One Good Hustle

ELEVEN




I’M ON THE couch with Jill. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon and we’re still not dressed because it’s pouring today. Pissing sideways.

I’m kind of happy, though.

Lou came home from work a minute ago. He stood here in the living room, taking up the entire door frame, and said, “Sammie, I understand you had to drive the girls home from a party the other night. Some drinking involved.” He scowled at Jill.

“Daddy! It was Crystal, not me!” Jill sounds like a six-year-old in a tutu when she sugar-talks her dad.

Lou looked back at me. “I just want to say that I appreciate you trying to do the responsible thing, Sammie. But I don’t want you driving without a licence. So if you want to make an appointment to take your road test this week, I’d be happy to give you a lift.” Then he lowered his head in that funny, bashful way he has and went upstairs.

I feel as if I’ve got sparklers in my gut right now. Nobody else except maybe those born-again kids talks like Lou, makes out like I’m a good girl, a dignified kind of person.

“Sammie, you’re blushing.” Ruby smirks. She’s sitting kitty-corner to us on the other couch, sewing the hem on a pair of Lou’s pants.

Whenever a person tells me I’m blushing, it just gives me an even bigger lobster-face. Lou’s so nice it’s embarrassing.

Jill is in her fuzzy purple bathrobe. I’m in my pyjamas and a beat-up University of British Columbia sweatshirt that once belonged to Jill’s ex-boyfriend, Roman. Roman used to play basketball for UBC but he was flunking so they kicked him out. He was way older than Jill. Twenty-two. I asked Jill once why Ruby let her go with a guy that old and she said, “I do what I want no matter what she says. And she’d rather know the truth than have me lie.”

Staring at the TV screen, Jill says, “Man, is Billy Dee Williams not the finest looking man you ever saw?”

We’re watching some old movie called Mahogany.

He looks a bit slick if you ask me. Like a hustler who doesn’t know enough to downplay it. “What else has he been in?”

“You never saw Lady Sings the Blues?” Jill says, as if I must’ve been raised by wolves.

She’s got the soundtrack from Lady Sings the Blues in her bedroom. The Mahogany one too. Diana Ross singing her guts out. Jill must have a dozen Diana Ross albums.

“If I married him,” Jill says, mooning at the TV, “I wouldn’t even have to change my last name. Jill Williams, meet Billy Dee Williams. Why, hello, Jill. You are one hot mama and I think we would have beautiful babies together.”

“Better watch it,” I tell her. “Maybe he’s not just any brother. Maybe he’s your brother.”

Ruby titters. “I think I’d remember that,” she says.

Hardly any black people live in Burnaby. Or Vancouver either. There are only two black kids in our whole school, which is probably why Jill’s so fascinated—she thinks it’s exotic.

I wonder what Jill’s dad thinks. My dad is pretty weird about black people. His friends are too. Marlene told me about this thing that happened before I was born. She said that she and Sam were over for drinks at another couple’s place: Peggy and Mike. Peggy—she’s now with my dad—was going out with a loan shark called Mike McGee back then. They were sitting around drinking wine and talking about how the white neighbour lady had gotten married to a black man.

Peggy didn’t think it was such a big deal.

Her boyfriend, Mike, said, “That sounds okay to you? Would you sleep with one of ’em?”

Peggy said that it depended.

“Would you sleep with a nigger or not? Answer the question.”

Marlene flashed her a look, trying to signal Peggy to say no.

But Peggy answered, “Maybe if I fell in love with one of ’em.”

Mike slapped Peggy in the mouth. Then he grabbed her by the hair, dragged her off her chair and called her a whore and a slut.

Marlene and Sam got out of there. Peggy was on the floor and Mike was waving a gun around before they left the house.

I wish I hadn’t thought of that. Makes me think I was raised by wolves.

Sitting here in the living room now, I watch Ruby’s sewing needle poke in and out of Lou’s jeans. Lou would never talk the way Sam and his friends do.

Diana Ross is singing on TV, asking whether you know where you’re going to and if you know what life is showing you. I hate this song. It’s the most depressing song ever written. It doesn’t even have a proper title, just “Theme from Mahogany.”

Jill is warbling along.

This song is an even bigger drag than “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” and that is an all-time wrist-slasher if I ever heard one.

The doorbell rings.

Jill looks at her mother. Her mother looks back.

“You get it,” they say in stereo. Then they both turn to me. “Sammie, you get it.”

The two of them are still giggling their asses off when I get up and open the door.

Standing on the porch is Drew, soaking wet.

My stomach drops as if I’m flying down the first hill on a roller coaster.

“What are you doing here,” I whisper, slip outside onto the welcome mat and pull the door behind me. Beyond the overhang, rain is pelting the steps.

“I looked up Jill in the phone book.”

I can just make out that stupid shitty Mahogany song still plinking away in the living room. When you look behind you, Diana says, there’s no open door. What are you hoping for?

“I was going to just phone you but—” Drew pauses. “That thing in the supermarket, I just—” He sputters, “P-p-p,” as if he can’t make words for a second or two. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you do that?”

“I’m sorry. I’m—” I feel the goose egg in my throat again. It’s ready to burst. Inside the house: Do you know where you’re going to? Over and over. I can’t talk.

“I don’t get you. What did I do?”

“It’s not about you. I’ve got other stuff going on.” I look down at the weather-beaten porch between my bare feet. “I’m not even dressed.”

He looks away, shaking his head like he can’t believe it. For a second I think he’s going to walk down the stairs, back into the rain, and be done with me.

Instead he says, “I came here because you’re not home. I mean—” He sighs as if he’s collecting himself. “I thought I should find you because, um, because I think something’s wrong with your mom. She called my place yesterday at, like, five in the morning. My mother answered and told her I was still sleeping. So then she called again at seven. My mom was so mad.” He laughs nervously because Drew and his mom don’t get along.

Then there’s a long pause until he says, “She was pretty revved up. She had this whole idea—your mom—about making you famous. I’m supposed to take a picture of you with tons of pink roses in a pink Cadillac. She said she drew me an illustration. Everything has to be pink for it to work. Then we’re supposed to send the picture to Phil Donahue, the talk-show guy. Everyone in the plan is Scottish, she said, so it would work because of the pattern. Because you’re Scottish, and I’m Scottish, and she’s Scottish and Phil Donahue’s Scottish …”

I move past him to edge of the porch. A drop of cool rain slants in and snaps my face. I wrap my arms around my ribs. I shouldn’t even have a friend like Drew. Drew is going to heaven. Me and Marlene are not.

He leans against the railing. “She kept asking if I could see the pattern. It was like she’d decoded the pattern and she could see it and nobody else could. Um. I said that sounded neat or interesting or whatever. Maybe we could talk about it later. So, I called her last night to see how she was doing and she had a whole other plan about making a million dollars. It had to do with pills and doctors and this secret code on pill bottles. She said it would work because of everybody being Chinese. She’s Chinese and so is her doctor.”

I turn around. “She who? My mother is Chinese?”

“Yeah. And some guy named Freddy.”

I look out at the rain hitting the parked cars and the sidewalk and the road.

“Sammie?”

“Yup.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yup.”

“Do you want to hang out? Go for coffee? Or we could take the bus downtown … go to Stanley Park maybe. Lost Lagoon is kind of cool when it’s raining.”

Across the road, there is a car parked with a small cargo trailer hitched to the back. I wish I could climb inside the trailer part. I want to be where it’s small and dark and closed. Where no one can see me or hear me.

“Sammie?”

“I can’t.”

“Okay. Well, uh, well, I have something for you. It’s just this, um, poem.” He pulls a folded envelope out of his jacket pocket. He goes to hand it to me. The edges are wet. “Or I could just read it to you now. Should I?” He goes quiet again. “Sammie?”

I feel my chest caving when he says my name.

I wish I were mean and strong. I wish I could punch Marlene for this and Drew too, bust everything apart. But I just stand here on the porch, sucking inside-out instead.

“I love you,” Drew says.

Like getting my head held under water. Like a pillow pressed over my face.

I shake my head no, walk back into the house, and close the door behind me, leaving him there on the stoop holding his folded poem.