by Ka Newborrn
In the corners of the room, bonfire embers glowed with dusky, amber light. They knelt in front of each other with palms stretched outward in mirrored, kindred equilibrium. A hint of singed violets mingled with the vestiges of pine. A spotted owl swiveled his head toward the open window and watched.
The threads that fastened the hummingbird pendant around her neck had loosened. He reached for them, but she pushed his wrist away and tightened them herself. He took in the faceted beads that sparkled in her hair and the knowledge that poured from her eyes.
Walking away from her, he looked up to the ceiling and spun. Faster and faster, arms stretched out to his sides, into a funnel that he had never seen before but somehow knew had been there all along. He kicked his toes up as he spun and swallowed the air, thirsty for dizziness.
“I’ll come back,” she whispered. She repeated herself into the funnel amplifier, dismayed by the reverberations of the myriad entities competing within him for her attention. “Not you. Not you. Not you. Not you. Not you.”
“Me?”
Calvin’s watery, yet sober response caught the voices off guard. “Me?” he whispered.
“Yes.” Then she was gone.
They tried to distract him with indignant buzzing as he searched the room for evidence of her visit. He found nothing, which didn’t surprise him. Toxins were in the way.
He crept slowly down both staircases as quietly as he could and minced through the kitchen’s back entrance.
“What’s that noise?” Aunt Alice called out from her bedroom.
“Nothing, ma’am, go back to sleep.”
He found a box of senna leaves in one of the cupboards and set it on the counter. Kneeling down on the floor, he opened the storage drawer next to the stove and sifted through a collection of metal cookware until he came across a forgotten glass saucepan that hid at the very bottom.
Using a paper towel, he brushed away the dead gnats that had collected inside before filling it with distilled water, a generous pinch of leaves, and a splash of apple cider vinegar. As it boiled, he grabbed a bolt of Saran Wrap from the drawer next to the refrigerator and tucked it under his armpit, then waited for the pan to cool slightly before carrying everything back to his room.
In the adjoining bathroom, he sprinkled rosemary and fir oils into the tub, turned the hot showerhead to full blast, and closed the door behind him. Steam filled the air as he sat on the edge of the tub, drank part of the concoction and gave himself an enema with the rest.
Swathed in Saran Wrap, he stood at his stereo and placed the stylus at the edge of a record. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew filled the small attic room. He closed his eyes and asked the forces of nature to cleanse his body and mind. When they responded, he bumped into his dresser as he lurched towards the bathroom, knocking Jana’s hairbrush, an assortment of snack wrappers, and the bottle of antipsychotic medication that had remained untouched for nine days onto the floor.
Screeching eighth notes mocked the stars that lined up outside his window to watch the unveiling. And if he had the slightest doubt that his eyes were truly seeing the message spelled out in the sky before him, the buzzing in his ears soon took it away.
COME*HOME
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA
1974
Hans
Despite the irony of his side gig, Lasse and his wife, Lynda, tried to conceive for years. Lynda carried babies to term on two occasions, but complications related to double-dominant syndrome caused the infants to die within hours of birth. She was devastated, but still determined to become a mother.
The Eriksens had been on the waiting list of a California adoption agency for over two years when they were notified that the newborn son of a sixteen-year-old unwed mother had been put up for adoption and would be available the following afternoon. Lynda and Lasse completed the necessary paperwork and brought him home. They named him Hans.
Lynda did her best to create a comfortable home environment, but Hans was irreparably cold and sterile. He rubbed his hands together vigorously in an attempt to generate heat. He obsessively motioned to his fingers and mouth until Lynda wiped them with Wet Naps.
Hans continued to focus on this behavior throughout the remainder of his infancy. Lynda longed for him to focus on speech. She constantly repeated the words mama and daddy. In lieu of crying, Hans expressed feelings of discontent through controlled, staccato shrieks that ceased invariably when Lynda wiped down his face and feeding tray with Wet Naps.
On the morning that Hans turned thirteen months old, Lynda continued the attempts to make him speak. She waved a stuffed bear in front of his face. “Are you Mama’s baby boy?” she cooed. “Can you say Mama? Say Mama!” Hans resumed his litany of clipped, controlled shrieks, his arms outstretched for Wet Naps.
Lynda lost her temper and slammed the bear down on the table. She grabbed a crumpled paper napkin and wiped Hans’ mouth abrasively. “Why do you always do that? Why can’t you say, Mama?”
Hans stared back with unblinking icebergs and removed the napkin from his mother's hands with tiny, exacting fingers. “Because I have a busy head,” he answered. Licking the napkin carefully, he dabbed at his own lips. This sent Lynda into a screaming, frantic tailspin to the kitchen telephone.
Lasse left his office immediately, stopping on the way to pick up his blind mother at her home in Norwalk. When they arrived at the house in Anaheim, he took her arm and led her through the front door.
In the den, a crazed Lynda was crawling on her hands and knees, and Hans was trying to escape her. “Say it again! Say it again!” she bellowed.
“How’s my big talker?” Lasse began a playful round of shadow boxing with his son.
“Grandma’s little smarty pants!” Lasse’s mother folded up her guidance cane and carefully made her way to an overstuffed chair in the corner. “Who’s my little Great Dane?”
“He’s not a dog!” Lynda spat.
“Well, he’s a Dane, isn't he? And Danes are...”
“Don’t even think about starting that race bullshit with me," Lynda threatened, shaking a finger in the blind woman's direction. “Not today. And besides, you don't know if he's Danish or not. He’s adopted!”
“Lynda! Ma! Please!” Lasse scolded. “Lyn! Go grab the tape recorder upstairs!” Lynda rolled her eyes and did as she was told. When she arrived downstairs with the tape recorder and microphone, Lasse and his mother were arguing.
“No, you shut up, Lasse! He likes it! Listen!” She rolled her eyes in her daughter-in-law's direction. “Lynda! Give me your hand! Quickly!”
Lynda made a nasty face and grasped her mother-in-law’s hand. The blind woman’s eyes rolled obliviously. Lasse glared at his wife and extended his hand. When the circle was complete, Lasse's mother began singing Thanks for the Memory in a scratchy voice. Lynda and Lasse joined in. A few moments later, the trio was laughing and singing loudly. Hans stared on in bewilderment.
“Lynda! Ma! Be quiet! I think he’s trying to say something!” Lynda broke the circle and scurried to put the microphone under Hans’ mouth. They waited.
The moment had come and gone, and Hans remained silent. Lasse tapped his foot impatiently and sighed with condescension. “What, so now you won't talk at all?” Lasse's mother waved the stuffed bear. Lynda continued to hold the microphone.
Hans shifted his attention from Lasse’s body, to Lynda’s helium shrill, to Lasse's mother's rolling eyes and back again. “What have you done with my mother?” he asked. A deafening silence ensued.
✽✽✽
When Hans was in the fourth grade, his teacher phoned Lynda in hysterical tears and informed her that he killed the classroom’s pet gerbil, tarantula, and hermit crab during recess by saturating them with Clorox bleach. He was asked to explain his actions during a meeting with the elementary school psychiatrist. He told her that the lives of classroom vermin were insignificant to the greater functioning of the Earth because their tiny brains were intellectually irrelevant.
The psychia
trist wrote in a spiral notebook and focused her gaze on Hans’ unblinking iceberg eyes. “So what you’re saying is, not all life forms are relevant?”
“Yes.” Hans answered without shifting his gaze.
“Does this theory apply to humans as well? Let's say your classmates, for example.”
“All life forms include humans. Humans include classmates." His voice was monotone.
“Do you feel the need to hurt any of your classmates?” she pressed.
Hans ignored the question and focused on the pattern of her yellow and burgundy Kente Cloth shift. “Why do you wear that?”
The psychiatrist glanced down at her shift. “Because I like it.”
“Why do you like it?” he pressed.
The psychiatrist took a deep breath and held her gaze. “It's a cloth from Africa. It aligns with my cultural identity, and the colors make me happy.”
His eyes were sterile. "You're worried about my sociopathic tendencies because I’m not sorry about having a little fun with the stupid rodents.”
"So you found it fun to kill them?"
His lips curled into the slightest of smiles. "I meant my classmates. Watching their faces when they saw what I did to their pets." He glanced at her breasts. “Why does it align with your cultural identity? You don’t have a West African accent or any African accent at all, for that matter.”
The psychiatrist cleared her throat. “Because I’m African American. Surely you understand the relevance of ancestral connection.”
He winced but never blinked. “Then you're the sociopath.”
“And how's that?”
“Kente Cloth is a commodity like everything else. The merchants who own it reap status and class. The laborers who produce it rot in sweatshops. It aligns with your cultural identity, but you perpetuate the same ethnocidal cycle that was supposed to end in America with Lincoln.” He picked at a scab on his elbow. “I'll bet an impoverished, underage West African girl was paid ten cents an hour to work in a factory to make your dress. Then she spent a third of it taking a bus home at three am and got raped by an HIV positive vagrant that was hiding in the bushes. I don't feel the need to hurt any of my classmates if you want the truth, and I guess you do, because you asked.”
Hans knew full well the fallacy of this argument, but, like everything else, facts and truth were pliable like clay and easily molded to suit his purpose at any given moment. It didn't matter, anyway; he could tell by the look on the psychiatrist's face that she believed everything he had said.
✽✽✽
He spent the remainder of his elementary school career devoid of incident, but staff and students alike were wary of him and kept a comfortable distance. In high school, he never spoke unless an opportunity arose to challenge his teachers. He didn't participate in sports or academic teams. His sole extracurricular activity was rebuilding the engine of a crumbling Volkswagen Beetle that he purchased on his sixteenth birthday.
One evening during his senior year of high school, while his parents were out on a dinner and movie date, he sat in his bedroom reading his acceptance letter to MIT. He had just turned on the television to watch the ten o'clock news when the telephone rang. It was his grandmother. Her home health aide never showed up for work, so she needed Lasse to come over immediately because she felt ill. Hans explained that his parents were out for the evening, but he would stop by to see her instead.
At ten twenty, he pulled his ancient Volkswagen Beetle into the driveway of his grandmother's two-story Norwalk home. He opened the front door and called for her. When she didn’t respond, he walked up the stairs and found her bedroom empty. He started to check the bathroom but heard a faint whimpering coming from the first floor. He followed it down the second floor landing and across the kitchen to the basement door, where his grandmother was lying at the bottom of the concrete steps with two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder. She turned her neck slightly in his direction and whispered for help.
He ran down the steps as fast as she could and glanced at the items around the room: an old side-by-side refrigerator. Rows and rows of canning jars. A washer and dryer.
A laundry basket filled with sheets, blankets, and a pillow rested on top of the dryer. Hans removed a blanket from the basket and held it to his nose. It smelled like fabric softener. He put it back into the basket, carried it to his grandmother and placed it by her side.
He knelt down and cradled her neck gently. Her eyes rolled back and forth. Taking her hand, he guided her fingertips to his mouth and curled his lips into a deliberate smile. She shivered. Tears streamed down her face and saturated the dry, cottony hair at her temples. He brushed them away, reached into the laundry basket and covered her with the blanket. She continued to shake uncontrollably.
He hummed as he held her, rocking her back and forth in his arms like an infant. Moments later, he was singing Thanks for the Memory in a loud, earnest voice. He took her hands in his own and moved them along in tempo, inviting her to join him in song. She didn't sing but opened her mouth and reluctantly produced a succession of guttural noises similar to the ones a rodent might make while being saturated with Clorox bleach. The noises gradually gave way to a coughing fit, followed by more shivers and the release of her bowels. Hans removed the pillow from the laundry basket, held it over his grandmother's face and relieved her of her misery.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
1991
Peggy
Stranded alone on the shoulder of the Imperial Freeway in a stalled car, Peggy Hope decided it was much too dark out to walk alone in search of a call box. She popped the hood of her Mercury Tracer, got back inside, locked the doors and waited for help to arrive.
She slapped her palms against the faded dashboard and cursed. She was used to car trouble, but the timing could not have been worse. She always made it a point to be on time; it was her first week on the job and she couldn't afford to lose it.
Her calf muscles were cramping and she needed to stretch her legs. She fiddled with the lever to pull back the driver's seat, but it remained as irreparably stuck as it had been the day her neighbor's cousin drove the cash-sucking lemon to her family's home in exchange for the three thousand dollars she had saved in high school.
She turned her body sideways and draped her long legs diagonally into the backseat. Forever and a Day Legs, her parents and brother often teased. All of her friends at CSU Fullerton were in the habit of telling her that her wholesome looks and five feet eleven inch frame could bring her more success as a model than her job as a home health aide ever could, but she ignored them. She enjoyed her work. Looking after Mrs. Eriksen was relevant to her goal of becoming a registered nurse, and she managed to sneak in a good deal of studying during her shifts.
When Officer Bob Murano showed up an hour and a half later, his handsome face and broad shoulders put her instantly at ease. He told her not to worry; he would arrange for a tow and drive her to work. As they headed to Norwalk in the police vehicle, she relaxed and put a plan into place. Once she got to Mrs. Eriksen's house, she would, with the moral support of the handsome young policeman, explain the situation to the elderly woman and apologize profusely. Then she would call the staffing agency and attempt to clean up the gaffe.
When they arrived at Mrs. Eriksen's house at ten thirty, the front door was wide open and a suspicious vehicle was parked in the driveway. Bob insisted on escorting her inside to make sure that everything was okay. Peggy did not protest. He did his very best to be as respectful as possible and not get distracted by her wholesome looks and Forever and a Day Legs. He failed miserably at the latter.
Raising a finger to his lips, he led the way as they entered the house cautiously and quietly looked around. Peggy stayed a few paces behind him, squeezing his bicep with her forearm and losing herself momentarily in the intoxicating scent of his neck. He turned to her momentarily and stopped. He stared longingly at her wholesome face, took her hand gently in his own, kissed it and motioned for her to stand back. A
s they minced across the living room and headed towards the kitchen, the distinct sound of a male voice singing emanated from the direction of the basement. He raised his gun and stepped into the doorway at the top of the basement steps. At the bottom of the staircase, Hans was crouched over Mrs. Eriksen's lifeless body with a pillow pressed firmly over her face.
Bob ordered Hans to freeze and screamed for Peggy to get out of the house. Crying, she ran out of the open door and towards a neighboring house for help. Hans looked down the barrel of the gun and did as he was told. The deliberate smile never left his lips.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
1991
Calvin
The voices informed Calvin that he was not allowed, under any circumstances, to continue polluting his body with insidious medical substances. He flushed the pills down the toilet and replaced them with identical looking tablets of alpha lipoic acid.
He made an effort to appear normal in front of his family. At dinnertime, he laughed freely at Jana’s jokes and was overly helpful towards Aunt Alice. He complimented the foods that the voices allowed him to consume and gushed about his new job when questioned about the internship. Despite his thespian sensibilities, Jana remained suspicious.
“He’s looking awfully slight and pale, don’t you think?” Jana confided to Russell one evening while Calvin was washing the dinner dishes out of earshot.
“That vegan diet is bound to shave a few pounds off of him,” Russell reasoned, “but he eats more vegetables than we do. Besides, you watch him take his medication every morning.”
“Didn’t you notice how he keeps batting at his ear?” Jana pointed out. “I think we should take him back to the doctor.”
“He’s due back for a physical in three months,” Russell said. “He’s eating regularly and holding down a job. I think you’re overreacting.”