Track Mangoes

The following is an old excerpt that was cut from my novel, "A Shibboleth," which, god help me, I will finish this summer.

The next day Lara Anne saw India with both of them, and more. It had been dark--the sun hiding behind a graphite colored blizzard cloud. No matter the weather, they were all standing outside the dormitory building, smoking and talking, talking so loudly that their words could be heard on the top floor of the large brick structure by students trying to study, gritting their teeth at their desks and asking their roommates why chivalry was dead. The only sound that was louder than the sound of their yapping was that of the windows slamming shut.

And there was a girl also. Smoking also. She was just as skinny as she remembered Brock to be, though slightly shorter, with dark hair, cut in strange and violent angles. The makeup around her eyes was applied thickly and with a hand that Lara didn’t want near her face, applying makeup or otherwise. She wore a small pencil skirt with brown natty stockings. They jutted out from the bottom hem of a very large, very thick wool sweater. The top hem of the sweater hung down below her collarbone, exposing her clavicles, which stuck out like mole holes in a soccer field. She looked like a molting bird. She stood out from their crowd as she ambled round and round them, circumambulating the clique, with an expression of disgust plastered to her face.

It was a girl she had often seen before. She even visited her house several times. She was a drug dealer. She dealt drugs to freshmen, who bought marijuana mostly and synthetics on special occasions. She was a drug dealer and her name was Sylvia. She lived in the dorms, Lara saw her there sometimes after classes, but her boyfriend, Brock, lived in a house off-campus. The house may have well of been her house too because, though she lived in the dorms, she didn't, as she insisted, live there. She lived at the house on Corsair Boulevard.

The house on Corsair Boulevard was privately owned. It backed up against a giant concrete wall. Behind the wall was a freeway that seemed to cut the expansion of the neighborhood instantly. The house was at the end of street, in a cul-de-sac with some trees. Cheap grey siding ran around it. Every thin pane of glass around the sun porch was cracked. A set of crumbling concrete stairs led up the front door, which was disproportionately gothic looking with it large brass knocker that hung in the teeth of some hideous gargoyle.

The last time Lara had been to the house on Corsair Boulevard there she had gone with India and left alone shortly thereafter. Inside the house a brown carpet expanded from their feet to the living room, where Sylvia sat, wearing a small cotton tank top with ribbons for straps. Behind her was the doorway to the kitchen, where the sound of sizzling onions could be heard. India and Lara sat down at the large dining table. India set her brown lather bag near the Sylvia’s foot. Her toenails were painted. Three guys in tight jeans and clever T-shirts sat on the couch, slumped down with their hips practically higher than their heads. “Indie Indie Indie,” Sylvia said from the table.

“Sylvie Sylvie Sylvie,” she replied. India sat down in a chair next to her. Lara got an uneasy sensation, like there was a tension she couldn’t feel but knew was there. So she ambled into the kitchen where she thought she might feel safer or perhaps get a glass of water. What she found was not a glass of water, or anything like it. She found Brock standing at a stove with a frying pan in front of him, sautéing onions. He stood there with his hands at his sides. Onions burned on the sides of the pan as if they had been there for a long time, as if someone had forgot about them. But how could Brock forget about the onions if he was standing right there? Lara stood in the doorway and watched him.

“Onions cooked?” she said. Brock turned around and looked at her with vacant eyes, as if he had been blinded by something but knew she was still there.

“Huh?” he muttered. “What? Yeah. They’re cooked.” Brock was wearing a pair of baggy jeans that clung to his hips with a leather belt and a bright green vest with no shirt on underneath. He turned his head back to the pan. “You’re India’s friend,” he said starring at the onions.

“Roommate,” she corrected. She paused for a moment and corrected herself. “Well. Housemate.” They hadn’t shared a room since sophomore year.

“Whatever.” Lara heard a noise come from the living room and turned around. One of the boys slumped on the sofa had got up and was bouncing up and down on it, like a child on a king size mattress. When she looked back at Brock he had dumped all the onions onto a plate. He sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and started eating the onions with his hands. “Want some?” he said, looking up at her.

“Sure.” Lara walked over to him and they sat down and ate the onions.

“Whose side are you on?” he asked. Lara starred at the piece of onion on his chin.

“What?”

“I said whose side are you on?”

“Oh. That.” Lara turned back to the dining room but she couldn’t see India. “I don’t take sides,” she said. “I’m just here to observe.”

“Observe what?”

“The, um. I don’t know. The.”

“The freaks?”

“No that’s not really what I meant.”

“It’s kind of what you mean though.”

“No.”

“It’s fine.” Brock got up and spooned more onions onto his plate. “Do you eat meat?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you want some ham?”

“Sure,” she said after a moment of hesitation. Brock sat down in front of her again. This time, in addition to his onions, a chunk of bread sat atop the plate with a slice of ham draped over it. Brock broke the bread in two pieces and put the ham in the middle. He squeezed it together and took a bite, tearing the bread away from the chunk the way a cat chews meat off a bone. Lara couldn’t take her eyes off his nails, short, jagged, and dirty. On the corner of the thumb she thought she could see a spot of green, where it had been painted weeks earlier. He shoved the sandwich into her face and she took it up and bit in to it. The meat was salty. The bread was slightly stale around the edges and was so hard it nearly cut into the sides of her mouth. “Goob,” she said finally. She had meant to say “Good." A piece of dried bread hit the roof of her mouth and she could taste blood on her tongue. She winced and Brock went on eating.

“Lara,” a voice said from behind. It was India standing in the doorjamb. Her head hung like a jacket on a hook, her hair in front of her eyes. She looked as though she might tumble on top of Lara and Brock, splayed on the kitchen floor, sending the onions, the ham, the bread flying into the wall, and the plate too, shattering into several large, sharp, ceramic pieces. But as India stood there, her hands just caressed the edges of the doorjamb, as if the only way they could hold her up was by caress. The she laughed. She smiled. She leaned forward like a trapeze artist, grabbing onto the frame and leaning forward. A piece of her hair fell forward again and then back onto her face. It got stuck in her mouth and just hanged there. She had a single braid amongst all the other hair that had a wooden bead fastened to it. The strand hung toward the floor like a pendulum, swinging. “It’s all done,” she said. India looked at Brock who had not looked up to see her. Her lips slightly parted, as if she was about to say something, but instead she stood up and headed purposefully towards the front door.

Lara got up off the floor, wiping the crumbs on her pants. She looked back at Brock on the floor, bovinely swinging his jaw. “Thanks for the food,” she said. He nodded and looked up at her. His eyelids hung low. He fluttered them for a moment, then opened them again as if Lara had appeared in the door for the first time.

Outside India was trying to light a cigarette underneath a streetlamp. She had slid her jacket on her shoulders. As she lit the cigarette her elbows raised and brought the hem of the jacket above her blouse. Under her blouse was an undershirt. Underneath that was a line a persimmon colored line of flesh running around her stomach, started and ended by her belly button poised in the center, like a diamond on a ring. India lit the cigarette and lowered her elbows. She blew a thick plume of grey smoke that rose up to the streetlamp. “Ready?” she asked.

Lara nodded and walked toward her. “Yup,” she said, sliding her jacket on over her arms. “Brock is strange,” she noted.

“Yes. He is very strange,” India said looking down at the sidewalk.

“I see him and Sylvia around together more often,” she added. “Just the other day, outside the dorms. She was wearing this cotton sweater.”

“That’s my sweater,” India said suddenly.

Lara paused a moment and frowned her eyebrows. “Wait,” she said, holding up a finger. India took a long drag of her cigarette and exhaled. As she looked up at the lamp, the light flooding over her face, she blinked several times. Lara opened her mouth, the words coming up out of her throat, but getting stuck there. It was like holding in vomit after drinking. She pressed hard, and tried not to let the words pop out, because she already knew the answer, but by the time Lara had uttered the words, “Why would Sylvia have your sweater?” it would be too late to have realized that India had been crying.

Kids at the Wheeler House, St. Paul, 2010.