To my delight, everyone laughed. I now
chanced a complete look around the room. One plump white woman and
a tall old mean-looking man with grey skin, wore white smocks and
stood a step or two back. These two I decided were doctors or
nurses. Since my treatment by the medical professionals in the past
had been deplorable, I instantly feared and hated them.
Two older Chinese men in silk business suits
and with kind eyes, looked on, only mildly interested. They seemed
to be as confused as I was. One man there, a fit well-tanned young
fellow, who stood at the end of the bed, had the likeness of our
halfway home councilor, a kind untried soul who seemed to me
sometimes to be unworldly. He’d once told me that I was lucky to
have a friend like Lloyd, even though I had told him earlier what
Lloyd did to me on a nightly basis.
Another man stood near the door as though
guarding it. His pale narrow face was in a profile and all I could
see was that he had a large nose and droopy ears. He wore a crisp
dark blue uniform and held a tiny policeman’s hat, casually
twirling it from end to end in his hands. He didn’t look at me and
kept his eyes down.
Then a transcendental event occurred to me.
I saw Sally.
She slowly pushed through from behind her
parents and came right up at the bedside eye to eye with a glossy
yellow sucker in her mouth. She was a tall thin eight-year-old with
long blond hair and deep translucent eyes. She smiled at me with
absolute love and touched my hand. Then she gave me a purple sucker
which I greedily seized and hid under the covers. I’d learned from
my short lifetime in the homes that you can’t trust anybody with
candy.
“Say hello, dear,” the black woman
urged.
But Sally said nothing and we stared happily
at each other until the woman with the voice-of-authority spoke
again.
“Isaac,” she said, “go see what’s keeping
them.” The man with the tan left. She looked at me thoughtfully
again. “How do we get a hold of your parents?” I shrugged. I didn’t
have the slightest idea. “Where’s your mother right now?” she asked
further.
“She is at the graveyard,” I answered
softly.
“Is that who the flowers were for?” she
continued.
I regretfully nodded. She was a clever woman
and I was too distracted by her daughter to fight her inquiries. As
well, I had grown more tired.
“Where is your father?” she went on.
I shrugged and closed my eyes for a moment.
She pulled me back from sleep.
“What’s your name?”
“Christian Donald Briner.”
Afterwards, they let me sleep. When I awoke,
they were gone, and I got out of the bed and peed, then took a walk
around the hospital. It was a clean dark place full of shadows and
coughing. I was in very little discomfort. Several days must have
passed. All I could feel of my wound was a clean strip of gauze
with no sign of blood.
The number of people in the hospital had
greatly increased. This led me to believe an epidemic had broken
out in Jersey City. When supper was delivered, I asked a tall
wizened nurse why so many people were sick. She patted my head and
left without answering me.
After supper, I was given pills, and I
dreamt that I was back with my mother. I think she didn’t really
have a face but was just the idea of motherhood, like the Virgin
Mary. She showed me how to empty my head of the vulgar and horrible
things Lloyd had put into it. How to stop the cheap brass from
rattling in my brain. They weren’t just sounds that I cleared out
of my head either, but the unclean concepts they signified. Lloyd
had shown me plenty of pictures of people engaged in all sorts of
things and had explained every little detail.
“Tonight I will show you the path to a
higher plain,” she said, “but first you must let me hold you in my
arms a while as you sleep.”
When my head was emptied, she whispered that
I was purified and should try to communicate directly with God. I
looked up, stunned and lost for words. Even though she held me in
her arms, her face lay hidden in the shadows of the dark hospital
room, but I could hear her soft voice in my ears.
“Tonight, Jesus will come for you,” she
whispered, “and will show you the way.”
I was overjoyed to hear it and when I opened
my eyes, a man came to me with piercing blue eyes and a long
trimmed beard.
“I’ll take you to a place which few men have
seen and returned to tell,” he said. “You’re a good boy and deserve
favor, but you may refuse to go. Many cannot come back. The joy,
the fulfillment, the pleasures, are nearly irresistible. If you
decide to go, you’ll walk the clouds and follow me inside the gates
of heaven. If you can leave when I say you must, no matter what
enraptures you feel, then you may return to your mother’s arms and
you’ll awake unpolluted.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say. His
piercing blue eyes looked into my heart and he touched me with his
hand. The g-force increased as we sped to heaven, and for several
minutes, my stomach was in my throat. I hoped he truly was who he
seemed to be. His direct presence in my life would put me further
than I had ever been from a nobody-orphan. God himself spoke
directly to me now, and I figured that was really something
splendid.
“Listen to me carefully,” he said when we
arrived, “don’t open your eyes and don’t talk. You must think of
only goodness and grace, nothing sinful. Can you do it?” I nodded.
“Your very life depends on it,” he continued. “Do you understand
that you mustn’t talk nor open your eyes the whole length of time
we are beyond the gates?” I nodded again. “Enter here now with me,”
he whispered, “and feel all the senses of eternity.”
A sudden roar of music filled my head. I
felt the enticing spirits of young virgins swish through me and
whisper into my ears to follow them. The smell of cinnamon and
exotic spices came to my nostrils. My mouth watered with the taste
of a flavor so wonderful that I nearly cried out. Light burned
brightly beyond my closed-eyelids which I fiercely fought to keep
tight. The wind rushed through my short crop of hair and up my
naked backside. I became flush and felt many pleasures rush through
all parts of my body. My head exploded in a flurry of delight so
that I could hardly breathe. Suddenly, I decided I would stay. What
was the point of returning when life up here was so full of
pleasure?
However, the man touched me before I opened
my eyes and we were gone from heaven.
“It’s late,” he said almost gently, “and you
have done well. In the grey dawn when you awake with your youthful
health and cleared mind, the body and soul as one, you’ll remember
me. If you ever need to see me again, go to any clergy and they’ll
guide you here. Now before I leave, I must tell you something.
Tomorrow begins your new life. Whatever gifts you are offered, you
must take them, but fear them as well. They’ll only be presented
this one time, and they are indeed glorious, beyond the wildest
hopes of your mortal fate, but in them, lies the seeds of your
destruction unless you follow the guide which has been dispatched
for you.”
I’d no idea what he meant, but it sounded
complicated and I was glad when he finished. I remembered pretty
much everything during my stay at the hospital, but especially that
dream. I now had a friend in Jesus. When I awoke the next morning,
a song played in my head, a blusterous rhapsody in a language I’d
never heard, but it quickly faded as another group of people
gathered around me.
“He’s awake,” Mr. Drury said, my assigned
truant-officer, a sad-looking man with a round face and hard
perplexed eyes. His bald head had a sweep of grey hair on the sides
and he wore a trim grey moustache. He looked vaguely like a cop,
and if it hadn’t been for the sad, almost anguished eyes, he would
have looked like a mean one too. The irony of this thought wasn’t
lost on me, he was actually a police-officer of sorts, and I knew
it, it’s just that at the time, I equated cops with the men in the
blue uniform.
“He has more color today,” the plump nurse
said softly. I recognized her voice but didn’t look at her face.
“I’ll get the doctor.”
My sleep-encrusted eyes wouldn’t go from
face to face. It was just too much, and I was mortified they’d been
staring at the lump on my stomach only half hidden under the linen
sheets. I rubbed my eyes harshly and forced myself to sit up a
little on my pillow. I quickly felt my head to find the gauze had
been removed. Only long narrow bandages covered the lump on it now,
but it was still gross to touch.
“How do you feel?” Mrs. Abbibas said softly,
an East Indian woman, who though dressed in Western style, always
managed to look as though she was in a silk sari. She coiffured her
graying hair in smooth waves, and her compassionate eyes were full
of affection. Her black dress was covered in a large grey silk
shawl as though she was a person from a mysterious land who hid out
in New Jersey and wished to return home, but couldn’t find the
secret path back.
She had these deep-set eyes and a smile on
her face that seemed the definition of maternal love. Many times
she had talked to me, and appeared always magnanimous, but I could
never really understand what she said. Not that it mattered.
Outside of taking me home, what could she do? My mother was dead,
my father, nonexistent. I’d no standing or money. I was sleeping
with Lloyd, living in a broken-down halfway home on Carling Street,
and had been arrested for truancy three times. Who wanted to adopt
an eight-year-old with a history? And one caught stealing from
perhaps the wealthiest family in New Jersey no less?
I nodded and she lightly rubbed my hand. I
recognized the man with the friendly blue eyes and moustache. He
looked down and smiled again. This time he was dressed in casual
clothes. “I’m Stan Tappet,” he said in a rather timid voice. “This
is Una.” I darted a glance at the big black woman with the
formidable magic.
Una was an opposite type to Mrs. Abbibas.
She dressed in a loose bright red-yellow floral dress, and her eyes
were playful and full of inquiry. ‘The Tappets perhaps owned New
Jersey,’ her eyes said, ‘but people like me built it.’
“Do you know why we’ve come?” she asked
loudly.
Indeed, I’d guessed it, but shook my head
and got out from under her gaze. Stan was to be my new father. I
could see he was afraid that I’d turn him down, that for some
reason, that somehow, I wouldn’t understand what was being offered.
I think he was afraid that I was thick as a brick. I saw that I
held sway over him. He’d been sent out by the lady with the voice
of authority and wasn’t to come home without me. They were used of
getting what they wanted. I remember feeling exactly that! Power.
Perhaps it was the first time in my life I had it over someone and
I didn’t even know why, but I wouldn’t willingly give it up.
Sally strode in from behind the people in
the room, her face kindled with delight, a bright red tin of
Coca-Cola in her hand.
“Hi,” she mouthed.
I saw that she had recognized inside herself
the seed of love I’d planted there from our first meeting. No
shyness came to her eyes either. They were fountains of
translucence whose depths were unimaginable. I had to have her—I
became greedy for her. It was deplorable but urgent as well. I had
power over someone for the first time, but he’d taken it all back
by bringing his daughter who had power over me. With her in my
life, the taste of Lloyd could be rinsed out and my past thoroughly
rejected. Through Sally, I could purify myself further. Jesus had
sent Sally to me.
All of this must have jumped to my face or
something, and Una pounced on me. She took my hand and squeezed it
not so gently. “Well, Mr. Christian, my full-grown child, ” she
said, “just don’t be wagging your tail yet. The nice people at
Carling Street would be happy to get rid of you, and I can see why,
but I think that the poor Tappets would be fools to take you in.
They feel obliged and I don’t see it that way at all. It was just
an accident. Bryce didn’t mean to hit you so hard.” With her other
hand on my chin, she forced me to look at her. “Is there the devil
in you?” she asked.
Fear jumped to my face. I shook my head so
vigorously it caused her to let out a loud laugh. She stared at me
for the longest time until I tore my eyes away and looked up at
Stan for mercy. To my utter surprise, he shrugged. I saw she’d the
power over me, and not he. I didn’t have power at all. I was
furious that I misread the whole situation so poorly.
I abruptly saw Una’s power then. It was
brilliantly disguised. So mysterious and extraordinary as to be
frightful, and at this point, totally camouflaged and unknowable by
someone my age. What force she served, I couldn’t see, yet I knew
she’d been the one who was responsible for Sally’s upbringing, the
one who would be responsible for me. Perhaps it was she and not
Sally who would be my earthly guide as Jesus had promised. But
whatever her standing and who ever she served, I could clearly see
I had absolutely no power over her and that she could stop
everything this instant with just a remark.
“The Tappet family wishes to adopt you,
Christian,” Mr. Drury said from the foot of my bed as though coming
to my rescue. “Mrs. Abbibas and I feel it is an excellent
opportunity for you. We strongly recommend it. Nothing stands in
the way of an expeditious agreement. We already spoke to Carling
Street. You could be in your new home today. All we need is your
agreement.”
I looked at Stan and perhaps said one of the
most disingenuous statements, and there have been many in my time
as a son to him, with a wild-eyed smile on my face.
“You will become my father?” I asked in
wonder.
He returned the smile completely taken in,
but Una spoke up again.
“Mr. Tappet is a very busy man, my
full-grown child,” she said staring at me again. “He invents
things, and all over the world, he works for a better place. He’ll
have time for none of your nonsense. I can assure you of that. I’ll
be looking after you, mostly, so, think twice before you say yes to
this. It’ll be no picnic.”