They Is Us

by Tama Janowitz

  The girls are old enough now not to need a sitter after school; when she doesn’t get home until late there’s a big Mega Mart Family Station a few blocks from the house, where the kids can go to buy an ice pop. And Mega Mart Family Station has some wonderful, unannounced bargains! Like the time the girls came back with a complete Enchanted Forest Outer Space Virtual Play Realm, even though it did turn out to be factory reconditioned and ended up doing some minor kind of brain damage to them.

  Anyway if she could do it over again she wouldn’t have married Terry – let alone Slawa – nor had children right away. She is still a good-looking woman, though, blue eyes, hair frosted and styled – thanks to Cliffort – in the latest manner. Maybe she has gained too much weight – but men have always loved her little Irish mutt face.

  She flips channels; the President notices immediately. “Welcome back, Murielle!” But before he can commence again she turns to the news, and the anchor woman is saying, “In our headlines this evening, an undisclosed source has told foreign affairs reporter Deiter Mandel that Gloria Polykovna and Amos bin Kaba have split. Calls to the couple’s Nature’s Caul mansion have not been returned. A spokesperson for the couple says the rumors are unfounded and that the couple has made no plans for a separation. In other news, more than twelve thousand were killed at a Brazilian soccer match just outside of Rio. When we come back, this week’s Mega Globe lottery is up to two billion dollars.”

  She puts the hologramovision back to a Wallpaper station, this one of stingrays under water. Who are Gloria and Amos? Is she losing her marbles? How sad they split up, and why?

  Murielle isn’t able to keep up with herself, let alone all the other stuff. Maybe she has an imbalance. She dreams about eating and wakes in front of the refrigerator, spooning mayonnaise into her mouth.

  At first she thought it was Slawa, until she woke at just that moment and realized it was she who had been eating all the grease. She has to admit it, she is no longer plump. She is actually fat. They live in the designated biotech production region that grows the Homeland Nation food; raised in giant airplane hangers, a sort of cellulose mash that is flavored and textured, turned into different shapes – corn on the cob, turkey breast, but thank God now it’s no longer necessary to harm any animals. She knows people who work there, each floor has a separate name: Chile, which grows ‘grapes’ or Washington for ‘apples’. ‘Asparagus’ and ‘strawberries’ come from ‘California’. The airplane hangers are here and there, New Jersey is lucky to have gotten the contract for so many, producing everything sweet and succulent and tasty with beautiful labels on all the crates, saying Chilean Grapes, a product of New Jersey. Each grape is as big as a tennis ball, seedless, a sack of skin containing gelatinous liquid, always in season, each with twenty percent more calcium than a five-ounce glass of milk and a hundred percent of the daily recommended amount of sugar! Now a Muslim could eat pork, a Jew, lobster, a vegetarian might dine on meat and a vegan dairy and eggs – because none of it was anything other than mock tissue.

  And then it comes over her, one of those true anxiety attacks. There must be some pill she can take, the full weight and realization her husband is gone, she is alone, what the hell was she thinking and what the hell is she going to do now? She lets out a yell, “Help! Help!” She is panic-stricken, heart pounding, unable to get air, my God what is going to become of her?

  The house is silent, except for her mewling, until one of the kids shouts from upstairs, “Aw, Ma, would you knock it off?”

  Maybe she can catch her breath if she goes outside. She stands on the front step. There are no street lamps but at a distance the glare from the highway on the far side of the marsh lights up the sky and in each house, through the windows, the flickering epilepsy of hologramovision screens can be seen. A smell of barbecuing meats wafts, hot fats and flesh intermingled with a sweet sewagey smell.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown Slawa out, things are worse now, he actually did fix stuff and now already windows don’t shut, doors squeak, lights no longer work – on the other hand, since he hadn’t been paying the bills, apparently, how much worse could things be?

  Murielle is restless and it isn’t even like there’s a bar anywhere nearby that she can go to and at least look at other people. The bucket of asphalt is still at the foot of the drive where Slawa left it the night she threw him out. His first wife, Alga, had, years ago, planted flowers in a concrete well in front of the lower floor window but everything had long since dried up; the heat had turned it into a bed of sand. A figure moves past the blind in the house next door. A rap on the glass upstairs in Tahnee’s room. She knows the two kids are working out signals of some sort, probably waiting for her to go to sleep so they can sneak out and meet. She could call the Patel boy’s parents, but what’s the point? Anil might be sympathetic, probably ground Locu, whatever – but Rima is crazy, she will no doubt blame Tahnee. Why stay in this hellish dump anyway, especially when there is – how much back-mortgage to pay? And quite frankly they scarcely have any equity in the place since taking out the second mortgage. Which had been Slawa’s idea, to take the money and buy that stupid hybrid car, for what, so they could afford to take a trip when now the fuel for the hybrid was more than a regular car? And the traffic virtually unmoving?

  How pleased she had been to finally have her own house when she had first moved in with Slawa, and it was only an hour or so from her father; there were even buses one could take – not that, in the end, she went there very often. She loved her house, until one day for the first time, she went into the backyard and found the old garbage, great heaps of old bread, crusts and moldy English muffins and then… baked beans, plops of canned baked beans. The food had not petrified, exactly, but it hadn’t rotted, either, stuff these days was filled with too much artificial preservatives and chemicals to do that. Instead it had taken on a heaving, living quality – intact, perfectly formed, bubbling. A sort of tar pit of cheese doodles and pickles. Slawa said it was food for the birds. What kind of idiot would put baked beans out for birds; there aren’t even any birds in the area.

  And the bugs! The whole neighborhood has them. Some kind of mutation from the benign poisons industries. You could put out traps, spray, boric acid; you could get a professional exterminator in to bomb the whole house (you had to go away for forty-eight hours) and it is true that when you come back there will be a layer of carapaces on every surface: but it still doesn’t kill ’em.

  They feed off hair, flakes of dander, the stuff in the mattress. Crumbs, a spot of bacon grease. You can take the garbage outside but they gnaw through the plastic bags, squeeze themselves into minute crevices in what appears to be a solid metal garbage pail; dine, and come back into the house where they lay their crunchy egg sacs, from which a thousand infants emerge. They are inside the refrigerator when she opens the door, where invariably she – or one of the kids – has spilled a little milk or hasn’t fully properly sealed a plastic bag full of chicken thighs. There are roaches frozen into ice cubes, and the worst part is, she knows that on an individual basis, they have personalities and full, rich lives that she is putting an end to.

  Not only does nothing kill them, but some bio-genetic-industrial-plastic-engineer had the great idea to make ’em glow-in-the dark and love music. At night they gather glowing and swaying softly in corners – one species can even make little humming sounds of its own – and you are supposed to crush these things! The happy, glowing dancers! They are everywhere, in the electric fan, emerging from the light sockets, behind the mirror on the closet door.

  There are times when she knows why Julie hates it when she kills them and would never do so herself. Some are actually kind of cute! Curious! Peeping out from the edge of the kitchen counter, antennae waving, what idiot had thought to introduce the music-loving gene into their DNA, you get the feeling, sometimes, they might also be dancing, lined up according to size, little ones in the front row… Nothing too loud, mind you, old-fashioned novelty songs about monke
ys and coconuts.

  There is one roach with a red dot or bump on one side of his back who isn’t afraid of them; Tahnee was about to squish him when she realized he was looking up at her, and decided to befriend him. They named him Greg and he comes when they call him, and in order for him not to eat the poison, they have a tank for him to live in with food scraps and a roof over it if he wants protection.

  Something vitreous and fringed fills the wall, gently throbbing. Involuntarily Murielle lets out a scream. What the heck? An invasion? Oh, she realizes, an eye, someone is playing a joke, putting his or her eye up to the camera… One of the kids? A prank call? “Hello?” she says.

  “What? Who is this?” The huge eye, eight feet tall, eight feet wide, blinks and trembles.

  “It’s me, Dad. Step back from the camera, you’re too close!” Now she is looking up his nostril. A picture, a video, of feet, feet in mismatched shoes, white mock croc loafer on one and green rain boot on the other: her dad must have tilted the camera. “Dad?” she calls. “Dad, are you all right?”

  “What? Oh, hello Murielle. It’s you. Can you call back later? I’m right in the middle of something.”

  “You called me, Dad! I’m about to go out!” She wishes she had more patience. She should be pleased he’s finally using the hologramovision, even though probably he just pushed some random button. No matter how often she shows him, he claims he only knows how to work the rotary telephone. He can’t help himself; she can’t help herself.

  But still, she could use a little appreciation. Doesn’t he see how lucky he is that even though she could get him a place in La Galleria Senior Mall and Residence Home for the Young at Heart she would never do so? It’s a wretched place, not that she would ever say so out loud. The turnover rate is so darn rapid. Once they are accepted and admitted it doesn’t take long for them to die. Sometimes less than two weeks. Of course, it is said that way it’s painless, probably better than a prolonged existence in the People’s Malls.

  “We’ll be coming over this weekend, Dad!” she says cheerily. “You have enough to eat in the meantime?” There are plenty of people who in this day and age have simply stopped looking after their folks.

  11

  It’s a Code Lavender day: this means if Murielle is going to drive the kids to school she will have to take the side roads – the highways are closed. There are still a few local routes not so many know about – but the school is in the opposite direction from the Senior Mall.

  If she hadn’t thrown Slawa out… but it is too late now. She does miss him in a half-hearted way, plus it is becoming apparent that without him around to blame, she feels more irritated with Julie. Almost two hours late, she drops off the kids in front of Robert Downey Jr. Junior High.

  In the car, the screen pops on and she switches to automatic control. “Murielle?”

  “Yes –” Who the heck is this? She has a private number after getting too many calls from irate children with relatives in the nursing home.

  “Hello, Murielle, hello, A. Jesse March Bishrop here, I’m Founder and CEO of Bermese Pythion where your daughter has been working this summer.”

  “Oh my gosh yes of course…” She can’t see him on the screen – something is wrong with it – but that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that he can’t see her! No lipstick, hair newly marcelled, frosted gold, and already out of style.

  Something is wrong with her auto-pilot cruise control. The car should automatically drive her to her destination. Lately it has developed a habit of heading off the road and onto the shoulder. “Murielle, are you there?” He has a nice voice, a manly voice, although what kind of person calls themselves by their first initial and middle name? One could hardly get more pretentious than that. No, no, do not think this way! “Yes… Is my daughter in trouble?”

  “In trouble? No, not at all, she’s quite a remarkable young lady.”

  “Julie?” She’s astonished.

  “Oh, well, I meant the other one, the older –”

  “Tahnee?” She tries to remember, has Tahnee been working there? “Oh, yes. Sorry, you caught me off guard!”

  “Anyway, I thought this could be a great opportunity for us to meet… Listen, you think you’ll have any time later on?”

  “Oh, yes, sure! What time? Is it dressy?”

  He laughs. “A quick cup of coffee is what I had in mind; I’m absolutely bumper to bumper while I’m here. I don’t know, some time over the weekend? I can pick you up.”

  “Why, that will be delightful.” It has to be a joke, she thinks, as she hangs up. A prank call. The president of Bermese Pythion calling her? Surely a guy that rich – he’s been listed as the richest man in the world, or at least one of them – would not be here in the filthy contaminated East, even on business. And calling her? If only her rearview mirror/hologramphone-o’-vision had been working – she’s seen his bright pink face, a boiled little sea-creature, on some program. He is sexy, in a crustacean-like way. She would have recognized him. This way… She shakes her head, angry for being so gullible.

  On the other hand, after all, there’s always a chance that it’s not a joke.

  In a sense Murielle’s job at the nursing home is that of ombudsman: the parents, the children, the social workers begin arriving at eight, nine in the morning and keep coming, often until late at night. “My mother has been complaining that the food tastes of burnt rubber.”

  “No, it can’t be burnt rubber. It could be methane gas, we cook with gas, as you know we use products straight from the local warehouses.”

  “Mrs Antrobus, my mother’s bathroom, the plumbers were in there trying to fix it, what, six, eight months ago? And it still doesn’t work and they left the place full of rubble.”

  “First of all, the plumbers were not the ones who were removing the walls, so they couldn’t have left it full of rubble. It had to be the company who removed the interior walls when they were trying to fix the pipe. Did you see who removed the walls?”

  “No…”

  “Then why do you think it was the plumbers?”

  “But… Whether it was the plumbers or not – the place has been left full of rubble.”

  “I can’t complain to the plumbers and ask them to do it, when I know that it is not their union that comes in to do the removals – and you can’t say who was in there taking the walls down. Was there anything else that was bothering you today?”

  “I was wondering, if my mom were to… pass, if I could move in. To her room. Even without the bathroom. I haven’t been feeling so –”

  “Usually there is our waiting list. I would like to help, in your case – if you could get me the right paperwork in the approved format, but you would have to have all of this accomplished before your mother passes on, which, I imagine, is quite soon considering how long she’s been here… Our expectation policy is unfortunately based on a rather rapid –” Conveniently her machine rings. “Hello?”

  “Who is this?”

  Oh God, it’s her father. “Just a minute. Mrs Weems, would you excuse me? I’m going to have to get back to you after the board meets to review.”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Dad. Dad, switch on the screen!”

  “A screen? Is this a joke?”

  “Dad, I’m at work. You called me. How are you doing?”

  “I’d rather not answer that until I know who you are. How did you obtain my number?”

  “Dad, are you c.k.? As bu?”

  “What? I’m not following you. Who is this?”

  “Dad, I can’t talk now but I’ll call you tonight. I really think you’ll be happy if you let me come and move you to my house. Don’t worry, Dad, I have always promised I will never put you in here.” The next person is in her office. She hangs up guiltily.

  “Mrs Antrobus? The protoplasm on the walls in my mother’s room – it’s growing.”

  “Did you fill out a work order slip?”

  “Yes.”

  “And nothing was don
e?”

  “No.”

  “That is terrible. What I would like you to do is fill out another work order slip and direct it to –”

  “I mean, I am thinking I am just going to go out and buy my own protoplasm-destroyer for her room! It’s been months! I did hdg-mail you.”

  “As you know, we are lucky here to be permitted to have a central protoplasm-destroyer system. It isn’t permitted to bring in your own. FYG regulations say it can sublimate the entire building. Check with your local assemblyman to find out more about what you can do to help stop the plasmoidic spread. Thank you for stopping by.”

  She isn’t trying to be mean. She has no other options, no choices, no way out except to attempt to placate, which solves absolutely nothing.

  “Mrs Antrobus, once again, my mother’s teeth.”

  “Were they labeled with her name and room number?”

  “How can you label teeth?”

  “La Galleria Senior Mall and Residence Home for the Young at Heart is not designed for those who have moved beyond assisted living. It may be that your mother’s case needs reevaluation and an application for the nursing home for those who have advanced to the non-functioning –”

  “But first of all, her teeth were stolen. And second, yes, I agree with you, but I filled out the application a year and a half ago and you said –”

  “I see. I wasn’t aware that your mother had dentures. As you know, we strongly recommend that patients have implants and veneers installed by our own in-house dentist, for an additional charge of thirty-five cents.”

  “What?”

  “I beg your pardon. I meant, thirty-five thousand dollars. That is well below what an outside dentist would charge. If it has been a year and a half that your mother has been unable to look after herself here, I strongly urge you to find an alternative.”