ELEVEN
I dream of my madre. It’s not Christmas morning, but she’s lining up toys for me on the kitchen table. “These are not the big-box shit. These are quality.”
They’re all building toys, boxes filled with plastic tubes and bolts, kid-size wrenches and interlocking hunks of wood that somehow become helicopters and dump trucks and rockets. I’m six years old, and I hug her around the waist so she won’t see me cry. I’m not old enough to read the instructions, have no hope of making the amazing things in the pictures. I wanted the plastic walkie-talkies I saw on TV.
She pats my head, probably thinking I don’t know how she got such expensive, useless things. “You are so good with your hands for your age,” she says. “Maybe you’ll be surgeon. Your uncle back home—he fixes baby’s hearts.”
Not dreams, memories. Baby’s hearts. Stolen rockets that will never be. Uncle surgeons that I’ll never see. Stupid rhymes that make me laugh. Ha ha ha—a laugh with no sound.
It’s the middle of the night, in June, because she pushes a math textbook off the bed. I had planned to study this time, but the apartment was too quiet—creepy quiet. She crawls in beside me and nuzzles my neck like a dog, except her nose is hot, like the rest of her. The summer heat hasn’t hit, but she’s running hot already, disappearing for hours on end, God knows where. “Forgive me, my little Mannie. Forgive me.”
I pretend to sleep, still as a log.
“And your papa, forgive him. He was not a bad man. Just a coward. You must forgive him. Cowards can’t help themselves.”
I am a log. Unshakable, unmovable. Dead wood.
She starts to sing. “Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.” I hug the feather pillow against my ears. It’s either that or smother her with it. “It’s okay, Ma,” I say. “Hush now.”
She starts to snore, wheezy and weak, like her singing. Good cowards. Dead logs. Bluebirds. Hot dogs. Ha ha ha.
It’s Easter mass and madre’s turn to cry. Mascara is running down her face, but she is still beautiful. The sunlight through the stained glass of groovy Jesus in a dress holding Mary’s little lamb turns her skin golden. I am as tall as she is—she can whisper straight in my ear.
“Who’s going to teach you to open the door for a lady? To be the man of the house? I’m not good to be a teacher, Mannie. I don’t have good patience. You know that.”
People beside us shuffle their feet, cough, give her a hard look. But she does not care, she’s on a tear. Ha ha ha.
It’s her birthday, which one she won’t say. We’re having pepperoni pizza and red wine that tastes like vinegar, but I drink it anyway. She keeps calling this the “last supper.” She keeps wanting me to call her Magdeline instead of madre. She hands me an envelope like it’s a present. The flowers I got her from the convenience store are stuck in an empty milk carton, because lots of things from the china cabinet are missing lately.
“Open, open,” she says.
“What’s this?” I ask, even though it’s perfectly clear. It’s a plane ticket to Argentina.
“For you,” she says. “To go. It will be a surprise, for them, but they will look after you.”
I want to smash the top of my wine glass against the edge of the garage-sale table, take the jagged edge that’s left and slice her beautiful cheek open wide. “You want to send me there? To them?”
She looks at me, blinks her long eyelashes like I’ve hurt her feelings—her crazy fricking feelings. Does she not know how much I hate those people? If they’d cast her out, what made her think they’d have anything to do with me? What kind of monsters send their daughter away to face her imaginary monsters? Crazy fricking bastards, that’s who.
Man of the house. Doors for the ladies. Monsters in the closet. Crazies in the bin. Ha ha ha.
Off to Betty’s house I go. Mannie and I put my good hands to bad use. Ha ha ha.
“Forget me,” Magdeline says.
Remember, Betty says, don’t take no shit. You have a good spirit, Mannie. Remember. Remember me.
I can hear her. She is here, speaking to me in her no-nonsense voice.
“Mannie? Are you awake? Open your eyes, Mannie.”
There are other sounds, too: whirring—a fridge maybe—creaking, another voice. “Dr. Janzen, please report to the nursing station.”
“Can you open your eyes, Mannie?”
It’s too bright, I say. It’s pressing through my eyelids, singeing my eyeballs. “How can you stand it?”
“Stand what, Mannie? Open your eyes.”
Betty is touching my arm, pulling at the hairs like a torturer. One time, she doused Nathan and me with a bucket of lake water to get us up for lunch. She will not stop until her mission is accomplished.
I open my eyes, and the searing glare lasts for maybe five seconds. The walls are light green, and the ceiling has a half-moon-shaped water stain. It’s not Betty. I close my eyes again.
“Hello, Mannie,” she says. “My name is Tamara. I’m your nurse. Do you know where you are?”
She is nothing like Betty. She’s a redhead with gold hoop earrings. Freckles run down her neck and onto her chest, and her lipstick is glossy plum.
“A wet dream,” I say.
Tamara doesn’t respond. I open my eyes and she looks right back at me, as if challenging me to a duel.
“Heaven,” I say. “I’m in heaven.”
She’s even hotter when she smiles, and I can’t help doing it back, even though I hate her for not being Betty. I feel my face muscles move, each and every one, as if it’s the first time they’ve cracked a smile.
“You’re in the hospital,” she says. “A doctor will be here soon.”
As soon as she says it, he walks through the door, like they’ve rehearsed it. He’s the bald, grandfatherly type, but his eyes are ice blue, like a Nazi officer in the movies. He grabs the clipboard from Tamara without even looking at her.
“Hello,” he says. “I’m Dr. Dextra.”
Your name sounds like some kind of fake sugar, I say. But luckily, no sound comes out.
He puts the clipboard behind his back and straightens his shoulders, standing tall for the Führer. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Not amnesia, I think. I know that much.
Dr. Fake-Sugar Nazi stays standing tall, looking at me like I’m a retard. “You were in a car accident. You’ve broken several ribs and fractured both shoulders. You also suffered a head injury.”
Just like that, I start to ache, as if having it all spelled out makes it real.
“Do you know what day it is?”
I shake my head and close my eyes to stop the tears, wish I could go back to my suffocating little memory room, where there is no sound or pain.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Emmanuel,” I say.
“When were you born?”
I’m so sorry, my little man. March is the cruelest month. The week you were born, it snowed six feet. My lips are heavy, filled with sand. The light bears down on me, strong enough to pry out secrets from prisoners. “March,” I say.
“You’ve been in a coma for four days,” he says. “Welcome back.”
He doesn’t sound like he gives a shit whether I’m alive or dead. I hear him move closer and bend toward me. “Do you remember what happened, Emmanuel?”
Was that four dream days or four real ones?
“Emmanuel, open your eyes, okay?” Tamara says. I picture those thin lips pumped up with glossy plum, smiling. Bev wore glossy plum too, which is why I know it’s glossy plum. Fractured shoulders. Nazi soldiers. Ha ha ha.
“Do you remember the accident?” asks Tamara.
My right ear is buzzing. Someone was screaming in my ear. Yes.
“Where’s Bev?” I ask.
The nurse grabs my wrist, and my dick—the only thing that doesn’t ache—actually starts to stiffen. She takes my pulse, Ms. Professional.
“Bev is fine,” she says.
I want them to bugger off now
, to leave me and my hard-on to our pointless, painless memory dreams. But I have to know. “Where is she?”
Tamara drops my arm and takes the chart from the good doctor. “She’s been released.”
What does she mean, released? Do they think I fricking kidnapped her? She wanted it, I say to no one. She came. It was her idea. She was the one.
“You rest now,” says Dr. Fake-Sugar Nazi. “I’ll be back to chat later.”
“But where is she?” I ask. “Is she with Ray?”
Tamara walks away from me. I hear her fine ass swishing in those ugly nurse pants. “We can’t share patient information. You worry about yourself. Bev is fine.”
Just like that, she makes it clear there’s no use challenging her. Question period is over. The interrogation is done.
I am on a mission. I am flying high, moving into high gear, taking her to fricking light speed. But the evil doctor has an arsenal at his fingertips. Eyes appear, black and blank as the night, creepy quiet and full of holy judgment. Screams blow my eardrums to oblivion. Armed police come out of the woodwork, announce themselves with peeling sirens meant to break the will. Roadblocks exploding, diamonds raining, engines hissing. A cartoon trophy wife in a white see-through nightie climbing through the debris in the living room, trying to distract you with her heaving chest. A pot-bellied old guy waving his arms, swearing like a biker in his boxer shorts. Game over.
There’s no getting around it—I need to escape the memory dreams, would even welcome the evil doctor. I pry open my eyes and suck in my sandbag lips. A fat nurse with a cute face and smiling cats on her uniform brings me apple juice. Swallowing is the only thing that doesn’t hurt. The doctor comes and goes, like he’s got bigger fish to fry. Fat Cat pokes and prods, says “sorry, sorry, sorry,” but doesn’t look at me. She’s probably the kind who only does the missionary position and stares at the ceiling the whole time.
Tamara finally comes, her hair swept up librarian-sexy. Her uniform is light purple, and her lips are glossy plum.
“Do you feel up for visitors?” she asks.
Maybe it’s Bev. I can already hear her voice. You win some, you lose some. Let’s have some fun. Was it worth it? But I need to focus. It’s a yes or no question. My scalp itches like a bugger, and if I look as bad as I feel, I’m a fricking monster. Bev and I, we’ll be beauty and the beast, I think.
There’s a croaking sound that is me. “Yeah.”
Tamara swishes away, a deliciously round ass in square pants. The thought of Bev and Tamara standing over me in their glossy plum is almost too much to bear, but my dick is too drugged up to take notice.
Tamara comes back and I close my eyes, tell myself to fricking focus, because I have no idea who is with her. The guy is tall and skinny, with a gray beard and expensive glasses. He looks like he would’ve smoked a pipe back when people smoked pipes. She’s butchy, with fuzzy blond hair. Her glasses are rimless, so you can see the bags under her eyes. They stand at the foot of the bed, just like the evil doctor, but they look too tired to hurt a fly. The professor seems to be holding the butch up, even though she probably outweighs him.
“We’re Faye’s parents,” she says. “She asked us to come and see you.”
I wonder if I was too quick to rule out amnesia. Or maybe it’s just the drugs. Either way, I draw a blank. “Who’s Faye?”
The butch looks like I’ve kicked her, like I’ve somehow offended her. “She was with you in the car.”
In the car. They’re talking about what happened, could be in cahoots with Dr. Nazi. “Chinese Faye?” I ask.
Now the professor looks like he wants to kick me, but it doesn’t matter because he’s not the type, probably hasn’t hit a soul since second grade. “Yes.”
I try to focus. Shiny black marbles in the shiny black night. Hoodie on the handle, ready to SWAT-roll. It means God is with you.
“She’s adopted,” the professor adds.
Of course—Bev told me that, I remember. “From China?” I ask. “You went there?”
These people don’t look much more awake than me and like they’d rather be anyplace else in the world than here. “Yes,” he says.
I am suddenly more awake than I’ve been for days, however many there’s been, as if I’ve sucked all the energy from these strangers. All of me aches, but I don’t care. “My dad’s Filipino. He took off as fast as his little brown feet could take him.”
They look lost, little lost sheep in expensive glasses.
“How is she?” I ask.
The mother is crying now, without any sound. Like mother, like daughter. “Her left leg is fractured in three places. There’ll be soft-tissue damage from the impact, and she’s covered in cuts and bruises.”
It was easier for them to send me to Bev’s. But they went all the way to China.
“She’ll be okay?” I ask.
The mother wipes her nose on her hand. “Yes.”
The father walks around to the side of the bed and crouches down. “Faye wanted us to tell you she would testify that Bev coaxed you into speeding away.”
The hollow whooshing in my right ear is all that’s left of the scream, the sound of fun when it gets old. “Is she with Faye?” I ask. “Is Bev here?”
The father looks up at his wife, like he’s pleading for help. “No. I believe she went back to the coast with her mother.”
So Bev is gone, gone, gone. Ray has lost.
The father stands up to his full height, skinny and towering like the poplars up at Keeseekoowenin. “Anyway, Faye wanted us to pass that on.”
“They’ll be assigning you a lawyer, Mannie,” the mother says. “But what about family? Do you have anyone?”
The father squeezes my wrist, just below the IV. He should want my head on a platter, and yet he’s touching my arm in a way that doesn’t ache.
My old man’s a coward. My madre’s locked up. Betty’s dead.
But I can’t make my sand mouth say these words, not to these people, not now, when memory dreams all blur together and everything hurts too much as it is.
The mother has stopped crying and looks uncomfortable, like I’ve just farted. “No one was killed,” she says. “You’re very lucky.”
Just as quick as I’m energized, I’m suddenly beyond tired. I can feel the nothingness licking at my earlobes, a kiss of fricking mercy—an escape from hollow, howling fun, fun, fun and these sad, strange people.
I dream not only of the past, but of things still to come, like Bev visiting me in prison. Ray has cut her off again, but her mom is with her, hovering like a wasp in August. Half of Lara is fat and the other is skinny: one thunder thigh, one stick; one flabby arm, one cut bicep. She gives me the willies, but I don’t care, because Bev is there with little Little Bear and even the sour, junkyard-dog-wish-I-were-a-real-cop jail guard has to pretend he’s not getting weepy.
“I knew you’d come,” I say.
Lara shuffles over on her high-heeled flip-flops. One side of her hair is dyed blond, the other red. She strokes my arm. “Ooooh. He’s cute, Beverly. He looks Latin, maybe. Latin men can’t be trusted, but they’ll treat you like a queen.”
I wish she would go away. At least my useless parents had the courtesy to bugger off. I rub my boy’s smooth, fat cheek, and he laughs. “Hello,” I say. “It’s your daddy-o.”
Bev pulls me up by the hair, embarrassed in front of Mr. Police Academy Dropout, who can’t be more than thirty but has the gut of a fifty-year-old.
I overlook this. I smile, slow and sexy, pretend I’ve still got it in the baggy blue jumpsuit, crotch hanging almost to my knees. I nuzzle Bev’s neck, pretend we’re not being chaperoned by circus freaks. “I knew you couldn’t do it.”
“Do what?” she asks.
Little Little Bear grips my finger, strong as an ox. “Get rid of him,” I say.
Lara pokes me in the chest too, but teeters to her fat side and goes down onto the concrete. “She didn’t keep it for you,” she says, still pointing. “That
’s just like a Latin man. Self-centered mama’s boys. She had her reasons. Women have their reasons.”
“Shut up,” Bev says. “Shut up or I’ll sic Ray on you.”
Lara wails, “I broke my fat hip, it’s broken! I tell you, it’s broken” while Bev covers her ears like a little kid. “La la la, I can’t hear you!”
Mr. All-I-Get-Is-This-Lousy-Pepper-Spray-in-My-Gigantic-Belt brings his belly over and scowls. The buttons of his uniform don’t quite close, and I can see his belly button sticking out, just like Bev’s did when she was pregnant. “That’s enough. This visit is over.”
I open my eyes. I’m back in the bed of pain, with its beeps and drips and mashed potatoes on a tray, its stream of nurses and doctors and lawyers who talk slow and serious with me but much more quickly with each other. Jabber, jabber, jabber, la la la. They tell me they’re trying to lower the painkillers, to test my awareness, while the dreams keep coming, leaving me lost amid the days, amid a three-ring circus where you don’t know where to look or why.
Glossy Plum swishes in and I almost shout, It’s not over, you bitch! It’s never over!
But the pain reminds me where I am. I’m where there’s warm apple juice and cold peas, guys in ties hovering like flies, fat little Filipinos grinning as they change the pee bag. Plus, I know Bev would think she’s nothing like Glossy Plum. She’d say Ms. Wet-Dream Nursey has a bit of an attitude, walking around like her shit doesn’t stink while licking Dr. Nazi’s ass. Bev would’ve called her Ms. Hot Snot.
Glossy Plum puts her hands on her hips and tries to look cheery even though I know she couldn’t care less about my sorry ass. She and Dr. Nazi probably think I should donate myself to medical research.
“You’re awake,” she says, as if I don’t know. “There’s someone who’d like to see you. Are you up to it?”
No. Yes. It depends. “Who?”
Glossy Plum looks at her watch, which is either a knockoff or her boyfriend has a few bucks. “Your friend Faye is on her way home today.”
Chinese Faye. Adopted Faye. Bev’s sort-of friend Faye. She’s never there in the memory dreams, not the future dreams, not the bed of pain. I have something to tell her, but what is it? Is it stolen? So what happened? Did you see him? I answered her questions. What could she want? What is it I have to tell her?
Your Constant Star Page 15