“Abdul, I don’t want this to become a battle of wills—”
“I’ll lose?”
“You already have, if you’re here. Like I said earlier, I’m leaving at the end of the week. You could wind up staying here for a long, long time, you know, doing, oh, say, testing meds for these people, locked down, strapped in. I’ve seen it happen before. Or we,
they,
I mean, damage people so badly they can’t let them out, and then they leave enough Velcro loose so they take care of themselves. I’ll ask you again: How old are you?”
“I told you I don’t know.”
“What is the last age you remember being?”
“Um, I think nineteen, twenty, maybe eighteen.”
“So what makes you think you’re not nineteen or eighteen anymore?”
“Well, that’s how old I was when I came here, but I’m older than that now by the years I’ve been in here.”
“Years?”
“Yeah.”
“How long do you think you’ve been here?”
“Shit, I don’t know,
you
know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I will, Abdul. You’ve been here for twenty-one days, exactly to the day.”
“Twenty-one days? You mean, I . . .” What’s he talking about? I can’t—
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. We had to keep you—”
“Why?”
“Well, maybe
how
is more like it and or more useful. You were incapacitated. They slapped a label on you as a threat to yourself and others, and if you were Abdul-Azi Ali like we thought you were, then it was not just a threat to others but a
lot
of others.
“So you just drag me here, lock me up in a room.
Who?
Who said you could do that? What did I
do
? I have rights? Why am I here?”
“Good question, Abdul. That’s one I’m going to ask you to answer, because I don’t know.”
“I had to have done something. I couldn’t just get locked up for nothing.”
“You never heard of people getting locked up for nothing?”
“Yeah, trash people, hoodies, and rapists and shit, or . . . or in China or someplace. This is America.”
“Where have you been, boy?”
I’m stunned. He’s Watkins in a jacket with leather patches on the elbows, a pipe. He needs a pipe and a fireplace. This is madness.
“Where have you been, boy? Where have you been?”
“I dunno.”
“You need to find out, you really do.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You could be here a long time, oh, declared this or that by the state, insane displaced person paranoid schizophrenic. They’ll come up with something, and you would end up fodder—”
“Fodder, dried hay for horses.”
“I’m not giving you a vocabulary quiz, Abdul. Don’t you understand what I’m talking about? Watkins, our minimum-wage sadist,
every day,
how’s that for a life? Not so nice, I think. Then wake up, kid, I asked you a question.”
“Honestly, after all that, I forgot what that question was.”
“You were going to tell me why you were here. What do you remember?”
J.J., when I first saw the devil it was an abyss, a straight drop into blackness. And, J.J., that’s when I understood Hopkins! That’s when I understood the great holy blinding light was the same as the devil’s dark, the very same, the exact very same.
“Abdul?
Abdul?
What’s going on in there?”
“I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! What sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life.”
“Who taught you Shakespeare?”
“It’s not Shakespeare,” I say.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest. He observed a lot of natural phenomena—flowers, trees, rock formations. So my earth science teacher, Brother John, had us read his poems and memorize them. That’s one I memorized. When you said, ‘What do you remember?’ that’s what came out.”
“Sounds like you got it perfect there.”
“Not perfect. Why did I get shock treatment?”
“Good question, and we’ll come to that. But remember our focus is getting you out of here. If you get mad now, it won’t happen. So I need to assess your current state of mind—”
“Why?”
“Well, think of me, you’re doing me a favor. Suppose I authorize your release and you go kill somebody.”
Shit, he’s serious. If he’s not
the
devil, he’s
a
devil. Maybe I can talk to him.
“So what is it about the Jesuits?”
“Nothing really. I was thinking about how after that, when I was seventeen—” I say.
“What about it?” he interrupts.
“Well, nothing really, just hitting this guy.”
“Who?”
“Roman, a guy I know. It was funny. After I hit him, he was screeching on and on, but later he claimed I broke his jaw. How was his jaw broken if he kept talking?”
“Why did you hit him?”
“He was trying to stop me from going. I had come back to get some books, and he didn’t want me to go.”
“You were leaving what?”
“His house, I was living with him, since I was thirteen.”
“Was he a friend, a lover, a relative?”
“What relative would act like that?”
“It’s not so uncommon.”
“I mean normal relative.”
“So go on, why was he so upset? Why did you feel you had to hit him?”
“He’s such a faker, I don’t know, but I guess he was in love with me.” I’m not lying, I realize. I didn’t know shit about him, really.
“Were you in love with him?”
“No. I was thirteen. I needed a place to stay. He took me in, trained me as a dancer—took care of me. In love? I didn’t even
like
him, but—”
“But what?”
“But I admired him in a way.”
“How so?”
“His skill, the guy was a virtuoso. He said he would teach me everything he knew, and he did but—”
“You hear the back story yourself, don’t you, Abdul? ‘But.’ But what?”
“But I wasn’t gay. But it felt good getting my dick sucked. I felt like he had me in a cage lined with money. I couldn’t get out even though the door was open. That made me feel even more trapped, because it was like I was choosing to stay. I didn’t know what to do. I felt polluted, yeah, polluted. I didn’t think I could get a girl and be normal, because I
wasn’t.
”
“Did he force you?”
“No, it was that to get what I wanted, I knew what I had to do. I felt like I had no choice. Of course I did: be homeless, go to a group home jail where I’d probably
really
have gotten fucked.”
“Say what?”
“Roman, all he wanted to do was blow me. It was not like he ever even tried to fuck me; it just wasn’t part of his program. But . . . but I hated the feeling, like now. I feel it now, like I don’t have any rights or choice—you got all the power. Do I have any rights?”
“Did you?”
“No,
do
I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I have to do this shit, talk to you?”
“No, you don’t have to do anything. But I suggest you choose to. Think of this as getting your ‘rights,’ as you call them, back. So finish telling me about this guy. It sounds like he played the role of parent and teacher even while sexually exploiting you.”
“He didn’t see it that way, as exploitation. He saw me as his ‘boy,’ like a husband or some shit.”
“So you’re angry, understandably, at being used. What most kids get for free, you had to pay for—”
“Exactly! And later I find out this faggot is whaling on me and he got HIV!”
“When did you find that out?”
“The day I was leaving.”
“So today do you have anyone, a boyfriend or girlfriend?”
“I got a girl. Or did have.”
“Did? What happened?”
“You tell me, you’re the one knows why I’m here.”
“Is this your first girlfriend?”
“I never had one before. I used to look at pictures and stuff.”
“And stuff?”
“You know, jack off.”
“What kind of pictures?”
What a fucking creep, why am I talking? “Britney, Lil’ Kim, mostly Britney but—”
“But?”
“But when I finally hook up with a Britney bitch, I couldn’t do nothing.” I’m still embarrassed.
“That’s called performance anxiety.”
“I thought it was the brothers at St Ailanthus fixing me. Like what happened to my grandmother in Mississippi. Someone fixed her and she was never happy again. Roman said I was more of a pussy than the ones I be sniffing after.”
“Did you like relating sexually to guys?”
“If they paid me. Anyway, that’s all I knew before My Lai.”
“My Lai?”
“My girl.” I’m surprised at the pride in my voice. What do I have to be proud about?
“Did you initiate sex with men?”
“No, but, I mean . . . I mean, I didn’t have to, they came to me. But—”
“But?”
“I did with the kids.”
“How old were they?”
I think of Richie Jackson. “Um, six, seven.” Actually, he was five.
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Little girls?”
“There was never any of them around.”
“Did you ever think of why you did that?”
“It felt good.”
“Better than Roman and—”
“I was in control and having fun with the little kids.”
“Fun? What about them?”
“They were having fun too. They loved it!”
“Are you sure?”
He’s getting on my nerves. “Yeah, they loved it, and me. They loved me. I was like a . . . a
father.
”
“The girl you’re with now? Is she a ‘Britney bitch’?”
“My Lai, hell no. She’s a . . . a woman. She’s real. She’s the first person I was ever real with. She’s no
picture.
She farts. We get down together. I’m her man.” Yeah, I remind myself, I’m a man.
“Did you ever hit her?”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“You were telling me about this guy.”
“Who?” I ask.
“The guy at the motel.”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me some more, Abdul.”
“I want to go back to sleep.” All of a sudden I’m in a funk.
“Abdul, I told you we don’t have time for that. Wake up, Abdul.”
“In the dream she asks me to kill him.”
“
Who
asks you to kill
whom
?” He’s leaning forward now, interested, real interested.
“In the dream My Lai wanted me to kill her father. All this time I thought she, maybe, really just loved me, but she wanted me to do that shit. She’s no different from anybody else out there.”
I turn away from Dr See. Fuck him. I can, and
am,
going to sleep.
“Do you dream like that often?”
“No. I mean, sometimes.”
“Abdul, can you tell me about the dream that brought you here?”
“I don’t remember my dreams anymore,” I tell him. “I told you that before!”
“And I asked you before, if you could remember, what would you remember?”
He’s fucking with me again. I feel like I only have a few seconds where my mind is mine before they take it back.
He
remembers.
“You know what I remember,” I insist.
“How so?”
“Don’t you know what I remember?”
“I told you before, Abdul, I’m not in your mind.”
He’s lying!
I can’t tell the difference between dreaming and being awake in here. Didn’t I just go to sleep, and here he is again talking to me and I’m talking back again, which is the shocker.
“I just wanted to think she loved me, that I was her man, the big cheese, the king or something. And all she wanted was to use me like everybody else. And also like I’m crazy or some shit, I’m just gonna go out to Connecticut and kill her fucking parents, two people I ain’t never seen, who are basically supporting her,
us,
’cause she’s kicking me coins when I need ’em—I’m just gonna go kill them for
nothing.
”
“Her father raping her was ‘nothing’?” Dr See asks.
“You know what I mean.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. You have an understandably bitter view of her request, but I don’t know if that means she doesn’t love you.”
“You don’t?”
“It was wrong. It was evil—I guess there’s a time to use that word. But she did see you as the ‘big cheese,’ as you say. She wanted him dead. You love her, she loves you. You’re her king, you should slay the dragon. That it’s the wrong thing to do, that it would’ve destroyed her life
and
your life, as well as her father’s, she obviously didn’t have enough . . . enough
sense
to figure that out.”
“She’s very intelligent.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t. Sense and intelligence aren’t necessarily the same thing. Whatever sense she had, her emotions ate up. Millions of people survive child abuse and go on to live life. She got twisted up in revenge and hatred.”
“I forgot something.”
“What would that be?” he asks in his sickeningly cool voice.
“I told her something about the brothers. Well, the brother who molested me, Brother Samuel, and, kind of, Brother John. I told her I went up there and confronted Brother Samuel in his room, where he had raped me when I was a kid. And I killed him. And then I climbed out the window and ran away.”
“Did that happen?”
“No, what really happened was, I went up there to confront them and Brother John had been transferred. And Brother Samuel had committed suicide.”
“So, it’s not
so
unreasonable that My Lai would see you as capable of riding out to Connecticut and killing her parents.”