moms who came in with their young daughters and shot her looks of disgust. With her head beneath the hand dryer she couldn’t hear what they were saying about her, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine. That is exactly the kind of girl you don’t want to become, Tracy, some girl with a face covered in blackheads and hair ratty beyond all hope. Look closely, Tracy, and see where you’ll be if you don’t put oatmeal on your face. Embarrassing, isn’t it?
When her hair was finally dry enough to manage, Rainbow pulled it back and tried to French-braid it, but it was impossible. There was no way to do it without an extra set of hands. So, she simply shook her hair out and then pulled it back into a tight ponytail and readjusted her clothing in the mirror—honestly, I look nice like this, what was their problem?—and went to apply at Sears.
This time she avoided the makeup counter, and the shoe department, and the Juniors and Misses departments, and the hair salon, and the photo lab. She purposely skirted each part of the store where attractive women or cute girls worked because they too would certainly notice her flaws that up until now she never knew she had. Which left mens-wear, the boys department, electronics, appliances, and car service. She thought she’d try her luck at the electronics department since it was probably the only place where she stood a chance, but when she walked up to a bank of TVs and VCRs and camcorders, she saw her image splashed across every screen in the whole department and realized the bitches at the makeup counter were right. She did look pathetic. She looked horrible. Her hair was frizzy and her face was all splotchy and plain. Rainbow knew at that moment she was a hideous mess, and she walked out of the store in shame.
Every store she passed sent a sting of failure into her stomach, reminding her she was not only all alone, but inadequate. Alone and ugly. That’s what she was.
Maybe this place would be better off underwater. And she with it.
As Rainbow walked out the main entrance and across the parking lot, she noticed a car slowly following her. She walked faster, switched to a different aisle. She ignored the car but the driver kept up with her, and when she got to the end of the aisle, the car pulled up in front of her, blocking her path. The driver rolled down the window and motioned her toward him. He looked at her outfit, at her shoes and her legs and her cleavage, and said I’ve got some work for you if you want it. Twenty dollars for just a few minutes of your time. I’ll even buy you some lunch. You’re too damn cute. Whaddya say?
She said nothing. Instead she straightened her back, glanced around the parking lot, and got into the passenger side of the car. She cringed a little at the man’s touch on her thigh, but she took the twenty and crumpled it in her hand, then steeled herself.
Just relax, baby. Like I said, this’ll only take a few minutes, and then I don’t have any problem running you by El Taco or something for a meal and bringing you back here.
His hand crept higher up her thigh, pushed her skirt up enough that her panties peeked out. She tried to pull it down a little bit, even though there was no point, but he gripped her thigh harder and said don’t. He drove across Wilmot and pulled in behind the Buena Vista movie theater, parked the car beneath a row of paloverde trees, shut off the engine, and leaned over toward her, his thumb pulling her panties to the side while his fingers played with her little tuft of hair and tickled her, and his breath was warm on her neck, then he was kissing her and telling her how beautiful she was. He kissed her all over her face, on her forehead, like her grandfather used to, and he didn’t seem to notice her blackheads or her bad hair. He just kept telling her how cute and sexy she was and how bad he wanted her, and then he grabbed her hand and put it on the crotch of his jeans. He was hard so he couldn’t have been lying about being attracted to her. It made her feel like other girls were just jealous because here she was, walking all by herself, and a grown man wanted her, not the makeup counter girls, not the women working in the department stores, he wanted her and so she knew the other girls had been lying about the blackheads and she grabbed his dick through his jeans and squeezed it and he moaned and unzipped his pants, kissing her the whole time, muttering sweet things amid his heavy breathing, and Rainbow opened her legs to him, opened them all the way, as far as she could in the front seat of the car, and the itch returned that she’d felt years before, the itch that needed to be scratched, and he was going to scratch it for her, so she kissed him back, squeezed him harder, let him touch her however he wanted to, and when he told her to crawl over the console and onto his lap she did it happily, now that she felt beautiful again, and he pulled her close to him, lowered her down onto his dick, and laid his seat back, and they had sex, right there in broad daylight, that’s how unashamed he is of me, she thought, he wouldn’t want to be seen in daylight with me if he didn’t mean those things he said because any minute someone who works at the theater could come out to smoke a cigarette or take out last night’s trash before they opened up for the matinee, surely someone could drive back here, it’s not like it’s abandoned, and they kept going, the car rocking with their motion, until finally the man shuddered and held her close, and let out a long breath of air and kept saying goddam, baby, goddam, as his shudders subsided, and Rainbow was pleased that she made him so happy, pleased she had this ability to make grown men call her baby.
He didn’t buy her lunch, though, which disappointed her. He looked in the rearview mirror, the side mirrors, then told her he was late for something, sorry, and opened his door and told her she had to get out fast. Then he was gone. But she still had the twenty. She had money and she felt whole once again, for the first time in a long while.
This time, when Brightstar returned to the tunnels, she had a bag of food waiting for him. His favorite: a chilidog and cheesy fries from Weinerschnitzel. He devoured the food and told her I just knew a new outfit was all you needed, Rainbow. You know, show a little skin and they assume you’re older. So where’d you get a job?
It never crossed her mind that he would ask her where the money came from, she just thought he’d be grateful and excited when she found work. So Rainbow lied. She stuttered and told him she got a job waiting tables, didn’t name a restaurant. Not that he’d care. Or maybe he would. She didn’t know. Thankfully he didn’t notice her pause.
The next morning she did it again. She scrambled out of the arroyo, then washed up in the mall bathroom, fiercely scrubbing her face with hand soap, trying to get at those pores she still couldn’t see. She wet her hair and dried it beneath the hand dryer, happy she had finally figured out a way to make money. Happy she wasn’t going to starve.
The makeup counter looked abandoned when Rainbow walked past the entrance to Dillard’s, so she walked in quickly and swiped a tester bottle of Liz Claiborne perfume and walked out calmly. She sprayed a slight amount onto her wrists, rubbed them together, then rubbed them on her neck. Her chest got a spray as well. And when she was sure no one was looking, she lifted her skirt slightly and sprayed toward her panties, then squatted down quickly to catch the perfume mist before it fell to the ground.
Prepared for a new day, she walked around the mall trying hard to look like she belonged, like she was actually shopping. She browsed Spencer Gifts, laughing at the raunchy birthday cards with fat naked women on the covers, flipping through the posters of swimsuit models and famous bands and ripped boys wearing only jeans and standing by bales of hay.
Her first score of the day was just outside a jewelry store, where a man came out carrying a necklace for his wife’s birthday, saw her slowly walking past, and offered her an Orange Julius. She accepted gladly because she hadn’t eaten yet and the drink would fill her up. She licked the froth off the straw for him, putting on a show to let him know she was interested and okay with his come-on. He kept glancing over his shoulder, looking for security or maybe his wife or kids. Finally he asked her to leave with him, offering ten dollars if she came outside to his car and went for a ride, but she refused and told him it would take twenty. The man rolled his eyes, but he pulled a twenty out of his wallet and gave it to her, then he rose and gestured for her to follow. The look on his face told her to follow at a discrete distance. So she did.
He took her to Reid Park, since it was just a couple blocks away, and paid for a paddleboat ride on the lake. Once they were settled in the middle of the lake, he pulled out his dick and told her suck it nice and slow, I’ll keep a lookout for trouble. And he paddled slowly in a circle while Rainbow went down on him, oh she was so good at this. He couldn’t believe his luck. This hot little piece giving him a blowjob. Something he was sure would never happen again in his life, but here he was, sitting in a boat with a cute bitch he picked up at the mall for twenty dollars. And she sucked like a pro. Like she just loved being down there. He pushed her down. Made her take all of him in her throat, and she did, just slid down like it was nothing and then he closed his eyes and bit his lip while he came down the back of her throat and then whispered swallow, swallow, you little slut, like it’s your last meal, and he saw white behind his eyelids, then opened them and the perfect Arizona afternoon greeted his eyes and he was happy, so goddam happy because it was the best twenty he’d ever spent in his life. He zipped up his pants and they paddled back to the shore in silence. Yes, she was good.
At Rainbow’s request the man left her in the park, and she walked over to the water fountain and swished her mouth with the warm, stale water. It wasn’t a big deal really, which actually surprised her because she’d never done that before. It wasn’t like she could get a job doing anything else. And nobody had seen. No one else was paddling on the lake. The park wasn’t full of people since it was a weekday. Twenty dollars was a good amount for ten minutes of work, plus a free Orange Julius.
She spent a couple hours at the park. Relaxing, strolling leisurely through the grass, lying down in the shade, smelling the roses in the garden, feeling beautiful and wanted. She swung on the swings for a little while too, listening to the children laughing and squealing in the sunlight. Yes, Rainbow, it looks like everything might just work out after all. It was such a pretty day and she walked back over to the mall to try her luck again.
