restlessness
someone come
Even though she was only a little girl of six (well, almost six), she knew that Buddy had written the words, and that it was some kind of prayer, and that made her sad because she knew what it was like to feel so scared and tired and alone, like you belonged somewhere else but there wasn’t anybody listening to you when you asked to leave.
and where do I live?
under the tracks of the l
in a cardboard box
that’s falling apart
within the cell life is hard, life is long
within the cell, life is hard
someone please come
II
Leah watched in silence as her mother handed the baby over to the man in the dark coat and knew she wouldn’t be seeing her little sister again. It always happened this way: Mommy would go away with the men in the dark coats to the Shiny Place (that’s what Mommy called it) and Leah would be all by herself for weeks at a time in the abandoned warehouse that was her home; it was kind of scary for a little while after Mommy left, but it was easier getting the people at the restaurants to give her food when she was by herself—”Oh, you poor child,” they all said, stuffing bread and hamburgers and doughnuts and little cartons of milk into the paper bags, “what kind of a mother would do this to a child?”—so she never had to dig through the garbage dumpsters like she had to with Mommy, and there was Merc and Chief Wetbrain who were always on their corner a few blocks away, they were really nice and had helped her before...but mostly there was Buddy. She thought it was a good thing that she had Buddy around to take care of her when Mommy was gone; he always made things better.
The dark-coat man took the baby, smiled down at it, then snapped his fingers; another man in a dark coat and sunglasses (Leah wondered why none of the dark-coat men ever took their sunglasses off, even at night) got out of the car and handed Mommy a thick envelope. That made Leah feel even worse. She knew there was money in the envelope that the dark-coat man was giving to Mommy for the baby, and Mommy would use it to buy more needle-stuff that would last until the next time the men in the dark coats returned to take her to the Shiny Place, and after a couple of weeks she’d come back all pregnant, then have the baby, then the dark-coat men’d be there with their envelopes full of money.
Leah wanted to cry. She hadn’t even got to give her little sister a name—and this had been her first sister, too.
She felt a tear forming and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and Removing herself (that’s what Buddy called it) from everything going on around her, watching as silvery shimmer-bursts of light went off behind her closed lids, and she did just as Buddy had taught her, she reached out in her mind like in daydream and snagged a ride on one of the shimmers—
—and saw the Earth and the Moon as they must have looked to astronauts moving through the cold, glittering depths of the cosmos; the dry, pounded surface of the moon, its craters dark and secretive and dead as an old bone; just beyond was a milky-white radiance that cast liquid-grey shadows across the lunarscape while distant stars winked at her, then a burst of heat and pressure and suddenly she was below the moist, gleaming membrane of the bright blue sky, Earth rising exuberantly into her line of sight: She marveled at the majestic, swirling drifts of white clouds covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land and watched the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the molten fire beneath, and when the plates had settled and the rivers had carved their paths and the trees had spread their wondrous arms, there came next the People and their races and mysteries through the ages, and in her mind she danced through some of those Mysteries, Buddy holding her hand as they stood atop places with wonderful and odd names, places like Cheops’ Pyramid and the Tower of Ra, Zoroaster’s Temple and the Javanese Borobudur, the Krishna Shrine, the Valhalla Plateau and Woton’s Throne, and then they started dancing through King Arthur’s Castle and Gawain’s Abyss and Lancelot’s Point, then they went to Solomon’s Temple at Moriah, then the Aztec Amphitheatre, Toltec Point, Cardenas Butte, and Alarcon Terrace before stopping at last in front of the great Wall of Skulls at Chichén Itzá: The skulls were awash by a sea of glowing colors, changing shape in the lights from above, their mouths opening as if to speak to her, flesh spreading across bone to form faces and her heart—oh, her heart felt almost freed and—
Mommy smacked her on the shoulder. “Stop daydreaming, damn you.”
The dark-coat man handed the baby to one of his friends, then walked over to Leah, took off his sunglasses, and smiled down at her. His eyes were cold and black and made Leah feel like he’d swallow her up if she looked into them for too long.
“Please don’t,” said Mommy. “She’s all I’ve got.”
One of the other men grabbed Leah’s mother and held her back.
“All you’ve got like my ass chews gum,” said the dark-coat man. “You have about as much love in your heart for this child as I do for you, you worthless piece of shit.”
“Don’t you call my mommy names!” shouted Leah.
“I apologize,” said the dark-coat man, kneeling down in front of Leah. “Tell me, sweetheart, how old are you now?”
“I’ll be six pretty soon.”
“The thirteenth of next month, as a matter of fact,” he said. “And you know what’s going to happen then?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Why, we’re going to come back and take both you and your mommy to a birthday party for you.”
“Really? In the Shiny Place?”
The dark-coat man shot an angry glance at Leah’s mother. “Chatty little thing, aren’t you?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“And charming, to boot.” He looked back at Leah. “Yes, sweetheart, we’re going to have a birthday party for you in the Shiny Place. Then you and your mommy can live there, if you want. It’s very nice; it’s clean and you can watch television and play games and there’ll be food every day and you won’t have to worry about ever being left alone again.”
“Can I still see my friends?”
Something in the dark-coat man’s eyes brightened when she asked this. “What friends do you mean, sweetheart?”
“You know...Merc and Chief Wetbrain, and Randi—she’s a singer who comes around to visit Merc sometimes.”
“Of course you can still see them, Leah. We’ll even bring them to the party if you want.”
“Could they live with us, maybe?”
“Maybe. Are there any other friends you want to come to the party?”
She almost told him about Buddy but something in the way he’d said any other friends didn’t sound very nice, so Leah just shook her head.
The dark-coat man stopped smiling. “Well, then...you think about it, sweetheart. If there’s anyone else you want to be there, you just tell us where they are and we’ll invite them.” He reached out and touched her cheek. His hand felt like cold, raw restaurant meat. “Listen, sweetheart, we need to, uh...do something to you right now, if it’s okay.”
“Don’t touch her!” shouted Mommy.
“Shut up,” said the dark-coat man. Then, to Leah: “Would you do a big favor for me? Would you get into the back seat of my car and let us take a little blood from your arm?”
“W-why?”
“It’s all right, Leah; the man who’ll do it is a doctor so you don’t have to—”
“I don’t like needles,” said Leah, as much to her mother as the dark-coat man.
“I know you don’t, honey, but we need it...we need it in case your little sister gets sick, see? You both have the same blood-type—do you know what that is?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. You both have the same blood-type, and it’s very rare; you’re the only other girl in this part of the country who has it, and if something happens and your little sister needs blood, we wouldn’t have any.”
Leah thought about it for a moment. “Will it hurt?”
�
�Only a little sting, I promise.”
Leah’s lower lip trembled. “I don’t want her to be sick.”
“Oh, she’s not sick, hon, but if she were to get sick....”
“Okay.”
“I won’t let you!” shouted Mommy.
“That’s enough from you,” said the dark-coat man, rising to his feet. “She loves her little sister, don’t you, Leah? She only wants to help, and if she doesn’t, that might spoil things. We don’t want to spoil things for her, do we?”
“Will she be there?” asked Leah, pointing at the baby. “At my party?”
“If you want.”
“I do, I really do. I never had a little sister before.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Ah, well...that can be one of your presents. You can give your little sister a name. Would you like that?”
“Oh, yes...!”
“Consider it done, then.”
Leah got into the back seat and let the nice old doctor with the gray hair take some blood from her arm; it took a lot longer than she thought it would because he had to fill a clear plastic bag, and it left her feeling a little dizzy but then he gave her some lemonade and cookies and she felt better.
As she sat there finishing off the cookies and starting in on the King Dons (“Maybe you’d better have something more,” the doctor had said), she heard Mommy talking with the dark-coat man.
“What’re you going to do with her?” said Mommy.
“None of your business. You’ve not asked about what happened to any of the others, so why the sudden concern?”
“Because...I dunno...she’s not such a bad kid, y’know? I love—”
“Oh, spare me. God, you’re disgusting.”
“You can’t talk to me like that!”
“I can talk to you any way I damned well please. Aside from the fact it took us three fucking years to find you, the only reason we’ve let you keep her this long is because she’s formed—for whatever bizarre reasons—an emotional attachment to you. She loves you. We didn’t expect that. But don’t think that means you’re safe, dearie. You could be disappeared like that”—he snapped his fingers—“and no one would give a damn.”
“Maybe,” said Mommy. “And maybe not. Maybe I got friends around town, you know? And maybe I gave a couple of them copies of a letter I wrote, and they’ll send those letters if I turn up missing.”
“Do you really think that just because my division works outside the boundaries of the Federal Government we can’t affect something so puny as the U.S. Postal Service? Christ! You don’t deserve to be her mother. “
“What is she to you, anyway?”
“A pinball,” said the dark-coat man, then laughed. “Oh, my, the expression on your face—BoBo the Dog-Faced Boy looked more intelligent. You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“You never made a whole lot of sense in all the years I’ve known you.”
“And I fear it’s prevented us from becoming closer. The heart breaks. Listen: A few weeks ago I was in Jerusalem checking out reports on a little girl who we thought might be like Leah. What happened with her is none of your business and secondary to the point of my story, anyway.
“I was walking through one of the oldest sections of the city and admiring its ancient beauty, when I got to thinking about how Jerusalem was perceived in medieval times: Many religious groups considered it—and still do consider it—the center of the universe, the naval of the world where heaven and earth join. It was there at the center of the universe that God spoke to His prophets and the People of the Book; Jews come to worship at the wall of their temple near the Holy of Holies, Christians come to follow the steps of their Lord in His Final Passion, and Muslims worship at the Dome of the Rock where Mohammed received the Koran.
“In ancient times, there was a center to the old city marked by Roman crossroads that divided the city and the earth into four quadrants—the fulcrum of medieval geography. Most of the roads disappeared long ago, but to this day, at each corner of the crossroads, there still stands a Roman pillar. So I found myself wandering into the very center-within-the-center of the universe. Do you know what’s there? Of all the shrines and statues, temples and rocks, symbols and what-have-you that could be there to mark the exact, precise center of the universe, can you guess what I found?
“A pinball parlor. Rows and rows of pinball machines. Astonishing. I laughed, I couldn’t help it. Determinists think of the universe as a clockwork device. I see it as a pinball machine. Playing pinball requires total concentration, the right combination of skill and chance, an understanding and mastery of indeterminacy as the balls fly about, interacting with the bumpers and cushions. It creates an ersatz reality that integrates into the human nervous system in a remarkable way, and I realized that it was no accident that pinball machines stand at the center of the universe, because in order to know the universe we must observe it, and in the act of observation, uncontrolled and random processes are initiated into reality. I can see from that blank look in your eyes that I’m losing you, so I’ll make it simple: children like your daughter will someday soon become the pinballs in the machine of the universe, and whoever has them, whoever controls them, is master of the game and need not worry that the device will tilt on them.”
Mommy shook her head. “Man, you are so full of shit.”
“I take back what I said about you before; you don’t disgust me. I pity you too much to feel disgust.”
“Feeling better now?” asked the doctor, jostling Leah’s arm.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thanks for the King Dons. I don’t get to have a lot of snacks.”
“Would you like some more to take with you?”
“Yes, please.”
As the doctor was putting the extra packs of King Dons into a paper bag for her, he asked, “Tell me, Leah, do you get many headaches?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are they bad?”
“Yeah. Sometimes they hurt real bad.”
“Can you show me where they start, these headaches?”
“Sure.” She put a finger on the bridge of her nose. “Right here. I get a runny nose, too. Sometimes my nose bleeds a little.”
“I see,” said the doctor, then reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a bottle of pills. “What you’ve got, Leah, is a condition called sinusitis. It’s not uncommon for children of...for children like yourself. Don’t you worry yourself, hon; it’s not too serious, if treated properly. Here, you take these pills—and don’t let your mommy see them, all right? She’d only take them away from you.”
“...’kay...?”
“The red ones are for your headaches, all right? Take one when the pain gets real bad. The blue ones are for infection; you should take one of those three times a day. Can you remember all that, Leah?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor smiled and touched her face; his hand wasn’t at all like the dark-coat man’s; his hand was warm and kind, like a Grandpa’s hand—or, rather, how Leah imagined a Grandpa’s hand would feel.
“You’re a very pretty little girl, Leah, has anyone told you that?”
“No, sir.”
“And with the ‘sir’! So polite.”
“Thank you.”
“I know a lot of this must be confusing for you, dear, but when we come back and take you to your birthday party next month, you’ll understand everything.”
“My little sister’s gonna be there. The other man said so.”
“And so she shall be.” Then the doctor leaned forward, pulled Leah close, and whispered, “Your brothers might be there, as well.”
Leah felt her heart skip a beat. “All of them?”
“Yes. And maybe—and you must not tell this to anyone—maybe your daddy will be there, too.”
Leah was so excited she could barely contain herself. For all of her life she’d wondered about her daddy, who he was, where he came from, what he did f
or a living. All she really knew was that the men drove Mommy to see Daddy whenever they took her away. And now she might maybe get to see her daddy for the first time.
In her heart, wizards, angels, and faeries danced.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, then gave the doctor a great big hug and kissed him on the cheek. He hugged her back, and there was something sad in the way he did it, something that made Leah think of the words on Buddy’s wall: the voice in the night sky is loneliness...
“You remember about the pills,” said the doctor, “and about our little secret about your daddy, okay?”
“Okay,” said Leah, stuffing the bottle of pills into one of her pockets and climbing out of the car, the bag of King Dons clutched to her chest like discovered treasure. She wondered if Buddy liked King Dons, if he’d ever had them, and looked forward to sharing them with her best-best friend in the whole world.
Mommy grabbed Leah’s arm and they ran out of the alley. The only sound Leah could hear now was the laughter of the dark-coat man; it bounced off the alley walls, ugly and mean, coming after her and Mommy like some crazy junkyard dog; the sound wailed and roared in the slick darkness of the rain-dampened streets, and under the laughter Leah could hear her little sister starting to cry and suddenly she felt awful, like she’d just run over a bird with her bike. She felt like a killer. She didn’t want to leave her sister in the alley with the dark-coat man. The alley was cold and wet and dark and smelled like somebody threw up.
“Mommy, please go and get her back.”
“Be quiet.”
“Please? She’s c-c-crying, hear? She misses us and—”
“I said shut up!” screamed her mother, slapping Leah hard across the face. “Shut your miserable little mouth, goddammit, or I swear I’ll...I’ll let Jewel take you up to his room next time!”
Leah went rigid with fear. Jewel was the short little bald-headed man Mommy bought her needle-stuff from. He was old and wrinkly and sweated all the time and was always trying to touch Leah whenever he saw her. “Young and tasty,” he said. “I like ‘em when they’re young and tasty.” Leah didn’t know what Jewel wanted to do with her, but she knew it probably wasn’t very nice because Jewel had a little girl named Denise who was with him all the time, and she always had bruises and cuts on her face and over her body and sometimes burn marks around her wrists and she never said anything whenever Leah talked to her and her eyes were always staring out at something only she seemed able to see, and whatever it was she saw made her empty.
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