20

by John Edgar Wideman

  “She lives in the underground village,” Willa told the boy. “She's a gymnast, you should see—she does back flips and balance beam and horse, and I think parallel bars. She's the head of the blue squad. Also she carves tunnels. She's two-and-a-half months older than me.”

  And she took his hand and placed it over Gail May's face.

  Her mother must have been standing there watching from the stairs. She must have been staring at the ring Willa had made of all the soup, of all the milk cartons, arranged not by flavor but by child. She must have been looking at Willa and the boy sitting in the center of the ring. As Willa's eyes lighted on her mother and Melody two steps behind, she tightened her hold on the child.

  “What on earth are you doing?” said her mother from the stairs.

  Willa shrugged and touched the child's staticky hair. Her mother came toward them, kneeled outside the circle, let out a strained laugh.

  “What are you doing with all the soup? It's melting, Willa. Will you just look at that? All my good soup is turning to mush.”

  She was right. Tiny puddles of water were collecting underneath each carton as the soup began to sweat. Her mother started to pick up a carton, but Willa leaned over the boy and swatted at her hand.

  “Leave it, Mom, okay? I'll clean it up.”

  “I thought you were reading in your room,” said her mother. “We heard you reading to him.”

  She stepped over the cartons, scooped the boy up, handed him up to Melody, and whispered something. Then Melody and the boy disappeared up the stairs. Outside the ring of cartons, Willa's mother crouched.

  “Were you building a city?” she said. “There are blocks in the attic if you want to build with him. Why did you have to defrost all my soup?”

  If she had felt like it, she could have explained things logically to her mother, how in an Emergency Situation the radiation would seep into the basement, inside the furnace, inside the canned goods, stacks of magazines, bottles of wine. How it would go right through the thick white insulation of the fridge, through the wax and cardboard of the milk cartons, through all those dotted faces to the soup.

  But her mother knew that, and still she kept making soup.

  Willa sighed. “I wasn't defrosting.”

  “What were you doing then?”

  Her mother stepped over the cartons and kneeled by her side.

  “Just playing.”

  “Well then,” said her mother. “I'll put them away. I can't have all that soup melting. You can't refreeze, it doesn't work.”

  “Ill do it,” said Willa, and as her mother sat cross-legged in the middle of the circle, she began collecting the cartons by age, by group, starting with the babies and moving up.

  “Melody has potential as an artist,” said her mother. She handed her daughter a carton, out of order.

  “I'll do it. Let me do it.” Willa peered at the carton—G. Phillip Stull, red squad—then put it back on the floor.

  “Oh—oh I see,” her mother said. “You were talking to him about these pictures, weren't you? You were telling Melody's baby about the children on the cartons.”

  Willa continued her ordering.

  “I think a lot of it is media panic, honey,” her mother said. “I mean, from what I've heard. A lot of these kids are with their divorced parents, or there's a custody problem, or they ran away. You'd be surprised. Most of them aren't actually missing at all.”

  Willa turned and began to collect the two to four year olds.

  ————

  Upstairs, she went to Melody, who was cutting an apple into pieces in the kitchen, and stood by her side. In the living room she could hear her mother murmuring to the child.

  “Hi there,” said Melody, and Willa said hi.

  “Your Mom said I could cut Jo-Jo an apple. Thanks for playing with him. Did he give you any trouble?”

  Willa shook her head. Melody popped a slice of apple into her mouth and chewed.

  “He's a good kid. All his babysitters love him, once they get used to him.”

  “Did he, I mean, was he—”

  “He was born like that.”

  Willa nodded, and Melody squinted at her. “Has your mother been telling you stuff? About where I worked and all?”

  Willa shook her head.

  “Oh, okay. It's just that I've had a bunch of jobs, worked all over the place, but my last job was at that power plant down by Acton, and it's hard to say, about his eyes. You can never say for sure, but if your mother told you I shouldn't take any more chances with that place, I can't argue. Too many funny things.”

  “What'd you think when he was born?”

  Melody shook her head. “I had a C-section—you know, when they cut you open?” She traced a line down her stomach. “I was out cold.”

  “So you didn't see him.”

  “Oh sure, I saw him. They bring them in. I was real happy, seeing him there. I was—I guess I was so drugged out or something, but I just kept waiting for him to open up his eyes, you know?”

  “He's got such blond hair,” said Willa.

  “His daddy's a towhead.” Melody leaned toward Willa and whispered confidentially. “I'm blond, too, really,” she said, lifting a lock of her dark hair, “but not white blond like him, more washed out, kind of dirty blond. Now you've got a real pretty color. That's all natural, huh?”

  Willa nodded, and Melody smiled a crooked smile which almost looked sad. Then she touched the tip of Willa's nose with an outstretched finger.

  “Lucky you. Hang onto that hair, okay?”

  She scooped the rest of the cut apple into her hand, tossed the core into the garbage can, and walked away.

  When Willa went to the living room, she saw Melody on the floor with the boy. They were playing the game where his mouth was a tunnel, the apple a chugging train. Jo-Jo was laughing and had his fingers splayed across his mother's face. Willa stood in the doorway, a sour feeling in her gut.

  “I hate to say it, but we've got to get going,” Melody said to her mother.

  And her mother answered, her voice quick and concerned. “So soon, but you just got here. You hardly drew at all.”

  “They say the weather won't hold out.” Melody looked up at the ceiling as if it were the sky. “We have a drive.”

  Willa's mother came and stood with her while Melody lay Jo-Jo on his back and zipped him into a snowsuit. Then she and her mother moved to the front door and watched Melody pick her way down the slippery stairs with the boy on one hip, a knapsack on her back, her drawings in a roll under her arm.

  “You two take care now, okay?” said Melody, turning when she reached the bottom step, and Willa smiled a quavering, forced smile. Melody strapped Jo-Jo into a car seat that looked like an elaborate plastic bubble, slid into the driver's seat, and sat there a moment warming up. The car was blue and rusty, coughing as if the air were too much for it, but after a minute Melody waved. Then she and Jo-Jo drove away.

  “Why couldn't they have stayed longer?” Willa asked after the car and then the sound of the car had disappeared. “I have nobody to play with.”

  “I don't know, honey,” said her mother, and her voice sounded tired and disappointed. “People have things to do.”

  Willa went to her room and lifted the cardboard shield which tricked her ants into thinking they were underground. They froze for an instant, then saw it was just Willa and continued on. Their paths were so easy to follow; she could see through the glass on both sides and watch their every move. She would let them go, she decided. Not now, when the ground was frozen, but in spring when the earth grew soft and they could burrow down. She would take the farm outdoors, crack open its sides, and let the ants spill out like beads.

  But then Willa remembered the Queen ant, the one who had broken off her own wings when she settled in the farm to lay her eggs, who lived off the energy of her useless flight muscles, leaving the broken wings in a corner of the farm. Auto-amputation was what they called it in The Wonder World of Ants. Willa
had wanted to get rid of those wings, hated looking at them, but she couldn't reach them without dismantling the farm. The Queen couldn't fly, and she was too fat to walk. Out in the world, abandoned by her guards and workers, she would die.

  Willa wished her ants were leafcutter ants, the kind who dragged bits of plants and caterpillar droppings to their underground nests and grew fungus on them, like farmers. Then they ate the fungus and fed it to their kids. That was practical—the leafcutters could live through almost anything, but Willa's ants were used to bread and honey and being fed by her. The missing children, the way she saw them, were more like leafcutter ants. Somehow they knew how to get by.

  Ants had survived on this earth for more than a hundred million years. It didn't surprise her. The smaller you were, the better your chances. Her mother made her drink milk so she would grow big and strong and so there would be cartons for the soup. But big and strong was the wrong thing; small was what you had to be. She would not drink milk anymore. In the end, if it came to that, she would find a friend like Jo-Jo. Underground he would shine in his paleness like the fireflies in summer in the fields out back. Blind, Jo-Jo would be able to sense corners, the twisted workings of the paths, and if she took his hand, he would guide her far from the silos, deep into the insulated center of the earth.

  1992

  DIRECTOR OF THE WORLD

  Jane McCafferty

  You can pretend when your father comes home from the war he's all right, same as he'll pretend same as your mother will pretend. First, the big supper!

  She got in her apron, wore it like the miniskirt, tied the sash tight, put on nylons, high heels, nothing else, just the apron with the fruit that's the wrong color meaning oranges are grape and vice versa, someone's humor we don't need it.

  He's with his keys, we don't know what they go to, there are fifty-two of them altogether, only I know because only I counted, it was night, they were over my head. All he wanted to do was cry, that was how it had to be. He said to her, you get out of bed so I can cry in peace. Get out of my dream. Out! Really loud, you would think to yourself, the neighbors.

  Right over my head so on the gray couch looking at the ceiling I thought they might crash on through, would they be bare, I wouldn't want to see, I'm not like the others, especially the ones who do it, and they do it in the outdoors, for instance in a parking lot, even though I would say, “There's broken glass and you'll get cut.” Once a girl said she likes it, the getting cut part, by the name of Yolanda Finch, not a lie.

  You can still be a child, for instance, you can say no, I don't think I'll grow up yet, then you think it so hard, it works, and you go to a movie and get the child rate maybe all your life hunching.

  And sometimes you can feel like saying to your mother that you don't like the world, so this way she'll say drink some milk, take a nap, or make a joke and say the world don't like you either but don't you already know that.

  In the mornings you all sit at the white table, the kitchen seems full of fog, there should be a horn, she looks all right in her nightgown, he wears his underwear, calls them drawers and maybe his shoes on too, maybe even combat boots depending on his mood, you think to yourself I'm not inviting friends over anymore and your mother makes the joke, What friends?

  There are all those times when you forget who you are. It can be like you're the impersonator and they're paying you, you can convince so many that you are yourself.

  So she's standing at the stove frying eggs which he loves. So we think, when all the sudden he says “Tell me why you're cooking eggs.” She turns around and says, For breakfast Silly, smiling but it's the crying tone now.

  Also outside there is yelling. The bottle breaker likes the morning and to say Somebody Somebody. Like a rooster it could wake you, we're not on a farm, you can go to the windows press your forehead and see the bottles breaking. You might want to go to a farm for health, a little air. I could grow up and have a farmhouse, very quiet, I love nature and wouldn't need a car.

  After he said “Breakfast, is that right?” he took the ring of fifty-two keys and examined it like a huge seaweed thing, it should be dripping wet. He shook it just a little, a little music in the kitchen, there goes the hole.

  Important, he said. Important thing is to be a good spy. My mother turned around and said Come again?

  Zenia, he said to me, Sometimes I look at you and think you're less than human. And I mean that as a compliment.

  And my mother turned from the stove. Very lonely when she said nothing, and I said Why you got that look, it's a joke, he's funny, he's making a joke. Why are you looking so serious, spoiling everything! My father nods, then gives me the wink. Then says in the old voice: First we need raincoats.

  That's right, I said, and then we laugh, do we know where we are? The nervous laughter, all those keys!

  “Good-bye,” I said to her. She folded her thin arms, that's all I can say, I wasn't interested in her eyes.

  So we got into his car, which first he stood back, looked at smiling. This piece of shit, he said, it'll take us nowhere fast.

  We got into the front seat, red like blood under my legs. Sun washed through the windshield so we squinted. I just clearly saw how I was, another person, and quiet in the piece of shit car.

  We didn't look at each other, how could we. How do you say why you don't look. To get through it you stare straight ahead.

  You miss me? How much? As much as you thought? and he asked me all three questions as usual before I even answered the first.

  What did I say? Nothing! I loved him! I should've found my voice!

  He started up the car, I was all right in his book he said. We drove, there was that sizzling sound, so the streets were wet. Tulip tree, he said, every time we passed one. And made an explosion sound. The trees were beautiful.

  “Where's the raincoat store, honey?” he said, then looked over. I saw his eyes, you don't know how a hand can reach out of the pupil, which in him was then large, but I saw the hand reaching, maybe waving good-bye, maybe I wanted to say that too, good-bye! But you just look at each other anyway, it's a part of your life, your life and not to block things out.

  “I don't know any raincoat stores,” I said, talking in the tone of everything's fine. “Raincoat stores, hmmmm,” I said, very cheerful since the silence. Then I said, “Can we turn on the radio?” and he said, “Radio?” and got a big smile on his face. “That's a fantastic idea!”

  You thought I invented the radio!

  When really, when I was small, it was us on the road listening to the radio, all the windows rolled down, that's how the years went by I think now, and then I was very happy. You can't imagine how many good songs there were. Every so often his hand reaching over and sitting on my head like a nice cap to keep my thoughts down.

  You think about the hands you held once.

  We sailed down the freeway like a speedboat. I could see the road was water going fast. He said, “Sears,” and I nodded, very cheerful. There was green sky out the windows, and he had his keys on his lap like a small dog, that was the sad part. His hand smoothing them.

  Before Sears there was a bar. I forget the name. The bartender told him No little girls and he said Little? Who's little? Then he said, Please, if she sits quiet on the end stool? The bartender shrugged. My father said he just wanted one drink and he'd be mighty quick.

  He made it so quick my eyes didn't even get used to the dark. I was still blind from the daylight shining off the wet gray sidewalk. He put his finger up in the air and said, “To the raincoats!”

  You can pretend people aren't gone, but really they are, that doesn't mean they're not them anymore. They're still blood.

  In Sears he said for instance, “No we don't need any help” to the saleslady, and he said it so quiet, like a whisper, and his eyes fluttered, fluttered, froze.

  He took us to the boy section. Girl raincoats aren't for spies, he said.

  He picked out one real nice spy raincoat, size twelve, beige color
ed plain, dark lining.

  Try it on, Zeen Queen.

  That was the old name. It will tell you he had a sense of humor, also he made up songs for me and sang them when we drove. “Zeen-Queen, Zeen-Queen, what did the world mean.”

  In the spy coat I stood before the mirror and he gave a whistle. You know the whole Sears heard. “Beautiful!” he said, and asked a stranger, “Whatta you think, does she look like a spy?”

  The stranger nodded very cheerful. Then we went to the men's section. He found a raincoat just like mine, three times as big and put it on. Handsome. I'm telling you.

  He looked in the mirror, not at the front self but walking away he looked at the back of him, looking over his shoulder to see how he looked leaving.

  “We're all set,” he said.

  “Sure Papa, what you say goes.”

  And then I snap my finger like the Three Stooges on the television, he used to watch with me on his shoulders. He used to be like that, a man watching television with a girl on his shoulders, four years old and smaller, before he saw them stick grenades up the village girls which he told us in his old voice in the other bar where the bartender didn't care how long I stayed. That was later in the night. We were in our spy coats. Let me go backwards.

  He said at least he wasn't a Seal. They do things he couldn't imagine. The hardest things, he said. And black seals were slipping all over inside my head throwing red balls so when I told him, he had to say, “Not those kind of seals! Christ!” I was then blocking it out and seeing his hand on the pile of keys making him popular in the bar. They kept saying “Why all the keys? Why all the keys?” Laughing together against him.

  There are so many people think it's a joke. Pick up your keys, we can leave the bar, I told him.

  We were then back in the car. We drove in the dark playing spies. “There is so much to spy on,” he kept saying. Beeped the horn. There in the Valiant the red front seat with the moon. It's dark enough. Both of us in our spy coats, he slides through the rich section, where I know people for instance from school. They look like magazines, very rich. He slid by in the car and we stared very hard at the houses. We spied on many things, the lit windows, the yellow flowers, the big lawns, we saw it all. A sprinkler, a sprinkler, shooting the air. An old man looking at the sky with a dog in his arms.