Saving St. Germ

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  I looked around. We were standing in front of a low Spanish-style building with a huge sign reading CHRISTIAN SUPER-LIGHT MISSION on it. A net of colored Christmas lights, many burned out, blinked off and on across its façade.

  “Someone took my little girl away,” I said suddenly, and began to cry.

  She nodded. She was still holding her children to her.

  I wiped my tears on my sleeve, trying to change the subject. I nodded toward the mission.

  “You stay here?”

  She looked at me wild-eyed, her lips still moving. “You from the mission, is that right?” She began to edge away from me.

  “I’m not. I swear it.”

  She spat into the street. Her lips stopped. “They try to take my kids, like all ’em do. Take the mother in, then pack these off and send to foster. You from Social Service you said, right? You come for my kids?”

  “No.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Where your girl?” she asked finally.

  “My husband took her.”

  She laughed, showing her broken teeth. “You come from the mission?”

  “No.”

  “You go in those missions: They Bible-beaters in there.”

  “My husband took her—didn’t even give me a chance to talk to her. The son of a bitch, he won’t let me even see her.”

  “Son of a bitch. Uh-hum. That’s right, baby.”

  The baby had started crying and she lifted it on her shoulder and nuzzled it.

  “I’m going to die if I don’t get her back.”

  “He came after me. He’s gonna cut my babies too, he say.”

  The little boy pulled away from her suddenly and tugged at her coat. His voice was high and lisping.

  “Can we go up there to McDonald’s? Huh? Huh?”

  “What’s going to happen now?”

  She blinked.

  “McDonald’s.”

  We walked up the littered street toward the Golden Arches. The family stayed together, a careful unit, and I walked a little behind.

  “Listen,” I called after her as we walked, “did you know that a single quark is afloat in a crowded sea of continuously appearing and disappearing virtual pairs of quarks?”

  “Uh-hum. Uh-hum,” she said softly. “You from Social Service, right?”

  “Quark,” said the little retarded girl, “quark quark quark!”

  O Aspasia, Annie Jump Cannon, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Elizabeth Fulhame (“the ingenious and lively Ms. Fulhame on the reduction of gold salts by light”) ... O Isabella Bird Bishop, O St. Nicerata, O Ellen Swallow, O Theana.

  We marched, me bringing up the rear, toward the Golden Arches.

  On the steps of the Magellan Hotel, I watched the storm clouds gather. The air was full of high-flying green electricity: Rain was on its way. The old battered men on the steps spat and complained; the wind picked up and tousled their ratty hair, blew trash across the street. Where would all these people go if it rained? Inside, I’d settled with the desk clerk (if you could call a man in a metal cage in charge of opening doors a desk clerk)—the Family would stay at the Magellan for five more days, which is what the Mother had wanted to do—and then? I didn’t know. I no longer had a salary. I had grant money for my work in the lab but I didn’t know if I was ever going back to the lab. The Mother liked the Magellan because she believed the desk kept out the Social Service and the missionaries, plus the ghost of her mother came once every two days. Also it was close to McDonald’s. Maybe in the next month or so, when my money ran out, when I slipped through the safety net into the street, I’d end up there too. With Ollie?

  I’d been at the Magellan for a little while. After we’d dined at McDonald’s, the Mother had pointed out the Magellan as a refuge she’d sought when she could afford it and we went there. They settled in a “suite” of ugly brown rooms with a toilet and a sink in a closet. I sat down in a chair in a room across the hall from theirs—and I stopped. It was a kind of catatonia; I sat there in the chair and I don’t know how much time passed. I was aware of them moving about their room, the doors open, TV blaring ... but I was made of stone. For the moment, my headlong flight had ceased. I’d go in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I’d come to and the woman would be dancing soundlessly in my room. Once I jolted awake: she was standing over me. She touched my face—then my hair.

  “Fire-red. Fire-red.” Then she frowned.

  “Lemme see your teeth.” She pulled up my upper lip and stared at my front teeth. Her face was very close to mine, a frown of concentration on it. Her breath was sweet but overripe, like apricots.

  “No false?”

  I shook my head.

  She touched my front teeth, her finger felt like a zap of electricity, then let the lip drop: “I know somebody put a di-mon right there.”

  She walked away, across the hall, and took a chicken leg from a bucket on the table, then stood chewing on it, tearing at the flesh, staring across the hall at me.

  When I finally shook myself and stood up, I was used to the stained walls, the bare bulb overhead; I’d lost all sense of time. Was it Wednesday, Thursday? Another week? I took a step, unsteadily—I had to go get Ollie. I washed my face, staring at myself in the rippling piece of dark mirror over the standing drain that was a sink—I saw how ghastly I looked. I rinsed my mouth and tried to clean my nails. Down the hall I could hear two drunken men shouting at each other. Then came the powerful smell of disinfectant and the clank of a pail: housekeeping.

  I went downstairs and outside and stood on the steps of the Magellan Hotel in the wind and sobbed for Ollie. The numbness of her loss had splintered now into specific pains: The pain of not being able to touch her, to hold her, to nuzzle through her fragrant fine hair. The pain of not hearing her voice, of not seeing her face startle like a bird into each of its familiar and subtle expressions, not bathing her, not feeding her, not putting her to sleep. My shoulders shook and I had to sit down on the top step and hold myself, to stop the sobbing.

  I had two dollars left in my pocket. I tried to remember where my car was, but I couldn’t. I wiped my eyes. I heard a ruckus behind me in the hotel lobby, turned around and saw the Family making its way through the dim stained interior. The Mother was shouting something and the kids, pulled along in her wake, looked exhausted and resigned.

  They brushed past me on the top step and I touched the Mother’s arm. She looked strangely at me. She didn’t remember me though I’d just said good-bye to her upstairs. I’d asked her name and the names of her children, but she said they didn’t call each other by name and she certainly didn’t ask mine.

  “Hi,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “We got to go,” she said and rolled her eyes. “They let in some Social Service person up there.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Wait a minute, you Social Service too!”

  “No, I’m not. Wait, there’s no Social Service person upstairs!”

  “I gotta go now.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Come back here, please. Just promise me you’ll come back and stay, OK? It’s going to rain.”

  I grabbed her sleeve; she was already on her way, the baby asleep on her shoulder.

  “Don’t go, please.”

  She pulled away; the baby opened its eyes and stared dully at me over her shoulder. I took the hand of the little boy. He looked at me, terrified.

  “Bring your mommy back here later, to the room. It’s all paid for.”

  He continued to stare at me. His mother called him and he ran. She called him Brother.

  Halfway down the block, she stopped, turned around and looked directly at me.

  “When my mamma call to me, I’ll come back here! It might be sooner, it might be later,” she yelled at me. “You think you can tell nobody what to do? No you can’t, you burnin’ Red, you can’t tell nobody!” Then she whirled around and shuffled off.

  One of the old men on the step craned around and looked up at me. “Go
ddam fucking bitch,” he said. Then: “Goddam fucking wind.” And as he spoke I felt the first drizzling drops on my face. I walked past him down the steps; he held out his grizzled hand and I gave him a dollar. Then it started to pour.

  I boarded the bus a few blocks away and fell exhausted into a seat. The other passengers stared at me. I was soaking wet and I was still wearing a paper crown from McDonald’s on my head and I realized I’d been talking to myself. I waved at the staring faces and they quickly looked away. Somehow this made me laugh, rather loudly, and the woman sitting across from me moved to a different seat, nearer the driver.

  I stared out the window at the passing city; after a while I understood that the bus was going to go within blocks of UGC. At the main gate stop, I got off in the driving rain and walked past the guard in his neon slicker, busy in his booth, then trudged toward Oberman Hall. My shoes were filled with water and my hair was streaming. Soaking bits of the yellow tissue crown stuck to my hair and eyelashes. I stopped at one point and leaned against a tree. Then the rain came down even harder; I had to squint to see. At last I could make out the outlines of the science and research buildings and I heard myself sobbing as I pushed my body toward the lab.

  I fell against the wall inside Oberman Hall, panting. When I pushed open the door, the lights were on and there was loud music. Rocky was there, dressed up in glittery leggings and a jeweled black leather jacket, lots of makeup with about sixteen gold earrings. There was her big red book bag on the floor, half filled with texts and slides.

  She came around a pillar, leaned against it, and stared at me. Then she hurried over and took my arm.

  “He took Ollie.”

  “Who did? Jay?”

  I nodded and started to sob and then I got control. I put my head back and breathed through my nose. Rocky pulled up a chair, sat me in it, then held up a hand for me to wait and turned off her tape deck.

  I felt a sense of horror telling her what had happened, because now the events had become a narrative, a story, and this somehow distanced me from Ollie, set the unthinkable into predictable anecdotal sequence. But I had to talk to someone.

  Rocky blinked her eyes and shook her head at me.

  “You look like you died,” she said, and didn’t laugh. “I mean it. You look as if someone shot you in the back seven hours ago and you’ve been walking around ever since, losing blood and your memory.”

  “Blood, maybe,” I said. “But I remember everything.”

  She got up and went to the hot-drinks machine and came back with two cups of coffee. I drank mine down eagerly, even though it burned my throat. I heard Rocky rummaging around in the shelves and this time she returned with a pile of old towels. I set my coffee down and she threw one over my head. I dried my hair. Then, still shaking with cold, I wrapped myself in the remaining towels and went back to the coffee.

  “Jesus,” she said again, “you look like shit.”

  I toasted her with the plastic cup. “You’re back.”

  She looked away.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not. I just came in tonight to pick up my stuff.” She shrugged and looked around, scratching her arm and sipping her coffee. “My books and tape deck and stuff—I’m leavin’.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m leavin’. I’m droppin’ out of school, going back to work in the family store for a while.”

  I sat up, spilling the last of my coffee. “What are you talking about?”

  “Hey, Professor. You’re the one who said I wasn’t no good at science, just good at fuck-ing!”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Hey Prof, I’m just throwin’ shade on you. You hurt my feelings that night but ... that’s not it. I made this decision based on, you know, my life.”

  “Rocky, don’t be funny.”

  “My life. My GPA ain’t that hot overall, this place costs big money and ...” She looked at me. “There’s someone new in my life.”

  “Rocky. No.”

  I watched her as she took a stick of gum out of her jacket pocket, unwrapped it with maddening slowness, then popped it in her mouth.

  “Rocky, you’re not going to do it, are you? You’re not going to throw this away?”

  I tried to get her to look at me. She stuck out her lower jaw, stretching the gum inside her mouth. Her eyes were fluttering, half closed.

  “How many grad students have I had in here? You’re a kid and you’re way beyond them. You’re so gifted, Rocky.” I paused to get my breath. “Who the hell is it, anyway? Another Troy? Or Lance?”

  She snorted. “No. It ain’t Lance or Troy.” She chewed, watching me.

  “I admit it: Science is important to me. You taught me a lot. But I need to have that same feeling I have in here ... in other places.”

  There was silence. She shrugged again and stared into space, her jaws working. I blew my nose. She looked at me.

  “You understand?”

  “What’s to understand? You’re in love with some guy and—”

  “Woman.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Woman. I’m in love with some woman. I got a new girlfriend.”

  I shook suddenly with cold and she blinked, surprised, as if I’d flinched in revulsion. “Girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed at my face. “You never guessed, Prof? That I hang out on both sides? God, you’re major uncool.”

  I put down my cup awkwardly; towels slid from my shoulders. “Who is she?” I asked, major-uncoolly.

  “Who she is doesn’t matter. I love her. She’s not like me. She’s quiet, she’s deep. But the thing is I have this feeling with her which is very much the way I used to feel in here with you.”

  “So are saying that you never cared about science, you just—”

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t all you, don’t get excited, man. What I liked was the fact that two women, two of us, could work together like that. I liked that, Prof. I liked the work and I liked the idea of the two women. So what you said about cholos hurt me—but let me tell you, not as much as it hurt me to go into the graduate admissions office, where they looked at me like some kind of little puta! And I thought to myself in there, Why do I need to borrow forty thousand so I can go to grad school in biochemistry or molecular biology and end up working in a paint factory? Who’s gonna hire me afterwards?”

  I rubbed my sleeve across my runny nose and felt tears starting up again. “You would not end up ...”

  She folded her arms in front of her and snapped her gum with authority. Her look silenced me.

  “I’m not you. Harvard connections and all that. If I do this, it’s just gonna be the way I say. That’s all.”

  The tears ran down my face and I put my head down.

  After a bit she got up and knelt beside me and put her arms around me. She smelled like gardenias and Doublemint. I put my head on her shoulder and we held each other. Then she sat back on her heels and pushed her long hair out of her eyes.

  “I found your note to me in here. The night guard let me in and hey, there it was.”

  Gum snap.

  “Thanks for writing it.”

  I’d forgotten the notes I’d left; I’d forgotten everything, it seemed. Centuries ago (a sharp but muffled pain) I’d found out I’d been scooped by L.R., standing in this room.

  I covered my face with my hands again. Gum snap—I felt her shake her hair. “You want me to kidnap Ollie back from Jay?”

  I laughed into my hands—it felt odd to laugh. I looked up. “I want you to come back here to work.”

  “You know, I can’t do that right now. I gotta think.”

  There was another pause. She stared at me, cracking her gum, thinking. We were still kneeling.

  “You ever see a scientist with an ass like this?” She turned around and waggled her rear end. “And hey, so help me, they can kiss it, man!”

  “You were born to be in science, Rocky.”

  She laughed. “I was born to caus
e trouble. Like you.”

  She leaned over again and kissed me on the lips. Then she pulled away, a little frightened. I reached for her and hugged her.

  “I love you,” I said. “I need you to help me.”

  She shook her head dazedly and smiled. “You mean you’re coming back here?”

  “I don’t know.” I stood up. Rocky stood up too. “I need a ride home. Can you drop me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You’re on my way.”

  As we turned up my block, I saw that all the lights were burning inside my house. I couldn’t remember if I’d left them on when I’d taken off for Jay’s. I saw a silhouette moving inside. My heart moved—Ollie? Had Jay reconsidered and brought her back?

  I leapt out of Rocky’s car, beckoning to her to follow, ran up the steps, and jammed my key in the door. Someone was in the hallway; a large shape stood there as I opened the door. I pulled my key free of the lock and stared. It was Q.

  Chapter 25

  I DON’T KNOW who was more shocked. We stood staring without speaking. Then Rocky came up behind me and then my mother, wearing a blue silk bathrobe, appeared in the entryway behind Q. Then everyone spoke at once.

  I was asking them what they were doing there and they were carrying on about the way I looked, and where had I been, and where were Jay and Ollie? Rocky was trying to say good-bye to me, having sensed family weather. Finally everyone stopped talking and Rocky hugged me, once, hard, and loped off across the lawn.

  They pulled me into the house, where, despite the enormous distraction of their presence, a tidal wave of grief overtook me.

  Her dragon still sat in the red chair where I’d put it the other night. Her yellow rain boots stood side by side near the umbrella stand. Her “TV” box in the corner. Her dreamy, startling little face looked out from photographs everywhere: on the walls, the coffee table, everywhere I turned. Sobs rose in my throat, but I caught them, one by one. I pulled myself back up straight. They were staring at me.

  My mother stepped forward. She had that resolute I-can-fix-it look on her face that I remembered from childhood. It was a look that I’d come, over many years, to understand never existed in pure form. It always appeared in combination with a swift glance of accusation; so it was really the I-can-fix-it—you-did-it-again-didn’t-you-you-hapless-jerk look.