Above

J. T. LeRoy

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who

can know it?

Jeremiah 17:9

THE ONES THAT buy me candy don't last long. The ones that slap her

last longer, but not as long as the ones that beat her with their fists

and me with their belt.

We live in the car, driving until she meets the next one. Sometimes

she tells him about me, her brother. Sometimes I'm her sister. "Men

like girls, not boys," she says. "You wanna come inside, don't ya?"

Sometimes I stay hidden in the car until he's gone to work. I lie in

the cradle at the foot space of the backseat and disappear.

Sometimes she gives me the halves of the pills I ask for. They're

white, but they make it all dark, not the dream where my limbs are

blown across the open brittle road until red-winged crows descend from

the white sun,

carrying my limbs farther and farther away until I wake up screaming,

struggling to reattach.

Sometimes we go into stores and I borrow what she tells me. Under my

coat inside my pants, the bologna packages go. The cold beer bottles

slide down my sleeves, the ends held closed with thick rubber bands so

by the time I'm back in the car my hands are numb and bright white.

When I borrow right we drive away fast, laughing while stuffing our

mouths with strings of bologna and drinking the sour dull fizz from the

bottles. When I borrow wrong a bottle falls out when I loosen a rubber

band or I get stopped on my way out the sliding doors then the world

moves like in those old hand-cranked movies I'd looked at in arcades.

Everyone surrounds and moves away from me at the same time. She yanks

my pants, and her hand comes down fast across my bare ass again and

again. It's a trick, she had told me. They usually stop her, tell her

it's OK. They calm her down, give her coffee or something. She tells

them I'm a behavior problem, and she cries. They stare at me, shake

their heads, and suck their tongues. Sometimes we have to really trick

them if they're really mad by spanking me again. Sometimes not in the

back private room, but with everyone seeing. It works 'cause they

never call the police on me. But when we get back to the car she

doesn't drive away fast and laugh. She stays mad, sometimes for a day

or two, not speaking to me at all, not giving me any of what she had to

buy, making me be in the back and out of her sight. I know it's not

real, though, I remind myself she's just tricking them in case they

have 'eyes in the back of their heads' like her father, and maybe their

eyes went in our car.

Sometimes when she stops at a bar, she comes out and goes in his truck.

"Man don't drive a truck, can't drive home a fuck," I whisper her rhyme

while they drive away. But I know how to go with the flashlight from

under the seat when everyone is gone and it's quiet, just like we do

together; going around back, digging into the bags and finding food

'hardly bit, not wet with spit'. When I do it alone I pretend she's

next to me being lookout. I even whisper to her about what I find.

"Bag of pretzels."

"That'll do us fine. What else ya got there, kid?" I make her say.

Then there's the one she married. I stay in his apartment while they

drive up to Atlantic City for their honeymoon. They're supposed to be

gone for two nights. The door is locked with a key on the inside as

well as out, which makes me feel safer. But as the nights keep going

by and my Kraft singles go down, even the end pieces of Wonder are

gone, I watch out the back window as the garbage men load up the bags I

can't get into.

I keep all the lights on at night and sleep in the day after my

favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon show. After four nights I know they aren't

coming back, so I stand on a chair and draw pictures of her on the

white walls with a black marker. I do it all night until the first

violet blur of morning creeping in lets me feel my hand is cramped and

see the walls are covered.

After six nights he comes home without her. "She married me and run

off when I runned out of money," he says, his head in his hands. He

says nothing about the walls, even though I have already prepared and

stand holding a belt, doubled over. He only cries looking at the

potato figures of her stuck flat on his walls. While he cries I pull

the cellophane film off the last cheese slice, eat it, and go to sleep

even though the moon is still a yellowish scar in all the black.

I wake up screaming; the crows' red wings flash over my eyes as he

pulls my legs apart, his hot breath against my neck, claws push my face

down into the pillow. And for the first time they peck at me, and it's

worse than I ever imagined. It's a drill blade twisting and hollowing

me out between my legs, and he cries her name again and again in my ear

until it bleeds.

I stop trying to crawl away. I float up with my marker and draw her on

the ceiling whenever the crows attack again.

The towel under me is turning crimson and soggy like tomato bread

soap.

"Les' go," he says when it's night again, and dresses me, putting a new

towel on me instead of my underwear, inside my pants. He carries me to

the car, where I fall against the wall waiting for him to unlock the

door. He drives me in our car she'd left, not his truck.

We drive a long time and turn onto a dirt road.

Suddenly the car stops. "Sorry," he says, takes the flashlight from

under the seat, and leaves. I pull myself up and watch the torch he

carries swing over the crowd of skinny trees like a flame scanning a

matchbook. I stare until the glow of light is gone, only the funneled

moon through too many trees.

A flash in my eyes blinds me, but I can hear them. "Nurse, hold him

still now!" Another flash. I struggle, but I'm held firm. "Turn him

round." I am moved to my stomach, my legs held apart. Another flash

behind me. I squint past the floating spots and see two policemen

across from me, standing, frowning, and drinking from steaming paper

cups. I scream and kick. "Help us out here, Officer, if you don't

mind." One moves forward, putting down his cup, and presses down on my

back. Another flash. "To the side, turn him." My body is turned and

held sideways on the white paper spread beneath me.

"What's your name?" the cop says, his stale breath coating my face, I

kick out hard as I can. "Goddamn it! He hit the camera! Hold him

still!" The hands clamp down on me, pushing my head and chest down

hard onto the mushy vinyl tabletop, the paper ripped and soaked from my

drool. "What's your name?!" the cop says again. "They found ID in

the car?" Another flash above me. I see my clothes crumpled in a

corner, and the red-stained towel pokes out from a trash basket. I'm

naked.

"He needs stitches, you about done?" Another flash.

The cop blocking the door, still drinking, rests his other hand on his

gun. I scream again. "Nurse, restraints!"

"One more photograph! Turn him sideways ... spread his legs ...

wider ... perfect, OK, great! Thanks, guys. Hope you get the bastard

that did this, see ya."

"Let's get these restraints goin'."

I'm pushed onto my stomach, my arms are pulled out, as are my legs, and

soft cuffs freeze them to the board. Something is sliding under me,

lifting my hips, and straps are pulled across my legs, back, and head.

Voices rumble around me. "Tell me your name!" the cop standing above

me orders. "You want us to catch this guy?!"

"OK, you're gonna feel a sharp stick," the doctor says.

And off in the distance I hear the beating, "OK, one more stick."

of their wings ...

"And one last stick."

and the room bleeds with their jagged red feathers "OK, here we go

..." and razor beaks filled with

"Gonna fix you right up."

parts of me.