by Sapphire
This must be hell. A white place without music, with lights that never go off. Just above my head is the devil, two fluorescent lamps, two long tubes, bulbs, in each fixture, covered with a sheet of semitransparent plastic. Four bulbs on all the time, how is that energy-efficient? The long white lights never go off. I close my eyes to see dark, but the lights eat the darkness out of my head. Sometimes a needle goes in with some darkness, but it’s fake. The lights overhead don’t go off. This room is about, what? Eight feet wide, ten feet long. The way the ceiling is shaped, I feel like I might be on the top floor close to the roof. Have I heard the sound of rain above my head? There’s no windows. The only furniture is the metal bed that I’m strapped in and a metal chair with a white plastic seat. The floor is white scarred squares of linoleum.
Lucky to be here? The meanest of the men in marshmallow shoes, I can’t call his name. He stands out for being mean and blacker than the others and always chewing something in his purple lips. What time of day is it, year is it? Am I old, still young, sick, handsome, did I get something? AIDS? Or leprosy from the Bible?
“Be still.” From ghost devil out of nowhere. “Be still,” he repeats, though I haven’t moved, and wipes some stuff on the side of my face. He raises a pair of clippers so I can see them. CLICK BUZZ.
“Don’t move,” he says. I have no intention of moving. The clippers feel good on my face, his fingers tilt my jaw, and then he moves to my head, black bits of hair fall on the white linen. Have they done this before? I don’t remember. How old am I? Why am I here? The air feels good on my shaved temples. Is this a dream? Some kind of state I never learned about in catechism—purgatory two or something? Did I do something wrong? When I hear my own voice, it sounds like a retarded echo of itself. Am I fat, bigger, taller, finished growing, a grown-up? I can’t fix my tongue to make all the words I am thinking. Why? I ask. I sound to myself like retarded kids we used to make fun of, like they are rolled up in my mouth. My tongue is a sack of cement.
“UH-wah-wah why?”
“What?” he snaps.
“Wh-wah wh-wh-why?”
“‘Why?’ Is that what you said, big-ass nigger?”
Why is he talking to me like that? He’s black. Does everybody hate me? I’ve got to get away from here. In the dream, but it wasn’t a dream. I’m on a ship, it is a dream. I can smell the salt water; usually in dreams I can’t smell. I’ve still got to get away, water or not. I’ve got to try to swim back to shore. Everybody on the ship is dancing! Dancing like in the olden white days, they all, we, I’m one of them, have on breeches like from Shakespeare’s or George Washington’s time, gauntlet gloves, and embroidered shirts like from costume rental, dah dah dah, we do the mincing cinque pas. We’re in the garden now. We’re all light-skinned, white (except me!), sipping tea, in white ruffled shirts. The music sounds like it’s played on a tin piano, a tin prissy sound. I stop dancing, and the whole court turns to look at me. I’m speaking in the carefully enunciated, elevated tones of a Shakespearean actor when I grab my sword—
“Look at you, you big drooling fool! You can’t stay here no longer than a minute at a time. Can you? What are you talking about, shithead? ‘Why?’ Why what, nigger?”
His stupid voice kills the garden. Even if I could talk, I don’t know what to say, or how to talk in his head like he talks in mine, not my ears but ringing in my head like a stupid bell bong bong bong “Why what, nigger?” He wants to know why? Why what? What does he want to know why about? I want to know why my tongue can’t run or fly anymore. Broken bird. Hey, I remember that: if dreams die life is a brokenwinged bird that cannot fly. Where? From my mother. He said I was lucky to be here. Let’s talk about that. Why do you think I’m lucky to be here? If you think I’m lucky to be here, you must know where here is. Where is here? I demand to know.
He grabs my arm, ties a tourniquet just above my elbow, make a fist. I don’t. Smell alcohol, wipe, evaporates cool on my skin.
“Don’t give me a hard time, motherfucker, you big-ass freak. You lucky to be alive after that shit you pulled the last time.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, if he’s really talking. Pop. Needle plunges into my vein. “Shit you pulled”? I did something he didn’t like?
Cool wipe of alcohol, another needle, he loosens the tourniquet. Blue clouds rush me wrap me in warm blue water and float float to a heavy gray place. I feel the Velcro wrapping me, and my bed grows wheels; wheels wheel me to another room, turn me onto a steel slab. Why? Why? No tongue. When my tongue comes back, I’ll ask. Now I’m an animal. I smell hear see but without the sky colors. I remember in pieces, then not at all. I want to be left alone. Leave me alone. But the dark faces with marshmallow shoes and white jackets are all around me. One of them asks another one exactly what I’m thinking:
“Why are we doing this?”
“We just are.”
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t go all the way under if he’s gonna fry.” A woman’s voice.
“For Christ’s sake, let’s get this over with.”
They pull straps on my feet tighter, stuff my mouth, attach silver things to my shaved head. Then I’m hit.
ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
Paaaaainnn
Pain
pain
ZAP! ZAP!
ZAP! ZAP!
ZAP! ZAP!
ZAP! ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
Paaaaainnn
Pain
pain
Then it’s blank except for the smell of shit.
Then another shot no rush but the smell of chlorine, weird blue eyes the color of the bottom of a swimming pool I’m flailing grabbing at the water the bottom opens up panic rips my breath then the fall in black no thing.
I’M LYING ON a blanket at the beach, the hot sand warming my back as I watch white fluffy clouds floating by. As I stare at the clouds, they start to change, taking on shapes that look like children. They’re round with big eyes but no arms or legs, just cloud bodies. Their big eyes are staring at me. Why? Do they like me? I don’t like them. I want to get rid of them. This is no beach. I’m here, with nothing; why aren’t they nothing too? Why can’t I get rid of them? I want to get rid of everything.
Yeah, I want to get rid of everything and just keep the colors of things, the Charlie Parker sounds—these colors. The color of My Lai’s clit pulsing like a heart alive in my mouth. Alive in my mouth like an animal or a curry. I licked her whole body with my tongue like a mother dog. I took her like she was my mama’s tittie, I sucked her cunt like she taught me, diving into her black jungle hair. She taught me, she’s a smart girl, I made her body scream, she’d be sweating, dripping because of me, her sweaty hips slipping in my hands like a fish, her long legs, toes, her whole body spasms of desire for me. Oh oh oh! That’s how she’d come, thin, her body didn’t scare me. She wasn’t all fat and fluffy like Amy. I wasn’t scared of My Lai. I fucked her so hard we bled. I smeared the blood on my cheeks and forehead like war paint. I want that . . . I want that . . . I want that. Why am I here? I want to get out of here. My Lai Desiré. I want to get out of here. I remember her nipples hard beasts, her big fishy tongue. Roman said, No girl do you like I do. He was wrong, anybody can suck a dick, My Lai blew me good. Roman? I had forgot about him. Does he have anything to do with me being here? He hasn’t been in my head in a long time. It’s so confusing here. She wanted me, I wanted her; what happened to our dance? Dancing? Blow me! Bloooow me! What are they doing to me? Why can’t I move? Are they going to kill me and cut my heart out for some fat old white man like that story in the News about the guy who went to Pakistan and bought him a kidney; he didn’t care that he hated the people he got the kidney from or that they hated him, he lived. Their asses got five grand, maybe. They won’t care about me either. My body parts will be all over Long Island and the Upper East Side. They will eat me! Why can’t I move? Do I have a nam
e? Arf! Arf! Meow! Am I a cat, a nigger, a boy, a man? What’s the difference between a cat and a nigger? And a man? Why is everything so bleary? Where is yellow? Pineapple? Green? Trees? Ice cream? The pink bulb of My Lai’s clit, her deep pussy, why isn’t she here? If someone is yours, why don’t you own them? If you’re free, an American, why can’t you leave when you want? I must be someplace else. Where the fuck is here? I want a mirror. Where’s a mirror? Get these straps off of me. I’m tired of being strapped down like, like a . . . a prisoner of somewhere. I’m tired of being strapped down, wheeled around, blinking lights in my eyes, needles, brain fried. I’m hungry. I don’t want a tube in my nose. I want some pork fried rice, real food, wonton soup, some fried chicken and mashed potatoes. A WHOLE chicken, potato salad, two double Quarter Pounders with Cheese and large fries Dunkin’ Donuts glazed jelly filled double chocolate cinnamon sugar I want to kill something and eat it, a baby, or a pig, kill and eat it raw, I want to run naked through the Amazon in . . . in wherever it is, I want to be free, grow long hair, and live in a cave like ancient white people in Europe, I want to be Jimi or Jean-Michel I rather die I rather die than this shit.
“Shut up, will you? I can’t understand a word you sayin’, you big faggot. What you doing with your nipple pierced?”
He’s behind me, I can’t really see him, but I can feel the weight of his body pushing me down a long hall under blinding lights. My back is cold lying against metal. If we kill anybody, I had told her, it should be these motherfuckers out here, these perpetrator faggots or the police, look what they did to that guy Diallo.
“No, fuck the police. I want him dead dead DEAD. I’m not doing anything with you ever again if you don’t do it. You say you love me, I told you what he did to me.”
I’m a good boy I can’t do that. That’s crazy, girl! Crazy girl, crazy. No one understands me. No one understands me—
He leans over in my face. “Stop grunting, pig.”
Why does he talk to me like that? This must be a prison, if this is a hospital, where are the doctors and nurses? I feel my heart rising in my throat like it’s an elevator inside of me. I suck in my cheeks, the flesh inside my mouth, between my teeth, and then I bite down hard. The blood fills my mouth. I grunt, and when he leans in to taunt me again, I spit blood in his face.
“Ah! Ah!” he gasps. “Nigger, is you crazy!”
The smell of blood, his fist splits my lip, more blood flows, ignites me like a match to lighter fluid. I want to kill him, then fuck him, I feel myself getting hard. His fist upside my head sends me to black.
THE WATER IS BLUE. I’m in a room, on a bed, looking out a window at a black woman, a native type, with a basket on her head, walking down a road toward the ocean. Or was the shade drawn, with just the smell of the ocean wafting in through the window screen? Yes, he would not have had the window open. There’s a picture on the wall; maybe it was another place or time. I remember now: the woman in the painting, her large feet, the basket on her head, the picture-book blue water. Brother John is blowing me on the bed. I smell something like ocean water. I’m eating popcorn at home with My Lai watching In the Company of Men on DVD. I’m at Kmart, crying, when Snake gets us both busted because he was shoplifting. They let me go; I cry some more. My mother is behind me, her hand is on top of my hand, which is on top of the computer’s mouse. I laugh when she says, Click click. The scenes coming through my head like this confuse me. I know I’m not awake. I’m afraid I’m dying. Very afraid. At first I didn’t think death could happen to me. How is it possible? I’m young strong beautiful. I felt that way at St Ailanthus that morning, how is it possible? Their white faces glowing like the walking dead in horror flicks. J.J.! J.J.! Leave the premises immediately! Huh? I liked it there. What else? I try to remember more, but it’s like there was no time before there and no time after. But I know a lot of time has passed. I’m sure of that. I must be old by now. And My Lai? Where’s my wife? I’m standing in a black pond. I know where my feet are, know they’re wet, but can’t see them, can’t see what’s in front or in back, can’t see the next step. In the dream the black water is rising. I stop it. I don’t want to dream that.
On Sundays at St Ailanthus, we have pancakes with butter and maple syrup, Spring Tree Maple Syrup Grade A Dark Amber. I know because when I had KP, I poured the syrup from the can into stainless-steel pitchers that I would put on a cart, and when the cart was loaded with pitchers, I pushed the cart to the tables and put a pitcher on each table. I was happy working. I was happy anticipating the taste of the pancakes, the yellow salty butter and the maple syrup all mixed up in my mouth.
Now I’m in a place with no taste except my blood in my mouth and the smells of alcohol wipes and bleach. No My Lai’s onigiri-and-curry cunt, her mouth swallowing my balls. No Brother John like a sex father or little kids waiting like rosebuds to open for me. No food here no music no touching. I love touching people, pressing against them in the subway, sticking my nose in people’s armpits, sticking my fingers in every curry pot. What did I do? No girl to drive my dick in, cupping her ass, smelling her juice, screaming me, the taste of her nipples, my big tongue, lips sucking home. Alone like this I feel dead, wiped away by the marshmallow shoes, voices like wind rustling the tops of trees in scary movies the moon frozen full in the sky the killer’s knife coming closer and closer. So how do I get to be a boy again?
What’s the opposite of death? Drums. Beat. House. African Latin heart beating like beat beat the drums in Imena’s class Jaime I remember him tan boy I know he loved me but he cut me!
“What for!”
“You know what for!”
SLASH. I scream and try to take the blade from him, he cuts my hand one two three CUT CUT CUT. But . . . but I thought you loved me, I’m screaming. My blood is turning everything red as I wipe my face with my bleeding hands. “I hate you. I hate your black ass, you fucking gorilla! You raped me!” Behind the veil of blood, I see the girl he is performing for. She’s looking at him. I recognize her look, she’s wondering. He’s come to me, to cut, to prove he’s not a faggot, to prove he’s man. Then out of what seems like nowhere, it’s a bunch of them. They move in on me punching kicking. Shithead! Maricón! Motherfucker! You black motherfucker!
“For God’s sake!” he screams like the bitch he is. “I was a little boy. You made me! You made me!”
Shit, I’m thinking, they made me. Then there’s no more thinking. I’m all the way down. They’re kicking me.
“What the fuck are you assholes doing!” It’s like a old man’s voice, one of the park winos. Everything halts. Indecision. Then one of them kicks me again.
The ice flick of a switchblade. “Come on, sonny boys, I’ll git at least one of you spics!” Then running. Heave a sigh of relief.
“I didn’t do nothin’ I didn’t do nothin’,” I mumble through the taste of blood.
“Don’t care if you did, dat’s what we got coppers for. Need to get someplace?”
“Thank you thank you, no, no. I just want to go home. I can walk. Thank you thank you.”
I had forgot all that. The scars fade away or into other hurts. The first thing I remember is how his little lips tasted, the skin of his belly, curly nigger hairs around his thing big like a man’s, different from Brother Samuel’s blue-veined red hair. He didn’t have to do that; being in our world didn’t make him a faggot, it was just our world, what else were we gonna do? The brothers had us, me, I figured; I thought he, the kids, loved me. I thought that was love. I remember his penis in my mouth my penis in Brother John’s mouth My Lai’s clit in my mouth my heart opens in my mouth her clit pulsing like a heart, her heart, in my mouth. She really loves me. She, we, danced; I thought that was love. Then why am I here without her?
“You don’t know what love is. You find out one day.”
Ah, yes. Roman. Roman said pussies could not be trusted. And they stink. He was wrong about that. My Lai doesn’t stink; she taste good. I can’t remember the last time I ate something. Is it dinn
ertime, lunch, breakfast? My mother used to fix me oatmeal with butter and a maplesugar bear melting at the bottom of the bowl. Tears are starting to roll down my cheeks. I can’t wipe my eyes. I feel cold shivery then hot burning up. My mouth’s dry. I see my tongue crawl out my mouth like a pink slug. I eye it on the pillow. It looks back at me as if to say, How’d we get this way? Yes, you’re crazy, it says, this is your tongue. It crawls up beside me on the pillow and starts to weep. I’m so lonely, it says, I’m so lonely I could die.
It’s time to wake up if I’m asleep. I’m way drugged; this is something different than I ever had. Straitjacket, that’s how I felt with Roman. Just be still, hold back, don’t kill, just get through the shit, endure this faggot and he’ll give me a life. And I was right, wasn’t I? But what it took, what it took. And now this, what is this shit here? I didn’t go through all that to end up here.
The door swings open. Black face, white coat, it’s one of the ones who wheel me and stick me with needles.
“Get up!” he shouts, his voice turning to little black monkeys swinging from trees screeching Get up! Get up! Get up! They scare me. Anyway, I can’t get up. What is he talking about?
“Get up, stupid. You ain’ that high, you only had a quarter of what they been giving up.”
Stupid? I’m not stupid. I may be bad, but I’m not stupid. Or did something change? Have they changed me with all their shit?
He kicks the bed. “You gotta shower, and we gotta clean that fucking bed.”
What’s he talking about? Is he crazy, not just peanuthead mean but wacko?
“Come on, man, you gonna make me really hate you, dude. I said get up. You ain’ as crazy as you make out.”