Anatomy of a Girl Gang (9781551525303) Read Online Free PDF Page A

glass and rigs and shit all over the damn place. I need somethin for my feet. I’m goin through a dumpster and I find a grocery bag, eh, kinda heavy, maybe a little slimy. Could be somethin to eat, I think. My stomach’s rumblin, all hungry and gettin excited. I open the bag. What’s inside? A newborn baby, cold and grey. Its blank blue eyes starin straight up at me, all glassy like. Reminds me of this doll I used to have when I was a kid.
    I dropped the bag and threw up on the pavement beside it. I walked and walked in the cold rain. Finally, I found a couple a garbage bags and some ripped up t-shirts in another dumpster, and I wrapped them around my feet. I walked around for the rest of the night in the freezin rain with these stupid dirty rags around my feet, just lookin for a fix or a bit of rock, a cigarette,just somethin, anythin, anythin at all. Because it’s so cold and hard out here and I got nothin. Not even shoes.
    I walked all night, no one would front me, no one would share what they had, and I had no cash cuz whoever took my shoes took alla that too. When the first light of morning burned through the clouds, I wandered down to the water and unwrapped my feet. They were bleedin and blistered, with bits of glass and stones stuck all in them and totally disgustin. I wanted to throw up again but there’s nothin left in me to come out. I washed my feet in the ocean. Stung like a motherfucker. I could feel the junk sickness settlin down on me. It’s heavy and dark, like a mean storm cloud. I knew then I needed some kinda change.
    There’s a drunk asleep on a bench in Crab Park. In his shoppin cart there’s a pair of shoes. They’re boy shoes, ugly as sin. They’re a couple sizes too big for me, but they’ll do. I didn’t feel too bad about takin them cuz he already had shoes on, so he don’t need them as bad as me.
    I went back to workin the strip, but it’s too early, there’s no one around. Stood around a couple hours and finally got a trick, a BJ.
    It’s twenty, I said as he’s puttin hisself back in his pants. He’s skinny and red-faced, with a dick like a pencil.
    He snorted. I’ll give you five bucks.
    But the price is twenty.
    Yeah, but my dog is prettier than you, he said, and shoved a crumpled-up five into my hand, leaned over me to open the car door, then pushed me out onto the street and pulled away.
    Does your dog give you blow jobs? I yelled after him. Pencil-dick prick!
    I bought a three-dollar rock and smoked it to my head. Then the sky clears up and the sun comes out some and I feel like eating.
    So I’m at the Carnegie, gettin a two-dollar lunch. A nice soup, a nice salad, nice bread. Then I see this little girl come in with her mom, little Native girl, and she’s got her dolly swingin from one arm and she’s holdin her mom’s hand with the other, and she’s gigglin and chatterin away and lookin up at her mom like … like she’s the only person in the wide world that matters. Her eyes all shiny and bright. Then suddenly, outta nowhere, I’m cryin into my soup. Just bawlin, eh. Like somethin inside me just broke, and I can’t take another minute of bein who I am: livin on the street, turnin tricks, shootin junk and coke, smokin crack, smokin meth, stayin up all damn night so nobody climbs on toppa me. I mean, it’s almost as bad as it was on the rez. I’m just so tired. I’m sick and I’m tired and my feet are bleedin and snot’s drippin down my face into my soup and I don’t even care. I let it drip. After awhile a fat white worker lady comes around and puts her hand on my shoulder and says, Do you want to go somewhere and talk, sweetie? And I hate that she calls me sweetie, cuz that’s what some of them tricks call me. Even though I try never to think about them or remember them, I can’t help seein some of their faces flash behind my eyes when she calls me