William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Things happen, Chocolate said. I got friends, they been trying to conceive a child for years and can’t do it and others get one right away. There must be a reason. You know what I’m saying, Dom? A divine reason.

Oh, fuck that, said Domino.

She hadn’t told the others when she got the abortion. It was nobody’s business but hers. Later on, though, she’d started feeling sorry for the dead baby. She got so she couldn’t stop thinking about it. The dead baby came swimming through her heart’s windows at night, making her heart’s cat hiss, spreading its unformed flipper-arms wide like a torpedo’s fins to explode inside her with dead and bloody grief; she bit her lip and the tendons stuck out in her neck like tree-roots; the dead baby sucked the blood from her heart and then tumbled down to the empty place inside her where it had died.

I know how you feel, Chocolate said while within the crack pipe, smoke like white San Francisco fog roiled into her mouth, then into Domino’s mouth, which was framed by white scars from the broken glass which had penetrated her body in numberless accidents.

You ever had an abortion? the blonde suddenly said in a low anxious voice.

Uh huh, said Chocolate. ’Course I did. We all gotta have those.

I feel a little strange, Domino said. You know. In my tummy.

Oh, everybody start to feel that. Never mind about that, Dom.

I just kind of sat there empty afterward, Chocolate. Know what I mean? I felt so bad. And this was my ninth time.

Uh huh. Hey, Dom, let’s go score some rock. I know a trick who—

Chocolate?

What?

What’s your real name?

Why the fuck you want to know?

Because.

Brenda.

Brenda, huh? Well, I guess Chocolate will work. Brenda’s some stupid twat’s name.

What the fuck you ask me for if you gonna insult me?

Then I woke up with a pinching cramp this morning, Chocolate, and I felt kind of scared…

You’re gonna bleed for a couple of days, Dom. Don’t have a heart attack. For Jesus sake. Stupid twat name she tells me. Dom, you anybody else I cut your face.

I feel, you know, neutral.

About callin’ me a twat?

About what I did. To my…

Well, you got to. I always felt neutral about it.

Always?

I felt, well, weird but okay. Even that first time I never told the daddy, and back then when I just turn sixteen I actually got a pretty goddamned good idea who that daddy might be…

Brenda? said the blonde, longing just then to be as jaunty as miniskirted Chocolate with her headphones on and her wrinkled fist jammed firmly against her hip and her lips parted in a heroin smile with darkness deep inside as she raised knee and showed leg.

What?

Brenda, my tummy hurts.

You gonna be fine, Dom. You want me to get the Queen?

Shit, no. What’s the use of bothering her? She never—

I don’t wanna hear you badmouth her, Dom. But if you wanna smoke some weed, that gonna take your cramps away, I guarantee…

Brenda? repeated the blonde, her eyes as slow and bleary as a car’s yellow eyes creeping down a hooker avenue.

Call me Chocolate. Brenda just some stupid twat name.

Brenda, my—

Lemme guess. Your tummy hurts.

Oh, fuck off.

Well, you did it. Nobody did it to you. You said you didn’t want no baby, so…

You think I’m trash? You think I’m not good enough to have a baby? Is that what you think?

Hey, honey, lots of women like us got other goals. We’re professional women. We never got any appropriate time until we make a time and that’s not how life works.

So you’re saying I should have kept my baby. You’re saying I’m a fucking murderess.

I’m saying I love you, Domino. Domino, you’re my sweetheart.

And you probably think I’ll burn in hell, don’t you, you Bible-thumping tattooed negroid bitch? I bet when you’re alone with the Queen you tell her, Domino’s just dirt. Domino’s scum. Admit it to me. Admit that you look down on me.

Domino…

Tell me you hate me. Tell me I’m trash, because I killed my baby.

Domino, you remember what the Queen said? She said, when you put out a thought in the universe, you gonna get something back. Girl, you better start taking responsibility for your thoughts.

Fuck off.

All right, Domino, that’s enough. Other people got problems, too.

Why, you selfish little nigger twat, don’t try to hide that hatred in your eyes. Now I know how you feel about me. You watch your back, girl, or some night you might wind up shanked. Some night you might wind up with a big old butcher knife wedged deep up your gonorrhea-infected snatch…

The falling out between Domino and Chocolate actually went back almost a year, to the night when Domino for pure goodness had gotten Chocolate a date (in other words, Domino saw the john first, but the john liked Chocolate’s looks better), so Chocolate agreed to let her have a third of the heroin. After the date, Chocolate wanted to wash the sperm out of her mouth with a bottle of some Thunderbird because she and Domino were standing right across the street from the liquor store on South Van Ness where at this very time of night a certain clerk might give Chocolate free booze in exchange for a little pussy because she’d managed to make him believe that she had no money — a demonstrably useful fiction to maintain, so she asked Domino if she would buy for her with the john’s twenty. In other words, Chocolate’s logic had just entirely contradicted itself, but never mind. — Sure, that’ll work, said Domino, clip-clopping into the liquor store on her silver high heels. As she was paying for the wine, a brawny black woman named Ada, of whom Domino was scared because she sold ass for Domino’s former pimp, brushed past Chocolate and asked for two dollars because she was hungry. Domino had already given Ada two dollars for food earlier that day, the Queen and Justin not being in sight to protect her. She didn’t have any more money for Ada, since the change from the twenty belonged to Chocolate. It wasn’t her money, and she told Ada so, but with a weak and sinking voice entirely uncharacteristic of her, because she felt in her soul that she was already dreaming a nightmare so terrible that self-defense must prove useless. — What do you mean it’s not your money? the black girl shouted. ’Course it’s your money! Don’t you be scammin’ me, bitch! — Through the liquor store window Domino could see Chocolate running away; she hoped to get the tall man, who was out trying to score a perfect baggie of white girl, but Chocolate, who kept scratching at her red eyes, trying to peel the swollen orange eyelids back and scrape out the infection that grew inside, unfortunately for Domino found herself presented on the very next block with a very attractive sexual offer which she owed it to herself not to refuse, being pretty broke, and once she accepted she got not only money, but also a deep needleful of pure China white heroin which blissfully sidelined her until late the following morning, so Domino remained most friendlessly alone as Ada pursued Domino all night, breaking up her dates. Whenever a car slowed, Ada scared the driver away. Wherever Domino went, even all the way to the Tenderloin’s red-streaked night where sparks came tumbling underneath the door of a welding shop like Fourth-of-July cigarette ash, the black girl was punching her and spitting on her. She fucked up Domino’s eye. Domino didn’t want to strike back because Ada was eight months pregnant and Domino would do major jail time if she killed her baby. She lost one of her high heels as she fled down the street, with Ada loping behind cursing. When she found Chocolate at last, it was dawn and Chocolate was lying grinning and mumbling in a doorway. Domino had been so frightened as to entirely forget her easy graceful old ways of intimidation; therefore she actually begged Chocolate for two dollars so Ada would leave her alone.