by A M Homes
That this seems so much like an end is an error, a great mistake. I am at the beginning and about to start again. I resolve to meet her soon.
And where is she on this great night?
Oh, I know all too well she’s with him. She spends this liberation day with the boy, the toy, on a pseudodate. He has taken her, or she has taken him—the logistics are no matter, they’re both guilty as sin. Fucking in the sand trap at their fathers’ country club, while overhead similar pyrotechnics do parade. They are not alone, but with his friends. She fucks him first, their own sideshow, and then she fucks all three, the lardy boy from before and the big one with the beakish nose. She fucks them once, twice, three, and more, and you cringe when I call her a whore. For now I am trapped behind these walls, but she is making do—three scrawny cocks, thirty dirty fingers, sticking something in every orifice, lucky little dicks. God, I hate these chains about my legs.
A manganese of white light explodes against the night.
Mama is dead. The telephone rings. My grandmother answers it, listens, then hangs up, turns to me, and says, “Gone. She went over, off the road at the Panoramic View, near the steak house. Dead.” Mama is gone. She has left me with a woman who only keeps me because it would be more embarrassing not to. My fault. All my fault. You can’t convince me differently. The howling begins. A wail. A siren that never goes off, only grows more distant and more near, a constant warble in my ears. Without trying, without even knowing, without an effort, with only a plea, no, a kind of pathetic begging, no, with nothing but my presence, my person, my love for her, I was drawn in, implicated, involved. And despite my will, the will to remain who I was, as I was, there was confusion, uncertainty, the weakness of my person and then an unknowing of my will. Yes, it did happen, all of it happened. Desire confused itself, and while I once was sure that I had not, I became equally sure that I had—one often gets what one wants. I am her murderer. Believe me.
I try to stand but am pulled down; my steel jewelry prevents me from walking around. Out. I want only to be released, or if nothing else, to be taken back inside. I need to think, to pace. These thick restraints on my arms and legs cripple me, and suddenly I am sure I will spend my life in chains—that is their plan for me. Little do they know, I think differently.
Black-powder bang. Floral fireballs, flowers bloom in the sky.
Fury and frustration. Tremble. Shake. Stomach rises with bile, with the bilge of it all. There is pain.
I know who I am. I dance around it, use my words, my refraction, to obscure what is excruciatingly clear. Were I not to hide, to cloak and clothe myself, it would be unbearable for all—and I include you in this. The reptilian repulsive; even I don’t like the look of me.
Where is she when I need her most? Sick, just sick, I am turning on myself.
Something spins in my gut, I don’t know what. “Guard, guard,” I call, but there is no response, save the repetitious report, the final barrage, a billion blasts, a thousand rounds. The sky is bleached pale white. The concussion ricochets off the walls.
Grand finale. I lean forward and vomit into the dirt.
On either side of me, Frazier and Kleinman pull away, tugging at my tired chains, forgetting we are joined. They are stretching me as if to split me. Vivisection. My vomit steams, yellow, red, and green.
There is a great round of applause.
The lights go on. The night disappears. “It was your goop the other day,” Frazier says as we’re getting up.
I shake my head. “No, not then, just now.”
Going back inside, the chink-a-chink-a walk, shimmying shake, shiver of our synchronicity, becomes a raucous rattle, a rowdy rumble that makes my head ache.
On the wall someone has taped a handmade sign: “While you were out, your unit was sprayed with an insecticide which kills roaches, fleas, ants, and flies. However, it is not harmful to human beings.”
Extermination. We have been sprayed with a killer cologne, another in their series of experiments. During the night, those of us not quite right will start to twitch and writhe. Chemical warfare. I didn’t think it could happen here. Bells ring—a clever death knell.
We cough, choke, and gag.
In ever corner of every room, there’s a puddle of the stuff. A squirt of it like someone pissed foul. Again, I vomit.
“Are you okay?” Clayton asks. I have no answers for such stupid questions. “Did you eat the Cracker Jacks? You could sue for that.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Quite fine, better than before.” Clayton takes me down the hall to the showers and splashes cold water on my face. I rinse out my mouth, sputter, and speak as if I’ve been drowned. The Declaration she sent still spins in my head:
“Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity…. The History of the present King… a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over… thee.”
Clayton throws me against the wall, my face flush to the battleship gray, the texture of the cinder block embossing my cheek.
“I want to fuck you here and now,” he says, pulling at my pants. “Are you sick enough for that?”
I am spread against the wall as if to be frisked, my legs kicked apart, the pants down. Men walk in and out. From the corner of my eye, I see a few watching. One begins to touch himself.
I am sure this pleases Clayton, reenacts the highlights of his early career. He fucks me. Pummeled, torn from inside out, when he is done, I feel as though a rake has scraped through me. Surely I am bleeding, having a period of my own, oozing from the ass, soon to stain the seams of my shorts a deep and muddy red. It’s an inside job.
I don’t know whom to hate more, him for doing this to me or me for having let it go on for so long.
“We must, therefore, acquiesce… and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.” He fucks me and then drops to his knees, buries his head in my ass, and starts to suck my blood/his cum. Again. He’s doing it again, rimming me. Last time, I swore that if he tried it once more, I’d kill him. Wasn’t this the very act that, although enjoyed, I railed against? Too much, too good. I don’t know why, but I get hard.
Flame. I am the flame. I am the fire, the start, the burst of light, that surprising thing.
I wheel around and with strength I didn’t know I had, I bang his head against the wall, cracking it on the cinder blocks. He falls. I stun him first and then switch my role, kicking him in the gut. He is down on his hands and knees. I am behind him, stripping him. Force. I force myself against his flesh, until finally it gives way.
“Relax,” I shout into his ear.
I fuck him fiercely up the ass, fuck him like I’ve never fucked before, with everything I’ve held for years. I’ll not be the pussy anymore. A man, a man again, reclaimed. I have the power. I fuck him, fuck him and a crowd does gather. This is my chance to show them who I really am, the goods I’ve got. I do it well, do it good, do it like I didn’t know I could. I am hard and large. In and out. My loins banging against his bumper. Beneath me now, Clayton is crying. To drown him out I start to sing—it has been that kind of a day. “What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming…”
On the last verse, while I’m still riding him, I call for audience participation. “Everybody join in, sing along,” I say. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…” And then I really throw myself into it. “For the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
I let it come, copious amounts, great gallons of jizz, coursing up, out, and into him. I fill him with my most personal touch, a handy high colonic. I’ve never come so much. Finished, I retreat, zip up. My discharge glistens, an opalescence, like mother-of-pearl shining on his pure white ass. “Who wants some?” I ask, putting him up for grabs, a gracious giveaway. It’s over. It’s all over, anyone can have him now. And sure enough, a line forms. Someone steps on the back of his neck, holding him
down. I leave with Clayton on the floor, broken, blubbering, finally getting what he wanted all along. I go back to my cell, so pleased, so happy, so relaxed. I go back to my room and begin to pack. After all, I’m leaving soon.
I’m nothing you can catch now. I am black powder, I am singe, I am the bomb that bursts the night.
THIRTEEN
Do all little girls have to die?
Yes.
The hiss of the aerosol can, the scent of Lemon Pledge. She is awake. Her mother is dusting her room. The Hoover stands upright, ready. “Finally,” the mother says. “You’re awake. I’ve been working around you.”
“Don’t we have a maid?” the girl asks.
“Once a week,” the mother says. “But things get dirty every day, don’t they?”
The vacuum is on, the white headlight glows against the carpet. “I worry about you,” the mother says over the din. “Aren’t you more worried about breaking a nail?”
“They’re fakes.” The mother taps her nails against the handle of the Hoover. “If one breaks, I just glue on a new one.” She stops vacuuming, picks up a piece of clothing from the floor, folds it, and puts it on top of the dresser. “Are you getting up?” she asks. “It’s a brand-new day.” The girl was awake earlier. She heard her father get up, her mother rising with him. The routine all too familiar. The men work in the city, the city is far away. They get up early, their wives get up with them. While they shower, shave, and dress, the wives make coffee, breakfast. He comes down, she feeds him, he leaves. She eats the leftovers, showers, and begins again when it is time to wake the children.
“Up and at ’em,” the mother says.
“I’m naked,” the daughter says, as though the prospect of seeing such will drive the mother out of the room.
The mother turns away. The girl dresses. The mother talks nonstop. “With a little effort you could be very attractive. If you want people to pay attention, you have to put out the signal. You have to let them know that you’re interested. Are you interested?”
In the bathroom the daughter brushes her teeth. “You got mail,” the mother says through the door. “A postcard from France and another of those letters with no return address. You know, the friends you make now will be with you for the rest of your life. Arrange to see them.” The girl comes out of the bathroom. The mother corners her. “What do you want to do with your life, that’s the question. Any ideas?”
“Where’s the letter?”
“Downstairs.”
I can tell you anything. No matter what, you listen. You don’t pass judgment and that’s a good quality.
I have no judgment—and that’s a problem.
Before I open the envelope I’m already writing you back. My mother is talking. The whole time she talks, I’m writing to you, invisibly in my head. It’s a word-for-word
exchange. I do it to drown her out. Downstairs, she has followed me downstairs. Perhaps I haven’t been entirely honest with you.
I imagine the dining room table set for breakfast. Place mats instead of a tablecloth. Breakfast dishes, yellow with flowers.
“Can I get you something?” her mother asks, having put on an apron like a waitress.
“No,” the girl says.
“Eggs, toast, cereal?”
“No.”
“Coffee, tea?”
“No.”
“Eat your grapefruit, it’s sectioned, it’s easy.”
“No,” the girl says.
The girl goes into the kitchen, boils water, makes herself a cup of cocoa. She puts a pair of Pop-Tarts into the toaster and waits. When they’re ready, she carries everything back upstairs.
“You know I don’t like food wandering around the house,” the mother says.
The girl closes her bedroom door.
I know who you are and I know what you did.
A pause. A silence. I’m not sure how to respond. I reread.
I know who you are and I know what you did.
Does this come as a big surprise? How could she have written me if she hadn’t picked me on purpose—I thought that much was implied. Still, there is something about the way she says it that frightens me.
I know who you are and I know what you did. Doesn’t my address mean anything?
Pardon?
Her street. I live on her street.
Oh, God.
How could you not have noticed?
I was never invited to the house.
Sctfrsdale, of course, it would have to be there. I could go on but don’t. If I were to continue, I’d accidentally and unintentionally reveal the degree to which I’ve so thoroughly confused the correspondent and the beloved. But now that she’s mentioned it, stepped back to say that she is in fact not Alice, clarifying that she is only some lonely neighbor girl, it is all I can do not to ask, Does she have any news, word of Alice’s family? Are they still there? The mother? The sisters? That stepfather, who knows anything about him? The one time we met, I didn’t like him, didn’t like him at all. However, I hold back, feeling that it would be impertinent, even rude, to interrupt at this moment when she is so intent, focused on herself.
Scarsdale—have you lived there long?
Forever. But don’t change the subject, I’m talking now, trying to tell you something. I’ve known about you all along. Your footsteps are deep and leave tracks like mud prints.
Hers is the false poetry of the overly undereducated, and you wonder why I haven’t quoted her more all along?
Leaden, forced, falsified. Pretentious though it may be, I remain convinced that my interpretation, my translation, is a more accurate reflection of her state of mind, far exceeding that which she is able to articulate independently. And while putting words in the mouths of others may be my specialty, my naughty narration is fast becoming a tired thing. I’m running out of steam. Perhaps in my advancing age, I have less to say, that or I’ve lost the strength it takes to wrestle with her. Whatever I suggest the reason to be, the truth is I quote her directly because it’s time she spoke for herself, she is in fact insisting on it, asserting herself over me. And without her interpreter, her translator, you— the reader—are free to make of her what you will. Or perhaps I pull back because I know what comes next. However obvious, my retreat is an attempt to extricate myself, to surrender my responsibility—after all, I know how the story ends. Or perhaps all that’s at play is the cracked logic of the old adage: If you give them enough rope, they’ll hang themselves, literally.
My reason for writing was that I thought it might make me less afraid if I could talk to you, if I could find out who you really are, what makes you tick. What does it mean for a girl like me to write to you? Do you like it? Do you like it a lot? Am I torturing you? I have to be honest with you; plus, there’s not a lot to lose. And what are you going to do anyway—come kill me?
She doesn’t shut up long enough for me to respond. This is not a conversation, not a dialogue, but her hysterical purge.
Do you even have a clue? My life is completely different because of you. I doubt you realize it, but your influence is everywhere. And it’s not only me, it’s all the mothers and all the girls. Everyone is afraid.
I wasn’t allowed to play in the front yard, “Out back, ” my mother would say. “Play in the backyard, it’s fenced, no one needs to know we have a little girl. ” She said it as though my playing on the front lawn was an advertisement for things that might be taken from my parents’ house, burgled.
And I couldn’t walk to school alone, they were afraid we’d evaporate, disappear right off the sidewalk, that the sidewalk itself was the path that led straight to men like you. “And never go in the woods alone, ” my mother said. I never knew if that was because you’d be there, hiding in your secret headquarters, or if it was for fear of what I’d find—the forest is your burial ground. Once in New Hampshire on a beach by a lake, my father saw something in the sand. “Look, ” he said, pointing at it, “there’s something for you to play with. ” The small hand o
f a Barbie doll was poking up. I pulled it out of the sand and that’s all it was, an arm, just an arm, amputated. I screamed. My father laughed. That hand, that arm, could have belonged to someone, could have been part of a real girl, buried in the woods, chopped up and left in pieces, in Dumpsters, in assorted plastic bags, that arm could have been something you did.
Excuse me, but you said New Hampshire? A lake in New Hampshire? Maybe I am not so confused.
Keep an eye out, report anything strange. They say a man like you can be anyone, someone I know, someone I trust, a friend of the family, a relative, even the mailman. How do I know which one is you ? What are your distinguishing characteristics? What makes you different from everyone else ? Do you walk with a limp? Have scars? Do you leer? Will I feel you coming up behind me? Will your fingers reach around and cover my mouth? How do you pick your girls? Do you look as crazy as you are? And why do you hate me? Or more specifically, why do you hate little girls?
Hate is hardly the word.
There’s more. I drive to Sing Sing. I’ve been going there a lot, hanging out on the hill at State Street by the fire station. From there you can hear the noise inside the prison, you can hear the men.
Jealous, I’m jealous and worried that you’re shopping for a new man, a more convenient prisoner, someone with a better location.
Last time I took Matt with me and he totally freaked, he kept saying, “I don’t want to see any people, whatever you do, don’t make me see the people.”
There are trailers in the back, weird little Winnebagos where I guess the guards live, and out front there’s a parking place reserved for “The Employee of the Month.” Bet you didn’t know that.