At Hill And Bedside

Some woman came to the door, and it was a surprise. Some woman came to the door barefoot. She held it open in a way that indicated the visitor should enter. This visitor, the young teenaged boy, seemed to provoke much curiosity from her; she just stood there assessing him, wondering probably if this is what the children in America looked like, pulling in the smell of detergent from his clothes. She was thinking, maybe, that there were green bills folded neatly and concealed in the large envelope he was holding. And the young man could not access any emotion. There was anxiety perhaps. He felt it. After all, he had been awakened quite early that morning and called upon to set out on this much-anguished about segment of his visit back to the country of his parents; the country of their ancestors and those that had brought them there by force; his country. But the land had belonged to no one, at least, not anyone who had come by ship. And that indigenous group who stood most in right to lay claim to the creeks and waterfalls, the internal islands and the rain-drenched leaves, the tough bark and minerals that rose to the sand’s surface like stars reflecting on water; those who stood shoulder to shoulder and greeted the barges as they sailed in, did not subscribe to a philosophy that allowed them to see nature as a possession. It was natural to behold how the trees ascended and bended to the side. He had remembered them that way, looking as if they stopped in the middle of some sort of dance. He had sensed how time itself seemed different when he stepped out of the airplane. It was at once familiar and terrifying. He felt the commingling of the spirits. They swayed in between the coconut palms. They spoke languages in the wind that beat against the blue pick-up truck, which whisked him away from the airport. He could barely believe that he had been born in this place. That he had actually been produced there. And now, he had returned as a mere observer; a visitor with roots somewhere in the vicinity.

The boy was made to understand that he could not let his month-long vacation end without visiting his grandfather. It was a mandate. The task had been looming like a loose chandelier above him and now the inevitable was actually happening. He had sat quietly in the passenger seat of the vehicle as it climbed into the hills. He watched the bungalow houses flicker past him on stilts, and was mesmerized. It seemed appropriate somehow that this man would live in a place as removed from the city as it was. Everything about the old man was obscure, his story spoken about in patches and pieces. What had any of them really known about him? The boy had watched his own father discuss the elder with that aloof look held by those that are simply speculating. His eyes were devoid of familiarity. There was no ownership in his tone. And still there was a mandate.

Some woman had come to the door and ushered him in. He walked past her stare and into the back room. She watched him walk to that back room without compassion and left him there alone with the old man. The wood on the walls was graying from neglect. Bags of clothes had been flung into a corner and leaned on one another for support. A solitary window opened out into a budding jungle and was held up by a stick. The old man lay in his bed. He beckoned his grandson with a trembling voice and mimicking hands. The boy approached his relative. He pulled a nearby chair closer to the bed as he was instructed to do. He looked at the man’s face and saw something in it that he had known. The man started to speak. He asked about the boy’s mother and father, his brother and sister. He spoke about age and isolation and learning by living. He wanted to know what life was like in that other world. Was it not cold? Was it everything people described it to be? He had always wanted to discover for himself, he said, the answers to those questions. The boy nodded, not being able to imagine that he had ever known any other kind of existence, although he had. But all of that recollection had grown dimmer with time and relevant only as a point of reference, as something that had shaped him in some imperceptible way. He remembered this man, standing above him at a standpipe, pouring liquid on his head from a bucket of herbs and saying prayers of protection. It was the memory that devoted him to this elder in secret; the idea that someone thought him precious enough to protect in such a sacred manner. The boy was unexpectedly overcome. He huddled by his grandfather and gripped the edge of the mattress. And he was suddenly taken aback, for the old man started to weep. He just wept and wept.

Eleven by Night

Flocks of feathered floats had helped to facilitate the fantasy, flaring in and fanning out; ruffling as if the breeze had snuck up from the adjoining seaside and tickled them. They were tugged on and put on parade by tanned figures that were glistening with sweat, gyrating and giving in to a general sense of euphoria. They danced on vapors. It was an emancipation exclamation, a festival of melody, a gala that deceived even the native residents into thinking that they had been transported to some tropical dreamland for Carnival. Carnival! Except that this was North America; this was the land of migrants and Mounties, in the summer months, when the clouds were flickering and fleeting, and something frigid was a-rolling-in.

Fed by all the frenzy of the earlier hours, the revelers took the nightfall as it came. They took to the streets, persevering with the recreation and the revelry. The more flamboyant of the set parked expensive automobiles on the avenues with lights beaming, sounds blasting and the cleaning solutions drying unseen into the paint. The sidewalks were abuzz with the intoxicated and the inquisitive, and impudent youngsters on the prowl for their own amusements. Another line of vehicles made a syrupy slow drain down the main boulevard. And inside, the passengers' faces drew closer to the glass, meaning to miss nothing.

From five or so feet away, there seemed to be another costumed mass gathering – similar to that which was marching in the sun just hours before…but here? No. All of that pageantry had died out with the daylight; these were symbols of a different variety. Was it the red stripes surrounding those caps that made them look so unnatural? Out-of-towners would find the attire too bright and celebratory for actual enforcers of the law to wear. And then, a woman screamed! The throngs suddenly became sluggish; frowns were formed out of just buoyant features; a kind of internal movement changed the formation of the police unit and a woman screamed.

Fists pounded on metal. The air had changed. The surge of blue parted to reveal the woman; her braids had unraveled and her head swayed low over her protruding stomach. The squad of blue, eleven they were, advanced upon the bawling captive. She wailed an announcement of her pregnancy, but she may as well have been shouting at thunder. The woman screamed. She wrestled her wrists against the silver handcuffs. Eleven officers struggled to take hold of the woman’s body, unaffected by the emotional exhibition. Eleven men were taking hold of one woman’s body. This, at Carnival!

Flushed

The noises that echoed from the hollow spaces in the back reached around the hall like long fingers and grabbed and wiggled at his ear. Even at the gate where he stood, the words were crisp with enunciation. It was like listening to a radio in the dark; in the wee morning hours when all but one thing in the world was mute. He waited for an acknowledgement that he could carry out his task. He leaned on the wall in his gray suit and something misty was floating around his mind. He overheard his name. He was surprised. Even at the gate where he stood, the name was crisp with enunciation. His name! There was a sudden foreboding rumbling in the deep. He would know before knowing that whatever reached him next would hurt him. And then, the adjective came; it made his spirits fall like cucumbers just sliced by a knife.

Still, the God of the universe had been merciful, for it allowed him to receive this latest destruction in the hallway alone. The God of his imagination had destined that he would have to share this shame with no one.

Amen. He let his head hang for a second in a mood reminiscent of his earlier more vulnerable days, long before his majestic transformation; his evolution into something elegant with a suit and a pricy watch and an expensive cashmere overcoat that fell toward his ankles; Oh how he walked like a king and held his shoulders up, and stood face-front before judges to articulate his phrases - very persuasive. Who could even comprehend the catalogue of mortifications he had already crawled out of? They were always nipping secretly at his heels. There was a quick moment of delirium. Panic. His eyes were searching for a swift solution. And then, it was decided. He would walk to the end of the hallway and return after an introspective intermission. Perhaps, none of this had happened at all. He was his only witness after all. Yes. He buttoned up his jacket and started to walk.

Swiftly, And Then...

But nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, not even the old woman sitting on the marble steps in the foyer the day before. She was fanning herself with a magazine and humming some sort of hymn about knowing neither the day nor the hour. In fact, wasn’t that her yearly routine? Yes. The residents in the building were not surprised when they spotted her on their approach to the double glass doors, slouching in her summer print; occupying the space in the corner of the stairs with grace, like the aging black sovereigns that one heard existed in centuries past, but could not quite visualize; or as might have been conceptualized in a painting created by an artist that never had and never would actually witness such living greatness. Yet, the old lady was great in her way; she had lived a lengthy life and deserved some title. She was a sweet old thing really; harmless by most accounts, and seemed always satisfied to be just where she was. They all nodded in her direction whenever they passed through the front doors, and she nodded back.

The nurse expected to come across the elderly woman on her way back in from her day shift. She was ready to greet her with the appropriate degree of deference, while perhaps letting a mild curiosity about the woman play in her smile. She anticipated the hike up the flights of stairs leading to the fifth floor, with her clenching the rail like a rope, blowing full breaths from a body that was not unaccustomed to labor, and marking with each quiet pant, a task that required her attention; the grandchildren would have likely been in need of some item or other and then, she would have had to see how her daughter was making out in the heat, pregnant as she was. It was true that July had only now started, but the humidity had climbed to such a high degree that the young flower buds that were striving to decorate the garden in the building’s entranceway fell over and passed out. Nonetheless, the nurse arrived to find that the old woman had relinquished her place by the door. And that gave her a shock despite her knowledge of the circumstances that had suddenly summoned her home.

It was the first true symbol of the change that had smashed into her routine and demolished everything; this vacancy on the stairs that even the light was beginning to withdraw from, leaving only the pale bare stone. The call had reached her at work. A frantic voice astounded her with the news that her daughter’s body had been discovered motionless on the bed and, that by that hour, the child inside had followed its mother; that the authorities had already come to fetch out the dead; and an aunt had already taken from the apartment the children whose mother had suddenly departed from them. She must have ravaged her mind for an image of her daughter talking and moving. What had they talked about? She would try to remember. As the vehicle drove to the address, she was statue still, thinking that at any moment it would disintegrate into ash with her in it, willing it to happen. But nothing happened and nothing changed. People moved about on the avenues as if this catastrophe was not upon them all; cars and buses moved; planes soared too high for the caving earth to vacuum them in and swallow them; trains still ascended like fountains out of the underground with compartments in tact, and the sun continued to blaze its punishment upon her. It was only the old woman that had vanished; the first true symbol of the change.

The View From Upstairs

Rows of support beams join at the ends to make the shape of a triangle; white holiday lights drop and hang from them like frills in midair. On the wall, there is a glitzy banner that reads King of Kings. The air is thickest on the balcony, where it smells something like lotion and sweat, and the mourners sit shoulder-to-shoulder, fanning themselves and rocking as the singer sings. There is a widescreen view of the casket from that height and the wreaths propped up like individual portraits around it. A mother’s life has ended; mother and senior member of the church; mother and former resident of one of the public housing towers that surround the place of worship. Mother’s children flank the front row, holding on to one another. Her mostly teenage grandchildren are squeezed between other relatives in the pews. They seem displaced and slightly perplexed. The singer steps forward and vibrates the room with her contralto. There are voices of accord calling out from every corner. One of the surviving daughters jumps to her feet and lifts her hands upward. It is an act of supplication. She surrenders sorrow with a deep groan and her arms give way, pulling her body forward. A family member joins her to support her weight. On the left, her brother’s shoulders quake under his wife’s consoling arm. Further left, her sister slumps, weeping and speaking to the departed with her head sagging over the back of the bench. Mature women ushers that have been on post at nearby tables, rush the entire line with fans and water and boxes of tissue. The leading member of the Women’s League climbs the stage. She is a contemporary of the deceased and presses on her cane with effort. She reaches frail fingers to the microphone and nods to the string of reverends that are presiding like a panel of judges with pocketbooks at their feet. She acknowledges the pastor with a lowered chin and then faces the congregation with a scroll in hand. She draws a deep breath and unfolds The Resolution of the Dead. The parishioners rise.

The Slasher

The men over whom the officer was custodian had faces that resembled those of her brothers and cousins, her uncles and lost loves, and if she let herself think of it; her two sons. She prayed they would never breathe the air within those walls. It was a frosty and impersonal place to which she reported day after day, but she had settled into the routine of the thing more than a decade ago. She knew why it was possible to be deemed mother and savior one day, and a bitch that warranted spit in her face the next. In her time, she had invited many a miscreant to a tumble outside the path of the security cameras, and because of that, there was always a “Ms.” placed ahead of her name.

The woman believed that the brain adjusted to any condition it was subjected to for a continuous period of time, making the abnormal seem standard. But then, normalcy was generally defined by circumstance and the disposition of the company doing the defining; this was what she had come to understand. It had taken only a tiny fraction of her eighteen years on the job to become used to working in confined spaces, passing through rows of metal gates, identifying individuals by number and housing location, and locking every door behind her with a large key. It was as natural now as opening her eyes and seeing light. She could watch a security team brawl with an inmate while eating a muffin.

The day had been just like all the others. The officer sat monitoring the moving waves of brown with a dead look in her eyes. As usual, this collection of men reminded her of something that she could not yet bring herself to think about; that disturbing thing that was the root cause of their detainment in the place to begin with. She pushed it out of her mind. A young man approached her with his jeans hanging low. She motioned with her hands for him to pull them up and he complied. He smiled and she thought it odd somehow. This child, not much older than her own, seemed to already be installed there. She was moved by him. The woman suppressed her warmth like smoke just inhaled; letting it hover in a place he could not see.

His chances must have been slim from the very start, she thought, a function of his environment. He stood in front of her with his hands at his side. How courteous he was, she thought, and deferential in addressing her, and when she handed him the pen he requested, she noticed that his fingernails were clean. She was moved by him. She imagined in that smile, a boy that was loved well and loved deeply. She saw in his strut, a man that would likely make a mother out of an eager young girl; this child, not much older than her own. She was moved by him and wished to hug him and reassure him and lament the future that would not be his.

“He just got done with a hundred and forty days in the box,” the woman’s partner suddenly said, leaning near to her ear as if he were catching a whiff of her sweet sentiments. She turned a questioning glance towards him. “Yeah,” the man continued, “he went down for fighting in the yard; carved up a bunch of dudes’ faces something terrible, and he cut them up and down.” There was a pause. She let her gaze reach the young man in the corner, where he was leaning over a table writing meticulous lines across a sheet of paper. “They had to lock him down,” the man said again, “they seized a five inch blade from him. That kid is a monster. He’s a lieutenant in his gang, you know, a slasher.” There was another pause. The woman squinted and tightened her jaw before repeating her partner’s words. “A slasher?”

Sophisticated Gentleman: Nonchalant

He could swing razors with a comparable degree of competence and he knew how to punch a torso sideways so as to take the wind out of it. This was knowledge that he shared with quite a few of his peers, but that was neither here nor there: For he had extracted himself from the process even before he understood how self-destructive it actually was and how murderous it was of his culture and the bloodlines that were sinking inside of it. He remembered being eighteen and in college, of all places, with salt in his eyes and vinegar in his mouth, always carrying around the feeling of wanting to batter something, walking on marble for the first time. He too had been battered in various ways, some of which he would not disclose, and wished to show as well as describe the sensation of being kicked in the mouth and stomped in the back by eleven or so designer sneakers. He remembered being eighteen and running around with a bunch of other loose youngsters who delighted in smoking bush and drinking vodka, and reciting lyrics to rap masterpieces late into the night. He remembered being eighteen and visiting the young women in the dorm rooms, recounting with much exaggeration the things that had transpired there and cursing, always cursing, loudly or in a murmur, defiantly or in amusement. He remembered being eighteen and roving across the terrain with the other young bulls in college, of all places, picking fights with others and sharing frustration on a plate.

And still he had managed to extract himself before he was fully aware that his was an old feeling, formed out of ingredients that had merged somewhere in the belly of a ship to make an explosion with a big bang. Cultivated over time, it was transplanted from dingy building walls to ivied stone gates, where the unwelcome were greeted with a handshake and a smile and an expectation of a stay that would not outlast the year. There, outside the city limits, the misguided young bulls entangled themselves and stepped hoof-first into every ensnarement that had been carefully laid out for them. It was the nature of the time within which he lived, a period that demanded stealth and quick-wittedness and perseverance and on top of that, called for luck, lots and lots of luck: For he had only missed by pinches the fate that would be doled out to the others – attendees at institutions of a different sort. And now even that unfortunate lot would claim him a success because there was parchment with his name on it, and letters for which he would owe a fee for many years to come. How could he disagree with them? He did not delude himself with any misplaced feelings of self-importance or blindly blame them for their circumstances. He was just in a daze really; sitting at a bar with some comely woman, smelling expensive perfume and the cigar smoke rise, staring blankly at the athletes darting across the plasma screen, hearing the latest hip hop music play, lifting a glass of vodka to take that perfunctory sip, noticing the diamonds shine, and never thinking, refusing to think.