I thought. I thought about silent places where darkness covered everything with an oily film. These were uninhabited and soundless places, like hidden chambers of the moon. You could see no faces there, you could hear no names. Like Officer Henrietta’s photographs, these places didn’t matter to me that much one way or the other.
Officer Henrietta was looking at me. I looked at the sheet of unmarked white paper on the desk before him, at his upraised and ineffective pen, at a photograph of his beaming family in a cheap plastic frame.
“Is Rodney around?” I asked after a while. “Is there any possibility I might be able to see my friend Rodney for a few minutes or so? I’d like to know how he’s doing, you know. I’d just feel a lot better if I knew my friend Rodney was all right.”
ALONE IN MY discrete room I would lie on the bed for hours gazing at the stale ceiling and talking to the figures who sat observing me behind the mirror. I could hear efficient machines whirring back there, official documents being filed into sliding cabinet drawers, the occasional hum of a word processor, the brief interjections of a clattering typewriter. “I think I’m learning to take things a lot easier than I used to,” I told these invisible people. “In the past, I may have been too quick to make judgments. I couldn’t seem to accept the way things were. I think I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past few days or so, and I may be on the verge of some real sustained growth–both intellectually and emotionally. I’m growing more and more interested in eastern religions, for example. Yoga, Brāhmanism, Buddhism, Tantrism, Oriental alchemy, mystical erotism. We’re very much a thing-oriented culture–the West in general, I mean. We’re into making things, changing things, moving things from one place to another. Sometimes I think it’s best just to let everything lie. To not keep banging and bumping away at the world, to accept things for what they are. I guess in a way that might sound escapist to you. I’m sure my friend Beatrice would probably be quick to agree. To imagine the world and all its suffering as a sort of necessary trial, one which presumably conditions us to understand our true being, is to imagine that the world itself doesn’t matter, nor the conditions in it. That means, in a way, accepting the world’s cruelty and its pain. That means just leaving it alone to get on with its own alien and material processes, however wrong and unjust they may be. I’m sure that could sound rather self-centered, even pretty ambivalent or smug. But there often comes a time in your life when you stop worrying about whether the way you think is right or proper or not. You just get tired, and start accepting the way of thinking that’s easiest and least worrisome. Maya, the world as illusion. Karma, that duplicity and evanescence of mere physical life, the incessant beat and blur of material repetition. Then nirvana, the self’s final liberation, a dream of nonbeing as pure being. We find our way out of this world within this world, I guess that’s what it all boils down to. Now that I’ve got your attention, maybe I can ask you to send me a few books. I could use one or two books on Vedantic philosophy. Then, of course, The Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita. I could use a general edition of Patañjali’s Yoga-sūtras, while we’re at it. I don’t mean to hurry you, but whenever you have time. I was thinking they might even make a good permanent addition to the library here. When kids get screwed up like I do, they need some traditional wisdom in order to work through their confusion. Kids who try to break the rules are only trying to find better rules they can live by, and the best rules are always the ones you carry within yourself. Kids need to learn they can’t expect anything from anybody. They need to learn that everything they’ll ever have is already inside them, simply waiting to be recognized.”
As I lay in my bed talking, I heard doors opening up and down the hallway outside. I heard toilets being flushed, and gurneys squeaking and clattering along the polished tile floors. The halls were filled with the bright, audible noise of institutional fluorescents, that hypnotic artificial light you might discover like atmosphere inhabiting some alien space station.
“Of course, you know what Beatrice would say about all this, don’t you?” I shrugged, affecting a smug disconcern. I couldn’t remember if I’d told these invisible beings about my friend Beatrice or not. “She’d say all my talk about spiritual liberation’s just a big con, that I’m trying to disavow ontology. You can’t disavow ontology–that’s what Beatrice would say. Ontology’s what happens when you’re hit by a bus. It’s not something you can just disavow.”
I WANTED REDEMPTION in these days of my slow recuperation, the warm equatorial haze of samadhi, the total cessation of all transformations. They never brought me the books I requested, however. Whenever I reminded him, Officer Henrietta avoided the issue. Instead I received a few “world classics.” Les Misérables, David Copperfield, War and Peace, all of them abridged and illustrated for some theoretical “young adult” reader. These books lay casually disregarded on my bureau while I lay in my bed thinking. If I could not learn redemption, I could at least imagine or even reinvent it. I gathered what fragments of Oriental wisdom I could recall and tried to generate larger worlds around them, vaster pictures into which these fragments might tidily fit, like pieces in a philosophical jigsaw puzzle. The mind was just a reaction of pure spiritual being to the world’s material force. The mind was a whirlpool, constant and uncontainable, which spun off into the world knocking into other things, inciting other spirits to move. This was karma then, I decided: the constant push of objects which tried to make of spirit and object too–a sort of cosmic bullying, a rushing and herding of things into other things. These forces made life, death, people, pain, suffering, cities and, worst of all, human emotions. They made anger. They made hate. For years now I had been filled with this hot and irreproachable anger that burned and flared in me without warning–this anger I could not contain, which had caused me to do something, or perhaps even a series of things, for which I had been legally incarcerated. I had been incarcerated in order to protect the people I loved, and as a result of this real burning drive in me, this raging drive to hurt, to conquer, to create a more material and corrupted world, I had harmed people–people I loved, Officer Henrietta liked to remind me–and I had consequently harmed myself as well. You can’t direct your hate at other people; hate is a force that burns him who uses it too. Hate never does anyone any good, I thought. This was the lesson I had been brought here to learn, and I was amazed at the effortless and benign nature of its composition. It had simply grown in me, blossomed like flowers. It took root and grew from the very rage and anger it was intent on eliminating. Everything carries within it the fuel of its own driving antithesis, I thought. Anger is the stuff from which real love and knowledge grow. In order to grow and learn, we must permit the world to betray itself.
On a Friday morning before lunch I was permitted two visitors. Beatrice and Ethel, both immaculately buffed and manicured, lipsticked and glossed, sat on cracked vinyl chairs in a small Visitor’s Lounge which included a wobbly, unvarnished pasteboard coffee table, some magazines and an additional cracked chair for me. Ethel wore a gauzy hat and was potent with cheap perfume. Beatrice wore a dress that appeared slightly cheap and shiny, like polyester or cheap lacquer. Her hair was washed, her lipstick excessively bright. As I sat down in the empty chair, we all regarded one another uneasily, like strangers brought formally together by some parent-teacher committee or charity bazaar. Ethel cleared her throat and I examined my pale hands in my lap. Beatrice could not remain silent very long. She shifted nervously in her seat, adjusting and readjusting the hem of her awkward skirt.
“I don’t owe you any apologies, Phillip,” she said. “Don’t think I came here to apologize.”
I wanted to tell her about my anger, how it had departed suddenly, become a force of mere matter. I, meanwhile, was growing more ethereal and abstract. I thought she might like be better now, this “new” Phillip.
“That’s OK, Beatrice,” I said. “I didn’t expect you to.”
“Then you expected right.” Beatrice’s blue eyes flashed at me. �
��What I did I did for your own good. I don’t give a damn about your father. You could have drawn and quartered that SOB for all I care–”
“Betty,” Ethel cautioned her abruptly.
“–and I really mean that,” Beatrice continued, cautioning Ethel right back. “What I do care about is you and Rodney. I was damned if I was going to watch you both throw your lives away over your stupid father. He wasn’t worth it, Phillip. You’re trying to kill the only person in the world you love because the world won’t love you back. You’re a patent narcissist, that’s what you are. You gaze at the world and expect the world to gaze dreamily at you. You’ve got to grow up, Phillip. You’ve got to learn to relax. You’ve got to start showing some concern for people in the world who weren’t born with all the advantages you’ve had. Think of the children in Soweto and Afghanistan. Think of the political prisoners throughout Latin America and Eastern Europe. The world’s not reflective, Phillip. It’s dynamic and blind and stupid and correctable and utterly forlorn, just like you. Just like me and just like Rodney and just like Ethel here–” Ethel blushed slightly, as if she were flattered to hear her name mentioned in any context at all. “It’s a world with real problems, that causes real pain, that promises real pleasure and abundance. I haven’t been able to sleep all week. I knew you knew, even without me telling. I just hope you know too that it’s not because I don’t love you. I love you and Rodney very much. You’re my family, and if I had to, I’d call the cops again today, right this very minute, if I thought you and Rodney were about to do something you’d both regret later. You can bet on it. If you tried to pull the same crap all over again, I’d have the cops all over you in a second. I’d see to it they were all over you like a cheap suit.”
Meanwhile Ethel snuffled behind a dingy Kleenex. Her eyes had grown moist, and her mascara was starting to run in places.
“Where’s Rodney?” I asked. It wasn’t as if I were addressing her with my question, but rather trying to push her out of my way. “When am I supposed to see him, anyway?”
The Kleenex in Ethel’s hand began violently shaking. Obviously flustered, Ethel looked from Beatrice to me, and then at Beatrice again. Her face was very pale.
“They caught him climbing over the back fence into a neighbor’s yard,” Beatrice said. “He’s in a holding cell here, just like yours. But early next week he’ll be transferred to a separate facility. They don’t want you and Rodney seeing each other again for quite a while, Phillip.”
“It’s my fault,” Ethel said. Finally she was looking at me. Her damp hand touched mine. “I shouldn’t have let him near you. I know you don’t understand what you do to people, Phillip. But you were a terrible influence on Rodney. I should have paid more attention, Phillip. I should have gotten to know you better.”
“When you get out, Phillip, I want you to call me.” Beatrice leaned forward earnestly in her chair. It was the customary intensity of her expression now that made her stiff dress seem more and more like a disguise. “I want you to call me and tell me where you are. I left word with your parents, but they’re not responding. When you get out, Phillip, I want to see you. Call me, promise? Call me first thing.”
I promised I would. I went to the door and asked the guard to take me back to my room. But already I knew I would never call her. We were all moving off into separate worlds and galaxies now. We were all journeying off to find the only redemption any of us could afford. I didn’t owe Beatrice anything and she didn’t owe me. And I certainly never wanted to be betrayed by Beatrice ever again.
A FEW NIGHTS later, while I was lying on my bed trying to design my own mantra, Rodney came and tapped at my door.
“Phillip,” he whispered. “Hey, Phillip. It’s me.”
My room was dark, and a mantra to me was just a faultily remembered notion. A mantra was a puzzle that drew your mind into the deeper, more complicated puzzle of the world itself. Or so I understood it. You are hanging from a rope in a dark pit. At the bottom of the pit a lion roars at you. At the top, a mouse gnaws silently at your rope. This is the universe you’ve landed in. Even salvation doesn’t last very long.
“Hey, Phillip. I’ve just got a minute. Are you up?”
I climbed out of bed and went to the door. I could sense the pressure of Rodney’s fingertips on the outer side of my hard steel doorknob. In my dark room with the door bolted from the outside, I thought of Dad.
“Rodney, I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you.”
“Look, I only got a minute. I gave the guard twenty bucks from the cash Ethel smuggled in for me. Here, something else.”
I felt Rodney’s body brush lightly against the outer surface of my door. Then I heard something strike the air vent over my head. Rodney’s feet landed softly on the outer hall. Then I heard Rodney jump again, and a pack of Winstons popped through the air vent and ricocheted off the dark, wide-screen mirror.
“You get them?”
“I think so.”
“Just one thing, Phillip–and listen to me real carefully now. Tell these fuckers anything they want to hear. You got me? Anything. Be anybody they want you to be, and get the fuck out of here. This place is full of crap, man. Have you gotten a look at that Officer Henrietta, Boy’s Best Friend? I never met anybody filled with more crap in my entire life. So do what they say, right? Say whatever they want to hear.”
“Rodney, I have to ask you something–”
“Hold on a second–” Rodney whispered. Then his voice grew dim, harder and echoing as he leaned away from the door. “What?” he asked, in a louder voice. “Just one minute.”
“Did we hurt anybody, Rodney?”I asked quickly, afraid my question might go unanswered. “I’m beginning to suspect we may have done something we shouldn’t have–”
“Fuck, lady!” Rodney told the echoing hallway. “I told you one minute!”
Then, as if the institution itself was hurrying to divide Rodney from my vital inquiry, I heard the dark weighted body of a guard sweep down the hall and Rodney’s elbows knocking loudly against my hollow door.
“Fuck you, lady. You fucking cunt, I said I’m coming. Watch it there, will you? Shit!”
“Rodney, keep in touch,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. His voice was steadily diminishing down the long corridor, as if someone were slowly turning down the volume on a radio.
“Tell the fuckers anything, Phillip! You hear me? Tell them whatever the fuck they want to hear and get yourself out of this dump. Hey, lady. That’s my arm you’ve got there. Know what you just did, lady? You just screwed yourself out of twenty fucking bucks–that’s what you just did. You blew it, lady, because I’m going to eat it, you hear me. I’m going to eat your twenty fucking dollars before I’ll let you see a piece of it.”
“I’ll do my best,” I whispered secretly, as if Rodney and I were conferring in one of the unoccupied, transgressed homes of our childhood. “I’ll tell them anything–as soon as I figure out what it is they want to hear.”
I would call Rodney’s house months later after my release, but his number was long disconnected by then. My letters were returned by the post office, no forwarding address available. I didn’t blame Ethel, really. I was not the only man in her life.
Then, just before it disappeared forever from my world, Rodney’s voice said, “Hey, lady. I thought you were supposed to be letting me out to take a piss.”
27
THE FOLLOWING THURSDAY I was escorted to the Youth Facility’s remotest, somberest corridor for what Officer Henrietta called an “informal prelim.” Escorted by a young woman in a patently unattractive and bulky blue uniform, I saw for the first time the general design of the institution, filled with its atmosphere of harsh fluorescent light, bracketed by white ungleaming tile floors and lacquered beige walls. In one corridor I heard the monotonous, aggressive clocking of a Ping-Pong ball, and in another a sports program on TV. We passed a cafeteria where young Chicano men wore white aprons and black hairnets. They had tattoos on their muscu
lar arms and lean, mustached faces, and swabbed down the floors with tall wet mops. They rested the mops against their shoulders and looked at me as I passed. I felt very uneasy looking back. They scratched under their arms and continued watching me go by. Then they scratched roughly between their legs.
In the distant, official temperature of the Deposition Room (or so the plastic sign said on its door) I was seated in a stiff chair at a table with three men who wore modest navy-blue suits with modestly patterned ties. They were introduced as a judge, a prosecuting attorney, and a Youth Offense Adviser, who, I assumed, was sort of like my lawyer. When they spoke, however, I could never distinguish who was saying what, or from what official position.
“There’s no prior record then.”
“None.”
“If the parents aren’t making charges, why are we holding him?”
“We found illegal substances on his friend. Everybody thought it might be a good idea to keep him under observation for a while.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“Joe, Harry, Delacruz. Me.”
“That’s not everybody, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“How old is he?”
“Eight years old.”
I sat forward in my chair. “Almost eight and a half,” I said, but they didn’t seem to hear.
“What does the psychological profile say?”
One man opened a manila folder and read to us. “Severe amnesiac reaction to stress and poor body management. Perhaps a paranoid schizophrenic, with delusions of grandeur and competitive reality disorder.” The man closed the file. “The doctor thinks the kid could grow out of it.”
One of the men tapped his pencil against the flimsy Formica table.
“If we keep him, where are we going to keep him?”
“Here, I guess.”
“What about a foster home?”
The History of Luminous Motion Page 18
