Janet Fitch - White Oleander

I called for help, but no one could hear me over the music. Misha was heavy, he rested his head on my shoulder, slobbering on my neck. His weepy blue eyes so close, one heavy arm around me.

I hit him, but it was no use, he was too drunk, my fist bounced off his flesh, he couldn’t feel anything. “Misha, get off me.”

“You’re so beautiful girl,” he said, trying to kiss me. He smelled of vodka and something greasy, someone must have brought a bucket of chicken.

My knife was just under my pillow. I didn’t want to stab Misha, I knew him. I’d listened to him play bottleneck guitar. He had a dog named Chernobyl, he wanted to move to Chicago and be a blues guitarist, except he didn’t like cold weather. Rena gave him this haircut, the bangs slightly crooked. He wasn’t a bad man, but he was kissing my closed mouth, one hand groping under the blanket, though I was fully dressed. His fumbling hand found nothing but vintage polyester.

“Love me a little,” he begged in my ear. “Love me, devushka, for we all going to die.”

Finally, I got a knee up and when he shifted I hit him with my drawing board and slid out of bed.

In the living room, most of the people were gone. Natalia was dancing by herself in front of the stereo, a bottle of Bargain Circus Stoli clutched by the neck in one hand. Georgi was passed out in the black armchair, his head leaning against its fuzzy arm, a white cat curled in his lap. A cane chair was knocked over, a big ashtray lay facedown on the floor. A puddle of something glistened on the scarred leathertop coffee table.

Rena and her boyfriend, Sergei, lay on the green velvet couch, and he was doing it to her with his ringers. Her shoes were still on, her skirt. His shirt was open, he had a medallion on a chain that hung down. I hated to barge in, but then again, Misha was her friend. She was responsible.

“Rena,” I said. “Misha’s trying to get in bed with me.”

Four drunken eyes gazed up at me, two black, two blue. It took them a moment to focus. Sergei whispered something to her in Russian and she laughed. “Misha won’t do nothing. Hit him on head with something,” Rena said.

Sergei was watching me as he kneaded her thigh, bit her neck. He looked like a white tiger devouring a kill.

When I went back into my room, Misha had passed out. He had a bloody cut on his head from where I hit him. He was snoring, holding my pillow like it was me. He wasn’t waking up anytime soon. I went to sleep in Yvonne’s empty bed. The stereo stopped at five, and I got a restless hour or two of sleep, dreaming of animals rummaging through the garbage. I was awakened by a man pissing in the bathroom across the hall without closing the door, a stream that seemed to last for about five minutes. He didn’t flush. Then the stereo came back on, the Who again. Who are you! the band sang. I tried to remember, but I really couldn’t say.

WE SAT IN THE KITCHEN on a dreary Saturday, sewing leather bags for crystals. It was Rena’s latest moneymaking idea. Niki played demo tapes of the different bands Werner booked, but they all sounded the same, skinny white kid rage, out-of-control guitars. She was looking for a new band. “This one’s all right, don’t you think? Fuck!” She jabbed the needle into a finger, stuck it into her lipstick-blackened mouth. “This sewing’s for shit. What does she think we are, some fucking elves?”

We were smoking hash under glass while we worked. I let the smoke fill up under the little shot glass that Niki stole from the Bavarian Gardens, it had an upside-down Johnnie Walker printed on it. I put my mouth down to the edge, picked up a corner of the glass, and sucked the thick hash fumes into my lungs. Yvonne didn’t smoke, she said it was bad for the baby.

“What difference does it make?” Niki said, putting a chunk of hash on the pin for herself. “It’s not like you’re going to keep it.”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “You think that way, I don’t want you taking me to baby class,” Yvonne said. “Astrid’ll take me.”

I started coughing. I tried to do Butterfly McQueen from the childbirth scene in Gone with the Wind . “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies,” but I couldn’t get my voice to go high enough. I thought of Michael, he always did Butterfly better than me. I missed him.

“At least you have good thoughts,” Yvonne said.

Childbirth. I shuddered. “I’m not even eighteen.”

“That’s okay, they don’t serve liquor,” Niki said, throwing a finished bag on the pile. She picked up another one that was all cut out and ready for sewing.

Stoned, I traced a rising smoke pattern into a scrap of leather with an X-acto blade. I was good at this, better than my mother used to be. I could do a crow, a cat. I could do a cat in three cuts. I did a baby with a curl on its forehead and tossed it to Yvonne.

The door banged open behind us, letting in a rush of cold air. Rena came in with a roll of dark green suede tucked under her arm. “Georgi sell whole thing, trade for lamp,” she grinned proudly. “Nice, huh?” Then her gaze landed on me, etching designs into the leather. “What, you crazy?” She grabbed the doeskin away from me, thumped the back of my head with the heel of her hand. “Pothead stupid girl. You think is cheap?” Then she noticed the design and frowned, her lower lip pouted out. She held the scrap up to the light. “Not bad.” She tossed it back to me. “I think it sell. Do all bags. We make money on this.”

I nodded. I blew whatever I made on art supplies and food and going in with Niki on dope. College had already vanished, disappearing like a boat into fog. At Claire’s, I’d begun to think of my life as a series of Kandinsky pencil sketches, meaningless by themselves, but arranged together they would begin to form an elegant composition. I even thought I had seen the shape of the future in them. But now I had lost too many pieces. They had returned to a handful of pine needles on a forest floor, unreadable.

Sergei came in carrying a bag, his cheeks flushed pink in his handsome, wide, un-Californian face. He unloaded two bottles of vodka, put one in the freezer, set the other on the counter, and took down two green glasses. He sniffed the air. “Mmm, dinner.”

“So who invites you?” Rena said, hopping up to sit on the counter, unscrewing the cap of the vodka. She poured three fingers into each glass.

“Oh, these girls not starve Sergei,” he said. He opened the oven, peered in at the bubbling dish I was making for Yvonne, a broccoli-and-cheese casserole, to build her up for the baby. She’d been stunned to watch me put the ingredients together, she hadn’t realized you could cook without a box with instructions. Sergei bathed his face in the smell and the heat of the oven.

I cut a tiger into a leather scrap, reminding myself that Sergei was just Rena with a better facade. Handsome as a Cossack, a milky Slavic blond with sleepy blue eyes that caught every movement. By profession, a thief. Rena occasionally moved merchandise for him, a truckload of leather couches, racks of women’s coats, a shipment of stuffed animals from Singapore, small appliances from Israel. Around here, he was a constant sexual fact. He left the bathroom door open while he shaved in the nude, did a hundred push-ups every morning, his milky white skin veined with blue. If he saw you were watching he’d add a clap to show off. Those wide shoulders, the neat waist. When Sergei was in the room, I never knew what to do with my hands, with my mouth.

I looked over at Yvonne across the table, bent over piles of little bags and leather scraps, sewing, patient as a girl in a fairy tale. Any other girl would be sewing the ruffles on her prom gown, or knitting baby shoes. Now I felt bad about making fun of her earlier. “Sure, I’ll go to baby class with you,” I said. “If you think I’ll be any use.”