Given my long legs and lanky stride, I assumed I could have caught the woman easily and resumed our little struggle. But she glanced back at me and began to run as if overtaken by frantic and dire urgency, her elegant form completely abandoned to spastic motion. I ran, shouting out “Whore!” and “Bitch!” thinking that I would catch her soon, and then what? Wrestle her to the sidewalk? Grapple in the street? Yet the distance between us grew. The little thing was out-running me. Panting, I lost sight of her somewhere around Walnut and Broad Street. I sat on the curb to relax for a moment. The sultry August air coated my skin.
That night I wandered around the city for a couple of hours in hope of seeing the young woman again. I played our entire encounter over in my head, and I realized that her bizarre behavior made sense if she had known that I had been gawking at her from behind. Only when I walked past the coffee shop, did I remember that I had ignored Morris. I was amused by the idea that he had waited for me and gotten more frustrated by the moment. Most likely, he’d suspected that I had intentionally snubbed him, given one last insult, some spit in the eye. I happily accepted the role of bastard and artificer. There were more groups of people in the world than the one that had rejected me. Let them rot. My new feeling of liberation, of unconcern, of I-will-no-longer-be-fixed-sprawling-on-a-pin-like-a-lifeless-bug, was mildly subdued by the fact that the woman had stolen my manuscript: two years of work tucked irreverently under her arm.
At home, in bed, I lay on my stomach, my forearms on my pillow, and read a freshly printed copy of my manuscript. The thing was so recondite, each page laden with erudite jargon and convoluted with tortuous syntax, that I doubted the woman with her wasted countenance that hinted at mental anguish or physical addiction, did anything more than glance at the first page, find it abstruse, flip to the center, find that frustrating, and then in a final vindication of her self-esteem against my leering eyes that had reduced her to mindless meat, to the juice in my jouissance, she closed my manuscript, and with too much indifference to take the time to set it aflame or tear it to confetti, she simply dropped it into a garbage can or pushed it off into some corner to collect dust.
By September, the young woman had fully seeped into my fantasies. She was the skirt-clad student in the front row, who crossed and re-crossed her spindle-legs, with a flash of auburn floss. She caught my eye and gave me an insidious smile that unraveled my thoughts. Then after class, when everyone else had filed out the door, she was leaning across my desk, pointing to a page in the book she needed explained. No sooner had I begun to talk than her little hand with its chewed back fingernails made a furtive disappearance under the desk. You like that, Professor? She was also the neighbor bending over her laundry basket. When she had all her sheets hanging from the line, forming a thin curtain, I glanced back at the busy street, before stepping through the sheets. I approached her from behind and cupped my hands over her small, nubile breasts. She rubbed up against me as she squirmed to free herself. Then yielding to lust, she was bending over her basket, and I was getting onto my knees. She was also the miscreant spread out in a heap of rags on a doorstep. I gathered her into my arms and carried her tired body home, where I bathed her, kissed her bruises, and nursed her soul. One evening I found her framed in my bedroom doorway. She was backlit and dressed in nothing but a white button-down shirt that she’d borrowed from my closet. Without a word, she took a hesitant step forward as I propped myself up on one elbow to squint at her. Then, like a scared child, she scrambled into my bed, to be held throughout the purple hours of the evening.
In late September, this last fantasy somehow coincided with—either slightly prior to or after—my discovery of the boy, my little hazel-eyed errand-runner, hugging his knees on the front steps of my building. It was dusk and rush hour. Because of road construction somewhere in the tight city grid, every car with wheels was rerouted down my narrow road. They crept along, windows open, each playing its own song on the radio. I felt as though I were on display and that everyone was driving past my building to watch me act out the scene with the boy. Both of his knees were a tender red, and his eyes, usually alert and agile, now looked as if they’d been smudged by grimy thumbs. The pallor of his face told me that he hadn’t slept for days or that he was very sick.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“What?” He lifted his head and looked at me.
“Are you sick?”
“My stomach. I got to throw-up.”
“Are you faking it?”
“I got to throw-up.”
I glanced back at the busy road as I mounted the steps and opened the front door.
“You better not be faking it,” I said.
The boy watched me holding the door open for a moment, before he realized what I intended, and got to his feet. He walked before me in the corridor. It was a lumbering shuffle, which saddened me a little. He moved as if all his bones were soft and bending beneath the weight of his flesh. Then he did something that disconcerted me: When I let him into my apartment, he walked directly to the bathroom with his head down, apparently already familiar with the inside of my home. I leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door, with my arms crossed, and listened to him vomit. Evening was settling down, filling my home with dark pools and shadows, but still I listened and waited. The toilet flushed once; then after a while, it flushed again. There was silence for a long time. I left my post and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of hot tea. I drank it at the table as I looked at my mail. Although W. McTeal had sent nothing, between my phone bill and a coupon for a health club was a little envelope with tight, neat script, a letter from Teresa Morris. She was a clean, polished woman, who orchestrated her days around the Sunday church service and other holy functions. Her letter read something like this:
Dear Dr. Parker:
My brother is a kind man, perhaps too kind. I’m aware that he went out of his way to help you, and that you have made no effort to repay him. He says that it was an investment in a brilliant mind. Knowing him, I’m sure that the sum he confesses to, is only a fraction of what you truly owe him. I appeal to your heart. Say nothing of my intervention into your affairs, and please make some kind of effort, no matter how small, to repay my brother. He has a family of his own to support.
I responded promptly, not with a check to Morris the man, but with a little note to Morris the sister. I enjoyed adopting her method of corresponding by mail because I imagined that this petite, religious woman felt it was more sly and secretive than a phone call. Perhaps she believed she was letting herself get involved in an intrigue that was unseemly but darkly pleasurable. Perhaps, between the lines, she had written, Burn this letter when you’ve finished reading it. Burn it now. Yet I wrote very formally, explaining that Morris and I were no longer on speaking terms and that he was probably too proud to accept my money. If sister would like to accept the money on his behalf, then meet me at such and such a coffee shop at a particular time and date. I look forward to meeting you, so I can finally have this matter resolved. I appreciate your tact and understanding. I set the meeting for the first Friday in October, hinting that I hoped that sister could repair the rift between Morris and myself. Your brother is a generous man.
“What are you doing?” the boy asked, standing beside my chair.
“Are you done being sick?”
“I’m okay.”
Biting his bottom lip, he leaned forward to look at the letter on the table. Then he pulled out a chair and sat at the table. I was hoping to see him look around, but he sat as if he had been used to sitting there his entire life.
“Do you want me to mail your stuff?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I want you to go home. It’s getting late.”
He nodded at me and slipped from the chair to his feet. He stood with his hips slightly cocked and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his cut-off shorts.
“Can I have a dollar?”
“Go home.” I turned my gaze back to the letter, as
if to dismiss the boy. I sensed him lingering, but I refused to look at him. He began to shuffle away, his little body wasted down to threads. I listened for my door to open and shut, and it did. Strangely, I slightly regretted that the boy had left so easily. I got up from the table and searched my apartment, thinking that the boy might have tried to trick me and that he was now hiding somewhere. I didn’t find him.
A little while later, when I was sitting at my computer and pointing at the screen with a pen, there was a knock on my door. I buttoned up my shirt as I walked over to the door. I was about to throw it open, when I heard my landlord’s voice.
“Dr. Parker.”
“What?” I asked, with the door between us.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Talk.”
“Can you open the door?”
“What do you want?”
“I can’t allow you to bring that boy inside the building. Did you know that last week he was caught stealing a carton of cigarettes. I was talking to the clerk.”
“I don’t care.”
He knocked again.
“Dr. Parker.”
“Leave me alone,” I said and went back to my desk. I couldn’t resume my work because he continued to knock and call my name. Although he went away after a while, I was too annoyed to concentrate. I hated the thin wisps of hair on his bald head. I wanted to do something to him that for the rest of his days would grate up and down the knots of his spine whenever he remembered me. I wanted to haunt his mind with trauma and disease.
In bed, with the covers pulled over my head, I was on the edge of sleep, imagining the young woman reclining against me on my couch, her fingertips casually moving in circles on my thigh, my fingers in her hair, my lips at her ear. I heard a faint tapping and sat up in bed. I drew my robe around me, cinched it at the waist, and followed the sound of the tapping into the living room. The boy was at the window. I opened it and looked down at him shivering. Without a word, he reached up and grabbed onto the windowsill. He started to pull himself up, as if he wanted to climb through the window, but I put my hand on his forehead and pushed him down. He stepped back into the center of the alley, where he stood and quietly inspected me.
Leaning slightly out the window, I saw that he was alone. We watched each other for a moment; then the boy came forward and grabbed onto the windowsill again. I pushed his head. His feet scrambled against the wall, and a strange gurgle escaped from his throat. He dropped back into the alley. He stared at me, as if I were somehow confusing him.
“Go home,” I said.
Watching me, he stepped up to the window. This time when he started to climb in, I retreated into the room. He slipped in headfirst, his legs following in serpentine motion. He dropped fully to the floor, as if issued into my home, a thing without bones that slivered along the dimly lit floor and found its way to my couch. He scrambled up and curled himself in a tight ball.
I shut the window and locked it. For a little while, I sat on the coffee table and watched the boy sleep. When I went back to my bedroom, I shut the door and locked it. I had a difficult time trying to fall asleep. Although I had left the boy in the other room, the image of his small, motionless frame and the sound of his breathing were smeared against the back wall of my mind.
I would like to skip the details.
Let the saints and martyrs talk about the long, dark night of the soul, and how something inside of them twists around and around until they feel their bodies contorting in painful knots. Let them sweat drops of blood. Let them pray. I’m past anguish now, though there was a time in my life when my body would buckle beneath a sudden flash of guilt. Words and images swarmed my mind, each one with a little stinger, pricking me into raw pulp. Somewhere in my crippled form my heart beat like mad. Where are your accusers now? Who condemns you? I wanted to be dragged out into the street and kicked. I wanted someone to clench my neck from behind, press a gun to the back of my head, and turn my brain into a mist. But I curled up under my bed covers and searched for a place inside of myself that wasn’t touched, smudged, or soiled. Not finding that place, feeling incapable of being happy just for an instant, was another burden. It was a loss of control, a loss of agency and self. The swarm of words and images made me wonder into how many pieces my mind was fractured. Rubbing my palms against my eyes, holding my head in my hands, I was certain that I was crazy. I was also certain that I was dying. I imagined tumors and worms. Strangely, this comforted me a little as I lay in bed, wishing my organs would rot more quickly, feeling my heart slowing down at last.
The night the boy slept on my couch, with his knees drawn up to his chin and the fingertips of one hand lightly touching his lips, I was so alone in my own repugnance that it was a long time before I fell asleep. Because such nights are rare and not indicative of my character, I don’t like confessing to them. I would like to say that the boy had a peaceful night, but in the morning, after I unlocked my bedroom door and came out of my room, I learned that the boy had his own plague to deal with. I would like to say that after I discovered the couch empty—though with a dark, pungent stain on it—I also discovered my home empty, and that the boy had left sometime in the early hours before dawn. I would like to say that a warm little nook opened up somewhere in the fabric of the city, and the boy slipped himself in, as if somewhere in the total mechanism of inhumane humanity a single cog broke loose and in that flaw, that immeasurable lapse in design, the world created a warm little nook for the boy. I would like to say that all the monsters had their claws removed and that the hearth fire burned at a steady even glow all year round and the biscuits were always cooked to perfection by some maternal old aunt with a ready kiss and smile. But innocence presupposes decadence, and in all likelihood, neither one exists—just shadow and act, and the meat, sinew, and bone of neither saint nor sinner, under a firmament that is neither sacred nor profane, spinning toward an end, which is just an end. In the meantime, lions don’t lie down with lambs; they chew them up into bloody flaps of flesh. And little boys don’t escape; they curl up on bathroom floors, with their shirts splattered and their shorts soiled.
I lightly poked his ribs with the toe of my slippered foot. The boy made a soft noise, and his body attempted to straighten but then curled itself up again, more tightly than before. A sour stench filled the room. The faucet ran at a trickle. I had an impulse to leave him, as if I could efface him from the world by simply closing the bathroom door. But I kneeled down on the tile and lifted his head. I remember that I kept speaking, saying things like “Come on now. Get up,” hoping to bring his limp body to life. He was a wet, disgusting thing. Apparently, sometime during the night, as I’d sweated and tossed in bed, everything inside of the boy had tried to evacuate itself through every orifice it could find.
After the ambulance ride and the long hours in an orange plastic chair in the hospital waiting room; after the policeman with broad shoulders and a thin, lipless mouth; after the plump woman from Dyfus with her slow, soothing voice and her dark eyes that never left my face during the entirety of our discourse—which she called our appointments—all the while my refrain sounding again and again: I don’t know the boy or what has happened to him; after a thorough inquiry was made and even the boy himself was by then well enough to be questioned, and my life was raked down to the roots, so all that could be seen was seen, and I felt as though I had been pumped dry by a chafed hand; after all that and so much more which I’m happy to pass over and never preserve with words—what finally exculpated me, what finally saved me despite my landlord’s slanders, was that out of the three different traces of semen collected from the boy’s body, none was mine.
PART TWO: MOTHERS AND WHORES
Even though I was eventually able to wash my hands of the boy and leave him to his lunacy, to howl and slobber and writhe within the walls of some white ward, where all the staff, mostly women, was trained to smile mechanically and speak in warm soothing tones—my brief encounter with my errand-runner continued to influ
ence my life. I felt that I was constantly under surveillance and that I would continue to be a suspect despite my apparent freedom. From the cashier at the checkout line in the grocery store to the chubby, pimply boy where I rented movies, everyone seemed to watch me. I no longer bought the food I usually bought or rented the kind of movies I liked to watch. Everywhere was a monitor, which made me a bit irascible and curt. I couldn’t even find the humor in the little prank I played on Morris the sister. After we’d arranged our meeting by letter, she went and sat alone in the coffee shop and waited for me; in the little drama she undoubtedly cooked in her little brain, I was to play Parker the penitent, while she was Mother Morris the sister. Yet the day came and went. I sensed that something was special about the day, but I couldn’t remember what I was missing, what holiday, feast, or national day of observance. Perhaps it was the anniversary of my father’s death. The exact date had slipped my mind years back, and I’d refused to ask my mother because I feared fixing it in memory or being tempted to mark it down, once and for all, on the calendar or the wall. I preferred ignorance over commemoration. Just knowing the month was enough. He had once written me a brief letter, in which he apologized for making fun of me. I kept it hidden behind the cardboard backing of a picture frame; a print of the poem “Footprints,” in neat curvy calligraphy, faced the glass. I had no reason to lift it from the wall and dismantle the frame because I knew what the letter contained: I feel bad about saying your hair is a filthy rat’s nest. Of course, this was an easy apology to accept, given that my first knowledge of this particular insult had come through the letter itself. Still, I didn’t like thinking about any of this, for a vague, pestilent cloud of dread hovered within my mind—when, instead, I should have been laughing at the sister, who wished to reconcile me with my lackadaisical benefactor, but who simply sat with the collection plate in her lap, waiting for my tithe and my penance. The joke was wasted, the day just another unpleasant day.
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