This is my first time out of the house since Trevor got beat up. I go out the back gate and walk around the block onto High Street, bypassing the cameras. High Street looks the same and when the only constant feels like change, it’s both comforting and chilling to hear the same whistles from the same old creeps on the same corner as I have since I was twelve. The 80 bus pulls up to the corner and I hop on, put in all the change from my pocket to pay for the bus fare, and sit next to this old woman who’s mumbling something about buying herself a sandwich.
Daddy used to take Marcus and me on random buses just to kill time until Mama got home from work on the weekends. We’d hop on and he’d start talking with the driver, trying to get them to not make him pay for Marcus and me. We were cute enough and Daddy was charming enough that they’d normally say yes and Daddy would sit me on his lap and whisper, “That’s how you get what you want, baby. Anybody who says words don’t mean nothing is lying.” Then he’d start shaking his legs so it would compound the turmoil of the bus and I’d go wobbling in all directions, laughing so hard that Marcus would catch it like a cold.
The best and worst part about the bus is the people. The woman beside me is listing all the things she wants on her sandwich. I’m gonna be on this one for a while, so I settle in and look past the woman and out the window. We pass a bunch of taquerías, none of which could compete with La Casa, then we enter the strip of churches, liquor stores, funeral homes, a couple apartment buildings and houses sprinkled in. International Boulevard is a weave through every kind of East Oakland living. We’re going deeper into East and I’m hoping my memory serves me well enough that I know when to get off.
Spent my whole life waiting to fall into something that would make my body wanna turn into its own instrument just so I could be a part of every song that jump-started a pop and lock, make everybody dance. Like when Daddy joined the Party and hid his biggest joy under his beret, tilted just right. Like when Mama stumbled into Daddy’s smile and knew all she had to do was lock it into her fist. Like Marcus and his microphone. Sometimes, when I paint, I think I feel that, but the painting is never enough, never erases all the other moments I can’t seem to find no peace.
The bus window reveals so many people living inside their music. A group of boys biking in circles, stereo balanced on one of their shoulders, heads nodding. At a red light close to the library, two kids—maybe twelve or thirteen—walk together. The boy has his arm around the girl’s shoulder and her hips are too wide for them to be pressed that close together and still move comfortably. She leans into him and he kisses her forehead, and it looks halfway like a choke hold too, but they’re so young and so happy, street-dazed, bag full of books on her arm.
I think I must have missed that moment when you stumble into the tug-of-war with your happy. A couple weeks before Demond’s party, I ran into Camila again before dark and she bought me dinner at the taco truck off High Street, where we sat on the curb eating together. I asked her how she was always so content with this life, why she even started walking these streets in the first place.
Camila’s face twisted into a tense stitch before flushing in calm.
“Don’t help me to fight a life I’m stuck in.” In that moment, I saw just a glimpse of the truth I didn’t want to see. Camila is not a glowing woman walking free, walking godly. She is a woman who survives, even if that survival means tricking herself into believing this world is something it is not, that her life is all glory.
I don’t know why, but that night by the taco truck, Camila kept on talking, told me about parts of her life I’m not sure she’s talked about since she lived them. So much of her started to make sense. All she ever wanted was to live in her body however she damn pleased, twist her hips, and strut around in neon.
Camila started out answering ads on Craigslist when the site was still new, the internet sparse.
“My specialty was answering to ‘Man Looking to Dominate Young Tranny.’ All them fuckers was nasty, but I was young and I was just happy someone wanted to fuck me and pay for my rent at the same time. Ended up getting all the shit I wanted from that money, got my face done, paid for hormones. Eventually got hired as an escort at a real agency, but they took a good cut of my money and I wasn’t even getting no good gigs. That’s when Demond found me.
“I couldn’t have dreamed of any of the shit I got now when I was your age.” Camila tapped her green acrylics on the curb. “It ain’t perfect, but it’s better than what I used to have.”
There was something about the way she talked about it that night that was different. It was like she was jealous of me, like she wished she could reverse time. She told me about how she used to get beaten up a lot more, had men bring knives to their meetups and start trying to mutilate her.
“Demond makes sure I don’t get hurt as long as I keep bringing in new girls. I only got johns who won’t fuck me up now and Demond makes sure most people don’t even know about me.”
After that, Camila finished her taco and stood up, brushing my cheek with her finger, and returning to the next car ready to pick her up.
Camila found a way to survive and Marcus found something to live for even if it failed and, hell, Trevor even found his own thing, always galloping toward the nearest hoop. And I am still waiting to be hit by some universe-halting love that will turn me inside out and remove all the rotting parts of me. Or at least something to make life bearable that isn’t another person who will leave.
The bus is nearing Eastmont and I pull the wire to let me off at the next stop. The streets are flat here, but the potholes only get deeper. The sandwich woman still sits beside me, murmuring, and I wonder if the sandwich is real because there ain’t no more restaurants the way this bus is going and she doesn’t look like she’s getting off anytime soon, head bent down nearly touching her lap.
I stand and think about waving goodbye to her, but I don’t think she ever registered that we were sitting beside each other in the first place, so I exit without glancing back, without ever knowing whether or not she got that sandwich.
Just because I know where I’m going doesn’t mean I wanna be heading in its direction, her direction. In my pre-streets lifetime, I would have said I’d never step foot in no trap house like this one. Today, I don’t even knock on the front door, just go around to the side door and open it like it might as well be my second home. Scariest thing about this kind of place is how quiet it is. There’s thumping from the bass of some music, but it sounds distant, muffled. Everything is dark and some whispers float through the room, some groans and teeth chattering.
Number one rule about entering somewhere you not supposed to enter is don’t never question none of it. Don’t ask nothing and don’t act like you don’t know what you doing because that’ll land you right where you don’t wanna be. It’s all wood, floorboards splintering. When Mama gave me the address, I knew exactly where she was talking about, the place where one of her friends lived, from back when Mama wasn’t sure what side of grieving to be on. I climb the stairs and knock on the door of the apartment with a large C on it.
Mama opens it.
I haven’t thought about what it would be like to have Mama back here, back in the same city it all happened in, not in years. Once I turned sixteen, I was pretty sure I’d never see Mama again, had my own funeral day just for her.
Here she is, though, slipping her hands under the sleeves of her old Purple Rain sweatshirt. “Didn’t think you’d come.”
I nod. If Mama told me she was a shape-shifter, I’d believe her. Woman standing in front of me don’t look nothing like the one from a few months ago, swallowed the one from a few years ago, chewed up the one from last decade.
“Why you here?” If I didn’t know better, I would think Mama didn’t want to see me, her cheeks swishing side to side like her mouth is full.