Ecstatic

by Victor La Valle

  The shots of sunny orchards were replaced by flashbright footage of college-aged men and women, skinny and sanguine, surrounding a Wendy’s restaurant.

  – Film obtained recently shows this band of college students taunting helpless travelers a year ago. The old women you see trapped in this circle of belligerent twenty year olds were only buying copies of The Rescuers Down Under, a Disney film, for their nephews and nieces. When they were accosted, in 1994, at a Parsipany, New Jersey, rest stop.

  –The Miss Innocence pageant was different from many others because they only accepted contestants who had held onto their virtue. A contest for girls from ages eleven to seventeen who’d done what few will nowadays— remain a virgin.

  – Here you can see the Blue Ridge Theatre. Where musicals such as Oklahoma and The Music Man are regularly run. Gospel choirs practice on the second floor. And on Saturday, the 11th, these girls staged one of the most enjoyable shows in years.

  The tabloid show had film of the night of the blowout: the protestors walking around outside the Blue Ridge, of them opening the door to the service hall. A camera man had perched himself at an auditorium window and there was footage of people inside running, spasming, crying as the flares burned. You could hear the horns, but the glass muffled it some. They had shots from inside the protestor’s yellow bus, but none of Uncle Arms.

  Jerry Ganz was the gigantic man I’d seen taking notes at the McDonald’s foofaraw. He wore very small glasses, the frames strained to reach both ears.

  – Rumors were circulating that the students had a bomb planted somewhere in the audience. If it had gone off who knows how many lives would have been destroyed?

  Jerry Ganz was standing in front of the marble Lumpkin library as a man in frayed jeans and tatty T-shirt cleaned the steps behind the reporter.

  – But we wouldn’t even bring this news to you if it was just one long sad story. There are enough disappointments in the world. It’s true that Miss Innocence was ruined. But there were actually two pageants that weekend. The second, a local event in its third year. It was conceived by one very special man.

  – Ah neva hade it easeh, nut fo’ one minut ov ma lahf.

  – His name is Uncle Allen. That’s what he likes to be called. Most of the year he’s in his office in downtown Lumpkin helping people of all incomes to buy a home. Uncle Allen is a mortgage broker. And how did he get started?

  – Ah wish yawl cood see mah back, ah tell ya. Gots enuf bruisuss fo a fooball team. I dun hahd woik an’ ah buhleev dat good peeples awlwuss comes out on top.

  – Uncle Allen, the son of men and women who had to work on their knees, now has the money to help others stand. And how does he do it? With his own contest. One that rewards girls for their character. He’s only got one question when they come on stage: Have you suffered?

  – Because Uncle Allen knows, maybe better than most of us, just what rewards suffering can bring.

  – Ah calls ’em mah Goodness Girls. Da winnas.

  – And what good fortune really for Uncle Allen and his Goodness Girls. If the Miss Innocence pageant had gone on without incident we may never have known about Uncle Allen, whose pageant brings modeling contracts to girls of all sizes and shapes.

  As proof they scrolled a few of the past winners and their advertisements across the screen. I couldn’t disagree about his standards. Only about a third of the girls had waistlines. They modeled ponchos, long jackets, overalls, serapes. Circulars for Good Will, an Army & Navy shop.

  –This ends with a mystery though. One of the Goodness Girls is missing. As we speak.

  – She left a picture, but not her name. Maybe she didn’t expect to win. A child who, Uncle Allen says, stole the show when she stepped on stage. We have only the Polaroid, taken when she registered, carrying her sick grandmother on her back.

  – Uncle Allen hopes she’ll contact his office if she sees this, and the number is at the bottom of our screen.

  – But maybe it’s fitting that she went off without a trace. A beautiful girl is just a daydream. We’ll end with her snapshot on the screen so you can see, as Uncle Allen put it, what an angel looks like.

  33

  Nabisase didn’t want to celebrate with me. When I reached over the couch and rubbed the top of her head with my sweet fine knuckles, she jumped away.

  Grandma even stood up, painful work, and said, – Anthony, don’t do that!

  – I was congratulating her!

  My sister touched up against the entertainment center, one hand on the television screen as if it brought her more warmth than me.

  She didn’t want to celebrate at all.

  Nabisase put on her coat and left the house. She didn’t even tell Grandma that she was going. To the Apostolic Church of so-and-so. That’s where she called Uncle Arms. Same evening that the program showed.

  After she left I told Grandma, – She shouldn’t be scared of me.

  – It should be the other way round? My grandmother laughed. At least her award package came to the house. Nabisase still used it as her mailing address.

  When the Federal Express guy asked for a signature I was the only one home. Let me correct that. Grandma was home, but if I’d called her over she’d have taken thirty minutes to shamble from her room.

  I took the envelope. Overnight Delivery. It arrived early on the 22nd. Closed the door.

  I didn’t open it though I dropped it a few times on the chance it would pop open and let me inside.

  Candan rang the front doorbell and when I answered it he said, – I saw the FedEx man.

  I didn’t invite him inside, but stepped out there. He was taller than me by a head. I wanted to press his minuscule ears; they were the size of buttons.

  – I wondered if it was something about your mother.

  –That letter was for Nabisase.

  – From your Mom?

  – Uncle Allen, I said.

  – I thought your Uncle was dead.

  –Then it’s a message from the grave. I walked down the steps just to make him follow me. You have any reason to be expecting her? I asked him.

  He shrugged. – I’m not her family. You would know.

  – I know she’s not coming back for you, Candan.

  I was standing by my Oldsmobile, looking at my reflection, but he’d stayed by the front steps. Candan snapped his fingers. I thought he was commanding me to come over to him, but it was the dog, that Doberman, pressing its face against the hedge. It wanted to push the way through, maybe to eat me, but when Candan snapped the animal returned to the backyard.

  – Did she say something about me? he asked.

  I didn’t even turn around. – She was too busy driving off with some Indian guy, I said.

  – She didn’t.

  – She did.

  He opened my gate, shut it and walked back to his house.

  34

  I left the house after Candan went away because I couldn’t sit for hours, alone with Nabisase’s letter, and not open it. Not for hours.

  I brought a small pot of tea and two sandwiches to Grandma’s room. Changed her socks and helped her to the bathroom before going out. I wanted to get in a van and ride the way up to Queens General so I could find out about the attraction between that bacterial-bozo and Nabisase. I should have gone and pulled the tubes out his veins, but I was too tired. I felt like I hadn’t slept even one night my whole life.

  Ishkabibble is who I wanted to see, but I had no home phone number. He called you, but couldn’t be reached. If I tried to find him whose home would I check? Nearly everyone was indebted to him so he told no one his address.

  Finally I ended up in Brookville Park because I knew he liked it there. Quiet. Empty. No one angry because he wants the check. Its small ponds had sprouted tan reeds that tossed dryly against themselves.

  The most distinct landmark in Brookville Park was the rigid purple monument at its east entrance. An abandoned semitrailer that had been scratched, cut, spray-painted, signed. It was s
pecked with spots of orange rust.

  Its support legs had fallen off a long time before so that the semitrailer leaned forward, a Muslim kissing soil for the third time in a day.

  I was happy for my sister, but jealous too. She was ten years younger and already poised for something spectacular. Fun, at least. I wondered if my bitterness was only going to get stronger until the time when I stopped remembering my name and how to care for myself. Maybe one good side-effect to flipping out was that I could forget how little I’d done.

  – Hide me!

  Ishkabibble came out from the trees, running. His overcoat snapped behind him and one of his dress shoes had come off. He ran so fast I almost missed him; attache case in his right hand knocking the back of his right thigh.

  – I’ll take you home, I said.

  – You’re not fast enough. He looked over his shoulder. Hide me now!

  I pulled at the door to the semitrailer. He was fast, but I could be strong. Not strength, but power. Grabbed the handle and simply leaned back.

  The door opened and it was like night time in there. He was tentative. It smelled of mildew; there were small plants growing in the standing water. When I opened the door both our shoes were splashed.

  – You can always dry your feet, I said.

  I pushed it closed and walked away. Not far— thirty feet— to one of the baseball diamonds. I stamped on the mound, but it was already gone. An indent instead of a hill. As I kicked around out there a military outfit shot from the trees.

  Black boys on mopeds. Ten bikes and twenty kids. Friends shared the padded seats. Two even rode the handlebars, dangerous as that was. They drove quickly, dangerously, screaming Ishkabibble’s name.

  When I let him out he owed me a favor.

  I waited there, he went home and came back in fifteen minutes.

  While he was gone I opened the door to the semitrailer again. I was wearing boots, not shoes, so I didn’t worry about the inch of water. I went in, shut it. The incline was pretty minor. There was grass and weeds growing in here. I couldn’t see them too well, but felt them against my pants. Some were as tall as my shins. A marsh inside the semitrailer; the semitrailer in a park; the park in my suburban neighborhood. I never understand what people mean when they say, getting back to nature. As if they ever left.

  Ishkabibble came back, calling for me. When I stepped out he said, – I know you were praying for this.

  I didn’t look at the book, just held it.

  It was hardback, 184 pages. I wanted to hammer nails with it. That’s how strong I felt. I swung it around in one hand a few times just to know the weight. Page numbers were at the bottom, centered under the text. The paper was thin and there were some smudged pages, but I recognized every line. It had striking red endpapers. The first page listed my name, the publisher (Rahsaan Robinson Press; Tattleback, Connecticut) and the title, Killing Is My Business.

  It didn’t have a dust jacket, but that was no problem to me. I always lose those plastic wraps anyway.

  – What happened here?

  –That was a printer’s error, Ishkabibble said. Sorry about that.

  There was no title on the turquoise cover, only my name in gold. All capital letters. Anthony James.

  I pointed at both words. –This is going to give people the wrong idea of what’s inside.

  Still, how could I get angry? With this talisman in my hands.

  Most pages had two entries, sometimes three. They were broken up like any dictionary. Alphabetical sections. A. G. J. There were even a few in Q. Quiet or He’ll Hear You, Quarrel with Fear, Quetzalcoatl Craves Blood.

  – Why don’t we sit down for a minute? he asked me.

  – You want to?

  He laughed as we walked to a bench. I read to him when we sat. Just a few short ones. It Woke One Night. How She Bled. Eviscerate Steve.

  He asked, – How did you turn out to be my best friend?

  35

  I had a book. And what did my sister win?

  A book of coupons, 40 percent off at most of Lumpkin’s stores. One round-trip bus ticket to Lumpkin. And an appointment to pose for two color photos on the weekend of January 5th–7th next year. They’d appear in the Hoddman’s Sunday Circular soon after and pay $600 upon publication.

  Uncle Arms benefited more. By 1997 prospective Goodness Girls came to compete from every county in Virginia.

  But an encyclopedia was better than any of that. As soon as I had it I bounced around.

  Soon as I got home from the park I asked Nabisase to go out with me to the movies. We both had accomplishments to celebrate. She refused and called Ledric at the hospital. Spoke with him the rest of the night.

  I asked her again the next day, the 23rd, in the evening, after work. On Friday, the 24th, too. Nabisase adamantly opposed me until Saturday, around one o’clock. I was in Mom’s old room. Mine now.

  – Ledric says I should be nicer.

  I lay on the bed I’d brought up from the basement by myself. – Why did you ask him?

  – ’Cause I talk to him every day, she said. He’s getting released tomorrow.

  – Did his family ever send us that money they promised?

  – I haven’t seen it yet.

  It was the 25th of November. Nabisase and I walked instead of using the car. She was thirteen and I was twenty-three.

  We crossed Brookville Park and entered Town, a three-block strip of shops: Key Food, two corner stores, a Korean market and four hair salons. There was a minor branch of the public library, used mostly for the free toilet. I pulled my sister across the street, pinched the fleshy lobes of her ears. – Let’s get these pierced, I said.

  Nabisase clutched a parking meter. – You said we were just going to a movie.

  –I figured that since we were out, we might as well. She wasn’t smiling, but I was. I had an encyclopedia of horror films, have I mentioned that?

  Nabisase looked down the block. – I always thought I’d do this with Mom.

  – How long do you plan to wait?

  My sister rested her chin on the top of the parking meter. – I miss her.

  I pulled Nabisase into this jewelry store that also sold pets. It was situated between a laundromat and a pizzeria. She was aghast because the place had no dignity.

  – How about the Piercing Pagoda in Green Acres Mall? she asked.

  –The mall is as far as the movies. That’s twenty minutes from here. This is where we are.

  Nabisase tugged her ears hard like she wished they would come off. – I saw you let those people into Miss Innocence, she said.

  – But look how things turned out.

  – You going to try and take credit for Goodness Girls now?

  They sold animals toward the front of the store and gold from a glass counter in the back. Why try to make money in only one way? If not for space limitations they’d have sold 50 cent bags of cookies too.

  The woman who owned the store was in back, by the jewelry, her head wrapped in bright green cloth. Another woman was back there too, tall and as yet unimpressed by the jewelry choices. The customer switched her purse from one shoulder to the other, making no motion to unzip and spend. – You all right? she called suddenly.

  I was going to answer, but a child’s voice came. – Yeah Momma, come look at fishes!

  Against the walls of the store were cages of lizards and snakes, some green, some brown or black. Two rows of fish tanks, eight feet high and fifteen feet long, split the center of the store into aisles.

  The sun was up, but we were still dressed heavy for winter. The store itself was humid. It smelled like wet, mossy stones. I stuck my gut out to see it stretch my shirt so far that the buttons might burst. I did that to make my sister laugh, but my imperfections had lost their funny side for her.

  Nabisase and I looked into a tank of ten baby lizards. They tumbled over one another. They stood on one another’s heads. As a unit they turned and watched us.

  That kid who’d demanded her mother come
watch fish appeared wearing black jeans, a black sweatshirt, blue cap, no holes punched in her ears.

  –That’s bearded dragons, she said.

  I thumped my belly like the old man she’d say I was.

  – Is that right? my sister asked.

  – Snakes is better though. Lizards and fish are boring.

  – Maybe they think you’re boring, I told the girl.

  Nabisase said, – Shut up, Anthony!

  – I’m sorry, but who is she to criticize them?

  The girl smiled like I’d said something nice because I’d used a kind tone. Then she pointed her thumb.

  –That’s your thumb, I said dismissively.

  – And this is my pinky.

  Her stern mother looked at us. – How you doing over there Samarra?

  – Good, Momma.

  The little girl looked at me as though she had done me a service, perhaps spared my life.

  Sam took Pop-Rocks from her pants pocket, snapped the small pack in the air. Her little belly stuck out under her sweatshirt, over her jeans. – Pop-Rocks! she yelled.

  – Samarra Kroon you stop that screaming!

  Sam ate a handful of the purple candy then opened her mouth to show the science fomenting.

  – You put all that in your mouth at once? Nabisase asked. She knelt between the girl and me, but the kid could not be mesmerized by kindness. It was with me that Sam spoke. – You know which finger this is?

  – Do you? I asked back.

  She shyly peeked at her mother then turned to Nabisase, who was tapping a turtle tank to get the conversation away from me.

  –That’s the longest finger, I answered for her.

  Sam grinned widely. – Nah-uh. That’s not the word.

  – You tell me what it is then, I dared.

  – It’s the fuck-you finger, she whispered.

  – You saying that to me? I asked.

  Sam laughed.

  Nabisase did not. – Let’s go. Anthony.

  – No, I said to Samarra Kroon loudly. Fuck you.

  Then here the girl’s mother came. A blue flame surrounded her.