Jex Blackwell Saves the World Read online

  The office door opens suddenly and Ms. Tubman thrusts her head out into the waiting area. “Jex,” she beckons. “Come in. Please.” Her words are abrupt and serious. Jex stands and hesitates for just a moment in sort of a ‘fuck all this’ kind of way, but it doesn’t last long. She shuffles into Ms. Tubman’s office. Ms Tubman closes the door behind her and the two sit down. Ms. Tubman offers some water to Jex. Jex declines.

  “So,” Ms. Tubman says, looking across her messy desk at Jex, a stern look on her face. “It’s nice to see your ugly mug again.”

  Jex smiles awkwardly, just a tiny smile, no more than a reluctant grin, really. She plays with her fingernail and says, “Ms. Tubman, I’m really sorry I went AWOL. I don’t really have an excuse, I just …”

  “Jex, please,” Ms. Tubman interrupts, her voice as hard as nails. “I didn’t ask for an excuse and I’m not looking for one. Your excuses don’t matter to me.”

  Jex recoils just a little bit, stuck somewhere between remorse and rebellion.

  “I’m sorry,” she stutters. “I don’t know …”

  “Stop it,” Ms. Tubman interrupts again. She looks Jex straight in the eyes, hard and firm. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “OK,” Jex says, extending the word in a clumsy fashion that is either obstinate or scared, maybe a combination or both. “I don’t,” she tries to continue but Ms. Tubman stops her again.

  “Don’t, Jex, just don’t.”

  “OK,” Jex say. She is, apparently, just here to listen. She thinks for a moment that she might just get up and leave, extend a middle finger and just leave the library behind. Leave everything behind. Despite these instincts, the kind of instincts that grow in you as a kid and never leave, she doesn’t follow them. She just sits there and waits.

  “My emotions are very strong, Jex, they always have been. I’d like to think that they don’t rule my world, but that would be a lie. Maybe if they didn’t, I could be somewhere other than this old library. Not that it’s so bad, but emotions can be a tough thing. That’s my point.”

  She pauses a moment, as if to measure how well Jex is following along. “OK?” is all Jex could say in response, and that’s just enough, maybe, and so she continues.

  “Emotion can be a tough thing,” Ms. Tubman repeats. “And emotion can be limiting. But I’ve found over time, though, that if you follow emotion, there will be more good than bad. It’s OK to trust in your emotions. There is good and there is bad. And it’s your emotions, your instincts, if you follow them, more often than not, you will find right, not wrong. I believe these things.”

  Ms. Tubman doesn’t ask Jex this time whether she understands her point, but she does study in a way that suggests she is trying to see if Jex gets it. Jex doesn’t respond and Ms. Tubman never asks. She just continues.

  “Jex,” Ms. Tubman continues. “I am not one to judge or criticize. I believe in good and bad. And I think you do, too. And I believe in you.”

  There is a long pause and Jex says all she can think to say, which is: “thank you.”

  Ms. Tubman doesn’t respond this time. She just says this: “Can you come in Tuesday, ten to four?”

  It takes Jex a second to break that sentence down. She pauses in a way that seems more like making sense of it rather than hesitating at the offer. Jex shakes herself out of it and says the only thing she can say: “Yes, I am. I mean, yes, I can.”

  “Good,” Ms. Tubman says, without any hesitation on her side. “Tuesday, ten to four it is.” Ms. Tubman stands up and walks over to Jex, who also stands up.

  Ms. Tubman embraces Jex, and it feels warming and comforting in a way that Jex did not expect, nor does she feel understand. She hugs her back, which is all she can really do. “Oh, you’ve gotten so skinny, Jex.”

  “Just a few pounds,” is all Jex can say. She knows it’s a few more than that, and that she couldn’t really afford to lose even a few pounds before she disappeared. She doesn’t think about it much, or much other than the comforting feeling that Ms. Tubman’s hug provides. She doesn’t articulate it though, and neither does Ms. Tubman. The hug finishes and Ms. Tubman walks Jex to the door. “OK, Jex, see you on Tuesday.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Tubman,” Jex says, a mature earnestness obvious in her young voice. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome, Jex. The library is delighted to have you back.”

  Walking out of the office through the library halls – her most comfortable stomping grounds – Jex can’t help but smile. Behind her, out of her eyesight, Ms. Tubman can’t help but smile, too.

  * * *

  The café in which Jex sits is no Starbucks. It is blunt and simple, more dirty than clean. Like the café in which it is served, the black coffee Jex drinks is purely utilitarian, no flower made of foam lingering coyly on the surface. She drinks it from a white mug, unadorned and unembellished; no plastic cup with a pithy phrase running down its spine. It is the best coffee in L.A. that seventy-five cents can buy. There’s no commissioned soundtrack flowing smoothly from overhead speakers, hidden from view; just the tinny sound of Otis Redding straining from a tiny radio behind the counter. The sound is lo-fi. Jex likes it that way and she chooses to listen to it while she drinks her coffee instead of disappearing into her ear pods. She likes, too, the clattering of dishes and mumbling of the dozen or so people that populate the fairly sparse greasy spoon.

  As she sips and thinks, Jex sketches absently in the pad that is resident in her oversized messenger bag. The pad itself is something to see, with a cardboard cover completely covered in green-ink drawings and black sharpie tags. The edges of the pages are tattered and torn, and the pad seems nearly full of drawings, doodles and sketches.

  Inside the tattered pad, Jex draws what she likes to draw best: anatomical figures. At the moment, she is sketching a side view of the human heart. She takes great care with the curves of the coronary artery; spends minutes on the complex map of fine capillaries, studying each capillary carefully, recognizing its individuality and character before moving on to the next. The broad arc of the left auricle, still beautiful in its simplicity. No more than a fuel pump, straightforward as that. The little circles that stand proud as crowns on the aorta. The elegant lines of the inferior vena cava. As she completes each section of the heart, she carefully labels them in compact, neat lettering.

  Jex focuses so intently that at first she doesn’t hear the drumming and chanting growing louder outside the café. She goes over each pencil line carefully in pen, picturing the red and blue slopes and twists and coils as though they were real, replaying in her head as she draws the photographs she’d seen in books and videos she watched endlessly on YouTube. She is in her own world.

  “Now, what in the world is that,” says a waitress behind Jex, and Jex is momentarily distracted from her sketching to look at the waitress, who had walked past Jex and was now looking out the front window. Jex follows her gaze and sees a growing crowd in the distance. The chants and drums suddenly come into focus in Jex’s head and instantly command her attention. Jex sees colorful signs and banners in the crowd, which is starting to morph into something that seems organized. The drums grow more distinct and begin to sound more robust than just stark percussion. It is starting to sound like music.

  “Oh,” Jex says with a note of abrupt recollection. “Shit.”

  The waitress looks back at Jex. “What’s up, sweetheart?”

  “Oh geez, Jo,” Jex says absently, as much to herself as to the waitress. “I think I’m late.” Jex fumbles through her bag and pulls out the flyer she received the prior week. It is dated today and the time is 3:00. Jex looks at her phone and sees it is 3:15. “Oh, shit,” Jex repeats, and stands up. She stuffs her hand into her hip pocket and pulls out a fist of crumpled dollars. She drops two bucks on the counter and says, “Sorry, Jo. I’m super late. I gotta go.”

  Jo shrugs. “You gotta go, girl, you gotta go. Don’t be no stranger, now.”

  Jex smiles as she opens the door. “
Never, Jo. I promise.” She rushes out and heads north toward the crowd. The waitress Jo watches Jex as she goes, a reluctant grin on her face.

  * * *

  By the time Jex gets to the protest, the passion is already hot and Pershing Square swells with people. There are protesters everywhere, of every size, seeming to be protesting about every issue imaginable. Anti-government; anti-racism; pro black power; pro Native American power. On the flyer that Jex found, the protest advertises itself as an anarchist battle against poverty, and it seem that anarchy is the road map of the day. Everyone seems interesting in having their say.

  Drum beats, the whole square seems to pulsate to the drum beats, which are morbid and loud; frenetically paced. And over that, “Testify” by Rage Against the Machine blares from a sound system somewhere in the park, Jex can’t quite see where. The dueling rhythms of the song and the drums don’t quite match, instead melding together into a tinny cacophony of angry sound. Jex’s heart seems to race with it, and she looks around the mad crowd, the din of outrage loud in the air.

  Jex promised Eugene and Molly that she would meet them at the southwest corner of the Square, but that was twenty minutes ago and the crowd is practically a mosh pit at this point. “Shit,” Jex says out loud but not loud enough for anyone to hear over the shouts and chants. She’s never going to find either of them like this. She pulls out her iPhone and clicks Molly’s number. It rings and rings and goes to voicemail, though Jex wouldn’t have been able to hear her voice if she had picked up. The sound is outrageous.

  “Oh, well,” Jex thinks to herself. “I guess I’m on my own on this one.” She looks around at the crowd; some people screaming at each other and some chanting together in unison. There are protesters and anti-protesters. The sun is hot above. Jex looks around in a three hundred sixty degree circle. She sees that police encircle the entire perimeter of the square. Jex is not sure if it is ominous or comforting; maybe neither, maybe both. Perhaps it just depends on who’s looking, she guesses. She looks around, surveying her surroundings. She sees a group of about a dozen women, mid-fifties or so, some black and some white. They are holding hands in a straight line and marching with determination through the crowd, almost like a left-wing conga line. They dress sensibly, sneakers and comfortable slacks. The woman in the front holds a sign that says: “Stop Anti-Woman Violence.” The group is chanting loudly in time, “Say it once, say it again! No excuse for violent men!” Jex shrugs. “Makes sense to me,” she thinks and heads to the back of the conga. Someone hands her a sign. It says, “My body, my choice.” Jex grabs it and thrusts it into the air. “Say it once, say it again,” she chants along in her gruffest voice. “No excuse for violent men!”

  Fifteen minutes or so pass, and Jex savors each one of them as she snakes her way through the crowd. She looks ahead and the woman in front of her looks back at her and smiles. She seems slightly older than the rest of the women in the line, maybe sixty or so. Her smile is sweet. “Thanks for joining us, kiddo!” the woman shouts. “I was protesting when I was your age, too. My body, my choice!”

  “My body, my choice!” Jex repeats loudly, with a big grin. She is having the time of her life. She scans the crowd again, studying every face carefully. White faces. Black faces. Brown faces. Red faces. Yellow faces. Everyone having their say. Everyone having their moment to shout; their moment to scream at the top of their lungs. The people and the voices melt together into one. The result is a dreamy mess of surrealism. Jex is not sure if she is awake or asleep. She feels alive, though. That is good enough for her.

  “Jex!” The voice is loud and clear over the roar of the growing, excited crowd. Jex jolts around at the sound of her name. Her friend Eugene stands behind her, his face nothing but a grin. “How are you, girl?”

  “Eugene!” Jex shouts back at him and gives him a big hug. Eugene is a big boy, with large shoulders. His hair is pulled back and his eyes are wide. He has a large red sign that says “Free Leonard Peltier” on it in black lettering, surrounding a black stencil of Peltier’s face. “I’m sorry I’m late,” Jex shouts. “I got distracted.”

  Eugene chortles. “Of course, you got distracted, Jex. Of course! You always get distracted! It’s OK with me! As long as you made it, I’m happy!”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Jex confirms. She looks around, her eyes wide. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  Eugene nods his head, enthusiasm and sweat dripping from his body. “It is totally radical. There are so many groups represented here,” Eugene shouts. “There really is an uprising on the way, and this is where it starts, Jex. This is the breeding ground for a new society!”

  “That’s awesome,” Jex yelps. “You are such a bad ass!”

  Eugene shouts with a laugh. “Nah, I’m just doing my part. You know Native Americans are gonna start getting some proper representation in this town now, right? Everybody has to do something, right Jex?”

  “That’s right,” Jex agrees, her eyes glimmering.

  “You’re going to do something great, Jex,” Eugene says, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You are going to help a lot of people with your head,

  ” he says and then pauses, before tapping his own chest lightly. “And with your heart. You need both of those things, right, Jex?”

  “Yes,” Jex says, nodding her head in agreement, in a way that fairly gushes with pride and determination. “I understand.”

  Eugene holds up his hand, and Jex pauses. He looks over his shoulder, listening to something in the distance. After a moment, a look of satisfaction takes over his face. “Yes!” he says emotively. “This is the Sex Pistols playing.”

  “Yeah,” Jex agrees. “‘Anarchy in the UK.’”

  “Exactly,” Eugene explains “Boy do I have a surprise for you!”

  ‘What’s that?”

  Eugene is nearly imploding with excitement. “I know the DJ here, DJ Somethin’ Kool. He’s part of the revolutionary vinyl movement, playing loud, mean songs at protests.”

  “That’s cool!” Jex says.

  “Yeah, well that’s not the coolest part. He owes me a favor and he agreed to play one of Bawdy’s songs after he played the ‘Anarchy in the UK’!”

  Jex is delighted. Eugene’s sister, Molly, plays bass for Bawdy DySmurfia. “What,” Jex exclaims. “No way! How?”

  “I snuck him a copy of their new seven inch. It’s their first release.”

  “What!?? No way. I knew they recorded it but I didn’t know it was out yet.”

  “Well,” Eugene say slyly. “It’s not released formally yet, the record label is doing a little release party in Echo Park next month.” Eugene winks,” but I know someone in a position to get me an early copy. DJ’s gonna rock that shit right after this song. The crowd is going to love it.”

  “For sure,” Jex agrees. She is about to ask what songs they ended up putting on the seven inch – they had several to pick from and she is personally hoping for “Anarchy isn’t Just a Fanny Pack with a Circle A on it” – when her conversation with Eugene is interrupted.

  “Hey, brother,” says a large young man in a flannel shirt, touching Eugene’s arm slightly. “We’re late and we gotta go.”

  Eugene pulls his phone from his pocket and checks the time. “Shit,” he says. “I didn’t know it was getting so late. We gotta go.” He turns to Jex. “Jex, we gotta go. We’re going to have ten minutes at the microphone and we have to finish coordinating what we’re going to say.” He pulls a folded up piece of paper from his breast pocket. “Trust me, though. We have plenty to say.”

  Jex smiles, “I know you do,” she says and pats him on the shoulder.

  “Stay safe,” Eugene says as he turns to go. “This place is cool, but vibes can change quickly. Take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” she says with a wink. “I’m pretty good at taking care of myself.”

  Eugene nods and turns to leave.“Oh, wait,” Jex says. “Where’s Molly? I want to find her if I can.”

  “Yeah, dud
e. For sure. I just saw her. I am pretty sure she is headed to the DJ table. She wants to be in prime listening position for when the song comes on. It’s that way,” Eugene says, pointing to the northwest corner of the park, where Jex can just make out some turntables set up on a raised platform.

  “Which song are they going to play?” Jex asks.

  Eugene grins. “Fanny Pack!”

  “Cool!” she shouts, with a grin equal in size. She gives Eugene a final hug and watches as he walks away. The conga line is long gone, so Jex is on her own to make it through the thick crowd over to the DJ stand. She makes it about a hundred feet before she hears the unmistakable bass riff. Bawdy’s song is starting. “Whoop,” Jex yells, and quickens her pace to the DJ stand as the first lyrics start to drop.

  Anarchy! Anarchy!

  Direct action! it’s the time!

  Anarchy! Anarchy!

  Always gaining traction! Crossing every line!

  Five guys with black bandanas covering their faces run past Jex, waving tall red flags recklessly through the crowd. They are yelping out some words that don’t seem to make any sense, almost like speaking in tongues. Jex shakes her head in momentary annoyance and continues her trek to the DJ stand. The song continues to jam, as the drum circle picks up its pace, closing in on the rhythm of the track.

  Anarchy! Anarchy!

  Moving forward! Never backwards!

  Anarchy! Anarchy!