Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

I look out of the car window again. I push the button and my window goes down. The night air hits my face. I close my eyes. So much like a dream, things are sometimes. Or a movie. If I was filming us driving I’d put a Nick Cave song in. I’d zoom in on ordinary objects in the car — Little Teena’s thick fingers on the steering wheel, the green glow of the speedometer and digital clock. Ave Maria’s Hot Tamales sticking out of the pocket of her jean jacket. And the pink plastic of my Dora purse — the safety pins for eyes — my black skinny jeans knees. It’s a claustrophobic little world the objects we own make for us.

But then I’d pan out to the view beyond the inside of the car, because you can do that with film — you can expand or contract space — you can trick time by going slow motion so that a few seconds of silence riding in a car lasts thirty minutes. You can speed up an entire day and night so it looks like a series of retinal flashes.

If I was filming this scene I’d go from the vastness of a night sky back to each of our faces there in the car — the way faces close up can look like their own universes. Ave Maria’s eyes are blue-green. Like the ocean. Little Teena has a cool little comma scar just under his right eye. It makes him look perpetually shy just under his badassery. My face is like a blank screen to me. I don’t know what there is about my face. Sometimes I’m scared it’s nothing.

My ass buzzes. I pull it out. It’s a text. Ida, please call me.

Mother.

“Let’s just go over the steps again,” Little Teena says.

“Yay!” Ave Maria goes.

I laugh but nothing sounds.

“Step one. Enter and distract intake person. Me at desk, Ave Maria hanging back with spooky sister.”

“Check!” Ave Maria sings.

“Step two. Engage script and hand over paperwork to move toward entrance.”

“Check!” An octave higher.

“Step three. Gain entrance, knock the intaker in the head from behind, get Obsidian.”

“Double check!” Ave Maria operatically sings, then says “can I hit the whoever it is with a Coke bottle? There’s an old-school Coke bottle back here — my mom loves this little Mexican market where they sell the old-school Coke bottles.” She hold it up. “Aren’t they cute? They’re little!”

I look over at Little Teena. Then back at Ave Maria. They continue their fake dialogue and their step rehearsals in their fake hair in Ave Maria’s mom’s Jag. Love isn’t what you were ever expecting. I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. No voice I mean. I smile. Little Teena interprets the silence correctly. Ave Maria pets my sketchy hair. I shove the last of the bacon in my mouth. It’s salty and rubbery yet crisp. What is bacon but fat and gristle and thin strips of ass meat?

Tastes like … family.

THE HALFWAY HOUSE LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE GROUP homes for tards. You’ve seen them, usually a two-story dingy dark gray number with security bars on the windows and doors and dead grass for yard contained by a crappy-ass chain link fence.

This one has what looks like a tall surveillance mechanism posted sentry-like near the entrance, but on closer inspection? It’s just a goddamn bug zapper.

“Google Earth it,” Ave Maria says from the back seat of the Jag.

Little Teena does. We’re parked about two blocks away. We put our three heads together in the back of the Jag and study the halfway house on the laptop. Pretty much one way in and out. Through the front. Though fire code probably means there’s a back door. It’s the law. It’s bad to let teens burn up. Hard to get social services funding if you, you know, bar-b-que them. So there must be a back exit.

I delete my mother and text on my cell to Little Teena: Can you hack in? Surveillance?

Christ. It looks like somebody’s big huge crackhouse.

Little Teena taps away at the laptop keyboard. Bless the fingers of Little Teena. He chuckles. “All they’ve got going on is like a series of nanny cams. And electronic locks that are … lemme see … ha. Morons. The electronic locks are all controlled at the front desk. They’ve got a password tumbler from like the Starsky and Hutch years.” He continues typing code.

“Why, it’s just a dumbass little meanness hotel!” Ave Maria pipes.

“Oh my fucking god,” Little Teena says. “Their password? Get this. Their password is … PASSWORD. I can unlock everything from here and disable their idiotic “safety system” without them even knowing it. Fucking figures. Department of Juvenile Justice? I salute you!” Little Teena salutes the air. “Dumb douches.”

Before we leave the car, I text them both: Hatha Breathing. They know because I taught them. We all close our eyes and hold hands. We breathe in for seven seconds. We hold it for seven seconds. We breathe out for seven seconds. We picture the ocean. We do it seven times. When we open our eyes, we are our characters.

As we walk toward the entrance I can hear bugs die zap deaths in the bug zapper. My role is of course to look troubled, dejected, like I might lash out.

Tough gig, huh.

Little Teena carries his air of authority, his clipboard, his fake wad of papers.

Ave Maria fiddles with her eyepatch. I slap her hand away from her face. “Sorry,” she goes, and then sports a distraught sister face so fast it takes my breath away. Right before we get to the entrance, Ave Maria grabs both of our arms and whisper sings, “You guys? You guys rock!” Then she kisses each of our hands and immediately returns to her role. She’s gonna make an awesome mom someday.

Upon entering it’s clear that “intake” is bogus. Some fat ass guy in a white man jumpsuit with — I shit you not — a box of half-eaten powdered donuts is at the front desk. The computer system? Dell. You heard me. What kind of a monkeyfuck operation is this? Dell computers? This is going to be like taking candy from geriatrics.

Little Teena assesses the situation about as quickly as I do, and launches smoothly into his spiel. “Got an emergency intake on a transport from Bellevue. They can’t take her up at Chelan so we had to come here. Full up at Chelan. Christ. Kids these days, huh?” Little Teena jams the exquisite pile of false paperwork and the clipboard at the fat ass.

So far everything is proceeding according to the steps.

“I didn’t get any call about an intake tonight. You just hold on here,” fatty blabs. He’s got powdered sugar on his upper lip. Man, you can’t make this shit up.

“Whose this?” Blubbo says pointing at Ave Maria.

Little Teena leans over the counter and points to the data on the fake forms that identifies Ave Maria as “next of kin” and “sister” and “legal guardian.” “Parents are dead,” Little Teena explains. “How these two managed to keep out of child custody services all these years is beyond me. But that one?” Little Teena points at Ave Maria. He leans over the desk and whispers to whale boy. “She’s a nurse. Candy striper.” And then he winks at intake balloon.

I stand there trying to look as silently dangerous as possible. I shoot for a kind of Bob De Niro in Taxi Driver look. I smile, then go cold faced, then smile again. I spit on the floor and then for no reason I whistle “When You Wish Upon a Star”.

Everyone turns and stares at me for a minute.

“See what I mean?” Little Teena says, “We’ ve got a live one. Do me a favor and take this little teen monster girl off my hands, will ya? Mind?” he says, moving in to snag a donut.

“I don’t know, I just don’t know … this is highly irregular,” puffy says, shuffling through the paperwork, but the paperwork is jake. Marlene is a pro. Nothing is missing. Everything has the proper signature or seal or whacked out institutional code lingo all over it. I shoot a glance up at a surveillance camera in the back corner behind the human blimp. I smile and pick my nose. I nonchalantly flip on my Zoom H4n.