White Oleander

The rest of the prison sleeps fitfully, rocked in dreams made vivid by captivity. I know what they're dreaming. I read them like novels, it's better than Joyce. They're dreaming of men who beat them, a backhand, unsubtle kick to the groin. Men who clench their teeth before striking, they hiss, "Look what you 're making me do. " The women cringe even in sleep, under the stares of men's eyeballs roadmapped with veins, popped with rage, the whites the color of mayonnaise left out for a week. One wonders how they could even see to deliver their blows. But women 's fear is a magnet. I hope you don 't know this. It draws the fist, the hands of men, hard as God's.

 

Others are luckier. They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.

 

Some dream of crime, guns and money. Vials of dreams that disappeared like late snow. I am there. I see the face of a surprised ARCO attendant just at the moment it spreads into a collage of bright blood and bone.

 

I lie down in the cherished apartment, its white carpet, garbage disposal, dishwasher, security parking. I too cheat the old couple out of their savings and celebrate over a bottle of Mumm 's and Sevruga on toast. I carefully take a sliding glass door off the track of a two-story house in Mar Vista. I buy a fur coat at Saks with a stolen American Express credit card. It's the best Russian sable, golden as brandy.

 

Best are the freedom dreams. Steering wheels so real in the hand, the spring of the accelerator, gas tanks marked FULL. Wind through open windows, we don't use the air conditioner, we suck in the live air going by. We take the freeways, using the fast lanes, watch for signs saying San Francisco, New Orleans. We pass trucks on great interstates, truck drivers blowing their airhorns. We drink sodas at gas stations, eat burgers rare at roadside cafes, order extra everything. We listen to country music stations, we pick up Tijuana, Chicago, Atlanta, GA, and sleep in motels where the clerk never even looks up, just takes the money.