Armadillos Read online

It rained three days solid and the only luck I had was finding a decent size of gray tarp to hide under, though in truth all the difference it made was I got wet from the feet up instead of the head down. The cardboard I laid out on was soaked through. My ass felt like a sponge.

  I was hunkered down in a little courtyard surrounded by offices. The only way in was through a back lane, the likes of which only rats and dogs might nuzzle down. I slipped down after dark and felt safer there than the guys I’d seen in doorways being kicked and spat at and moved on by the law. I crouched under that tarp like a mouse in a hole and made like the sound of rain popping on plastic was popcorn in my kitchen. Jojo used to complain about my overactive imagination but out here I was learning to use it for good. I closed my eyes as the rain came down and the smells returned to me, clear as comfort; smells a body never forgets, a toasty, buttery sweetness down my throat. She, standing with one hand on her hip, the other holding the lid of the pan down while an army of jumping jacks pinged inside. She, telling me to fetch the plastic bowl with the blue strawberries on to put the popcorn in. She, beside me on the couch watching fuzzy Cosby Show reruns on the old portable, and outside a storm whipping up to keep the men gathering scattered sheep for longer.

  The rain was soaking through the tarp, there must have been holes there somewhere, and I was only getting wetter and wetter. Eventually I got to thinking I might as well just take a shower right there in that courtyard. I knew it was stupid, because I didn’t rightly know when I might get dry again, but I eased the tarp back and lifted my head to the heavy sky. The water on my face felt good, something natural in the most unnatural of places. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me.

  Thought I heard something. Snapped my eyes open and looked quick around the courtyard but the rain was coming down so hard it was difficult to see. Seemed I was alone but still, I had a bad feeling. At last, a voice cut across the night.

  ‘Take your clothes off!’

  I dived straight back under the tarp and balled myself up underneath it, willing myself invisible. No one approached but I’d definitely heard it. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and darkness.

  But nothing happened and I got to thinking I was imagining again. I peeked back out. There, spinning like some ghost or angel or moonchild, was this creature all white and glowing in the night. I counted two arms, two legs and a head before I realized I was looking at another human being. A female one at that.

  ‘Take your clothes off!’ She screeched and spun round in the rain, arms stretched out at her sides, naked as a newborn, cackling like a hyena. Outside of a dream it was the strangest sight I ever did see.

  I did not take my clothes off.

  Instead I sat dumbstruck as this white witch skipped and jumped and hopped all over the place. She had long, crazy pink hair and she whirled it around so much it came to look like the whirring blades of a helicopter. She splashed in puddles and came close enough for me to make out the blue Care Bear tattooed on her ankle. Then she was gone, dipped behind a rusty yellow dumpster, and then there she was again, flipping over the side and down into it.

  I sat there half blind with rain wondering what the hell I’d just witnessed. A moment later, a big bag fell out of the dumpster and landed on the ground with a thud. There was some scuffling and some swearing, and then two white hands appeared over the edge and hauled their body back over into the courtyard. She was dressed this time, wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She tucked a jacket in between her legs, leaned over sideways and began dragging her fingers through her hair. I still hadn’t budged an inch and was now sitting in a puddle which threatened to become a lake. My jaw hung so low that if a boat happened to sail by it would have sailed straight on into my mouth.

  ‘My name’s Freak,’ she said, tying her hair back in a tight ponytail. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Uh. Aggie.’

  ‘That your real name?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Well, you’re dumb for telling me your real name, Aggie. Don’t tell nobody else your real name, y’hear?’

  I nodded.

  She slipped her jacket on and pulled some jewelry from its pockets. Grimacing, she shoved her dangly earrings in, and her plastic bangles made a noise that later on I could tell from fifty yards. She had at least one ring for every finger, including her thumbs.

  ‘I been watching you two days, Aggie.’

  She glanced up at me expecting some reaction but far as I was aware my face was still frozen in solid shock.

  ‘I been living in that dumpster whole time you been here and you had no clue. What if I’d been some bad guy, huh? I could have taken you like that.’ She snapped her fingers and with the other hand she made like she was drawing a blade across her throat. She raised her eyebrows at me and nodded, waiting for a response. I nodded back.

  ‘You gotta sharpen up, Aggie. You’re new, huh?’

  ‘I been living out country ways,’ I said, offended she thought I was a newbie. Like to see her sleeping with snakes and spiders.

  ‘Country, huh. Well, this aint no country. Things are different here. Jesus. What piece of shit is this?’

  She marched over and snatched the tarp.

  ‘Look, it’s all ripped up, y’all. This bitch aint never gonna keep you dry.’

  Too damp to be angry, too cold to care, I let her scrunch up my little home and toss it aside. She didn’t look too dry herself and I told her so but she didn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘This weather’s a real goddam turd-floater. How about we go find somewhere better?’

  She stood over me, crazy, scary, different. When she stretched out her hand, I reached up and took it.

  8

  Freak talked a little bit like she was some sergeant in the army. When she asked a question, it came out like a command. She was only little but seemed to me she’d been practicing making herself big as possible. She swaggered to go forwards. One foot pointed to two o’clock while the other went to ten. Made no sense to me but that’s just how Freak was. Told me she was eighteen but I reckoned she wasn’t much older than me. Claimed she wasn’t a runaway; she was just out having an adventure. When I asked if her parents didn’t mind, she told me her family were good, clean-living folks who reckoned it was fine for her to do some traveling, so long as she didn’t forget who she was or where she came from. Strange, since all I wanted to do was exactly that. Next time I opened my mouth to speak, she told me to quit with the questions.

  But she knew where she was taking me that first night. She led me through the wet city streets until the skyscrapers were behind us and the roads gave way to smaller complexes. She took me through streets with names all misleading; Pine, Maple and Beechnut, but hardly a tree in sight. Reckon we walked an hour before turning into a modern development, so new they hadn’t even finished building it. The house we stopped at was the nearest thing to a palace I’d ever seen: a townhouse with three storeys, four if you counted the storage room at the top. Looked so grand from the outside I near enough bolted, but Freak grabbed my arm and dragged me up the six or so steps to the front door. She banged on it hard but the place stayed silent.

  ‘Goddam it.’ She peered through the opaque glass and banged again. Curtains in the house next door twitched and a woman peeped out, face more miserable than the weather. Freak flipped her the bird and she disappeared, pulling the curtain tight behind her.

  ‘Adrian!’ Freak yelled. ‘Open up!’

  The house stayed dark.

  ‘I know he’s in there,’ said Freak, and she continued to bash away on the door like she was trying to knock it down. More curtains opened and silhouettes stood watching us from windows up and down the street.

  ‘Maybe we should go,’ I said, just as a window above our heads flew open. I tried to see through the driving rain but all I could make out was a white face and long black hair.

  ‘Piss off, Freak-face,’ it said. ‘You’re not wanted.’

  Weirdest accent I ever heard.
r />   ‘Aw, come on, Ade. We’re freezing our asses off here.’

  She wasn’t lying. The rain hadn’t eased off one bit. Freak rattled with shivers and I wasn’t far from joining her. Our itsy faces must have looked like two drowned moons looking up at him.

  ‘Who’s your friend? Another little thief?’

  ‘Naw, Ade. Don’t be like that. This is Aggie. She’s fresh. Needs our help.’

  ‘Need our help, do you?’

  I looked from him to her and back at him and I shrugged. Freak jogged up and down on the spot. ‘Aw, come on, Ade, just open up. Please.’

  ‘You have rotten taste in friends, do you know that, Aggie?’

  The holler that came from Freak almost sent me down the stairs in shock. She threw herself to the ground and thrashed like a toddler in a supermarket. Her head smacked off the concrete floor and her fists pummelled the iron stair railings. I didn’t know what the hell to do with her. I looked up to the window for guidance but the guy had gone and the window was closed. I tried to protect her head by cradling it in my hands but all I got was a punch in the mouth for my efforts. The neighbors were coming out to watch on their porches when the guy opened the door and hissed, ‘Freak! The fucking neighbors!’

  Her whole body went limp. I was fixing to ask someone to call an ambulance when her eyes snapped open and she flashed a grin. She hopped right up from the ground and strolled through the front door like she was some rich lady and Ade just the doorman at a fancy hotel.

  I stood alone on the steps, unsure of what I was getting into. I was soaked to the skin and so cold it hurt. Ade stared at me, a tall, gangling kind of guy with matted black hair and clothes scruffy as mine. Not exactly what you’d call respectable.

  ‘Cell phones are banned.’ His weird voice again. ‘If you have a cell, you have to leave. Now.’

  ‘I don’t have a cell,’ I replied, confused.

  ‘No cell. Are you sure about that?’

  I shrugged and nodded. It wasn’t a hard question. I spread my arms out. All I had was a plastic bag with a change of clothes in.

  ‘Mister, if I had a cell phone I can tell you I wouldn’t be holding on to it. I’d be selling it to buy me some new shoes.’

  He looked down at my sodden tennis shoes. When I wiggled my toes, it felt like they were in an overcrowded goldfish bowl.

  ‘You do need new shoes,’ he agreed.

  ‘Indeed I do, sir.’

  He stared at my shoes, as though he was real sorry for them. Then he looked up and said, ‘If I find you with a cell or a laptop or any type of electronic device, you’ll be asked to leave. Got it?’

  He was a whole new type of crazy, but I was so cold I just nodded.

  He glanced back up the street and then up to the sky before moving away from the doorway. ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Are you in or out?’

  The door he held back was thick and made of solid wood. The hallway inside was dim.

  I was trying to decide when a bunch of loud folks came running down the street and up the stairs I was on. They pushed past me, and amid a chorus of Hey Ade’s, a light snapped on in the hallway. The place came alive with the sight of people shaking water off their shoulders. A pizza box was opened up and the contents disappeared in a flash. Freak came running out to see what was going on and when she saw me still on the stoop she reached out and dragged me in.

  ‘Sorry, I should have warned you about him,’ she hissed in my ear. ‘You did right to say you had no cell. We all do that.’

  She pushed a towel into my hands and as I wiped my face and squeezed my hair dry, the door clicked closed behind me.

  9

  The hall alone was the size of my entire downstairs back home. A staircase made of solid oak twisted up from the middle and doors went off at every side. The smell of paint hung thick in the air, and the walls were decorated with graffiti and stencils. No furniture to speak of and no carpet either. I followed the crowd through to the back of the house and found the kitchen. It was even bigger than the hall, with a breakfast bar that wouldn’t have been out of place in any drinking joint. The back wall was made entirely of glass so you could look out at the garden.

  ‘We got a pool,’ said Freak in my ear.

  ‘Seriously?’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Freak. ‘Aint got no water in it, and it’s full of junk, but it’s there. Sure beats a soaking-wet alley, huh?’

  And then just like a truck had knocked her into next week – she was gone. Shouts and jeers started up and I was bumped and shoved as people crowded around. Through the huddle I caught glimpses of Freak being hauled around the room by this beast of a woman, all chains and big black biker boots. She’d wrapped Freak’s hair around her fists and tugged her clean off the ground. Freak’s arms flew all over the place but she couldn’t land a touch on her. Looked to me like her head couldn’t stay on her shoulders much longer. I pushed my way to the front to try to help but by then they’d stopped. Freak was on her back with a boot on her chest.

  ‘Where’s my money, you fucking whore?’ grunted Beast Woman. She had silver bracelets jangling up her arms, and a tattooed snake that slithered its way down from under the sleeves of her T-shirt.

  ‘Fuck you, Marjorie,’ Freak moaned.

  Beast Woman lifted her leg and looked fit to stamp down when Ade appeared out of nowhere and pulled her back. Freak was on her feet in a flash, spitting nails.

  ‘Dirty fucking bitch, coming at me from behind like that.’ She lunged for Beast Woman, but Ade grabbed the back of her jacket and stepped in between them. ‘Fucking behave!’ he roared. He was such a puny-looking guy I was amazed when they both shut up and calmed down for him.

  ‘What you let her back in for, Ade?’ demanded Beast Woman. ‘She’s no good.’

  Freak let out her ponytail and shook her hair loose. A little bit of blood oozed from a cut somewhere in her scalp.

  ‘I got your fucking money, Marj. Here.’ Freak took a wallet from her jeans pocket and threw it in the woman’s face. It fell to the floor and the two of them stood, each willing the other to pick it up again. It was Ade who settled it.

  ‘Pick it up, Marjorie. Count it.’

  Freak kind of snorted as the woman bent to pick up the wallet. ‘There’s extra in there for goodwill,’ she said.

  ‘For interest,’ Beast Woman growled.

  ‘Is it all there?’ Ade asked. Beast Woman nodded.

  ‘Freak, you need to apologize to Marjorie now. Do it.’

  Freak’s face turned blacker than an ace of spades.

  ‘She got her fucking money. What more does she want?’

  ‘I need an apology, Freak. I need an apology real bad.’ Marjorie drawled the words, clearly mocking, but Ade seemed to miss the tone. Folks around us were starting to laugh a little.

  ‘I’m fucking sorry, okay?’ Freak said, looking more mad than sad.

  ‘And, Marjorie, your friends need to leave. Now.’

  The laughing faces changed to dismay.

  ‘Fuck sake.’ Beast Woman muttered, as some of the crowd shuffled forward. Ade stood back to let them pass, while Freak smiled at Beast Woman and Beast Woman continued to glower.

  ‘Right. Everybody’s friends again. Good.’ Ade clapped his hands. Marjorie barged her shoulder into Freak as she left the room. The others drifted off after her until it was just the three of us.

  ‘Freak, see me later for a refresher course on the rules of this place,’ Ade said.

  Freak shrugged and sucked her teeth. He turned his attention to me.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not usually this exciting. What did you say your name was?’

  I’d already told him Aggie but the fight had shocked me and Freak’s words from way back in the alley were ringing in my ears. Don’t tell anyone your real name. I heard myself say, ‘Jojo,’ and Freak exploded into exaggerated laughter.

  ‘When I said don’t tell people your real name, I didn’t mean make one up after you’ve already told them!’ she hoot
ed.

  Heat and redness prickled up my neck into my face. I managed to stammer out my name.

  Freak howled. ‘Told you she was fresh.’

  I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. Ade looked real pissed and told Freak to can it, she was on her last warning. She shut up. He turned his attention to me.

  ‘Alright. This is how it works. Do you know what a squat is?’ I shook my head and he started talking about something called adverse possession. Freak leaned against the kitchen counter and rolled her eyes. I zoned out until I heard him say, ‘I’m the boss. That a problem for you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good, but don’t me call me sir. Look, I have no problem throwing you out if I have to. This is our home. We treat it with respect. No mess, no thieving. As for our neighbors, we blend in with them. We don’t alienate them.’

  I looked away from his wannabe dreadlock hair and Freak’s mane of pink that made her look like something from My Little Pony. I nodded. ‘Blend in. Got it.’

  ‘Main rule is: any trouble and you’re out on your arse.’

  ‘Arse?’ I couldn’t help myself, his voice was too weird. Freak started giggling again and he just looked even more pissed and walked out.

  ‘Arse?’ I said again, making Freak laugh even more.

  ‘Shut up, he’s British. Can’t help it. Least he speaks American. Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.’

  We were to treat it with respect, but as Freak showed me around it was clear the place was pretty fucked already. All cables and wires had been cut, whether they were hooked up to something or not. Power was limited and came from a generator out back. The windows on the upper floors were covered by silver foil.

  ‘Ade’s nervy.’ Freak shrugged.

  It was a house intended for rich folk. Ceilings so high you could almost fly a kite in there.

  I ran my fingers over the smooth wooden handrail and imagined walking down the stairs in a Cinderella gown.

  ‘Hey, daydreamer. Up here.’

  I followed Freak up to the final landing.

  ‘You’ll be in here with me,’ she said. ‘It’s small, but at least you won’t end up sharing with anyone else. Careful coming in. The floorboards aint nailed down.’