‘I do my name too,’ she said. ‘My real name. Not the one they gave me.’ She showed me. I ran the tip of my index finger over the scars on her belly. I couldn’t read them.
‘What’s your real name?’
‘Tiyah.’
‘Then what’s the name they gave you?’
‘Same,’ she said. ‘At least they think it’s the same, except I pronounce it and spell it a secret way. But nobody knows what my last name is. No one but me. And now you.’
She wrote her name on a piece of paper and gave it to me. I put it in the pocket of my jeans. I stroked her belly. ‘This is the secret way you write your name?’
‘Yes.’
‘But your dad sees this.’
‘Stepdad. He can’t read it though. It scares him. He doesn’t know if he did it or not. It drives him crazy.’
‘Well, they can’t touch us now. Not while they’re inside.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘We can heal.’
I winced. ‘Yes, we can. Why do you say it like that?’
‘Because. I know what’s coming when he gets out. And I still cut myself on visiting days.’
‘Me too,’ I admitted. In fact, I used to start cutting two days before visiting day. On the day itself, I vomited and had diarrhoea before visiting hours and then again after. Both.
Her stepdad bred pit bulls, mine set fires. We used to meet on Sundays in the visiting room where they gave you colouring books and magic markers. When your mother’s name got called you didn’t look up, you just pushed down hard on the markers. Tiyah and I never stayed inside the lines. That was the first thing I noticed about her, weeks before we spoke and before I knew her name. She was the only other kid who didn’t stay inside the lines. The colouring books had blank pages too and you could draw pictures. In the beginning, we didn’t talk, we just showed each other what we’d drawn. My artwork was full of orange and red, with thick black funnels of smoke. She drew dogs with teeth like knives. We didn’t explain anything, we didn’t speak at all in those early days, so I just thought she was scared of dogs.
She wasn’t, as it turned out.
She loved pit bulls, she never blamed the dogs, she blamed her stepdad for the way he trained them and made them mean. Over and over and over she would draw a tree with a branch and a swing. There were birds in the tree and daisies dense as stars around the roots. Sometimes there was no one on the swing, and sometimes there was a little stick figure with four arms. Two of the arms held the ropes of the swing, the other two stretched straight up like skyrockets stuck to the stick figure’s shoulders, like skyrockets waiting to be lit. I thought maybe she had a brother who was a soldier. Maybe he was just resting on the swing with a rifle and a bayonet in each arm. Maybe she was afraid he’d be sent overseas and be killed.
I wonder what stories she told herself about me back then, about me and my drawings and my rows of houses on fire.
She must have done the swing and the four-armed stick person scores of times. Finally I couldn’t stand it. One day I leaned over and pointed to the twin bayonets and asked, ‘Why does the kid on your swing have four arms?’
‘They aren’t arms. They’re wings,’ she said.
‘Wings?’
‘It’s Jimarcus.’
‘Who’s Jimarcus?’
‘Little kid next door. I used to babysit him. My stepdad’s dogs got through the fence.’
For what felt like hours, but might have only been seconds, I waited for her to explain and when she didn’t, I asked, ‘So what happened?’
‘The dogs ate him. He was three and he flew to heaven before anyone could stop him.’
Our names were called then and we had to go and say hello to our stepdads, a glass wall between. We had to speak through a telephone. We had to say Hi, Dad. I miss you too.
All that was a long time ago but that was the day we began to become blood sisters.
One Sunday she didn’t come. Every time the guard moved, or the door opened, I’d try not to look up, at least not before I’d counted to ten. They missed the bus, they missed the bus, I kept telling myself. They’ll be late, that’s all.
They never arrived.
When my mother came back from her visit and my name was called, I did something I had never believed I would do. ‘Is Tiyah’s dad still here?’ I asked my mother.
‘Who the hell is Tiyah?’
‘You know. The one who’s always here when we are. The one whose mother gets called when you do.’
‘Oh,’ my mother said. ‘The black whore. How the hell would I know?’
On the telephone, through the glass wall, I asked my stepdad: ‘Is Tiyah’s dad still here?’
‘Who’s Tiyah’s dad?’
‘The one who breeds pit bulls.’
‘Oh him. Yeah, he’s still here. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just wondered. Tiyah and her mom didn’t come to see him today.’
‘I wouldn’t come either, if he was my fucking dad.’
‘He’s really her stepdad.’
‘He’s a fucking barbarian.’
I didn’t know I could miss anyone so much. I wouldn’t have believed it. If I’d been called for a TV quiz show and had to list the TEN THINGS I MISS MOST, I would maybe have put her at number 10, after my grandma and grandpa, my kitten that got killed by a car, my Peter Rabbit books that my stepdad threw into the trash, my teacher from fifth grade who told me I’d grow up to become a writer, my favourite TV shows that I can’t watch anymore because one of my stepdad’s friends smashed the TV. You get the idea.
I started cutting her name. I even started cutting it on my forearm where people could see, except I covered it with long sleeves. I was advertising, I guess. I was sending out messages. Call 911. Code Red. My arms were like milk-carton ads for missing kids. After four weeks, no sign of her, dreams started to fall on my pillow every night. They fell like rain, sometimes like hail. Every morning, my pillow was wet. I slept under water. That’s where I wanted to stay. I’m not sure if I was ever awake, even though my mom would pull off the sheets and make me get dressed and drop me off at the school-bus stop. It kept raining dreams. I could put my head on the desk at school and a dream would come. I could lean against the railing on the stairs to the gym and I’d be somewhere else. I’d look up in band practice and find everyone staring at me because they’d all stopped playing but I’d gone on oblivious with a solo riff, a calling song, Tiyah, Tiyah, Tiyah, where are you? on my sax. I could be sitting in the visitors’ room at the slammer and watching the guard and waiting for my mom to be called and I’d find that the school nurse had been talking to me, or I was in the counsellor’s office and I couldn’t remember how I got there. I couldn’t remember what they’d asked.
They were good dreams that I had. I didn’t want to wake up.
In one dream, we would be in a car, me and Tiyah in the back seat, and a mother and father (not mine, not hers) in front, talking to each other like normal mothers and fathers do. And then the mother would reach up, sort of casually, and stroke the father’s hair on the back of his head. And the father would partly turn round and say, Girls? You want to stop for an ice-cream? And then, because we hadn’t answered, the mother would swivel in her seat and say, Girls? Why are you crying? And we wouldn’t be able to say a word because happiness was cresting over our levees and we were drowning, and laughing as we drowned.
In another dream, Tiyah and I were eggs, warm in a nest, touching each other. There was a mother. She was brooding over our thin shells and we could feel her heat like the soft feathered underside of a cloud. We hatched. We shivered and held hands, and then we flew, oh how wonderful that was, flying away, wingtip to wingtip, to a safe and tropical place.
And then I dreamed about something that had happened. I dreamed Tiyah was handing me a tight little ball of crumpled paper. Nobody knows what my last name is, she was saying. Except you.
When I woke, I went through the pockets of both pairs of jeans. In one, there was
a damp pellet of paper. I spread it out flat with the utmost care but it revealed nothing more than black smudges.
I asked my mother: ‘What’s the last name of that black woman who used to come visit the slammer same time as us?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ my mother said.
On visiting day, I asked my stepdad: ‘What’s the last name of that guy who breeds pit bulls?’
‘Oh him,’ my stepdad said. ‘Funny you should ask. He’s dead. Knifed someone in the shower and got knifed back. Awful bloody mess is what I heard. He’s toast.’
‘What was his name?’ I asked.
‘Damned if I know,’ my stepdad said.
And then I had the most important dream of all, not really a dream, a memory message. We were in the visiting room again and Tiyah was showing me her drawing. There was a kid with four arms on a swing and a school behind. She’d printed Drysdale Middle School above the gates.
Drysdale Middle School was only five miles from my own school so I cut classes one afternoon and walked there. Talk about slums. I was shocked. I mean, my own neighborhood is blue collar, nothing fancy, but I couldn’t believe how much worse it got, and so suddenly. There were no front yards in the houses I passed, only stoops, and there was trash and broken glass in the street. A lot of windows were boarded up. There was a dead dog in the school grounds and crows were pecking at it.
I waited by the gate until the last class let out.
I could feel Tiyah coming before I saw her. I could tell from the fever that went rocketing from my feet to my head. When she saw me, she stopped so abruptly that someone behind her tripped and fell. Tiyah looked frightened. She turned and started running back toward the school buildings, then she stopped suddenly and turned again. She walked toward me very slowly.
‘I was afraid I made you up,’ she said. ‘I been imagining a lot of stuff lately.’
‘Yeah. Me too. I missed you something awful.’
She just stared. ‘How did you find me?’
‘I lost the paper you gave me with your last name. So I tried to find out your stepdad’s name.’
‘He was only my stepdad for a couple of years. He was my mom’s boyfriend,’ she said. ‘And I never took his fucking name.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Did you know he was dead?’
Her eyes opened very wide and she did a kind of dance step and clapped her hands. ‘No, I didn’t know. How?’
‘Knife fight. Your mom doesn’t know?’
‘She wouldn’t care. She already hooked up with someone new.’
‘Is that why you stopped coming?’ I asked.
‘That’s why,’ she said. ‘I missed you. I wanted to write but I didn’t know where to send a letter. I’ve been drawing you though.’
‘I’ve been dreaming you.’
‘I’ve stopped cutting,’ she said.
‘I’ve stopped cutting too,’ I lied.
‘I want to show you something.’ She led me back behind the school through a string of lots that were overgrown with weeds – goldenrod and thistles – as high as our heads. Here and there, you could see patches of blacktop. ‘Used to be a parking lot,’ she said. ‘Used to be a used-car lot.’
Where the lot dipped suddenly down into a ravine, there was a tangle of trees and a rusted red pickup on its axles. She patted its metal flank. ‘I call him Code Red,’ she said. ‘He’s a sweetie. He’s the best stepdad I’ve had. Come on in.’
She climbed into the cabin of the truck and beckoned me. She had a blanket and a pillow in there. She had hard salami and a penknife, packets of crackers, cheddar cheese, a drawing book and her magic markers. ‘This is where I live,’ she said. ‘I ran away.’
‘But doesn’t the school …?’
‘They don’t know. I go to school every day.’
‘But doesn’t your mother …?’
‘She’s probably glad to be rid of me. If she’s noticed. Anyway, she hasn’t showed up at the school. When she does, if she does, I’ll have to take off.’
In the back of the pickup she had one of those little barbecues that you set on picnic tables. She had a bag of coals. ‘I catch fish,’ she said. ‘You want to stay for dinner?’
‘Sure.’
‘First we gotta catch it.’
She had a net and she had a line. She gave me the net and we slid down the bank to the creek. Maybe it wasn’t a real creek; maybe it was just a drain, but it was beautiful. All we could see was trees and rocks and water. ‘It’s private weather down here,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
She caught a fish on her line and we took it back up to the truck. She lit the coals and ran a thin skewer through the fish and held it over the fire and then we ate it using our fingers.
‘You want to be blood sisters?’ I asked her.
‘You bet.’
We jabbed the skewer into our thumbs and rubbed them together. I sucked the red bead off her thumb, and she sucked mine.
‘I know they’ll catch me here sooner or later,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got a grandma in Georgia somewhere and I’m going to find her.’
‘How will you get there?’
‘Hitchhike.’
‘That’s dangerous.’
She laughed. She put a red dot on my forehead with her thumb. ‘Not as dangerous as staying here or staying home. You got a grandma?’
‘I did have. But she died.
‘You got to do something, Elizabeth.’ She lifted my arm and stared. ‘For one thing, you got to stop cutting. I’ve stopped. If you get out of there, you can stop.’
‘It doesn’t hurt.’
‘That’s the problem,’ she said. ‘Look. I drew you.’ She showed me a page of her drawing book. There was a prison with bars, all in black. There was a stick figure, all in red, outside the bars. The stick figure had huge green wings arching above it, bigger than the rest of its body. ‘That’s you,’ she said. ‘Flying away. You could do it.’
‘Let me go with you.’
‘All right. Tell me where your school is. When I have to leave to go look for my grandma, I’ll come get you.’
I wrote the name of my school and the address underneath my green wings. ‘Wait by the school gate.’
‘I promise,’ she said.
She touched her thumb to my lips and I pressed my thumb to hers. I ran all the way home. Maybe I flew. I loved the taste of her blood.
I stopped cutting that day but it was too late.
What happened was this: the very next day the school nurse took me to the principal’s office. A doctor and the school counsellor and the county sheriff were there. They were very kind and gentle. We are admitting you to hospital for a while, Elizabeth, they said, until you get better.
‘Is this because I cut classes yesterday?’ I asked.
Yes, they said. We called your mother and we visited your home and we were very disturbed by what we saw. But we’ve been worried about you for some time, Elizabeth. We’ve had you under observation.
‘You don’t have to worry any more,’ I said. ‘I’ve stopped cutting.’
That is very good news, they said. And a safe rest in hospital, they said, will be even better for you. We’re aware that your home environment is harmful and we have court papers—
‘No,’ I said, panicked. ‘No, no, you can’t. I will never cut classes again. I promise I will be in school every day.’
That is not the kind of cutting we are worried about, they said.
I started to cry. I tried to explain that I had to be waiting at the gates when Tiyah came. I tried to explain that the kind of cutting that worried them was finished, done with, gone forever. I promise, I promise, I promise, I kept telling them.
When I woke I was in a hospital bed.
You became hysterical, one of the nurses told me. She was very kind. You had to be sedated for your own good, she said.
I became hysterical again. Etcetera, etcetera. It wasn’t the kind of hospital where you could
just get out of bed and walk away.
I suppose I would have to say that in the long run things worked out fairly well for me. I was taken into a Quaker boarding school. People were kind. I went to college. I became a teacher. I work in the poorest parts of the city where I once lived. I’ve never stopped looking for Tiyah but I haven’t found her.
I’ve been diagnosed as depressive more than once.
Drysdale School no longer exists. It’s a fitness centre. On the empty lots behind the school are townhouses covered in vinyl siding. They have small front porches and small front lawns. The creek where Tiyah and I caught our fish flows inside a culvert, unseen.
In the eyes of the children I teach, I watch for storm warnings and I never stop looking for signs of the weather underground.
That Obscure Object of Desire
Personne ne voit les choses comme elles sont, mais comme ses désirs et son état d’âme les lui font voir.
(Luis Buñuel)
Nelson does not know her name but he calls her Beatrice because she reminds him of a painting he found online. When he clicked on the full-screen view, he was transfixed by the strange light that came from the portrait, a light that almost set fire to the woman’s hair. Nelson felt heat leap out at him. Instinctively he put his hands in front of his face and promptly felt foolish. Nevertheless he leaned forward so that his forehead was touching that porcelain brow.
The eyes of the woman in the painting were closed. She might have been praying, but the way her lips were parted suggested that she was longing for someone, yearning for someone in particular. That first time, that first moment of cyber contact, Nelson pressed his lips to the computer screen and lightning hit the back of his throat.
The woman in the painting was wearing a green dress.
Could this have been coincidence? No.
Nelson believes in signs and when the woman revealed herself in pixels, her lips just inches from his, he had to reach for his inhaler because the resemblance was so striking, so shocking. The model for the painting could have been the woman who lives by the park. Every night, pensive, she stares at Nelson from her third-floor window for half an hour at a time. Her attention does not waver.
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