When Mama Jane said the last thing she would ever say to me about us possibly getting together, I wasn’t relieved or grateful—I was shocked. And it took every ounce of my reserve not to say, “You think I’m cute?”
I went quiet, trying to figure out what kind of ugly Mama Jane had encountered in her life to make her say a thing like that.
The next day, Mama Jane got us a hotel room with two twin beds.
And the day after that, we arrived in Los Angeles.
. . .
I didn’t love Los Angeles the first time I saw it. Driving in through downtown, the streets were dirty and there were homeless people. Actual homeless people.
I had seen such people in movies and read about them a time or two in books, but I had never actually clapped eyes on anything like Skid Row in Los Angeles.
As we lumbered down the streets toward the factory for the drop-off, Mama Jane kept on having to stop when a woman or a man would wander into the road.
Sometimes they were older people with fat bellies and sores. And sometimes they were younger people with dirty hair and sores and faces that looked like they used to be appealing before all the dirt.
“It’s the drugs,” Mama Jane told me as we drove down the street. “Some of them is crazy, but when you see them young like that, usually it mean some drug done got ahold of them. Meth maybe, but usually crack. The crack done hit real bad out here.”
We had had crack in Glass back then, but not like this. Back in Glass, we were all spread apart, with neighbors you didn’t have to see unless you sought them out. But the streets of downtown Los Angeles were close, with trash and people piled up on most corners and a constant stench that made me roll up my window and think maybe this was hell. Maybe the poets were right about hell on earth, and when you lived a bad life, you died and came back as one of these people wandering out in front of trucks that never hit you.
I thought about Cora then, wondered where she had been during the years between leaving me with my grandmama and coming back to do a less than half-assed job of raising me. Had she gone to a big city like this? Was that where she had learned to drink and make friends? Was that what I was going to have to learn in order to survive out here?
I must’ve shivered because Mama Jane said, “Don’t worry. We ain’t going to be down here long. I’m dropping this load off, then we’ll head out to Nicky’s.”
NINE
I had seen pictures of seedy Hollywood on television and in the movies, but I never saw it close up until I climbed out of Mama Jane’s truck and looked up at Nicky’s. It was several blocks down from the old Cinerama Dome on Vine in a gray, two-story building that looked like it had seen better days. Maybe back in the fifties, it had been a nice place, but now the only thing new about it was a large neon sign that read “Nicky’s.”
Mama Jane came around the truck and took in the place with me. “He’s been fixing it up. It’s gonna be real nice when he finishes. Plus, he says that he talked to some people that were setting up a redevelopment fund for the area. So this part of town might be nice . . . someday. The point is, he’s only twenty-five, and he’s already done all this. We’re real proud of him, no matter what happens with it.”
Mama Jane did not sound optimistic about the chances of this club working out for her nephew, and I could see why. There was graffiti on every storefront as far as the eye could see. There were also dangerous-looking men in flannel shirts, and hookers, who upon second look turned out to also be men, on nearby corners. But I figured beggars can’t be choosers, and desperate people like me shouldn’t have any truck with pickiness, so I followed Mama Jane into the building.
I was surprised to see that it was actually very nice inside. There were hardwood floors, elegant black leather bar stools, and round mahogany tables that seemed suited for an upscale crowd.