Read Online The Tribes of Palos Verdes by Joy Nicholson - Free Book Online Page A

floor.
    *   *   *
    Orky and Corky are trained whales at Marineland, the big sea aquarium near our house. Orky knows how to do back flips and dance to the Donna Summer song called “I Feel Love.” They are both very talented and famous. They’ve been on TV at least six times.
    But one day Cami Miller pins me down after class and calls my mother Orky. I try to stay calm, but she keeps pinching at me, telling me how ugly I am. I punch her in the side of the jaw until she cries. I say, “I dare you to say that again.”
    â€œOrky, Orky, fat as a whale, gross as a snail,” Cami says, scratching at me. I punch her hard in the stomach. “Your mother is so gross,” she says, “such a whale.” I pull her hair until it comes away in my hand, and then shove it in her gagging mouth. The principal suspends both of us from school for three days.
    My father comes to my room and says, “I’m going to have to ground you this time. Your mother’s very upset.”
    I tell him how everyone at school makes fun of her, I tell him they call her Orky and make whale noises at me when I walk through the halls. My father turns very red. A vein pops out, pulsating on his neck.
    â€œFrom now on, Medina, if the kids call your mother Orky, just pop them one in the nose for me.”
    I start to laugh and say, “That’s what I did. I got suspended.”
    â€œYou’ve got to be smarter next time,” he says. “Wait until after school.”
    *   *   *
    After school the sky is white. The air crackles like hot paper. The annual heat wave came early, in the middle of winter, just before the big waves started to hit. I’m still grounded from surfing.
    I’m hosing off my surfboard, talking to the ancient Japanese gardener as he soaks the dying spider orchids with a watering can. When my board is clean and cool, I begin to wax it, explaining how to stroke it from one end to the other with a bar of coconut oil so it leaves behind a small residue of film.
    â€œThat way you don’t slip off when it’s wet,” I tell him.
    The gardener smiles, uncomprehending, wiping small beads of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. He nods his head as he kneels in the bush, ripping away parched leaves with his fingers.
    I’m sharing with him in detail all the different kinds of surf wax—the kinds made with pure coconut and the inferior kinds cut with animal fat. I put the board to his nose and he laughs and says, “No, no … busy right now.”
    I push. “Come on, it’s just coconut. Just smell it a little.”
    There is a tap at the window. A rap, klonck, klonck, and a voice that is girlish and sweet.
    â€œMedinaaa,” my mother calls, “I want you to come in now. Nooow.” She wiggles her fingers at me and then pounds three times on the glass.
    She is in her bedroom when I go inside to face her. There is a note on the kitchen table that warns me “not to parade around half-naked in front of the gardener.” The house is quiet. I smell bacon and anger in the fading light.
    *   *   *
    At 1:30 A.M. , my mother comes to my bedroom, shaking me awake from a deep sleep, holding a pair of nylon shorts between her fingers.
    My mother holds my face, cradling it, and rubs the nylon between her fingers, close to the small of my ear. It makes a scratchy noise, a dry itchy noise, sending off sparks from the heat.
    â€œThese shorts are not what an old man should see. I saw him. I saw him looking at you.”
    As I try to wrestle my face from her hands, she tightens her grip.
    â€œYou think you know about men just because you’ve charmed your father, but you don’t.”
    Then she wipes her sweaty fingers on her white nightgown, dropping the shorts in the hamper without another word. She slams the door to the bedroom with great force. She uses the door as a form of communication,