They Is Us

by Tama Janowitz

  She pries loose. “I came home early to see my daughter.”

  “Yes, you caught us all off guard I am afraid.” She laughs a tinkling-type laugh. “Perhaps for the best if you do not see Julie just yet, until I have prepared you.”

  “What are you doing to her?”

  “You know, we have been so worried about your little girl! And one day my husband and I rang your bell, with some food. She told you this, I am certain.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “What a remarkable child she is, Murielle!”

  “You’re talking about Julie?”

  “I hope you are not minding, but after she spoke to my husband, she says the tremors are due not to Peplum’s Scourge, which is what our doctor thought, initially, but a prostate complaint due to an environmental contaminant! Yes, here in our own back yard, can you believe it! And, as I had been saying to the doctor, surely it cannot be Peplum’s. Yet with a simple remedy: fondling his aura, your daughter cured him! Then, I could not help myself, you see, I have a friend who is very ill and – the doctors do not know what is wrong with her!”

  Murielle doesn’t have a clue what the woman is going on about.

  “I knew how worried you must be, there she lies in that dark room, alone all day, I promise you we will look after her while you are at your work. You see, we have almost lost our motel franchise, but it is thanks to Julie we are able to save it now, with the additional clients! Oh, it had been so terrible! As you know, they said we were not keeping up the standards and we said, ‘Why do we need your name when you, the Superior Inn Franchise Corporation, simply take our money and offer no assistance at all, only to overcharge us for your required products?’ So we left the corporation, and they forced us to change the name of the hotel, now we call ourselves the Vastly Superior Inn, but they are threatening to…”

  “But what is going on here?”

  “Have a lime soda. Isn’t it wonderful!” says Rima, “So refreshing and delicious, I have made it myself from citric acid the flavor of kaffir limes – and you must try the onion bhaji, it is a kind of little fritter, I hope you do not find it too spicy.”

  She had not known what a talker Rima could be. “No, thanks.”

  “I am so glad we are friends now, I have longed to have someone to confide in. You see, it was the representatives from the Superior Corporation who came in, secretly, a few times a year, to visit the various franchises, and discovered that we were not using the correct oil paintings and bed linens: hideous mustard-tone acrylic blankets and brown patterned bedspreads! But you must see, they charge a markup that is twelve hundred times as much as what these things are worth! And my husband, he has gotten so lazy – do you know, that scoundrel has completely lost his mind, he is smoking opium or some synthetic substitute? Yes, believe it or not, I found him in the linen closet, with sixteen customers waiting to check in and no one there! ‘I will divorce you,’ I told him. ‘Have you lost your mind? You are such a dork!’ I had just not known nor understood how isolated I would be in New Jersey. The scum next door, hanging out on their front lawn, the trashy girls, the drunken husband, the bad smells of roasting pork.” She pauses, realizing this was not perhaps the right thing to say. “Now of course I know better! To think that all this time I might have thought the better of you. My family is not here, except for my younger ungrateful sons! Locu has gone, simply disappeared, I am distraught! And now, my husband has finally driven the Patels’ hotel into the ground, adding chili powder and things that he knew were not supposed to be adding to the complimentary buffalo wings. ‘These people want bagels,’ I told him. ‘They do not want spicy food, many of them are Orthodox Jews, go to the day-old store and get them some old bagels for the complimentary breakfast.’ But does he listen?”

  Obviously the woman is out of her mind, Murielle thinks, does she even realize how rude she is being to rant on and on like something has come unstuck? “I still don’t understand what is happening here, the people lined up; my daughter.” Murielle says.

  “I am telling you, Murielle, although our relatives in India send us money each month, it is not enough, I wish my family had been allowed back to India The Homeland! But they said after three generations you cannot return, you are no longer Indian. India is so rich, this would not happen there! In India, even the poorest person has a lovely home, medical care. Here, for my son Locu all I can hope for is that he can obtain a position as a geisha to the rich in Nature’s Caul.”

  She is never going to get an answer from this woman, Murielle thinks. At least the crowds have dispersed, the block for now is quiet. “Listen, you really have to go.”

  Grandpa is watching hologramovision.

  “It appears that a few of you have been following the World Cup soccer,” the President is saying. “And I know that some of you are curious as to why the US is not participating. For that, I have a good answer –” He glances quickly at the prompter. “Not only are very few Americans interested in soccer, it not being a particularly American game, but in addition Congress has stated they feel the US must preclude itself because we would undoubtedly win, and the other countries would be angry and even more jealous of us. So for those of you who have a warm and generous spot in their hearts, you should be happy that as always we are showing American kindness to –”

  “Baboon-bottom breath.” Grandpa spits in a paper napkin and turns to the advertisement channel.

  Some nitwit broad takes a couple of steps forward, she’s yammering away as she practically climbs into bed with him! “For a limited time you can have direct delivery, straight from the bubbling subterranean system of Brooklyn directly to your door! And because we use a special patent-pending method of purification, our water is so clean it’s even better than the first time around. Because while water doesn’t grow on trees… a tree grows in Brooklyn water.”

  Now what the heck is that supposed to mean, he thinks. There aren’t any trees in Brooklyn. Besides, who wants someone else’s recycled… On the other hand it is cheap and probably – by law – has to be okay. He decides to order the service, on line for only the next fifteen minutes act fast now! To his delight the blonde broad who has somehow gotten into his bedroom starts jumping up and down, now he realizes he can see through her shirt! She’s shouting, squealing as she jumps up and down on his bed. “I can’t believe it! This kind of thing never happens! It’s unbelievable! Guess what: you’ve won a round-trip first-class trip to the destination of your choice.” There are bells and whistles going off and other people outta that weird HGMTV machine have started crowding around him, it looks like they want to shake his hand but whenever he reaches out his hand goes right through theirs, like they’re some kind of ghost? “Congratulations! Please say yes or no to one or more of the following offers – Almuncle Antrobus, would you like to have a degree in Criminology? A half-gallon of enzyme-enhanced peptides with sparkling oxygen crystals? Treat foot fungus! Fast and safe effective treatment in three easy payments. Learn more about brewing beer at home?”

  “Well… maybe.”

  “Sweetie, in order to be eligible for the free first-class ticket to the destination of your choice, you are obliged to say yes to at least three of our valuable offers. Do you have one or more mortgages? What about applying for refinancing of your home?”

  Four hours later Almuncle is still clicking off boxes when someone new cuts onto the screen.

  “What? Who the heck is this?”

  “It’s me, Papi – Dyllis! I hear little Hulia is getting sicker, how is she doing?”

  “Who?”

  “Julie? Your granddaughter.”

  “Oh. Yes. That is what has been troubling me. Listen, I’m almost out the door, the taxi should be here any minute.”

  “Where you going, Papi?”

  “I’ve won an all-expenses-paid first-class ticket to the destination of my choice! It’s all been recorded and I’ve signed the necessary papers!”

  “Why, Papi? Why you going?”


  “That bitch Murielle won’t put me in the nursing home! All I ever wanted was for her to sign me into that darn nursing home – they have a gym, a sauna, nightclubs! – but instead she’s got me trapped in this cockaroach-infested hellhole with Frogboy and my granddaughter who’s got a line of people around the block coming into the house. I don’t know what she’s doing in there, some kind of brothel?”

  “Listen to me, I don’t know what’s going on, I will come over and try to help.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Grandpa says. “The taxi should be here any minute and I’m off to Amsterdam. First stop, the Red Light District; then on to van Hoek to meet my love, sweet Lady Juan Aishat! I was supposed to look after Julie while Froggy went out, but I ain’t sticking around here!”

  Though Julie is still barely able to walk, and bandaged over virtually every part of her body, she’s managed to get out of bed to sit on a chair in front of the living room window. “Grampy – he’s gone, Dyllis.”

  Dyllis pulls up a chair and sits down beside her. “I know, little mommy, he told me. That’s why I come here, to see you, but I don’t wanna leave you alone. Your granpappy, he tell you goodbye?”

  “Yes, Dyllis. He gave me this to watch when I’m better.”

  It’s an antique ZVD3, maybe a half century old, labeled Death, Doom and Disaster, Or, How We Brought Destruction On Ourselves. “Ju know, when I was a little girl,” Dyllis says, “people always talked about how there used to be all kinda birds. Sparrows, pigeons, Mister Robin Redbreast, some leetle kinda of blackbirds, alla them die of the bird ’flu. They must have been pretty, right? Birds flying around in the trees, chirp chirp, picking up worms from the grass…

  “It’s probably good the birds all died,” Julie says, “since there’s no trees or grass any more either. The only birds I’ve seen around here are those seagull-vulture kind of things and most of them look pretty sick.”

  “I feel pretty sick too! And jour dog, did you have a look at heem? She’s losing all her hairs, you got jourself a bald dog there.”

  It is true that Breakfast’s fur has dropped off in huge patches and he looks quite miserable, pinkly gray, and constantly scratching. “He looks the way I feel,” Julie says. “If I could just get these bandages off and scratch. I feel like I’m going out of my mind. What the hell’s wrong with me, anyway? Why won’t anybody tell me?”

  “Nobody tell you? You got the boiling pox.” Dyllis almost forgets she has a Spanish accent. “My gawd, Julie, I don’t know why they didn’t let you know, that’s terrible. I’ve always believed in telling the truth. It’s some kind of variation on smallpox, you know, a mutant strain or something: that’s why the injections they gave you when they first took you in didn’t work, or made it worse or something. They think there was a vial of the stuff in the plane crash, they’re gonna level the whole area, turn it into a memorial. I mean, they don’t normally do that for plane crash sites.”

  “But Tahnee and Cliffort were there and they didn’t get sick…”

  “Some kinda immunity, I guess… or maybe they never touched the stuff, you only get sick from direct proximity… Well, one good thing: you got yourself a boyfriend, didn’t you?”

  “You mean Cliffort? Oh Dyllis, I think so; I hope so, I love him so much but now look at me, how fat and ugly… Dyllis?”

  “Jes?”

  “I was responsible for that plane crash,” Julie says miserably.

  “What chu talking about? You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Yes, I did. Cliffort was teaching me how to shoot, you know he has some guns, and I wasn’t paying attention and when the plane came in overhead, it was my shot that hit it.”

  “It was an accident. If it was anybody’s fault it was Cliffort’s – you’re just a child. I think you should get rid of him.”

  “You’re not really helping me.”

  “If you wanted to be punished, you’ve got your wish by getting smallpox or whatever it is you have. Why do you think all these doctors and scientists keep coming over?”

  “I didn’t know. Nobody even told me who they are or were.”

  “Come on. Eet a nice day. I help you outside, you get some fresh air.” Dyllis puts her arms around Julie and carefully ushers her out the back door. Slawa had built a barbecue pit, years before, out of cinderblocks; it takes up half the yard, which had mostly been concreted over. The rest is dust. There is a metal table and chairs and Dyllis seats Julie in one of the chairs before unfurling the umbrella.

  “I’m gonna go get you a hat; and I’m gonna get you something to drink, you gotta keep drinking liquids.”

  “I itch all over, Dyllis.”

  “That the pustules. Try not to scratch… Sh-sh-sh-sheet! I stepped in dog sheet!”

  Breakfast at long last has managed to defecate and now prances around looking pleased with himself. In the corner of the yard a large insect, the size of an overgrown watermelon, emerges from under a pile of refuse.

  “Breakfast!” yells Dyllis. “Get over here! Goddamn it, that look like one of the bugs escaped from the lab. I don’t like that, that shouldn’t happen, we don’t know nothin’ about what it can do. You got a rake or a shovel some place?”

  “Maybe in the garage. What are you going to do? Don’t hurt it!”

  “You don’t understand. If it’s what I think it is, it have a stinger with, like, poison ivy kinda fluid, you be scratchin’ something fierce!” The insect, with a large striped carapace, is unafraid. When Dyllis approaches it with a trowel, whitish fat squirts from the hole in its back. She hammers it and she keeps hammering at it until it topples over in a greasy heap, legs and antennae still twitching. “Lemme get a bucket soapy water, some lighter fluid maybe clean up this spot, I dunno… Okay, Julie, I gotta go. You wan’ me to help you back inside?”

  Julie’s eyes are beginning to burn. She lets Dyllis help her up the back steps of the house and into bed; once she is tucked in Dyllis has to go home.

  The hours pass in quiet exhaustion, each second carrying with it a tick of pointy pain. Her eyes are worse and she keeps the bandages on all the time; to remove them, even for an instant, is needles in her eyes.

  She eagerly awaits her mother’s return, but when Murielle arrives she says she has a migraine and goes right to bed. In the middle of the night the phone-screen starts to ring, she should have turned it off before going to sleep: it’s that little disappointment, A. Jesse.

  Why is he still pestering her? He has no business calling her this late. “What is it?” she says, though not without hope, perhaps after all he has snapped back to the old Jesse, or he has news about Tahnee.

  “Actually it’s more than just the SloMoFlies we’re looking for,” he says at last.

  “What now?”

  “Let me explain something to you. We have reason to believe your husband is a terrorist.”

  Was it possible? No, Slawa was too fat and feeble. The whole thing was ridiculous…

  “Murielle.”

  “Oh, Jesse. What is it?”

  “Murielle, I want you to leave. Get out. Now.”

  “Get out? What do you mean?”

  “The place is going to be bulldozed and quite frankly, they don’t care if you’re inside or not. In fact, they hope you will be.”

  “They? Who is they?”

  “Who is they? Murielle, you know how I feel about grammar. I’ll let it go, for now. In any event, I can’t reveal that.”

  “But how can they do that? Just bulldoze my house?”

  “It’s not just your house. It’s all the houses in the area.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s going to be a memorial. They say this comes from the Federal Department of Homeland and Abroad Acme Construction, though it’s actually because the contractors have such a powerful lobby: they control everything, kind of like the Masons. They need to enlarge the highway.”

  “But the highway is already twenty lanes wide, and the houses aren’t anywhere near the road.”
<
br />   “They’re going to say it’s a contaminated zone. A danger area, slated to become a memorial site for the victims of the terrorist attack.”

  “What terrorist attack?”

  “The plane crash, it was an act of terrorism.”

  “I just don’t –”

  “I didn’t want to have to tell you but it’s your daughter.”

  “My daughter? She’s thirteen years old! You said it was my hus – my ex-husband.”

  “It’s both. Murielle, don’t argue with me. I’m giving you a warning. That’s all, take it or leave it. Get out while you still can.”

  The guy is nuts; on the other hand, what if he is right? But how is she supposed to get out with her boiled daughter, still slowly cooking from the inside out. And the dog. And Dad. They can’t drive, the main roads are permanently blocked by traffic, most people have either moved into their cars or long since abandoned them. It is all too absurd.

  Hours have passed when Murielle wakes with a jolt. Her sleep has been so deep that for a moment she cannot remember where she is, opens her eyes: a lady’s fan appears on the ceiling, folded white light, shuffling open wider and wider and then dreamily flicking shut: the reflection of a passing car’s windshield. But it can’t be a car, what the heck is it?

  There is a tremendous noise going on outside, on the streets the neighbors are staggering this way and that; nobody seems to know what is going on, overhead the lights of a huge flock of helicopters whirr angrily as they come lower, lower, almost touching the roofs of the houses and then buzzing off again… What is happening? A secret celebrity wedding is her first thought, two famous and important people must have purchased a house in this dingy little development in order to hide from the press but then decided to have it leaked. There have been rumors that Stella and Colin are about to tie the knot. Also, Lottie and Russell were seen canoodling in New Hollywood’s hippest nightclub. Brandy Crowe is pregnant, who could be the father? Alien invasion, spacecraft in the swamp? Another plane crash? Or, as had happened once before, a cell of terrorists renting a nearby house to manufacture bombs?