by Joe Meno
Fourteen
THE VERY NEXT DAY, TUESDAY AFTERNOON, FINDS Thisbe singing with Roxie in the Caspers’ garage. They have decided to start a band. Now is the time for such bold moves, while her father has retreated to his fort in the den and her mother has all but vanished. Each of the girls sits on an orange milk crate, Roxie playing a bright pink guitar that is covered in Magic Markered words Thisbe is unable to read. Roxie is strumming the guitar wildly, playing a song Thisbe does not recognize. Already, like chorus, this is not going so well. First of all, the girls are not allowed to use Roxie’s amp. Thisbe’s dad has already said no, in a rare moment of actual fathering. “Bob Dylan did not need an amp until after he was famous,” her dad argued. “Same with Joni Mitchell. Both of them didn’t need amps.” Thisbe, unfamiliar with the works of either musician, had no choice but to agree. But now it all seems kind of stupid. Roxie says so anyway. “This is kind of stupid. I mean, how can we be a band if we don’t use amps?”
“Maybe we should make some songs up first. Then we can practice them and when we’re good maybe we can play them with amps.”
“Okay, fine, whatever. Do you have any songs?”
“No,” Thisbe says. “What about you?”
“No.”
“Well, maybe we can write one now,” Thisbe suggests.
“Okay, I don’t care.”
“Okay, so should we write the music first or the words?”
“I don’t know. The words.”
“Okay,” Thisbe says. She reaches into her book bag and finds her math notebook, the back of which is filled with her failed attempts to redeem the neighborhood’s pets. Thisbe ignores these numerous tally marks and retrieves a ballpoint pen. “Okay,” Thisbe says. “What should our first song be about?”
“I don’t know. Elephants.”
“Elephants?”
“Yeah. Like how they have their own graveyards and everything.”
Thisbe taps the pen against the page, unsure.
“What?” Roxie asks, strumming the guitar again.
“Nothing. It’s just that I don’t think people sing songs about stuff like that. It seems kind of like a joke.”
“Well, that’s what makes it cool.”
“I guess.”
“Well, what are your big ideas?” Roxie asks.
“I don’t know. Like about Love and Heaven. That kind of stuff. Like the songs from musicals. Important songs.”
“Listen, this is just supposed to be fun, right? Why are you making it all serious?”
“I’m not,” Thisbe whispers, though she knows she is.
“You are.”
“We can write our first song about elephants, I don’t care. It’s fine.”
“Well.” Roxie nods, then gives the guitar another strum. “You start it.”
“Okay. Um. How about like…Elephants don’t forget you when you leave the room…”
Roxie smiles, clapping her hands. “That’s good. Write that down.” She strums the guitar again, making a C chord.
“They don’t ever forget you, remembering is what they do…”
Roxie slowly switches her fingers, making an awkward G.
“I wish you were an elephant, I wish I knew how you feel…”
Thisbe closes her eyes, smiling, holding the pen before her open mouth like a microphone.
“I’m getting tired of trying to find you because you don’t even seem real.”
“Wow, cool,” Roxie says, giving Thisbe a gentle shove. “You’re like a poet. You’re totally like a good singer when you don’t try.”
“I don’t think so,” Thisbe whispers.
“No, you totally have like a good talking voice.”
“Wow, thanks,” Thisbe whispers. “You were good, too.” She shoves Roxie back, her hand touching the other girl’s shoulder, the feeling momentary, electric. Before she can begin to feel awkward again, or guilty, the garage door lurches open, and Thisbe sees her dad behind the wheel of his car, dreary-eyed, his beard uncombed and blond and gray, as he begins to pull into the open space.
“Dad!” Thisbe shouts, standing up.
Her father shrugs his shoulders, then honks, motioning for his daughter to move.
“Okay, okay, God!” Thisbe hisses, sliding the orange milk crates aside. “It’s my dad,” she announces, sadly defeated. “He’s okay, but he’s been weird since him and my mom got separated.”
“My dad is in Guam. He’s in the Navy. I haven’t seen him in like ten years,” Roxie whispers.
Thisbe’s father climbs out of the car with a distracted frown.
“Dad, this is Roxie,” Thisbe says, humiliated.
“Hello there,” Thisbe’s dad murmurs, opening the backseat of the rusty Peugeot. An enormous stack of papers and maps tumbles out, Thisbe’s father sighing as he leans over to scoop it up.
“What is all that stuff, Dad?”
“It’s from the museum. I had to clean out the research lab.”
“Oh.”
“But it’s okay, I think, well…your mother’s not home again?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well, your friend is welcome to dinner. I’m making microwavable mac and cheese. Do you guys want some?”
“No, thanks,” Thisbe groans. Her father stares at her, perhaps equally embarrassed at the sight of himself, and then, arms full of scientific data, he stumbles off toward the house.
“Wow, what does your dad do?” Roxie asks.
“He’s a scientist. He looks for squids.”
“Cool.”
“Not really. So what do you want to do now?” Thisbe asks.
“I don’t know. I have to be home in like a half hour. My mom totally freaks if I’m not there when she gets back from work.”
“Yeah,” Thisbe says, sympathizing, though it’s almost impossible for her to remember either of her parents freaking out about anything, other than themselves.
“We could go to the field for a while. By the lake,” Roxie suggests.
“I guess. If you want to,” and then Thisbe’s heart begins to beat madly.
AS THEY PEDAL toward the hidden field, the secret field, Thisbe starts to pray, a prayer unlike any other she has whispered to herself: Dear God in Heaven, who is Holier than Holy, dear God, please, please, please do not punish me for my wicked, unhealthy thoughts. Do not let a car hit me or a bus run me over or an airplane fall out of the sky and crush my pathetic heart. Do not let acid rain or a hailstorm or one of your terrible plagues destroy me. Do not let the arrows of Your most Holy light pierce my breast or snakes or falcons come and smite my traitorous heart from my chest, not until I have held Roxie’s hand again. Waiting for brimstone, waiting for a flash of lightning to cleave her from existence, Thisbe pedals with one eye open, following Roxie, the flick and float of the other girl’s skirt the only thing she sees.
ON THEIR BACKS—leaving their bicycles twisted atop each other at the end of the trail—Thisbe stares up into the shocking blue sky and does not feel like she is flying. Instead, it is like she is falling off the face of the earth. She grasps at the tall green grass around her, the clouds drifting silently at her feet. She closes her eyes and feels her heart racing in her chest, her breath unsteady, ragged. She is aware of the wind as it brushes over her bare face and feels as if she is falling from some unimaginable height. She opens her eyes in panic, then turns her head and looks at Roxie, her short blond hair like a halo above her tiny ears, her snub little nose, her pink lips. Roxie smiles and takes her hand, both of the girls shutting their eyes. In that moment, they begin to fly. Their two bodies drift silently above the field, the sunlight streaking their faces as the clouds begin to swell around them. Thisbe feels like crying. She has never been so happy. But this time it is much shorter. For just as soon as she feels herself becoming weightless, just as soon as she’s left the ground, Thisbe opens her eyes and sees they have already descended. She is only lying there, stretched out on her back. Beside her Roxie is humming, her green eyes still clo
sed tight, pulling at the grass near her small hands. A strange, unfamiliar thought races through Thisbe’s brain—How would it feel if I suddenly climbed on top of her?—and, immediately ashamed, Thisbe looks away. Roxie, opening her eyes, turns and drops a handful of grass on Thisbe’s stomach. Thisbe smiles, picking the blades off one by one, and finds Roxie’s hand moving along the waist of her skirt. Thisbe closes her eyes, feeling like she might start crying. No, no, no, no, she thinks. Please don’t touch me. Please don’t touch me, but the thoughts are only thoughts and have nothing to do with the feeling that has begun to vibrate all along the bottom part of her body. The other girl’s fingers are warm and inch along her skin like a spider, creeping along the waistline, back and forth, as if she cannot make up her mind. Thisbe hears her breath coming and going quicker now, the rasp in her lungs beginning to catch, a spot somewhere in the back of her knees starting to tighten, and then Roxie’s face is above her own, her face is floating there, her face is the sun, the moon, it is the entire horizon, her green eyes flickering with a question that Thisbe does not know how to answer. Roxie has placed her hand in Thisbe’s hand and is looking down at her and neither one of them is laughing now or making any kind of sound at all, they are just staring at each other, the question beating in the air around them, the only sound the sound of a perfect collision of thoughts, like birds’ wings, Thisbe thinks she now understands the question being asked but is too afraid to answer, how can she even begin to answer? The other girl’s hand is against her own, their palms forming a perfect dark universe, Roxie’s smile disappearing, replaced by something else, some new expression, something not quite serious, though by this look it is clear that this is not entirely a game now either. Thisbe does not get up. She does not run away. Even though her lungs have begun to burn, even though she is aching to be alone, in her room, on her bicycle, safe, her feet planted back on the ground where they belong, not pointed upward toward the sky, where nothing is at all clear, Thisbe does not know why she doesn’t just go. When Roxie moves closer, kissing her on the corner of her mouth, then her nose, then her chin, then her neck, Thisbe closes her eyes and pretends it is the kiss of something else, something blessed, something she does not know by name, something she’s sure she’ll never quite understand. Thisbe lies there, happy for one moment, though she does not try and kiss the other girl back. She is content to be floating, adrift in that autumn sky, caught among a cloudy heaven and earth, sun and grass, fixed somewhere between what she thought she most wanted and the sound of this other girl’s lips.
BY THE TIME the kissing episode is over, Roxie, uncharacteristically embarrassed, her face flushed bright red, afraid to look Thisbe in the eye, mumbles a weak goodbye and pedals off, leaving Thisbe there alone in the field to wonder what she has done. What has she done? She doesn’t know but she is sure of the gravity of her sin. She knows God has seen what has happened and is terribly, terribly disappointed in her. She murmurs ten Hail Marys and a dozen Our Fathers, one for each place she let herself be kissed, her mouth, her neck, her cheek. She decides to go visit her grandfather, hoping to find forgiveness in dutiful service to the elderly. Pedaling away from the lake, down the wide boulevard, she does not bother to pray. She closes her eyes and imagines a sky full of locusts sweeping down, tearing her arms from their sockets. When she opens her eyes and the sky is still blue, and there are no scalding clouds of brimstone, what she feels then may be the worst disappointment of her life.
Fifteen
AT THE RETIREMENT HOME, LATE THAT TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Thisbe sits beside her grandfather, praying for a quick, merciful death for the both of them. She closes her eyes, whispering a single prayer over and over again, holding his tiny white hand, ignoring the noise of the recreation room, which is now being used for an impromptu checkers tournament. Thisbe looks over and sees the frustrated expression on her grandfather’s face, she can tell that he is upset about something, sitting there in his wheelchair so meekly, his teeth and gums sadly sunken into themselves. His mouth, wrinkled, blue-veined, small, perfectly weak, does not open to speak, not at first. He only has three words left, and after that, he will be done with words, just as he will be done with food and done with remembering. These last utterances, these three remaining sounds, must be carefully considered. When he has made his decision, Henry leans over, placing his mouth next to his granddaughter’s ear, and asks in a solemn whisper, “Help…me…escape.”
Thisbe, surprised, turns to look in her grandfather’s eyes. He is not joking. There, in the gray-green flecks of Henry’s eyes, Thisbe can suddenly see the truth. Her grandfather is just as lonely and just as desperate as she is.
“But how? And where could you go?”
Henry doesn’t answer; his fingers scramble into the breast pocket of his robe and produce his wallet, unfolding it in his lap. Thisbe can see a number of twenty-and one-hundred-dollar bills folded inside. Her grandfather glances down at the money and smiles.
“What will I tell my dad?”
Henry shakes his head and without speaking, only using his eyes, he seems to repeat the question.
Thisbe looks up, staring at the pairs of elderly residents distracted by the black and red squares of their game. There is no nurse or orderly on duty at the moment; the glass security doors that lead to the elevator are only twenty or thirty feet away. She turns to her grandfather and nods once, pulling herself to her feet. She slips behind his wheelchair and begins to push him toward the glass security doors. She loses her nerve when she sees a serious-looking nurse sitting behind the front desk, paging through a tabloid magazine. Anxiously, Thisbe pushes her grandfather past the desk, past the glass doors—the old man grabbing at the wheels to try and stop her—then back to his room, where she quietly closes the door behind them, already apologizing.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “But there was a nurse. We couldn’t have gotten past her.”
Her grandfather shakes his head angrily, his eyes squinting with bright annoyance. He grabs her hand, pulling it toward the open door. But Thisbe is too afraid of the nurse at the front desk, too frightened by the idea of what her father might do or say whenever he finds out, which, of course, he eventually will.
“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting down on the bed. “But I don’t think it’s such a good idea anyway.”
Henry hisses his displeasure, then slowly wheels himself into the far corner of the room. Ignoring his granddaughter, he searches the pockets of his red robe for his notebook. When he finds it, he flips to a blank page and then begins to write angrily.
To Whom It May Concern,
You had a son named Jonathan and two
granddaughters, Amelia and Thisbe.
To Whom It May Concern,
You were not much of a father or grandfather.
To Whom It May Concern,
In this way, you were exactly like your own father.
WHETHER IT WAS only Henry’s imagination or the sad, strange truth—that his father and uncle were indeed guilty of treason, their secrets hidden in the lines and stitches of the clothes they mended—was never officially proven. For within a day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527 had been issued, granting the federal law enforcement agencies the power to arrest and detain resident aliens of Japanese, German, and Italian descent for engaging in subversive activities. Immediately the federal agents of the Chicago Field Office quickly had their hands full.
December 8, 1941
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
To: COMMUNICATIONS SECTION
Transmit the following message to:
CBC:CSH
TO ALL SACs: MOST URGENT. SUPERSEDING AND CLARIFYING PREVIOUS INSTRUCTIONS RE: GERMAN AND ITALIAN ALIENS. IMMEDIATELY TAKE INTO CUSTODY ALL GERMAN AND ITALIAN ALIENS PREVIOUSLY CLASSIFIED IN GROUPS A, B, AND C, IN MATERIAL PREVIOUSLY TRANSMITTED TO YOU. IN ADDITION, YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO IMMEDIATELY ARREST ANY GERMAN OR ITALIAN ALIENS
, NOT PREVIOUSLY CLASSIFIED IN THE ABOVE CATEGORIES. IN THE EVENT YOU POSSESS INFORMATION INDICATING THE ARREST OF SUCH INDIVIDUALS NECESSARY FOR THE INTERNAL SECURITY OF THIS COUNTRY. ABOVE PROCEDURE APPLIES ONLY TO GERMAN AND ITALIAN ALIENS, AND NOT TO CITIZENS. ABOVE PROCEDURE DOES NOT IN ANY INSTANCE APPLY TO DIPLOMATIC OR CONSULAR REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GERMAN OR ITALIAN GOVERNMENT. BUREAU MUST BE ADVISED TELEGRAPHICALLY AT EARLIEST POSSIBLE MOMENT CONCERNING INDIVIDUALS ARRESTED PURSUANT TO ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS. THIS TELEGRAPHIC INFORMATION TO BUREAU SHOULD SPECIFICALLY DESIGNATE, WITH REGARD TO EACH INDIVIDUAL MENTIONED, WHETHER THE ALIEN IN QUESTION HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY CLASSIFIED ON THE A, B, OR C LIST, OR WHETHER HE IS BEING ARRESTED AS AN ALIEN CONCERNING WHOM INFORMATION JUSTIFYING HIS ARREST IS POSSESSED, ALTHOUGH NOT PREVIOUSLY CLASSIFIED IN THE ABOVE CATEGORIES. AS TO ALIENS IN LATTER CATEGORY, SPECIFY CONCERNING EACH INDIVIDUAL WHETHER CUSTODIAL DETENTION DOSSIERS PREVIOUSLY SUBMITTED BY FIELD OFFICE INVOLVED CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL IN QUESTION. AS TO GERMAN OR ITALIAN ALIENS CONCERNING WHOM INFORMATION IS POSSESSED INDICATING THEIR ARREST NECESSARY FOR INTERNAL SECURITY OF THE COUNTRY, ALTHOUGH NOT PREVIOUSLY CLASSIFIED IN A, B, OR C CATEGORIES, AND ON WHOM PREVIOUS CUSTODIAL DETENTION DOSSIERS NOT SUBMITTED. BUREAU MUST BE FURNISHED IMMEDIATELY COMPLETE SUMMARY OF INFORMATION POSSESSED CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL INVOLVED, JUSTIFYING ARREST. ALL INDIVIDUALS ARRESTED MUST BE TURNED OVER TO NEAREST REPRESENTATIVE OF IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE.