The Wild Alternatives

The Wild Alternatives

 

Most mornings are a variation of this one, stumbling out into the blue dawn of our house, jabbing my big toe into the neck of some sleeping girl with no hair, wearing a tie-dyed wedding dress, and who chose to end the night on that particular spot of carpet in the very center of the hall in front of my door. She curses herself back to sleep. Her face is motley with drool and runaway coloring. As I pass, I wonder why she’d want to sleep there when the living room holds no less than five mismatched couches, each swollen cushion’s infested guts tinged with tobacco smoke and spilt wine. I think there’s something satisfying about their dilapidation, like a popped zit. Puss and toxicity giving way under pressure. Relief by destruction. Might, not sight, may be the true source of beauty.

Our staircase is wrapped in wild English Ivy. Spiky green hearts the size of my palm climb up along the wall and out the bathroom window, trickling down the crumbling red brick, patched brown and green with moss or mold, I can’t tell. Somehow through the broken window pane above the sink, the vine weaves back inside, crisscrossing the poetry which wallpapers our kitchen. Those pages were torn from old attic anthologies – This Is Just To Say appears four times. None of this was here before. The walls were bare. The couches less by four and sealed in sticky plastic. The books left to collect dust upstairs, safely unseen. The ivy outside where it belongs. Grandpa would have a conniption, but this is our world now.

Our sun dries out our clothes on our porch where my friends are laying flat, watching our sunrise with Tom (who is much older than us but has no one) and who we tolerate because every morning he brings us weed and packs a free bong, lighting it up as the first rays of orange and red stretch over our horizon. Dense swirls of smoke first occupy the glass, then roll up and out into the all too crisp, too clean, too good air of another brand new day on Planet – uhm - I’ll have to ask them what we should call it.

Understand, this is the only place that ever felt like home. Even when I lived here before with my Grandpa, it wasn’t home to me. Then, it was where I’d stare at empty walls, at the space where the corners met, and I’d cry as a hollow helplessness burrowed down my spine. Cried like it would make a difference, bring back the lost, the dead. But that was long ago and here, now, we – my friends and I - will sit stoned out of our minds, hypnotized by our own good feelings, drenched in young, living, bright, beautiful, things. Surrounded by miles of nowhere, this was where we belong.  

Soon, the boys are hungry. Olivia and Kia will go down the foot-worn path into the surrounding woods to pick berries, they say, but really they go to kiss and hold each other close and play pretend together, so I make extra eggs in case anyone still has the rumbles, stealing shots of Z’s vodka to feed my high instead of my hunger. Tom will watch Amber tease Saheed about his hair, a Mohawk which stuck up in purple Liberty spikes when we first met, but now hangs in long gnarled ropes along the center of his head, the sides shaved bare, brown as a coffee bean. Zvezden, who we call Z, will try to tell us about his parents fleeing Bosnia way-back-when again, but Saheed will hush him, turning the subject to Existential Libertarianism. We all understand we’re only here for the good, that unmuddled kind of happiness, but sometimes we need reminding. No one likes a buzzkill. The girls won’t return long after Tom’s first hit has worn off, and already we will be all too sober to take the beat of noon’s heat or Z’s hand-me-down histories and so we will retreat back into our now empty home.

We have a deal. They work. Make Money. Keep us fed and inebriated.

I collect knowledge. I keep us sharp. I study.  I know, talk about a good deal.

Saheed’s a clerk, selling truckers and lonely old men porno mags and cigarettes at 3am most weekdays, and then booze as a bartender on weekends – he gets us what we need. Olivia paints nails and plucks eyebrows for her cousin, who raped her when she was young, but pretends like nothing happened. Olivia isn’t licensed and the pay is good, so she works hard to pretend too, and every week comes home with fresh fruit and whatever vegetable we couldn’t grow ourselves. Z was fired from his third fast-food job last month and has sworn them off indefinitely, he says. Saheed’s been meaner than usual to him lately, as though glaring at him and stealing his dates will increase Z’s credentials, or improve the market, or lift the economy, or in any way make it more likely the kid who was raised on wartime stories and bloodbaths will find new, better paying employment. Amber, who by comparison was raised on bedtime stories and bubble baths, even despite her scars and hallucinations, loves to play with my hair and I tell her she should be a stylist even though neither of us follows that kind of thing. She was going to strip but Olivia talked her out of it, even if she has the body and doesn’t mind people asking about her scars, even if she enjoys it immensely. Kia devoted her life to the capital ‘E’ Earth when she was 17, and so she pushes around a shopping cart piled high by day’s end with wrongly discarded bottles. Popping them into the machines at the supermarket, extending her hands chalky with dirt and stale sweat and sticky brown syrup, she cashes in for her supper the most honest day’s work I’ve ever seen.

For my keep, I teach myself and then teach them. The one thing I’ve got is a good head on my shoulders, Grandpa used to say.  No reason to lie: I love this kind of thing. I love reading. I love making lists, charts, graphs. I love organizing information. Most of all, I love teaching: teaching poetry at breakfast, psychology and world cultures after lunch, science over dinner, history before bed. I have plans, and lessons, and games, and dirty acronyms. I have illustrated, personalized, Sparknotes. I have relatable pop culture references. But they never seem to have the time or the energy or the will, though. They encourage me to continue while they take another hit, and as the months have passed since our agreement I’ve started to sense their resentment. I shouldn’t have stayed here. I should have let them have the place. It doesn’t really belong to anyone now, anyway. Attachments are foolish. I should have known better.

Since my return - my arrival to a house once so dark and dank and dead, now broken into by light, and vagabonds, and wild English Ivy – every night and day I imagine this as our Eden, our Utopia, our Bohemia.  Lately though, the dream has started to fuzz and transform in my mind, like mold on a peach. They don’t ask my opinion anymore. They don’t include me. They cut me off. Saheed will change the subject so sharply that it’s more uncomfortable not to just go with it; pretend nothing is wrong. I have too many words, he says. If I want to get anywhere, I need to learn to say the most with the least words possible. Take up the least amount of anyone’s time. Always make the most with the least. I ask him, what does he know? He’s just a clerk who sells perversions of the heart to lonely old men at 3am when they should be home hugging someone who gives a damn about them, if only for the practice. I stared directly into his eyes then, as though I could will him to the power of telekinesis. He walked away then, and hasn’t spoken to me since. Not even in the mornings when we pass Tom’s bong.

Today though, he wants to talk. We sit at the edge of the woods in hammocks Kia made from plastic shopping bags last summer. Saheed and I wrap ourselves in blankets despite the heat or else the plastic will leave odd bumps on our legs. This summer Kia promised to make softer ones.  Was it only a year ago? A year ago they moved in. A year ago I started living. He doesn’t start to talk right away. I hate these kinds of things. Talks. They make me nervous. It never ends well.

He doesn’t look at me when he speaks. We’re moving, he says.

We are we going?

No, listen. Me. Olivia. Z, Kia, and Amber. We’re leaving. Putting our money together and going west. Portland. Seattle. SFO maybe.

I can’t go with you?

He grimaces and I can see the honesty in his regret. He puts up his hands, palms open: Hey if you had money, sure! But we each got to be able to hold our own, pitch in. It’s the only way this can work. You understand that, don’t you?

So I’ll drop out. I’ll do what you all did. What? What’s that face for?

It’s your life. You know that. But I’ve got to say this. Don’t.

Don’t. Seriously? That’s all you got?

You’re smarter than we ever were. You’re going to be more than okay. You could go to college. Get out of this shithole.

Shithole?! This is no shithole! I huffed to my feet, unsteadying the hammock, knocking Saheed on his ass. I would’ve laughed if I weren’t so angry, or if it weren’t for the expression on his face. How dare he insult such a welcoming place to lay down his bones? How dare he be so thankless?

There’s nothing here! He dug into the ground, tearing clumps of grass up by the roots.

You’re here! I yelled back. I’m here! Why isn’t that enough?

He says I need to learn how to be alone. What kind of answer is that? Forget it, he has no real answer. The rest of the day, I can’t stop ruminating, like a hunger pain, like an itch, a constant stab between the ribs: Why isn’t that enough?

*

            Laying on the floor, I don’t remember how I got here. Stiffly, like I’ve been sleeping for eternity until now, I sit up, sore. Sweat trickles behind my ear and down my neck, and that’s strange, because it’s a cool night. My head is pounding and when I see the wine bottle, all glass and emptiness, I realize I must have passed out on the bathroom floor. Wouldn’t be the first time.

            Standing spins me with nausea, and more sweat drizzles down the back of my neck. I sit on the covered toilet seat, holding my head in my hands, breathing heavy. They’re gone. I’m totally fucked. Heat creeps into my face and I know I’m about to cry. Maybe I should let it come. Let it break. I wish I hadn’t been so angry when they left. It’s not their fault I’m 18 and on my own. That now I must get my own food. Steal my own cable. They were kinder to me than I ever deserved. I’ve been so happy, by which I mean I’ve been so wasted, since I met them that I don’t remember why I was miserable anymore. Then again, that was the point, wasn’t it? Sitting, deciding whether or not to cry, staring at the rotting bathroom tile, with those horrid little red polka dots, I realize there’d never been horrid red polka dots on this tile before. I touch my hair, and it feels wet. My hands are red. My head is bleeding, and there’s nobody home.

            I search the bathroom for an extra mirror, but there’s just the one above the toilet. Tears keep running down my face, as blood slips down my back, across my shoulders. Great dried clumps of red ooze streaking my arms and I can’t decide if I look more like a suicide victim or an escaped tribal sacrifice. Of course this sort of thing would happen tonight. Of course they would be gone when I needed them most.

            Even if we – I - had an outside line, I can’t call an ambulance. What do they do with runaways? They’d definitely ask too many questions. People like me: the smokers, the extremists, the chasers, the vagabonds, the damn rapscallions, we know which questions to ask when it counts.

            It was the night we made our deal. The night I let them stay. We were up late in the living room, talking, intoxicated. I told them, You know, my grandfather, a hermit and a drunk, built this house with his bare hands? And they said, Oh really? And why? To which I replied, because it was important to him. Then Saheed asked what was important to me, and no one ever asks me about myself, so I blushed hard before I answered: poetry. They liked that answer and laughed. Z said peace was most important to him, and Saheed threw a pillow at him. Olivia thought it was a nice idea, and told Saheed to stop picking on people for having dreams just because he didn’t have any himself. He got sassy then, which was always fun to watch, because something within him puffed up and his eyes went from black to caramel.

I happen to have a dream, thank you very much, he said.

Let’s hear it, then, said Olivia.

I’m starting a band.

There was a pause before Z laughed, choking hard on an inhale of smoke.

Okay, what’ll you name it, Saheed? asked Kia, who hadn’t bothered answering that the Earth was most important to her since we all already knew.

The Lost Causes.

Z laughed again, but I couldn’t tell you why this time. And what the hell kind of band is that?

Punk and Alt and some art stuff, like Lou Reed. Please, act like you could do better Z, go ahead.

Z stood and straightened out his suspenders, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. If I had a band, I’d name them The White Lighters. We’d be reggae and stadium rock, he said.

Peaches! screeched Amber nonsensically, suddenly mad with giggles after her turn to smoke.

What about God and the Philosophers? said Olivia

How about The Alternatives? I said, and thought no one heard me when Saheed pointed at me suddenly, saying Yes, Yes, Yes! That’s it! The Wild Alternatives! Love it! Just why he liked the name so much or what he saw in it, I don’t know, but from then on I had something to contribute. It was then I decided they had to stay – we would be a family.

            A towel wrapped around my head is soaking up the blood now. I can feel a giant bump, and upon investigation, I found where my head had hit the tile, where a crack down the center of the ceramic matched what I could see of the gash behind my head. Grandpa had fallen once and the doctors were worried about complications, but he was old and had lived his life. I’ve never been anything like my family, why should it start now? They’re what people call dysfunctional. Mom overdosed before I could know her, and Grandpa hadn’t wanted to be a father, especially to a girl, the first time around. We lived in silence mostly. One thing he did tell me was to be sure to take care of myself. Not to get hurt. Every injury comes back, he told me. You’ll feel it all again, you’ll see.

            Tomorrow I could walk to the edge of the woods, to the bus stop, and find Tom. He’ll take me to the hospital if I need to go. What if it’s serious? How would I know?  I bite down on my lip, knowing there’s no use in tears, they’ll just get me worked up, just make my stomach turn and my head hurt worse. Maybe this is what I needed to learn how to be alone.

            I know there’s supposed to be more to life than this. What are my options? Something better than numbing out, than running away. Right? But the past takes so much energy to mend.  To mend it you must touch it, and memories like these burn with mixed feelings and unsettled scores. Better to look only to the future, but that must wait, because I am tired now. My hair is dry, matted with blood. Tomorrow there will be no more drugs, or strangers, or music. Tomorrow there will be no more friends, or family. With a heavy rush, I fell back to sleep.

            Tom didn’t come back for a week. I lived off stale cookies, a block of cheese, and the last of Z’s vodka which he must’ve forgotten on purpose, his way of saying goodbye. I wasn’t so fearful that I couldn’t leave – more so I just didn’t want to. If the world had changed, I wanted as little evidence as possible. I wanted to suspend my childhood, if just a little longer. No one has ever blamed me for it, and I have not missed those odd, lost days.

            He found me in the hallway. Strange how comfortable that spot is, just in the center, right in front of my bedroom door. Tom picked me up and I realized he wasn’t quite as old as I had thought, or at least strong for 60. Plopping me down on one of the couches, he pushed a bowl of plain oatmeal and honey under my nose and said, Eat and then, I’ll patch up that numbskull of yours. As I spooned the breakfast into my astonished mouth, Tom dragged in a suitcase and four bags heaping with groceries. A plastic tub of fresh water – one which he threw to me and another he cracked open for himself. It’s only until you get yourself together kid, he said. Nobody should be alone if they don’t want to be. Plus, you need somebody to teach you how to get a job. Unless you’ve read a book on that, already?

            Tom waited for my reply, some sign of approval or intense horror, but I couldn’t muster either. My head ached and the food sat heavy and not yet digested in my stomach. All I could manage to say was: I hit my head. He said, What? but honestly the oats had turned into a black hole, one which sucked in my voice. Certainly, the hole would spin, gaining power, until it drained my very brain. I couldn’t think and my ears began to ring. At least this was better – better than dying alone. That’s when he poured the water over my head.

            Wake up, child! He said. We’ve got to get you together, understand? He was a business man after all. Somewhere behind all the drugs and loneliness, Tom was a fierce salesman. He’d make an excellent employee, if he cared about that sort of thing. A Dad too, for that matter.

            Tom and I made a new deal. Together, we both sold weed and other mild substances to the college kids and single moms and veterans and misfits that littered the suburbs beyond the valley, and the city North West of that, and the woods where we lived in what was once my Grandfather’s house, and was once a bohemian paradise, and is now a wild alternative I never expected.