Sometimes I noticed when I took them off the facility grounds, their eyes scanned the streets of Manhattan as if some key to unlock the mysteries of the universe were to be discovered amidst the endless piles of garbage bags and garbage-people and it seemed to me nothing less than one of the first signs of schizophrenia, irrationality and madness at its finest, although of course I didn’t think they needed to be locked up, as I was an active and vocal opponent of mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline, I went to protests and rallies and enjoyed screaming angrily at people with others, but when I saw my troubled people staring distantly at the garbage piles, searching, searching, I concluded perhaps they should be locked up for the rest of their lives, then something would happen, one of the schizophrenic troubled people would do something nice, and I would reverse my position, I went back and forth over the matter and never came up with a definitive answer, either way, I waffled a great deal, but in the end anyone would say I tolerated their schizophrenia, I didn’t really mind it.
The keys to the universe aren’t in the garbage! I screamed at them in an attempt to jolt them out of their dangerous and delusional fantasies and then I offered them a thin glass pipe filled with potent marijuana.
I had always promoted early intervention at my workplace; I was a proponent of special medical intervention when it came to my troubled young people, intervention mostly through the administration of marijuana, which was illegal, but I felt it was my ethical duty to give it to them. It calms them down, as I had explained to my coworkers, it helps them focus on real things, they smoke it and they mellow.
My coworkers shut up about the matter as long as I provided them with their own personal bags of marijuana. Of course since it was as integral to the facility as the paper products for the toilets, I bought the drugs with the credit card used to purchase the paper products. Everyone who took care of the troubled young people loved marijuana; the functioning of the facility continued smoothly with this improvement made.
The most recent photo of my adoptive brother I came across was a picture of a birthday dinner, probably his last or the year before. It was from the time during which he attempted to grow a mustache. He was sitting at a restaurant table, a heavily frosted birthday cake in front of him, the candles flickering under his eyes. He was smiling stiffly for the camera. Was this before or after he received the discounted book about cars? His eyes looked so tired, he appeared to be exhausted by living, my poor dear hermit. The act was wearing thin! He wore a light blue polo, the same shirt he wore every day of his life, the shirt he probably wore even the day he committed suicide. It was possible. It was the style of shirt he wore to Catholic elementary school and beyond, thick and starchy, ordered in bulk quantities from a Lands’ End catalog. I stared at his photo; he didn’t even look that Korean, he looked Chinese, and every time we went to a Chinese restaurant, the waitress would ask if he was Chinese, but I would never be asked, because it was very obvious to everyone that I was Korean or possibly Tibetan. Growing up, we both admitted to one another that we wanted to be white. As little children we were told that if we prayed to Jesus Christ, if we spoke to Jesus Christ as if he were our friend, if we told him the deepest desires in our hearts, he would answer our prayers and grant us our wishes, as long as we believed in him with a pure abiding faith.
I want to be white, he said to me once.
I want to be white, too, I said to him.
Sometimes at night I pray to God that I will wake up and be white, he said.
I too have spent nights in prayer to our lord Jesus Christ that I would become white, I said.
We were nothing less than disappointed about being Asian and very ungrateful about being brought into this country, a country neither of us had asked to come into, and neither of us identified as Asian, we never checked the Asian box. If someone asked us our nationality, we usually said, adopted.
He was alone in the photo from his birthday. I imagined my adoptive parents sitting across from him at a restaurant. My adoptive mother would ask him to smile for a picture. I saw my adoptive brother order a bowl of plain rice, nothing added, no salt or butter or soy. After the meal, my adoptive father would pay the check but not without first inspecting each item on the check carefully, even requesting that the server bring back the menu to check the bill. Actually, now that I thought about it, a night like that would cause anyone to want to commit suicide!
Everything is fine, my adoptive brother wrote to me once, and then it isn’t. Everything in my world is neutral, he wrote, and then it goes dark. Our house depressed me, childhood depressed me, school depressed me, our dog depressed me, my shoes depressed me, my books depressed me, you depressed me, our parents depressed me, the tree outside my window depressed me.
I knew then that his writing to me of everything that depressed him, in combination with his miserable birthday photo, was the first real clue that my adoptive brother had been thoroughly miserable before he killed himself. His suicide had not been out of the blue, it had been arranged and thought out. In order to find more photos of him as substantiating evidence, I had to flip past several grotesque photos of myself from various stages of childhood and young adulthood. As an adult, whenever I saw a photo of myself, I immediately destroyed it, even if other people were in the picture. Of course, I missed a few. Sifting through the pile, I found a picture of myself in front of a birthday cake. I wore a pink polo that I thought made me look more feminine. Tears were in my eyes, my lips were pursed; I looked like a miserable duck. To each look miserable, we were twin infinitives. The point is, I myself did not want to exist photographically, and it was very devastating for most people.
Many years ago, my adoptive mother insisted on visiting me at my college dorm in Iowa.
There are no photos of your family, she observed as we stood together in my dorm room.
It was strange to me, the way she said your family. The way she said your family made it sound like something detached and distant from both of us. She might have been talking about Ethiopia.
Why are there no photos of your family? she asked me. Don’t you miss your family?
I tried to explain my position on photography. It’s just that a second captured on film doesn’t accurately represent the real world, I said to her.
She looked at me as if I were some kind of Native American New Age-y person.
People who call themselves photographers are fake, I went on, the real charlatans of our time. Behind a photo is a perfectly fake person, scrubbed of all flaws, dead inside.
Everyone is attached to photos, I said, and I have no attachment to photos, I never have.
Photos are sentimental, I said, and I’m not a sentimental person.
You’re ashamed of your family, she said, you’ve always been ashamed of your family. What did we do to you, Helen? Why are you so angry with us?
I told her that they had done nothing to me, that they had raised their adoptive children perfectly, that I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
You’re lying, she said, you’ve always had a talent for exaggeration and drama. That’s the reason you went to college, she continued. To hone your dramatic flair. I’m sorry your father sent you here, I’m sorry your father paid for this.
She gestured around the dorm room.
I laughed because we were both standing in a tiny airless concrete cell.
I’m sorry he paid for it, too, I said, I’m sorry he paid for the cheapest college I got into.
No one wanted to hear about my anger, especially not my adoptive mother. Her face came back to me; in my mind, I saw her mouth shaped into a bird beak. Her hands were on her hips in an exaggerated pose of disapproval. She wore a collared shirt with flowers embroidered on it, a shirt she considered to be dressy, the most appropriate shirt in her wardrobe for a weekend college visit.
A few weeks later, an envelope arrived in my dorm mailbox with nothing in it but a truly grotesque family photo taken by a professional photographer at a department store: m
y adoptive parents and my adoptive brother smiling vapidly in front of a fake brick fireplace. My adoptive brother’s eyes were especially glassy, like a mounted animal specimen. Of course I wasn’t in it, and it pleased me to think of them as a unit detached from my own existence. My college roommate Beth watched me tear it up and throw it away.
You’ve always been a coldhearted bitch, she said with admiration.
16
A policewoman was at the front door. She was peering in through the window next to the door when I happened to walk through the foyer. I just happened to be walking by, fresh from the toilet, when I saw her peering in rudely. I opened the door, hesitantly.
Hello?
Hello. Is Mrs. Moran in?
I’m afraid not. She’s out with the grief counselor.
Okay, dear, what about your dad?
The policewoman seemed to think I was younger than I was, and I couldn’t tell if she wanted to be invited in or not.
I’m checking to see if everything’s okay, she said.
Because of my activism against the police, now that one was in front of me, in flesh and blood, I wasn’t sure how to react. I’m sorry, I’ve been home the entire afternoon, doing nothing, I said, is there anything else?
Well, she said, this is for your mom. She thrust forward a plate with something wrapped in foil.
Out of curiosity, I accepted it, and shut the door.
I brought the plate into the kitchen and removed the sheet of foil. F O I L is a beautiful word, I thought, almost as beautiful as T I M E. On the plate was a white double-layer cake, frosted. I helped myself to a slice, then another, with a large, hefty bread knife. I brought my plate into the den. I had no idea when my adoptive parents would be back, or for how long the house would be this empty, how long I would feel this stillness spreading out in front of me. How silly it is that we organize life with minutes and hours and days and months and years. Time is a human construction, like gender and race and capitalism. I took a few bites of cake. Wild animals don’t have a concept of hours, birds don’t have a concept of days, not even fish… Suddenly, the house phone rang. It took me a moment to see that it was buried underneath a pile of photos.
Hello? I said cheerfully.
It’s Thomas, the voice said, I’m free now.
You were supposed to call me on my cellphone, I said, not my adoptive parents’ house phone.
Sorry, do you want to talk now? I just got off work.
Could you meet me somewhere? I said.
Where?
I haven’t been back here in years and I don’t have a car, so somewhere close by.
I’ll come to your parents’ house. I know where it is.
I hung up the phone, annoyed by the mess on my adoptive father’s desk. Organize yourself! I said to no one. Organize this situation! Simplify this mess! I took a bite of cake. It’s always easier to reduce complicated situations to a simple idea. I preferred it that way. I preferred simplicity, seamless boundless simplicity! Timeless elegance! I started to put together the pieces of his suicide arrangement. I flipped through ten more photos. In each photo I found of him, he was frowning or neutral. He was a gentle person; he had never been prone to violence, he always seemed like the docile one, whereas I was the violent one, full of rage, who day after day threatened to destroy the peace.
I stopped looking at photos. I turned on the computer and looked up a few things on the internet. The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. A young man with pale hair appeared on the doorstep. He was probably my adoptive brother’s age, maybe a little older. He was wearing his uniform from work, a fast-casual restaurant, and I saw beads of sweat on his brow, his nose. He took off his headset self-consciously and folded it into his pocket. I told him to come in. We went into my adoptive father’s study and sat down in chairs facing one another. I took out my traveler kit and popped a couple pills to calm down my thoughts. I offered him a piece of the policewoman’s cake, which he accepted. I went into the kitchen and cut two slices. I would eat another piece with him. I did not offer him a drink, as it wasn’t that kind of social visit; we were meeting to talk about a suicide, we had come together to look into the abyss. I took out a piece of paper from the desk. I wrote down INTERROGATION OF THOMAS.
Where is everyone? said Thomas. Are you always alone in the house like this?
My adoptive parents are out making funeral arrangements and working, I said. They’re very busy right now.
I realized my voice had an artificial quality or the tone of a museum docent speaking in front of a large group of children. Let’s start over, I said quietly. Thomas, how do you know my adoptive brother?
School, he said, I went to the same school as you. You were a couple grades ahead. You don’t remember me? I used to come over to your parents’ house with Zachary Moon all the time after school to hang out with him. By the way, I told Zachary, and he said he’s going to come home as soon as he can.
And when was the last time you saw my adoptive brother? I asked.
It must have been a week ago, said Thomas. He told me he wasn’t feeling well even though we had made plans to have dinner. I picked him up from your parents’ house and we drove by our old school. You know the place, you went there, too, it’s not far from your house.
It’s within walking distance, I said.
Right, said Thomas, your brother wanted to see it and I didn’t ask him why. I think it made him wistful and nostalgic. I was hungry and when I suggested we get something to eat, he told me he wasn’t hungry, that he didn’t want to eat anything.
We ended up going to his favorite Greek restaurant. I was starving and I thought taking him there would help his appetite. When we got to the restaurant he sat across from me in the booth and didn’t really say anything. Then I noticed something strange: he was talking with his hand in front of his mouth. Maybe he was embarrassed about something in his teeth. So I didn’t say anything. Besides, if something was wrong, I knew he was taking care of it. He was always making appointments with doctors. He was always in and out of a hospital and doctor’s appointments, so I figured he was going to take care of it.
What do you mean, I said, that he was always in and out of a hospital?
I guess he was always making appointments with doctors for various things, anyway, that’s what he told me, I never went with him to the hospital or doctor, so I don’t know for sure, said Thomas. I would ask him what was going on and he didn’t want to talk about it. His mouth wasn’t bleeding or gross. He just had a strange way of speaking that night. He would put his hand up, or he would sort of pull his lips over his gums. It was very strange.
And what did you do after going to the Greek restaurant? I said.
I took him home, Thomas said. It took him a long time to get out of my car. We were pulled up at the side of your house and the passenger door was open. His feet were out, his legs half out. He stayed that way for a while as we talked. He couldn’t make up his mind. In or out, I said. Out, he said. For the next half-hour, he didn’t make any motion to leave. Finally, I told him I was really tired and had to go. I sort of pushed him out of the car, not in a violent way, in a very gentle way. Let me try to say it like this: I pushed him out, gently but firmly.
What did you do when you got home? I said.
I fell asleep. I was tired. I called him first thing in the morning, around nine, he told me that he had a nice night out. He said, I had a nice night out with you, thank you for being in my life. I told him he was talking crazily; I asked him if he was drunk. Of course he wasn’t drunk, he never drank or smoked or anything. I asked to see him that day, but he said he had things to take care of. I never saw him or heard from him again. I texted him and he didn’t text me back. I called and it went to voicemail.
When I called you, how did you feel? I asked.
How do you think? he said.
It was crazy, too, a relative of your parents called me and told me what happened, he said.
I should have known something wa
s wrong, he cried. I think something in his mouth bothered him, but what was it?
You must mean Uncle Geoff called you, I said excitedly. Good old Uncle Geoff as the messenger.
It looked like Thomas was crying, but I wasn’t sure, so I kept talking.
A few minutes before you arrived, I was in a state of panic, I was unorganized, and you were about to arrive. Everyone always arrives at the worst possible moment. You were on the doorstep about to ring the doorbell when I looked something up on the internet, I said to Thomas. I went to a mental-wellness website, which I trust as a source, and it states there are six common reasons people commit suicide: 1) they’re pathological 2) they’re depressed 3) they didn’t understand what they were doing 4) they’re irrational 5) they have a medical reason 6) they lost control. We must rule out that he was pathological or irrational, and as far as I know he never lost control. He composed his suicide, I said, more than he composed his own life. He was obsessed with planning and preparations, and he left nothing to chance.
Because of what I knew of him and his planning obsession, I said, he absolutely confounded me, his only adoptive sister, when he showed up unexpectedly and out of the blue at my shared studio apartment in Manhattan one day at the end of July. It was the second thing he did that truly astonished me. And at the time, it made me so angry, because what did he think I had to offer him?
17
Three months ago I was in New York City, and chaotic things in my life, like my living situation, began to stabilize. It had been years since I had seen him. We stayed in touch through email, text, etc., but I never went back to Milwaukee, I didn’t go home for the holidays, I stopped doing Thanksgiving when I was in my early twenties, Christmas was the next to go. It took me five years to stabilize in New York City. When you move there, people tell you it will take two years, but it took me five. I started my current job over half a year ago. And it’s shit. One morning a few months ago, my supervisor blew his whistle and gathered us, supervisors of the troubled young people, in the most disgusting room of the facility, a room filled with piles of flies and mosquitoes and mold-flecked mugs and one grimy window. Everyone was standing in an oval, a great force of pleated khakis and polos. I was looking at my phone discreetly when I heard my supervisor say something about assembling a team to oversee an internal investigation, and as I looked up with great interest, my coworker Michele told me to go make coffee.
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Page 7