The Kid (45 page)

I’m surprised to find my feet aren’t shackled. Because my hands were, I didn’t even try to move my feet. I felt paralyzed. The hallway to the showers seems like something out of a movie, blinding bright lights like I’m being filmed. I’m that guy in
Dead Man Walking,
being led to the electric chair, that song by Springsteen comes on and your heart is bursting, it’s a moment of artistic genius, one like
I
wanted to make one day. Now I never will, not in here, not having
been
in here, even if I do get out. He didn’t even get an Oscar for that shit. Maybe I did do something awesome before I got here. Maybe it was too far out, radical. Radical and far out. Maybe I’m a political prisoner and it’s just a matter of time before voices around the world rise up on my behalf like one of those people Scott is always talking about, Saro-Wiwa or somebody like that. But no one knows I’m here. Anyway, for the people to rise up for you, you have to have risen up for the people. I never even had a chance to do that. I feel the tickle of a dry piece of something fall down and out of my pants leg. I know it’s a dried piece of shit. I can smell myself.

“Eck!” from the guard. Guard? Executioner? Drone flunky drudge? I’m not a political prisoner being led to the gas chamber. I’m a little kid being made to take a shower, to wash away my filth. I shouldn’t mind, but I do, what else do I have? Maybe I did that shit—shitting because I was crazy to keep them off me; in that case I wasn’t crazy. But I think I was just mad. I don’t know what has happened to me since I been in here.

“Don’t stop walking, and when we get in there, don’t think I’m wiping that shit off your big butt. You patients are crazy, man!”

Why do black people always have shit-ass jobs where you can’t do nothing but hate them? I rather be a criminal, which I’m not, than do stupid shit fucking with people.

“Don’t stop walking.”

Did I stop walking?

“Turn left. Here’s some soap, stupid. If I go take a piss, am I gonna come back and find you done killed yourself?”

What can I say to that?

“Not that I care, but I don’t want to lose my job. Yuk-yuk.”

An urge to totally break him surges up, send him home to his wifey crying. He’s probably too stupid to have a wife. The urge goes back wherever it came from, and I hold out my hand for the soap.

“At least you don’t have to worry about dropping it. Yuk-yuk.”

The showers are in a room tiled in green from the floor to the ceiling, no stalls, everyone can see everyone,
could
see. I’m the only one here today, just me in a green room with eight showers.

“Hurry the fuck up!” he shouts from it sounds like somewhere way down the hall.

I smell cigarette smoke, hear a radio:

It’s Saturday? Doctors don’t come on Saturday, do they? Yeah, I guess, maybe, I don’t know. I’m feeling confused now. What’s gonna come out of the shower if I turn it on? I hope it is gas or anthrax or some shit. I don’t care, long as it’s not worms! Thin white threadworms that penetrate your skin and invade your major organs until you’re a teeming mass of worms. Worms crawling out your nose, your ears, your mouth. Worms’ll be coming out my dick, my asshole. “UGH!”

The sounds of the radio go down, the smell of smoke comes nearer.

“Ugh yourself! Motherfucker, I know you better turn that water on and get your ass cleaned up. Fool shitting on yourself. You ain’ gonna aggravate me like you did Watkins. I’ll come in here and do a midnight barbecue on your ass by myself, you fuck with me. I know you ain’ crazy enough to like being fried. Is you?
Is you?
I know you better turn that water on.”

The sound of his voice is like warm hands on my heart. I do love you. Yes, I do girl. It’s such a strong love music. He’s singing from his heart. He means it. Whoever he is, he means it. He loves someone. I wonder what he looks like. He’s black or a black-sounding white. No, 1964, the disc jockey said, back then white people hadn’t taken it all yet. He’s black!
(It’s not you people is so talented or been through so much—
Shut up, Roman!
No, let me fucking finish. It’s not you people is so talented or been through so much, compare what happen to you to what happen to us—you is like a bathtub we is the ocean.
I’ll kill you, faggot.
You can’t, I’m not here! What you got is wasted on you people, like being young on kids; we do you a favor to take it. You know what Roman think—
I don’t care.
You should.)

The singing is bringing My Lai, her lips, slow dragging with her. I did so much for you, Roman is crying now. I never have a boyfriend who is not black. You know what they call fags like that My Lai said, dinge queens! We laughed. I turn on the faucet. Water! comes out the showerhead, too hot at first, then I adjust it. Warm, it feels so good, no worms but water and words from a song inside feeling.

When was the last time I felt good? The music gets louder.

PLOP! A wet washcloth lands at my feet.

“Use it!”

I do, vigorously rubbing the bar of soap into the wet washcloth, then rubbing the cloth under my arms, separate my butt cheeks, get the crack of my ass, the lather from the soap and the filth from my body run brown, then clear, down the drain. I make the water a little hotter and just stand there letting it run down my shoulders and back, I’m free from evil worms and pain.

“Hey, stupid! You been in there almost half an hour. How long does it take to take a shower? Come on out of there!”

When I get back to the room, the bed has been made up in thick white sheets, making it look like a mummy. The shower has worn me out. I climb into the bed and breathe in the fresh bleached-clean smell of the sheets. My head sinks to the pillow, and even before I fall asleep, I’m dreaming. Or did I really get up and creep to the door, look both ways, and, not seeing anybody, step out into the hallway, turn left, and start to walk down the hallway? The sparkling linoleum is white, clean, and cold under my feet. Cautiously, I open the first door I come to—a big sink, mops, buckets, and brooms. I close the door. Where am I? I can
feel
people. I know I’m not alone here. I keep walking and come to another door. I open it and enter a long white-walled corridor, at the end of the corridor there is another door. I open that door and step into a big room that smells like piss. The room is bright with high ceilings. Sunlight is streaming in from windows so high they almost reach the ceiling. I look up at the ceiling, then down at a row of beds lining each side of the room. At first I don’t know what it is. The bright light obscures my sight. Then I see the people. So even though the smell is kicking me, I step closer. A man is lying in the bed closest to me naked on a bare plastic-covered mattress. He’s curled up in a fetal position like a seed in a pod, hands tucked under his chin, toes digging into the mattress. Buzz-cut hair, large
Star Trek
–ish ears, his elbows and thin thighs hide his privates. There’s no sheet or blanket on the bed, nothing, just him asleep in a puddle of yellow piss glistening on the plastic-covered mattress. On the bed next to him is a naked woman flat on her back, her flaccid breasts flopped down the side of her body, her hands curled like claws at the ends of arms bent at the elbows.

I hear a grunt, and between the first two beds a man is sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, one leg folded under him, the other bent at the knee, sticking out at a weird angle. It was like I was stuck in a dream or a movie with no sound track until he grunted. Now I hear low moans, wheezes, cough-cough, sniff, rattle, and groans coming from the twisted shapes in the beds, maybe fifty beds. What is this, a hospital? Well, where’s everybody else? I don’t know what it is, I know what it feels like, like I’ve stepped into a . . . a garbage can or something, a human landfill. I start to creep backward, away, step step. Then I turn and run to the door, fling it open, but the long white corridor is gone and I’m in another room. The first thing I see is a big television set hanging from the ceiling and people in wheelchairs, fifteen or twenty of them, their mouths gaped open like baby birds’, staring at the TV. There’s another group, maybe ten, sitting or laying on some benches. A commercial is playing on the TV. Tampons make a girl free from monthly worries or accidents, and she gets into an SUV and drives away. Then the TV shuts off, and one by one they turn their heads away from it and look at me.
Shit, I didn’t do it!
I think, not say, because there’s no speech here. One guy who’d been laid out like a corpse on one of the benches rises to look at me. It’s Richie Jackson, lying-ass Richie Jackson! He’s shrunken and twisted like he has polio or something. One arm folded to his chest, the hand curled over and useless-looking hangs from his wrist, bent. Only his eyes seem the same, big brown little-kid-looking. I hear a SKIRR-SQUEEEAK! and see one of the chairs start to roll toward me. It’s Slavery Days!

“You know what you did to me!” She hikes up her skirt. She’s flashing her old pussy.

Fuck her, she’s crazy. I ain’t did nothing to her. It should be the other way around, what she did to me!

“Boy!” she hollers. And like it was a command with her leading the way, all the wheelchairs start to roll and creak toward me! I turn around to run back to my bed, but when I get to where the white door leading to the corridor was, there’s only a little blue door. I crash through the little blue door into the hallway, but once I’m back in the hallway, it’s like either I’m getting taller or the hallway is shrinking. I stoop over and keep running until I can’t anymore, because the hallway is getting smaller and smaller. I have to drop down onto my hands and knees. The hallway is a tunnel now. I hear footsteps behind as if someone is coming up to the door. Then I hear the door slam! I try to turn my head and shoulders to look back, but I can’t; there’s not enough room. My shoulders are almost touching the fishy-smelling wall of the tunnel. Disgust fills me as cysts swell from the walls of the tunnel and burst one by one, spewing tiny little worms that start to crawl over me. Ugh! The tunnel is touching my shoulders now. In front of me, a cyst super-swells like bubble gum until its glistening skin bursts, spewing dozens of tiny spiders. I’m sweating like crazy, and it stinks, sweat, fishy smell, and cigarettes. I have to keep batting my eyelids to keep the tiny spiders from crawling into my eyes. There’s not enough room for me to crawl on my hands and knees anymore, so I contract my abdominal muscles, hunching my butt up to the top of the tunnel, then I contract my butt muscles and release my abdominals, propelling my body forward, contract butt release gut, contract butt release gut, inching along like a caterpillar. I’m scared the tunnel walls are going to crush me before I can get out. I can’t wipe the worms or spiders off, and they smell or something smells like old garbage. My heart is beating so fast it’s almost vibrating. Breathe
breathe,
don’t hyperventilate, I tell myself. I look ahead of me, the light is brighter. Almost somewhere! Next thing you know, I’m coming out of the tunnel head and shoulders first. When my arms get free, I use them to pull myself all the way out of the tunnel. I tumble onto the black, rain-slick asphalt of a parking lot. I don’t look back, because I know the tunnel is gone. A warm, misty rain is coming down. Lights from the parking lot shine down on the few cars parked here and there throughout the lot between gleaming white lines. I don’t see any people. The blue-black sky is studded with blazing stars. If it wasn’t for the parking lot cars, I could be in a Van Gogh painting. Ahead and to the side of me is a row of motel rooms in a U shape around the parking lot. The neat numbered doors are all shut against the night. The cars seem rooted. No one comes out of the rooms to get them, no vehicles from outside wheel into the lot. No noise, no sound coming from anywhere. Where am I? I don’t know which way to go, what to do. I’m thinking I have to get back when a light comes on in one of the rooms. Number 6. I walk toward it.

I’m standing in front of the door, looking at the light coming from behind the drawn blinds, when I notice the blinds are
outside
the window. The blinds start to rise by themselves as I’m checking them out. I’m scared, and my bare feet are starting to get cold. I don’t really want to, but my feet step closer to the window, maybe they are thinking about the warmth that might be inside? Inside the room there is a raggedy man in jeans who looks like he’s drunk. His mumbled curses are the first sounds I’ve heard since I tumbled into the parking lot. He’s standing in front of a TV screen. Whatever he’s seeing is making him mad; wobbling on drunk legs, he starts screaming at the TV. I don’t see anyone else in the room, and I can’t see what’s making him so mad, but he scares me with his drunk, defeated face. I got to get out of here. I can’t stop trembling. My chest tightens. He’s lighting a cigarette now. I don’t smoke, I think, then think funny I thought that. He’s smoking now. His room changes to a control room hung with dozens of TV monitors that look like the multiple eyes of a bee. Please, please, I rather not have no eyes than see this. I will myself not to see it. My chest really hurts now, I can smell the smoke from his cigarette, I start to weep, but my eyes are dry, No, no, I’m shaking my head and crying.

“Hey there, are you OK, friend?”

I open my eyes, sit up. I’m in my bed again and looking at a man who is flicking ash from a cigarette into an ashtray on the bedside table. Who’s he? What’s he doing in here smoking? I lurch away, falling flat on my back, squeezing my eyes shut.