Latin@ Rising

by Matthew Goodwin

  “The room’s a little goofy by design,” I said. “To a lot of locals, it looks like Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and if not, it’s still campy and funny. Either way works for us. For our experiments, we need people to be as relaxed as they can be.”

  “That sounds like something a shrink would say,” said Chase, suddenly suspicious. “Is this all a trick? Are you a fucking shrink? I ain’t going to no shrink!”

  Karen pinched his arm. He turned to her and dared her with a “What?”

  I just kept talking. “We’re not trying to help you get in touch with your inner child here. For superportation to work, we need to get you in touch with the other Chases out there, ones that are similar enough to you so that we can copy information from them.”

  Chase stopped mid-chew. “What do you mean, ‘the other Chases?’”

  “Like that one,” I said, gesturing with my chin.

  I’d gotten lucky; the timing was perfect. I had started the ClassAgg before I entered the chamber, and now, as if on-cue, Chase and Karen looked across the table and saw a silvery, liquidity form sitting across from them. It looked exactly like Chase. It was speaking to someone we couldn’t see. A second later it started laughing like a silent movie. It was standing on two perfectly healthy legs.

  “That’s me?” said Chase. Then: “That’s not me. That’s some trick. Is this a movie set? Is this reality T.V.?”

  “Science is full of tricks,” I said. “This trick allows us to translate information of Chases from other universes and bring it here, into the ClassAgg. We call it superportation.”

  Some Chases joined the army but were never deployed. Some Chases were, but were never hit by the IED. Some were hit by the IED but made a full recovery. Some died in action. Some Chases never joined the army at all; they became poets and classical violinists and waiters and civil engineers and started businesses that failed and businesses that succeeded and were arrested for tax-evasion and became congressmen. Some Chases died when they were kids; some became the richest men in the world. Some married Karen, but most didn’t: they died virgins, or married other women, or were gay and moved to states to marry men or stayed here and lived with men out of wedlock, or lived in universes where Pennsylvania allowed gay marriage.

  But the most important thing I explained to Chase is that, out in the cosmos there were innumerable, luckier Chases who had perfectly functioning lower halves. I could sneak him into the ClassAgg a couple of Sundays a month and—using his love for Karen and Karen’s love for him—find other Chases. Then I could superport information from those other universes onto his own body.

  The upshot was, through an enormous expenditure of energy, and only while he remained in the ClassAgg, for a couple of hours every month I could give him mercurial legs. For as long as it lasted, Chase would be whole again.

  If you want to know what happiness is, give someone his legs back. Even if it’s temporary or incomplete. Even if it helps heal the marriage you wished every second of every day would fail, because you want Karen for yourself, even after everything that’s happened. Tell the love you feel for her to go fuck itself. Bring happiness back to a body the world has ravaged, and some of it will vicariously trickle down to you. You will rediscover what agency feels like. Agency, you will suddenly remember, feels good.

  If, on the other hand, you want to feel like a lovelorn teenager, drive into a cornfield and lie on the hood of your car next to someone who: 1. has already betrayed you once, but; 2. you want more than anyone else in the world, yet; 3. is utterly forbidden to you, and thus; 4. is even sexier because of it. Just lean back on the windshield with your hands pillowing your head and listen to the rustling stalks and look up at the stars. Try to be honorable. Try to be a good friend.

  “Thanks for dessert,” I said to Karen. She and Chase were constantly finding ways to thank me for sneaking him into the ClassAgg for the past four months. That night’s thank-you had taken the form of a homemade four-berry pie. It sat on the back seat now, untouched, tepid.

  “It was the only excuse I could think of to see you tonight,” said Karen, her eyes locked on the moon. “I have to tell you something.”

  “You couldn’t text me?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. What?”

  She swallowed. “Chase wants a baby.”

  I thought this through for several seconds before I responded. Then: “He figures there are some universes where you are pregnant right now. He thinks I can superport that information to our universe, the same way I’ve been superporting legs.”

  She laughed joylessly. “Our very own immaculate conception.”

  I waited a few seconds to make sure what I said next I could say completely without affect. I said, “Is that what you want?”

  “First I want to know if you can do it.”

  The last thing I wanted to do in any universe, ever, was to help Chase and Karen have a baby together. Because that would be it. Karen would be gone forever.

  Only thing is, the scientist in me wouldn’t stand for it. I’d betrayed my professional ethics more than enough for the sake of my stupid, stupid heart. Being good at my job was one thing over which I still had control. So I thought through the idea dispassionately, scientifically. And I can honestly say the best answer I could give was, “No. It’s impossible. It’d be just like Chase’s legs: the information vanishes as soon as you turn off the ClassAgg’s power.”

  There was relief in her voice. “That’s what I thought.”

  “There are other options.” This was me still being professional and self-sabotaging. “I could show you what your child or children look like in other universes. I could superport them a while into the ClassAgg. Maybe Chase would like to see them. Maybe you would, too.”

  She shook her head. Her voice was raw and tender when she said, “It’d be like seeing ghosts. That would break poor Chase’s heart.”

  At least she sounded raw and tender. I realized then I had no longer had any idea how to interpret her words. She had become a cypher to me, a placeholder zero of herself. Her words were dialogue from an audition-script: a good actor could play them a million different ways.

  Yet I still wanted her. What the fuck was wrong with me?

  I was awoken from my reverie by a touch. Karen’s hand had cautiously crawled over to mine, like a crab seeking a mate. I lay very still. She interlaced her fingers with mine. Neither of us said anything for a time.

  Eventually, her eyes jumping from star to star, she said, “Chase is coming back to himself. Those months when he first came home, there was nothing left of the man I’d fallen in love with. He was pure rage.”

  “He’d lost both his legs.”

  “Yeah. Who wouldn’t be angry?” She squeezed my hand a little tighter. “And I thought, ‘Karen, you slutty bitch, this is exactly what you deserve. You deserve a hateful husband who will treat you like shit for the rest of your life.’”

  “No one deserves that.”

  She looked at me for a second. Then she turned back to the sky and, rueful, said, “You should think that. You have every right to think I deserve every bad thing that could happen to me. What I did do you, Jesús—unforgivable.

  “Yet here we are. Not only did you forgive me, but you’ve given Chase his hope back. He’s feels like he’s living a miracle, thanks to you. You know what he says? He says, ‘I feel like every Chase in the universe is coming together to help me get through this.’”

  It was the longest we’d held hands since Chase had returned. “That’s a nice thought,” I said.

  “He’s not nearly as angry anymore. He can envision a future. He wants kids now.”

  “I can’t give him kids.”

  “But you made it possible for him to dream about the future again. You gave him his vision back. It’s the greatest gift anyone can give.”

  “Glad to help.”

  She laughed. “’Glad to help.’ Really, that’s it? That’s all you want to say?”

  “What
else should I say?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “Always so practical. So understated. You know why I fell for you, Jesús?”

  “Yep. Because I’m ‘Spanish.’”

  She squeezed my hand, hard, as punishment; I giggled evilly. “Never going to let me live that down, are you?”

  “It was pretty racist, m’dear.”

  “I know. I mean, now I know. I didn’t realize I was being racist. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. If I’m being really honest,” I said, letting go of her hand so I could roll on my side to face her, “I’m not really all that Puerto Rican. Really, I’m white.”

  Now that cracked her up. “Jesús, honey, have you looked in a mirror? You are not white.”

  “I know I look brown. But I’ve forgotten all my Spanish. I have a Ph.D. in Physics from an American university. I have money, a white ex-wife, a white ex-lover, and a split-level I bought 17 years ago. I don’t live the life of someone who has to struggle against racism every day. It’s not fair for me to call myself Latino.”

  I looked up. The moon pulled a curtain of clouds around itself like a magician, and the field grew a little darker. “Can I be really honest, too?” Karen asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I did fall for you because you’re Spanish. Latino. Whatever. I mean, your name sounds super-Latino—Jesús Camacho!—and you have brown skin and kinky hair. But you’re right. I mean, you speak perfect English. Better than me.”

  “Better than ‘I.’”

  Her laugh ascended to the stars. “See? So yeah, fine, you’re white. But off-white. I was lonely without Chase, and you were different enough to be exciting. But not too different. Just enough.”

  Maybe some people in my shoes would’ve been offended by Karen’s words. I wasn’t. Because—again, being totally honest—I thought of myself in exactly the same way: Latino enough to be interesting, but white enough to fit in. Before Karen, I had no idea how much racism I’d internalized.

  “You know why I fell for you, Karen?” I asked her.

  “Seriously, no idea. I’m an administrative assistant with a high school diploma who eats too many whoopie pies and goes to church mostly for the gossip. You could do a lot better.”

  “I fell for you because you’re so honest. Even when it makes you look bad. Everyone else keeps their evil parts hidden. Not you. You share everything you’re thinking: good, bad, ugly, whatever. It’s so refreshing.”

  Her face became mannequin hard. She told the moon, “You mean, except for the part where I was lying to you about my husband, and lying to my husband about you.”

  What could I say? “Yeah. Except for that.”

  I thought I had ruined the moment, but I saw her squint a little; she was thinking, and the thought seemed to amuse her. “You know what I want, Jesús? I want to know how the other Karens did it.”

  “Did what?”

  She rolled over and got make-out close to my face. “How they managed not to fuck up our relationship. In some universes right now, there are Karens and Jesúses who are perfectly happy together, even after Chase came back. Every possibility can happen, right? Somehow, some brilliant Karens out there figured out a way to keep seeing you.”

  As gently as I could I said, “That sounds impossible.”

  “With all the gagillions of universes out there, you’re telling me there isn’t a single Karen in the entire cosmos who figured out how she could keep you and Chase?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But we still only get to live in this universe. And in the here and now, I don’t see how to make that happen.”

  “But we have a ClassAgg! Don’t you see? That thing is a fucking crystal ball! We can search for those universes. Find out how they made it work.” She took my hands. “Jesús, there’s a way! A way we can be together again!”

  She was almost crying she was so happy. She wanted so much to be right. And she was, kind of. But when physicists use the word “information,” they mean mass, particles, position in space and time. They don’t mean philosophy and morality. It’s true that we could spy on all the Karens and Chases and Jesúses living their lives across realities, but we couldn’t talk to them or ask them how we should fix our broken lives. The ClassAgg only let us spy on others. It had no opinion about what anything meant.

  It was Chase who called me. “Jesús, it’s time, man, it’s time! Her water broke!”

  “I’m on my way. What do you need?”

  “Nothing man, just get your ass to the hospital! Wahoo!”

  I wasn’t family, so they wouldn’t let me in the delivery room, even though Karen and Chase told everyone in the hospital I was more than family. But rules are rules, so Chase came out regularly to update me, and every time he reported, he thanked me for the miracle I’d given Karen and him. He called me his angel. Twice he summoned me into a hug, and each time I locked his wheels so I wouldn’t lose my balance, then stooped over and embraced him until he had finished crying.

  At 4:40AM, Karen and Chase became the proud parents of a healthy 8lb. 11oz. boy with ten fingers and ten toes and his whole life ahead of him.

  It was hours more before they would let me in to see the baby and the proud parents. When I did finally enter the room, Chase was cradling the sleeping newborn in his lap, while Karen lay on the bed with her eyes closed, looking like a vampire’s most recent meal, black-eyed and enervated.

  I whispered from the door, “Hey, happy parents!”

  Chase gestured me over; I tiptoed so as not to wake the newborn. “He’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Chase whispered. Only surface tension held the tears against his eyes; they would fall the next time he blinked. “It’s like he’s made of ‘perfect information,’ right Jesús? Like you gathered all the best ideas from every universe and put it into our child. That’s what you did. There in the ClassAgg, you made all this possible. It’s a miracle. You gave Karen and me a child of our own.”

  “Yeah,” said Karen, “a child of our own.” I looked at her and found she was staring at me. Through her exhausted rictus I could see that same infuriating look of hers. Once again she was waiting for me to betray her.

  I knelt next to Chase’s wheelchair and brought my face close to the child’s. The sleeping baby took easy, sonorous breaths. “My God,” I said, and I meant it. It was hard to imagine the universe had any problems at all when it had babies in it breathing so peacefully.

  But the truth is, babies are born into a whole universe of problems. My son’s skin was as brown as mine.

  THE DRAIN

  Alejandra Sanchez

  Alejandra Sanchez has a BA in English from California State University, Los Angeles and a MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in the independent film, I Stare At You and Dream, KPFK’s Pacifica Radio, Radio Sombra’s Red Feminist Radio, Mujeres De Maiz, La Bloga, UCLA Young Writers Anthology, Hinchas de Poesia, Duende Literary Journal, and PBS Newshour’s Where Poetry Lives. In “The Drain” Anahita who normally relies on a morning shower for personal healing, finds that a strange substance has invaded her sacred space.

  Anahita entered her bathtub and stepped in something like a pool of curdled buttermilk that slid between her finely manicured toes and crept up her ankles.

  Eew! What the hell is that?

  She jumped out and wiped her feet with a towel that hung from a hook on her bathroom door. Entering her bedroom, Anahita fished around her closet for a hanger. Straightening the hook, she went back to the bathroom and stuck it in the drain. The water struggled to go down but stuck, emitting a gargling sound and spurts of phlegmatic bubbles.

  Anahita needed a plumber. But had no idea where to find one at 6:00 AM, when what she desperately required was her morning shower. Today was huge for her. It was the deadline for a crucial grant proposal at the non-profit where she worked as Resource Development Manager. What would Teresa, the Community Health Coordinator say to her four-year old on his birthday if mo
mmy suddenly lost her job and had no money? Or poor Steven, who had cried to her in the breakroom when his wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and medical bills were sky high?

  Everybody was counting on Anahita.

  Who could she call to fix the drain?

  He had always taken care of those things. And Anahita did not want to call him. Not after the last time.

  Anahita, I’m so sorry baby. Please. Please forgive me. I will never do that to you, ever again. I promise.

  I love you

  Ana.

  She had tried to leave. They were standing at the bar and Vincent squeezed her wrist so hard she couldn’t feel her fingers. He poured her glass of cabernet onto her white dress, staring at her with a crazed look in his eyes. His pupils were so dilated, melted into his irises—like pools of black obsidian. I told you I don’t like you to drink Anahita, he said in a hoarse whisper. It almost looked like he was smiling, with those frantic, liquid eyes that really scared her. As if trying to contain something behind them that seeped through and scared the shit out of him.

  She ran outside. He followed her to the parking lot. She thought he was running after her, with apologies. Anahita put her hand on the car door handle. It was cold, hard, lifeless. She heard his footsteps behind her. Anahita turned around as his hand rose, and saw with her eyes, but didn’t really see.

  His hand loomed huge, as if bulging out from some other body — not Vince’s — and hurled towards her. The parking lot whirled like a carnival twister, though somehow felt slow motion. All the blood drained from her head and sunk to the pit of her stomach.

  A sting burned a hole through one side of her cheek. Her head throbbed. Anahita’s face felt misshapen, lopsided, as if her face was a mask that had been attached — now ripped off, hanging from her cheekbone.

  Her vision blurred. The parking lot, with all its shiny metal cars, looked slanted.

  He stared at her.

  She saw him. He looked like a completely different person to her. Not Vince, not her lover. Through eyes almost swollen shut, she saw. He was a mass of unlighted shadow, no eyes, no face. She got into her car and locked the door.