Veronica (eBook)

Because I sat against my mother when she told this story, I did not hear it in words only. I felt it in her body. I felt a girl who wanted to be too beautiful. I felt a mother who wanted to love her. I felt a demon who wanted to torture her. I felt them mixed together so you couldn't tell them apart. The story scared me and I cried. My mother put her arms around me. 'Wait,' she said. 'It's not over yet. She's going to be saved by the tears of an innocent girl. Like you.' My mother kissed the top of my head and finished the story. And I forgot about it for a long time.



I open my eyes.

I can't sleep. When I try, I wake after two hours and then spend the rest of the night pulled around by feelings and thoughts. I usually sleep again at dawn and then wake at 7:30. When I wake, I'm mad at not sleeping, and that makes me mad at everything. My mind yells insults as my body walks itself around. Dream images rise up and crash down, huge, then gone, huge, gone. A little girl sinks down in the dark. Who is she? Gone.

I drink my coffee out of a heavy blue mug, watching the rain and listening to a fool on a radio show promote her book. I live right on the canal in San Rafael and I can look out on the water. There're too many boats on it and it's filthy with gas and garbage and maybe turds from the boats. Still, it's water, and once I saw a sea lion swimming toward town.

Every day, my neighbor Freddie leaps off his deck and into the canal for a swim. This disgusts my neighbor Bianca. 'I asked him, 'Don't you know what's in there? Don't you know it's like swimming in a public toilet?'' Bianca is a sexy fifty-year-old, sexy even though she's lost her looks, mainly because of her big fat lips. 'He doesn't care, he says he just takes a hot shower after.' Bianca draws on her cigarette with her big lips. 'Probably get typhoid.' She blows out with a neat turn of her head, even her long ropy neck is sort of sexy. 'I hate the sight of him flying through the air in that little Speedo, God!'

Sure enough, while I'm looking out the window, Freddie, all red and fleshy, with his stomach hanging down and his silver head tucked between his upstretched arms, vaults through the air and--wap!--hits the water like a bull roaring in the field. I can just see Bianca downstairs muttering 'Shit!' and slamming the wall with her fist. He's a big fifty-something, with a huge jaw and muscles like lumps of raw meat just going to fat. His round eyes show one big emotion at a time: Joy. Anger. Pain. Fear. But his body is full of all those things happening at once, and that's what you see when he's swimming. He attacks the water with big pawing strokes, burying his face in it like he's trying to eat it out. Then he stops and treads water, his snorting head tossing and bobbing for a second before he turns and lies down in the water, like a kid, with total trust--ah!--face to the sky, regardless of the rain or turds.

Even though he's big, Freddie's got the face of somebody who's been beat too many times, like his face is just out there to be beat. He's also got the face of somebody who, after the beating is done, gets up, says 'Okay,' and keeps trying to find something good to eat or drink or roll in. He likes to end stories by saying, 'But they'd probably just tell you I'm an a-s-s-h-o-l-e,' like, Oh well, what's on TV? That's the thing Bianca hates most, that beat-up but still leaping out into the turds for a swim quality. Especially the leaping: It's like a personal affront to her. But I like it. It reminds me of the sea lion, swimming...