Saint X

by Alexis Schaitkin

  Not long after Fazil arrived, Clive was working on a Monday night when, barely an hour into his shift, he pulled over on Amsterdam and vomited a salmon-colored froth onto a hardened gray snowbank. He was so suddenly and intensely ill it was all he could do to drive the taxi back to the garage, stopping periodically to be sick again, and then struggle home. He thought he’d eaten something bad and figured he’d be back on his feet the next night; instead, he awoke drenched in sweat and delirious with fever. The illness lasted for days. Fazil moved his mattress against the wall to create as much distance between them as possible. Ouss cared for him to the extent possible when he wasn’t at work, bringing him soup and medicine and washing Clive’s sheets at the Laundromat.

  Just an hour before he fell ill, Clive had paid his weekly lease, six hundred dollars he now had no chance of recouping. When he was finally well enough to return to work, he showed up at the garage only to have Larry tell him he’d found another driver for his shift. He would have to wait until a spot opened up. Two weeks passed.

  Sara called. “I expected you to wire us something last week.”

  “Things are hard up here at present.”

  “Well, down here at present your son is growing like a weed and needs new polos and trousers and shoes.”

  “You think I don’t know your extensive list of demands, what with how you do remind me?” he snapped.

  For a moment Sara didn’t speak. He could hear her breathing into the phone slowly and deliberately.

  “This is not about me and you. It is about your son.”

  He hated when she called Bryan your son—as if Clive didn’t know, as if he needed reminding.

  Rent was due but he couldn’t pay it. Their landlord came to the apartment and told him in front of Fazil and Trev and Sachin that he had a week to pay. That night he took Ron Rawlins’s business card from his wallet and turned it over in his hands. He walked to a pay phone. He dialed the first digits. Then he heard Ron’s voice, Good on you, in his head. He hung up. He tore the card in pieces and tossed them in the rubbish bin on the street corner. He did not trust himself with it.

  Two days later, he returned to the apartment after a day spent fruitlessly walking the city looking for HELP WANTED signs, his feet aching, and found Sachin sitting on the couch. Sachin looked up at Clive, his green eyes sparking. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “You know very well.”

  “Please, Sachin. I’m too tired for this today. If you’re vex with me, say so and be done with it.”

  “You bet your dick I’m vex. This morning I had four hundred dollars in an envelope under my mattress. Tonight, I don’t.”

  “You think I took it?”

  “I know you owe rent.”

  “But I’ve been gone. I’ve been out since this morning.”

  “Says you,” Sachin spat.

  Clive heard the sound of a key in the lock. Fazil stepped inside. When the small old man saw the two of them, frozen and glaring at each other, he hunched his shoulders and disappeared quickly into the bedroom.

  “I’m giving you a chance to make it right, Clive. You give me what you did take and we’ll be cool.”

  “I didn’t take your money, Sachin. How would I even know where you hide it?”

  Sachin clapped his hands and released a dark, amused laugh. “How would you know?” He was wired; he spoke with a red-hot smoothness. “Clive, even you could find a stack of cash in a room that’s nearly empty.”

  “I don’t know what else to say,” Clive whispered. “We’ve lived together a long time. You know me. You know I would never—” He heard the floorboards creak in his bedroom beneath the light weight of Fazil’s body settling onto his mattress and he knew. Small, silent Fazil who never bothered anyone. He also knew there was no point in accusing him to Sachin, who would never believe him, blinded as he was by his anger. “I wouldn’t,” Clive said finally, uselessly.

  “You have until tomorrow night.” Sachin stalked off to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  He should not have thrown away Ron Rawlins’s card. It had been exactly the wrong thing to do. What else was new? The next evening, he went to the Little Sweet. He planned to stay there until closing, then remain out until two or three A.M., by which point, he hoped, Sachin would have blown through his anger and turned in for the night. He ordered his pepper pot and Carib, then another beer and another. Vincia pursed her lips but did not comment. The radio was on; the local Caribbean station was broadcasting a cricket match, Barbados Pride versus Leeward Island Hurricanes. By his sixth beer, he could feel the grass on the pitch like velvet beneath his fingertips. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer that when he opened them he would be sitting in his grandmother’s kitchen. She would be rinsing dishes in the sink. She would swat a mosquito and scowl, and how happy he would be.

  When he opened his eyes, he was in the Little Sweet, his empty plate before him. He looked through the storefront at the street. Sachin was standing on the sidewalk, staring at him through the glass.

  * * *

  ONE AFTERNOON when he was fourteen, during the boys of Everett Lyle Secondary’s brief love affair with boxing, Clive took a punch to the gut so powerful it knocked the wind out of him. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s on land as he waited what felt like an eternity until the air rushed back in. It was Thomas Hinton who had walloped him that time, a shy, handsome boy, well liked by the girls, who would go on to become the landscaping foreman at one of the resorts on the south coast. Clive remembered the intensity of the punch, but he did not recall feeling any pain at the moment of impact. This must have been partly because of the adrenaline of the fight, his body thrumming with it as he tried to get off his best shot to a chorus of cheers and jeers. But mostly it didn’t hurt because Thomas was his friend. So were Damien and Des and Don, and because they were his friends, his body seemed not to believe the physical seriousness of their blows. Those matches in Don’s yard never hurt. It was the great irony of their contests. They administered injury to one another in order to teach themselves something of the violence of manhood, yet each blow was carried on the wings of fraternal love; you could feel it as plainly as you tasted the tang of blood seeping from your split lip. Because of this, those afternoon sessions were no preparation at all for what finally did come, on a frigid February night in New York. As he understood very quickly after he left the Little Sweet and followed Sachin around a chain-link fence to a vacant lot (broken glass glistening like jelly in the moonlight), it was not the physical power of a blow but the contempt which fuels it that makes it so terrible.

  Why did he go with Sachin? That’s what he would ask himself after, leaning against the fence and spitting blood onto the sidewalk, his face mangled and swollen. He could not explain it. Sachin had stood on the sidewalk outside the Little Sweet, staring at Clive through the glass with such coldness. He curled his index finger, gesturing for Clive to come out as if offering an invitation. Clive felt his body rise from his chair. He had the feeling that he was walking toward something he’d been trying to avoid for a long time, that Sachin had something to show him about himself, and that it would be the truth.

  When they entered the vacant lot, Sachin stumbled on the uneven ground, then swung his arms wildly to steady himself. He was very drunk. “This is your final chance,” he slurred. His voice was brittle and ironic, as if this were a poorly acted performance they were both in on, as if his own anger were hilarious to him.

  “I didn’t take your bloody money,” Clive grunted through clenched teeth. He was suddenly furious, because he understood now that Sachin didn’t even really believe he’d taken it, but it didn’t matter. He was hated.

  The first sloppy blow glanced off Clive’s jaw. Sachin spun on his own momentum, regaining his footing just in time for his chin to meet Clive’s fist. Clive heard the gnash of Sachin’s bottom teeth smashing into his top teeth, saw his head snap back.

  Well, Clive thought, he
’d given Sachin his chance. It wasn’t his fault if Sachin had shown up too drunk to put it to use. He turned and walked over the uneven ground toward the sidewalk. He was almost at the fence when he heard the pounding of feet behind him. Then Sachin was on him. An arm hooked around Clive’s neck, the crook of an elbow crammed against his windpipe. He fell to the ground and Sachin sprang on him. Clive felt every blow—on the rim of his eye socket, his throat, his chin. Finally, he was able to grab hold of Sachin’s shirt and shove him off. Sachin flew backward. Clive heard a crack. Skull hitting concrete.

  The night filled with a terrible stillness. Sachin lay on the ground, motionless. “No,” Clive whispered. “No, no, no.”

  Then Sachin raised his arm. Clive had never felt such relief in his life. Sachin brushed his hand against the back of his head, held it up to the moonlight to confirm a gummy swipe of blood. He pushed himself off of the ground and rushed at Clive. Clive let Sachin pummel him, too terrified of what he’d almost done to retaliate.

  Sachin began to laugh. “Is the big man scared?”

  He punched Clive in the gut. Clive did not respond.

  “Does that make you angry? Does that get you going, big man?”

  Sachin’s pale eyes never wavered from Clive. He was a father whose child had been taken from him; his loss was black magic, allowing him to see through Clive and know the things that he had taken. When Sachin delivered a swift, fierce kick to his groin, Clive fell to his knees, spat into the dirt. The world began to swirl. Sachin kicked at his ribs like he was trying to dislodge a stubborn flat tire. He kicked and kicked—he was moaning, Clive realized. The sound had been going on for some time. It filtered down from far above his body like the voice of God.

  Then footsteps, stumbling away. He caught a fleeting whiff of berries. Tinkling laughter. A final howl: Sachin’s? His? Hers? Clive sailed away on it.

  * * *

  HE COULD not stay in the apartment. It wasn’t just Sachin. After that night, he could find within himself only pity for Sachin, whose family was gone and always would be, no matter how he tried to batter the truth of his life out of existence. But he hated Fazil. (Where would the money he’d stolen end up? Clive wondered. He imagined grandkids in Guyana opening a package of Nikes and CDs. Or maybe Fazil had no one back home and would spend the money in small morsels on himself; he saw him hunched over a large slice of red velvet cake in a café, scraping every last bit of frosting from the plate.)

  Ouss loaned him the money for his back rent and the deposit on a new place. He found an open bed in an apartment shared by five roommates just a few blocks away. Not long after that, a shift opened up at the garage, and Clive returned to work. His first night back, in early March, was the first warm night of the year, a promise of spring. When he got off in the morning, he decided to walk. He crossed Manhattan on Forty-second Street, Times Square so early in the morning empty, his. When he reached First Avenue he turned south. He walked past the United Nations, its sweep of flags snapping in the wind, past the brick projects of the Lower East Side, quiet and softly lit at this hour. At Delancey, he turned onto the pedestrian ramp for the Williamsburg Bridge. He crossed the bridge, pushed forward by westward winds and fanned, at intervals, by ephemeral breezes from bikes whizzing past. When he reached the bridge’s apex, he stopped. At the edges of the panorama, the silver tip of Manhattan and the brown façades of Brooklyn aproned the river; the water was a rich, indeterminate color, as if the essence of the city had been condensed into a dark, sparkling broth, and here he was above it, catching its cool upward breezes.

  Things would get better now. He would be able to wire money to Sara and his grandmother soon. His cuts from the fight with Sachin had scabbed over. His whole body felt tight and new as a bud. At the foot of the bridge, he got on the B44 and rode Nostrand all the way down to Snyder. When he got home, the phone was ringing. He picked it up just in time. It was Sara.

  “I was just thinking about you,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m back at work. It’s all sorted out. I’ll be wiring money in a few days.”

  She said nothing.

  “Sara?”

  “That’s wonderful.” She paused. “I want you to know I’m proud of you, Clive. I know it hasn’t been easy there.” Years later, the memory of it was enough to pull tears to his eyes. “I’m calling because I have something to tell you.” Her voice sounded neither happy nor sad.

  “What is it, Sara?”

  “I’m married.”

  For a moment he couldn’t speak. “You’re—Sara, did you say y-y-y—”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “I said I’m married. I got married. Last week.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, Clive.”

  “You should have told me. You should have given me a chance to—”

  “To what? To try to stop me? I’m sorry, Clive, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve been here, all this time, raising our son alone.”

  “While I’m up here slaving away for that boy.”

  “And how do you think it’s been for me? You don’t have to take the stares when all you want is to buy groceries.”

  “Please, Sara. Listen to me. I love you. I—”

  “It’s Edwin,” she said. “Do you hear me? It’s Edwin.” Her voice seemed to study the words, as if she only half believed them. “I married Edwin.”

  Bery Wilson, Sculptress. That’s what it says on my business card. These days every actress wants to be called an actor, every waitress wants to be a waiter. But I’m a woman and I want every last person who sees my work to know it. My artist friends scoff when I show them my card. They think it’s vulgar, like I’m an electrician or an accountant hocking my services. But I’m making a living doing what I love, and I want the world to know that, too.

  In my twenties, when I was new to New York, my love affair with the city just beginning, I salvaged my materials from its streets: twisted bike rims, concrete, pigeon feathers, lots of metal. My latest pieces are different. In this place of my adulthood, I resurrect the spaces of my youth.

  Rubbish Day went up last year in a pocket park in the West Village. If you’re not from where I’m from, you’d see it and think it was just a sculpture made of castaway items, but anyone from home would see the bottle of Maggi and the box of Sazón Goya, the Ivory soap and Crix crackers wrappers, the bottles of D&G pineapple soda and Vita Malt and the canister of Nestlé Klim and know it was a love letter.

  School Girls was installed in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Building in Harlem a few years ago. A circle of straw-and-plaster girls with painted-on skirts and blouses, maroon and pink. On the opposite edge of the plaza there was another girl, alone, looking back at the others and flaying them with her eyes. The piece was up November through March. The decay of the materials over the course of the winter was part of the project from its inception. I used to ride up there to see how people interacted with my work. Hardly anybody noticed the lone girl. I would watch her as if held there by something. Watch the snow settle on her shoulders, pigeons peck at her straw, sleet lash her wide-open eyes. I wanted to take her home and make her cinnamon tea and tell her, Just you wait.

  Faraway Woman will be my next project, on Governors Island. I’ve only done sketches so far, but I know she will be larger than life. A woman twelve feet high with locks of black hair six feet long and bright white haunches thick as tree trunks. Hooves for feet. I want people to fall in love with her. I want her to give them nightmares.

  When that girl died on Faraway, I knew it was the woman who took her. You might expect me to believe it was Gogo Richardson, on account of the afternoon he punched me so hard my legs flew out from under me. But that afternoon wasn’t what I thought about when I heard that he and Edwin had been taken into custody. Instead, I thought of a morning many years earlier, the first day of second grade, when Gogo’s terrible stutter almost caused him to wet himself in front of the entire class. I felt such rage at him then. Rage for allowing something
so humiliating to happen to himself. Rage that he couldn’t just fit in. I know, I know. Irony is a live wire. It seems to me now that for years of my life, rage is all I was. It lived in my skin and crackled in my teeth. I would have followed it anywhere.

  STARLIGHT

  YOU GET FAR ENOUGH INTO winter and you no longer believe it was ever warm or ever will be again. The trees seem as unalive as the other fixtures of the city’s sidewalks: newspaper boxes, abandoned bicycles, hydrants (their tops covered now in little ushankas of snow). During the day, the light seems filtered through a dishrag, and by late afternoon, day is gone; the surrendering blue of a four o’clock twilight becomes your whole world.

  When I try to get myself back into that winter, to reenter my psychic state during those frozen months, I find that I can no longer do it. I can remember that period in an external way, using the things I did and said to reconstruct what I must have felt. But I can no longer inhabit those memories as I can inhabit even more distant ones: Sipping espresso with Aunt Caroline in the Place des Vosges. My skin peeling in the days after Alison’s death. Me say day me say day me say day. The best I can do is to describe how the world around me seemed altered. Before that time, the city was for me what I believe it is for most people: a commons, all of us grazing together in its glass-and-steel meadows, a place the most salient feature of which is not, in the end, its skyscrapers or its cacophony, but the excruciating and ecstatic demands it places upon our empathy. To push through the crowds in the Times Square subway station, zigging by tourists with suitcases, zagging around bankers in suits, brushing past people hawking churros, EPs, God, veering around a troupe of young men performing backflips above the hard tile floor, and squeezing onto a train so packed your chest compresses in the crush of bodies, and to know that every one of these people is in the thick of a life every bit as complex as your own, that you are all extras in one another’s dramas—isn’t this the quintessence of urban life? But during those months, it was different. The city seemed not public but private, a place created for me and the things that were playing out in my life. New York was mere backdrop, a screen painted with buildings and delivery trucks and dog-walkers and children on scooters, in front of which I enacted my life. I did not care what people around me thought of me because I did not entirely believe they were real. On the subway I bit my nails with impunity; I traced words in the air without bothering to disguise my behavior.