Zibby Mag

By Mary Otis

I’m standing on the rooftop of my 1920s Hollywood apartment building, the Afton Arms, and to the west I see a glint of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a hot April afternoon, and fretful Santa Ana winds churn and swirl around me. Palm trees creak and bow, and thin clouds skitter across the sky. I come to the roof to get perspective, literally and figuratively, and walking to the edge, I feel a rush of vertigo. A gust of wind pushes against my back, and if I’m not careful, it feels like I might fly over the side. I work in a local bookstore, and though I spend my days surrounded by words, I’m not a writer yet. I’m trying to decide whether to follow a boyfriend to Texas or stay in Los Angeles. I’m trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life.

The Afton Arms is built to look like a castle, complete with a faux bell tower. Across the courtyard, I can see my apartment—the ivy-covered turret, which houses my kitchen, and the tiny hexagon-shaped window in my bedroom. I close my eyes and inhale the smell of night-blooming jasmine, exhaust, and fresh bread from the bakery down the street. When I open my eyes and look down, I see her—the girl on the lawn. For a week she’s been sitting on the grass outside a metaphysical center near a sign that reads “Impossible Possibilities.” The metaphysical center is windowless and covered in pink stucco, the pale pink of a baby’s palm. The girl sits on the lawn for a couple of hours, sometimes longer, sometimes late at night, as if the curtain of evening makes her invisible. She sits with her legs neatly canted to the side in a way that brings to mind a private girls school—good sweaters, gold lockets. Except this girl is barefoot, dirty, and deeply sunburned. She wears a crop top with little daises on it. I’ve never seen her ask anyone for change. I’ve never seen her ask anyone for anything. The girl absently tugs at the grass, then without warning, looks up at me on the roof and we lock eyes.

Although I’m not a writer yet, I’ve recently begun to jot things on index cards—images, words, phrases that capture me. I keep them in a cigar box where I imagine they will gather power. I write “the girl on the lawn” and slip it into the box.

At the suggestion of a friend, I take a writing class. I’ve never written fiction before and sign up for a mixed level workshop taught by a teacher whom I pick because I like his name—Jim Krusoe. Before the workshop starts, students mill around discussing their publications and books, throwing around craft terms, and I have no clue what anyone is talking about. I make it through the first hour of the workshop, but at the break, I flee. I’m too scared to take the class. Much later I will realize that a seizing connection can masquerade as fear; something that will become the organizing principle of your life can initially terrify you.

The next day when I arrive home, I see her again, the girl on the lawn. It’s almost ninety degrees, the air smells like pennies and burnt sugar, and the troubling winds won’t let up—earthquake weather some would say. The girl hasn’t left the lawn since morning, and I worry it’s because she’s shoeless, and the pavement is hot. I approach her but stop about six feet away, as if I’ve stepped through an invisible doorway to her home. To move closer seems disrespectful. “Do you need shoes?” I ask.

The girl lifts her head and squints at me. No response. I’m not sure she heard my question. “Can I use your shower?” she asks. Her voice sounds drifty, like a late-night radio show caller with a bad connection, the type the host cuts off.

I glance over the girl’s head at the metaphysical center, shut tight as a sleeping face, still pink. “Now?”

“I’ll clean your bathroom,” she says.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Why?”

A trickle of perspiration runs down my back. I wonder how old the girl is and decide we might be about the same age. We might have gone to high school together. The girl brings her index and middle fingers to her lips, as if she is considering something—a delicate, refined gesture. “Nancy.” She smirks and stares straight ahead as if she already knows my answer will be no.

Nancy follows me into my apartment building like someone coming out of anesthesia. She steps into the foyer cautiously.

“This way,” I say to her, though there is only one hallway. I think of other things not to say: Live around here? Crazy weather we’re having.

Nancy stands in the middle of my living room and sneezes. “You have any tiny time pills?” Emphasis on time. And for the first time I notice an accent, maybe Southern.

“I don’t have pills.”

Nancy sneezes again. “Contac. You got Contac?”

“I don’t think they make it anymore.”

Nancy stands motionless and waits like she’s a person at the end of a long line who has little hope of making it to the front.

“So, there’s the bathroom,” I say, and Nancy enters it and shuts the door before I can give her a towel. She’ll find only my own, hanging on a hook near the shower. I wait in the hallway and listen to the water run at a trickle, nothing more.

Minutes later, Nancy steps out of the bathroom. “I cleaned after myself.” Her hair is wet, and her top and jeans are damp in spots. Rather than use my towel, she didn’t dry off. “You have a boyfriend?” she asks.

Because I’ve seen Nancy’s life on the lawn and there is no other person in it, I lie. “No boyfriend.”

Nancy pulls a cigarette from her pocket, puts it in her mouth.

“I’m sorry, you can’t smoke.”

She picks a piece of tobacco off her tongue and stares at me. “I know the day you’re going to die, want to hear it?”

“How could you know that?”

“I’m psychic. I see things.”

“Thanks, no.” I laugh but Nancy doesn’t.

She bites her lip, and I realize she’s stalling for time. “You work?” she asks.

For a crazy moment I want to say I’m a writer but don’t. Impossible possibilities. “I might move to Texas.”

“Sure,” says Nancy. “Sure.” For a moment we share an easy familiarity, as if we often chat about our futures. We fall silent again. I ask if I can help her get into a shelter, and Nancy studies the floor. Finally, she says, “I always wanted to live in a castle.”

We stand there looking at each other. “I’m sorry,” I say. Nancy flinches and turns away.

I try to give her a pair of shoes, but they don’t fit. I ask her if she needs money, but she shakes her head. I hand her a twenty, anyway. I tell her I’ll help her again.

After Nancy leaves, I watch her from my living room window. She steps onto the sidewalk and turns, as if someone had called her name. Walks a few feet. Stops. Looks up at my window. Then slowly, very slowly, she walks away like someone treading the bottom of the ocean.

The next day, the girl on the lawn will be gone and she’ll never come back. I decide to stay in Los Angeles rather than follow someone else’s dream. I find the courage to return to the writing class, and in response to an assignment, here’s what I write about Nancy—

The girl on the lawn grew up in a town slit open by a one-way highway. Before the highway, the town was filled with cows, silent people, and lilac bushes at every turn. There was a rumor that you could walk the highway straight across the country, and the girl ached to do this.

The girl on the lawn played flute. She had beautiful embouchure and an astonished look like someone flung into a snowbank by a person who deeply loves her. Each day the girl on the lawn stole a little bit of money from every member of her family, never enough to be caught. The girl on the lawn was not dumb. The girl on the lawn was like a million other girls that rise up like a flock of birds and turn, all at once, toward Los Angeles.

Many years later I’ll write a novel, Burst, about a nomadic mother and daughter who must rely on the kindness of strangers, about a girl who believes she’s psychic, and the Afton Arms rooftop will anchor the final scene of the book where a mother and daughter are running around “drunk on spring air.”

Sometimes I see a store clerk or a woman at a stoplight, and I think it’s Nancy, but it’s unlikely, given the number of years that have passed. Sometimes I think I see her at the same age she was when I met her. Then I’ll realize it’s a different girl—a girl on the run, a lost girl. I’ll always wonder where Nancy came from and where she went. I’m still trying to write about her.

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Mary Otis is the author of the novel Burst (out today with Zibby Books), and the story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries (Tin House Books). Her fiction, essays, and poetry have been published in Best New American Voices, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, McSweeney’s, Bennington Review, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and in many literary journals and anthologies. Her story “Pilgrim Girl” received an Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize, and her story “Unstruck” was a Distinguished Story of the Year in Best American Short Stories. She has taught fiction in the UCLA Writers’ Program and was a founding professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program.

Zibby Books is proud to partner with Project LIFT for the launch of Burst. New York Theatre Ballet’s innovative LIFT Community Service Program provides scholarships for talented at-risk and underserved children at the School of NYTB, as well as programs that champion dance for the greater good. You can find more info about this partnership here.