Ecstatic

21

Ledric Mayo could go ahead and die because I wasn’t going to help him. I was saying that to myself the whole seven-hour drive from Lumpkin, Virginia. If Nabisase and Grandma had been speaking to me I’d have told them that very same thing.

It’s what I told myself as I called in sick at Sparkle on Monday morning.

Then again at noon when I went outside to do yard work because I just couldn’t sleep. To illustrate the mood of my family: I hid the kitchen knives and that’s no joke.

— Aye nigga.

— Get that nigga!

— Get that nigga to stop cutting them bushes!

Three times Pinch yelled at me and three times I ignored him. He was with a few other guys in the yard next to mine, on the front steps of Candan’s house.

Pinch stood up when I didn’t heed his command to stop chopping at my hedge and he walked out then around into my driveway. Now I couldn’t ignore him because his beefy hand was on my shoulder. I let go of the trigger of the hedge clipper and the high — chip— chip— noise faded away.

— Those bushes never did anything to you.

He and I surveyed the hedge, which ran the length of my driveway. Twenty-five feet before it reached the backyard, where we had a less formal row of shrubs.

I was proud of myself because I’d really gone hell with the cutting. It wasn’t fair that in the summer this bramble was going to bloom into one impossible green afro which would have to be trimmed every two weeks and yet it wasn’t even really our property. The damn thing was growing from Candan’s side. The President was the one who’d planted it, so why did I have to tend one half of its features.

— That’s called being neighbors, said Pinch.

There were plenty of other reasons to be agitated, but the one that irked me most was Mr. Ledric Mayo. I really didn’t see how I could go administer to an idiot who’d poisoned his own stupid self.

The two other guys, Candan one of them, stood in Candan’s yard but came closer to disapprove of me from fewer feet away. Through the tindersticks of this bare winter hedge I watched them shake their heads.

Candan said, — Now that’s too much, Anthony. Next time you don’t have to cut a lot.

Who knows. Maybe the guy spoke to me that way because he truly meant to be kind, but it was the tone one takes with a guy who separates clear and colored glass for a living.

— You took the top two feet off that thing, Pinch said. The President’s not going to be to happy about it.

— He’s no one’s boss, Candan said quickly.

Even I was surprised to hear him sound so ferocious.

Then the President came round the corner in his Lincoln Town Car.

His Town Car was a big mess; not even old; a ’94 model, but damn that front end was battered. The headlights were held by gray duct tape. One of the rear-door windows was veiny from having half-shattered.

Pinch smiled. — Candan, you tell the President what you just told us.

The guy next to Candan was as fat as me. Out in Queens this wasn’t as rare as the Surgeon General would wish. It was like, say, semi-rural Pennsylvania. I am the unattractive America.

The President didn’t make it easy on his car, weaving like he did. He bumped against curbs a couple of times.

Going twenty-five miles an hour and without once tapping a brake the President spun that black car to the right just as he reached home. As the car entered the driveway it bumped one of the poles of their fence, making it shake rattlesnake-loud.

The President was not a drunk. It wasn’t alcohol making him weave. — Youngbloods! The President yelled happily. He rolled down the electric passenger-side window, but still sat in the Town Car. Candan and the fat guy were on one side of the hedge, Pinch with me on the other.

Candan spat.

The car was turned off.

Out stepped the President in a turquoise track suit.

It was his eyes that were wrecked. I had never seen them this close before. They went in two directions and neither was straight ahead. His driver’s license had gone out of style three years ago, but try telling him to renew it. Men never believe their powers will fail.

— Youngbloods, he said again.

Pinch smiled first. — How you, Mr. Jerome?

He shrugged. The President was that kind of man who meant to be weary, no matter. If he was in bed he’d say his back hurt from being prone then when on his feet he’d swear the most he wanted was to spread out on a board to sleep. The President said, — They got me on the run, Chester. They got me out of breath.

Candan walked toward the car without greeting his father.

— I got the damn car keys! C.D. Come back over here. Where you been hiding? the President asked me.

— Took my family away for the weekend.

— How far? he asked.

— Viriginia. Seven hours’ drive. We got back at four this morning.

— Are you all here? Candan asked.

— Where else would we be?

— Four of you came in this morning? Candan asked. One, two, three, four?

— Damn Candan, the President said. I think the man can still count!

I looked at his son, at Candan, wondering how people had spoken about me in the weeks since I’d returned.

The President joked around instead of letting his son press. He pointed at me and the other Jell-O-fellow beside Candan. — You two look like the bookends at a cookie factory.

Guys giggled, even the other big boy, but the joke didn’t make sense to me.

— Why would a cookie factory have bookends? I asked.

But too late for that because the President noticed my work. He walked the length of the hedge while still in his yard then scratched his gray mustache. He wore a black leather baseball cap with an adjustable strap on the back. — You sure made a mess of this, he said.

I wondered why he had to accuse me, but remembered the big orange clipper in my hand.

The others waited for angrier words, but the nice thing about the President was that he was never going to get his gun from in the house. Most he’d do is crack an egg on your forehead.

— If I ever need a haircut I won’t call you, the President said.

Before there could be any more jokes Candan’s red dog came from their backyard and crouched at the President’s feet. A lithe Doberman, missing one of its ears. I thought it was playing with the older man, but it snarled at the President until Candan walked over, slapped its side and yelled, — Shut up!

— Get back! Candan yelled.

The President bowed his head, but I didn’t know if the gesture was in deference to his son or his son’s emissary, the Doberman.

After Candan commanded it the mutt popped up, trotted off, thin body bouncing so high above the ground it seemed about to float off like some long, useless balloon. It barked a few times, which caused a few other nearby dogs to rev up so then there were pockets of howling in the neighborhood for close to thirty minutes.

One day; so far; no mother; not bad.

When the President went inside their house Candan paced casually to the Lincoln then removed keys the President had forgotten in the driver’s side door. He shook them in front of us like Candan needed people to see that he was right to assume his father doddered, but we looked away, ashamed for him to show it.

22

When I walked back inside with bits of hedge drit still on my hair Grandma was in the living room with Nabisase. The younger was talking while combing the old woman’s hair into braids, but they stopped when I came in.

Fatigue twists the tongue until it turns blue. — I think you’re overreacting, I told them. Mom’s the one who cut out on you, not me.

For the first time in years I felt like a child. A horrible time compared with adulthood.

— Did you hear what I said?

Nabisase and Grandma continued to play Easter Island; in the living room I stood three feet from a civilization unwilling to answer me.

Stupidly, I went and tried Mom’s door. It was locked when we left so why would it be any different now. I got down on my knees and pressed my nose to the space at the bottom. Then my ear. I was waiting for a sign that she was back in there.

She wasn’t.

I went to get the mail and that’s when I realized I never sent Ahmed Abdel his note. It was in my jacket pocket, forgotten when I chased my sister and grandmother to Uncle Arms’s charade.

As I got the letter, walked to the door, my sister finally said something.

— Are you going to see about Ledric?

— How’d you know about that?

— I played the answering machine.

— I was only going to mail a letter.

Grandma didn’t look at me, but she said. — He sounds terrible and sick.

— You two have Ledric Mayo on the brain.

I tapped the letter to Ahmed Abdel against the door. They waited.

— I don’t have the energy, I complained. This is the only thing you all can talk to me about?

Nabisase stood up. — I called him already and got the address. I said we were going over.

— Why’d you do that?

— Because we’re going to.

I didn’t want to bring Nabisase with me to Jamaica and luckily it was four o’clock so my sister’s church was having its second Monday prayer meeting. She was willing to miss school, but not devotions. Christ had really impressed my sister with his Bible that you’ve heard so much about. The first morning back from Lumpkin she read Scripture while eating cereal.

But you know, I’m not even going to say Christ when I refer to Nabisase’s faith because I still didn’t believe she meant it. I’ll say Selwyn because Nabisase wouldn’t know the difference.

Nabisase walked with me, though not for the comraderie. I was on the sidewalk and she stayed at the lip of the street. She thought I’d betrayed her. On the drive up from Lumpkin I filled the car with gas and didn’t make one stop; she and Grandma didn’t speak.

Except when we were finally home and I got out, ran around to Nabisase’s side.

Then my sister said, — Don’t you hold any more doors open in front of me.

It’s harder to stay close when someone watches you betray them. She thought she understood me perfectly and I just couldn’t explain.

I smiled as we reached the corner of 229th Street and 147th Avenue. Nabisase went to hear sermons at the Apostolic Temple of Selwyn. A Church with Old Time Powers.

Watching her, I wondered how, exactly, a person finds religion.

After ten minutes a brown van stopped about a half-block past me. I waited for it to come back but the driver wouldn’t rewind so I had to walk over.

There are two kinds of vans used for this small-business public transportation. The difference is in the size of the passenger door. One has a great big hatch while the other’s got a portal the size of an airplane window. I will let you guess which this van had; it shouldn’t take long to figure. When I opened the tiny entrance the crowd inside muttered. I distinctly heard one man whisper, — Oh god damn, at the sight of me.

Ten passengers watched me struggle in. The inside of the cabin smelled like sweaty feet and cocoa butter. Each row of seats fit three people, but those were to capacity so I had to get past them, to the last back ass end where there was the longer seat that fits four.

I knocked a woman’s hat off her head with my big shoulder.

A teenager got so jostled as I passed that his whole damn magazine fell between his knees to the floor.

— Sorry, I whispered. Sorry.

Even the other fat people cursed me or rolled their eyes.

The driver was a fifty-year-old lady with a face like a betel nut. She waited until I was almost in the seat properly then pedal down, pedal hard.

There was dance hall music coming from the radio and the van’s CB spattered conversation or static. The driver’s name was Lorna Tintree and she picked up the microphone whenever her dispatcher called for her. They always used her full name. She yelled responses as she drove too fast.

Her voice had a thick island accent. I could imagine mango trees, but not any particular island. Slow down was the only message I wished her dispatcher would send. Her hair was a big loose spray of black semi-curls emanating from her skull like the sound waves of her rollicking conversation.

Each time she stopped talking there was a moment before the guy on the other end responded and the fuzz through the microphone sounded like a name:

— ledric- ledric-.

Please understand how dangerous a van trip is. Lorna Tintree took curves doing fifty.

When we hit bumps and dips in the road eleven people tossed in the air. Only our driver wore a seat belt.

My sister might have thought I was going to help Mr. Mayo, but I was not. I’d go apply for a library card at the Jamaica branch, have some lunch and then come home. I’d tell her that I lost the address.

But after each leap, as the van banged back to the ground, the gnash of chassis against roadway was a familiar proper noun: — ledric- ledric-.

My conscience sounded like my sister, her voice a guide in my head. Leading me past Rufus King Park. To Sutphin Boulevard and 88th Avenue where a certain fat bastard rented a room. Shit if I hadn’t been avoiding saving his life.

23

Ledric’s building was owned by a Nigerian woman who wouldn’t let me into her home until I said his name a couple times. When I did she looked at me closely, asked, — You are the brother?

— Of course, I said. Let me see him?

This was a private home that the woman owned. One of three on the block between a pair of six-story apartment buildings. — Go round the back, she said.

The lady rented single-occupancy spaces out of her basement. Three rooms at $400 each. Probably covered the mortgage so that her own paycheck might afford the large-screen television I’d seen through her front window.

When I knocked politely and heard no response she kicked the door to Ledric’s room so hard that it rumbled from the force of her boot. Eventually Ledric made a noise, but not for three minutes. In that time I watched the lady as she ran one finger across her gums then fed on a few remnant strands of beef.

Ledric was able to pull open the door to his room without getting up because he was lying on the ground. — Hey Ant. Nabisase just called me to see if you came yet, he whispered.

The Nigerian said, — I want money for getting Ledric’s vomit out of my carpet.

I’m not a creature. There are human feelings in me. I got down, set my arms around his waist, and helped Ledric onto the bed. That wasn’t actually a good thing because the whole mattress was wet through the sheets.

The Nigerian woman said, — And he’s going to have to pay for the mattress if it’s ruin.

Ledric’s room was only big enough for a bed and desk. The window was open, which helped relieve the moist smell of yuke, but this was November and pretty cold.

— You should keep the window shut, I said to him.

The landlord covered her nose. — He shouldn’t.

I helped him dress, but he couldn’t get his arms through shirt sleeves. — I’m seeing in two’s, he whispered.

His desk had nothing on it but work materials: envelopes, preprinted labels and form letters from SunTrust, a bank in Washington, D.C. I went through them like they were my own. Offers for unsecured credit cards, all applicants considered.

— This is your job? I asked.

— I’ve got to complete a hundred-fifty more this week.

— I’m not going to do it for you, I said.

On any subway seat in Queens there are these little red cards with phone numbers and bold offers: Lose Weight— 30 Lbs in 30 Days. Make Money— Assemble Products in Your Home. I never thought anyone was foolish enough to call the swindlers back.

I was angry at him, but he could hardly breathe. I sat him up while I filled a gym bag with his least grimy clothes. The boy just wasn’t neat, even before the tapeworms I bet. Where was that jar?

— I threw it out, Ledric said. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I helped him to his feet, but that was a losing proposition. He was having a bad time standing, but when he leaned against me we managed a kind of run that was basically the two of us falling forward under the combined weight. Six hundred pounds. Okay seven.

He was shorter than me and he had an enormous belly; the kind that suffocates genitals when the bearer sits down. But he had no tits at all and his legs were skinny.

Before we could leave the Nigerian woman said, — He still owes me for the last week. Your brother pays me last Wednesday.

— He’s sick, I said.

— One ’undred.

I paid her with the bills in my pocket. Ten ten-dollar bills and she counted them in front of me three times. I had no bank account only some paper money in my wallet and the rest hidden in one box of my books.

Getting to Jamaica Avenue took half an hour, though it was just three blocks. Ledric had been slurring his words for twenty minutes and each time he opened his mouth a little drool played down his chin. It got so disgusting that I tied one of his T-shirts, bandit-style, around the lower half of his face to absorb the saliva.

This made it harder to get a gypsy car; outfitted as he was and me with Ledric’s duffel bag on my shoulder taxi drivers probably thought we’d robbed a White Castle of its patties and buns.

— Call your mother to pick us up, he begged.

— She’s not with us anymore.

— Is she alright?

I didn’t feel like answering him. Eventually we were picked up. I gave the driver my address, and this is how Ledric Mayo came into my home.

24

I joined Clean Up that evening because even after bringing Ledric back, after explaining his predicament to Grandma then arguing with her over allowing him inside, after setting him on the living room couch and going to the grocery store for items Nabisase expected Ledric would need, I still wasn’t tired.

Anyway, I couldn’t ask Nabisase to get a job. She’d already missed school one day and I wasn’t planning to let her pass another. Grandma had some savings, but we’d need income. I didn’t mind any of this. It’s not that I wanted to discover my manhood, I was going to invent it.

Clean Up was a twilight shift that paid twice as much as day cleaning. It was clandestinely run by Sparkle’s assistant manager, Claire. She told me not to bring any identification when meeting her in front of the office at nine. Thought I’d be alone, but there were twenty people waiting. Carrying no green cards, visas, credit cards; we weren’t even allowed to use last names.

At nine-thirty Claire drove up in her green van. It wasn’t even as nice as the gypsy vans, which have four rows of padded seats. She had two long benches soldered down in the cargo hold so some sat on them. When those filled we sat on the floor between the benches. Like all Queens drivers Claire stood on the accelerator and the rocking in the back made for bruised butts. I’m too educated for this, I thought each time my tailbone banged.

The factory was only one floor, but very wide. We had crossed from the mall in Long Island back to Laurelton. Metal grates were closed over loading bays. A man in the shape of an ostrich egg was waiting at the only open door. He didn’t let us in until Claire returned from parking the van blocks away. Once she took us in he locked the door from outside.

We were led through the staff offices, more cubicles than closed rooms. Through a rectangular area with table, tea bags, coffee machines. We couldn’t walk fast enough for Claire who had on hiking boots and baby-blue jeans. She didn’t speak with us except to yell, — Let’s go! Do you people know how much I’ve got to do tonight?

Then we came to a room where boxes of furniture were in stages of being packed or unpacked. Lights hung from the ceiling. Seven red hand trucks against a wall. Claire took off her coat to reveal one of those thin upper bodies that is the opposite of good nutrition. Her arms were as stiff as the chicken wings I’ll bet she bought through bulletproof Chinese restaurant glass. She was running a nefarious, illegal labor scheme wearing a white Old Navy T-shirt.

— The important thing for you to understand about Clean Up is that I’m always busier than you. While you’re clearing a room I’m doing four or five other jobs. So don’t bother me. If you see me smoking a cigarette don’t come asking for more hours, because I’m doing inventory in my head.

She expected some reaction, maybe an ovation.

She said, — I’d give anything for one American. Then she yelled, If any one of you spoke English I’d pay $100 an hour.

— I speak it pretty well, I said.

She was surprised. — How did you get in here?

— You called me. We spoke on the phone.

Claire had a notepad in her back pocket and opened it. — You’re not Esmeralda. Anthony?

— Yes.

— Anthony, I’m a very busy woman. I don’t want you interrupting me again.

With that Claire led us to our workroom. I’d thought this was just going to be a bigger sweeping job. Gather factory dust, shine flanges and get twice my daytime Sparkle rate. You’ve got to realize how much energy I had; the coming work didn’t daunt. I’d just driven for seven hours that morning, we’d been in Virginia twenty-four hours ago. I’d saved Ledric from his landlady and took him home to recuperate. Now what else, Clean Up? That’s nothing. Six hours of work. I had the fuel.

We left the main floor by going through a thick door with four locks. There was an open dark stairway and I forgot where I was. For eleven seconds I had a waking dream that we were being taken to the basement so they could shoot us in the head and keep the blood. I know that seems stupid but besides me the other twenty women looked El Salvadorian so what child of the eighties wouldn’t think of death squads? A feeling of nauseous exhilaration was in my sternum because I thought I was going to be killed, but then reality returned as I gripped the handrail and we were led downstairs by Claire.

The basement was twice as long as the factory space upstairs, but only half as high, eight feet maybe. Sometimes Claire covered her mouth down here. Like whenever she breathed.

She had a King Kullen bag full of white mouth guards. We put them on, but the rubber wire of the face masks scratched our cheeks so badly they left scuff marks. Claire walked to the top of the stairs leading to the first floor then addressed us.

— You grab those big pink sheets then put them in the barrels. When one is full you cover it tight. Jam those sheets down hard to fit plenty. If any dust comes up put on your air filtration units.

She shut the door then we listened to four locks click. I swung the surgeon’s mask, was this the air filtrator? I’d seen sturdier toilet paper.

We rolled the long pink dry sheets; this worked for the top layer. Half the basement floor had stacks of these pink mats laid out.

Once we had mastered the right speed, one that kept the asbestos dust out of our air, the curling up was easy. We stacked the rolls on their sides next to the barrels.

A woman said, — We stop. We done too fast.

Two of the twenty women were sisters. They wore clean white sneakers that they’d been brushing with their open hands whenever a smudge appeared. Now on break they sat and took the shoes off, blew on them then used the bottoms of their shirts to wipe the heels. Pay Less sneakers probably, cheap, but I admired anyone who worked hard on her wardrobe. I rubbed at the dust stains on my purple suit.

Turning their shoes over both women cleared grains from the soles by running pens in the grooves. The green ink made the bottoms of their sneakers the dull color of an unripe olive. We rested for half an hour and watched the sisters maintain their beauty.

What a disappointment to find out later that this basement had flooded recently. It was obvious because the next layer of pink sheets were stiff but wrinkled like dried washcloth. These sections broke apart while being rolled so there was no way to avoid the dust. Below that was a layer still so wet it couldn’t be curled. I paced the room looking for tin or flat steel to use as a shovel.

I found the lower end of a broom so I tried to sweep portions toward the barrels, but the pink molasses came apart under the bristles. Soon the whole room was a tableau of crouched figures scooping wads of asbestos into their arms, balancing the bundles as they walked across the long room to drop them into bins.

Every twenty minutes half a dozen people stopped to stretch their lumbar regions in the corner of the room not beset with pink dust devils. When the floor was clearer we tracked through puddles of grainy water as yet undried on the concrete floor.

The soles of those sisters’ sneakers leaked ink into the puddles when they got wet. The pools were already cloudy, but they turned faintly green.

One woman pointed, saying, — It is the color of dollars bills.

We were punch drunk. We were half twisted off.

We’d been down there four hours so excuse our grogginess.

The general state was so bad that one of the sisters rashly splashed through the green puddle just because it was like money.

I did because it was like money.

The other ladies splashed in it and for a good reason, it was money.

The second sister even went through eventually, but only because she was a big follower.

We doused our shoes in the water more than twice because it was like money.

What a peppy crowd we became. Making friends and praising peace. Our pants stained with prosperity.

25

My long Monday finally ended at three AM Tuesday morning, November 14th, 1995.

The Clean Up shift was close enough to my home that Claire agreed to drop me at the corner, though the other women were only getting a ride to the 7 train.

She left me out on the corner of 229th and 145th Avenue where I had to hide behind a parked car because four loose mutts wrestled, yipped and yawned in front of Candan’s home. His red Doberman barked then the four on the sidewalk whimpered. I was afraid of being snapped at like Ishkabibble at my cookout so I gave the dogs a few minutes to socialize. Soon, the quartet ran off, I thought they were done. But Candan’s red dog was still there, nose pressed against its gate, watching me open mine.

Grandma hopped in from the living room as I took off my coat in the kitchen. Before I could ask why she was awake Grandma whispered, — He can’t breathe. That boy.

I said, — Let him rest.

— Your sister sits with him the whole night.

I opened the basement door, but the lights were off. — They’re down there now?

Grandma said, — We couldn’t manage him down the stairs. He is as big as you. He is still in the living room.

He was in a sleeping bag on the ground with some couch cushions to prop him up. Between the sectional couch and the entertainment unit; his boots stood neatly with the other shoes in the kitchen.

Three in the morning and my sister was still awake kneeling by his side. She wasn’t saying prayers, but playing Tetris on her Game Boy. She wore a long yellow nightdress that went down to her ankles. Her bare feet tucked under her butt so that the toes were pointing toward me in the hallway. There was a bowl of water with a face cloth soaking in it, and another wet one resting on Ledric’s collarbone.

— What you’ll need to do is take hot baths, Nabisase told him.

He responded slowly.

— I wish I met you someplace else, he said. I look kind of nice when I’m dressed up.

She was thirteen and he was nineteen, a huge age gap only to parents of teenagers. Those adults should shut their eyes, firmly, at malls.

— I don’t care about that stuff, Nabisase said. Fat’s not the worst thing you could be.

— Your brother tell you how I got sick?

— He said it was bad fish.

— I just got desperate. I don’t want to look like this anymore.

She exchanged one wet cloth for the other; rubbing it on his face, his neck, his arms.

I didn’t interrupt them. I went back to the kitchen’s security door and slammed it as if this was my first time coming in. With that noise my sister rose and went right to bed. Ledric shut his eyes.

Grandma sat in the kitchen, waiting for me to carry her. — You need the hospital even more than he does, I said.

She told me, — I am fine.

This left the basement or my mother’s locked room for my first sleep since Lumpkin. But I refused either.

I crept to Ledric’s side and listened to him wheeze.

He slept for three hours while I never closed my eyes. I should have been exhausted.

At six I poked his ribs. — Get up, I said.

— Where?

— I guess we’re going to Queens General, I said. If you’re that sick.

Ledric whispered, — I’m not going to no hospital. His arms were above the covers, but he couldn’t lift them. Only his puffy hands shifting proved his agitation.

— Listen to you. You can’t inhale.

— No hospital.

— You still seeing double?

— I just won’t open my eyes. To prove it he closed them, but couldn’t even rally the energy to squeeze them theatrically. His big cheeks puffed out and he exhaled.

— My sister can’t take care of you with aspirin and soup.

— No hospital, he stressed. They’ll give me a disease.

His sentences were coming out between wheezes, murmurs really. I had to lean down close while on my knees. — I think you’ve got one already, I said.

He opened one eye to look at me. — Last year, this man went into Queens General to remove some warts and they took off both his legs. I’m telling you. I believe that shit.

I touched the top of Ledric’s head, but that only made it slide backward until he was looking at the ceiling. The boy had very little muscle control.

— Okay Ledric. At nine we’ll go over to the clinic on Brookville Boulevard.

The green-tiled one-story building at the southwest corner of 147th Avenue and Brookville Boulevard had been a Sons of Italy Lodge (Per Sempre) then changed to a cash-only medical clinic housing doctors from four continents, none of them North America.

It was shaped like a Cambodian pagoda, with a fenced lot next to it; I parked the Oldsmobile Firenza there. When I’d returned the Dodge Neon to the rental office I glued the trunk shut at the lock, hoping the people at National wouldn’t notice— they hadn’t.

I went into the clinic to borrow a wheelchair, but Ledric wouldn’t fit so I came back with one of the carts used for unloading medical equipment. Just a wide flat tray on wheels. Ledric slid out of the Oldsmobile’s backseat and flopped face-first on top of the cart. I had to push him through the delivery entrance.

We would have been in the waiting room three hours if Ledric hadn’t started gasping. Once that happened an angry elf-owl of a nurse let me roll my brother to a small room where a stubble-necked Russian doctor asked a few questions, moved Ledric’s head around. The doctor diagnosed this easily.

— Botulism, he said.

26

A condition that demands hospitalization.

The real torture to the Russian physician was that he’d have to release us from his highly profitable care there. He didn’t have the equipment in this tiny clinic on the tri-corner hat border of Laurelton, Rosedale and Far Rockaway.

Though Ledric tried to protest again he was making no sense because he couldn’t shape words; he might as well have been a manatee booing.

I wanted to take him to the hospital in the Oldsmobile, but the Russian doctor wouldn’t let me. He was afraid I’d ignore his diagnosis and take Ledric home hoping he’d pull through. The Russian was already well acquainted with the rational paranoia of people without health insurance. — Botulism is not like a fever, he said.

— How am I going to pay for an ambulance?

— Your brother will die without it.

— Can you get them to come down on the price?

The Doctor huffed, but only a little; I doubt he’d been well off when practicing in St. Petersburg. He touched my shoulder. — Your brother goes to Queens General. It is reasonable and his care is precise.

Queens General hospital in north Jamaica is a choir of gray buildings taller than most in Southern Queens. I could say that it’s run down but that would give the wrong impression, make you think the place was a quagmire. It was a decent operation and if money came into the coffers they spent it on equipment.

I followed the ambulance to the hospital the whole time wondering how I’d missed another day shift in the sticky mess of Ledric’s life. I parked and walked the overpass of the Grand Central Parkway then down 163rd Road. Made a left on the slight incline that leads into the emergency room. The place was pretty empty because it was only 11 AM. There were two hundred grievously wounded people waiting to get medical attention instead of the usual twelve hundred of most evenings.

I had the good fortune of having a family member who’d been brought by ambulance and diagnosed with an illness rarely seen in America anymore. When I told the nurse at the front desk his name (she was behind Plexiglas so I had to shout) I was sent up to Ledric’s room immediately. In the elevator I wondered how much a private room cost. I hoped they had him bunking with other people.

He might as well have had a Barcalounger near his bed for the excess space they’d given. How about a wide-screen television with a host of private movies and a masseur on call, since we’re spending Anthony’s money? I would’ve felt better, maybe nonchalant, if I believed that Ledric had even collected loose change in a jar. The penniless creep. He couldn’t have asked for the room, too weak to say it, so some clerk had assigned this manse.

I left when the doctors finally came. They asked me to leave. There were two of them. When I returned in twenty minutes they’d written down Ledric’s many symptoms but had done nothing to repair his health.

— What are you going to do for him?

The physicians nodded, but without looking up from their papers. They didn’t seem wealthy, either one. For instance, their watches were cheap. Digital faces with plastic bands. One wore black while the flashy one’s was orange.

— It’s not botulism, said the first one. He told me like he was solving an illusionist’s trick.

The second one agreed and laughed to prove it. — It is not botulism.

— But the Russian doctor was so sure, I said.

The first put his hand up. — There’s a good chance your friend over there spent too long in a gulag.

— You should take his diagnosis with a tranquilizer.

— We’ll probably end up giving Mr. Mayo a purgative, that’s all.

— Oh that’s good, I said.

— He’ll get the runs, the doctor with an orange watch clarified. He pointed at things a lot just to show that gaudy colorful band. We’re going to let Mr. Mayo sleep a while and check on him tomorrow.

— But he’s not asleep. I don’t even think he’s breathing, I said.

— He’s breathing under his own power.

— The next time you want to get well, come to us. I’ll bet this Russian would amputate your foot if you came in with whooping cough. They laughed at the doctor and it seemed, in his absence, at me.

I thanked them anyway as they left. Sitting next to Ledric in a chair I kicked my feet. Hospitals are quiet when you need them to be.

I couldn’t sleep, but I was exhausted. I took off my shoes, so that helped. Ledric was as big as the bed. The nurses had dropped the metal guards from the sides of the mattress because he wouldn’t have fit on it otherwise.

I walked around the room in my socks to see him from all angles. Even crouching at the foot of the bed, staring up from his feet to the rise of his belly. I pulled the sheets above his ankles while I was down there just to see those five-pound potatoes he called feet.

It was like I had an audience with my own body; a chance to see how I’d look laid out on a bed. Except for his face we were enough alike. I walked to the window, blocking daylight, and Ledric’s figure worried me. I don’t mean his weight; the lonesomeness. Other than myself no one else was going to visit.

When I sat next to him again, heard his fuzzy breathing, I forgot sympathy and only remembered the burden. How had he become my responsibility? Nabisase and Grandma expected me at home. Was this how my mother felt before we went to Virginia?

To pass the next hour, since Ledric wasn’t going to tell any jokes, I tore off the cover of the hospital phone book and wrote a few more quick movie entries. Night of the Hatchet, Bet They Die, Easily Eaten. Why did the one-eyed drifter take his hatchet to the people of Tarpenny, Florida? In a surprise twist, they were a town of warlocks and witches and the drifter was a righteous man.

I looked at the words and felt guilty because I wasn’t going to give Ishkabibble a film. Only summaries of them. Not a movie, just letters.

After an hour and a half I left the room to call Grandma and yelled when I heard that Nabisase had skipped school a second day. They were happy to know Ledric was safe.

At home we ate dinner in the living room. We watched television awhile, sitting on the same sectional couch watching the same show, it was actually pleasant enough.

The nice thing about working as a house cleaner is that there’s some room allowed for personal crisis. The Third World isn’t running out of reserves to fill the posts.

Between a short day shift at Sparkle then another night at Clean Up I went to visit Ledric on November 15th. He didn’t seem to have moved since I’d left the afternoon before. It was a good sign, though, that he was still breathing without equipment. I guess that was a good sign.

While I waited I touched his hand. I picked lint out of his hair. There was even some on his eyebrows. What a dummy. I hoped he was alright.

The general practitioners returned after I’d waited an hour, both smiling, holding Ledric’s many medical forms. I thought they were going to discharge him and these were the bills.

Instead each guy tried to outkind the other. If one shook my hand, the other put his hand on my shoulder. The first offered me a stick of gum and the second gave me a whole pack. I thought they were preparing me for an outrageous invoice.

— We looked at the results and had a neurologist in to see Mr. Mayo. We feel very confident now in our opinion that Mr. Mayo has contracted botulism.

From his bed Ledric raised a pointed finger. He struggled to direct that mini-carrot at me. If he could speak, Ledric would be gloating: No hospitals I said. He would have, but couldn’t because the physicians pulled his arm back down then pulled the covers over his belly, right up to his sweaty neck. They snugly tucked him in and grinned.

27

A problem with dogs is that they can’t be reasonable. I don’t mean just the wild ones.

When I came back from the hospital on Wednesday afternoon my reserves were tapped; a two-day snooze was in order. I wanted to try and get one, at least.

Near my home I stopped at the old white house on the corner to rest against its low fence. My vision was spotty, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since plucking Ledric from the room he rented.

You did that, I crowed to myself. You saved the boy’s life.

But forget five minutes of pride because Candan’s red Doberman chased me half a block home. It had been out wandering, I suppose.

It could have caught up. It should have. Instead it paced me, staying about an eighth of an inch behind. Not snapping its jaws so much as clicking its teeth. I got so confused that I tripped. When I fell, just two houses from my own, the red Doberman stopped and waited for me to stand.

Soon as I did it sparked again; snarling; going on until I was inside my yard with the gate closed.

The dog then ran past my place, past Candan’s to the one-family home of Henry and Althea Blankets. Older folks with a fat German Shepherd. The red Doberman stopped there to bark hysterically at their yard until the German Shepherd inside the compound answered.

After the German Shepherd started the red Doberman ran to the next house and did the same thing until an Irish Setter completed the quorum.

28

As I came in the house my sister apologized. — Not another day, she said, before I could.

— You’ll go back to school tomorrow, I told her. Did you see those dogs outside?

She pointed to her bedroom. — I packed my bookbag already. So how did Ledric look?

— Big. Am I that size?

— Did he seem any better though?

— They hadn’t even started treating him yet.

— That’s Anthony? Grandma yelled from the sectional couch. She stamped her good foot on the carpet, summoning me.

She was covered in gossip magazines. Nabisase had walked to the store to buy soda and reading material. Grandma was turned on the couch so her right leg was up.

— Put some rub on my leg.

Grandma meant the mentholated gel, but that was for colds not fractured bones. — It’s not going to stop the pain, I told her.

— I don’t want to talk of hospitals.

— They helped Ledric, I told her. Eventually.

— Sure. Just please rub. Just please rub. Your mother used to do it, but now.

After I was done I rolled her gown back over the right leg and washed my hands in the bathroom. After that I bashed in my mother’s bedroom door.

The lock held, but not the cheap wood around it. The door popped from its hinges after nine good kicks and then it was easy to get inside.

The room still smelled like Ghost Mist, a perfume sold in stationery stores. Usually just beside the South Queens Tattler, a local version of the tabloid news. You were as likely to read about 6th District Representative Floyd Flake’s legislative agenda as the goat in Cambria Heights that looked like Billy Dee Williams.

A streak the size of an otter had dried into one wall where a perfume bottle had shattered. Glass fragments stuck in the carpet hairs.

Mom’s dresser sagged on its little legs because all four drawers had been pulled out, flung around, and without them the cheap wooden frame was weak from years of beatings.

Some of her clothes were still on the ground. A shirt with the arms spread in an explosive diving pose. A pair of pants with the legs crossed over themselves in a sprint.

My mother had never left a sloppy room in her adult life. Where do you think I learned to clean a house with such aplomb? How many weeks had she slept in this mess, preparing herself to leave?

If I’d put the door back up, blocked the opening, Nabisase wouldn’t have seen. It was disconcerting to think about how many times we’d passed Mom’s room and didn’t fathom her life inside. Or felt too tired to ask.

Nabisase went off when she saw the chaotic room. I guess it was unsettling. Down the hall, into the living room, where she didn’t scream but made a smashing sound. She broke the little Sidney Poitier statuette.

She could have kicked in windows, but my mother hadn’t made them. Nabisase picked the small head up, then threw it down again. Once the piece broke she took off her sneaker to crack the rest precisely.

Grandma watched from her convalescence on the couch.

I went to my mother’s bedroom and overturned the bed.

29

— You got French fried, I told Ishkabibble, because he looked worse today than he had a week before. I couldn’t stay home while my sister broke Sidney Poitier’s chips into bits of dust. After tossing Mom’s mattress around I needed to get out.

Ishkabibble pulled the collar of his button-down shirt away from his skin; took out a plastic bottle wide as two fingers then rubbed lotion on various parts of his reddened neck.

He was planning to meet me because I had a mortgage check for him signed by my grandmother, but she didn’t want him invited home. We agreed to meet on 147th Avenue and 223rd, though I bet if I’d let the scent of Grandma’s draft out to the wind the man would have found me in Sierra Leone.

Before the money I gave him a large envelope.

Ishkabibble’s enthusiasm went to rubble when he found it was no movie script.

— That’s not what I wanted to do. This is it.

— A book? he yelped after I explained.

— A book. He was doused.

— A book! He threw it to the ground.

No worry though, I’d bound the sheets of paper in a gray plastic expandable folder. They were all in there: on the backs of Uncle Arms’s flyers, napkins from the coffee shop in Lumpkin. The torn-off front cover of a hospital phone book and many sheets of legal paper I’d found at home.

— You don’t like it?

— Tell me where the movie went.

— Why worry about one when you’ve got two hundred of them here?

Ishkabibble must have been used to this kind of disappointment. He thinks a woman should buy a Jeep Wrangler, but she wants an Acura. A guy borrows money to open a business and decides to burn it on a boat instead. No one wanted his advice, just his funding.

— I can’t hardly read these. What’s this say?

— The Dead Reserved a Room, I read. 1974. When a woman in her fifties, Dorie, inherits the old motel her grandfather once ran she travels there, to Michigan, in the hopes of making it a profitable business again. When she arrives a number of women from the local college are lodging there. At first there’s little to disturb their lives and the older woman befriends the college students. Eventually the girls are killed off. Each time it’s Dorie who finds them. She discovers that her grandfather is killing them from beyond the grave. He doesn’t want Dorie taking their advice: sell his hotel and move to Chicago where she’d always hoped to be in a band. A quieter version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of family businesses gone awry.

— You have got to be kidding, Ishkabibble said.

— Should I read another one?

— I got it. I’ll take that. No problem. I’ll think of something. He tapped the collected pages. I never heard of any of these though.

— And I’m sure you know the banking laws better Than I ever will.

— That suit makes you look like a football player, he said. Big Man. Feel like helping me out now that I’m going to help you?

He asked politely, and that made the difference.

We didn’t walk far, still on 147th, but right before it reaches Farmer’s Boulevard. On one side of the street there were private homes, but across from those a hive of warehouses that saw local and long-distance deliveries fifteen hours a day.

Next to a red weathered matchbox of a deli was a yellow home so humble its back was to the public road. The front windows and porch faced an abandoned yard not the street. Ishkabibble posed me right on the grass. He really told me how to stand; with my arms crossed and not to speak even if the guy inside said something to me. Ishkabibble knocked on the side door, which was actually the one that faced the street.

There were no security bars over the windows. This didn’t create an air of freedom as much as implied there was nothing valuable inside.

That side door opened then Ishkabibble stepped aside so that the man could come out. Bald, but with a fastidiously maintained long beard. More gray than black. A real mantle of righteousness. He shut the house door behind himself. They spoke a bit.

Ishkabibble pointed backward, toward me. I thought he was bragging about my film encyclopedia. Getting a few advance sales. He was smiling if the homeowner wasn’t. I waved at the bald man and he pointed at me, a response I mistook for friendly.

— You don’t threaten me, he yelled. Hear?

I said, — Zuh?

It was just surprise that made me stutter, but he heard what he wanted to.

— Fight? he said to me. I’ll fight you, you ras. .

Before he could finish the curse Ishkabibble said, — I don’t want it to come to that and neither does he.

This was me Ishkabibble referred to. I’m the ‘he’ at the end of that sentence.

The homeowner, despite respectable flustering, looked summarily defeated; as if street boxing was actually a question of weight classes. I leaned back against the man’s fence and it made some noise, sure.

— You going to bust my fence now too?!

Ishkabibble looked at me, — He’s going to pay, Anthony. Don’t worry. Stand straight. Relax.

The man walked into his home and two of his children came to the only window on this side of the house. A bathroom I’ll bet because there was fog on the pane. Two girls, younger than Nabisase, who stared like it was me who’d come to collect their daddy’s soul.

But let me refrain from acting po-faced for too long. Once I realized that Ishkabibble had propped me up to play his muscle, a hired lug, I loved it. The man actually believed I was menacing just because my upper arms were as big as some people’s thighs.

When he came back out with a folded envelope for Ishkabibble he looked my way but I remained impassive. Looked at his home rather than him. He came to me. Stood one foot away. Then I was afraid. Those wiry guys are the toughest meat in the world. If he’d actually starting hitting me my best defense would’ve been to fall forward, hoping to crush his thorax.

— You lay down with a man like Ishkabibble and you going to have hell.

I had shut my eyes, but opened them when he stopped speaking. The man’s thick beard looked softer from here. For no reason I wondered how many pens he could store in it.

— Who is this boy? he asked Ishkabibble.

But my buddy was already walking off. — Anthony come on, he said.

— Are you that one, then? From down over 229th Street way.

The man touched my neck so tenderly that I wasn’t agitated anymore. I felt like an animal that knows, instinctively, when it meets a decent human. He yelled at Ishkabibble. — You’re wrong for using a boy like this. He’s big, but don’t know better. Doesn’t matter Anthony, he said. Anthony, yes? I’m not mad. I heard about you. I’m always sorry for people with troubles.

I walked far behind Ishkabibble; he wouldn’t slow down for me. At every corner I expected him to throw out my manilla envelope, but he kept it. How far he expected me to escort him I’m not sure, but passersby stopped me more than once. Couples mostly. In the middle range; forties, fifties and sixties.

Mr. and Mrs. Blankets said hello and asked about my day. They were walking that husky German Shepherd. It pulled at the leash; it pulled at the leash; so they weren’t able to stay.

Mr. Rumtower and Mr. Brace patted my arm and said, — Alright Anthony, when I passed.

Ms. Tandyamara, who drove a tractor for New York City, gave me five dollars. Popularity never felt so bad.

I said thanks to her. I said it to everyone. They shrugged or laughed; some friendly and some uncomfortable. Don’t believe it when you hear that everyone mistreats the mentally ill and that they always have. Compassion smashes up against confusion, unease. The pileups make messy scenes.

I forgot about Ishkabibble until he had almost disappeared. A long, thin doodle ahead of me.

30

For days now I’d begged Grandma to let me help her. I was sleeping twenty minutes a night, that’s all. I’d lie down, but the eyes wouldn’t shut; I lay flat until that got boring then rolled onto my side. I tried to find the cool spots on my pillow. With Mom still gone I stayed in her room, the one that seemed to expel its occupants.

On the 17th of November, a Friday, Grandma finally let me pack her up. Of course she could have waited until Saturday because I didn’t have to work, but then most people find the exact wrong time to accept help. I called in to Sparkle to miss a day and the receptionist only grunted.

I had to drive Nabisase to school because she’d skipped on Thursday to visit Ledric in the hospital. I found out because the school called me. He could speak well enough already to give my sister a phone number for his parents in Chicago. They said they were going to send some money; it was that or have them visit. I vetoed a plane trip because I’d be the one getting them at Kennedy Airport, driving them to Queens General and back. And I didn’t even like this guy! My sister was his sympathetic bet.

After I watched Nabisase walk inside her school I came back for Grandma.

— Bring the mail, she said as she dressed. We’ll be waiting a while.

From the clinic’s parking lot there was a view of Brookville Park; a parcel of spare woodland that divided Rosedale into halves, one mostly white and the other mostly black.

I’d wheeled Ledric through the service entrance, but I carried Grandma to the front. The clinic’s waiting room was still small, but it serviced a tiny clientele. Immigrants fed this practice. Carribean, West African, East Indian and some Irish. Black Americans, yes, and Chinese from Valley Stream. If a job or Medicare wasn’t covering hospital charges, then you went here.

The waiting area was occupied by rows of chairs that were soldered down in groups of seven; they were orange. Twenty people sat around already. I took a number from a red dispenser that looked like a canteen. Our number, A44, was called so quickly I expected to be home fast.

This first walk to the receptionist was only to register, though. We were allowed to request a doctor so I chose the apparatchik. Now the disinterested woman behind the Plexiglas gave me another ticket, a new number, and told me to sit some more.

— One is yours, Grandma said when I sat again. She pushed the piece of mail into my chest.

I would have liked to peel the stamp off as a souvenir, but there wasn’t one. Only that faded red punch of machine postage. The left-hand corner of the envelope showed the group’s name and return address in Boston.

Free Ahmed Foundation.

Dear Conscientious Supporter (this was printed on the page, the rest he wrote by hand),

Thank you for the letter. You will be added to our growing mailing list.

You are correct, I do have a lot of friends. The number grows more each day as my case gains more attention. God is good.

I did quote a comic book in my interview. Would you have respected me more if it was Diderot? They are both just entertainments in the end, don’t you agree?

Many people have asked about my name, but I do not understand their confusion. I have found friends in here who introduced me to the virtues of Islam. Faith is important in prison. I think you see religion as a child’s toy, but it’s a weapon. The schemes of powerful, treacherous men fall before it.

In your letter you seemed quite angry. I hope I am incorrect and that you rest at peace. You ask if I wish that I was black. I do not. I am not crazy. Have you ever wished to be a woman?

Some people write asking that I tell them how to be productive. Often they sound like you. Misguided. Let me sign off by telling you what I’ve told many of them. Be active. Activate!

Ahmed Abdel

At two-thirty they called Grandma’s name.

I carried her to an examination room then propped her on an examination table. I stayed in there with her, watching the clock go. The windows were opaque so the sunlight that came in turned a buttery yellow.

Grandma said, — Thank you for bringing me.

— Do you have to say it like we’re strangers?

She turned her head away. — Why did you let those people in? Your sister might have won.

— Miss Innocence? What was her talent going to be? Punching out the MC?

— But you even stopped her fun.

The Russian shook my hand quickly when he walked in, but no more. He hardly looked up. Just said, — Hello. Hello. I’m going to close this curtain so she and I have privacy.

I was actually hurt that he didn’t recognize me as the botulism brother.

From outside the beige plastic curtain shell I heard Grandma undress as the doctor put on rubber gloves. I recognized the snap as he pulled them down to his wrists from the times I’d used those same gloves to clean ovens.

— We will x-ray the hip, the doctor said to me when he eventually stepped out.

— Do I take her?

— We have a wheelchair. Come back in ten minutes.

— What about her purse?

— Take it with you if you’re worried.

Being outside in the cold was nice until I noticed that I’d become a focus of the waiting room audience. The television was broken and I was there in the large window. Just another screen.

I didn’t want to stand there carrying Grandma’s handbag while people watched me so I patted my suit jacket and pants as if I’d bought cigarettes, but couldn’t find them. I tapped myself harder. I almost hurt myself because the more I acted this way the more people inside the clinic looked at me. That only made me more frantic to seem normal as I slapped myself around looking for a cigarette I never even had in the first place.

I thought of going to the park for a walk to get away a minute, but with my good fortune Grandma would finish up with the doctor, come out to try and find me, wander into the street and get hit by garbage truck.

A woman in white pants and nurse’s shoes came outside. — Why you jumping around out here?

— I was looking for a cigarette.

She had one. A plastic aquamarine lighter too. Coming out to check on me was a good excuse to have some herself.

I didn’t actually know how to use a cigarette.

When I put it in my mouth I put it in too far, choked up on it and got half the thing wet. Then the lady had to give me another. The next one I left hanging so far off my lips that the wind snatched it from me and carried down the block.

— This is the last one, she said.

She brought the lighter close. She had big hands. We were standing outside the clinic on the wheelchair ramp.

— Activate, I said.

I tried hard and pulled properly. A successful blaze. Since this was only my fourth cigarette in twenty-three years I didn’t inhale correctly, but the action itself was well carried out. The woman stubbed out her own cigarette against the railing I leaned on.

I must have looked awful because she treated me so nicely.

She said, — I’m going to tell you, okay? Because I bet you’ll need to know. Don’t ever go to St. Luke’s. If you’re in Manhattan and they pick you up one day. Not St. Luke’s. They’ll strap you down for three days in their psych ward and never let you stand even for a shit.

I was surprised and couldn’t hide it.

— What do I look like to you?

She said, — Sympathy.

While I smoked and coughed with her, five dogs trotted out from the park then ran along 147th Avenue ignoring cars, buses and vans. Their mouths were open. A smug furry procession.

After passing by the nurse and I, the dogs ran across the busy intersection at the corner of Brookville Boulevard. Every driver managed to use the brakes. Lots of people witnessed this, not just me. When the hounds had crossed against the light safely, stopping traffic, they howled. Then went farther down 147th Avenue untethered.

31

Soft in the middle, queasy from the cigarettes, I walked inside the clinic holding my belly. The people sitting and waiting tried to smile at me, but stared. If you’re ever trying not to seem mentally unstable, avoid carrying an old woman’s large pocketbook while taking your first tobacco hit in front of a jury.

I had to knock at the Russian doctor’s office door because it was locked when I got there.

— You came back, Grandma stammered when he let me in. She squinted.

— Of course. I touched her shoulder. I’m not leaving.

She was lying on the examining table with both legs bent at the knees so that her soles were flat and her shins faced the back of the room.

— The hip is fine, he said as he went around the examination table. Deep bruises takes longer to heal at her age.

If he had been speaking with her before I got there he wasn’t doing so anymore. Now I was the authority in the room. — But now we find another problem, he said. I am cutting it off.

— Cutting where?

— From my leg, Grandma muttered.

He had a silver tool that looked like a cookie cutter stubbed into her shin. Blood came out from where the silver plunger hid. Dribbling down my grandmother’s leg.

— Shit! I screamed.

He pulled the cutter out; it had a small cylinder of her flesh in the once-hollow core now. — I will do stitches, he said.

Grandma held her face like she was trying to pull it off.

— Can you feel it through the anesthesia? I asked.

— There is none, the surgeon said.

— Where did it go?

— I didn’t have any, the doctor said. Many people here don’t get any. It is expensive for all sides.

He carried some thin black thread in his palm. — She wanted none, he added.

Grandma rubbed her two thin bent arms together at the elbows, inches above her face.

— How come you’re not screaming? I’ll get the police! There’s blood, Grandma.

She told me, — I had him do it this way.

The Russian stitched the site. Explained that after giving Grandma this punch biopsy he’d send the flesh to test for cancer.

I fell back into a chair clutching my own leg.

— I am sorry, Grandma whispered. To all of you. Many nights I wonder how I brought this sickness to my children.

Instead of running away I pulled the chair closer. The doctor’s needle made no sounds entering her skin except for Grandma’s rasping. She said, — What did I do to you?

— You’ll never be able to move around on that leg, Grandma.

— Why should I be spared?

The doctor must have wanted to be charming. He thought he was making a joke.

The Russian said, — Now your children will have to carry you.

32

I was part of a Current A fair family. The Hard Copy demographic. Rescue 911; Real Life Stories of the Highway Patrol; Unsolved Mysteries starring Mr. Robert Stack. Beginning on November 14 th television news and the reputable papers explained that the entire U.S. Government was shutting down due to budgetary squabbling between Democrats and Republicans, but the effect on us was minimal.

Looming cuts to our national budget were advertised as either a prelude to the Rapture or Satan taking control, depending on your political affiliations. Even atheists and the spare Marxist agreed when allowed a few minutes of punditry on cable stations. The way politicians yelled I expected warlord-supported gangs to commandeer our homes and daughters. Federal Government deadlock was on every major network which meant, of course, that many of us changed the channel.

To programs that were more entertaining. I was a fan of the Morton Downey Jr. show just like Nabisase. When Grandma had finished with the Star I took it to the bathroom and read quietly. One of us was watching television at all times.

Besides, serious news only reported on small lives like ours when they’d been caught in the trajectory of someone’s gun. Other than that it was war crimes, statewide fires and unctuous assemblymen; famine in the hot belt of the planet. More important, I’ll agree.

Call ours minor items then. The shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. A priest who had a sex change. One Hartford man who’d faked more on-the-job injuries than anyone in America. Ordinary epics. Legends are still to be created.

Into that stewpot add a beauty pageant for virgins. No national scandal, but a five-minute item for sure.

The revised Norton Anthology of Poetry was on my sleeping bag open to the bottom of page 1249. I’d opened it while feeling particularly distant from college one evening; actually pretending I’d enjoyed my Survey of American Poetry seminar freshman year. I plowed it from the bottom of one of my book boxes and read awhile, but turned it down when Grandma called to me from the living room.

— Anthony! Come on, Anthony!

Even my sister said my name as she hadn’t done since the 12th, and it was the 20th already; hearing Nabisase speak to me really was a miracle worth thanking Selwyn for.

When I got upstairs they were on the couch. Grandma leaned forward, left elbow on her good thigh, resting her chin in that left hand, tapping the tip of her nose with her pointer finger.

Nabisase said, — Anthony, look at this.

The TV was speaking.

A cabbage-headed man hosted the show, but he wore a suit for dignity. His Australian accent made him sound smarter. Out of those clothes he’d look like any alcohol-pounded, red-faced, barender, but not behind a desk.

— Beauty pageants built this country, he said.

— They’re one of America’s sacred institutions. Women make more money, have more power, now than ever before in human history, but let’s hope we never forget to appreciate the precious faces of the ladies who compete in the pageant system year after year. Here’s our Jerry Ganz with a story we call, Pretty as a Picture.

His face dispersed into pixilated dust on the screen, which refocused on the image of a shaded runway. It was footage of a contest, but not Miss Innocence. Women in their twenties wearing gowns; this passed quickly. To teenagers in a similar promenade.

A new deep voice began; Jerry Ganz.

— Beauty, he began. Pageants, he finished.

— Every state in the nation hosts dozens each year. Fitness America, Cracker Jacks Bikini Contest, Miss Italia, The Black Mother and Daughter Pageant. Even Manhunt International, for gentlemen.

— While most of us can see that these institutions celebrate competition, excellence and, yes, good looks, not everyone agrees. The weekend of November the 10th found over forty families traveling to a small town named Lumpkin on the border between Virginia and West Virginia. A place where crime of any kind is rare.

— You can see the local temperament at the annual Apple Picking Festival, where families from every part of Frederick County come to enjoy apple cider, apple pie and apple fries.

The shots of sunny orchards were replaced by flashbright footage of college-aged men and women, skinny and sanguine, surrounding a Wendy’s restaurant.

— Film obtained recently shows this band of college students taunting helpless travelers a year ago. The old women you see trapped in this circle of belligerent twenty year olds were only buying copies of The Rescuers Down Under, a Disney film, for their nephews and nieces. When they were accosted, in 1994, at a Parsipany, New Jersey, rest stop.

— The Miss Innocence pageant was different from many others because they only accepted contestants who had held onto their virtue. A contest for girls from ages eleven to seventeen who’d done what few will nowadays— remain a virgin.

— Here you can see the Blue Ridge Theatre. Where musicals such as Oklahoma and The Music Man are regularly run. Gospel choirs practice on the second floor. And on Saturday, the 11th, these girls staged one of the most enjoyable shows in years.

The tabloid show had film of the night of the blowout: the protestors walking around outside the Blue Ridge, of them opening the door to the service hall. A camera man had perched himself at an auditorium window and there was footage of people inside running, spasming, crying as the flares burned. You could hear the horns, but the glass muffled it some. They had shots from inside the protestor’s yellow bus, but none of Uncle Arms.

Jerry Ganz was the gigantic man I’d seen taking notes at the McDonald’s foofaraw. He wore very small glasses, the frames strained to reach both ears.

— Rumors were circulating that the students had a bomb planted somewhere in the audience. If it had gone off who knows how many lives would have been destroyed?

Jerry Ganz was standing in front of the marble Lumpkin library as a man in frayed jeans and tatty T-shirt cleaned the steps behind the reporter.

— But we wouldn’t even bring this news to you if it was just one long sad story. There are enough disappointments in the world. It’s true that Miss Innocence was ruined. But there were actually two pageants that weekend. The second, a local event in its third year. It was conceived by one very special man.

— Ah neva hade it easeh, nut fo’ one minut ov ma lahf.

— His name is Uncle Allen. That’s what he likes to be called. Most of the year he’s in his office in downtown Lumpkin helping people of all incomes to buy a home. Uncle Allen is a mortgage broker. And how did he get started?

— Ah wish yawl cood see mah back, ah tell ya. Gots enuf bruisuss fo a fooball team. I dun hahd woik an’ ah buhleev dat good peeples awlwuss comes out on top.

— Uncle Allen, the son of men and women who had to work on their knees, now has the money to help others stand. And how does he do it? With his own contest. One that rewards girls for their character. He’s only got one question when they come on stage: Have you suffered?

— Because Uncle Allen knows, maybe better than most of us, just what rewards suffering can bring.

— Ah calls ’em mah Goodness Girls. Da winnas.

— And what good fortune really for Uncle Allen and his Goodness Girls. If the Miss Innocence pageant had gone on without incident we may never have known about Uncle Allen, whose pageant brings modeling contracts to girls of all sizes and shapes.

As proof they scrolled a few of the past winners and their advertisements across the screen. I couldn’t disagree about his standards. Only about a third of the girls had waistlines. They modeled ponchos, long jackets, overalls, serapes. Circulars for Good Will, an Army & Navy shop.

— This ends with a mystery though. One of the Goodness Girls is missing. As we speak.

— She left a picture, but not her name. Maybe she didn’t expect to win. A child who, Uncle Allen says, stole the show when she stepped on stage. We have only the Polaroid, taken when she registered, carrying her sick grandmother on her back.

— Uncle Allen hopes she’ll contact his office if she sees this, and the number is at the bottom of our screen.

— But maybe it’s fitting that she went off without a trace. A beautiful girl is just a daydream. We’ll end with her snapshot on the screen so you can see, as Uncle Allen put it, what an angel looks like.

33

Nabisase didn’t want to celebrate with me. When I reached over the couch and rubbed the top of her head with my sweet fine knuckles, she jumped away.

Grandma even stood up, painful work, and said, — Anthony, don’t do that!

— I was congratulating her!

My sister touched up against the entertainment center, one hand on the television screen as if it brought her more warmth than me.

She didn’t want to celebrate at all.

Nabisase put on her coat and left the house. She didn’t even tell Grandma that she was going. To the Apostolic Church of so-and-so. That’s where she called Uncle Arms. Same evening that the program showed.

After she left I told Grandma, — She shouldn’t be scared of me.

— It should be the other way round? My grandmother laughed. At least her award package came to the house. Nabisase still used it as her mailing address.

When the Federal Express guy asked for a signature I was the only one home. Let me correct that. Grandma was home, but if I’d called her over she’d have taken thirty minutes to shamble from her room.

I took the envelope. Overnight Delivery. It arrived early on the 22nd. Closed the door.

I didn’t open it though I dropped it a few times on the chance it would pop open and let me inside.

Candan rang the front doorbell and when I answered it he said, — I saw the FedEx man.

I didn’t invite him inside, but stepped out there. He was taller than me by a head. I wanted to press his minuscule ears; they were the size of buttons.

— I wondered if it was something about your mother.

— That letter was for Nabisase.

— From your Mom?

— Uncle Allen, I said.

— I thought your Uncle was dead.

— Then it’s a message from the grave. I walked down the steps just to make him follow me. You have any reason to be expecting her? I asked him.

He shrugged. — I’m not her family. You would know.

— I know she’s not coming back for you, Candan.

I was standing by my Oldsmobile, looking at my reflection, but he’d stayed by the front steps. Candan snapped his fingers. I thought he was commanding me to come over to him, but it was the dog, that Doberman, pressing its face against the hedge. It wanted to push the way through, maybe to eat me, but when Candan snapped the animal returned to the backyard.

— Did she say something about me? he asked.

I didn’t even turn around. — She was too busy driving off with some Indian guy, I said.

— She didn’t.

— She did.

He opened my gate, shut it and walked back to his house.

34

I left the house after Candan went away because I couldn’t sit for hours, alone with Nabisase’s letter, and not open it. Not for hours.

I brought a small pot of tea and two sandwiches to Grandma’s room. Changed her socks and helped her to the bathroom before going out. I wanted to get in a van and ride the way up to Queens General so I could find out about the attraction between that bacterial-bozo and Nabisase. I should have gone and pulled the tubes out his veins, but I was too tired. I felt like I hadn’t slept even one night my whole life.

Ishkabibble is who I wanted to see, but I had no home phone number. He called you, but couldn’t be reached. If I tried to find him whose home would I check? Nearly everyone was indebted to him so he told no one his address.

Finally I ended up in Brookville Park because I knew he liked it there. Quiet. Empty. No one angry because he wants the check. Its small ponds had sprouted tan reeds that tossed dryly against themselves.

The most distinct landmark in Brookville Park was the rigid purple monument at its east entrance. An abandoned semitrailer that had been scratched, cut, spray-painted, signed. It was specked with spots of orange rust.

Its support legs had fallen off a long time before so that the semitrailer leaned forward, a Muslim kissing soil for the third time in a day.

I was happy for my sister, but jealous too. She was ten years younger and already poised for something spectacular. Fun, at least. I wondered if my bitterness was only going to get stronger until the time when I stopped remembering my name and how to care for myself. Maybe one good side-effect to flipping out was that I could forget how little I’d done.

— Hide me!

Ishkabibble came out from the trees, running. His overcoat snapped behind him and one of his dress shoes had come off. He ran so fast I almost missed him; attache case in his right hand knocking the back of his right thigh.

— I’ll take you home, I said.

— You’re not fast enough. He looked over his shoulder. Hide me now!

I pulled at the door to the semitrailer. He was fast, but I could be strong. Not strength, but power. Grabbed the handle and simply leaned back.

The door opened and it was like night time in there. He was tentative. It smelled of mildew; there were small plants growing in the standing water. When I opened the door both our shoes were splashed.

— You can always dry your feet, I said.

I pushed it closed and walked away. Not far— thirty feet— to one of the baseball diamonds. I stamped on the mound, but it was already gone. An indent instead of a hill. As I kicked around out there a military outfit shot from the trees.

Black boys on mopeds. Ten bikes and twenty kids. Friends shared the padded seats. Two even rode the handlebars, dangerous as that was. They drove quickly, dangerously, screaming Ishkabibble’s name.

When I let him out he owed me a favor.

I waited there, he went home and came back in fifteen minutes.

While he was gone I opened the door to the semitrailer again. I was wearing boots, not shoes, so I didn’t worry about the inch of water. I went in, shut it. The incline was pretty minor. There was grass and weeds growing in here. I couldn’t see them too well, but felt them against my pants. Some were as tall as my shins. A marsh inside the semitrailer; the semitrailer in a park; the park in my suburban neighborhood. I never understand what people mean when they say, getting back to nature. As if they ever left.

Ishkabibble came back, calling for me. When I stepped out he said, — I know you were praying for this.

I didn’t look at the book, just held it.

It was hardback, 184 pages. I wanted to hammer nails with it. That’s how strong I felt. I swung it around in one hand a few times just to know the weight. Page numbers were at the bottom, centered under the text. The paper was thin and there were some smudged pages, but I recognized every line. It had striking red endpapers. The first page listed my name, the publisher (Rahsaan Robinson Press; Tattleback, Connecticut) and the title, Killing Is My Business.

It didn’t have a dust jacket, but that was no problem to me. I always lose those plastic wraps anyway.

— What happened here?

— That was a printer’s error, Ishkabibble said. Sorry about that.

There was no title on the turquoise cover, only my name in gold. All capital letters. Anthony James.

I pointed at both words. — This is going to give people the wrong idea of what’s inside.

Still, how could I get angry? With this talisman in my hands.

Most pages had two entries, sometimes three. They were broken up like any dictionary. Alphabetical sections. A. G. J. There were even a few in Q. Quiet or He’ll Hear You, Quarrel with Fear, Quetzalcoatl Craves Blood.

— Why don’t we sit down for a minute? he asked me.

— You want to?

He laughed as we walked to a bench. I read to him when we sat. Just a few short ones. It Woke One Night. How She Bled. Eviscerate Steve.

He asked, — How did you turn out to be my best friend?

35

I had a book. And what did my sister win?

A book of coupons, 40 percent off at most of Lumpkin’s stores. One round-trip bus ticket to Lumpkin. And an appointment to pose for two color photos on the weekend of January 5th–7th next year. They’d appear in the Hoddman’s Sunday Circular soon after and pay $600 upon publication.

Uncle Arms benefited more. By 1997 prospective Goodness Girls came to compete from every county in Virginia.

But an encyclopedia was better than any of that. As soon as I had it I bounced around.

Soon as I got home from the park I asked Nabisase to go out with me to the movies. We both had accomplishments to celebrate. She refused and called Ledric at the hospital. Spoke with him the rest of the night.

I asked her again the next day, the 23rd, in the evening, after work. On Friday, the 24th, too. Nabisase adamantly opposed me until Saturday, around one o’clock. I was in Mom’s old room. Mine now.

— Ledric says I should be nicer.

I lay on the bed I’d brought up from the basement by myself. — Why did you ask him?

– ’Cause I talk to him every day, she said. He’s getting released tomorrow.

— Did his family ever send us that money they promised?

— I haven’t seen it yet.

It was the 25th of November. Nabisase and I walked instead of using the car. She was thirteen and I was twenty-three.

We crossed Brookville Park and entered Town, a three-block strip of shops: Key Food, two corner stores, a Korean market and four hair salons. There was a minor branch of the public library, used mostly for the free toilet. I pulled my sister across the street, pinched the fleshy lobes of her ears. — Let’s get these pierced, I said.

Nabisase clutched a parking meter. — You said we were just going to a movie.

— I figured that since we were out, we might as well. She wasn’t smiling, but I was. I had an encyclopedia of horror films, have I mentioned that?

Nabisase looked down the block. — I always thought I’d do this with Mom.

— How long do you plan to wait?

My sister rested her chin on the top of the parking meter. — I miss her.

I pulled Nabisase into this jewelry store that also sold pets. It was situated between a laundromat and a pizzeria. She was aghast because the place had no dignity.

— How about the Piercing Pagoda in Green Acres Mall? she asked.

— The mall is as far as the movies. That’s twenty minutes from here. This is where we are.

Nabisase tugged her ears hard like she wished they would come off. — I saw you let those people into Miss Innocence, she said.

— But look how things turned out.

— You going to try and take credit for Goodness Girls now?

They sold animals toward the front of the store and gold from a glass counter in the back. Why try to make money in only one way? If not for space limitations they’d have sold 50 cent bags of cookies too.

The woman who owned the store was in back, by the jewelry, her head wrapped in bright green cloth. Another woman was back there too, tall and as yet unimpressed by the jewelry choices. The customer switched her purse from one shoulder to the other, making no motion to unzip and spend. — You all right? she called suddenly.

I was going to answer, but a child’s voice came. — Yeah Momma, come look at fishes!

Against the walls of the store were cages of lizards and snakes, some green, some brown or black. Two rows of fish tanks, eight feet high and fifteen feet long, split the center of the store into aisles.

The sun was up, but we were still dressed heavy for winter. The store itself was humid. It smelled like wet, mossy stones. I stuck my gut out to see it stretch my shirt so far that the buttons might burst. I did that to make my sister laugh, but my imperfections had lost their funny side for her.

Nabisase and I looked into a tank of ten baby lizards. They tumbled over one another. They stood on one another’s heads. As a unit they turned and watched us.

That kid who’d demanded her mother come watch fish appeared wearing black jeans, a black sweatshirt, blue cap, no holes punched in her ears.

— That’s bearded dragons, she said.

I thumped my belly like the old man she’d say I was.

— Is that right? my sister asked.

— Snakes is better though. Lizards and fish are boring.

— Maybe they think you’re boring, I told the girl.

Nabisase said, — Shut up, Anthony!

— I’m sorry, but who is she to criticize them?

The girl smiled like I’d said something nice because I’d used a kind tone. Then she pointed her thumb.

— That’s your thumb, I said dismissively.

— And this is my pinky.

Her stern mother looked at us. — How you doing over there Samarra?

— Good, Momma.

The little girl looked at me as though she had done me a service, perhaps spared my life.

Sam took Pop-Rocks from her pants pocket, snapped the small pack in the air. Her little belly stuck out under her sweatshirt, over her jeans. — Pop-Rocks! she yelled.

— Samarra Kroon you stop that screaming!

Sam ate a handful of the purple candy then opened her mouth to show the science fomenting.

— You put all that in your mouth at once? Nabisase asked. She knelt between the girl and me, but the kid could not be mesmerized by kindness. It was with me that Sam spoke. — You know which finger this is?

— Do you? I asked back.

She shyly peeked at her mother then turned to Nabisase, who was tapping a turtle tank to get the conversation away from me.

— That’s the longest finger, I answered for her.

Sam grinned widely. — Nah-uh. That’s not the word.

— You tell me what it is then, I dared.

— It’s the fuck-you finger, she whispered.

— You saying that to me? I asked.

Sam laughed.

Nabisase did not. — Let’s go. Anthony.

— No, I said to Samarra Kroon loudly. Fuck you.

Then here the girl’s mother came. A blue flame surrounded her.

— You get back! she screamed. I don’t give a damn, you get back from my daughter!

Little Samarra began to cry. The store owner reached under the counter while her husband came out from a closed office door. My sister could have helped by explaining that I always joke around with kids, but the only thing my sister did was step away. I had to run outside by myself and wait for her around the corner.

Outside the movies I fumed. I also panted. We walked fast from the lizard store to here. I was afraid Sam’s mother would be looking for me.

— I really thought you’d help me, I said again.

Nabisase wouldn’t discuss this anymore. I stood behind her, in line to enter Sunrise Cinemas Multiplex, pressing my thumb into her back. Either I’d annoy her or she’d answer me, but I wouldn’t be ignored. Getting into the movies was a slow process ever since they’d put up metal detectors. My sister wouldn’t look at me like I wanted her to.

— Which movie do you want to see? I asked.

She was distracted, holding a small cork to her nose. I was too annoyed to take notice.

— Why did you come with me if you’re not going to talk!

When she heard my voice raise she turned to me. — Whatever you want to see.

Then she looked around or through me again, sniffing the little stopper with her back to me.

— What is it? I asked while the ticket line stalled ahead of us.

— Uncle Allen sent it to me, she said. It was in my award envelope, but I don’t know why. It has a funny smell.

She gave it to me. A move so casual that she must have really wanted an answer and hoped I could provide it. If she hadn’t wanted my help she wouldn’t have explained anything to me.

Even after holding it under my nose a full minute I didn’t recognize the scent, so I put the top in my mouth.

— Oh Anthony, my sister said.

— It’s spicy and sweet at the same time. Paprika and peppermint.

— You’ve had it before? She seemed encouraged.

— Never have, I lied.

It was a soggy cork now. I held it out to her. — Can I keep it?

She shrugged — You act like it’s a Christmas card.

The film was being shown in the smallest theater to the far, far left. I walked behind my sister. I passed the concession stand so easily that everyone at Halfway House would have applauded. The only sign that I noticed the snacks was a sheen of sweat on my upper lip as we went by.

I had trouble with the chair. They’re only cut to accommodate so much. My body was pinched. I strained to get myself in. I yelped a few times in the process.

— Please, Nabisase said quietly. Can’t you just try to relax.

— The seat’s too small and I’m too big, but forget that. I want to talk about what a girl like you should know.

But she was easily distracted, by couples, a family, a strong breeze, anything that came through those doors. Anyone besides me. Faint tunes played through the room’s speakers and the lights were up.

— Do you know about Toxic Shock Syndrome? I asked.

The previews began so the room was only half as bright as before. We were still visible. I saw her rub her forehead. — Anthony, please.

— Toxic Shock Syndrome, I said loud. No one hushed us; we were in the right theater for conversations. There were other couples talking nearby.

— I found this when I was cleaning out Mom’s room.

It was the instructions from a box of Playtex tampons. Along with TSS, it described how to insert one.

To her credit, my sister acted maturely. She stood up. She walked away.

She sat a few rows down and on the opposite side of the aisle. I saw her slip into an empty seat. I sank lower in my own, feeling defeated. I took the cork out and tasted that night in Miser’s Wend, Virginia. Uncle Arms, we’re even.

Behind me. The theater doors opened. Both of them. Letting in light so I looked back. Annoyed enough right then that I might even pick a fight. And it was him. Ledric Mayo. Standing at the door.

He started to walk along, leading with his strawberry-shaped nose. As if he was sniffing out my sister.

I’d thought he was going to be discharged tomorrow, but he was at the movies with us on Saturday afternoon. He hadn’t even dressed well. The guy was in his hospital gown. His front was covered, but it couldn’t be tied, so the back was open to discovery.

He walked slowly because there was an IV in his arm and no one else in the movies noticed him. The IV was on a drip so Ledric was dragging it along beside him. A dirigible of a man pulling a long thin silver pole down the middle of a movie theater.

Ledric passed me and sat next to her. Nabisase acted so happy that it was like she’d expected him. He stuck one fat foot into the walkway.

The screen blew on, kindling our faces. A bonfire.

I leaned far back enough in my chair that I felt like I was falling. This made a terrible creaking noise in the theater. When I popped back up I tried to find my sister and him again.

There they were.

No.

There.

His arm already over her, her right hand on his lap.

She squeezed his thigh.

I wished I’d sat farther back.

I tried to leave, but had wedged so hard into the seat that I’d need a little help to get up.

So I stayed.

I tried to watch the film.

When I looked at my sister again she had less of her left hand out. It was in his pants. Through the zipper. Rummaging as though untangling a wire.

He dipped his head to try and kiss her, but her face was still down, watching to make sure she didn’t fumble. Also his stomach made it hard for him to move around.

The screen seemed brighter because the music soundtrack was so loud.

Oh, what was that?

Was it out?

Why did my sister stroke it?

She bent his penis like a plastic straw and lucky for him it was still soft enough to twist.

Nabisase tried more. She did better. The screen lit them like I wished it wouldn’t.

He leaned back.

There’s never a good day to see your sister suck a dick.

I leaned forward less to vomit than to breathe. I couldn’t look away. The dark silhouette of Nabisase’s head moved slowly. Then Ledric pushed his toes forward and backward like he was pedaling a bicycle.

The more his leg kicked, the bigger his belly became. It grew to the size of a weather balloon, but neither of them floated. I couldn’t see much of my sister’s head after a point, just his inflatable belly swaying.

I wanted to tell her don’t be like that. Don’t be so nasty. Goodness Girl.

It was Saturday, November 25th, 5:00 PM. That’s the first time I was ever thrown out of a movie. Because I wanted my sister to stop slurping I raised a ruckus, nearly broke the noisy chair.

Leaning forward and back, once and again, hoping the squeaks would distract my sister, but it didn’t. She kept going. Ledric too. They were the only ones in the room not mad at me.

My waist felt sweaty and my feet were cold. I was so hyper that I finally had the strength to stand on up. I did and screamed my sister’s name.

— Nabisase!

When I was a boy her birth had been the momentous event of my lifetime. My father visited us once, when I was ten. He drank beer with me one afternoon, out of cans and on a park bench. He made me think a man in glasses could be handsome. He spent the rest of the trip chasing my mother. He left after a few days. Nine months more and my sister was.

Having her around had been like a promotion; from only child, from little boy. I hadn’t been so matured in one decade as that first evening I picked her up. Supporting the back of her head with one hand.

— Nabisase! I yelled again.

The doors in the back opened as an usher walked in, but I watched my sister stand up. Ledric had disappeared and I wondered how a fat man moved so fast. Nabisase ran to the other exit, below the screen. Her hands across her mouth and nose hiding her disgrace.

36

When I reached home, walking from the movies, my hands were so stiff it could have been a bone disorder. Our block, 229th Street, was subdued in the early evening. When I cleared my throat the sound was amplified.

— You out here, too? the President asked from his front steps. In silhouette that hedge looked the worse end of a knife fight.

— It’s just us, I agreed, then leaned against the fence though this was a lousy move as it caused the red Doberman to stir. It came from the backyard.

— Quiet, the President commanded. Quiet! he tried again.

To no end. The man had to call his son. Candan took the leisurely route. When he appeared he only said, — Viper, quietly. The dog stopped watching me and went to Candan inside the house.

— Why would you name a dog after a snake? I asked once Candan had gone inside, taking Viper.

— He named it for the car, the President said.

I wouldn’t say that this man enjoyed my company, but that his own son was no friend.

The President took off his glasses, which made the already awkward eyes go bobbling to the farthest reaches of each socket. I looked away so as not to laugh, because the man was alright.

— He works hard, the President admitted. Soon that boy’s going to make a lot of money and his mother and I need the help. He pays half the mortgage right now, the President said.

— Is that right?

— Hell yes. So he’s got to make some room for himself in the house. I can understand that. I tell myself to.

Candan came to the security door three times. I took this for jealousy, but then saw it as a territorial instinct. I had the feeling that Candan would keep his father in a jar if he could.

The President finished his beer. He had torn away the label. He plopped it down with two others on the stairs. I took those three to the recycling bin, and when I returned he said, — You have got to be the neatest nigga since Moses.

— He was neat?

— Who gives a fuck! I’m talking about you.

This didn’t seem like it was going to be much of a year for snow; that was all right because it saved on shoveling.

— You keep some long hours, the President said. I see you come and go. Don’t know if it’s working or fucking.

— Last woman I got doesn’t call me anymore.

— It happens. My wife stopped giving me the soft serve when our boy came home.

— How long’s that been?

— I bet a year.

— I went longer than that without any, I gloated.

— But I married her behind!

— Stop making a fuss! Candan commanded from inside.

The President licked his lips a few times before putting his mouth to a new bottle of beer.

— Lost your mother, I see.

— How’d you know?

— Four people leave and only three come back, so what would I think? And C.D. was crying in the house last night.

I tapped my thighs because I wasn’t going to feel sad for Candan.

— I had a lot of hope when you moved in, the President said. Thought you were going to straighten your family out.

— And how’s your home life?

— You can’t guess how me and him got to acting like this. It’s not like you all.

Candan called his father inside, but I told him not to go.

— He probably needs help getting his mother from in front of the TV. Horse racing took more money from us than taxes this year.

— Sounds like there’s all types of problems you need fixed, I said.

— Well who doesn’t, Flapjack? You got a solution?

— Sometimes one word can kick-start your day, I said.

The President shook his head. — You tell me you love me and we’re going to have a fight.

— Dad! Candan demanded. The President went inside.

I stood on their stairs and looked at the doorway. It wouldn’t matter if I screamed or whispered so long as I said it.

— Activate.

37

I left the President’s yard not when the father and son began yelling inside, but once Candan let the Doberman out through the side door. I heard its nails clip along the concrete driveway and I rose.

A genuine Volkswagon Jetta was parked in our driveway behind my Oldsmobile Firenza and I knew Grandma hadn’t bought a new car while Nabisase and I were at the movies. It was impossible to see into the house from our yard because the front window was eight feet off the ground. I crossed the street to stand in the yard of the couple who owned an RV and the lights were on in our living room. With a glow coming through our one front window.

Inside I saw my sister with two, frankly, enormous figures. Men or women I couldn’t say, but each was an airship. They were inside, moving slow, talking with my little sister; it was as if I could see clearly the nightmares in a monster’s head.

I wanted to avoid walking into the house directly in case she’d hired two hooligans to beat me raw after the debacle in Sunrise Cinemas. But why get mad at me?

Into my yard and to the back where the honey-scent of laundry detergent dimmed the air around me. A line of clothes had been left out in the yard of the house next door; not the President’s, but the high-school teacher’s on the other side. The smell of clean clothes made me nostalgic for housekeeping work.

Our basement door, the third entrance to our home, opened to me so easily that I felt a nuclear charge. I put my hand to the sturdy door and it swayed for me.

On top of feeling brawny I also had the house key.

It was dark but I had the basement’s floor plan memorized. I was in the house, but the others didn’t know. I felt great again. Quiet. Invulnerable.

Only fifteen feet away from my book; it was lying on my bed in the dark.

The door at the top of the basement stairs was open four inches, enough to see into the living room. Stairs didn’t creak; suddenly I wasn’t heavy.

Those two bigger figures were women; they seemed attached by an invisible chain. Both carried black bags; not leather, but plastic. They set these on the living room table at the same time then sat. Without a cloth the white top made the purses seem darker and brighter simultaneously.

Nabisase made tea for them.

Merril and Devona introduced themselves to Grandma. I heard them. Then they helped my grandmother from the living room back to her bed.

Maybe they were cops. Could Nabisase have me arrested for making a scene in the movies that day? We’d never had my mother committed, but I’d heard it could be done.

Merril and Devona both wore their hair short, flat and close to the scalp. While they waited for my sister they played with anything near their hands. A few photos. The PennySaver. Pens. My book. My book. My book had been moved from my room.

This made me want to dash out there and take it back, but again, what if they were detectives?

Nabisase took a pot, boiled water in it then added the tea grounds. Not in a kettle, but a small open topped pot which is the way Grandma and Mom taught us. Next she poured in the milk. After that Nabisase added wedges of ginger. She cut the flame out as the tea bubbled to the rim then it settled to a flat formula. Steam rose as the drink breathed. She poured the tea through a strainer to collect the grains.

They were from her church, but who knew. Neither spoke of their Lord for half an hour. Eventually the conversation came around to Nabisase’s television appearance. They took so long to bring it up that they must have planned exactly how to talk about it.

— And when we realized that was you we almost fell over.

Merril, the bigger of the two said, — That’s right. She’s not lying. Mrs. Hubbard told us. She had you on tape! You looked so nice.

— I want to get a copy, my sister said.

— We could do that for you.

Devona said, — So many people at the church wanted to meet you after we told them.

My sister asked, — Really?

— I’m talking about the kids your age. They wanted to listen to you. I mean, you’ve been on television. You could reach so many people.

Of the pair Merril was more serious-minded. Devona kept getting up to look at framed family photos on the entertainment unit. She’d ask who each person was. When those explanations were exhausted she couldn’t remain polite any longer. — What is that? she finally asked.

— Devona!

— I’m sorry, but I want to know.

— My mother made it, Nabisase said. It was a statue of Sidney Poitier that got broken.

— I wish we could have met her, Devona said.

Nabisase rubbed her solar plexus. — I don’t know. You might still.

I stopped crouching, stood, behind the door. Like that I could see that Nabisase had collected all those pieces she’d smashed when I opened Mom’s bedroom.

They were in a small orange flowerpot. Enough fragments to reach the rim. The only piece that had stayed recognizably facial was Mr. Poitier’s flat round nose. She’d set the nostrils on top of the pebbles and then put it out on the living room table. She must have done it today, after the movie. From where I was it looked like she was growing a person.

Devona touched the pot at the bottom. — I can see the nose looks nice.

— It was so good-looking before it fell, my sister said.

Nice! As in well done. This almost made me flop backward down the stairs. I thought she was lying, joking, deranged, but my sister’s wistful whisper suggested that she now remembered it that way. I imagined her telling Ledric: My mother was such a great artist. And believing.

After an hour of somber conversation Devona would have jumped through the big front window if she could have. As Merril and my sister were becoming even closer, Devona lost interest. She pushed her seat farther and farther from the table.

Merril said, — Let’s be straight now, Nabisase. What made you call us tonight?

My sister cried into her chest. Tears brought Devona back.

— I don’t want to hate anyone, my sister whispered. But I feel like I do.

Merril finished her tea, only a sip or two.

It gave Nabisase some time to shake before Merril went down the girl’s throat with compassion. Grandma could be heard in her bedroom, but her actions sounded like small ones. I doubt she wanted to hop out here and talk.

Nabisase said, — I remember when the church helped Ms. Petit find a place to live when she wanted to take her kids and leave her husband.

Devona nodded.

Merril tapped the tabletop firmly. — People know who you are now. I bet it’s them who would feel lucky to have a TV star staying in their places. They’d tell all their friends!

Nabisase laughed along as well.

— We want to help, Merril said.

Merril put on her glasses when they were reading Scripture; even Devona clowned less. I crouched on the other side of the door. Nabisase said, — I know a lot of people say this, but if I only ever got to ask Selwyn one question I would want to know why he made some of the people in my family get so sick.

— Is that the only question you’ve got for Him? Merril asked. If that’s true then, baby-girl, you’re lucky.

It was the only time I saw Merril get angry; it revealed her to me if not my sister. A woman in her fifties coming to aid a pretty teenage girl who, by some luck, had been featured on a national television show. A little wackiness in one’s family probably didn’t seem like much pain.

Merril said, — We learn to read the whole Bible, not just the parts that make us feel good.

— Selwyn had brothers, Nabisase said.

— Mark tells us so, Merril agreed.

— I was scared when I read that because I never thought of it before.

Merril said, — Maybe you heard of the Bible, but never really learned it.

— It’s easier that way, my sister said.

— That’s why so many people only come in on holidays.

— I don’t want to be one of those. Nabisase had both hands open, faced down on the table. I want Jesus’ protection.

Even now Devona was impatient and turned from their Bible to ask what is this? — A map of Uganda as a dinner mat, my sister explained.

And this?

— Look at it, Nabisase said.

Devona opened my book and read:

— Gather.

Wishing to return a long dead mystic to life Jimmy Larson begins raiding the local morgue because he’s learned of a scientific process by which a fresh cerebral cortex can be siphoned of its vitality, which becomes a purple paste. Enough of it, when injected into a corpse, can bring back the dead.

Devona said, — What the fuck?

— Devona!

— I’m sorry Merril, but that’s just odd.

Devona looked at a few other pages. — Killing Is My Business? I watch scary movies with both my boys and I never heard of these.

Merril slammed the book’s cover closed so hard that I winced. — Can we get back to the important business? There’s only one thing on this table that matters to me.

Devona said, — Okay Merril, don’t act high post. You almost broke my finger.

Merril said, — There’s a lot to learn, Nabisase. You should read the Word for moral guidance. It’s the power of Jesus. But you’ll see that when we read about Abraham of Ur. How he traveled to Canaan and in Egypt. You’ll find out that this isn’t just about one man, it’s the development of a whole people. Their arms eventually stretched so wide that they found you and I. Today. Right here. They hold us close to their bosom. The book becomes a record of ourselves.

38

Wish that Ishkabibble had been my best friend when he quoted me the cost of publishing two hundred and ninety-nine more copies of my encyclopedia. Or that he’d named this price before sitting me down that day in Brookville Park with the formalized pages in my hands. Before my Thermite gladness. Previous to letting me walk around owning it for two days. In advance of my loving it.

— Five thousand dollars is the sweetheart price, he insisted on the phone.

It was November 26th and Nabisase had gone with Merril and Devona. Not permanently, just for Sunday morning service. They left the night before and came back at 8:00 AM. Then left again, together, at noon.

Have you ever held your own book? I’d like to pretend it’s nothing, but I’m not in a self-deprecating mood.

— You’ve printed all three hundred copies already? As I asked I poured Grandma’s tea, then brought it to the living room couch.

— And trust you to repay a bill that big? You pay, Anthony, and I print.

— How do I know you won’t just make a few thousand copies of it first and get rich off of my work? Maybe you could sign an affidavit that you won’t cheat me.

— Do me a solid and get your book. Now read one to me.

— Homunculus, I began. 1987. An unnamed fishing town in Maine is preyed upon by a presence that has impregnated its women. The wives speak of waking on different mornings to find a tiny man in bed with them. Climbing inside them. There is no pain. The fiend appears once to each woman and never again. The children they bear are malformed, give off noxious odors, and they mature rapidly. After a month they’re as big as toddlers. The men of the town are horrified; they shun these mutant children. Even the mothers are ambivalent at first. Until they realize that these children can’t be hurt. Completely indestructible. Faced with such an idea the mothers rejoice. Men leave town in disgust. The women age, and though they pass away they are glad; their babies will never feel pain. The film ends displaying an entire town of monsters intermarrying, persevering. Victorious. A horror movie with a happy ending. It’s my favorite film.

Ishkabibble was on the line, but quiet besides breathing.

— I don’t see your point, I said.

— Forget it. Look. I’m not giving you any affidavit because I don’t even want to waste money on a notary public until I see cash from you.

— But I’m your boy!

— That’s the only reason I didn’t charge you for the copy in your hand.

— I don’t have five thousand, but what if I take orders? Then you could see how many people want to buy it.

— Get money, not names on a sheet.

— How much would you charge?

— Don’t ask for any hundred dollars, that’s a bet. Ten would be cheap enough.

— Three hundred books at ten each is only three thousand.

— You come up with that much and I’ll let you pay me the rest slowly.

— That’s very generous. Must mean you don’t think I can sell fifty.

— The possibility did come to mind.

— Want to buy a book? I asked him.

— Why would I?

— Since we’re friends.

— No. Come up with a convincing pitch.

— Buy one because ten dollars doesn’t mean much to a successful man like you.

— Poor people always think about how much they don’t have. Everyone else thinks of how much they want to keep.

— To support a great artistic endeavor?

— Don’t sell your aspirations to me.

— Encourage local talent?

— Forget about what you think you are and think of what other people see.

— You should buy a copy to get the neighborhood kookaburra off your stoop.

Ishkabibble chuckled. — Next time I see you I owe you a dime.

A neighborhood can seem like a nation when selling door to door; the enterprise is most fruitful when there’s something sad to sell. Americans yield for tragedy, not altruism.

The hardest work, what got me into many living rooms, had already been done by people like Candan, Mr. and Mrs. Blankets, my own mother probably. Folks knew of unfortunate Anthony, that my brain wasn’t worth a wheel of cheese. I had $90 after nine homes. A few thousand places were left. My confidence multiplied. Shame withers beside success.

So many people were at home; it was late afternoon on a Sunday with little else to do but welcome a guest.

I rang the doorbell of Mr. Goreen, who worked as a piano teacher out of his home.

He was mildly suspicious so he looked at every page before giving me his money. I let him watch as I wrote his title, address and dollar amount on the last few blank pages of my book.

— Your cursive is so neat, he said. Do you want some water? I can make a sandwich.

To get five thousand dollars only five hundred people had to fund me. I had a thousand bucks after only one hundred and eighty minutes. The only uncharitable homes were those where the owners had been out. My neighbors were kind. Many families fed me; a slice of banana bread at least.

The more money I took the less I looked at folks directly, but my embarrassment only made them more generous. They tried, in small ways, to take care of me.

A diplomat finds himself at the doorstep of important people as he travels through any country. Eventually, even the President must be met.

He asked, — How many other people gave you money?

— Everyone.

— I guess I’d be the first to say no then?

— Are you going to say no?

He was holding the book so now he actually looked at it. — You telling me so many people like these freaky-deak movies? How am I even going to rent them? I know I never seen any of these at Blockbuster.

— It’s like owning a book about Madagascar. You’ll probably never go, but you can get an idea of what the place is like.

— How much?

— Ten dollars.

— You want it right now?

— Yes I do.

He went into the house and almost as quickly he returned. — Come back in a little bit, he said. I’ve got to see if I can borrow.

— Forget it Mr. Jerome. I’ll put you down and you pay me later.

— You come back in half an hour and just hush.

I went on until I reached the homes that abutted Kennedy Airport. It was so loud out there that I yelled my introductions. Even the bald man with a beard, in the house without window guards, slid me money. By 7:00 PM I had fifteen hundred dollars and sore knees. With a car I could have done three times as many places.

I gave the President sixty minutes to rub together the money, but he hadn’t been able. When I rang the bell it was Mrs. Jerome, the President’s Wife, a beautiful fat woman with a Manhattan phone book balanced on one hand. The President came out when she called him; she patted her husband’s stomach before going back down the hall.

— I can’t buy none, he said. I’m having trouble getting the money. I told Candan what you were selling, but he’s not interested.

— I’ll write you down as paid, Mr. Jerome. It’s fine.

He looked at the doorknob. — Candan won’t even listen to me.

No one in Rosedale seemed more my twin than the President; robust once, but surrendering to a power that hemmed him in. There was no time for comradery because that red Doberman cantered from the back then growled behind the President until the old man went back in. After he’d gone off the dog sat on its haunches at the doorway and stared at me.

I stuck my tongue out at the dog. It didn’t recognize the gesture. I pulled $1500 out of my back pocket, one hundred and twenty bills, ten and twenties, all of them. I flapped them around and Viper tilted its head up at the motion.

I went to the next yard having forgotten it was mine. In the kitchen Grandma was unpacking a suitcase while Nabisase was packing another.

— Ledric’s coming, Nabisase said.

— You’re letting him move here?! I asked Grandma. I slammed my book down on the kitchen table. As soon as I did I picked it up to make sure it was fine.

Grandma pulled pairs of Nabisase’s very small panties out of a white suitcase.

— He’s coming to take me to my friend Devona’s. Grandma stop!

My grandmother was sitting in a chair, bent forward. She sat up and touched the wood cabinets behind her. — Will I be left here alone?

— I’m still around, Grandma.

She looked at me and said, — Yes.

Grandma moved to a smaller tan suitcase, pulling out pairs of folded jeans. As she did that Nabisase refolded her panties.

— Is it money? I asked. Is that why you’re going?

I took my earnings from my pocket and put them on the table.

— I don’t want to be bribed.

— You won’t take money, but you will suck dick. Tell that to your church friends.

Nabisase stopped packing. Lights were on in the kitchen, the living room, the hallway, the bedrooms. — It would be better if you were just dead for a while, she said.

Grandma didn’t get up, she pulled her chair a few feet across the white-tile kitchen floor. It was a way to get around without having to get up. To the table. To my money.

— Did you steal this? she asked.

— What do you think I am?

— Then where did you get so much?

— Mr. During. 143–44 227th Street. Ten dollars.

Nabisase held my encyclopedia.

— Give it.

— Mrs. Binni. 145–46 229th Street. Twenty dollars. All these people gave you?

— They paid me.

— For what? Grandma asked.

Nabisase shook my book while holding the spine waiting for the valuable item to fall loose. Dissatisfied, she threw it in the air, over my head. It landed on the floor with such a thump that I didn’t know what to do. I’d been excited when I walked in, and I still was, but I became so angry, too.

— For that! I screamed, pointing at the wounded encyclopedia. For me.

My grandmother threw my money at me and it separated in the air. A shocking soft explosion. The spine of my book was broken. My sister’s clothes were untidy on the floor.

Grandma picked up my hardcover and brought it to her nose.

She stood up and gave the pages a glance.

Grandma held it open with two hands and asked, sincerely, — For such nonsense?

So I hit her.

39

Ever seen a man smack a woman? Most of the time it’s anti-climactic.

I punched my grandmother, but didn’t knock her down.

It was a glancing blow, more on the shoulder than chin; I didn’t aim correctly. She fell sideways, but not to the floor. Grandma leaned against the fridge.

My sister drove her forearm into my back as though it was my weight she hated, not me. Then she kicked me in the shin, so I was relieved of that idea. Grandma sat on the closest chair, reached under the kitchen table, got a boot and threw it at me. Then Nabisase, ever the showstopper, swept cups and bottles from the kitchen table. The glass didn’t break, but landed softly in her scattered clothes.

I turned around and hit her too. With a bit more shoulder in the delivery.

My sister’s nose opened.

Blood went down into her teeth.

Grandma stood, swung a broom against my back and fell into her seat again. When the broom handle broke she moved to a cheap thin flashlight, bashing that against my knees.

Nabisase hit me with the broken end of that broom handle; it popped against my shoulder, went from eight inches to four. She hit me with it again then jabbed the wood into my cheek. We tussled and Grandma stayed in the kitchen. Nabisase and I went to the living room.

Over by the TV Nabisase threw a ruler at my head. D-cell batteries. Celery sticks.

As Grandma hurled pretzel rods I put up my hands, screamed, — I get the point!

Nabisase picked up a pair of scissors which are deadly even when folks are calm so I used my best defense and fell on her. She was fast enough to turn and start running, but I caught her under my breaker, if not my wave. Nabisase fell forward, onto her stomach and let out a sound closer to a burp than a scream.

Then a siren rounded the corner, three cop cars a moment later.

I ran to the window. Grandma had wobbled into the living room, but she didn’t have a phone in her hand.

— You have a panic button in the kitchen?! I yelled.

Then the ambulance, slowest of all emergency vehicles, parked in front of my home.

I ran past Grandma as she struggled toward my sister, grabbed my book off the floor, by the fridge. I imagined Mom calling the New York Police from a duplex in Virginia. Reaching us, protecting us, even now.

The four cars had stopped in the road, but still made noise. Their lights moved across an already gathering crowd.

My sister was on her belly and Grandma was on her knees and my neighbors emptied from their homes into the street. I could see them through the front window. I wanted to explain my situation before I was arrested. I opened my front door. The police stepped out of their squad cars. Three began crowd control, one spoke to the EMTs.

The last two touched their guns as they entered the President’s yard.

The paramedics followed, inside the President’s house with a gurney. From 144th Avenue to 145th folks had gathered on 229th Street and it wasn’t my fault.

The police brought the President out. I’m glad to say he wasn’t handcuffed.

— Mr. Jerome! the crowd yelled.

— Mr. Jerome, what happened?!

Ledric arrived, but couldn’t drive his Rent-A-Wreck car onto 229th Street because it was full of people. It better have been a rented car, if he owned one I’d be upset. Since I was on my steps I saw him leave the gray-green car on the next block and walk to my home. He wasn’t wearing the white hospital dress now.

Instead he’d had a haircut and wore a sleek, large leather coat. He’d finally washed his face, no more oily sheen. His ash-colored slacks still showed their creases. Ledric Mayo was styling.

He entered my yard, but stayed on the bottom step. I didn’t move from the top.

Ledric looked at the police, the President and back at me. — When I saw those cops I thought I knew who was in trouble.

— You’re the one that brought problems into my home.

He climbed nearer, but not right up to me. — I told her to be nicer to your ass, Anthony.

— You can’t mess around with a thirteen year old. I’ll call these cops on you myself.

He seemed afraid to walk past me, but he finally did it. — Not all families should stay together, he said.

Then he went into my home.

I went down the six front steps until I was with the crowd.

That must have been an old gurney the paramedics had, from the wheezing noise it made when dragged out of the President’s house and along our uneven sidewalk. Actually, it sounded more like whimpers.

When the EMTs pushed past me I saw the red Doberman, Viper, on the gurney. It had a claw hammer lodged in its neck.

The dog looked longer stretched out on the white bedding. Viper was on its side so the one visible eye squeezed shut and opened again, slowly. The hammer was so far inside that only the wooden handle showed. The metal head, both blunt end and sharp, had gone deep into the muscles. Viper opened its mouth to bark, but such noises were obstructed. The most it could do was sigh through the nose.

There were two paramedics, a man and woman. The guy had a body like telephone cord; he stood at the foot of the gurney massaging the Doberman’s lower paws. He was crying.

The woman didn’t seem as deeply affected. She kept digging her nose.

— You pick up animals now? I asked the woman.

— The call was just about an attack, she said. Didn’t know who was hurt until we got here.

— Oh damn it! Ledric came running from my front door, down the steps and to the EMTs.

— She’s bleeding, he told them.

— Another damn dog? the woman asked.

— My beautiful girl, Ledric told her.

I could see where each paramedic’s sympathies lay. The humanitarian ran into my house with her emergency kit, Ledric right behind, as the partner wheeled Viper to the ambulance. The crowd let him go, but slowly. They wanted to see.

The police went around taking witness statements for a few minutes. I wondered what they’d ask me.

The paramedic who’d helped my sister soon ran down the front stairs, carrying that heavy black box slapping on her left thigh. — Don’t put that dog in my ambulance, Ricky! Shit!

Ricky was already loading Viper inside.

The President was propped against a squad car while two cops interviewed him. He was tired; they were tired. The President’s wife walked out of the house with a third police officer, but Candan didn’t.

— Ricky! Stop! We’re calling Animal Control!

A heavy woman leaned against the ambulance and hadn’t yet bothered to move. The other cars on the street had been converted into benches. Three boys climbed up two trees. As the crowd got louder the youngest kids covered their ears.

Nabisase came to the doorway with Ledric. Her face was almost gone behind white tape and bandage. She looked like a poison warning before me.

I waved at them from the sidewalk. Relieved, even happy.

— Hello, Anthony, Mrs. Blankets said and smiled at me. Is that your book I’ve heard about? she asked.

I showed it to her and she clapped twice, enthusiastically. Genuinely. A festive mood filtered through the crowd.

My sister and her boyfriend went back inside. As I greeted other people, Grandma stood at the front door. She opened it and left a bag outside, at the top of the stairs.

I walked up to it. Some of my clothes were inside. I didn’t care about the jeans or T-shirts. Someone had packed my two other suits. I wore the purple one now. When I stood again, after touching through my belongings, Grandma locked the security door. She did that when I was watching.

— I could break this door open easily, I said.

She leaned against the handle. — Don’t.

— Where’s my money?

— It is with your clothes, she said. We apologize, Anthony, but there is no room for you.

— Who’s going to take care of you?

— Your sister will stay.

— I thought she said she was moving.

Grandma nodded. — Her or you.

— You could let me have the basement. I won’t come upstairs.

— I apologize, Anthony.

— You’re overreacting, I insisted.

— I do no such thing.

Grandma closed the door.

Let her try to live on an envelope-stuffer’s salary. He’d have to mail out 80,000 letters a month to cover the mortgage. I decided to be happy. A person can do that.

There really were worse situations than mine; like Viper had a hammer in its neck.

The crowd laughed, watched the paramedics wrestle the Doberman in and out of the ambulance. The woman screamed at Ricky as she pulled the gurney out and Ricky, refusing to lose, tugged the gurney back in. Even the President watched. I waved at him, but he didn’t notice.

Standing on my front stairs I could see past the crowd, over their heads, behind them.

To 145th Avenue.

Where the old German Shepherd, once owned by the Blankets family, jogged by without a leash. Without an owner. It went along.

After the German Shepherd two Pit Bulls ran behind the crowd.

A Jack Russell Terrier.

One limping Basset Hound.

A Rottweiler. A Rottweiler. A Rottweiler. A Pug.

More Pit Bulls.

Soon so many dogs were shooting down 145th Avenue that cars couldn’t pass. The dogs seemed to know what would happen. Traffic stopped.

A skittering, yippering Chihuahua went by. Eleven kinds of mutts.

The air took on that wet-sock smell of canine breath.

The EMTs stopped arguing. Both climbed on the ambulance’s rear bumper. Children were lifted onto their parents’ shoulders. Police put away their big, black notepads. Viper continued to breathe.

It was impossible to believe there were this many loose dogs in Rosedale. Even if they’d been imported from nearby Laurelton. It made no sense. Had to be two hundred now.

But I recognized the fat, haggard German Shepherd when it passed 229th Street a second time. Six minutes later it passed a third. Every one of them did. The Great Dane. The Mastiff. The Affenpinscher, too. They weren’t running away. They were running laps.

Now there really are only two ways to react to the extraordinary. The first is to ponder the grand purpose until all the fun is sucked away, the second is to enjoy it. The President’s Wife left his side and ran toward the breadbasket of the crowd. She screamed, — I got $80 on Mr. Frame’s boxer! Somebody better take my personal check!

Then everyone started making bets.

The dogs sprinted along 145th Avenue until they reached 225th Street. There they made a right for one block, right again on 144th Avenue, down to Brookville Park, right once more to the corner of 145th and started again. A good-sized circuit. I thought some driver, at least one, would beep at the dogs and scatter them, but not one did.

Beers were passed around soon. Given away by any men or women with a few in their fridge. All gamblers paid out when their dogs lost a lap and then picked a new breed each time. The police had to put the President in a squad car, but they left his windows down and told him how much his wife was losing.

November 26th, 1995, was the last time I lived with my family but I didn’t know it then. I’d thought our fight was just a mishap not a tragedy. Mom had put them through it one thousand times. Couldn’t they endure one more? It was such a surprise the first night I tried to get back in and my sister called the law.

That evening, the hounds formed a barrier. Their vigorous bodies blocked us in. We were free to mill around here, but not beyond. A person could run from one corner to the other but never, really, away. We were together. We were bound.

And I was a grown man in my fine purple suit. My black shoes fit me snugly. I held the front cover of my book to my chest. Anthony James. I felt the raised capital letters through my shirt; it was like I was screaming my name back at my own heart. That made me laugh. That made me wiggle. I felt so powerful I could have torn the moon in two.