My father says, “Home is over there, by the Dump.” He waves a follow-me hand and walks down a rickety staircase made of mixed and mismatched pieces of metal and wood that hugs the circumference of the giant post to which the guard station is moored.
Melissa comes up behind me and says, “Holy shit.”
“Well said,” I say.
I walk and we reach the bottom of the staircase after the equivalent of maybe three flights. One more door to pass through, this one chain-linked and electrified, says my father. The stairs end on a horizontal support beam thick enough for five, maybe six people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder without having to worry about falling off. I look down and the ocean is only ten feet below us. The water is dark and calm. I thought it would be colder down here than in City, but it isn’t. I’m not sure how that works but I’m not going to ask him about it.
There’s a buzzing sound, some static-filled communiqué from one of the boys in the guard station, and the electrified door swings open. Still playing the effervescent tour guide, my father tells the camera that this guard station only monitors the tunnel and its access stairwell for potential escapees. They turn a blind eye to anything that might and does happen everywhere else. Why should the guards be any different than the rest of us?
41
BLESS YOU, FATHER!
We sit in the small staff-only cafeteria of Home. The three of us are the only ones in here at whatever time it is now. There’s a bowl of cold chicken soup in front of me.
My father says, “So, what do you think? I’d offer a drink but I’m all out of sacramental wine.”
I say, “I don’t know.” To get here, we walked past thousands of people crawling and living on Pier’s posts and beams. Then thousands more while we skirted the Dump perimeter. All along the way people called out to us, or more specifically to my father-the-father. Father! Father! Help me, Father! Save me, Father!
He told me and Melissa that he’d walked this gauntlet countless times and it seemed everyone was Catholic when the chips were down. Then he waved a non-committal hand at some people, others got a salute, others got a quickie stations-of-the-cross, some a simple bye-bye or a hand puppet. He told us it didn’t matter what he did and that it all worked because none of them knew any better. I hated him when he said it. Then he gave the middle-finger to a group of older men sifting through some trash. They responded with laughs and a hearty round of Bless you, Father!
He says, “Took four years of fundraising and two years of construction to get this place up and running.”
Home is only one level, but almost the length of a City-block. Like the guard station, the building is attached to a post, though there are also cement footings attached to some other beams and struts. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told Home’s back end leads directly into the Dump.
I stir my soup and chunks of Farm chicken float to the surface. I say, “What do you do here at Home?”
He doesn’t answer my question. He’s talking to Melissa. Telling her about how Dump’s base sits on the ocean floor, and how underwater wires and netting surrounds the base perimeter and acts like a sieve. Telling her how the salt water, with a little help from City Pharmaceutical’s all-natural additive (that’s how he put it), helps the trash to degrade quicker and then disperse and disintegrate into the ocean. Telling her that’s why he never eats seafood when in City.
I say, “Is this place a soup kitchen? A shelter? Is this a weigh-station? Are you trying to rehabilitate the homeless and get them back up City side?”
He tells Melissa that the entire homeless population lives off Dump. At least, the homeless population that makes it this far. The homeless are usually dropped at a point far away from Dump and they have to climb and crawl their way to it.
I say, “So this is a hospital, then?”
He tells Melissa that even though City government knows all these people live off Dump, they still use the all-natural additive. When ingested, the all-natural additive breaks down the immune system, exacerbating and accelerating the spread of disease in an already disease-prone population. Tuberculosis, cholera, hepatitis, influenza, pneumonia, typhoid, malaria. It can’t be said that the all-natural additive does not do its job: breaking down the world’s largest compost heap.
I say, “So this is the place you abandoned us for. This is your calling, your reason, and you haven’t said a goddamn word about what Home actually does.” And right now I don’t care how callous I sound, how selfish. Here’s a man discussing the plight of thousands down here and I’m the kid who wants to know why this place was so important that he had to leave me and Mom.
He looks at me, and I feel Melissa zooming in for my reaction shot, and he says, “No, this is not a hospital. Yes, this place is why I left you and your mother. This place is a home for the dying.”
42
MORE THAN YOU COULD POSSIBLY KNOW
I didn’t believe that white-collared fraud until he took us to the Wing. It looks like a hospital. There are beds and every one of them occupied with a coughing or unconscious person. There are bedpans, IVs, feeding tubes, catheters, white linens. But this isn’t a hospital. There aren’t any monitors. There’s nothing beeping or flashing. No flatlining EKG or iron lungs. Nothing to unplug. Nothing that can save people from dying. There are no doctors here, no nurses. Only the terminally ill and my father’s volunteers. He introduces me to ten or so of them. I lose count. I’ve already forgotten their names. I’m not forgetting on purpose and I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just not ready yet.
My mother isn’t in any of these beds. I’ve looked.
I do know that all the volunteers, with the exception of my father, are City deportees. The cynic in me believes they’re only volunteering to be fed, that they’re about as much of a volunteer as I am. I know I’m not being fair but I’m sure they’re used to it.
We stand at the foot of a bed that cradles a middle-aged woman. Middle-aged is my best guess. It’s hard to tell with the feeding tube, puffy face, matchstick arms, pale skin, deep, watery breaths. It reads tuberculosis on her chart.
My father says, “We can’t save them. But Home is where we care for the dying. Our mission here is to make these people feel loved, wanted, human before they die.”
We stand and watch the volunteers in action. They clean bedpans and empty catheters. Only some are wearing rubber gloves. No one wears surgical masks to prevent any respiratory ailments. They change sheets. They wheel dead bodies out and wheel barely breathing bodies in. They sit at bedsides, holding hands and rubbing the foreheads of the dying. They smile and laugh and talk to them all.
Father ESP taps his temple and says, “She’s on her way out.” He leans over the middle-aged woman’s bed and whispers her name. Her eyes open. The whites aren’t white. They’re as red as a crayon, capillaries burst from her unrelenting coughs. She tries to say something. The feeding tube in her nose has a pink tinge.
He says, “You don’t have to talk. I know.”
The woman stops trying to speak.
He says, “I love you. You are important to me and everyone else here.”
I wonder how many times he’s said this to someone. Out of all those times he said that, I wonder if he ever meant it. I still hate him and I want him to sound rehearsed, but he doesn’t. He sounds like he means it even if it’s something I’ve never heard him say to his wife or son.
“You matter. You will be missed.” He turns and looks at me. “Isn’t that right?”
I’m sweating. Does this mean my body is crying and I’m just too much of an ass to follow suit? I’m supposed to say something. What can I possibly say to this discarded woman that wouldn’t ring hollow? She knows better. She knows better than I do that no one loves or loved her. Maybe what my father is doing is wrong, trying to give an ounce of dignity and hope to the hopeless.
Melissa punches me in the back. I turn and she’s flailing her free arm at the
bed and the woman. Now is not the time to be thinking about her motivations, though I think she is crying behind the lens.
I step toward the bed, take a deep breath that isn’t so deep, a breath conscious of where it is, and then I say, “I will mourn your passing more than you could possibly know.”
I think she died before I got it out. My father told me I did a good job anyway. He told me that before I could tell him that I didn’t think I could do this for the two weeks preceding the election.
Melissa pulls the camera off us and goes right to her smart phone. Melissa says yes and no into the phone between long stretches of time. My father and I don’t say anything as he walks me to the sleeping quarters. A long linoleum hallway dumps us into a suite with four doors.
My father says, “Take any one of those three.” Then he disappears behind the fourth door. I hear it lock.
Melissa sticks her phone in my ear. It’s The CM. This is what I hear:
“The premier episode just aired,” then, “The last ten minutes were a live feed,” then, “Congratulations,” then, “The ratings are through the roof,” then, “Insta-track polls show you gaining by as much as ten points,” then, “Of course that brings your total to eleven points,” then, “Ha ha!” then, “Ha ha!”
43
23UI4900-1
Melissa isn’t here. She positioned a camera on a tripod and it’s filming me now. This is what I am doing:
I’m in my room lying in a cot with her phone cradled to my chest. I can’t sleep. The walls in here aren’t thick enough to keep the crashing sounds out. City must be making a deposit to Dump. There’s a rattle of debris on Home’s roof and one loud thud, then it stops. I wonder how many people were hurt and how often it all comes crashing down on their heads. There likely isn’t any warning from above.
I am not going to make it here. It’s still two weeks before the election.
I dial the police hotline number. No need to turn on a light to see my mother’s thirteen character case code still tattooed on my arm because I’ve memorized it. I punch in the code and this time there’s a new voice and message saying, please hold for the next available agent. I sit up fast, ready to sprint to wherever it is I need to sprint to because they know where my mother is. They know where she is!
“Hello, City Police.”
“Hello?” I speak in a hushed tone. I’m not sure why speaking in my normal tone seems wrong while alone in this dark room. “Do you know where she . . . um . . . my mother is?” Fucking A, listen to me. When did I become this helpless and pathetic?
More loud crashes. The fuckers are dumping more trash on us.
The agent on the phone says something but I don’t quite hear it. I thought this person said I have no idea where your mommy is, you wuss. But that can’t be right. I say, “Sorry, could you repeat that?
More crashing. Trash lands on the roof right above my head, the cot and floor vibrate from the impact. Burnt-out TVs or dishwasher asteroids falling on my ass. I say, “My neighbours are moving furniture or something.”
“Case number, please.”
“What?” This is an I-heard-you-but-don’t-quite-believe-what-you’re-saying-to-me what.
“Case number, please.” The agent is clearly annoyed with me and the continuing ruckus. Everything in me sinks all the way into my toes. I give the numbers. I hear a flurry of computer keys. Then a return of the automated voice. “Thank you for calling City Police. If you’d like to make a donation to any of the Policemen’s Ball charities please press one, otherwise stay on the line for your requested information.” There’s a click, a hint of hold music, then I hear, “Case denied: invalid reported information error: 23UI4900-1.”
I stay on the line. The message loops until the phone hangs up on its own. How convenient.
It’s only a few hours before my first morning shift at Home and I won’t be able to sleep now. I mess around with Melissa’s smart phone, and find myself on the Internet. The City NewsWire has the following headlines:
FARM UP AND RUNNING AT NORMAL LEVELS
FORTY-THREE FARM WORKERS ARRESTED
ON CONSPIRACY CHARGES
FIFTEENTH SUICIDE BOMBING IN A WEEK
BRINGS DEATH TOLL TO 1344
DOW REACHES A NEW HIGH
(MAYOR SOLOMON PREDICTS GOLDEN ECONOMIC AGE)
SLUMPING CITYTODAY MORNING SHOW
TO GET A ‘MAKEOVER’
THE CANDIDATE WINS RATINGS WAR
ON OPENING NIGHT
On the front page of NewsWire there’s a link to the footage of my Farm escape. I download it and watch. I hoped seeing it on the small phone screen would make it seem less real, but it’s not working that way. Nothing works the way we want it to. Watching this vid hurts. I watch it back-to-back-to-back and I will continue to do so because I don’t know why it hurts. I don’t miss Jonah. Honestly, I don’t. At least, I don’t think I do. I’m sorry he died so horribly, but there hasn’t been a moment since that I wished it was me instead of him. To me, that means I don’t miss him.
After watching the donkey explode and kill Jonah for fifteen minutes, and after three years of living and working and then blowing up with Jonah, I find myself mercifully drifting toward sleep, but also remembering this:
It was my first month at Farm and Jonah was still filling me up with his conspiracy theories and life lessons. He’d once tried so hard to be the father figure he knew I didn’t have. During a lunch break, after toasting my one-month anniversary, he hit me with his theory behind why homeless life might not be so bad. How once removed from the money and guns and corruption and bullshit of City, the homeless could create a kind of primitive utopian society. Everyone caring and looking out for one another because they had to. That made sense, right? They had no choice if they wanted to survive. Wasn’t it possible that the homeless would be okay, that it was what they ultimately wanted—to be ignored and alone and just out of the way? Maybe it was good for them, and they were happy and they weren’t getting hurt. They were different than us. They were equipped for homelessness. They could handle it. They were meant for it. They deserved it.
No one at the lunch table really argued with Jonah. They wanted to believe what he was saying. I know I did. How else could we live with ourselves, otherwise?
44
HANGIN’ WITH QUAZ
Days and nights bleed together because there isn’t any drastic brightening with morning or darkening with night down here. I mark the passage of days by cot-time and phone calls from the now rabid CM. I’ve been at Home for a week. I still don’t know where my mother is.
My Home partner is a man my father has dubbed Quaz, as in Quasimodo. The reasons for his nickname are obvious if not utterly cruel. He doesn’t seem to mind my father giving him the nickname. I feel like a shit-heel whenever I call him Quaz, but he won’t offer his real name. So fuck him.
In this first week, Quaz and I have honed a routine. In the morning we clear Home’s roof of trash with push brooms. Then Quaz, me, and Melissa (of course Melissa follows us wherever we go) search Dump for the dying. We always find more than enough to fill any empty beds at Home. When I don’t think Quaz and Melissa are looking, I’ll ask people if they’ve seen my mother.
The search is the worst part of our day and our day is a cornucopia of worst parts. Death is everywhere—horrible, painful, and undignified. People fall off the posts and beams, or they jump. They drop like a tree might lose its leaves. If the bodies don’t land in the water, they become a soon-to-be scavenged carcass. Picked over by other people and water rats so big they should be called something other than rats. I’ve seen people crushed by falling trash and a few lost underneath a landslide of refuse. Disease, vermin, and decay are thicker than the fogs that sweep through here. As we walk and climb through Dump and Pier, trailing our gurneys behind us, everyone begs us to take them Home, to feed them, clothe them, take care of them. Gangs of younger males physically threa
ten us but have yet to follow through on those threats. Most go from begging to offering all manner of sexual favours or clung-to heirlooms and personal trinkets. My father wasn’t lying when he said the homeless were still potential consumers.
Upon returning Home, we spend the afternoon caring for these terminally ill people, talking to them, telling them we love them and that we care about what happens to them. Home’s stated mission is to convince our patients they are not being cosmically or karmically punished and that they deserve our love and care. We are rarely successful. Although, Quaz is especially good at this aspect of his job. He kisses them all on the forehead as his greeting. He has no fear of catching their diseases or viruses. Me? I’m deathly, morbidly, shit-scared of Hepatitis C. It kills at least half our clientele. In my limited experience, it is by far the messiest and quickest disease passing through here. Vomiting, diarrhea, yellow skin that cracks and bleeds, and it’s so very contagious. I wear latex gloves and wash my hands and face so many times my skin is raw and ashen.
Before dinner we clear out the morgue. The morgue is a large, empty room in the back of Home. Throughout the day, staff simply stack the dearly departed against the walls. By the time we get there the room is SRO and full of the unmistakable smell and heat of rot. We bring the bodies out behind Home to a somewhat cleared area of Dump, incinerate the bodies, and send the ash to the water below.
Tonight, as the ashes fall, Quaz mumbles a little prayer in a language I don’t understand. I assume it’s a prayer. Given that my father-the-father runs the show here, I expected more God-squad kind of talk than I’ve been hearing.
Swallowing a Donkey's Eye Page 14