The Shyster's Daughter, page 4
With my hands flying overhead, I rush down the steps, then stop before I reach the bottom so they don’t see. The doors to the hay barn are latched yet unlocked. My horse, Boo Boo, an Arabian trail horse, whinnies and paces back and forth in his pipe corral. The other horse, named Lou, is a former prized Saddlebred. My father bought him for my mother on their first anniversary. The horse is too old now to do more than toss his head impatiently in front of his aluminum feeder.
I hear the two-fingered whistle, coming from one of the Murillo boys. My face feels hot and tight like it’s sun burned, and all I can think to do is pretend they’re not following my every move.
In order to scare off the mice, I kick the door a couple times, then pull off two pre-sliced flakes and balance them, one on each arm. I’m allergic to alfalfa, and if I’m not quick I’ll wheeze like an asthmatic and my arms will rash up and itch. Just as I’m hoisting the flake into Boo Boo’s feeder, something rustles in the alfalfa, something alive. At the first sight of gray fur, I drop the flake between the pipes, piercing the air with my squeal. The mouse scurries off into a puff of dirt.
Behind me, a Murillo boy laughs. I toss the other flake at a hungry Lou, and make a bee line for the house.
“Shut the hell up,” Cheech shouts at his little brother.
I’m on the phone telling Tomoko what happened with the Murillo brothers when our call gets cut short, an emergency breakthrough from the Orange County prison. Whenever it’s a collect call, I know to accept the charges. The client in jail will pay for it later, getting double-billed for calling collect, let alone our home number.
I’ve never spoken to a murderer before, and although my father slept with a hunting rifle by his side when Cooper had escaped, this killer is different. He’s my father’s front page client and I’ll get into trouble if I’m not polite.
“May I speak with your father?” The precise way in which he forms each syllable makes him sound successful, like one of my father’s business clients. Even murderers have phone manners.
“Just a second, please,” I say.
My father is in the living room, the TV on, tuning out the ten o’clock news with the aid of a Walkman. He wears headphones, listening again no doubt to Bared’s confession.
Scattered across the table are black and whites of the crime scene. One shot is of the victim’s head thrown back against the chair, his eyes bulging. On the front of his shirt is a small hole where the bullet had entered, and I am shocked at how little blood there is.
I mouth Bared’s name as I hand over the phone.
My father slides the headphones back a little to make room for the receiver. From his end I’m able to put together half the story. Bared has been roughed up at the jail. A broken nose and finger. It’s race related. While being struck and kicked he heard somebody call him a sand nigger. At twelve I’d heard “nigger” used solely as an insult to a black person. In time I’ll learn the offensive word will do even more damage being used as a root slur against all races.
My father promises that tomorrow he’ll have pictures taken and will use them at the emergency bail hearing.
“The guards beat him up?” I ask after my father is done talking.
He hangs up and shrugs.
“Hard to tell. Usually it’s the arresting cops. He looked fine this morning. Sometimes a client will do it to himself if he thinks an ass kicking will help get him out sooner.”
I hear my sister unlocking the front door. She looks satisfied, refreshed, her lips abloom in bright fuchsia. She takes a long sip of her thirty-two ounce McDonald’s cup, leaving no print.
“Mom finally woke up.”
I wonder if our mother came around on her own or if Rhea helped.
My father removes the headset as if the foam parts impede his hearing.
“How is she?”
“They’re releasing her tomorrow morning.”
My father tosses the rest of the Walkman onto the coffee table.
“Goddamn it.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.” My sister passes us in a burst of Poison, her favorite scent, getting his reaction all wrong.
My father shakes his head at the circumstances he can’t change, at the toxic relationship the two of them share and how what just happened with Bared has ruined his chances of being the good husband. No matter how fast he is at the bail hearing, all my mother will see is that she’s just given birth to his son and he’s late in picking her up from the hospital.
The next morning I’m pouring a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios when my father knocks on Rhea’s door, open handed. In his other hand is a cup of coffee.
“Time to get up,” he calls at the closed door.
Though I should be going to school, my father has decided that I’m to go with him. He doesn’t want to have to worry about picking me up after school. An emergency bail hearing has been granted. I’m not sure how my father is able to pull this off so soon, but he did and we’re already late for it.
By the time I’ve finished the Cheerios and have bussed my bowl in the dishwasher, he’s dressed in a suit and tie.
Dabs of toilet paper stick to the red nicks on his face where he cut himself shaving. He reeks of my mother’s last Christmas present, Drakkar Noir. His open hand on my sister’s door has turned into a fist.
“Get up now,” he says. “I’m not paying nearly a grand a month for you to sleep away the semester.”
My chest tightens at the beginnings of an argument, so I break in with the white flag.
“Okay, Dad,” I say. “I think she heard you.”
A couple of minutes later my sister emerges on her way to the bathroom. Her short hair is smashed along the side of her head where she’s been sleeping, her face cracked in places with dried Calamine. From her skeletal shoulders, her nightgown hangs as if being held up by a wire hanger. She doesn’t look herself and hasn’t for some time. The pills her L.A. shrink prescribed aren’t working.
Before she shuts the bathroom door, she faces our father dead on, calling up energy from down deep.
“Mom told me what you did to her.”
Whatever Rhea claims he’s done to our mother, it must be true because my father backs off. He snaps at me to get in the goddamn car and as we leave, it’s anyone’s guess if she’ll make it to school or simply head back to bed.
Although my father is over forty and a good fifty pounds overweight, I have trouble keeping up with him in the courthouse halls. My Van slip-ons squeak at every turn on the shiny floors, grabbing the attention of a few men in suits who look a little puzzled at seeing me, a seventh grader, tagging along with her father to court. It’s impossible to tell which of the men are attorneys and which are cleaned up drug dealers, murderers and thieves.
Inside the gallery, my father seats me in the last row. The Drakkar Noir he sprayed can’t mask the smell of our brisk walk because he’s all worked up now.
“Don’t you move,” he orders in a hardened whisper. “And don’t talk to any men, especially if they aren’t holding a briefcase. They’re the criminals.”
I nod, hoping he’ll go away soon because I’ve been holding my breath all this time, and I’m positive my face is turning blue.
Court has already started and once the judge sees the back of my father’s head, it’s as if he recognizes it and calls Bared Garrata’s name next.
“Counselor,” the judge begins. “I understand there’s reason for you and your client to be in my courtroom again?”
“Yes, your honor. A very disturbing reason.”
On the way to the defense attorney’s table, my father stops to touch the shoulder of a woman with dark blond hair pulled back in a bun. Gratefully, she takes his hand, and I don’t see how my father stands it, all that emotional pressure from defendants, from their loved ones, looking up to him as their only chance at being cleared of the charges levied against them by the entire State of California.
From a side door, a bald man in an orange jumpsuit appears. His beard is dark and bushy. He stands inside what looks like a jury box except there’s no jurors, no chairs, and there’s metal mesh screen separating him from the rest of the courtroom. Even at this distance, one of his eyes is visibly swollen and closed. A thick scab covers the bridge of his nose.
“Your Honor.” My father levels his arm dramatically toward Bared, leveling his accusation. “Look at my client. He is an innocent man unless proven guilty. Bail must be reduced if he’s to survive until his trial date. Who protected his rights last night while he was getting his face rammed against a steel sink, being called a sand nigger?”
“Enough, Counselor,” admonishes the judge, raising his voice and lowering the gavel. “You will not play the race card in my courtroom.”
My father nods, and something passes between them, the certainty that as a defense attorney it’s my father’s job to be a showman. To distract and offend. The judge looks a little familiar, and I think I’ve seen him once at a party at the home of my Uncle Dimitri—also a lawyer.
The prosecutor, a woman that’s model tall, with short dark hair and pointy glasses, speaks up, forced to deal with my father’s underhanded move.
“If Mr. Garrata surrenders his passports, I find nothing wrong with reducing his bail to three hundred thousand.”
My father cocks his head.
“Three? How about one and a half.” He points again at Bared. “This man has no priors. He’s a family man with two young daughters. He’s an assistant manager at a fan manufacturing plant.” Now my father turns his attention on the prosecutor. “Ms. Tomkins needs to stop blowing hot air, so to speak. My client doesn’t have that kind of collateral.”
Some minor wrangling occurs before the judge ultimately rules in my father’s favor, increasing the bail to one hundred and seventy-five to save face. And although I’m happy to see my father win, it feels like he’s lost. Not only has his client, Bared Garrata, shot and killed someone pointblank, he must’ve blown a hole in the heart of every member of his victim’s family.
Quickly, I turn and head out into the hall before I happen to recognize any of them by their grief.
That afternoon my mother comes home and three days later we are given my brother, all pink, with a clean bill of health, plus a birth certificate with his tiny footprint. Because my mother is still sore from the caesarean and because she wants to keep a closer eye on baby Nick, she has my father move my old mattress out of the garage and into Nick’s room.
At least this is the story they tell me. I want to believe them, yet I can’t help thinking about what Rhea said, how it sounded like he’d done something to hurt our mother. Whether out of necessity or penance, my father sets up my old bed in Nick’s room. He screws in the last bolt of the bed frame, screwing himself, as he must’ve known, along with it. The nights he’d spend alone in the California King for months to come, maybe longer. Last spring for my birthday, my mother was insistent on buying me a waterbed. At the time I was blinded by having been given something so extravagant that I hadn’t even asked for, that I had to actually fill up with a hose. But I see now she might’ve been planning on moving out of her own bedroom since then and the extra bed was no more of a gift to me than it was for herself.
Later in the night I hear them keeping their voices down, and this time it’s my mother who speaks in the low roar.
“You at least could’ve told me what you did. I had to find out from the nurse. You had no plans of ever telling me.”
“Jesus, June. I was only thinking of you.”
“You were thinking of yourself.”
“They already had you open. I didn’t see the point in making you go through that again.”
“It wasn’t your fucking choice to make.”
Rarely have I heard my mother use the F word and when she does, I know at least for her, the fight is over.
Uneasily, I close my eyes as if pretending that I already am might help me fall back asleep.
Within a week my family slips into a certain pattern of taking care of Nicholas—feedings, cradlings in the rocker, late night pacing up and down the hall. He seems to fall asleep to my off-key version of Duran Duran’s ballad “Save a Prayer” so long as I don’t spike my voice toward the high notes I can’t reach. Diaper changes are round the clock, and I quickly learn the hard way, when changing him, to throw another diaper over his privates to stop the geyser that spurts on instinct as soon as I rip off the soiled one. Even my father pitches in when he gets home from work. All of us do except for Rhea.
Her pink window blinds stay clamped shut night and day. She sleeps for the rest of us who aren’t getting much of it because of the baby, and with our mother in full nesting mode, Rhea has no reason to ever emerge from her own isolated nest she’s created out of bed and blankets. If she’s made any friends at her new school, like she claims, we’ve never met them. She even missed her last appointment with her shrink, using Nick’s homecoming as an excuse. It seems she’s even reduced her intake of Diet Coke just so she won’t have to get up and use the bathroom.
One morning around my brother’s third or fourth week home, my mother is in the kitchen fixing breakfast while my father is getting dressed for work. For once he doesn’t have to bang on my sister’s door. She’s already showered and there is the muffled whirring of the blow dryer in the bathroom.
When she appears in the kitchen, she is dressed for school, her short hair finger-styled. The hot pink blouse she’s wearing is new and matches her favorite Clinique lipstick. My mother’s face brightens as she stands over the stove scrambling eggs, with my brother gurgling in his carrier on the floor, her bare foot tipping him contentedly back and forth. One less child she needs to worry about.
“You look pretty,” my mother says. “I like the shirt. That’s a flattering color against your fair skin.”
The compliment makes Rhea’s eyes shine and in those few seconds, I see them, really see them, before she retreats back into herself, into the morning routine of slinging her backpack over one shoulder and passing on breakfast.
“I’m glad you like it, Mom.”
“Paula,” my mother orders. “Give her a piece of your toast.”
While I’m biting into a piece smothered in strawberry jam, I hold another one out to her, one that is only buttered, fewer calories. Rhea ignores it and leans down near my face. Instantly I raise my hands, expecting her to pinch or smack me like she usually does when she’s in a good mood and wants to give me a hard time.
Instead, she kisses my cheek.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, forgetting my mouth is full. “Are you on your period or something? You’re acting weird.”
Rhea laughs as she pulls away, a laugh that doesn’t sound like it comes from her, no trademark snort that leaves the rest of us going in her wake.
After school I break out the bareback pad and the bridle and put them on Boo Boo. Going on Tomoko’s advice, this is my prime opportunity to catch Cheech’s attention.
He’s outside swinging the bat at his own pop-ups, knocking the homers into the neighbor’s backyard nursery on the other side. His father and little brother are nowhere in sight, probably at Rigo’s Little League game.
Leading Boo Boo to the side of his corral, I climb up and keep him steady as I ease onto his back. The pad feels puffy and soft under my bare legs. If my mother were home she’d kill me, knowing I was riding this way, in nothing but a pair of shorts and my Vans. When she gives me lessons, I’m forced to wear jeans and riding boots, sometimes even gloves.
Right now, though, I’ve lucked out because she’s not around. All I found after my father’s secretary, Nora, dropped me off from school was a note she left on the fridge, instructing me to stay put and wait for my father. Nora wasn’t much help either except she did stop off at McDonald’s and buy me a Happy Meal before depositing me curbside.
The oleander bushes are abuzz, the hard shells of the flies reflecting in the sunlight, and I make sure and steer Boo Boo as far away as possible while still making a ring in our backyard of pure dirt. First I make kissing sounds, the cue for him to trot, keeping my back straight, squeezing with my thighs, so I won’t slip around on the pad.
With each lap, I become more and more tense as I no longer hear Cheech swinging at anything. He’s watching me, and I think twice if I should head back into the house and change into a pair of long pants. He’s doing exactly what I wanted him to do, checking out the summer tan on my bare legs.
But there is no wave, no cat calling, not even a two-fingered whistle, and the rhythmic sound of bat connecting with ball resumes. Being ignored frustrates me into kicking it up a notch, and I touch Boo Boo’s flank with my heel, feeling the slide and pull underneath me as his front legs extend into a gallop. I shorten my reins and somehow this accidentally brings Boo Boo too close to the oleander bushes. This is when I feel it land, as light as a barrette: a horse fly right on the side of my head.
Although I stop from screaming, I can’t stop my hands from striking and slapping at my head like a lunatic. Maybe it is the commotion that startles my horse, or maybe it is the fact I drop the reins. In a matter of seconds Boo Boo lunges one way, and I slide off in another. The number one lesson my mother has drilled into my head is that if I’m going to fall, I need to drop, then roll away fast, so I won’t get hoofed in the face.
I roll more smoothly and farther than perhaps a stunt double even could, stopping face down near the lower steps that lead up to the house. Dust is thick and powdery on my tongue, and I’m afraid to see if Cheech has just gotten a front row view of me eating dirt. Boo Boo grazes nearby, weeds poking out from the steel bit in his mouth, the seat of the bareback pad now hanging under his belly.
“Man, that’s some wipeout,” Cheech hollers from across the fences. “You okay?”
As I climb up to my knees, what feels like a relatively safe landing turns out to be anything but. I open my mouth to breathe, to answer Cheech, yet nothing comes in or out. The air is pounded from my lungs, and it seems with every gasp that they’re clamping tighter and tighter. Breathing feels like an act I’ve never tried before, and I wonder if this is how Nicholas felt when he was first pulled out from the womb. I’m convinced that at age twelve, I’m dying of a heart attack.
