They Is Us

by Tama Janowitz

  At last it is decided she probably doesn’t have the Cox-Weems Pox; nevertheless, she should be admitted overnight. It may be some side-effects from being near the airplane crash, the fall-out of frozen sewage. She keeps protesting, she doesn’t feel sick! But after a while with the patronizing smiles and the peculiar-smelling air: a rubbery odor of powdered latex examining gloves, of Band-Aids, of rubbing alcohol, of recycled air, she slowly begins to think that, after all, maybe there is something wrong. In the next bed a woman is moaning behind curtains and buzzing for the nurses over and over. “Madam,” says Cliffort, “don’t you get it? Nobody is going to come!”

  Around nine that night her mother announces she is going home. Cliffort lingers. “Don’t worry, Julie, if you are pregnant I’ll be happy to practice couvade,” he whispers, pulling the curtain closed as he crawls into the bed alongside her.

  “Cliffort, what are you doing?” His tongue is in her ear, his soft webbed fingers are caressing her, making fluttery circles on her hot skin.

  “Cliffort loves his Julie, Cliffort wants it real bad. Cliffort can’t wait any longer.”

  “But Cliffort.” Julie is nervous, someone can come and pull the curtain aside at any moment. “Not here, not now! There are other people around!”

  “Ssshhh, ssssh, it’s okay.” His pants are down, he’s peeling back her hospital gown.

  “Please, Cliffort, you gotta go now!”

  “Don’t you know what this does to a man, Julie? I’m starting to get green balls! Come on, just play with me down there a little bit.”

  “No, no, I don’t care! Cliffort, get out!”

  He stares at her coldly and gets up. “Very well, if that’s how you feel,” he says. He pulls on his pants and stalks out.

  A nurse comes into her room; this one is tremendous, dressed in white, an overgrown loaf of pumpernickel, sour and yeasty. “Turn over,” she says.

  Now Julie wants to call Cliffort to come back, but it’s too late, the nurse angrily pulls up her hospital gown and jabs her a number of times with something that burns as it goes into her buttock cheek. “What is that for?”

  “Never you mind,” says the nurse. The nurse is furious but what did she, Julie, do to make her so angry? Julie has tried her best not to bother anyone, not to ask for anything to drink, not to buzz to use the bedpan until it is imperative; Julie smiles when the nurses come into the room, she tries to be helpful and informs them that the woman in the next bed is dead but… they obviously don’t like her!

  The injection makes her itch; she scratches herself uncontrollably until, around three in the morning, just as she is drifting off to sleep, two different nurses come in, give her another injection and then, this time, tie down her hands. “No more scratching!” one says glibly. “It will leave scars!”

  “You were lucky that the airline company agreed to pay for your hospital costs,” Murielle says when, back home, Julie complains. “Besides, that’s how it’s supposed to be in a hospital, and you were in one of the best.”

  “But Mom, I can barely see – and I feel little teeny explosions inside.”

  “Keep the bandages on, your eyes might get better. I don’t like to have to leave you alone, but I have to go back to work. When I go off to be with A. Jesse things will be different, and I think he can help us get you girls a settlement from the airline.”

  “No!” Julie doesn’t want to explain she doesn’t want a settlement, it should be she who makes restitution to them! She is sobbing but no tears come out.

  “Look, don’t cry. None of us can afford to cry right now. Why don’t you watch hologramovision? I left you a can of soup on the counter, all you have to do is put it in a bowl and turn on the microwave, just be careful when you take it out. You don’t really need to see to do that! And there’s tuna-fish, from the deli. You’ll be all right. Just call me if you get scared.”

  Julie feels her way to the kitchen, opens the door to the fridge. Then pries off the top of a plastic container, sticks in her finger, pulls something out, maybe an olive? But when she tastes it, a color, sky-blue, or… no, it’s closer to rich deep purple, filling her mouth and in the air hangs a yellow 11. What the heck is that all about? 11. An idea of… egg-flavored icebergs, maybe sort of like meringues… ovoid shapes… a whole lot of information is getting scrambled up… maybe her ear-microdot is coming loose or the battery getting low 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 Somehow her wiring might have gotten switched to… a cooking show? All she knows is, it is awful and when a bell rings in the distance – the doorbell? – it smells meaty. Rotten meat at a low temperature. Or… chalky stale bird droppings?

  Maybe it is just the stupid disease.

  She is panicky restless. Shaky. Everything is all wrong. Something comes back to her, one of the doctors saying to another, if the pustules don’t erupt there is a strong chance of lesions in her head. What if everybody started feeling this way? Slimy walls, custard mattress. Nasty floating motes, the size of gigantic amoebas and whole paragraphs out of books, just hanging up there.

  Hours pass, she is alone, it is dark.

  “Julie?” A banging on the door. “Julie, it is me, Rima Patel, I heard the news that you are ill –” Mrs Patel is so so nice, she has brought her dhal and homemade puri and raita and rice, rice pudding and carrot halwa, things with cardamom and rose water. “Julie, I am here also, Mahendra Patel, from next door. We did not mean to disturb you, but Locu has been asking us to see how you are doing, he is worried about your sister, but he knows your mother does not care for him. Julie, where is Sister, he is driving us crazy.”

  “Mahendra, the child is looking terrible, how can they leave her alone like this?”

  Cool wet rags over her face… She sleeps, mostly… Someone comes into her room in the darkness and stands by the door… She is sometimes, dimly, aware there is noise, there are people blocking the doorway. It now seems that Mahendra and Rima and her own grandfather are taking care of her, but where is her mother, where is Cliffort, why does he hate her now, where’s her dad? Sometimes in her long trances she, the original Julie, emerges briefly, wondering whose voice is banging on, sinks back down again. Sometimes, Sue Ellen is there beside her, but who wants to have a wet spot that thinks it is trapped in a dirty ashtray, as a friend?

  It is exhausting and each day her head hurts more than the last. The headaches now almost never go away. And yet her condition is not completely without pleasure. The root scent of a forest truffle, combined with the color blue, and the c-chord played on a slide guitar connected each time she hears the words “multiple ulcers” and “watering-can” along with the soft mouse? Or is it a hamster?

  Okay, so things are not exactly right.

  When everything is quiet in her head she turns on the HGMTV. There has to be some show on that can distract her and at least she can still see the picture, kind of, it is in 3-D from floor to ceiling…

  The President is saying, “War with the Liberiayanesetrian people has escalated and it has become necessary…” Suddenly he puts his hand up to his ear… “What? Oh, I beg your pardon… The war with the Burkina-Bissau-Guinean-Faso (kind of complicated, but for your folks listening out there, ‘Faso’ gives you a clue as to what kind of system they believe in) people has escalated as once again they have refused to accept democracy and the decent way of life…”

  She turns to another channel but he is still there, and on all the successive channels, it’s the State of the Union, except for the shopping show: he has pretaped his news conference, but is Live-on-the-Shopping-Network. “Hello Julie, and welcome to the diamond show,” the President says. “Folks, we have a new viewer who has just joined us… Does anybody want to tell her your feelings about diamonds? Yes, we have a caller!”

  “Hi, this is Ashley, and I’m calling from North Carolina. You know, I bought the diamond ring, Julie, and it is just beautiful! I really hope you get one!”

  Someone’s come in through the front door; maybe it is Cliffort, saying he forgive
s her. He is rarely around, he spends his days doing something, but she doesn’t know what, she thinks it has something to do with insects. When he is there he hardly speaks to her, he makes sure they’re never alone together, she feels awful! Julie picks up the remote control to turn off the HGMTV. “Hang on there just a minute, Julie!” says the President just before Julie switches him off.

  “Daddy!” she says with delight.

  Slawa strokes her upper arm, one of the few places they haven’t bandaged. “My little Julyka, my little my wixen, my wermin.” When she was little Julie would howl with laughter whenever Slawa pronounced his ‘v’ as ‘w’, he is doing it now to try to cheer her up but it has the opposite effect. He’s so upset at seeing her he doesn’t know what to say. “So how is Mother? And your sister?”

  “Mom’s fine. Tahnee, you know, she’s at boarding school. She got a scholarship. Daddy, Daddy, see my ring?” Tahnee has lent her the ruby ring while she is away and Julie has wrapped it carefully in a bit of tissue, so that her dad can’t see there is a finger in it. Even though the finger has shrunk, she still can’t pry it out. Fortunately he merely glances at it before she tucks it away. “Oh, Daddy… oh, Daddy.”

  “What is it, my little cabbage?”

  “Oh Daddy, there are so many things, like, I shot down the plane –” Without thinking she blurts it out, oh Daddy.

  “No, no, Julie, that is nonsense. Your grandfather has spoken to me about this silliness. He is miserable old man, Julie. You shooting, maybe, but not your fault plane is crashing. Cannot happen this way.”

  “Oh, Daddy, are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course you tell police this is what happen, they laugh at you. No one will believe this, or peoples not receiving insurance money from plane company. What else, my shapka?”

  “Oh, Dad, all those animals I took home from the lab, Mom says I stole them and they’re really mad at me and I’m going to be locked up –”

  “What, all your little pets you find outside laboratory, or dying inside? And only now they are finding out some things are missing? No one will say nothing, Julie, you will see, this kind of place no want the publicity on what they are doing to animals, and you find them mostly outside in garbage –”

  “That’s true, Daddy, and I never took anything that wouldn’t have been thrown out anyway because it was almost dead –”

  “And so they don’t notice an animal missing; how you think they will look if they announce now, for six years he has been missing.”

  “And we really did find Breakfast outside, Dad!”

  He clutches his head in his hands.

  “Dad? Are you alright?”

  Since Bocar’s uncle hit him with a bat, he has these terrible pains, not all the time but when they come they are excruciating. “No, it’s nothing. I am thinking. This is true, yes, we finded the dog outside, he is stray. Don’t worry, I am your father, I will take care of everything. I am here to look after you.”

  “Oh, Daddy. I love you so much.” She sighs happily.

  “Julie my love, I gotta go, I’m not supposed to be here. So, you feel better now? Is there anything else?”

  “Oh, Dad, there is one more thing – promise you won’t be mad?”

  “No, of course I will not be mad, you tell me.”

  “I think… It was like this, I am kind of in love with Cliffort? You know, the guy looking after Grandpa? And so, one day he took me out, and I didn’t know what was happening, exactly, ’cause as it turned out he didn’t have a thing –”

  “A thing? What kind of a thing?”

  “You know…”

  “No, I am not knowing. What is this ‘thing’?”

  “His, um… private parts… You know, the part that men have.”

  “His cock? He missing his cock?”

  “Yeah, I guess…”

  “Thank the Designer, Juliana, you know in this country if something happen, there is no abortion, no health insurance, Yuliya I don’t know how to explain, but for the people like us – we are never going to get out of trap, and that is where they want us to be.”

  She doesn’t really know what he is talking about, only that he is upset. “But Dad, I don’t think he has a thingy, but… Dad, I didn’t really know what was happening, you know, but then, when stuff came out of him, which he said was, like, spawn or something, I think some of it got up into me and, so oh, gosh, now he’s mad at me and he’s not speaking to me. I want him back! I might be pregnant.”

  She sees her father has turned pasty white, eyes narrowed in a pure blue-steel rage.

  18

  Oh, he is happy.

  “None of this hydroponically grown slabs of tasteless tissue for us!” A. Jesse pontificates as Tahnee sits across from him at the long dining table made of polished petrified wood, where they are eating hand-massaged beef the texture but not the flavor of ripe bananas. “You don’t need to worry about being a vegetarian. Here in Nature’s Caul there are people who have full-time jobs pampering and massaging Kobezebu cattle, and when it is time for these cows to be slaughtered, they are slaughtered so gentle, so loving, in such peaceful surroundings: soft music plays while the cows are quietly chomping away on tasty morsels, and the massagers are stroking, the autistic people are soothing them, so that these steer don’t even know what is about to happen. They get to live long and fulfilled lives.”

  Unfortunately Tahnee is merely toying with the food! There is real asparagus, real enough in that it is grown in a field, not in a tissue culture center, though it is true this kind of asparagus grows on trees. There is real Hollandaise sauce made with fresh creamery butter and eggs from the happy chickens that wander freely within the parameters of Nature’s Caul, scratching and pecking.

  Doesn’t she realize how lucky she is? He would like to reach across the table and smack her, her manners are so appalling and later, he knows, she will take a frozen pizza from the deep freeze to be microwaved.

  “In order for there to be rich people there have to be luxury items that no one else can afford. If there weren’t, nobody would ever bother being rich, they would just lie around like everyone else. And it is no good if the poor people have the same luxury items as the rich people. It is okay if they have poor imitations, or cheap knockoffs or even items that only the privileged would know are fake because the detail is not the same.”

  “Like, whatever,” she says, bored. “Trepan me with an ice pick, you exfoliated parvenu. Blah blah blah is all you ever do.”

  Stupidly, tears fill his eyes. What is happening to him, anyway? He is like a bunch of soggy crumbs these days, try as he will, he just can’t squeeze the crumbs back into a loaf. It’s like… it’s like… why, it’s like being a female, one who’s about to get her period, all soggy and sappy and weak… Even his little bosoms are feeling tender, is it possible he is getting some kinda female hormone, estrogen or something, from somewhere? Pregnant butterfly urine?

  “I’m sorry.” Tahnee gets up and goes around the table to sit on his lap, where she now tenderly brushes the few strands of reddish hair over to one side of his pate, which reminds him, would he be more attractive with Hair-A-Tick, he can get the hair back on his head, it’s just that there have been so many side effects with that damn method.

  “You see, in a fair democracy, one based on all men created equal, the only luxury apart from material goods allegedly made of slightly better quality, access to activities limited to the general population because of exclusivity as well as cost, is slaves. Not slaves in the sense of ownership but in the sense of servants. In a true democracy servants feel and believe themselves to be equals. However, to feel more important one must have people below oneself who are both humble and desperate. Let us look at a country which is a dictatorship and another that was Communist.”

  Tahnee yawns. Obviously she’s not listening.

  He can’t stop now, though, he has to try. “It has never been about government. It has never been about political ideologies. It has – always and
only – been about business. Money is made by the corrupt whether the system is communist or capitalist. There will always be someone skimming the cream, legally or not. Factories, farms, oil, land development. Those who are rich have power and all the fun toys. There is no point in raising money to save the Bono monkey. Bono monkey he long time bought and dead.”

  “Oh whatever. Spare me the rhetoric.” She is so rude he would so much like to turn her over and smack her plump little behind, spank it until it is hot and pink and she begs him to stop; only, he is certain, she wouldn’t let him, she would kick and scream and hit back. “Oh, Jesse, that reminds me of something I wanted to ask you. You know about the geishas you can have, like the boys who will wait on you, or the girls, what you called something like a varlet or a ladies’ maid?”

  “The word is valet.”

  “I want one. You promised, remember?”

  “No I don’t remember but of course, that can be arranged. I’ll ask Striosa.” Striosa is the head housekeeper. She has a million nephews and nieces living in the slums of some anonymous country – is it Nicotinga? Guyanaba? – one of those places where every other year or so a mudslide wipes out the cardboard and tin shelters, and obliterates a half million blah blah blah, a cause for celebration among the wealthy. Thank God the population is reduced, and then the rich ladies can host the benefit committee and obtain donated flower arrangements for the tables, dinner followed by dancing and a silent auction.

  “But why can’t I choose who I want?”

  “Who were you thinking of? Did you see someone here you like? Striosa’s niece, Onchantay, is sweet, she’s your age, it would take a few years to train her, probably, but…”

  “No! I want a friend from home.”

  “That’s sweet, but these people, they have their own systems for who gets hired. It’s very complicated. It’s based on who they owe favors to, they get a percentage of the geisha’s pay. The kids have to take classes, that costs money – it depends on their relatives back home.”