Ecstatic

by Victor La Valle

  I said, – Zuh?

  It was just surprise that made me stutter, but he heard what he wanted to.

  – Fight? he said to me. I’ll fight you, you ras . . .

  Before he could finish the curse Ishkabibble said, – I don’t want it to come to that and neither does he.

  This was me Ishkabibble referred to. I’m the ‘he’ at the end of that sentence.

  The homeowner, despite respectable flustering, looked summarily defeated; as if street boxing was actually a question of weight classes. I leaned back against the man’s fence and it made some noise, sure.

  – You going to bust my fence now too?!

  Ishkabibble looked at me, – He’s going to pay, Anthony. Don’t worry. Stand straight. Relax.

  The man walked into his home and two of his children came to the only window on this side of the house. A bathroom I’ll bet because there was fog on the pane. Two girls, younger than Nabisase, who stared like it was me who’d come to collect their daddy’s soul.

  But let me refrain from acting po-faced for too long. Once I realized that Ishkabibble had propped me up to play his muscle, a hired lug, I loved it. The man actually believed I was menacing just because my upper arms were as big as some people’s thighs.

  When he came back out with a folded envelope for Ishkabibble he looked my way but I remained impassive. Looked at his home rather than him. He came to me. Stood one foot away. Then I was afraid. Those wiry guys are the toughest meat in the world. If he’d actually starting hitting me my best defense would’ve been to fall forward, hoping to crush his thorax.

  – You lay down with a man like Ishkabibble and you going to have hell.

  I had shut my eyes, but opened them when he stopped speaking. The man’s thick beard looked softer from here. For no reason I wondered how many pens he could store in it.

  – Who is this boy? he asked Ishkabibble.

  But my buddy was already walking off. – Anthony come on, he said.

  –Are you that one, then? From down over 229th Street way.

  The man touched my neck so tenderly that I wasn’t agitated anymore. I felt like an animal that knows, instinctively, when it meets a decent human. He yelled at Ishkabibble. – You’re wrong for using a boy like this. He’s big, but don’t know better. Doesn’t matter Anthony, he said. Anthony, yes? I’m not mad. I heard about you. I’m always sorry for people with troubles.

  I walked far behind Ishkabibble; he wouldn’t slow down for me. At every corner I expected him to throw out my manilla envelope, but he kept it. How far he expected me to escort him I’m not sure, but passersby stopped me more than once. Couples mostly. In the middle range; forties, fifties and sixties.

  Mr. and Mrs. Blankets said hello and asked about my day. They were walking that husky German Shepherd. It pulled at the leash; it pulled at the leash; so they weren’t able to stay.

  Mr. Rumtower and Mr. Brace patted my arm and said, – Alright Anthony, when I passed.

  Ms. Tandyamara, who drove a tractor for New York City, gave me five dollars. Popularity never felt so bad.

  I said thanks to her. I said it to everyone. They shrugged or laughed; some friendly and some uncomfortable. Don’t believe it when you hear that everyone mistreats the mentally ill and that they always have. Compassion smashes up against confusion, unease. The pileups make messy scenes.

  I forgot about Ishkabibble until he had almost disappeared. A long, thin doodle ahead of me.

  30

  For days now I’d begged Grandma to let me help her. I was sleeping twenty minutes a night, that’s all. I’d lie down, but the eyes wouldn’t shut; I lay flat until that got boring then rolled onto my side. I tried to find the cool spots on my pillow. With Mom still gone I stayed in her room, the one that seemed to expel its occupants.

  On the 17th of November, a Friday, Grandma finally let me pack her up. Of course she could have waited until Saturday because I didn’t have to work, but then most people find the exact wrong time to accept help. I called in to Sparkle to miss a day and the receptionist only grunted.

  I had to drive Nabisase to school because she’d skipped on Thursday to visit Ledric in the hospital. I found out because the school called me. He could speak well enough already to give my sister a phone number for his parents in Chicago. They said they were going to send some money; it was that or have them visit. I vetoed a plane trip because I’d be the one getting them at Kennedy Airport, driving them to Queens General and back. And I didn’t even like this guy! My sister was his sympathetic bet.

  After I watched Nabisase walk inside her school I came back for Grandma.

  – Bring the mail, she said as she dressed. We’ll be waiting a while.

  From the clinic’s parking lot there was a view of Brookville Park; a parcel of spare woodland that divided Rosedale into halves, one mostly white and the other mostly black.

  I’d wheeled Ledric through the service entrance, but I carried Grandma to the front. The clinic’s waiting room was still small, but it serviced a tiny clientele. Immigrants fed this practice. Carribean, West African, East Indian and some Irish. Black Americans, yes, and Chinese from Valley Stream. If a job or Medicare wasn’t covering hospital charges, then you went here.

  The waiting area was occupied by rows of chairs that were soldered down in groups of seven; they were orange. Twenty people sat around already. I took a number from a red dispenser that looked like a canteen. Our number, A44, was called so quickly I expected to be home fast.

  This first walk to the receptionist was only to register, though. We were allowed to request a doctor so I chose the apparatchik. Now the disinterested woman behind the Plexiglas gave me another ticket, a new number, and told me to sit some more.

  – One is yours, Grandma said when I sat again. She pushed the piece of mail into my chest.

  I would have liked to peel the stamp off as a souvenir, but there wasn’t one. Only that faded red punch of machine postage. The left-hand corner of the envelope showed the group’s name and return address in Boston.

  Free Ahmed Foundation.

  Dear Conscientious Supporter (this was printed on the page, the rest he wrote by hand),

  Thank you for the letter. You will be added to our growing mailing list.

  You are correct, I do have a lot of friends. The number grows more each day as my case gains more attention. God is good.

  I did quote a comic book in my interview. Would you have respected me more if it was Diderot? They are both just entertainments in the end, don’t you agree?

  Many people have asked about my name, but I do not understand their confusion. I have found friends in here who introduced me to the virtues of Islam. Faith is important in prison. I think you see religion as a child’s toy, but it’s a weapon. The schemes of powerful, treacherous men fall before it.

  In your letter you seemed quite angry. I hope I am incorrect and that you rest at peace. You ask if I wish that I was black. I do not. I am not crazy. Have you ever wished to be a woman?

  Some people write asking that I tell them how to be productive. Often they sound like you. Misguided. Let me sign off by telling you what I’ve told many of them. Be active. Activate!

  Ahmed Abdel

  At two-thirty they called Grandma’s name.

  I carried her to an examination room then propped her on an examination table. I stayed in there with her, watching the clock go. The windows were opaque so the sunlight that came in turned a buttery yellow.

  Grandma said, –Thank you for bringing me.

  – Do you have to say it like we’re strangers?

  She turned her head away. – Why did you let those people in? Your sister might have won.

  – Miss Innocence? What was her talent going to be? Punching out the MC?

  – But you even stopped her fun.

  The Russian shook my hand quickly when he walked in, but no more. He hardly looked up. Just said, – Hello. Hello. I’m going to close this curtain so she and I have privacy.

>   I was actually hurt that he didn’t recognize me as the botulism brother.

  From outside the beige plastic curtain shell I heard Grandma undress as the doctor put on rubber gloves. I recognized the snap as he pulled them down to his wrists from the times I’d used those same gloves to clean ovens.

  – We will x-ray the hip, the doctor said to me when he eventually stepped out.

  – Do I take her?

  – We have a wheelchair. Come back in ten minutes.

  – What about her purse?

  –Take it with you if you’re worried.

  Being outside in the cold was nice until I noticed that I’d become a focus of the waiting room audience. The television was broken and I was there in the large window. Just another screen.

  I didn’t want to stand there carrying Grandma’s handbag while people watched me so I patted my suit jacket and pants as if I’d bought cigarettes, but couldn’t find them. I tapped myself harder. I almost hurt myself because the more I acted this way the more people inside the clinic looked at me. That only made me more frantic to seem normal as I slapped myself around looking for a cigarette I never even had in the first place.

  I thought of going to the park for a walk to get away a minute, but with my good fortune Grandma would finish up with the doctor, come out to try and find me, wander into the street and get hit by garbage truck.

  A woman in white pants and nurse’s shoes came outside. – Why you jumping around out here?

  – I was looking for a cigarette.

  She had one. A plastic aquamarine lighter too. Coming out to check on me was a good excuse to have some herself.

  I didn’t actually know how to use a cigarette.

  When I put it in my mouth I put it in too far, choked up on it and got half the thing wet. Then the lady had to give me another. The next one I left hanging so far off my lips that the wind snatched it from me and carried down the block.

  –This is the last one, she said.

  She brought the lighter close. She had big hands. We were standing outside the clinic on the wheelchair ramp.

  – Activate, I said.

  I tried hard and pulled properly. A successful blaze. Since this was only my fourth cigarette in twenty-three years I didn’t inhale correctly, but the action itself was well carried out. The woman stubbed out her own cigarette against the railing I leaned on.

  I must have looked awful because she treated me so nicely.

  She said, – I’m going to tell you, okay? Because I bet you’ll need to know. Don’t ever go to St. Luke’s. If you’re in Manhattan and they pick you up one day. Not St. Luke’s. They’ll strap you down for three days in their psych ward and never let you stand even for a shit.

  I was surprised and couldn’t hide it.

  – What do I look like to you?

  She said, – Sympathy.

  While I smoked and coughed with her, five dogs trotted out from the park then ran along 147th Avenue ignoring cars, buses and vans. Their mouths were open. A smug furry procession.

  After passing by the nurse and I, the dogs ran across the busy intersection at the corner of Brookville Boulevard. Every driver managed to use the brakes. Lots of people witnessed this, not just me. When the hounds had crossed against the light safely, stopping traffic, they howled. Then went farther down 147th Avenue untethered.

  31

  Soft in the middle, queasy from the cigarettes, I walked inside the clinic holding my belly. The people sitting and waiting tried to smile at me, but stared. If you’re ever trying not to seem mentally unstable, avoid carrying an old woman’s large pocketbook while taking your first tobacco hit in front of a jury.

  I had to knock at the Russian doctor’s office door because it was locked when I got there.

  – You came back, Grandma stammered when he let me in. She squinted.

  – Of course. I touched her shoulder. I’m not leaving.

  She was lying on the examining table with both legs bent at the knees so that her soles were flat and her shins faced the back of the room.

  –The hip is fine, he said as he went around the examination table. Deep bruises takes longer to heal at her age.

  If he had been speaking with her before I got there he wasn’t doing so anymore. Now I was the authority in the room. – But now we find another problem, he said. I am cutting it off.

  – Cutting where?

  – From my leg, Grandma muttered.

  He had a silver tool that looked like a cookie cutter stubbed into her shin. Blood came out from where the silver plunger hid. Dribbling down my grandmother’s leg.

  – Shit! I screamed.

  He pulled the cutter out; it had a small cylinder of her flesh in the once-hollow core now. – I will do stitches, he said.

  Grandma held her face like she was trying to pull it off.

  – Can you feel it through the anesthesia? I asked.

  –There is none, the surgeon said.

  – Where did it go?

  – I didn’t have any, the doctor said. Many people here don’t get any. It is expensive for all sides.

  He carried some thin black thread in his palm. – She wanted none, he added.

  Grandma rubbed her two thin bent arms together at the elbows, inches above her face.

  – How come you’re not screaming? I’ll get the police! There’s blood, Grandma.

  She told me, – I had him do it this way.

  The Russian stitched the site. Explained that after giving Grandma this punch biopsy he’d send the flesh to test for cancer.

  I fell back into a chair clutching my own leg.

  – I am sorry, Grandma whispered. To all of you. Many nights I wonder how I brought this sickness to my children.

  Instead of running away I pulled the chair closer. The doctor’s needle made no sounds entering her skin except for Grandma’s rasping. She said, – What did I do to you?

  – You’ll never be able to move around on that leg, Grandma.

  – Why should I be spared?

  The doctor must have wanted to be charming. He thought he was making a joke.

  The Russian said, – Now your children will have to carry you.

  32

  I was part of a Current A fair family. The Hard Copy demographic. Rescue 911; Real Life Stories of the Highway Patrol; Unsolved Mysteries starring Mr. Robert Stack. Beginning on November 14 th television news and the reputable papers explained that the entire U.S. Government was shutting down due to budgetary squabbling between Democrats and Republicans, but the effect on us was minimal.

  Looming cuts to our national budget were advertised as either a prelude to the Rapture or Satan taking control, depending on your political affiliations. Even atheists and the spare Marxist agreed when allowed a few minutes of punditry on cable stations. The way politicians yelled I expected warlord-supported gangs to commandeer our homes and daughters. Federal Government deadlock was on every major network which meant, of course, that many of us changed the channel.

  To programs that were more entertaining. I was a fan of the Morton Downey Jr. show just like Nabisase. When Grandma had finished with the Star I took it to the bathroom and read quietly. One of us was watching television at all times.

  Besides, serious news only reported on small lives like ours when they’d been caught in the trajectory of someone’s gun. Other than that it was war crimes, statewide fires and unctuous assemblymen; famine in the hot belt of the planet. More important, I’ll agree.

  Call ours minor items then. The shooting of Mary Jo Buttafuoco. A priest who had a sex change. One Hartford man who’d faked more on-the-job injuries than anyone in America. Ordinary epics. Legends are still to be created.

  Into that stewpot add a beauty pageant for virgins. No national scandal, but a five-minute item for sure.

  The revised Norton Anthology of Poetry was on my sleeping bag open to the bottom of page 1249. I’d opened it while feeling particularly distant from college one evening; actually pretending I’d enjoyed
my Survey of American Poetry seminar freshman year. I plowed it from the bottom of one of my book boxes and read awhile, but turned it down when Grandma called to me from the living room.

  – Anthony! Come on, Anthony!

  Even my sister said my name as she hadn’t done since the 12th, and it was the 20th already; hearing Nabisase speak to me really was a miracle worth thanking Selwyn for.

  When I got upstairs they were on the couch. Grandma leaned forward, left elbow on her good thigh, resting her chin in that left hand, tapping the tip of her nose with her pointer finger.

  Nabisase said, – Anthony, look at this.

  The TV was speaking.

  A cabbage-headed man hosted the show, but he wore a suit for dignity. His Australian accent made him sound smarter. Out of those clothes he’d look like any alcohol-pounded, red-faced, barender, but not behind a desk.

  – Beauty pageants built this country, he said.

  –They’re one of America’s sacred institutions. Women make more money, have more power, now than ever before in human history, but let’s hope we never forget to appreciate the precious faces of the ladies who compete in the pageant system year after year. Here’s our Jerry Ganz with a story we call, Pretty as a Picture.

  His face dispersed into pixilated dust on the screen, which refocused on the image of a shaded runway. It was footage of a contest, but not Miss Innocence. Women in their twenties wearing gowns; this passed quickly. To teenagers in a similar promenade.

  A new deep voice began; Jerry Ganz.

  – Beauty, he began. Pageants, he finished.

  – Every state in the nation hosts dozens each year. Fitness America, Cracker Jacks Bikini Contest, Miss Italia, The Black Mother and Daughter Pageant. Even Manhunt International, for gentlemen.

  – While most of us can see that these institutions celebrate competition, excellence and, yes, good looks, not everyone agrees. The weekend of November the 10th found over forty families traveling to a small town named Lumpkin on the border between Virginia and West Virginia. A place where crime of any kind is rare.

  – You can see the local temperament at the annual Apple Picking Festival, where families from every part of Frederick County come to enjoy apple cider, apple pie and apple fries.