Angler In Darkness

by Edward M. Erdelac

  The girl got up on her tiptoes and kissed her, like a pigeon pecking bread from a stranger’s fingers. Almost before her heels touched the ground, the basket had been swept off the table.

  The screen door banged shut behind her.

  “Love you!” her mother called.

  But the girl didn’t hear her.

  She went skipping and shuffling down the sidewalk, chopping imaginary monsters, heedless of the jumble she made of the lunches as she lay about her with the basket.

  When she struck the big man coming around the corner in the belly, all the fantastic colors in her mind washed away as if splashed with thinner.

  “Sorry!” she said automatically.

  “Hey, it’s alright honey,” the man said, smiling down at her in a way that made her back away from him, though she didn’t know why.

  He had a fat round head and a small, pinched face. His skin was freckled, but old, his eyebrows bushy. He had thinning hair but a patchy boy’s mustache. She looked at his hands. They were pudgy, the stubby fingers opening and closing at his sides.

  “Where are you going? You need somebody to walk with you?” he asked quickly, looking over the top of her head in the direction she’d come.

  “My grandma’s,” she said, pointing. “The little yellow house with the blue fence down the block. And no thanks!

  She walked around him and bounced away. She didn’t look back, for she had quickly returned to her imaginary battles, but he watched her.

  When she turned the corner, he went off with a purpose sweat popping out on his forehead though it was a mild day.

  She decided to take the long way there by winding through the park, so that the blazing colors could fuel her adventures. She kicked the heads off several yellow dandelions before she got the idea to pluck up enough fuzzy ones to wish Grandma’s sickness away. She gathered a fistful while the sun rolled across the sky.

  She had forgotten all about the decapitated dandelions and was dancing through the park, thinking what a great place this would be to have a real picnic, not a pretend one in Grandma’s bedroom, when she saw her grandma coming across the grass in her nightgown of all things. She had that confused look on her face, like she was lost.

  She wanted to laugh, but she remembered her mother had told her not to. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face though as she ran over to meet her.

  “Grandma!”

  Grandma turned at the sound of her voice. A big smile stretched the sagging lines of her face, displaying her straight, perfect teeth.

  “Why hello, Hon!”

  “Grandma, I was just coming to see you. Did you forget about our picnic?”

  “Well of course not! I was coming to see you, too.”

  “But Grandma,” and she put her hand to the side of her face and whispered so that her grandmother had to lean in to hear, “you don’t got any clothes on!”

  Grandma looked down at her nightgown. It was the light blue one with the lacy flowers across the chest that zipped up the back. She pinched the material over her hips, lifting the hem from her blue-veined ankles. She did a kind of spin.

  “What are you talkin’ about, Hon? These are my Sunday go to meetin’ clothes!”

  The girl giggled.

  “I brought lunch,” she announced, holding up the battered basket.

  “Well, it’s a nice day for a picnic,” Grandma said.

  So they had one. A real picnic in the park. A good long time they sat, no blanket between themselves and the grass and the ants, which they flicked off their ankles or fed bits of Twinkie. They whispered secrets and told each other stories true and fantastic through gobs of gray white bread and mulched salami. The girl didn’t see any of the strangeness in Grandma that her mother had warned her about.

  Grandma was barefoot. She put a peanut between her old yellow toes and a squirrel ran up and plucked it out. They laughed as they lay on their backs with the tops of their heads touching, and looked up into a sky that was darkening on the edges like a fading dream.

  Grandma sat up and looked down at the girl, looking a bit sad now.

  “Ought to get going, Hon.”

  The girl sat up too and hugged her knees.

  “Do we gotta?”

  “It’s gonna rain,” Grandma said, looking up at the fast moving clouds tumbling clumsily across the blue. “I want you to call your dad for a ride.”

  “Aw what for? We can get to your house before it rains.”

  “Call him, Hon,” Grandma urged.

  The girl took the cellphone out of her pocket.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Oh yes you do. Press the green button,” Grandma said.

  She did.

  “Now down one. That’s your dad.”

  She did as she was told, stood up, and spun around in a lazy circle as the phone purred in her ear.

  “This is Jack Woods. Leave a message.”

  After the beep, the girl said;

  “Hey Daddy, we need a ride. I’m with Grandma. Bye!”

  She closed the phone.

  “He didn’t answer....”

  When she looked back, Grandma wasn’t there. She wasn’t even in sight.

  “Grandma?”

  Maybe she’d gotten confused again, the girl thought. Maybe she didn’t want to get her blue nightgown wet.

  The rain began to drizzle. By the time the girl was at the edge of the park, it was washing the street, the cars hissing through it like boats through a river.

  She looked both ways and crossed to the yellow house with the blue fence. The gate was half open. She stopped and peered through the peeling pickets at the spider web with the big long-legged black widow that had been guarding her three cotton ball egg sacs for the past two weeks. The mother spider curled in the swirl of strand and shadow, and the egg sacs danced on the web which seemed to be strung with diamonds from the rain.

  She glanced up and caught a glimpse of Grandma moving away from the drapes. She knew her by her blue nightgown.

  She gently closed the gate behind so as not to upset the mother spider’s nest and skip-splashed up the front walk to the door.

  A wooden picture that looked like a fat-butted lady in a red and white polka dot dress stooping over some flowers hung on the doorknob.

  It turned and the door swung open. A car honked three times behind her.

  She turned and smiled, waving.

  Dad’s car had pulled up to the curb out front. The passenger window buzzed down.

  “Hey Dad!” the girl called through the raindrops.

  Her dad smiled. Then his eyes moved over her shoulder and his smile slipped.

  She turned to see Grandma standing in the doorway in her blue nightgown. But it wasn’t Grandma. She only caught a quick look, so quick it only confused her. The man was familiar, tall and big bellied, with freckled skin and a little face. The nightgown didn’t quite fit. It was slipping from his fat white shoulders as he pushed past her and ran down the front walk, his bare feet slapping on the pavement.

  He crashed right through the little blue gate, breaking it half off the hinges. The girl worried that the mother spider and her eggs had been killed.

  Her dad jumped out of the car and yelled at him, stabbing numbers into his phone.

  The fat man in Grandma’s nightgown ran in quick, short steps on his stubby white legs across the street into the park. The rain made the blue nightgown stick to his bloated body.

  Dad yelled into his phone as he came around the car to her. He was telling someone on the phone about the fat man, giving the name of the park.

  In only a couple of minutes the girl heard police cars. More than she’d ever heard all at once.

  She sat on the heels of her sneakers by the broken gate. The mother spider was agitated, her long legs twitching, testing the broken web, which had lost its diamonds, but not the precious little white egg sacs.

  Dad knelt down beside her. He didn’t have his coat on. He squeezed her very tightly.

>   “Are you alright, honey? Are you alright?” he asked over and over.

  She was nodding yes and trying to push him away, trying to stand up and go into the house.

  “I have to tell Grandma the spiders are OK,” she said.

  “No honey,” Dad said. She couldn’t tell, but he sounded like he was crying. “Grandma’s not home.”

  She didn’t understand.

  The police cars were loud. They were driving across the park, right on the grass. The red and blue lights bounced off the rippling puddles and streaked up and down the webs.

  I owe the concept of this story to a guy named Aaron I played D&D with back when I was in my late teens. Not the plot or characters, but the notion that belief could be a superpower. I remember he said to me, “I’m not a writer, I’m never gonna do anything with the idea. If you wanna use it, just mention you got it from me.”

  So thanks, Aaron!

  I grew up aware of the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago, and drove through the place once before they tore it down. Drab and tall and clustered with iron bars, supposedly to keep people from leaping over the balconies (but really, I suppose, to keep them in), it was a place that bred gloom and disenfranchisement.

  Conviction

  “Hello, Abassi,” the lady say, when I sit down. “My name is Daniela Orozco. Now, can you tell me why you were referred to me today?”

  I just shrug, even though I know.

  When she open the folder and slide the piece of paper with my drawing on it, I look down at my busted shoes.

  “Your teachers are concerned about you,” she say, though I know really they just worried about they own selves. “Abassi?”

  I look up, and her eyes are on me. I look away, but every time I come back, she still looking. She pretty.

  “You’re a very good artist, Abassi,” she say.

  Nobody never tell me I good at anything. It feel good. I wish the picture was something nicer.

  I drew it in history class. We was learning about the minutemen. In the picture in the book they wore GD colors and they was all strapped in the street like they was bangin’. I thought about Lateesa. I drew the minutemen blowing up, like they swallowed bombs. Their triangle hats was on fire, their heads come off, some of ‘em. I drew my own punkinhead self in there too. I shouldn’t have. If I’d of left that out, nobody would’ve said shit.

  “You told the teacher these were the minutemen,” she say, with her pencil on the bloody bodies. “But who’s this down here?”

  She point to the little boy with the big head and the busted shoes.

  I don’t say shit.

  “Are you angry about something, Abassi?”

  I shrug.

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Afraid?”

  She wait.

  M’always afraid. In the hall. In the street. In the stairwell goin’ back to Grammaw’s place up in the whites. I see ‘em on the corners, in the doorways, lookin’ out the windows. I don’t go to the

  bathroom at school ‘cause they in there. I hear ‘em from the hall and my back and my neck hurts I get so scared.

  “Abassi?”

  She looking at me.

  “Abassi I want you to sit up and take a breath. Breathe in very deep through your nose like this, and out through your mouth. Breathe with me.”

  I do what she say. My neck don’t hurt so much after.

  “Better?”

  I nod.

  “Can you tell me what makes you afraid?”

  “I scared sometime,” I say, real quiet so they can’t hear through her door, “they goin’ gimme another PhD.”

  “PhD?”

  “Punkinhead Deluxe,” I say. “They beat you till your head get big like a punkin.”

  She look at me and I look at my broke ass shoes again. I know I ugly. I been ugly since the PhD.

  “S’why I look this way.”

  “Who beat you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Abassi, I want you to be able to trust me. Will you tell me what happened?”

  I like her. I guess maybe ‘cause she pretty. So I say.

  I tell her how Lateesa was smokin’ water all the time with the clique (I don’t say who in the clique), and how she start in smokin’ rock too. I tell her how Grammaw told me one night to go out and find her, that I was responsible for her.

  I tell her how I found Lateesa out by the reds with the clique tryin’ to get TreySix to sell her some rock. I seent ‘em push her around. They say she got no loot so she gotta pay the other way.

  I don’t wanna tell her how she get on her knees, how she take TreySix’s dick in her mouth. I feel sick sayin’ that to Miss Orozco, but she tell me it Okay, so I tell.

  I tell how I stepped up to them, how I yelled at my sister to stop. They all told me to fuck off, but I din’t listen. I hollered for Lateesa to come home.

  Then I say how they bum rushed me. I din’t see nothin’ but blue and silver and the black of they fists and they Tims comin’ down, they gold chains swingin.’ They shout, they laugh the whole time. I din’t hear nothin’ but my bones snappin.’ The last thing I seent before I woked up in the hospital was TreySix laughin’ on his celly with Lateesa on her knees in front of him.

  But I don’t snitch. I don’t say TreySix. GD’s kill me and my Grammaw if I do.

  Just like they kill Lateesa. She OD’d while I was sleep. But it just like they kilt her.

  “Breathe,” she tell me.

  I breathe.

  “Abassi?”

  I look at her.

  “Do you feel responsible for Lateesa?”

  I shrug.

  “Grammaw said I was.”

  “You’re not. She was your older sister. Anything she did, anything that happened to her, was because of choices she made, not you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I understand why you’re scared, and why you’re angry. I want to keep seeing you. Is that alright?”

  I nod.

  “I want to talk to you about what the goal of our therapy is going to be. I want you to remember the breathing exercise, and something else. I want to you to keep your head up when you walk. Don’t slouch, try not to hunch up your shoulders. I see the way you carry yourself, and I see that you’re afraid. There are people, like the ones who hurt you, that will see it too and jump on that fear. It’s Okay to feel afraid, and there are places that it’s appropriate to show that, like right here with me. But you and I know that there are places out there that it’s better to look like you’re not. I think you’ll find too, that if you start carrying yourself like you’re not scared, you’ll be scared less and less. If you start to believe in yourself, you’ll find you’ll hardly be scared at all anymore.”

  “I’m always goin’ be scared,” I say.

  “You only think that because of where you are right now. I don’t mean just in this neighborhood. In this school. I mean in your life. You don’t have to always be this way. I know you feel like everybody has power over you. The GD’s, your grandmother, your teachers....but if you have conviction....”

  “What?”

  “Conviction. Belief. If you believe in yourself, I mean really believe, like, how you believe that every step you take your foot will touch the ground. If you believe like that that you can change things for yourself, you can.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes you can, Abassi. You can control it, you just have to convince yourself. I’ll help you. But we’ll talk about that later. Our time’s almost up for today. I wanna give you some homework...”

  I suck my teeth and she smiles.

  “Yes, I get to assign homework,” she says. “I want you to practice visualizing goals that you want to attain.”

  I shake my head. I don’t know what she mean.

  “I mean making a picture in your mind of how you’d like things to be. I want you to draw me a picture tonight, Abassi,” she says.

  “Of what?”

  “Draw me a picture of yourse
lf.”

  “I don’t wanna.”

  “Then draw me anything at all. And I’ll see you tomorrow, Okay?”

  “Awright.”

  She stands up and shakes my hand. Her hand is clean and smooth and warm.

  “It was nice to meet you.”

  * * * *

  I walk home.

  “Yo yo yo! Whatchoo want? Whatchoo need? ‘Got that rock. ‘Got that weed. ‘Ay! ‘Ay, my man! Give it up! ‘Sup, folk? Got my squares? Yup yup! What up, nigga? Hangin’ bangin’ slangin’ natamean?

  Right-right. Where my nigga Mike-Mike? Yo! ‘Ay, yo! ‘Sup, GD? ‘Ay, here go Punkinhead. ‘Ay nigga! Draw me a picture, nigga! Draw yo sista on my tip! Haaaaaaaaaaaah...bitch ass....”

  I go up to Grammaw’s.

  “’Bassi! Where the hell you been? I need you to go to the ‘sto! I need smokes!”

  “The man at the store say you got to get them, Grammaw. He won’t sell ‘em to me no more.”

  “Well what fuck good is you then?”

  I close my door. I get out paper. I draw for Miss Orozco. I think about what she say. About believing I can change things. I make a picture about how I want things to be. I draw the projects, the reds and the whites all broke down and the GD’s all up under the bricks. TreySix and Caveman, BillDawg and Mike-Mike. They can’t shoot nobody. They can’t jump nobody. I start to color in the blood, but I stop. I want to draw something nice for her, so I draw grass growing over the bricks. Grammaw say they used to be grass in the projects till the white folks paved it over to save money. I draw it green like I seent it on cartoons, not like the yellow shit that grows in the Killin’ Field where the crack heads go.

  I draw pink flowers, so thick you can’t see the bodies no more. Pretty soon the bricks look like a hill. I draw myself on top. I draw Miss Orozco too. I give her a pink and yellow flower. With the projects gone, you could see the sky in my picture. I draw it blue and I make the clouds big and white. I draw a smile on the sun.

  That fucks it up kinda. Makes it look like a little kid’s picture. I make the sun orange. That fixes it. I don’t draw no po-pos. I don’t draw no ghetto birds, even though I hear one outside, see the light comin’ down, lookin’ for somebody.

  I hear shootin.’ Back back back. I should go lay down in the bathtub.

  But I look at my picture. It’s a nice picture. I hope Miss Orozco will like it. She say I’m a good draw-er. I think she will like it.