Then I wouldn’t allow them to photograph me. “Father wouldn’t like it.” I tried to accordion the camera between my palms but I had lost my strength and any will to finish the deed. Two policemen started to restrain me until I promised not to destroy the camera.
They released my arms, said “If you act up we’ll put you in detention until we feel like letting you out.”
I stepped back, encouraging them to photograph Misty, whose face, out of her hat, resembled gelatinous fruit. I wouldn’t become a Photograph on anyone’s wall, except, maybe, Father’s.
There was an ordinary velocity to the events at the station. “There’s someone else in the body I want. It’s a penalty. Maybe later it could be a crime. What would you call it?” I asked the policeman.
“Disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, a possible assault. And that’s not even counting whatever drugs you two are on.”
“How about my history at the house of meat and mistakes?” It must not have counted because his face showed no emotion. “Besides she’s not pressing any charges.” I pointed at Misty, who was grimacing at the camera. “No photographs,” I screamed.
“We’ll do it later when she’s come down off of whatever she’s on,” the policeman mumbled to the photographer, as he showed us to our cells.
In the hallway I balked at the tiny, gray cage that reminded me of Father’s research animals. I wondered if the small space I viewed could contain me. I studied the cement walls settling around me, the wide bars on the door, like bones pondering the addition of flesh, muscle, skin to become some new form of life. “What is the basis of this cell’s intelligence?” I asked him just before I ducked into the cell and he locked me inside. It reminded me of something I had once overheard Father say.
It was a small, simple space and the height and breadth of me took up most of it. Against all that gray night peeked in through the window bars and colors corrupted me. They flowed everywhere, inside my head, down my throat, swirling near the close walls of my cell. Bright blue, red, yellow streaks surrounded me, tried to clothe me, then expanded within my interior. My perception was exhausted. I sat on a cot with a gray and white striped blanket. It was warm and a sparrow thumped inside my chest. I wondered what percentage of me was an accident and what percentage was planned by Father. I could hear others in their cells breathing, the clicking of keys on chains, the city outside the window with music leaking in from somewhere, a man saying to another, “Sometimes they ask too many questions.” I could hear Misty humming nearby.
I was a woman made of dead people, dead daughters, dead mothers, dead homeless drifters and dead wealthy people. Old and young. Dead sisters. Dead wives. Anyone who could offer a body part I needed. The manufactured dead. All expendable. I wanted to howl like an animal, feel that sound ripping through my throat. The pain. So I did, bellowing through the bars of my cell.
“Shut the fuck up,” Misty growled from her own cell.
A policeman came, who looked like all the others. Policeman One, Two, Five, a compilation of those who went before him. He stared at me through my bars. “Tomorrow, showers for you girls.” But, by then, I was sitting down on my cot sedately, looking at a wall. He left.
“What is absolutely necessary?” I whispered to myself. I tried to pull the bars of my door, but they didn’t budge. My arms were too weak. “How much longer does this pill last?” I asked in Misty’s direction.
Inside lights went out, and I could hear footsteps fading away. “You’ll be fine tomorrow morning,” Misty said.
I smelled the stench from leftover lumps of food, vestiges of pork and beans and spinach. My stomach almost turned. Then I received a memory. I wished I could will the remembrances and dreams to explain certain things but I couldn’t control them, at least not yet.
“I don’t know how to build a life from what’s left of this civilization,” the young man with wild, dark hair and thick eyeglasses said to the beautiful young dark-haired woman who had a child growing inside of her.
The woman took his hand, “The war hasn’t taken that much away from us.” She placed his hand on her stomach.
The man smiled with straight, white teeth. “We could go elsewhere. I could concentrate on my research.”
“We could go anywhere,” she beamed at him. “I mean, I would go anywhere with you.”
They rested on a bench inside a city park, looking at each other and listening. Musical instruments played in the distance. There was clapping from a large audience. Tree branches reminded her of hands making gestures. Fountains bubbled with water, children on bicycles rode by on paths that rose toward an unbroken, blue sky. A squirrel, a spasm of gray, ran past them.
The man patted her hand. “Encumbrance,” she gave him.
But the man shook his head, “No, never.” He turned his head toward her. “Resplendent,” he gave her.
The woman lit up inside. “Thank you for the word.” She smiled, a leaf slipping from its green hinge on a tree above her head, slowly somersaulting downward. Her face turned upward, toward him. “You can call me Mother from now on.”
A patient smile curled on the man’s lips. “Just call me Father.”
My eyes, when they opened, searched around the dark cell, unable to see much of anything; my body, even full of various disagreeables, had remembered. I couldn’t imagine Father married, but I knew he had been. The people in the Photographs had once been alive. I grew sad. I knew there was so much inside of me, so many lives, behind disgust, fear, and sadness. I discovered another feeling, anger. Too much injustice had happened to me.
A deep darkness permeated my cement cell and I wanted to scream. So I howled again, nothing intelligible, just an animal syllable for hurt. I howled as loudly as I could for as long as I could until my throat was raw and something inside of it shifted. I couldn’t hear anyone or anything in the dark, quiet night.
Misty and the others inside their cells kept on saying things like, “C’mon stop it.” “Nobody cares and nobody’s coming.” “Shut the fuck up so I can get to sleep,” until they, too, grew tired and stopped trying to reason with me.
The world removed what I had loved bit by bit: Gloves, curiosity, learning, experience, parts of me. I wasn’t what the world had wanted. A rampage was building up inside of me to take back what I had been promised, my own life. I had never killed any of them. They had done that to each other.
Memories, stories, and dreams created my skin, and kept me wandering. “Peregrination,” I told myself. I tried to write in my notebook, hidden deep inside my clothes but I couldn’t. I finally fell asleep.
I was screwing in a new arm I had found abandoned on a counter at a vacant department store in the city. It was a lovely dream in which I could find everything I wanted. I was drifting down the streets, full of stores with delicate, ancient embellishments and lettering in a language I didn’t understand. I squeezed and relaxed the fingers on my new arm as I strolled. I found food, left on a table at an empty restaurant. It was delicious, unlike the tasteless wad of food on a tray that one of the policemen had shoveled into my cell earlier. I saw my reflection in a women’s clothing store window and I was restoring myself to my old looks, slowly. I visited the library and sat at a long table and removed several books from the full shelves, and I began reading. Suddenly I realized how quiet it was in the city and nothing was moving except for me. I realized there were no people or animals left. The whole city was empty and quiet. It was a city just for me and my needs. Where had they all gone?
I woke up and, Misty was correct, I did feel better. Early morning was streaming through the bars of my window, creating a fence of shadows on the gray floor. I thought about how the forest had been sleeping, with Peter, Kat, and Theresa in its midst, with its birds, trees, ferns, rocks, rivers, grass, and now it was awake. I wondered whether Father had just tossed his covers aside, left his bed, what he was going to do on this particula
r day. Was he still working? Doing research? Did he have any new friends that were still alive? I thought about everyone else who awoke and began their days.
I felt strong and good. People were stirring in their various cells but the police hadn’t arrived yet. Father had a purpose in life: creating me. Theresa had her purpose: Kat and God. What did the rest of us have?
The Story of Taste
I was an old woman made of body parts. They were aging as I was and I had retained them for a long time. I was maintaining my equilibrium. I lived in a city. My name was Dina. I was so ancient I couldn’t count the years. I could hear a scraping sound inside my joints. I had forgotten longing. I couldn’t feel much, smell, see, or hear well. I passed people I knew in the park, everything was hazy and dim.
“Dina, I’m catching the moon,” an old woman called to me in the park. “Come and watch.”
I hobbled closer. The moon spilled out of her hands and fell into mine. I turned that orange moon around and around in my wrinkled fingers. I kneaded its thick skin. But it wouldn’t open up to me.
“The sky hurt me,” I tried to explain to her.
“Close your eyes and open your mouth,” she commanded me.
I snapped my lips shut.
“It’s a surprise,” she cajoled.
The air around me became pungent, sweet, sour, and citrusy. My old lips parted. Whatever she placed inside my mouth clung to me, like memories, although the body of it evaporated.
“That’s what the moon tastes like.”
I swallowed again and again to hold onto the dichotomous flavors. I had to ask her, “Then was it ever yours to give?”
I slipped my story into my notebook and hid it inside my clothes.
“I’m sorry, Misty,” I yelled through the bars, “our deal is off. I can’t take care of you.”
“Shit,” Misty said, “it’s tough back in that park.”
I easily bent the bars of my door. I could hear her better. I was glad to be back to my old self. I stepped through what was left of my door. No one was around yet. I punched the two hallway video monitors with my fists, shards of plastic fell and the electric wires dangled. I stopped to see Misty. She was still in her rags and reclining on her bed.
“Would you like to leave with me?”
“Naw,” she said, “I don’t mind it here.” She grinned, her teeth browning like food cooked in oil. “But they ain’t gonna get me in no shower this morning.” She flapped her hand. “Besides, I’ve shown you all the good places I know about. You’re good to go.”
I heard shaking and whimpering from other cells, one where there were eight women all jammed together and another with six men wandering around. They stank of urine, feces, and anything else the body offered.
A woman with makeup and teased red hair yanked on her bars, “I want to get the hell out of here. Let me out.”
“Okay,” I said, bending the bars for whoever requested it. “Dispensation,” I gave the woman with lipstick, mascara, and tiny clothes, whom I let out first.
“Whatever that is, I swear I didn’t do it.” She held up one hand and then gingerly stepped through the bars as though she might catch one of her high heels and trip. She stayed behind me while I opened several of the cells. “Hey, honey, a little makeup might help with your face. Shit,” she said, “it looks like you’ve been put through a masher.”
I was getting weary and my arms were beginning to ache after freeing seven cells. A few didn’t want to leave. Some needed to do their time and others didn’t want to leave, like Misty. There were about nineteen men and women in a phalanx behind me.
“Wow,” the woman with makeup said, “you are amazing.” She winked at me, “You should give me some of whatever it is you’re on.”
“I’m angry,” I told her as she twirled her red sequin purse behind me.
“I know what you mean. I’m angry a lot too.” She applied some more lipstick as she wobbled in her high heels. She pointed at a locked door. “That’s the way out.”
One policeman raised a club when I broke through the door. He was reaching for his gun. I knocked both weapons aside and held both his arms in one hand. Two other policemen tried to attack us but the crowd swarmed around them, pushing them down. I lifted all three policemen by their collars and threw them into an empty cell and locked it with their keys.
“You can’t do this,” one of them sputtered.
“We’ll find you. All of you,” another one threatened, grabbing the bars.
No one else had arrived yet. Then we all streamed out into the city and escaped.
Chapter Eleven
“Do you have some place to go?” the gasping woman in makeup asked me in an alley lined with garbage cans, old newspapers, empty bottles and cans. A car that had been stripped of its tires sat at the entrance. Everyone else had scattered. We fanned out and had finally stopped running. She pulled me into the alley. She was out of breath from running in her high heels. She scavenged through her purse and brought out several containers and a tube. “Here, let me do this.” She opened a compact nestled in her palm. “Bend down,” she ordered.
“Yes, I’ve been shown several places I can stay.” I was thinking of the beach and the girl with her family. I wanted to see them again.
She cupped my face and applied powder, which puffed in the air, red on my lips, and she pressed blue and black onto my eyelids, even the one that was damaged. She refashioned an eyebrow. She concluded with blush on my cheeks. She assessed her handiwork, which was nothing compared to Father’s. She lifted a tiny mirror toward my face but I only saw a little bit of me in the reflection.
“Not bad. My friend, Sparkles, he might be able to use someone like you and you could make some decent money. You can never tell what men want, you know what I mean.” She looked me up and down. “Maybe a little S & M or even enforcement services for him.” I didn’t want to ask her what the initials meant. She offered me a cigarette as she lit one for herself. I shook my head. “It’s all illegal, of course.” She winked at me. “Thanks for getting us all out. And without paying.”
“No I don’t want to meet Sparkles, but thank you.” I tried to wink at her with my bad eye and eyelid, but they didn’t work properly.
“Suit yourself. But if you change your mind and you need a job or money or something, you can find me around here.” She left, walking languidly in her heels.
I had to decide where to go, so I sat behind the abandoned car and lay my head on the back fender. A smell from the garbage cans disturbed me, filled my nose with rot. I could hear an echo of footsteps approaching as if they were far away. They stopped, and I could hear ragged breathing nearby. The surface of everything in the alley turned white as if it had been burned when a man in black interrupted my thoughts by bending down, reaching for me. I leaped up, grabbed him by his high collar, lifting him.
I was about to reshuffle him with my fist when he said, “I am a flagellant Father, and I deserve this.” His young, sculpted face turned to me as he pressed his hands together. His dark hair shone even though the light was dim. “This is rousing for worship. I’m levitating. God understands all my perpetual misunderstandings.”
“God?” My mouth fell open. “Do you know Him?” I put him down in the dirty alley.
“Only in the most abysmal sense.” He brushed off his dark clothes.
“I want to meet Him, God.”
“I find Him in the space between dusk and light. But, my dear girl . . . you are a girl, aren’t you? I can’t really tell. Anyway, come with me to my church and we can try and find Him.” He held out his hand, his brown eyes turned upward, toward me. “My name is Father Bill.”
“Whose Father are you?” I inspected his clean black clothes by walking around him, looking.
“Yours, my dear, and I take it very seriously.”
“Yes.” I was mesmerized. I took
his open hand. I could use a Father who knew God. One who wasn’t filled with a monstrous love. “Who is your daughter?”
“I don’t have one.” He smiled. “I work with people like you. ‘You shall hear the small and the large alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of any man; for the judgment is God’s.’ Deuteronomy 1:17.” We began walking.
“Oh, my face!” I ran my hands over my individual features. Part of my right nostril had fallen off in my recent flight from jail. “I must look hideous to you.”
“I’m not afraid of any face,” he replied. “Men in my profession before me took care of lepers. I try and take care of all the people I meet in my neighborhood.”
“That’s kind of you.” But he studied the sidewalks as we walked.
He looked up at me. “I, too, am being punished and ravaged by a disease within me.”
“Maybe you weren’t assembled correctly,” I offered. “Or you need another Father to fix you.” We angled past scrawny trees, handfuls of gnats, men in balled up bags and blankets sleeping in doorways with empty bottles lolling near them. “Could a doctor help you?”
“No.” He shook his head, a strange smile on his lips. “It’s deep within me. It doesn’t show. My father did try and whip it out of me when I was a boy. It has also affected my faith.” Tears brimmed at his eyes.
We stopped outside of a tall brick structure that was very different from Theresa’s rustic church. The building was circled by a rush of stained windows filled with colorful renditions of wings, fish, men, women, night stars, flames, flowers, a sun and a moon. The windows grabbed a bit of sky and transformed it. Sunlight became raw colors. The windows made me dizzy as if they were speaking to me. I pointed at one. “Are they trying to tell a story?”
“Aren’t we all, in our own way?” He smiled a handsome smile as he unlocked the door.
When we entered the enormous room, it was dark, cool, and drafty with glints of gold on statues, books, cushions. I didn’t need to bend or fold any of my limbs. Pews, worn by people’s buttocks and palms into a smudgy soft brown wood, faced all that beauty. Light, filtered through all the church windows, made different dappled stories on the floor and pews with its bright red, blue, green, yellow, and blue. The colors flew around me as the light changed, whispering their tales, tattooing my body and Father Bill’s. Even as we moved around the spacious room, they followed us, one story ending and another one beginning. It was roomy there, the opposite of the prison. I twirled on my incomplete feet, my arms outspread.
The Solace of Monsters Page 14