Ecstatic

by Victor La Valle

  We weren’t far from the main house, but we were right next to the cabin. Even without lights it gave a ginger glow. The cabin was run through with an animate silence that reached out and cupped my ears. The shingled roof sunk low in the middle like it was being sucked down from the inside.

  I still heard Uncle Arms, but from farther away. He said, – If I can try to make the lives of a few girls better now, that’s one way to balance out Otis Allen’s fortune.

  I don’t want to say I was scared. I was thrilled.

  If not for Uncle Arms my night would have consisted of television and hotel food. Right now Nabisase was probably back in her room, the preliminary night over, polishing the shoes she’d be wearing with a formal gown tomorrow. Muttering about the failures of Mom and me. Why would I rush to hear that? I’d have the rest of my life to get berated. Going to see my sister would have been the right thing to do, but tonight I felt like a little fun.

  – I want to help you, I whispered.

  – What?

  – Uncle Arms, I want to be your friend.

  When I was eating dinner in the house the cabin had looked quaint, but now it was much older. I thought it was a replica, the kind they sell in miniature at Home Depot, a pretty place to keep useful things like a lawnmower, rock salt.

  – It’s handmade, Anthony. More than two hundred years ago.

  There was a window, but were there chairs inside? A bed? An occupant?

  – What can I do? I asked.

  –This is quite a surprise.

  I couldn’t see Uncle Arms because I wouldn’t stop watching the cabin. Tricks of lights against the window; when I tilted my head long shapes squatted.

  – You wouldn’t find it hard to open a door, would you?

  – I want to do something better than that.

  – You don’t understand me, Anthony. This one gesture would help me a lot.

  – How much?

  He said, – I wouldn’t have to plant any of the protestors inside. I can’t trust them. They won’t wait until the right time. The second one gets in he’ll start chanting and throwing flyers. They’re too energetic.

  – Are you going to hurt the people inside?

  – I told you I wasn’t a monster.

  Fierce loyalty is a boy’s game best played at night when the imagination can transform every shadow into a foe. Uncle Arms went back in the house and returned; he was as thin as a cane. He brought out two small glasses, the green bottle.

  – At a certain time during the evening’s pageant you’ll hear a knock at the back of the auditorium. Then you’ll open the emergency door.

  Here I’d thought the whole world was telling my story only to find myself stumbled into his.

  While he’d gone into the house I hadn’t stepped away from the cabin. We drank five feet away from it. I didn’t want to get closer, but I didn’t run.

  Uncle Arms asked, – Does your sister win a lot of these things?

  – No, I said. She never has.

  – Maybe this would be her year.

  – Could you do that?

  – Winner’s name means nothing to me. If it assures your cooperation and a few years of silence I’ll give her quite a bit.

  – She was the girl with the old woman tied to her back.

  –The orphan! Uncle Arms laughed. I like the blood you come from, he said.

  I was glad to do something for my sister, but also to feel like a grown man. I entered the cosmos of backroom economies on November 11th. Her professionalism aside, Nabisase’s victory was rigged by an endomoprh and a goblin standing in crabgrass, and she would never know it. There are so many lives decided in this way.

  After finishing the bottle of green liqueur I could barely stagger and I fell forward against the cabin walls. Once I was closer the silhouettes inside were easier to recognize. The backs of two wood chairs and iron pots hanging over the fireplace. A low slim bed in the corner. There was a form, wide as an oven and twice as tall, pressed up against the right side of the window pane like it was looking out. When I stumbled closer it moved away.

  The door was made of three wide slats of wood joined together. They weren’t decorated. There wasn’t even a handle, only a hole in the door about level with the lower end of my stomach. Hanging through that hole was a leather string, like a bootlace. The hole in the shape of a heart.

  Uncle Arms whispered from behind me.

  – All the Quakers had to lock this door was a wooden board on the inside of the cabin. That leather string hanging out the hole is tied around it. When visitors are welcome the string dangles out. A visitor pulls on it, the board lifts and you walk inside.

  He said, –That’s where the saying comes from. A hole in my heart. When the string wasn’t hanging out it meant that company wasn’t welcome.

  – Who’s in there now?

  – Open the door.

  – What will I find inside?

  –The unseen hand, he said.

  My whole body was eager to find out. I touched the door and the wood was cold. I grabbed for the string, but it moved without me. Curling away slowly. It disappeared. Pulled backward from within.

  19

  Nabisase, thirteen years old, not safe, ossified, looked out the window of Grandma’s room; so stiff she might have been there for eighty years and continue for eighty more.

  Grandma lay on her back on her bed on her best behavior in the Comfort Inn room.

  Nabisase turned away from the low hills outside to sit on the bed and touch Grandma’s hip. Grandma made little gasps not only from pain, but in anticipation of more. She flinched. My sister pressed on Grandma’s thigh, asking, – Does it hurt here? Here? Where?

  I’d driven over from Miser’s Wend at ten that morning. A Sunday. November 12th.

  Mom’s bed, the one farther from the window, was tucked so professionally that it couldn’t have been slept in.

  Rather than call ahead, as I’d tried the day before, I got on the elevator, pressed third floor and nobody stopped me. Walked the hall and right into Grandma’s room. I could’ve done that on Saturday, but I’d assumed there were guards posted.

  Grandma skittered, sat up quickly, when she noticed me inside the room. The move made her squint with pain and she yelled, – How did you get in?

  –Through the door.

  – Wasn’t it locked?

  – Mom’s gone. Nabisase spoke to me, but I didn’t recognize the voice. Not frantic or angry, even irate; the tones I was used to.

  – Did you hear me? my sister asked.

  Grandma rose to her elbows. – We haven’t seen your mother except Friday.

  – We should tell the police.

  Nabisase only repeated herself. – Mom’s gone.

  – I thought she stopped doing this, I said.

  Grandma said. – She did. For some time.

  I felt fevered, but not them. Now I wondered if her message had sounded more despondent than I recognized. – What did she tell you the last time you saw her?

  Grandma said, – She left as my eyes closed.

  – We can call the cops from here.

  – Forget the police, Nabisase said.

  – Why do you sound so grown? I asked her.

  My sister sat down next to Grandma. Their postures were the same, but Grandma had reason to hunch over. She was ninety-three and her hip might be broken. While my sister was soon to be awarded Uncle Arms’s gold prize. She didn’t know and I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t think she’d believe me. But soon.

  Even as they sat there confused, I was happy. I’d never felt like an oracle before.

  – Were there any notes?

  Grandma said, – Do you believe she gives a thought as she waves out the door?

  Grandma was tired. Uncle Isaac. Mom. Me. How does a parent go on living, really pretty healthy, while watching her children decompose gradually?

  – She’ll be back by this afternoon, I said. I was optimistic. Sometimes Mom forgot her life and it lasted
for a few weeks, but most often she got confused, wandered for five hours then came back to us.

  – I’m not waiting to see, Nabisase said.

  – We can’t let her run around town getting in trouble, I pleaded.

  – Can’t we?! Grandma yelled.

  This isn’t the start of things I’m telling about. It’s not the middle, too.

  I stood, surprised that I’d become the paladin of compassion. – I’m going to get her back.

  Nabisase and Grandma, both, touched their hands to their eyes.

  – You’ll have to take Grandma, Anthony. They have a woman who can help me with my hair backstage, but it’s only me who’s going to steam my dress. And I have to go find some glitter to put on my shoes.

  – Will you miss the announcements? Grandma asked her. Of the winner? With the tiny man’s contest?

  Nabisase punched her own thigh. – Forget about that. It’s not important. I have to be ready for tonight. Uncle Allen wasn’t looking for pretty girls anyway.

  I should have urged her to get the fuck downtown, right now, and collect her prize, but the offhand way she described herself made me angry. More than angry. Just a blubbery bitter boy. Petty because I wasn’t good-looking.

  – We may help? Grandma offered her. To prepare yourself.

  – I need to get used to doing things on my own, my sister said. I want you both to go.

  I felt like the appointed manservant of some young caliph, but did as the young girl commanded. Nabisase tied my grandmother to my back with a few sheets. I carried her that way to the parking lot and put her in the passenger seat.

  In the wounded Dodge Neon we drove through Lumpkin, Virginia. There was the chance we’d sight Mom from the car, but not likely. So the new method was to travel, park, tie Grandma on my back and walk around a few blocks looking in stores or driveways.

  In 1981 Uncle Isaac tracked Mom to a duck farm in Providence.

  Grandma had a recent picture that we showed to clerks, people waiting to cross at red lights. Pedestrians and passengers stared at Grandma and me with patterns of bemusement on their faces as I carried her around. Most were nice enough to listen, but none recognized our dear.

  Just like Southeast Queens the city of Lumpkin, away from the phalanx of tourist restaurants and hotels, was the Lord’s territory.

  Calvary Baptist, Grace Brethren Church, Sacred Heart Catholic, First Church of Christ Scientist, Mountainview Church of Christ, Christ Episcopal Church, Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox, Grace Lutheran, First Presbyterian, Seventh Day Adventist, Centenary United Church of Christ, Braddock St. United Methodist, Market St. Methodist, St. Paul the Redeemer, Beth El Congregation Synagogue Reform. In a pretty small town. With twenty-five houses of worship what’s the gamble that, on a Sunday, marriage bloomed.

  At an A.M.E. church the jubilant congregation stood outside. Women in pink dresses, men in red suits. The front lawn looked like a taffy shop.

  The one-story wooden church was just another white house on a residential block, except for the wheelchair ramp leading to the front door.

  Soon as I walked onto the lawn a short, wide man approached. He was one of those small guys with a rib cage large enough to store a car engine. – Hey now, he said.

  He put his hand out to me.

  – Yes, I said.

  – Out strolling.

  This sounds like a question, but he wasn’t really asking. With his right hand on my shoulder he turned me away from the church so that Grandma and I faced the street once more.

  Grandma said, – We are looking for someone.

  – Yes, he agreed, but the face showed his unconcern.

  He put one hand in his red vest pocket which matched his red shoes, his red jacket and tusk-colored shirt. I tried to show him Mom’s picture, but there wasn’t time.

  – You both have a good day now, he said. You go on from here because we’ve got a whole mess of cars about to come up the road for a wedding. It’s going to get crowded. Go on. Go on.

  In a pantomime of friendliness he smiled.

  A woman, his wife I bet, walked closer to us and she smiled.

  The whole hill of people, hell-yeah fifty-five if I counted, walked closer to us and they smiled, too.

  The guy pushed me without making it obvious. Maybe he bounced at bars. With his hand against my right arm he sent Grandma and I going. I had to walk because the momentum would’ve tripped me if I didn’t move. I waved cheerfully until Grandma slapped my face.

  – Why would you wave? She asked. They were not friendly. When she scowled her eyebrows covered her eyes, so that her face lost its light.

  –They were nice. I was indignant for them because they’d smiled.

  –They were disgusted.

  – By you?

  She pinched my ear.

  – By me? I asked. They didn’t like me? How?

  – Because you are a stinker. One thin, mottled hand waved not across her own nose, but under mine.

  – How could they know just by looking at me?

  She hooked her thumb into the sheet where it passed under my armpit. – He smelled you.

  – It’s that bad?

  –Terrible, she admitted.

  I unbuttoned two of the buttons on my shirt and put my nose in. – What do I smell like?

  Grandma wasn’t going to detail the offense. I really hadn’t noticed. It was three days by now. That is a while.

  – I’m sorry, I said to Grandma.

  The car was parked downtown; as I walked she reached over my shoulder, rubbed my cheek. Before we got back in the car we stopped in a little pharmacy with aisles so tight that when I tried to slide into the personal hygiene lane I knocked Grandma into a whole display of brightly tinted coolers. I wanted to find some cologne to spritz myself.

  CVS was bigger; a chain store with plenty of floor space. There were perfumes in a glass case, but the case only opened with a key. I could’ve cracked it with my elbow, but who becomes a crook for such a dumb reason.

  – I’m going to have to buy one, I told Grandma.

  –These are too expensive. Try something else. She pulled my face away, to the right, not gently.

  Some perfumes were twenty dollars, but I understood what Grandma really meant. It wasn’t that she thought people shouldn’t spend twenty dollars on cologne, but that they should bathe before it became an issue.

  Opposite the perfumes there were bath gels so I went along opening many, putting them to Grandma’s nose until she decided which one she liked. As she sniffed she pursed her lips close to the bottle. If I couldn’t be trusted to soap up I didn’t trust myself to choose.

  What a finicky woman. On the twenty-third try, a hand lotion, she said, –This.

  It didn’t smell like flowers; not candle wax or ocean water. Worst of the lot. It was dank. It smelled like dirt really. Hearth Scented Body Gel by Mennen.

  – If you take one that’s too sweet, people will still smell you underneath. This one is strong, but not perfume. It will hide what you have done.

  Flipping the plastic tube I squeezed too much on my hands. Rubbed them together until the green paste covered my palms and fingers. First I reached into my shirt to rub up my stomach. I put it on my neck and face then massaged it in long enough that the green color disappeared; only the scent remained. Man of the soil, that’s me.

  There was a small glass case near the lotion end of the store. There was jewelry in it; the pieces were pretty but sure to have brief lives. On a few I could see the glue that had been used to affix red or purple stones to the gold-plated rings.

  – How about a necklace? I said to Grandma. There was a fine thin one with an orange stone.

  – I don’t wear, she said. She scratched behind one ear, gently.

  And I realized she was right. Never bracelets, medallions, rope chain or earrings.

  – How about a three-finger ring? I offered.

  – Not anything.

  – Are you allergic?

&
nbsp; – I am not.

  –Then let me get you one. You can wear it tonight.

  I was about to call the man at the counter over to unlock the case, but she slapped my shoulder. I dropped my hand.

  – You don’t trust my taste, I said.

  – I don’t wear any, Grandma said firmly.

  – Is it an African custom?

  – African custom? You fool. I stopped wearing them for Isaac when he died.

  – Did he wear a lot of jewelry?

  – No.

  – Was he allergic to jewelry?

  – No.

  –Then why jewelry?!

  – I cannot be pretty since my dear son died.

  We found Mom.

  But it took two hours.

  Sixty minutes of that wasted because Grandma wouldn’t let me ask after Mom in bars. After Grandma did let me Mom’s path lit right on up. Five of them had met her. Dick’s, Dell’s and the Doughboy. Happy Rabbit. Pretty Sue’s.

  We had a snapshot of her taken last month, in a department store. Mom stood beside a mannequin at the Macy’s in Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island. Both wore long coats with fur collars. Both were just trying them on. Mom’s head was back and she looked at the camera with a predatory gaze. Her tongue stuck half-an-inch from one corner of her mouth. My sister had taken the picture.

  When I showed this photo to the bartenders they recognized Mom, but not by the name we gave. That’s your mother? each asked, laughed, smiled, winced then answered. She left here but was going to Dell’s. To the Doughboy. And so forth.

  Until we got to the sixth bar, Right Not Left. Where the woman serving drinks hopped on one foot, saying, – She just left. Right out the back door. With an Indian.

  – Southern Ute? I asked.

  – From Uttar Pradesh.

  We found her outside holding hands with an Indian guy who had a twiny mustache so thick he could have been a Bollywood porn star; a brown Harry Reems had his arm over her shoulder. The trunk of his car was open so I could see black plastic bags in there piled a foot high. I wondered what was in them; probably just groceries.

  It’s true my mother had become magnetic. The Indian looked at her almost as intensely as Grandma and I did. He wouldn’t step more than five inches far. Without seeing her face I’d have thought this whole scene was criminal because he looked fifty, but Mom was a summery sixteen.