Fifty Contemporary Writers

by Bradford Morrow

  You walked in the door and there was a gigantic sign: THINK BIG.

  There were signs everywhere: BE BROAD-MINDED, BIG HEADS ARE MADE FOR BIG IDEAS. THE BIGGER THE HEAD THE BIGGER THE HEART.

  That was the main way you could tell it was a big head school. Everything else was normal. The blackboards. The desks. The trash cans.

  That and the doors. They were all coffin shaped.

  Why’d they have to do that? You know? Why couldn’t they have made the doors light bulb shaped? Or keyhole shaped? Coffins! You know what I mean? Coffins!

  Get out! the man from another country shouted. You are scaring my customers!

  All I want is a doughnut, I said.

  Go away! Nobody wants you!

  Please. Just a chocolate twizzler.

  You are scaring the children!

  The man from another country grabbed a hammer from the box under his counter and ran around the counter with the hammer in the air. Look what you did to that little boy! the man from another country said.

  It is true that little boy started crying when I walked into the store. What would be the point of denying that? And now his face was blue-red and he was screaming into his mother’s neck. And she had, in fact, clapped her hand over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see me. But, even so, the person she didn’t want to see was the man from another country. She didn’t want to see what he was going to do with his hammer.

  One chocolate twizzler, I said. I’ll go if you give me one chocolate twizzler.

  I will give you my hammer on your head, said the man from another country. I will give you two seconds and then my hammer is coming down.

  One, the man from another country said. Two. Go now, or I will make a hole in your head with my hammer.

  Please, I said. Just one.

  With a head like that you should never have been born. Why did your mother give you birth?

  I put a simoleon on the counter.

  The man from another country made a clicking noise to his wife. He pointed with his nose, and she threw a chocolate twizzler out onto the sidewalk.

  Go! the man from another country said. Fetch!

  Can I touch it? said the girl. Then she said, It’s warm! It feels like there’s a fire in there. She hit me two times with the point of her knuckle. Is it hollow? She pressed her ear against my temple and she hit me two times again. Huh, she said. I bet I can’t even reach my arms around it. I bet it’s too big.

  She pressed her chest against my forehead and her arms went out on either side.

  Wow! said the girl. It’s ginormous! Not even halfway!

  I didn’t want her to move.

  Mama called them the ant heads. The ant heads don’t like you, she said. They want to put your head in a garbage compactor. If they saw a boulder bouncing down a mountain straight at your head, they wouldn’t say, Watch out! They would cheer.

  Mama is a little head.

  Why did you marry my father? I said.

  Because I thought he was the moon drifting through the trees. Because I thought, There really is a man in the moon! I thought, Now that is a man who is going places! If I am married to the man in the moon, I will see everything. My home will be in the sky. I will have stars for earrings, clouds for slippers, and the sun will be my crown!

  It’s called the hate of love, they told us at the Big Head School. Inside the hate is the love for big heads. Bigger is better, is it not? It is because in the days before before, the little heads used to worship the big heads. They used to drape the big heads in fur and jewelry. They used to spray perfume into the air when the big heads went out for a walk because they wanted the big heads to always think the world was beautiful. The reason they did this is they thought the big heads could see the future. They believed that the heads of the big heads were so big because they were stuffed with everything that hadn’t happened yet. This was all nonsense, of course. It is true that thoughts travel faster in big heads, but they have farther to go. So it all evens out. Eventually the little heads discovered their mistake, and felt betrayed. No more gold and fur and perfume. The big heads felt betrayed too. What? they said. What! Why is this happening? The lesson is: never worship anything. The lesson is: the love in the hate and the hate in the love. The lesson is: it all evens out. If we are lucky. If we wait long enough.

  They don’t know anything at the Big Head School.

  It was the day after the men with torches and picks came to the Big Head School. We all got sent home for a surprise vacation. Because of all the repairs. The new roof and such.

  So, do you want to know what home is to me?

  Television twenty-four/seven. The smell of those little see-through socks that look like stockings for fat dwarves. Parrot shit. Parrot squawks. Mac and cheese.

  Trees and more trees and trees again. Our house was a hiding place in the trees. Nobody knew it was there.

  Mac and cheese. Mac and cheese.

  Mama would walk a mile to the shop of the man from another country, but she wouldn’t go a step further. All he sold was doughnuts and mac and cheese.

  She hadn’t been into town since I was born, even though the man she had disgraced herself for had long gone.

  Couldn’t hold on to him any more than I can hold on to the moon, was what she always said.

  So that day she said, Why don’t you just stay home? They hate you anyway. Why don’t you see your friends from the Big Head School? What did I send you to the Big Head School for if you don’t see your big head friends?

  Mama didn’t know anything.

  I didn’t have any friends at the Big Head School. The truth is that big heads are not very nice people. That’s just a fact.

  So that was the day I started wandering through the trees like my father. Up over the mountaintop, down the other side. Nothing but trees and more trees. And I’m not paying attention to where I’m going. Just all brain scattered and foot tumbling.

  And that’s when I saw the girl for the first time. I followed my feet to the edge of the bluff, and there she was, just below, lying on a rock, her head leaning out over a stream.

  At first she didn’t see me. Maybe it was because of the noise of the water. So I just watched her. She looked to me like she was just about ready to start being a woman, but not quite. So maybe twelve. I was eleven. She was playing with this piece of stick. She’d let it go with her left hand. It would drift downstream and she would catch it with her right hand. Let it go. Catch it. Let it go. Catch it. That’s all she was doing.

  Then one time she missed it.

  I must have air-sucked, because her head jerked up and she was looking at me.

  She was a fat face girl. You know? One of those girls who look like a professional boxer. Or her face got stung by a million bees. All swollen browed and mushroom nosed and slug lips. No eyes to speak of.

  Who are you? she said.

  And I guess I said what I said because I saw how the shadow of my head just perfectly covered her whole body, even though she was mostly lying down:

  The moon.

  No, you’re not.

  Yes, I am.

  Then how come you’re dark?

  I’m always dark in the daytime. That’s why you can’t see me.

  I can see you now.

  You’re not supposed to.

  She squinched up her eye and I could see she was trying to figure out if she should believe me.

  Gotta go, I said. Big night tonight. Need to get some sleep.

  See ya later! she said.

  So after that I came down to see the girl every day. And sometimes I would see her playing her floating stick game. Or making a dam. Or just taking a nap on that rock. But she would never see me. I stuck leaves all over my head and crouched in the bushes. And I was careful never to suck air or sneeze or fart. Sometimes I would wait and wait and she wouldn’t come, so I would go down and play the floating stick game myself, my head reflected like a cloud of cotton candy on the swirly-dimply surface of the water. Once I watched h
er the whole time she was lying on the rock playing her floating stick game. And I went down to her rock as soon as she was gone, and I put my hand down flat where she had been lying. And I could feel it. The heat from her body coming back up to me from the rock.

  So then the Big Head School got all fixed up again. And the teachers told us to put our heads in a ring and do a Chinese Whisper of Hope for the little heads. The big head boy on my left said, I hope the little heads go to hell. And I said to the big head boy on my right, I hope they go to the moon.

  That year the Big Head School canceled summer vacation. Our surprise vacation was enough, they said. In the school lobby they put up a new giant sign: BIG HEADS GET AHEAD.

  The girl didn’t come out to the stream in the winter. So I didn’t see her until more than a year had passed. This time it looked like, ready or not, she’d mostly started being a woman. And I was mostly thirteen.

  She still liked to play her floating game and make dams. But she also liked to lie on her rock and make big sighs. Sometimes she would make quiet noises that I think were a song. Then it was back to sighing again.

  I used to call that being moony. She’s moony today, I said.

  One day I lay down on the far bank of the stream with my head under a bush. I am one of those lucky big heads with a little head face right at the bottom of my big head where I am mostly neck. I figured I wouldn’t be so scary if she only saw my little head face first.

  Hello! I called out when I heard her sit down on her rock. Who’s there?

  Foot-splash. Foot-splash. Foot-splash.

  Who are you? she said, looking down at me.

  Remember me? I said. I’m the moon.

  No you’re not.

  Yes I am.

  Why are you lying there?

  I’m resting. Big night ahead. But now it’s time to rise.

  I had planned to say that all along. I thought if she thought my head was the moon rising in the trees maybe she wouldn’t be so afraid. Maybe she wouldn’t run away.

  You got a big head, she said.

  No I don’t, I said.

  Yes you do. It’s gigantic.

  No it’s not. It’s exactly the right size.

  The day she pressed her chest on my forehead and stretched out her arms came and went. Then there was another day when she said, They say the bigger the head the bigger the you-know-what.

  Heart?

  No, she said. You know.

  I didn’t know, so she pointed with her nose.

  Oh, I said.

  So, is it?

  I don’t know.

  Show me, she said. Then a little later she said, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

  I said I guessed that would be OK.

  So that was what we did.

  Then she said, I guess that’s pretty big. What do you think?

  I don’t really know, I said.

  Neither do I, she said.

  So she let her dress fall back down and I pulled up my pants.

  Then there was the day I said, Why aren’t you afraid of me?

  It’s because you’re the man in the moon.

  No I’m not, I said. Why doesn’t my big head make you cry?

  It’s because you have little hands.

  I do?

  You have little baby angel hands. Who could be afraid of those?

  Look, she said. She took one of my hands and she touched it to her mushroom nose. See? she said. Your hand’s as soft as an angel feather. Then she put my hand on the top of her head. It’s like a fly footstep. On her cheek. A mouse whisper, she said. Then for a long time she just held my hand in the air like she didn’t know what to do with it. This way and that. Up and down. Then finally she put my hand on her belly.

  What is that? I said.

  My belly.

  No. What does it feel like?

  Nothing, she said. That is the exact feeling of something that never happened. And never will. That is the softest feeling in the world.

  She smiled.

  Why should I be afraid of that? she said.

  Then one day: up over the mountaintop and just foot-in-front-of-foot down into the valley, and there I was at exactly the right stream, under exactly the right bluff, at exactly the floating stick game place, but the rock the girl used to lie on was in three pieces, and all the pieces had been spray-painted. One said, BIG HEADS = BIG BUTTS. The other said: WHY DO BIG HEADS HAVE BIG HEADS? BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ANY ASSHOLES AND THEIR SHIT HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE. And the last one said, WHY ARE YOU ALIVE?

  So after that it was television and parrot stink and parrot conversation:

  My mother saying, Who loves you, snooky-wooky?

  And the parrot saying back, Who loves you, snooky-wooky?

  And then the parrot saying to me, Who loves you, snooky-wooky?

  So I would lie down in the yard and look up at the stars and wish I could put my head into a garbage compactor myself.

  And my mother would say, Don’t worry. This vacation can’t last forever. Soon you’ll be back with your big head friends.

  But the welcome-back-to-school letter kept not coming. And just when I was sure it was going to come, it wouldn’t come again. Every time.

  Then one day: bang, bang, bang.

  I opened the door and it was the president of the Big Head School.

  I regret to inform you, he said, that the Big Head School has burned down again and we are too tired to keep on rebuilding it.

  Oh, I said.

  The good news, he said, is that from this moment on, you are on permanent vacation. Congratulations!

  Mac and cheese. Parrot shit. Mac and cheese. Parrot shit. Mac and cheese. Parrot shit.

  Then Mama turned blue and fell to the floor in front of the television and there was a sound in her throat like the last little bit of water going down the drain.

  Get Dr. Hand, she said. Quick.

  She was giving me a beached whale look.

  Quick, she said.

  So it was up over the mountaintop and then what? I had never gone into town by myself before. I had only gone in the Big Head School school bus. I knew that the girl came from the town, so that meant the town was on the other side of the stream.

  Maybe.

  Anybody have any better ideas?

  The theme music to Million Simoleon Lunch with Patti Kake had just come on when my mother fell down on the floor, blue. When I finally walked into town, the light was going powder orange all over the tops of the stores.

  You could still hear the crackling of the cinders. Everywhere in the rectangle of black that used to be the Big Head School twists of smoke rose up into the sky like the ropes in swami rope-climbing tricks, only without the swamis. Someone had stuck a sign into the singed lawn that said, GOOD RIDDANCE. Somebody else had dragged out the giant sign and changed it: BIG HEADS GET DEAD.

  Children were screaming and hiding their faces in their mothers’ skirts.

  No! said the woman at the Visitors’ Information Booth when I asked her, Do you know where I can find Dr. Hand?

  Then she slammed down her metal window blind and I could hear her punching telephone buttons.

  Sic’im! said the man walking the big tooth dog when I asked the same question, and slobber from the big tooth dog’s mouth splattered all over my leg.

  Sic’im! said the man. Sic’im!

  But the big tooth dog just bent itself into a pretzel going all snarly and snapping-tooth ballistic after its own rat-skinny tail.

  The man was a pin eye man, but even he wasn’t fooled by the leaves I had stuck everywhere but my little head face.

  And then I was lying on the ground.

  And the man who had just hit me with his big stone hand was holding his hand in the air like he was going to hit me again. And his friend the big foot man had put his big foot on my chest.

  Please! I said. Dr. Hand!

  The man with the big stone hand and his big foot friend just laughed.

  Please! I said. My mother!
Mrs. Moon! She’s blue! She might be dying!

  It was hard to talk with the big foot man’s big foot on my chest.

  The two men only laughed louder.

  Why are you laughing? I said.

  Dr. Hand! said the big stone hand man, wiping tears from his eyes with his little skin hand. Then he laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth with his big stone hand.

  What? I said.

  Hand! said the big foot man. Hand! That’s his name!

  Are you Dr. Hand? I said.

  The man with the big stone hand couldn’t stop laughing.

  Are you Dr. Hand? I said.

  Now I knew why the girl was a fat face girl. She was the big stone hand man’s daughter, and both of her eyes were black, and her nose was squashed flat and her lips were fatter than ever.

  Is this the one who did it to you? said the man with the big stone hand.

  Anyone who cared to look could tell the girl had a baby coming and that the baby’s head would be a big head.

  Her voice was so soft the man with the big stone hand made her say it twice. Yes, Daddy, she said. And then again, Yes, Daddy.

  Now get out of here before I throw you into the garbage compactor instead of him.

  Yes, Daddy.

  I knew we’d catch you, the man with the big stone hand said when his daughter had gone. It was just simple mathematics, he said. I knew that if we just kept at it long enough, one of you would turn out to be the one who did it.

  Did what? I said.

  The man with the big stone hand laughed. Then he said, You just wait right here. When I come back I’ll teach you more than you ever learned in that big head school.

  Later that night I heard a noise outside the bars of my window. I couldn’t move but I could talk. Is that you? I said.

  Yes, said the girl.

  Are you going to help me escape?

  You can’t escape, said the girl.

  Why are you here then?

  I’m praying.

  What are you praying for?

  For all the people who should never have been born.

  The night I married your father, my mother said, all of the tree leaves turned silver as we drifted over, and all of the rivers and lakes showed us their silver faces. Chimney pots too glinted in our light, and the shingled roofs were triangles and squares of night-white gray. We drifted over mountains, seas, islands. And in almost every field we could spot the moon-glow bodies of at least one pair of lovers. Sometimes they would leave off what they were doing to lie on their backs and watch us cross the sky, and sometimes they were too distracted by one another to pay us any mind.