by Jaimy Gordon
“It’s crazy fun on the racetrack, you’ll like it,” you said. “I was gonna come for you, Ursula, I had to fight down the urge… tell you the truth I’m sorta scared if you come to the track you’ll end up in even more trouble than I’m in, you’ll find some way. But are you really getting better in this place, I mean your arms look like two raw meatloafs, godzillas sake what’s that all about…”
“I’m in the hospital aren’t I? I gotta have sumpm wrong, long as I’m here. You wouldn’t want me hearing voices or picking up secret messages from “Louie Louie” or anything really buggy like that.” “You don’t want out? I mean I was sitting in the track kitchen and I got the most urgent flash, Margaret come get me get me get me outa here.” “Well I gotta own up I had one bad day, but that was before I made all these, er, musical friends and”-I whispered-“Zuk gave me her phone number.”
“What?! She’s a dreambox mechanic in this hospital and she gave you her private telephone number? What for? What kinda place is this place?” “Take it easy, don’t go flooey on me, keep your voice down”-Dr. Buzzey and Dr. Beasley were polishing off potato chips two tables to our left-“she’s, er, uh, a special foreign visitor, she lives on the grounds.”
Your forehead got that special dent again, dark blue and V-shaped, the shadow of some doomy bat, or bird. You wanted to tell me no no no but choked it down. Like mental patients we two sisters were not historically in the habit of hollering down each other’s stupider schemes. No squealing, lemme die first, doesn’t quite sum it up. There comes a day when even the other sister’s hair is standing on end, like when I watched you climb into that forty-foot frog-green bus marked Girl Scout Troop No. 49, headed for the Yukon with Mr. Johnny Rico, a car thief on the lam. Shrieking Margaret what is your problem would have been by our standards deplorably impolite. I watched you go. And likewise now I thought I saw your nut-brown hair stirring at the root, getting ready to raise those kinky braids like drawbridges, and your mouth fell open, but not one word did you say, just that bruise-blue dent in the middle of the forehead. “Well, so long, Ursula,” you finally managed, “when you get sick of the bughouse, you know where to find me. I guarantee you the racetrack won’t make you any buggier than this joint.” And you clomped off to feed for Boyfriend Death at 5 PM, on the backside of Indian Mound Downs, in Great Cacapon, West Virginia.
HOW LOVE GOT ME OUT OF THERE
When you’re buggy, there’s nothing like having a mission. Then like a flying bug you shoot through space, short, straight and frictionless. All those crawly bugs that in nightmares perforate your dreambox and riddle your conk with their busy incessant comings and goings have only aerated your machinery for this light-headed zoom. And so it was once I resolved to spy on Doctor Zuk.
I started running in the second floor stairwell and by the time I passed Lopes at the front desk in the lobby, I wasn’t even a blur-a blur might have required interpretation-I was the August heat, a liquid twitch of air between eye and pavement, so that he yawned and shook his head once, and went on picking his teeth.
My sneakers flailed the hot sidewalks up Monument, down Gay, straight to Charlie Rudo’s. It had been lying on a blue satin pillow in a locked display case when I bought my walky-talkies, I had peered at it with longing, and the salesman had let me twirl its knobs and hold its soft rubber bumper to my eye-a Zeiss Model 1-1000, the Field Marshal or should I say Marschallin of all spyglasses, a tool that could pick out the wrinkles around a raccoon’s fingernails in a mulberry top a mile distant, or, more to the point here, find a drop of blood, well it could be a drop of blood, on a girlgoyle’s white shorts and follow it up three escalators. Now I looked underneath at the price tag and reeled: $499.99! O well, for spying as for tracking, cool wits, doggedness, and if you had to have equipment, the best that you could buy or rather charge to Merlin and return tomorrow or the next day. “To the account please of Mr. Melvin P. Koderer, 18 Ploy Street, Baltimore, 2, Maryland.” And then I ran back to Rohring Rohring with this queen of spyglasses in a plain brown wrapper in my arms.
I couldn’t just lie on my bed and spy. Plenty of times, before the Bug Motels had their clubhouse NO ROYALS ALLOWED, I had back-floated there all the summer afternoon and stared at the eensy black domino that was Doctor Zuk’s balcony, and how should the nurses know what I was looking at? What could be more like a mental patient than to stare into empty space? But to lie there with a spyglass would give my staring a purposeful, even a paranoid air, not at all the sort of impression you want to make in the bughouse.
So I whipped up a “bath gate”: this was when you got the bathroom door and the hospital room door to stick together at their latches. Meanwhile you turned on the plumbing full force so that the elephant-trumpet of the bath boomed all the way to the nurses’s station; and you dumped in Her Secret Moments by the pound and threw clothes all around. It took a royal a good twenty seconds to get the doors unstuck and usually they just gave up and yelled through the crack.
I used up all my clothes that way, but what the hump, why not spy on Doctor Zuk stark naked? I lay on my back, my left hand stole to my crack, the sheets were cool, a faint breeze stirred from the harbor, it was almost lovely with my spyglass climbing the balconies rung by rung to Zuk’s altitude…
“Whuzzup, Bogeywoman, you gettin into sumpm you shouldn’t?” It was the Regicide on the half-hour, rattling at the hooked doors. “I’m in the bath,” I hollered. “I never know you to take you no bath before, raggedy as you be. I be back in five minutes.” “I take plenty of baths since I started getting better. You better keep out.” “Five minutes, Bogeywoman, I’m coming in.” “You just wanna see me naked.” “You think so? I see better than that in the buggy old ladies’ ward every day, better tips too. Say! talkin bout better, way your hot sister at?” “Why don’t you oink yourself?” “Fi minutes.”
By now Her Secret Moments had started clouding up the czarina of spyglasses, and the main thing I saw from my back was a big black blur-my own window bars. I sighed and stood up on the bed, threaded the spyglass carefully, carefully through the bars and twirled the knobs and ratcheted up the balconies, flowerpot by flowerpot.
I knew her balcony right away by its nakedness-I mean you couldn’t imagine madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse angling a watering can over pink petunias, or dangling dingy brassieres from a clothesline. But there was nothing, not even a bent-up chaise longue, and of course she wasn’t there, why was I even doing this? Wait, sumpm flickered, no, glinted, at the sliding screen door, and behind the gray rain of the metal screen, sumpm white floated, I rolled the velvety knobs and sumpm black, a black smudge, a black star, precipitated out of it, good godzilla cold sweat sprang out like horns on my temples it was an islet of black pubic hair I was hanging on, sort of a tropical isle, or like an old scary garden, overgrown, shadowy, sprawling, the arcs to the thighs lightly bearded like trellises, not all neatly edged in its pretty little patch like O’s. I went dizzy-except for Mrs. Wilmot’s scattered bristles I had never seen any but a girlgoyle’s-but maybe it wasn’t Zuk, no, lower, those were definitely her famous soccer player’s calves, I’d know them anywhere. Deep navel, lobes of well-fatted muscle, and suddenly I was looking at her breasts, I almost fell over backwards. So not like mine, so not like a girlgoyle’s, sumpm really hanging there, heavy bosom, weight, heft, I thought of the round provolones always dripping in their pale cloths in Karoline von Etzen’s basement but it was useless to scare up anything merely edible to save me, these were real and naked, I could even see the freckles on them and the big purple nuzzies hung low on their fluid roundness like old dried beach roses. It was scary all right, she was old, beautiful but old as the hills and crags, and slightly sickening like you ate too much Coquilles St. Jacques even if it was your favorite food. All at once I fixed on another black tuft-densely crosshatched armpit, course godzilla knows they don’t shave in Outer Hotzeplotz but it was the ripeness, the more than ripeness of everything that made me woozy like being in an orchard left to r
ot. And looking at that black thatch and the round arms and the white elbows I realized the breasts were draped in that offering way that breasts fall when arms are raised, saw the spiky hair all around and secretive smile but why couldn’t I see-what was she holding in front of her face-my godzilla it’s a pair of binoculars! She knows perfectly well I am looking, she’s looking too, she laughs, she even waves. The czarina of spyglasses leaps out of my fingers, floats on air, and slowly, slowly, rolls to the-cheese I can’t look-deep squeak and punch of metal, someone screams-
“Psst, hey, Ursie-” “Egbert, what the hump are you doing in my room?” I shriek. “I can’t believe I’m seeing you naked,” he says. “Me neither.” I yanked a sheet up in front of me-behind him I saw gray surf, dirty lace of bathwater inching across the linoleum. “Bertie, go turn off my bathtub”-he did it. “Now what the hump are you doing here,” I snarled ungratefully, for all I saw was my beautiful spyglass rolling over and over, Merlin’s face when he got the bill, the dense grizzled slightly sickening beauty of Madame Zuk, looking at me looking at her and shaking with laughter, I imagined her Red Army binoculars that probably wouldn’t break even if she dropped them thirty stories, I wondered if I’d killed somebody with my own fabulous spyglass and suddenly I saw my hand deep in my crack, o my godzilla how many afternoons and her laughter
“Ursie, I was thinking about maybe we should get married.” “What!” “We can’t stay in this joint forever, we don’t want to be hopeless cases. We could get our own place and still be Bug Motels. Pinky and Egbert would be so glad to get me outa here but not have me with em, they’d give us the money. I could take care of you since you’re sorta an orphan.” “I am not an orphan.” “Half an orphan.” “I’m not that pitiful.” “Well, nobody else wants you.” I thought of Margaret and certain other people and didn’t lower myself to answer him, the fuddy, at least not now.
“Ursie, I know you don’t like fuddies, much…” “You got a nerve to say I don’t like fuddies, what do you know about it, maybe I don’t like anybody”-(I was seeing that wild garden of pubic hair)-“probably I don’t like fuddies or girlgoyles or anything.” “Well I mean you never got a boyfriend, but I don’t exactly consider myself a fuddy,” he said, “… more like a lesbo.” I burst out laughing. “You got a frog dangle don’t you?” He nodded guiltily. “Well then I’m sorry you can’t be a lesbo.” “I didn’t say I liked having it.” “That’s got nuttin to do with it,” I said. “Say, you’re not the grand librarian of the lesbos of the world,” Egbert protested, “you can’t just decide sumpm like that.” I wasn’t going to argue with him. “The way I figure,” he said, “you’re a lesbo if you like girls cause you think you’re more like a girl yourself. What makes you queer is liking the same thing you are.” “Then I guess I’m not queer,” I said, “cause I really am queer, I mean I’m a monster, I don’t know any fuddies who are like me, including you, Egbert, or any girlgoyles either, or any grownups or lesbos or anything.” I was saying the first thing out of my mouth, but I decided I better shut up fast, cause this sounded like it might be true.
Egbert stood there for a while looking at me, feeling those few little blondie whiskerettes on his nice square chin. He was skinny, and his long silky hair lay on his skinny shoulders like a cape, but he was nothing like a girl. “You know, you’re right, you really truly are queer, and that’s what made me love you, Ursie,” he said, and at first he looked surprised and then his face got long as the bus ride home, “so there goes my whole theory out the window.” “It ain’t a bad theory, it just goes upside down,” I said. “I still want to oink you,” he said. Hmmmm, I was thinking about it, thinking about it, I mean all I had to do was drop the sheet, already I had this green and spongy feeling around my liver from my spyglass and Doctor Zuk, I mean, it’s sumpm when the love of your life makes you kinda seasick, like eating six Tastykakes all by yourself, and for a minute I wondered if oinking Bertie might cure me, but I didn’t think so.
“Yall two wouldn’t be about to engage in some of that four-legged bughouse athletics?” asked Reggie Blanchard from the doorway.
“Some five minutes,” I said, “it’s a good thing I wasn’t offing myself.”
“Well if that’s what you had going, I was gonna let you off with a warning,” Reggie said. “But this four-legged bughouse athletics stuff, mercy me, wouldn’t that be a nice change for the Bogeywoman-you know sometimes I thought you was one of those she-he’s.”
“I’m the lesbo here, not her,” Bertie said gravely.
The Regicide looked him over. “That’s what I like about this bughouse gig,” he finally said, “some new divergiation on the human spectacular you never heard of before, every single day. Now what is this?” He had just stepped into two inches of water. “I guess you taken that bath on the floor,” he said to me. “You dusty as a peanut too. I knew you was inexperienced at personal hygiene, but I ain’t expected this-good thing I get off at four-somebody be up here with a mop afta while,” he sighed. “As for that four-legged bughouse athletics, yall have to save it. The Bogeywoman here is already late for her Thursday date with her dreambox mechanic, and which I know cause Dr. Foofer sent me to cay her up there…”
“O my godzilla-”
I blab to Foofer
AND HE BLABS BACK
“I know you can’t name her exact country, Doc, top secret and all that”-
I mushed on with the program, but sumpm was different. To get myself in the right mood for dreambox repair, I had tuned up the scary couple on my crystal ball. Sekt, Madame? To the Koderer adolescent, yes? Stubborn as fungus, but now Gott sei Dank she gets always better and we may at last get rid of her! You want to get rid? I like this greedy baby. Yes, we have noticed. We even fear a little the sorcery of your influence, Doktor Zuk. But we can rely on the authority of your technik, Dr. Feuffer. Na ja! Even so she gets better. Kiss! kiss! Prosit! Nazdravje! Clink clink.
But no, his date with the love of my life seemed to have some way tightened the boilerplate on the world-famous diagnostician. Foofer sat before me more sealed than ever in his sphinx suit full of farts, his notebook closed, his ballpoint nowhere in sight, his baggy cheeks motionless, not even his thumbnail zissing.
“But howsabout we do it this way, Doc: If it’s no, say no, if it’s yes or maybe, say nuttin. Then nuttin’s for sure, but like you put it so succinctly” (I wasn’t above ladling on the shmaltz when he got that trapped look behind his bifocals) “at least then the truth shrinks down to my size, instead of staying as big as seven worlds like it is right now.”
“Ursula,” Foofer creaked, “nuh-zing you can propose, no game, no trick, will make me utter one word more or less than I zink good and right. Is it quite clear?” “It’s quite clear,” I echoed, We’ll see about that I was thinking.
“Okay, Doc, we’re talking Soviet Central Asia here, that narrows it down to six million square miles. I’m on the right track, aren’t I, at Camp Chunkagunk I was always the champ at this kinda thing… We’re talking Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or Kyrgyzstan-cheese, there can’t be two Foodian dreambox mechanics in the whole six million miles, just try getting your conk fixed in Betpak-Dala!-you can forget it! So once Doctor Zuk let it slip that she grew up in Forty Maidens Feasting-that was the name of this real old fort where they hid her when the bad guys took away her old man. I swear the name’s got fourteen k’s in it-sumpm like-well I’ll know it when I hear it. So I figure all I gotta do is dig up Forty Maidens Feasting in all the languages in Central Asia and I got my Rosetta Stone. Don’t look so surprised, Doc, I was trained by the best! the wood wizardess, namely Willis Marie Bundgus of East Millinocket, Maine.”
(I eyeballed him. Maybe August had put the dew on his wooly eyebrows, but what could explain the wild look under them, the restless irises stranded in bloodshot aspic-and he sat perfectly still-not even his thumbnail zissing-)
“Make it easy for me, Doc! I can tell I’m getting warm. Now the big question is who the hump
was her old man and why did they take him. Are we talking Nazis here or Commies-”
“Nuh-zing means nuh-zing,” Foofer suddenly exploded, but quietly, like a dropped grapefruit, with a thud and a fizz, and only afterwards the shiny eyebags under his glasses reddened, “when I say nuh-zing, it needs no dolmetscher, do you understand me, Ursula?” he whispered.
I was shocked. “Hey, I thought that was the main way you dreambox mechanics operated, you say nuttin and we fill in the holes, work the crossword puzzle, stuff the sausage casing-and here for godzillas sakes I thought we were doing better-”
“I object to nuh-zing if you want to talk. I gladly hear all you have to say. I mean that my silence is not to be translated by some, splutter, teenager into confirmation of nonsense concerning another mental scientist and particularly not into cheap romance! Is it quite clear?”
This was stunning news, but as it was not love of Foofer that had set me talking in the first place, I refused to let him hurt my feelings. I drew a breath and ploughed on with the program: “Just tell me this-Doc-I mean it is my question-the old man was a Jew, am I right?”
“Zis Zuk woman is of far too much interest to you. I tell you nuh-zing more about her! nuh-zing! We will have no more questions. This concerns you not a damp chicken dropping, do you understand?” It was my jaw that dropped. “You have scratched up far too much already what is nuh-zing of your affair, Ursula. If you can find Doktor Zuk you may ask her. There is an end of the matter.”
“Sumpm’s different about you today, Doc,” I had to observe, “you used to be more, er, softer. Sumpm more in the overcooked vegetable line-don’t get me wrong-I like overcooked vegetables, they’re real good for you. But used to be I could push with the program and you fell over splat.”