His Illegal Self

9

Throughout the night the trailer was punched and hammered so unpredictably, with such force, it seemed this thing might really kill them. There was nothing for Dail to do but hold the boy, listen to the adenoidal whispers of his sleep, while her legs ached with all the terror she had banned from her embrace.

There were some calmer stretches, but each return of violence seemed more drunken. The trailer began to lift and drop and the noise was soon so loud that the physical world lost all cohesion, and Dial found herself clinging to the axles of a ghost train. She could not let go, could not make it stop. She lay rigid in the bed, whispering to the boy-prayers, thoughts, wishes, things she hoped would worm their way like pretty threads into his sleeping brain.

There was no moon, no lightning that she could see. When she was tipped over it was into a sea of ink, her body wrapped around the sleeping child.

Her head cracked. She saw stars. She thought, Comic strip.

It’s OK, baby, it’s OK, babe. She was not knocked out but she could feel the ceiling with her backbone, sliding along the ground, grinding across stones as the trailer moved along the earth while she remained rigid, anticipating some horror, a stabbing blade, a hoe turned lethal in the night.

Baby. Che.

He did not answer and she thought, He’s dead.

What happened, Mom?

Shush, she said, feeling the terror of that word even in the middle of this other fear. Hush. It’s just the storm.

Are we OK?

Shush, she ordered.

Then came a noise without meaning, like a giant Mexican tin crow flapping its wings against the walls. She thought, What does it matter who his mother is? We are being torn apart.

We’re OK, baby, it’ll finish soon.

Then he was very quiet.

Che?

He was asleep.

Their blankets had fallen with them and she wrapped him tight, keeping her ear near his mouth so she could know he was alive. She tried to feel his pulse but he tugged his arm free in irritation and slept with his nose down and his bottom in the air.

Perhaps he was in a coma-Manslaughter, she thought. They were rocketed and buffeted, wheels in the air, soft belly offered to the sky until, finally, there came a time when the movement was not much worse than being in a dinghy moored too tightly for the chop. Her sleep was cut with something white and sharp, a knife of light went clear through her lids. She opened her eyes, saw the furry velvet shapes and then the lightning. Not lightning. She thought oxyacetylene. A rescue team. She carefully untangled herself from the boy, leaving him with his arms thrown wide, his lips gone violet-brown.

Sitting on the ceiling she could see through the top half of the door, showers of exploding sparks rising into the rain, a dancing snake of power line on a Kombi van. Figures dressed in trash bags stood before this wild machine while the water lapped at their feet, electric worms wriggling inside the river’s molten plastic-looking heart.

Dial found her backpack, then realized it was directly beneath a leak. So what, she thought. They were both alive. Her scarf was dripping wet, but the passports were OK inside their plastic sleeves. In the bottom she found some papers, a soggy mess of railway timetables and directions to Vassar, also her letter of appointment. It was nothing. Easily get another, but she sat cross-legged in the intermittent gloom and extracted the envelope and very carefully peeled the four tips apart so that the letter itself was exposed, sodden and vulnerable but blessedly whole. It meant nothing, but she held it in two hands, as if fearful she would burst its secret yolk. Carefully she placed it flat on the aluminum ceiling that was now her floor. Then, using her wet scarf, she began to smooth it flat, and as she squeezed out the final bubble the paper tore in half. Fuck it. She balled it in her fist and squeezed it, wringing the water into her lap. Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it. The fucking professor gave her Susan’s number, but no one made her call it. She did not even like the Selkirks. Vassar should take her back, fuck them, fuck it. She did not even know that she was crying. But he did, the boy.

Are you OK? he whispered.

She had no choice. She had to be OK. She came back to bed and held him.

Are you crying, Dial?

I’m fine, baby. I didn’t sleep much, that’s all.

Why are you crying?

It’s nothing, baby, something that happened a long time ago.