by Unknown
It got so every day was a surprise, whether you’d want to dance and fly and scream just to hear the sound of your own voice cutting the air, whether noises were too sharp and colors too bright, whether you felt like hugging or laughing or punching a fist through the webbed glass windows just to have something sharp so you could cut and cut and cut. Roar decided one of the droolers in the rec room was looking at him funny and broke the guy’s arm in two places before the monkeys got him down and sent him off for some time in the straps. Crow kissed me, or maybe let me kiss her, or maybe I imagined it, but there wasn’t much difference and anyway her lips were harder than I thought they’d be, and when we lay together side by side, with her hand in mine and her head against my cheek, her hair was stiff and rough, like sticks. She rubbed it against my face until I said stop, it hurts, and she laughed and said nothing hurts until it does, and then she took my hand and laid it on her breast and made it squeeze and squeeze. Like milking a cow, I thought, because those were the kinds of thoughts I had then, with Dorothy’s voice in my head and Crow’s meds in my blood and because I knew sometimes you needed that and because I thought maybe it was a dream, I let her make me hurt her until she screamed.
Dorothy got bored.
“Screw the pill thing,” she said. “What we need is some booze. How are we supposed to have any fun around here?”
“The Wizard can get us booze,” Roar said quietly, because even after two days in the straps, he was still getting ideas, sometimes even good ones. None of us were used to that yet.
Dorothy was still new enough not to understand.
“The Wizard can get anyone anything,” Crow said. She always liked to be the one to explain things to Dorothy. “But it’ll cost us.”
The Wizard lived in green.
Jade. Chartreuse. Citrine. Kelly. Verdigris. Lime. Avocado. Hunter. Rifle. Emerald. He named the colors for us, tapping along the wall where he’d taped pages from magazines, strips of cloth, napkins and leaves and curling locks of hair—a collage covering every inch of plaster in more colors than I ever knew existed, and all of them green.
No one knew what it was the Wizard had about green, like no one knew what he was in for or how long he’d been here or how it was he managed to smuggle in everything that he did—not just booze and the good kinds of drugs but smokes and sharp objects and the kinds of movies we weren’t supposed to watch because they might give us the wrong ideas. He had a middle-aged-dad paunch and the big red nose of a drunk or a clown. We’d never been in his room before, because Crow said we had all we needed with just us, and that it wasn’t worth it. But now, I guess, because Dorothy said so, it was.
“Vodka,” Dorothy told him, one hand on her hip, the other around Bad Dog’s neck. “Also cigarettes and a lighter.”
“Not cloves,” I murmured. I didn’t look at Crow, who didn’t care about smoke but hated fire. Dorothy said we should do what we wanted, and I wanted cigarettes. Real ones.
“Not cloves,” Dorothy said. “And scissors.”
The Wizard frowned. “You slice your wrists, it’s a mess for all of us.”
“No wrist slicing.” Dorothy smiled and raised three fingers in salute. “Scout’s honor.”
Crow gave me a sharp poke in the ribs, which I knew meant when did I ask Dorothy to get me the scissors, and why didn’t she know about it. I didn’t even have to ask, but I wouldn’t tell Crow that, because who was Crow to say Dorothy and I couldn’t have secrets together, too?
“And what do I get?” the Wizard said. He was looking at Dorothy, and he was looking at me.
Dorothy gave him a smile that didn’t belong here any more than she did, a smile left over from wild late-night bonfires and 3 a.m. beer runs and cutting school to smoke weed in the parking lot and a different life. “What do you want?”
In the Wizard’s room, late at night, it’s too dark to see the green, but you can smell it, rich and moist and sweet, like a forest after the rain.
In the Wizard’s room, late at night, the monkeys down the hall watching hockey and cheering loud enough to cover the noises we make, he tells me to be quiet, even though he doesn’t have to. He says he doesn’t like the sound of my voice. “It’s like metal,” he says, and then he laughs.
His breath smells green, and his chest is hairier than I expect.
I do not throw up.
It hurts when he sticks it in, but only a little, and I do not gasp.
It hurts when he is behind me, and his rhythm is a pounding, pounding, pounding, and my head shakes and bumps the wall each time, and it’s like I’m his Bad Dog, raggy and boneless and covered in filth.
His hands are on my scars.
“Pretty,” he whispers in the dark. “So pretty.”
He finds the bare patch on my thigh, the place where skin is only skin, unbroken and waiting. “Mine,” he whispers.
I am quiet, like he wants. I breathe beneath him. When it ends, I listen to him snore, and I am still there when he wakes up, so he turns me over and starts again.
“A toast to Tin!” Dorothy crowed, and raised a paper cup of vodka in my direction. “Here’s to taking one for the team, and here’s hoping it was a big one.”
She winked, and they all did the shot.
The Wizard supplied us with a bottle of vodka, three packs of cigarettes, a yellow BIC lighter, and most miraculously of all, the key to a supply closet where we could enjoy it all to our hearts’ content.
Instead of scissors, he got me a beautiful knife.
He had looked at Dorothy before he looked at me, because who wouldn’t, but he wasn’t picky. Anyone but the ugly one, he’d said, and we all knew the ugly one was Crow.
He looked at Dorothy, but then Dorothy looked at me, and somehow it was done.
After, we pretended like I volunteered, like I wanted it, like Dorothy was doing me a favor by stepping aside and letting me have all the fun, and maybe we weren’t pretending. Maybe that’s how it was. Maybe it could be that way if I decided that’s how it should be.
So I tipped my vodka back, too, and it burned.
That morning I had taken my secret knife and carved triangles into the bare patch on my thigh—not bare anymore. Interlocking triangles, one corner cutting into the next, so suddenly they weren’t triangles at all, just sharp lines doing their own thing. One for the Wizard, one for Crow, one for Dorothy. All of them for me.
Crow scowled when I flicked the lighter, so I flicked it again, right under her nose, yellow flame leaping toward her, and she screeched and punched me in the stomach. The lighter jumped out of my hand and skidded across the linoleum, the flame winking out. Then Roar roared, and Dorothy slapped a hand over his mouth, and Crow laughed and kissed my neck, and I squirmed away and lit up my smoke, and we all got so drunk we puked.
It’s good enough that we do it again, and again. When we need more vodka—and more cigarettes along with it, and once some of the graphic novels Crow likes with all the blood, and more than once some pot for Roar, and always something special for Dorothy, brownies or polish or an inferior pair of silver shoes—I do what I have to do.
It gets easier.
The Wicked Bitch never noticed any of it. Neither did the monkeys, neither did the doctors, and if the other patients did, they weren’t saying anything, because they all had their own arrangements with the Wizard, or because they couldn’t care less. We could have lived like that forever, but instead we did it only until Dorothy pointed out that it wasn’t living at all, not as long as we were caged up in the zoo.
“I think you’re ready now,” she said, proud as if she’d made us herself. “Let’s do this thing, for real.”
No more sneaking around for the sake of sneaking.
No more pill swapping just to see what would happen.
No more games.
For real.
Crow didn’t want to call it anything—Crow didn’t even like to talk about it, didn’t take part in the planning, just sat there dumb and dull like Roar used to be, wh
ile we scribbled maps, timed rounds, scouted exits—and so I had to name it myself. The Great Escape. The Big Breakout. Mission Possible. It wasn’t my fault they were stupid; it wasn’t supposed to be my job. My job was to get what we needed from the Wizard: The timing. The keycards. The cash. But when I asked Crow, she just shrugged and said whatever Dorothy wants.
Like I didn’t exist.
Crow didn’t know about the maps I was drawing on my calves, the way the knife tip traced our escape route through the flesh. She didn’t come into my room at night anymore, and I didn’t want her there, anyway. Once, I peeked through the crack in her door, and I watched her, sitting on her bed in the moonlight, staring at nothing, like she couldn’t be bothered to help us escape because she was already gone.
Maybe, even though I packed my bag and mouthed goodbye to my roommate and pressed my palm against the Wizard’s door like some kind of promise, I knew it would all go to shit. But I didn’t think it would go so fast.
We made it out of west, through the intake lobby, and all the way to the last of the locked doors. We made it far enough to start thinking we might actually do it, to whisper to one another, “This is real, this is happening, we’re getting out.” I told Crow we would run away to the city together, and we would get cool jobs and a cool apartment and live like other people lived, only better, because it was like Dorothy said: We lived in color. We were special. Crow blinked at me and said could we get a goat like Bad Dog and feed it all our dirty laundry, and then she said would the Wizard be at the door every night, collecting the rent, and I just nodded and told her sure, Crow, whatever you want—because Crow was right about her brains being a little scrambled, especially without her blue pills, and sometimes it was good just to say yes and keep going.
Dorothy held her hand, and they skipped along the road of yellow brick, tracing it back and back and back toward where we all started, toward the last of the locked doors, and whatever was on the other side of it. I locked arms with Roar, and he gave me the lopsided grin he’d been trying out lately. He wasn’t any good at smiling, and he was worse at skipping, but that was okay, too. On that night in that dark hallway, after it all seemed possible and before we got to the last door, everything was okay. Crow could think whatever she wanted; Roar could stop being afraid; I could watch Crow’s curls dance in the darkness and breathe in her smell and see how she looked at Dorothy and still keep the knife in my pocket, because we were close enough to the end that carving my heart out could wait.
The last door.
That was the one that needed the stolen pass, and Dorothy flashed it against the blinking panel, but nothing happened, except a red light. She swiped it again, and there was a noise, a click, a little like a turning lock but more like a warning.
It takes less than five minutes to happen.
It’s still happening.
I’m still there, in the dark corridor, choking on panic and the bleat of an alarm. I’m still there, always there, like I’m still in the room with Crow on that first night, like I’m still with the Wizard, will always be in the stink of his breath, in the sweat of his arms, in the bargain no one forced me to make.
When the scars fade, I carve them fresh.
In the dark corridor on the last night, when the alarm blares, and the monkeys spring from all sides, we scatter. We are in a lounge, which means tables to hide beneath and couches to climb over and magazines to throw. Dorothy hides. Roar fights. I draw my knife and think for once I will cut someone else.
There is screaming. Those are the monkeys, as Roar sends them flying through the air and into walls. Roar is the beast we always knew he could be, our fierce giant, the monster we made of him, and it takes six of them and a Taser to pin him down, something I only find out later, because I am focused on my knife.
They come toward me, and I brandish the blade, and I shout warnings, lines from movies that tougher people than me know how to say—“Stand back or else!”—but no one stands back; they come for me, and when I hear a fearsome screech, I know it is Crow coming to rescue me. I want to shout, “No, don’t! Save yourself!”—more of the things you say in the movies when there is any saving to go around. But I realize that Crow is not coming for me.
The monkeys have Dorothy and are dragging her out from under the table, dragging her even as she clings to the leg and sobs and begs them to let her go. The monkeys have Dorothy, and Crow somehow has the lighter. And a bottle of hairspray she must have packed in her bag when we all thought we were leaving for a different life.
Crow fires a spray of foul mist.
Crow screams, “Let go of Dorothy!”
Crow flicks the lighter.
And Crow is on fire.
It was the Wicked Bitch of the West, of all people, who put her out. Padded out of her nap room to see what the ruckus was and thought fast—filled a bucket of water, doused Crow’s flames. The monkeys found a fire extinguisher somewhere, but by then it was over. We were all quiet and still, except for Roar, who was making strange noises in electrified sleep; except for me, who was slipping a knife back into my pocket unseen; except for Crow, who was screaming.
It doesn’t hurt until it does. Crow taught me that.
I could have taught her something, too: that once it starts hurting, it never stops.
They took Roar away to north wing, with its black ribbon of death, and they kept him there for a long time. When they brought him back, he wasn’t Roar anymore. He was a body to prop in the corner, on a chair or a stool or a windowsill—a giant body like a piece of furniture that drooled and moaned and didn’t notice if you hung towels or bras or signs saying “vegetable” around its neck. Sometimes, if you worked at it, you could get him to rock back and forth, like he was praying.
Roar was back before Crow because of the burns.
When she came back, she was still Crow, but she also wasn’t. Because of the scar tissue and the melted skin that turned her face into a cratered moon, because of the nightmares, because of the hair that burned away and wouldn’t grow back. Because now she was the one who felt too much, felt everything like it was fire. Or because Dorothy was gone.
“Mommy, I want to go home.” That’s what Dorothy said into the phone in the hallway, after. She wouldn’t talk to me, but she couldn’t stop me from watching her, so I did. I played her shadow and followed her to the phone. She called her mommy, and she said the magic words, and then I couldn’t follow her anymore because she was gone.
Crow doesn’t always remember that Dorothy left. She doesn’t remember why she hurts, or why the mirrors have been taken from her room. Sometimes she doesn’t even remember Dorothy was ever here, and those are the best times, because we pretend things are like they used to be.
They say it’s probably the medicine that makes her like this—foggy and far away. They say it might just be how she wants it, deep down, because why not escape inside if you can’t get out.
I think they’re wrong. She wants to come back to me. Maybe she’s punishing me for what I let happen, and eventually I’ll be punished enough. Until then I rub lotion on her ruined skin and kiss the spots on her neck where the crows once flew. I memorized them all, and when she asks, I tell her they’re still there. “A murder of crows,” I whisper. “A murder of you.”
They tell me I won’t be here forever. They tell me they will fix me and send me away, and maybe this time I won’t come back again, and I let them think I believe them, that I can be fixed, that I am broken, that there is an away where I belong more than I belong here.
They tell me there are people out there who want and need me back, but there is only one person who needs me and only one person I want. I take care of her, because Dorothy’s not the only one who wants to run home, and Crow is home. I call to her, and I remind her, and I wait.
I remember for her the things she needs to remember, and I remember for myself the things she needs to forget.
I remember with the knife, which is still and always mine. I do what I need to d
o to keep it.
THE VEILED SHANGHAI
BY KEN LIU
June 7, 1919, Shanghai
“Don’t go into the streets today, Dorothy,” Uncle Heng said.
Ever since fourteen-year-old Dorothy Gee started attending the Willard-Pond English School for Chinese Girls, Uncle Heng liked to use her English name instead of her Chinese one—he said it sounded more educated.
“The foreigners in the International Settlement get nervous when the Chinese become unruly. They’re scared that the strike and protest are getting out of hand. Soldiers from those British naval ships at the docks came onshore last night. I think something bad is going to happen.”
“But the foreigners love freedom,” Dorothy said. “That’s what Mr. Ward always says in class. This strike is for freedom, too.”
Uncle Heng laughed at this, but Dorothy did not see what was so funny.
“The foreigners like freedom sometimes, for some people,” Uncle Heng finally said. “Just promise me you’ll stay home today.” He left to get more groceries from outside the city, as all the merchants had shuttered their stores.
Dorothy nodded reluctantly. This had been the most exciting week in her life. She desperately wanted to go out and join the throngs that filled the streets of Shanghai: workers on strike, students marching and shouting slogans, and merchants closing up their shops and refusing to sell to anyone.
Even the singsong girls and those women standing on street corners in tight cheongsams with long slits were no longer soliciting customers. Instead they linked arms and sang songs like this: