Straight up and No Sky There Also by Stephanie Dickinson
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STRAIGHT UP AND NO SKY THERE ALSO BY STEPHANIE DICKINSON Road of Five Churches Corn Goddess Half Girl STRAIGHT UP AND NO SKY THERE STEPHANIE DICKINSON RAIN MOUNTAIN PRESS NEW YORK CITY 2010 $12 Copyright 2010 Stephanie Dickinson STRAIGHT UP AND NO SKY THERE by Stephanie Dickinson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form what- soever without written permission of the author, except in the case of reviews or other critical articles. Designed by David G. Barnett/Fat Cat Graphic Design www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com Printing by Publishers Graphics, Carol Stream, IL ISBN: 0-9802211-8-8 Cover art La Mona Bleu by Michael Weston Rain Mountain Press www.rainmountainpress.com [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS FIRST LOVE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY 9 STRAIGHT UP AND NO SKY THERE 31 THE SNOW LEOPARD STALKS THE RIVER 47 BIG AIMEE’S PINK ALLIGATOR BOOTS 67 LUCKY 7 & DALLOWAY 85 SWEETNESS OF IRAQ 101 VALLEJO TO ISABELLA 115 VILLAGE OF BUTTERFLIES 131 GOATSUCKERS 141 KLARA’S BOY 157 THE GIRL WHO WATCHED 175 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to the editors of the following magazines where the stories in this manuscript appeared or will be appearing: “First Love West Side Highway,” Storyglossia “Straight Up and No Sky There,” Water-Stone Review “The Snow Leopard Stalks the River,” Gargoyle “Big Aimee’s Pink Alligator Boots,” Portland Review “Lucky 7 & Dalloway,” Salamander, NEW STORIES OF THE SOUTH, BEST OF 2008 “Sweetness of Iraq,” Natural Bridge “Vallejo to Isabella,” Skidrow Penthouse “Village of Butterflies,” Green Mountains Review “Goatsuckers,” Ballyhoo Stories “Klara’s Boy,” Ruminate “The Girl Who Watched,” Stone Canoe For Janet and Marge FIRST LOVE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY TAXI he taxi raced, skimming over the West Side Highway, all the side- Twalks Danielle trudged earlier, all the Walks and Don’t Walks, now flew away in a blur of gray. Millions of lit windows had turned themselves off, letting the warehouses of grimy brick and scarecrow water towers do the peering out. Her feet burned. Earlier she’d pitched forward onto the cobblestones and the heel of her silver shoe caught in a crack. She didn’t know why birds kept quiet at night or maybe they sang, but she couldn’t find them with her ears. She loved birds. Then she wondered where the stars were, because they’d disappeared. They hated the city. Asleep, did stars and birds close their eyes? Curl their toes around a branch? Stars burn. Birds sing through rain and thunder and at night they sleep. Who keeps the lookout? They must travel together. They don’t break off from the rest. The cabbie picked them up as a couple; he wouldn’t have stopped for the brawny man in sweat pants if it hadn’t been for Danielle. The petite black girl in white mini skirt who must be his girlfriend made it all right. “Cold enough back there?” he asked through a slit in the Plexiglas. And then the taxi entered the Lincoln Tunnel where the river was on top of them and all the currents and silky filth forced back by tiles like the ones in the girl’s locker room of Danielle’s private high school. Gray and pink tiles that she liked to rub her toes against after a shower with a towel around her. The good feeling of a good run and those tiles neat and pressed against each other. “See, I told you everything was going to be okay,” Demetrius said, the guy who used to be a bouncer at Crobar then at Clubland, keeping to his 11 FIRST LOVE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY side of the taxi’s back seat. His face shone with dimples and his warm eyes seemed to drink in all the night’s trouble. But it was his soft voice that convinced her to get into the taxi with him. His niceness. She’d been lucky, all that fear and then it had worked out. “Danielle, that’s a pretty name,” he said. “Like a greyhound purebred racer.” “How did you know I’m a runner?” she asked. He grinned. “I was meant to rescue you.” Maybe someone should have rescued Demetrius when he and his mother lived in motels along Hwy. 42 right outside Zebulon, North Carolina. He flashed on his mother’s boyfriend all those long years ago, his square head buried in the pillowcase’s smiling violets, his jeans rum- pled on the rug, Demetrius fishing in the pocket for coins. His mother on her belly, an arm thrown out, little pieces of lint caught in her hair, a balled-up silver gum wrapper. Demetrius hid the coins under a piece of rug where the tacks came up, and the next day he snuck to the conven- ience store, pointing to the red hots and bubble gum. “A nickel a piece,” the cashier said. He opened his palm, looked at the quarters, no nickels. He left the store, empty-handed. He was one dumb kid. Leaving New York City just as the sun began to seep into the sky, Demetrius watched light break over the interstate. He wondered if the girl’s eyes ached from the dump of mascara on her lashes? She had one of those upturned noses like some of the light-skins did. A plaza of tollbooths appeared. They were going to the hotel in Weehawken where he lived with his girlfriend Tabitha. It was where his car would be parked if he’d had one. They called Demetrius’ girlfriend with Danielle’s cell phone. “TeeTee, I’m bringing a lost girl with me. We’re going to drive her home.” He’d had to hang up when Tabitha started crying that they didn’t have no car and what was going on. Demetrius wasn’t thinking more than two to three steps ahead. “You’re a greyhound purebred,” he repeated, after finishing the call. He’d been a runner too, although none of his sprints were for extracurric- ular activity. Danielle liked being compared to a greyhound, the second fastest animal on the planet. Her right foot throbbed from her earlier fall on the cobblestones, the strap of her silver shoe had snapped. Her right foot was unlucky: it had been born as a club foot, which they’d operated on almost immediately. You wouldn’t know it. Her dad still talked about how spunky Danielle was, a baby with a cast on her foot almost as big as she. Instead of crying for her bottle, she’d bang her crib with the cast. Her feet turned 12 STEPHANIE DICKINSON out pretty, but she took extra care when she drank because then she went up on her tiptoes and took tiny steps. Track was supposed to have cured her of that. She ran the half-mile in high school; her short legs going as fast as they could up on her toes while the ostrich girls with their endless legs tried to get by her with flying strides. Danielle ran harder, from her gut, three strides to their one. “Come on, tiptoes,” the coach shouted, stuffing a hotdog into his mouth, another hot dog in his windbreaker pocket. “They’re passing you. Run!” But they weren’t. Danielle threw herself over the finish line. Coach clicked his stopwatch, scratched his stomach that hung over the elastic of his sweats. Blue green pickle relish like broken glass in the cracks of his teeth, “Not bad, tiptoes.” “Which side?” the cab driver asked. “Right or left.” He’d taken the exit that curly Q’d off the interstate to Weehawken and hit his turn blinker when Demetrius told him to take a right. The neon’s fading orange announced PARK AVENUE HOTEL. Demetrius wondered if she might get skittish once she saw the motel. He paid the driver, adding a two dollar tip. They got out of the taxi and the sticky reek of urine struck her nos- trils; there were glistening puddles in the parking lot, but Demetrius smiled and she could see dimples and wasn’t it time she saw how other people lived who didn’t have dads who worked for the Securities & Exchange Commission. She thought she heard a bird underneath the splash of traffic. A really tiny one. Like those hummingbirds at the bird garden in Jamaica where her dad took her after the divorce, two inches across and taken for bees. Maybe it was one of those birds beating its wings so fast until it sounded like song. All by itself, a red bird twitching like a shred of heart. “I’m not going to be living at this motel much longer,” Demetrius said, trying not to but seeing the hotel through the girl’s eyes anyway. “My lady and I are waiting to hear on a mortgage application. We’ve been looking at houses in your neck of the wood.” Danielle nodded. In her neck of the woods all the houses were basically empty during the daylight hours of the week. Her father was an attorney and worked as a fraud examiner, busy these days after the Enron collapse, all those imaginary offshore subsidiaries and holding companies that didn’t exist. Employees whose lifetime savings were lost. And sometimes her father didn’t exist beyond a wave when he headed out for his hour and fif- teen minute commute to Trenton, and a “Luv ya bunches,” on the cell phone. Eighty hour work weeks. Before her parents separated and later divorced they loved to read mysteries, especially in series: a veterinarian 13 FIRST LOVE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY detective whose cats solved murders; an ancient one-eared Laotian detec- tive; and black, blind, female, transsexual, and born again Christian detec- tives.