America
Page 14
“Nah,” I go, feeling stupid.
“Fuck.”
“Where’s Lyle?”
“The fuck should I know?” He pulls in on that blunt again.
“Forget it.” It’s a while before anyone says anything. Then he goes. “We ain’t shit.”
“Huh?”
“We ain’t shit. We ain’t brothers. We ain’t associates. We ain’t shit. You got that?” He walks away with that blunt, and the fountain comes on real strong, real fast and unexpected, the water gushing up from all those little places, and Brooklyn jumps, and I laugh at his back, because why did he show up if we ain’t shit?
* * *
“I think you’re ready for the kitchen.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“They’re going to pay me?”
“Hardly.”
“I’ll still come by here?”
“It’s by no means a full-time activity. You’ll still come here.”
“Huh.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“How do you?”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Well, all right. You answered.”
“I’m full of surprises, America.”
* * *
They were changing the whole system, anyway, and they thought I’d fit in real good to start. Now it’s three different dinners every night. Three different cooking stations, three different menus, three different teams. They got two professionals running the show, with a head cook and three cooks under him. I’m the only kid from inside who gets to be a cook. At first, they show me how to work the stuff. How to use the stoves and the mixers and all that shit. How to cook for bunches of guys all at the same time. How to make big batches. I have to wear an old lady hair net like Brooklyn, and plastic gloves, and I have to keep count of shit. How many bags of potatoes we use up, how many tubs of beans, bags of rice, how many crates of fruit and vegetables come in and go out. I have to think and remember a lot of stuff. Have to check the burners and the ovens all the time when I’m done. Can’t leave them on. Can’t burn up anybody else.
“You got that obsessive-compulsive sickness, kid?” the head cook goes. “Godamighty. You check that oven more times than I got hairs on my ass.”
“Nah,” I tell him.
“What’re you in here for, then? Shit, if you don’t have that obsessive-compulsive thing, my apron ain’t white.”
“Depression,” I tell him.
“You don’t look depressed,” he goes.
“I’m getting better,” I tell him.
Then I check the oven again.
* * *
We’re on a boat. In the middle of the ocean. Liza’s hair is long again. She’s hot, the way Wick and Marshall would think somebody’s hot. Anybody would think so. She’s smiling at me. She’s saying, I don’t hate you, America. Stupid. I don’t hate you. The boat moves, and it’s a whale. We’re standing on a whale. She steps up real close to me and kisses my mouth. She presses up against me, and she has tits now, and they’re soft. She lets me put my hands on them, and it feels good. She doesn’t hate me, and she is soft and good.
* * *
My shorts are wet. There weren’t any dicks. There was just Liza.
* * *
I don’t see Brooklyn in the kitchen, because I’m in the prep room, and he’s in the serving passage. And he doesn’t usually start until I’m done. But he’s still here. I know because the head cook tells me. And plus, sometimes we end up not being shit at the fountain at five o’clock in the fucking a.m.
I ask them for sea salt and more garlic, and the guys start saying stuff tastes better. I ask them for gingered mustard, and I make them buy scallions.
“This kid’s a real artist,” the head cook says.
“Can I get some dried cranberries?” I go.
“Dried cranberries,” he says. “Godamighty. Dried cranberries.”
He gets them for me, and they go real nice in my gravy.
* * *
We’re on the whale, and Liza’s hot, and nice and good, and then she lets me get in her pants, and she’s got a dick, and at first it’s cool, it’s normal, and it’s hot, and then real quick she turns into Browning and the whale starts diving underwater, and I’m drowning, and then Browning turns back into Liza with a dick, and it’s good again, and she hugs me real nice, the way a mother would, and it’s all okay, and it doesn’t matter.
* * *
My shorts are wet. It was Liza and a dick. Man. That is some weird shit.
* * *
It was good, but then they start finding the carrots. I’ve been getting rid of them every way I know how. Been throwing bunches out the window and through the grinder. Dumping armfuls down the garbage chute and the incinerator. I’ve been putting whole crates in the recycle bins and in the Dumpster in the back.
“You know who’s been messing with the carrots?” the head cook goes.
“Nah,” I tell him.
He comes back with a quarter crate. “I want half of these in the salad tonight, and I want the other half in the stir-fry.”
“Yup,” I tell him, and I wait for him to leave. He stays where he is. “The hell you doing?”
“Excuse you?”
“I said, what are you doing, man?”
“I’m watching you,” he goes.
“Step off,” I tell him.
“I want to see you handle carrots.”
“You out of your tree?” I go.
“I get to go home at night, kid,” he goes. “I’m not the one out of my tree.”
“I don’t like carrots,” I tell him.
“That’s what I figured.”
* * *
“So what happened?”
“Didn’t they tell you?”
“They said you were wasting enormous quantities of carrots. They said you were disposing of them. By the dozens. By the barrel.”
“Yup.”
“Must have taken up a lot of time.”
“Yup.”
“What is it with carrots?”
“Nothing.”
“America.”
“Dr. B.”
“You liked the kitchen.”
“Yup.”
“You were good in there.”
“Told you.”
“You could be a chef one day.”
“Yup.”
“But what chef cooks without carrots?”
“I don’t like carrots.”
“Clearly.” Then he starts smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry, America. I’m just imagining all those carrots.”
“It’s not funny, man.”
“I know it’s not. I just.”
“Isn’t that against the law, or something? Laughing at a patient?”
“America,” he goes, all struggling to get his face under control.
“Shit,” I go, trying to sound aggravated. “What are you, some kind of amateur? Now I have to deal with a goddamn amateur?”
I try to say it with a straight face, but that stupid laughing is catching.
* * *
I go out by the fountain at five o’clock in the fucking a.m., and he’s there. Smoking a cigarette.
“Where’s your blunt?” I ask him.
“Done with that shit,” Brooklyn goes.
“Cool.”
“The hell do you care?”
“Whatever.”
“They say you killed a guy.”
“Who says?”
“People.”
“Huh.”
“You did that?”
“What do you think?”
“What? You a shrink now?” It’s something, how he knows about all that, too.
“You think I am?” I go.
“Man,” he goes. “I hate that shit. That question-with-a-question shit.”
“Yup,” I go. He flicks me a cigarette.
“Yup.”
* * *
I�
��m on the whale, and Browning’s there, with a baseball, and we’re throwing, and it’s slippery on the whale’s back, and we’re throwing, and the ball turns into a dick, and it’s safe, and it’s good, and he’s smiling, and the dick gets bigger, and then it’s not safe, but it’s hot, but it’s bad and not safe, but it’s hot, and my dick is hard, and then he stops smiling, and the dick gets bigger, and then his face turns into Liza’s, and she’s smiling, and then it turns into Dr. B.’s, and he’s not smiling, but he’s safe, and the dick gets smaller, and my dick gets smaller, and then the face turns into Liza’s, and she’s got a dick, and it’s hot, and I want to fuck her with the dick and all, and then she turns into Dr. B., and he’s reading Ernie’s letter, and he reads, I know you’re a good person, and then he turns into Liza without a dick, and it’s not hot, and I don’t want to fuck, and she’s hugging me, and then we’re not on the whale, but we’re at Everest, and it’s cold and clean and white and bright, and Liza and Dr. B. and Ernie and Brooklyn and Ty and Fish are all there and they’re smiling, and it’s safe, and it’s good, and they’re pointing at some shit, and it’s Mrs. Harper in an ice wheelchair, and she’s smiling, and she’s going, America America.
* * *
Dr. B. says every time I scrape a carrot or cut it or chop it, it can be me telling Browning how mad I am for him being real good to me and then turning it all ugly. Dr. B. says every time I scrape a carrot or cut it or chop it, it can be me telling God or Mrs. Harper or even Browning I’m real sorry I stole his life away like that. Dr. B. says every time I scrape a carrot or cut it or chop it, it can be me telling myself I’m done with all the bad, I am over all the bad, I am not all the bad. Dr. B. says I’ll have so many carrots to do all that with that I can work through a whole lot of feelings by just cooking with the damn things. After a while I think maybe Dr. B. is right. So they take me back, and I scrape and cut and chop, and use up a lot of my head, going:
I hate you. Motherfucker, I hate you. Motherfucker. Motherfucker. I hate you. I. Hate. You.
And I take up some of my head going:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am real, real sorry.
Little bits of a minute, I’m going:
I’m not all bad. I’m not so bad. I. Am. Not. Bad.
I don’t know if this shit helps that much.
After a while, it doesn’t even matter.
Seventeen Years Old
BROOKLYN FLICKS HIS cigarette butt into the empty fountain. We watch the curl of its last smoke twist up and fade away.
“Won’t be here tomorrow,” Brooklyn goes.
“Huh.” It’s that time in the beginning of the day when the light is real little and kind of orange, and the birds are all twittery just like in cartoons.
“Going to get busted on a dirty urine. Going to get the twenty-eight-day special.”
“Again?” I go. “You picked up again?” He got clean and picked up. Then he got clean and picked up again, and then he eloped. Then he came back, and he got a lot of months of clean time. Now its all for nothing.
“Couple of beers. A blunt.” He leans back on the edge of the fountain like it’s his own front steps, or something. He’s got the timing down perfect now, so he always gets up and out of the way right when the water starts running again.
“What happened?” I go.
“What up with that, yo? What happened.” I get used to the way he sounds like a smart-ass all the time. I don’t take it real personal.
“You like the way it makes you feel?” I go.
“Nah.”
“Why do you do it?” I sound like Ernie.
“Bored.” He pulls a cigarette out from behind his ear and lights up again. He uses matches. He doesn’t much like lighters.
“Dr. B. says underneath boredom is some other feeling.”
“That dude got your head messed up.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Make you get away from shit.” He says it mumbled, the way you have to when you’ve got a fresh-lit smoke in your mouth, and you don’t want it getting wet with your spit, and shit.
“Huh?”
“You high, you fly, you in the sky.” That cigarette moves up and down the way they do.
He stands straight, real quick, and the fountain revs up with its water and noise like he pressed a button some way, only he didn’t.
* * *
I prep the meat and prep the fish and scrape the cucumbers for ridges on the edges, and I think about it. You have to escape any way you know how. You have to get away sometimes if you don’t get the life you needed. You can float up with your brain, or you can go find stupid Laura Ingalls, or smoke a blunt or drink beers, but somehow, you have to go far for a while. You get some peace that way. You get safe.
* * *
“You’re kicking me out?”
“No. We’re talking about an idea.” Dr. B.’s sitting in his big back black chair with his feet up on his desk, all calm. All fine with it.
“You’re kicking me out, man.”
He slides his legs off the desk and leans forward on his elbows, the way he does that used to make me think he was paying real good attention. He’s full of shit. Same as everybody.
“The idea of it makes you think you’re getting left alone again.”
“Fuck the idea of it. That’s what it is, man. You’re sending me away. Just when I started to like it here. Just when things were going okay. You’re going to ruin it now.”
You’re ruining my party! Who said that? Fish. Fish said that.
“Its not meant to be a punishment, America,” he goes.
“Fuck you,” I tell him.
“Ridgeway has been anticipating the opening of this transitional living home for close to a year now, and I’ve been thinking it could be a good fit for you. Now that it’s a reality, up and running, I thought it was time we discuss it.”
“Ah, man.”
“The fact is, there’s no longer any reason to keep you here.”
“Never signed your bullshit safety contract.”
“You haven’t needed to in a long time. In fact, America, you haven’t needed residential treatment for a long time, either. Short- or long-term. The point is, now there are options.”
“The point is bullshit,” I tell him. I get up out of my chair. I start pacing. I’m big now. I’m big, and my steps take me all the way across his whole damn office, fast. I have to turn around and pace the other way. Back and forth. Back and forth. “You’re not asking. You’re telling. You’re telling me I’ve got to leave. Probably need the damn bed. Probably have some other mental head tried to shoot himself or some shit, needs a place.”
“What’s this bringing up for you, America?” He’s leaning back, and he’s looking at me the way they look at you, and I’m pissed.
I grab his newspaper always lying there on his damn desk, and I start ripping it. I’ve got big hands now, and they rip real good.
“What’s it bringing up?” he goes.
“Shit.”
“It’s bringing up shit?”
“That’s right, man. Shit.”
“You felt like you got sent away when you were small. When you ended up with your brothers. All of you alone.”
“Shut up with that, man.”
“You felt rejected and sent away and you lost Mrs. Harper. Things were never the same for you again. You thought all the bad things that happened were your fault. And that’s what you’re scared of right now.”
I’m making these newspaper shreds mess things up all over the place. All over the floor, all over the air, everywhere. They flutter slow like ashes, and I think of that time when the ashes of my mother’s chart floated all around Browning, when he was sleeping. Before he was dead. “Time’s up,” I go.
“You know it’s not.”
“Yeah?” I grab the doorknob. “It is for me.”
Then I leave.
* * *
I cut and I scrape and I chop, and in my head, I go, It’s not bad. I am not all
bad. I. Am. Not. Bad.
You have to get away somehow. You can choose beers, or you can choose Everest, or you can choose the fountain at five o’clock in the fucking a.m. You have to find where it’s going to be peaceful. You have to find where it’s going to be safe. Maybe you don’t get to stay too long and then you have to choose someplace else all over again. But you always have to choose.
Dear America,
Where are you?
Love, Liza
P. S. You better remember me.
The fountain goes on at 5:17 a.m. I figured it out. You can set your watch by it, if you have one. Brooklyn doesn’t, so I don’t get how he knew to stand up straight real quick all those times at the right second, but he knew. It makes a noise like a bunch of little bathtubs left running. I steal soap from the laundry, and I put some in, and now it’s all white and loamy and crazy. I wish Brooklyn wasn’t in detox. I bet he’d like it.
Liza,
How the hell did you find me?
America
Sometimes from somewhere over my bed at night, I look down and I see me. I’m not that little kid anymore, I’m not all lazy and warm and bad. I’m this bigger kid, this almost-man type, and I’ve got big hands and a big face, and my feet hang off the end of the bed, and I’m not white, and I’m not black, and I’m not anything, but I’m a little bit of everything, and it’s just like that. I look down and it’s just me.
Dear America,
Why didn’t you sign, love, you jerk?
Love, Liza
“If I went, how would it be? And don’t ask me how do I think it would be, or I swear I’ll mess up this whole damn office.”
Dr. B. leans back and crosses his arms over the top of his head, all relaxed and shit.
“Right now there are two young people living there. Another seventeen-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. There’s a counselor who lives there, too. He’s a social worker. His job is to run the house. To provide structure and support. There’s room for a total of four young people. So others may join. You will attend school, regular hours. You would see me three times a week for continued sessions. Over time, you’d see me less often. You would maintain your medication until you, I, and the team all agree otherwise. You’d be allowed to work part-time if you maintain at least a C average in school. The money earned from any paid work would be yours to do with as you want. You would go to summer school so that you can graduate as close to eighteen years old as possible, or, if you think you can pass the GED at that time, you are allowed to try. You would be required to follow the general house rules including your share of chores.”