William Vollmann - The Atlas

How was work last night? he said.

Oh, pretty slow. Eight hours of nothing. Then a fifty-dollar blow-job. That was a good one. Then three more hours of nothing, so I gave up and came back here.

She'd been renting herself out for thirty-five years now, years of nights like slow fat bubbles rising from the head of an electric eel, and one night after she had fixed so that she wouldn't need to vomit in his sink for hours ("getting well" was what the whores called putting the needle in), she sat beside him on his bed, and as a consolation prize for once more disturbing his sleep took him to the bottom of the murk where her story lived spiny and spidery like a snowcrab whose whitish spines glow faintly. The story began with her father's return, long after his second disappearance. The neighbors said that he'd come through the window one night in summer and that was how Mother got pregnant again, but neither she nor her litde sister had seen him that time if in fact he'd come at all.

When the baby was born, he came back again and told the family that they were all to move to California. — Don't bring anything because you're starting a new life, he said. She was almost thirteen then.

Mother didn't quite buy all that. She still told each of them to bring her best clothes and one casual suit. What that meant was two of her flour-sack dresses.

When they got to California, Daddy was very nice. He was paying a lot of attention to her, which made her feel special. He brought them to his home in Daly City. He had a mistress who lived there, too, young, gorgeous, a college girl. He explained that Patsy was part of the family now. Her mother saw that she would have to resign herself to Patsy. She had the children. She'd do anything to make it work.

Daddy made them strip naked. He said that he was the benevolent dictator. They had to hold his Bible in their hands before they were allowed to speak.

When it was time to go to sleep, somehow she ended up in bed between Daddy and Patsy, with her little sister on the outside and Mother with the baby in the next room.

She was ashamed to sleep naked like they did, so Daddy permitted her to put on her nightshirt, but no underwear. Then darkness winked. She lay still. Daddy's hand was on her leg, and it began to go higher. He told her that he was only preparing her for life. Still she did not understand his meaning. At that time she hardly knew how babies were made. She hadn't started menstruating yet, had only kissed one or two boys. Daddy explained to her that in many African societies it was the role of the father to deflower his daughter, so that the birth canal would be prepared for her husband when the time came. He was pulling her thighs apart now and she was screaming and Mother came running in. Daddy turned on the light. Daddy said: She disobeyed me. Her mother went to her and for a moment she still hoped and believed, and Mother said to her: It's for your own good. The light died, and Daddy was between her legs again. She screamed despairingly and Patsy was holding her down and Mother was holding her down. Before his face blotted even the darkness out, she saw the cattish satisfaction on Patsy's face.

Confessing the blood that came out of her, Daddy said: I wasn't the first. I just finished what the other boys started. Their thirteen-year-old cocks were too small.

When the old lady was telling him this, he wondered under how many roofs if they could be flung up like gravestones he'd see children struggling feebly in the darkness, and then the scarlet darkness inside screaming out into the night.

When she turned fourteen Daddy sold her to an Ethiopian. He explained to her the advantages. She'd be an emancipated minor. She could do everything an adult could do except drink. The Ethiopian only wanted citizenship. She'd live with him in the same apartment building but she wouldn't have to sleep with him because she'd go on being Daddy's girl. He said to her so tenderly: I'd rather see you dead than fucking a nigger.

One day she came home and stole all the money out of Patsy's wallet. She went to Berkeley and asked the first person she met to please let her stay at his house. He took her home and fucked her all night, then kicked her out. That was what seemed to happen every night. After awhile she learned to ask for money.

Then I did that first shot of crank and that was it, the old lady said. That was it. I was totally sprung. I saw colors, and my shit didn't stink. Just one time. I was at a very low point in my esteem anyway.

In the middle of a rainy evening while he ate Chinese takeout the black woman lay naked, fat-breasted and snoring on his bed, her teeth gaping like a vampire's, her stockings still on, her hand seeming to twitch because it lay on her twitching belly, her hair down around her neck. Beside her sat the old lady on the nod, so peaceful and luminous-faced, dreamy, turning a cigarette in her hand, cross-legged, eyes closed. Suddenly she winked at him. She put a finger to her lips. Then she slid her middle finger all the way up the black woman's cunt, pulled it out, and began to suck. — The black woman opened one eye. — Not even at the bottom of my list! she scolded, and then they both laughed.

It was drizzling very steadily outside. He was warm and sleepy. He lay down between them, and the old lady put his head so sweetly in her lap. Half asleep already, he imagined being her good Daddy now to undo everything and taking her to the beach. She sat on her towel with the soles of her feet tucked behind her, and she was watching the lotion sink into her arms. Just before her stood a red bucket filled with ocean. He had caught the water for her. The water waited inside the bucket, waited to be poured out, and if he and she should die, it would wait for a wind to blow the bucket over or for the red plastic to be cracked by time. She watched the ocean glisten on her fingers. The ocean shimmered faintly through the translucent bucket's sides.

She took the yellow bucket and put an ocean inside it and poured it into the red bucket.

The whore who'd been raped with the vacuum cleaner came in, smiling shyly, with a packet of white powder. — Excuse me, she whispered. I don't smell, do I? I'm sorry I haven't taken a shower today.

Outside the hotel window an Indian girl was saying: Pay me, and a white man said: It's in the car. I'll get it, I promise. No, don't come with me, bitch, you just stand there and wait. I'm going around the corner. I said you just stand there and wait! — Inside, an Indian girl — an Ojibway, this one — threw herself down on the bed, groaning. She'd been hit by a car when she was drunk. When they took her to the hospital she waited almost as long as the Indian girl outside the window, and then she said to the doctor: Excuse me! — What? said the doctor. — When are you gonna see me? — When I'm not busy, said the doctor shortly. — You're not busy now; you're just pokin' your nose in a bunch of goddamned papers! she shouted. What would you care if I just left? — You're right, yawned the doctor. I wouldn't care one bit. — So she got up and hobbled out and got drunk, permitting her leg to solve itself, which was why she'd staggered the dozen blocks to the hotel room so slowly, almost giving up; which was why she'd limped up the two flights of steps above the poolroom, squeezing the handrail until it groaned like her. Her face was yellow with pain, which was why she fell down on his bed while he bolted the door, and then she said: Turn out the fuckin' light.

As he neared her, she grabbed him with a thick arm that was all muscle and ground his mouth against hers so that she could breathe into him her life of gin and beer and bad food, and she locked the crook of her elbow around his neck to pull him more irrevocably under her tongue while her other hand snatched one of his and put it on the crotch of her jeans. — Make love to me, she begged. Fuck me good. Just don't touch my leg.