Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

4.2

Along the top of the electric canyon, the lid of sky was tinted the color of sputum. Neon drenched the girl with the shaved head and she soaked in its downpour, the neon pulsing through her like radiation, as infectious as hope or, maybe, love. She whooped and laughed, ran and then skipped, her gait unsteady, her vision blurry with dope and drink and fear and the lingering flavor of Ponyboy's kisses. In his hardened grip her fingers were brittle yet unbreakable, and with a tight squeeze he pulled her through the hot still air, and she suspended her hesitancies and followed along, peripherally aware of the half-forms running alongside, their blurred shapes and deep breaths, their screamed curses and athletic weavings. One self-styled rude boy slammed his arm against a mobile home, then limped away as if hit. Another rolled commando-style across the hood of a midsize station wagon. On the spur of the moment, the girl slapped the side mirror of a stretch limousine. From behind tinted windows, its horn bleated. She howled back “MOTHERFUCKERS.” Ponyboy's grip remained firm, unaffected.

Across eight lanes, on the opposite side of the superhighway, their sprint ended where the pedestrian stream thinned. Pierced hooligans reclined against the bottom of a casino wall — some pouring condiment packages down their throats, others using the opened baggies of mustard and ketchup to make finger paint portraits on the sidewalk. A group of thugs was happily screaming obscenities into a cellular phone. Two stragglers were watching, wrenching the last scraps of humor from some earlier incident:

“Waah, who snaked my cell?”

“Waah, I'm calling the cops.”

Ponyboy let go of her hand and began stepping through a circle of ghouls, accepting without notice their greetings and slaps on the back. The girl was momentarily apprehensive, and watched him approach a lanky, deeply sunburned teenager — standing at a mailbox, with his pants around his ankles, and his hands on his crotch. In profile, half of a battery protruded out of the side of his nostril.

Ponyboy came from the rear, wrapped his biceps around his friend's waist and lifted, an arcing golden stream spraying the crowd of passersby.

“WHAT UP, COCKSUCKER?”

The girl waited, sure Ponyboy was going to return, introduce her. When this did not happen, she drifted, wandering absently, without direction. Green Wool James was nowhere to be found. Piggy neither — probably home by now, she figured. Certain boys resembled various punks she was used to, only where her friends took time to make themselves look properly disheveled, these punks were disheveled, their edges harder, their seams more frayed. As the girl approached the outskirts of a second small, disorganized circle, she felt predatory stares on her backside. A game of My Past Sucked the Worst was erupting, with tempers flaring over the hierarchy of incest abuses, whether you got more points for parents or grandparents, activity or grotesqueness.

“And just how do you top being jackhammered up the ass by your dad?”

“Try having grampa's eighty-year nuts slamming against your chin, BITCH.”

“Bullshit.”

“Bull sheeyit. ”

She backpedaled, trying to get away from their vulgarity. But her legs were suddenly rubbery, her coordination less than it should be. Her eyes searched for some hint of Ponyboy. Battery-nose. Anyone. She settled for a frail and enormously pregnant chick. Reclining against the bottom of the casino wall, the pregnant chick was filthy as a mechanic's rag and just as used, her skin bruised with dirt and grime. She was morose, and stared blankly at this feral wolf dog next to her. The dog was ignoring the pregnant chick and scratching its ear with a hind leg, and the pregnant girl watched for a little while, then scanned the chaos of nearby ragamuffins. Now she chugged from a clear plastic bottle, swallowing three, four gulps, before she gagged and then doubled over, spilling thick green liquid from her mouth, down her chin and neck. The pregnant girl dropped her head down between her legs, and took deep, sucking breaths, and when she came back up, her eyes were glassy and dim, her face adrift, unfocused. She coughed up a globule, and a thin line of phlegm hung from her cracked lips, and for an instant she seemed naked in her confusion, embarrassed at her nakedness.

“You okay?” asked the girl with the shaved head.

Glassy eyes focused. The pregnant girl was impassive, suspicious. But she nodded, somewhat. She wiped her bare wrist over the bottle's lip, nudged the container forward. “Vicks?”

“Ummm…”

A flicker of a grin. “It's mentholated.”

“Should you be doing that?”

“It's way better than drinking from any of those assholes’ stash.” A pointed glance. “They say they don't backwash— yeahright !”

“Whatever you say, Danger-Prone Daphney !”

The pregnant girl whirled toward the remark, “Eat me when I'm bloody, Lestat!”

“Whatever you say, Double-Penetration Daphney .”

Somewhere in the elevated distance a digital scoreboard flashed information about a twenty-four-hour buffet. Somewhere else a man-made volcano erupted. The girl with the shaved head self-consciously applied a circle of pressure to the soft area behind the mongrel's ear.

“He's gorgeous,” she said.

Then, once Daphney's attention had returned, “You sure about swigging?”

The broken smile hardened, Daphney's pie eyes going narrow.

“No disrespect or nothing,” said the girl. “I just meant, with — in… you know, your condition and all—”

“You one of them Angels of the Streets? Damn. I sure liked you guys better when all you did was stop by with condoms and tampons. This planned pregnancy bull shit, it's getting to be a drag.” Daphney took a swig, recoiled at the taste. “The last one said she wouldn't turn me in to social services. Yeah, right… cunt. ”

Her chin raised defiantly. “Don't front on me. I been streeting so long I got my own milk carton.”

The girl with the shaved head caught herself staring at Daphney's stomach, then blushed. Through the soles of her twelve-holes, it felt as if she were standing on lit matches. As she struggled to lower herself onto the sidewalk, her limbs seemed heavy and used and listless, and she noticed the corner of a denim knapsack from behind the breadth of Daphney's back. The girl's gaze was unsteady, and a bit blurred, but she was aware of the assorted leers, and she primly tucked her legs underneath her tush. She emptied her pockets, donating her remaining eight dollars into the community change pool. She scratched the bridge of the dog's nose, began to ask its name, and then, midway, stopped.

“Can I see your carton?”

Daphney spent a moment soaking in the request. Another examining the newcomer who had made it. “I used to have like nine,” she answered, her voice suddenly unguarded and girlish. “It was gonna be cool as fuck, ’cause I'd be giving my baby milk from the cartons with my own face. Get it? How cool is that? Cool as fuck, right?”

Swollen and grime-laden hands bloomed, each steel-covered finger turning alive, adding interpretive pantomimes to the performance, becoming as agitated as Daphney's voice: “What happened was, we didn't have no place to put the milk and it went bad and so they made me throw it out. But then I kept some of the cartons, you know, stored pens and lighters and birthie stuff in some. The others I just folded up. But then, I was supposed to go base with these fuckwads right?… That's a total different story. Anyways, my shit got jacked.”

Disco ball refractions formed a kaleidoscope across Daphney's profile, imbuing her face with a pattern of small, almost translucent snowflakes. To the girl with the shaved head she appeared beautiful and full of pain and beautiful for all her pain. The girl wanted to cover her and protect her. For an instant, she thought of taking her back home.