The woman in Van Nuys has a red bucket full of roses, enough for each visitor to this crook of the strip mall. Approximately 5,200 girls go to Van Nuys each year, give or take emergencies and second opinions and holidays; Van Nuys is not open on most holidays. There are the most girls on Thursdays and the least girls on Mondays. Sunday is Van Nuys’ day off when the girls stay home and the woman goes to church.
There were parts of Van Nuys that didn’t want to be Van Nuys, and so they left under the pretense of fleeing a paralyzed industry. The exodus began in the ’90s with the collapse of the General Motors plant—where her husband had found his first job—and they have been leaving since. One community traded zip codes to join Sherman Oaks; as the population depleted, the cars for sale on Auto Row went from luxury to used.
The woman in Van Nuys did not join the exodus; someone needed to greet the girls. She isn’t needed in Sherman Oaks or Encino, nor across the mountains in Beverly Hills, where her skills would tuck her away in gleaming stainless-steel kitchens. Fifteen years in this city and the woman in Van Nuys has never so much as seen inside the triangular town of Swarovski palm trees and overheated patio dining. She has seen the Hollywood sign, in glimpses—the H here, the double-L, double-O. She glimpses it through the gauzy gray that drapes the tallest building at the private university downtown to the tallest building on the backlots. She is not impressed with the glimpses she has seen, but she has never made it out to the basin on a clear day.
The woman in Van Nuys knows she and her husband would be better off if she rode the bus to Encino or Sherman Oaks or even Beverly Hills to push babies in canopied carriages. That’s where the highest-paying, but not necessarily the best, employers are. We could move away from the freeways to the sea, her husband says, if you took care of them babies. Alejandro’s wife goes on trips sometimes, trips with the family and them babies. To the islands, Jamaica, or the Bahamas. They let her relax, her husband insists, as the woman in Van Nuys rinses her roses in the back room of his gas station.
We make do, the woman in Van Nuys says, we make do.
They have a modest apartment off the boulevard, a one-bedroom with a separate entrance leading to an alleyway advertised as a patio, where, in the morning, she waters her miniature planters. At night, she mistakes planes for stars.
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The woman in Van Nuys has a red bucket full of roses. The red bucket is now held together with packing tape, having been snapped in half during an argument with a young man who littered her roses across the asphalt. He threatened her with fists and keys and 911 calls. When the officers arrived, the woman in Van Nuys was taken away, and her red bucket was marked as evidence.
There were the girls you approached in Van Nuys and the girls you didn’t.
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The woman in Van Nuys is quite good at counting the roses. She has a system that she uses each morning: count five by the bud, tie them together at the stem, and place them stem-first into the bucket. On the rare occasion when she counts too many, she brings the roses to the church at dusk, lays them before Our Lady of Guadalupe, and murmurs a Glory Be to the Father and to the Son—her Gabriel. When had she last seen him? His birthday had passed, but the bus ride seemed longer now that her husband would not follow her to the Other Valley east of Los Angeles. She has abandoned praying for her husband’s strength.
Gabriel did not make a sound at his birth, born twisted and blue. The doctor said his heart had stopped days earlier, but the woman in Van Nuys did not trust the doctor or the nurses who clamped her in restraints and said there was nothing left to be done. As her husband fed her a hamburger in pieces between walls painted yellow by fluorescents, the woman in Van Nuys wondered if the doctor ever bothered to wake Gabriel up, get a good look at his eyes, or lay an ear to his chest and catch a pulse and count the spaces between:
one, two, three
one, two, three
one, two.
She left the hospital the next day with a poorly stuffed teddy bear and a death certificate.
The bus ride seems longer, too, in this heatwave. The rose she salvaged curls from bud to stem. It’s more than a mile from the bus stop to the wrought-iron gates, and the woman in Van Nuys is no longer; she is the woman in the Other Valley, the one to the east, and she has lost her way. With the hills cast in half-light, she forgets which row of graves she needs to follow, then turn, follow, then turn, staggering through neglected paths until she comes across the tombstone with a single date. She straightens the rose before laying it on the ground, which is as dead and yellow as those hospital walls. She can say the rosary in full without her husband here. Chant its glorious mysteries for Gabriel. For the girls who go to Van Nuys. But today, she’ll rest, not kneel, and wonder about the stone cherub hovering overhead, how the roundness of his cheeks would never give way to middle age.
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Gabriel was going to be a doctor. That was the plan, one that was made when the woman went to the Other Van Nuys, the one on the far side of Auto Row between a dry cleaners and a pawn shop. This Van Nuys had less space but not fewer visitors, with girls squatting against glass and cinder block, checkered backpacks at their knees. The woman in Other Van Nuys was older than these girls, most of whom bounced babies on their swollen stomachs. The woman in Other Van Nuys had nothing to bounce, so she sketched on the back of her medical surveys, which were dotted with disembodied question marks. Her family has few medical records.
In the exam room, a doorless broom closet lined with stenciled Easter chicks, the woman in Other Van Nuys saw Gabriel move. It was more of a flutter, really, than a jab or a kick, Gabriel flexing. This will be you here, the woman in Other Van Nuys said to the fluttering Gabriel. She pointed to the broom closet but not to the Easter chicks. Gabriel received his first medical record, which the woman in Other Van Nuys placed in a crisp yellow folder from the ninety-nine-cent store. Everything was in order.
The woman in Other Van Nuys went to the pawn shop. Cash for gold, cash for gold. She slid her crucifix across the counter for seventy dollars. Gabriel was going to be a doctor—Her earrings? They are so beautiful, such fine gold—that was the plan.
One letter at a time, she said it to Gabriel in her belly: U-C-L-A. Over and over, a rhymeless lullaby with no broken cradles or mockingbirds. Sometimes, when the air was heavy, and the basin-folk stayed put, the woman in Van Nuys rode the bus through the Sepulveda Pass to Westwood Village. She crossed in front of the preening storefronts and turned up her nose at their sidewalk sales. Years from now, these streets would be Gabriel’s to keep. He would live not far away, up the hill on a street with permit-only parking—not that he would need it, with his three-car garage. Gabriel, doctor. In a long, long coat with rolled-up sleeves. That was the plan.
On the weekends, her husband would want to travel to the well-lit, well-kept section of Lankershim Boulevard to browse those stores that sell ten variations on one household good, but the woman in Van Nuys always refused. Instead, she donates her husband’s spare bills to the church’s poor box, and he sleeps in on Sunday mornings. Oh, the Padre tried to absolve it. A Catholic can have a rich life without children, but we know it is not a very Catholic life, and we know it is not a very rich one either, and she’ll have no one tell her these things that she knew and knew that they knew. The woman in Van Nuys is not that kind of woman—the kind who feigned pride while other women took pity. She would continue to sit in the front pew each Sunday out of blind ritual, shielded from the other women by maroon lace. Black would be too much; the woman in Van Nuys is not a proper widow, not with a perfectly healthy husband whose sole suffering is a complacent understanding of life’s shortcomings. She is a woman whom God disrespected. The plan does not change. He wasn’t there on the back of her medical surveys in Other Van Nuys, guiding her pencil as she scrawled Gabriel
in a long, long coat
with rolled-up sleeves.
And she would chant this in place of the Our Father, but you can’t mourn a plan the way you can mourn a dream. This much she’s learned.
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The woman in Van Nuys doesn’t carry signs. This is what sets her apart from The Others. They come to Van Nuys on Wednesdays and Saturdays in a white van coated with rust from the fender to the trunk. They congregate just a few steps away, trading handfuls of trail mix and kettle corn for her bite-sized watermelon chunks. The woman in Van Nuys makes it clear that she has carved out her own space on the asphalt. She will never use their glossy and graphic signs nor give them a rose, not even after Van Nuys has locked its doors and polished all its metal. The woman in Van Nuys sees their signs as showboating. The woman in Van Nuys believes in truth, but not the kind that can be blown up and printed.
The Others were always men. The elder ones have skin as anemic as their feathery hair; the younger ones are strong and tan with pale, unkind eyes. The elders do the yelling while the younger ones do their bidding. The younger ones often used cameras and trailed the girls through their viewfinders across the parking lot. Sometimes, they stick pamphlets and prayer cards onto fire prodders, which they flaunt at their sides like staffs. The woman in Van Nuys often wondered what they would do to her if she weren’t on their side of the blacktop.
Today, it’s the fire prodders. The Others prod prod prod into open car windows, their pamphlets flapping, and shout Take Take Take. The girls shield their faces and moan between spread fingers. The girls hate The Others, and The Others aren’t here for the girls.
This comforts the woman in Van Nuys, who rushes to steer the girls away from The Others. The Others continue to prod prod prod, shouting Save Save Save until the next car comes along, a blue Honda Civic stamped with a peace sign bumper sticker. The Others won’t like this, but they don’t like much outside their world. Later, The Others will chip away at the sticker with their house keys and replace it with one of their own.
The woman in Van Nuys always greets the girls with a smile. There were the girls you approached in Van Nuys, and the girls you didn’t, and the girls you did would cling to her pillowy pink cardigan as the woman accompanied them across the parking lot. If the woman in Van Nuys is successful, at least one girl will take a rose and return home with no stories to tell.
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When rain comes to Van Nuys, it comes as a flood, surging through the concrete washes and leaving debris on the streets. The woman in Van Nuys can’t rest beneath the awning—she must always stand fifty feet away—so she ties plastic bags to her white sneakers and balances a paisley-printed umbrella on her hip. In the days of one-hour photos, the attendant would let her share his booth, but it’s gone now, save for a few crumbling cinder blocks outlined in scarlet paint.
From her post beneath her umbrella, the woman in Van Nuys watches a girl in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, her wet eggplant-purple curls sticking to her neck. The woman in Van Nuys knows she could be a very pretty girl with a better outlook. A very pretty girl away from Van Nuys, a place so consumed with ugly appearances. The woman in Van Nuys grabs the girl by her arm—a very pretty girl, or she could be—hands her a rose—she will be pretty, God wills it, in the OtherVan Nuys—and steers her across the parking lot.
But it’s the wrong girl. There were the girls you approached in Van Nuys and the girls you didn’t, because the girls you didn’t have men parking the cars. These men were protective in a perverse way, keeping one eye in the rearview mirror as they straightened the wheels. You did not talk to their girls.
But the woman in Van Nuys did more than just talk, and this girl’s man knew. Before she strikes the pavement, the woman in Van Nuys thinks about Alejandro’s wife, how she once told her, while they felt for bruised fruit at the farmer’s market, that the girls were willing, sometimes confessing, in that half-minute before the men arrived to usher them inside. The woman in Van Nuys knew these girls were like roses before they opened themselves up to insects and nostrils and gas station attendants. And Alejandro’s wife had said, squeezing a peach until it oozed, that roses must be picked.
Blood seeps from her left nostril, filling the cracks in her lips. The girl’s man flings the umbrella handle onto the drenched asphalt. The girl’s man is bearded and waxy, the color of skim milk left on the clearance rack, but the woman on the parking lot in Van Nuys sees only scarlet and her perfectly counted roses strewn about like street-fair confetti.
The employees come to the door in suits and scrubs, cell phones pressed against their cheeks. They don’t leave the bulletproof glass. They’re calling the officers. Today is not the day for the officers. It is never the day for the officers. The woman in Van Nuys must leave her roses on the asphalt. You can’t take it with you, isn’t that what they say here?
At the edge of the parking lot, the woman in Van Nuys throws her red bucket into the dumpster.
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It’s too muddy for the cemetery, and the woman in Van Nuys is not dressed for church, so she retraces her steps along the boulevard, stopping only to give a long-haired man, his jeans perforated along the inseam, her last dollar bill. The salesmen on Auto Row huddle in their cars and flick at Hawaiian air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirrors. They would never unlock the doors for her. The woman in Van Nuys has worked furiously to avoid being the worst on the streets, but she cannot trick a salesman.
By the time the woman in Van Nuys reaches her apartment, only thin shreds remain from the plastic bags tied around her ankles; her sneakers are no longer white. The rain has washed away the scarlet, leaving only a crusted blood ring around her lips. She flicks at it like the salesmen with their Hawaiian air fresheners, brown flecks burrowing beneath her too-long fingernails.
Bangs and stomps and the overtures of children’s cartoons pour out from under her neighbors’ doors. The woman in Van Nuys doesn’t know when she last walked these stucco halls during the daytime or saw her neighbors. 1A is unemployed. 1C has two small children and no husband. 2A, who speaks in a funny twangy way, is new to Van Nuys and, it seems, the world. 2B emerges only to walk his stout, snippy terrier. None of them have ever called her by her real name, though 2B once came close.
On the alleyway “patio,” the woman in Van Nuys removes the plastic streamers from her sneakers. Her plants are suffocating, the overflow water splashing the cigarette butts left by 1A onto the cement. The woman in Van Nuys once wrote 1A a note with no punctuation, and 1A tossed that into the planter, too.
The woman in Van Nuys circles the kitchen island, stepping over paper bags buoyed with apple cores and coffee grinds. She irons out today’s paper with her palms, spending time on each headline to test her English as she brews coffee she will not drink. Three dead in a landslide. A string of suicide bombers, a riot ending in tear gas. She removes the atlas from the cabinet to look up the whereabouts of Turkey. When she has gone from foreign affairs to obituaries, the woman in sopping sweatpants in a stucco apartment building on a street with no outlet swept under the 101 in Van Nuys folds the newspaper in quarters, moves to the couch, and watches a bare space meant for a television set as the bangs and stomps and the drifting overtures of children’s cartoons overtake the room.
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It’s recital season in the Valley, and the woman in Van Nuys has run out of roses. She has a JCPenney shopping bag full of white carnations—enough, she made sure, for each visitor to the crook of this strip mall. A blonde woman filling up her SUV at the gas station had said sunflowers were the flowers brides want now; carnations have gone the way of the orchid.
The woman in Van Nuys shuffles along the boulevard in chunky sandals with a low heel. Van Nuys in the morning is always the best time. Steam rises from the streets and swivels around her ankles well before Van Nuys opens its doors. In Chilpancingo, there was no steam, just sweat and heat. But this isn’t just the average Van Nuys steam on an average Van Nuys morning when the average number of girls would go to the very average Van Nuys. The woman in Van Nuys sees their white van first: The Others are here even though it’s neither Wednesday or Saturday.
Today, the woman must stand much more than fifty feet away as Van Nuys collapses. Red and orange flames ricochet off the broken windows. The officers assure her that it’s too early for the girls; Van Nuys was empty, is empty. It is not the day for the officers, never the day for the officers, but the woman in Van Nuys will listen to these officers because today also isn’t the day for The Others. They have gone amok like she knew they would. The Others never came for the girls.
The officers flatten The Others against their white van and clasp their dirty wrists with zip ties. The Others thrash and thrust, wanting a proud glimpse of their work, their skill, before they are carted downtown and then, to Victorville. The Others chant Save Save Save in lighter tones, Save Save Save we did. The woman in Van Nuys does not hear The Others. There is no Van Nuys. This is not what she wanted. This is what sets her apart from The Others. This is what, perhaps, makes her The Other.
At the bus stop, the woman in Van Nuys sets down her shopping bag and rests her elbows on her swollen knees. Maybe she’ll go to Sherman Oaks or Encino or even Beverly Hills and join Alejandro’s wife. The pay would be good, more than enough for what she and her husband have now. After a few months of saving, they can move to a two-bedroom apartment with a porch and a yard or, at worst, a concrete balcony in direct sunlight. She can replace her miniature planters with full-sized pots crafted out of mosaic glass, grow lettuce and red peppers, and, when the Valley cools off, an eggplant or two. And she can travel. Take her first plane ride and saunter through those X-ray scanners shoeless but with pride, flashing a boarding pass to Jamaica or the Bahamas, where she can walk along the white-white sands with someone else’s baby on her hip.
Maybe they will say she has a knack for this.
Maybe they will say she has a calling.
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Lauren Barbato’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Blackbird, North American Review, Cola Literary Review, phoebe, Modern Language Studies, and The Razor, among others. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in religion at Temple University and teaches in the gender studies department at the University of Delaware.