Darkness.
DARK.
I….
What? Which? Who?
Who I? Think.
What is think?
Loud. Hurting. Loud.
A fence. Boys. Loud. Hurts me.
One boy, curled on ground.
Other boys.
Feet. So many feet.
Hurts.
I walk to them. I.
A boy in each hand. I throw them away. I.
More boys, more feet. Pick them up, bang together. Throw away.
Like this. I like this.
Boys gone.
Curled-up boy. Clothes torn, face streaked red. This is blood. I know. How do I know?
Boy stands up. Falls.
Face wet, not the blood. Water from his eyes. What?
Stands again. Speaks to me, words. Walks away. Almost falls, but not. Wipes face, walks on.
Turn, faces looking at me. I look back, they turn away. Alone here.
Here. Where?
Doors. Windows. Noise. People. In one dark window, a figure.
I move, it moves. I go close to see—it comes toward, reaching out.
Me?
Darkness. Darkness. DARK….
the one with the knife, just out of reach. Drops back, comes close, darts away again. Waiting, waiting, in the corner of my left eye. Old woman screams and screams. The one riding my back, forearm across my throat, laughing, grunting. I snap my head back, feel the nose go, kick between his legs as he falls away. Knife man moves in then, and I catch his wrist and break it, yes. Third one, with the gun, frightened, fires, whong, garbage can rolls on its edge, falls over. He drops the gun, runs, and I lose him in the alley.
The one I kicked, wriggling on his side toward the gun when I turn back. Stops when he sees me. The old woman gone at last, the knife man huddling against the warehouse wall. “Bitch, you broke my fucking wrist!” Bitch, over and over. Other words. I pick up knife and gun and walk away, find a place to drop them. The sky is brightening toward the river, pretty.
Dark….
and I am rolling on the ground, trying to take an automatic rifle away from a crying man. Hits out, bites, kicks, tries to club me with the gun. People crowding in everywhere—legs, shoes, too close, shopping bags, too close, someone steps on my hand. Bodies on the ground, some moving, most not. In my arms, he struggles and wails, wife who left him, job he lost, children taken from him, voices, voices. Gives up suddenly—eyes roll back, gone away, harmless. I fight off a raging man, little girl limp in his arms, wants the gun, Give me that gun! I am on my feet, standing over the gunman, surrounded, protecting him now. Police.
Revolving lights, red and blue and white, ringing us all in together, they yank the man to his feet and run him away, barely letting him touch the ground. Still weeping, head thrown back as though his neck were broken. Bodies lying everywhere, most of them dead. I know dead.
One policeman comes to me, thanks me for preventing more deaths. I give him the rifle, he takes out a little notebook. Wants my story—what happened, what I saw, what I did. Kind face, happy eyes. I begin to tell him.
….then the darkness.
Where do I go?
When the dark takes me—just after I am snatched up out of one war and whirled off into another—where am I? No time between, no memories except blurred battles, no name, no needs, no desires, no relation to anything but my reflection in a shop window or a puddle of rain…. where do I live? Who am I when I am there?
Do I live?
No, I am not a who, cannot be. I am a what. A walking weapon, a tool, a force, employed by someone or something unknown to me, for reasons I don’t understand.
But—
If I was made to be a weapon, consciously manufactured for one purpose alone, then why do I question? That poor madman’s rifle had no such interest in its own identity, nor its master’s, nor where it hung between uses. No, I am something more than a rifle: I must be something that….
wonders. Wonders even while I am taking a gas can away from a giggling young couple who are bending over the ragged woman blinking drowsily on the sidewalk, the man holding his cigarette lighter open, thumb on its wheel. I hit them with the can until they fall down and stay there; then pour the gasoline over them and throw the lighter into a sewer. The ragged woman sniffs, offended by the smell, gets up and mumbles away. She gives me a small nod as she passes by.
And for just an instant, before the darkness takes me, I stand in the empty street, staring after her: a weapon momentarily in no one’s hands, aimed at no one, a weapon trying to imagine itself. Only that moment….
then dark again, think about the darkness….
and it is daylight this time, late afternoon. I can see her ahead of me, too far ahead, the calm, well-dressed woman placidly dropping the second child into the river that wanders back and forth through this city. I can see the head of the first one, already swept almost out of sight. The third is struggling now, crying in her arms as she picks it up and raises it over the rail. Other people are running, but I am weaving through, I am past them, I am there, hitting her as hard as I can, so that she is actually lifted off the ground, slamming into a sign I cannot read. But the child is already in the air, falling….
….and so am I, hitting the water only seconds behind her. That one is easy—I have her almost immediately, a little one, a girl, gasping and choking, but unharmed. I set her on the narrow bank—there are stairs ahead, someone will come down and get her—and head after the others, kicking my shoes off as I swim. As I swim….
How do I know how to swim? Is that part of being a weapon? I am cutting through the water effortlessly, moving faster than the people running along the roadway—how did I learn to use my legs and arms just so? The current is with me, but it is sweeping the children along in the same way. Ahead, one small face turned to the sky, still afloat, but not for long. I swim faster.
A boy, this one, older than the first. I tread water to scoop him up and hold him over my shoulder, while he spews what seems like half the river down my back. But he is trying to point ahead, downstream, even while he vomits, after the third child, the one I can’t see anywhere. People are calling from above, but there’s no time, no time. I tuck him into the crook of my left arm and set off again, paddling with the right, using my legs and back like one thing, keeping my head out of the water to stare ahead. Nothing. No sign.
Sensible boy, he wriggles around to hold onto my shoulders as I swim, so that the left arm is free again. But I can’t find the other one—I can’t….
….and then I can. Floating face down, drifting lifelessly, turning and turning. A second girl. I have her in another moment, but the river is fighting me for the two of them now, and getting them to the bank against the current is hard. But we manage it. We manage.
Hands and faces, taking the children from me. The boy and the little one will be all right—the older girl…. I don’t know. The police are here, and two of them are kneeling over her, while the other two are being wrapped in blankets. There is a blanket around my shoulders too, I had not noticed. People pressing close, praising me, their voices very far away. I need to see about the girl.
The police have the mother, a man on either side of her, holding her arms tightly, though she moves with them willingly. Her face is utterly tranquil, all expression smoothed away; she looks at the children with no sign of recognition. The boy looks back at her…. I will not think about that look. If I am a weapon, I don’t have to. I start toward the motionless girl.
One of the policemen trying to start her breath again looks up—then recognizes me, as I know him. He was the one who was asking me questions about the weeping man with the rifle, and who actually saw me go with the darkness. I back away, letting the blanket fall, ready to leap back into the river, soaked through and weary as I am. He points at me, begins to stand up….
….the darkness comes for me, and for once I am grateful. Except…. except….
Except that now I will never know about
that girl, whether she lived or died. I will never know what happened to the mother….
Once I would not—could not—have thought such thoughts. I would have had neither the words nor the place in me where the words should go. I would not have known to separate myself from the darkness—to remain me, even in the dark, waiting. Can a weapon do that? Can a weapon remember that small boy’s face above the water, and the way he tried to help me save his sister?
Then that is not all I am, even as I wish it. Who am I?
If I am a person, I must have a name. Persons have names. What is my name?
What is my name?
Where do I live?
Could I be mad? Like that poor man with the gun?
I wake. That must mean that I sleep. Doesn’t it? Then where do I…. no, no distractions. What is sure is that I come suddenly awake—on the street, every time, somewhere in the city. Wide awake, instantly…. dressed—neatly, practically and entirely unremarkably—and on my feet, moving, either already in the midst of trouble, or heading straight for it. And I will know what to do when I find it, because…. because I will know, that’s all. I always know.
No name, then…. no home…. nowhere to be, except when I am hurrying toward it. And even in daylight, darkness always near…. silent, void, always lost before, but now this new place in the dark when I can feel that there is a now, and that now is different from after-now. If that’s so, then I ought to be able to stand still in after-now and look back….
standing beneath a flickering street light, watching two young black girls walking together, arm in arm. They look no more than fifteen—thirteen, more likely—and they have just come from seeing a movie. How do I know what a movie is? This must have been a funny one, because they are giggling, quoting lines, acting out scenes for each other. But they walk rapidly, almost hurrying, and there is a strained pitch to their laughter that makes me think they know it is dangerous for them to be here. I parallel their progress on the other side of the street.
The five white boys materialize silently out of the shadows—three in front of the girls, two behind them, cutting off any chance of flight. The moment is perfectly soundless: everybody knows what everybody else is there for. The black girls look desperately around them; then back slowly against the wall of a building, holding hands like the children they are. One of the boys is already unbuckling his belt.
I am the first one to speak. I walk forward slowly, crossing the empty street, saying, “No. This is not to happen.”
I speak strangely, I know that, though I can never hear what it is that I do wrong. The boys turn to look at me, giving the two girls an instant when they might well have made a successful dash for safety. But they are too frightened; neither of them could move a finger at this moment. I keep coming. I say, “I think everyone should go home.”
The big one begins to smile. The leader. Good. He says loudly to the others, “Right, I’ll take this one. Dark meat’s bad for my diet.” The rest of them laugh, turning back toward the black girls.
I walk straight up to him, never hesitating. The smile stays on his broad blond face, but there is puzzlement in the eyes now, because I am not supposed to be doing this. I say, “You should have listened,” and kick straight up at his crotch.
But this one saw that coming, and simply turns his thigh to block me. Huge, grinning—small teeth, kernels of white corn—he hurls himself at me, and we grapple on our feet for a moment before we fall together. His hand covers my entire face; he could smother me like that, easily, but I know better than to bite the heel and anchor myself to the consequences. Instead, I grab his free hand and start breaking fingers. He roars and pulls the hand away from my face, closing it into a fist that will snap my neck if it lands. It doesn’t. I twist. Then my own hand, rigid fingers joined and extended, catches him under the heart—again, around the side, kidneys, once, twice—and he gasps and sags. I roll him off me fast and stand up.
The boys haven’t noticed the fate of their leader; they are entirely occupied with the black girls, who are screaming now, crying to me for help. I take a throat in each hand and bang two heads together—really hard, there is blood. I drop them, grab another by the shirt, slam him against a parked car, hit him until he sits down in the street. When I turn from him, the last one is halfway down the block, looking back constantly as he runs. He is fat and slow, easily caught—but I had better see to the girls.
“This is not a good place,” I say. “Come, I will walk you home.”
They are paralyzed at first, almost unable to believe that they have not been raped and beaten, perhaps murdered. Then they are all questions, hysterical with questions I cannot answer. Who am I? What is my name? Where did I come from—do I live around here? How did I happen to be right there when they needed help?
I just saw, that’s all, I tell them. Lucky.
“Where you ever learn all that martial arts shit?”
No martial arts, I tell them, no exotic fighting technique, I was just irritated—which makes them laugh shakily, and breaks the tension. Beyond that, I talk to them as little as I can, my voice still something unpracticed, oddly wrong. They do most of the talking, anyway, so glad merely to be alive.
I do walk them all the way to their apartment house—they are cousins, living with their grandmother—and they both hug me with all their strength when we say goodbye. The older girl says earnestly, “I’m going to pray for you every night,” and I thank her. They both wave back to me as they run into the building.
I am glad the darkness did not snatch me away while I was with them: my vanishing before their eyes would surely have terrified them, and they have been frightened enough for one night. And I am glad to have at least a moment to be a who, fumbling and confused, before I must once again be an invincible what, taken down from the wall and aimed at some new target.
This time, when the darkness takes me…. this time my memory remains whole, clear, unhazy. Everything is still there: nothing tattered or smudged, gone. The two black girls stay with me. I remember them, even things they said to each other about the movie they had just seen, and their telling me that their grandmother worked in a school cafeteria. And from there I remember more, though I have no sure way of measuring when any of it happened. The drunken old man stumbling in front of a bus…. the two toddlers playing on a rusty, sagging fire-escape on a hot night…. the children driving so slowly down a wide trash-strewn street, training a pistol through the passenger window on another child who has just come out of a liquor store…. the woman looking behind her into a stir of shadows, walking a little faster….
And each time—me. Rescuer. Savior. Wrath of God…. somehow fortunately there at just the right moment; there, where I am necessary. But where is there?
I am beginning to know. It is a city—how big a city I cannot guess—and there is a river I almost remember swimming…. yes, the children. (What happened to the third one?) There is a street or two that I have come to recognize. A handful of buildings that give me some kind of bearing as I hurry past on this or that night’s mission. One particular row of crowded, crumbling houses has become almost familiar, as have a few shops, a few street corners, a few markets—even a face, now and then….
This city, then, is where I live.
No. This is where I am.
They live, but I am only real. There is a difference I cannot name….
outside an apartment door with bright brass numerals on it—4 and 2 and 9; for the first time they are more than shapes to me—my leg in mid-snap, heel of my foot slamming once, just under the lock, breaking cheap wood away from deadbolt and mortise to give me entry. And there they are, the pair of them, sitting together on a couch, his eyes all pupil, the skin of her arms covered with deep scratches. I have seen that before.
This time I could not care less about it. I am here for the baby.
Hallway, door on the right. Closed, but I can hear the whimpering, even though the man is on his feet, making outraged noises, and the
woman—pretty, once—is telling him to call nine-one-one. I pay no heed to either of them, not yet. No time, no time.
I can smell the urine even before I have opened the door. He’s soaked, and the mattress is soaked, and the blanket, but that’s not what stops my breath. It’s the little cry he gives when I pick him up: a cry that ought to be a scream, with those bruises, and the way his left arm is hanging—but he hasn’t even got the strength to scream. I cannot even tell when I’m hurting him. I lift him, and look into his eyes. What I see there I have never seen before.
And I go completely insane.
Somewhere far away, the woman is tugging at me, shrieking something at me. The man is on the floor, not moving, his face bloody. Not bloody enough. I can fix that. I start toward him, but she keeps getting in my way, she keeps making that sound. What has she got to make noise about? Her arm’s not broken, her body isn’t one big bruise—she doesn’t have those marks that had better not be cigarette burns. Pulling on the arm holding the baby, she will make me drop him. No, now she has stopped, now she is down there, quiet, like the man. Both in the red. Wet red. Good.
Still noise, so much noise. People shouting—the apartment is full of people, when did that happen? Police, lots of police—and one of them that one. He stares at me. Says, under all the racket, “What are you doing here? Who are you?”
“I am no one,” I say. I hand the baby to him. He looks down at it, and his young face goes a terrible color. Before he can raise his head again, the darkness….
….but no. Different this time. I am back almost immediately, ordinary night, and I am on the street, outside an apartment house I have never seen, where two police cars stand blinking redly at the curb. It is a warm night, but I’m shaking, and cannot stop. Something on my face, I brush at it, impatient. I have been…. crying.
No purpose here: I know this. I walk away down the street. Keep walking, maybe that will help. For the moment, no place I should be, no helpless, desperate appeal closing on me. No one to save, only escape, evasion. A little time to wonder…. to ask myself questions—did I kill those two? I was trying, I really wanted to kill them.
Sleight of Hand Page 25