“You’re exaggerating,” Alphonse had said. Then he paused and said, “But only a little.”
“HEY, Y’ALL!”
That’s Scott, whoever calls us in is who’s running rehearsal, Scott or Snake usually and lately, since the Vietnam piece, My Lai. I’ve never run rehearsal or laid down any choreography for the group; I know I could—run a rehearsal, that is, shit, I could choreograph too. What are you doing when you’re improvising but making up steps as you move? Choreography is just doing it without the total spontaneous thing. You
think
what you’re laying down when you’re choreographing. With improv you don’t think, you do.
Something’s up today. We don’t usually meet this early on Sunday. Scott is a born-again Christian. He’s usually in church the whole morning on Sunday. That’s all, being a Christian, according to Snake, in direct response to him not wanting anything to do with his family (except the moola) since his sister’s book.
I didn’t think I was going to be gut-level gung ho with the Vietnam shit. I just couldn’t cross that street until I read
Bloods.
Damn, when I read that—I felt, shit, a few years back in the day and some of those stories could have maybe been my dad’s, or my dad’s dad. The “loosie” story stuck like Krazy Glue: The guy’s a burnt-out homeless, but to hear him tell it he was a Vietcong killer, cutting off ears, annihilating gooks in the jungle right and left. So homeless is going into the corner store to get a loosie for a quarter or whatever they cost, because he can’t afford a whole pack of cigarettes. So he goes to ask the guy behind the counter for a loosie and WHAM! They have this instant recognition. The guy’s VC from ’Nam, some guy he’d escaped from or some shit. He’s Vietcong, North Vietnamese, over here, the nigguh’s here
with a store
after having fought
against
us. And this stupid nigger is here with his broke-up brain and shattered-shit life, homeless after fighting
for
us. I mean, he has to feel like a sucker. I snicker, shaking my head—
“What’s so funny?” Scott asks.
“Nothing,” I tell him. Why is he so touchy? Sometimes he’s cool,
most
of the time he’s cool. But then he can get into his king-dick alpha-male routine. I ain’t trying to be boss. I just want to do my thing, I don’t care who’s king of the mountain, as long as I get to dance. Shit, when I get good enough to be boss, whatever that is, I’ll just leave. Why does leaving even cross my mind? I just got here. Shit is working for me.
“So what we’re really doing this morning is listening to your performance piece,” Scott announces, turning to My Lai. “Is that right, My Lai?”
“Yeah, raw material for my solo. And it
is
fuckin’
raw
. So yeah, for now. I just need you guys to listen.” My Lai.
“OK, let’s hear it.” Snake.
“Well, I’m still not clear exactly what it is we’re going to hear.” Amy.
“Well, you could just listen.” Snake.
“I want to know
how
to listen. I mean, is this her story, or is it some compilation of Asian women’s stories that she’s woven together as an everywoman thing—”
“Stop!” Snake shouts. “Let’s make some coffee. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”
“Fool!” My Lai. But the laugh that escapes her is relieved.
I run to the kitchen with Snake to make sure I put the espresso machine back in there. Yeah, it’s there.
“Should we do coffee or espresso?” I ask him.
“Let’s just knock out five espressos.”
“My Lai likes coffee,” I say.
“So why’d ya ask, idiot!”
“Ain’t no idiot, number one—” Lately I’m constantly having to put this faggot in check.
“Well, let’s just say you don’t know enough to know this Bacardi and Happy I got will go better in the espresso—”
“Man, during rehearsal?”
“We ain’t gonna be doing no dancing today.”
“Well, whaddaya got? Tabs, powder?”
He pulls out a silver flask. And a plastic bag with some white tablets.
“So put it on the tray—”
“I like to spike—”
“So what are you, one of these drug-in-the-drink dudes?”
“I’m not above that—”
“You mean below, motherfucker!”
“Only way I ever got to bang a bitch!” He laughs. I can’t help but laugh too.
“I was checking out your turns, Abdul, while you were warming up in the corner, man—whew! Way out, dude. Shit, man, you look good! Skinny but good. What you been doing?”
“Working, man. I stretch and do an hour barre before I even leave that room.” I nod toward my room, mine
for now,
I note. “It’s no thing, I just do it, man. It keeps me from going postal, you know what I mean?”
“No, what do you mean?”
“You know, if I just sit and think how far behind everybody I am, choreography- and technique-wise. My Lai’s technique alone—”
“Look, they been dancing—no, not just dancing,
training
—since they were kids, man.”
“I know, man, I don’t want all the years and shit I put into my body to just go down the motherfucking drain. If you don’t practice, all you’re doing is maintaining, sometimes not even that. You know what I mean?”
“All too well, but still—”
“I want to rise,” I say, breaking in on him.
“Well, that’s why the man has you here.”
“Who, Scott?”
“Yeah, Scott, who do ya think?”
“He never asks me to choreograph or run rehearsal, you know what I mean?”
“Shit, that’s his thing, Abdul. When I do it, it’s just to carry out his, you know, fucking dictates. He doesn’t need you for that, man. He needs you for what you say you want to do,
to dance.
Milk it, man. Don’t be stupid and get into a competitive thing with him. You need to learn to read people better. You know what I see, man?”
“What?”
“You know, it’s good to work hard and all that, but watch yourself. To me it looks like you’re burning the candle at both ends, as they say, like you are
wired,
and if you ain’t taking nothin’, that’s even worse. You’re gonna burn out for sure, man—”
“HEY, DUDES! Like, some coffee already!”
When we bring the tray of steaming espressos in with Snake’s silver flask of rum and plastic bag of white tablets in the center of the five cups, everyone cheers.
Amy surprises me by breaking a tab in half and sharing it with Scott. Snake offers My Lai a tab. “No thanks.” Then she changes her mind and pops a tab. I shake my head no. If I do, I won’t sleep at all. I’m the only one here who has to get up in the morning.
My Lai’s sitting in lotus position on the floor with her notebook in front of her. She takes a deep breath opens her notebook.
“I was about five days old when I was found in a shopping bag on the doorstep of St Dymphna’s New York Foundling Home on the morning of Christmas Eve. By that night I was a fuckin’ celebrity! ‘Baby Christmas,’ the news stations were calling me. They Hollywooded the story by saying I was wrapped like a Christmas present! Anybody who had a radio, TV, or read a newspaper knew about me. Motherfuckers were calling up news stations wanting to adopt me. As far as I can figure out, those are the
facts
printed in the
New York Daily News,
December 24, 19__, preserved on microfiche at the New York Public Library. But the truth comes in details clouded in curses when they’re arguing, and they’re always arguing, my mother and father. It seems strange to be calling them that. Does my being adopted make me theirs or just ‘adopted’? It should have—like with a cake, put in the ingredients, mix it up, stick it in the oven, and voilà! Done. But inside, it was raw, runny shit. I never became theirs.
“‘Cold,’ she had said once. ‘You are one cold little girl.’
“Her sister had told her, ‘It could have turned out that way if she’d come out of you.’
“‘Whaddaya mean?’
“‘My Jeremy’s like that, a mean little snit. I feel sorry for his wife if his dumb ass ever gets one.’
“But my aunt wasn’t there that day when they were arguing (not that they care who’s there when they’re arguing). So the back story here is my grandfather has the real moneybags. (He can’t stand the sight of me.) My father’s mother, Grandma Dora, is Catholic; his father is Jewish. My father is nothing religion-wise (or any other wise except his money), but I guess he used to be Catholic, because he used to throw big bucks at St Dymphna’s. So they’re arguing in front of me as usual like I don’t exist, which is how I feel most times, when he guffaws and tells me over his shoulder between shouting at her ‘You went to the highest bidder, you little nigger!’
“‘Are you crazy? That’s nonsense. And stop calling her names.’
“‘I didn’t say nothing to her.’
“‘I’m listening to you. You think I’m fuckin’ deaf?’
“‘Well, it’s not ‘nonsense,’ it’s true.’
“‘It’s not true. Stop telling that
lie.
Your fuckin’ money, your fuckin’ money. You fuckin’ megalomaniac! We went through a
process.
They interviewed us, they came to our house, remember? I talked to psychologists, social workers, nuns—
then
we were allowed to adopt Noël. We did not buy her. You can’t buy children in New York, this is not Thailand or some shit. You’re sick, sick,
sick
—’
“‘Shut up, bitch! We bought her. I bought an apartment overnight around the corner so we’d have a New York State address. We were living in Jersey, remember? I donated a hundred K to that fuckin’ goy orphanage so you could have dibs on a newborn white baby girl, and you go sit up and see a goddamn newscast and got to have her—’
“‘Shut up, she’s not deaf. She’s your
daughter
.’
“‘I don’t give a fuck what she is, don’t call me a fuckin’ liar!’
“‘You’re high. You’re getting to be a regular old drug addict, aren’t you?’
“‘Don’t try to change the subject, bitch. You don’t think me giving them dried-up old bitches a hundred grand had anything to do with you getting little Miss Tokyo?’
“‘You’re evil, evil,
evil
! There’s no end to your evil. How do you talk like that in front of your own child?’
“‘She’s not my child, and for that matter you’re not my fuckin’ wife. The marriage was a joke. My brother ain’t no fuckin’ rabbi. He can’t marry nobody. We were pulling your leg, you knew that. Don’t—’
“‘You said we would go to City Hall afterward.’
“‘
Did we?
She’s not my child, and you’re not my wife. Shit, I could pull one off here like that big-name movie director and run away and marry her. Shit, if I marry anybody, that’s what it’ll be, young pussy—’
“My mother opened her mouth, but no words came out, only a kind of croak.
“‘Shit, you think I’m too low-class to have an Asian wife?’
“‘I hate you,’ she hissed as she dropped down on the floor as if her legs had buckled under the weight of his cruelty.
“‘Stop the drama! It takes two to tango.’
“‘What the hell does that mean?’ she said from the floor.
“‘What the hell does that mean?’ he mimicked her. ‘You’re glad to get what you want when you want it, but you get mad when I remind you how you got it. Yeah, yenta,
how.
My money, megalomaniac drug addict—whatever you want to call me, bitch,
my money.
Everything we got, we got because I bought it, bitch.’
“‘I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone!’
“‘Anytime you feel enough hate to leave, you can leave, you stupid whore.’ ”
But she didn’t leave.
“‘Where would I have gone?’ she’d said. ‘We need him.’
“‘No we don’t.’
“‘Yes we do. He’s just drunk right now. Everything’ll be alright in the morning.’ ”
But it wasn’t. She could have left him, but you just don’t leave money like that, she said.
“Look, he’s all talk. If he ever really hit me or hurt you . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I wouldn’t stand for abuse.”
But he was a millionaire, the son of a billionaire, and she wasn’t his wife. She had been his secretary. His “brother” who had “married” them went to jail later that same day for possession with intent to sell.
“Listen, I’m going to read you something from Ann Landers.”
“Who’s Ann Landers?”
“A nice lady in the newspapers who gives people good advice.”
“How do you know it’s good?”
“I know it’s good.”
“How do you get it?” I asked.
“Get what?”
“The advice,” I said.
“You write a letter and put it in the mail, and she writes you back and tells you what to do. Some of the letters she puts in the
Daily News,
like this one I was talking about. Listen to this guy; he’s writing Ann a letter to give her some information she can give to the rest of the readers.”
A man gave his wife a million dollars.
(“Like your father has, OK.”)
He told her to go out and spend a thousand dollars a day. She did. Three years later she returned to tell him the money was all gone. She wanted more.
He then gave her one billion dollars.
(“Now, that’s how much money Grandpa has!”)
He told her to go out and spend a thousand dollars a day. She didn’t come back for three thousand years.
“Three
thousand
? That’s longer than a dinosaur. Why would the lady want to shop for that long?”
“She wouldn’t, honey. The man is trying to illustrate something,
I’m
trying to illustrate something. I’m trying to show you how much money Grandpa has.”
But he’s not my grandpa. He said, “Get
it
out of here now.” A question occurs to me.
“How long could we go shopping with your money?”
“Huh?”
“If we were spending a thousand dollars a day of your money, how long could we go shopping?”
“My money? Honey, we’d never go shopping. Mommy doesn’t have any money.”