All of Us. A. F. Carter
I slide my hands between my knees, suddenly shy, this monster man demanding secrets that ordinary humans are allowed to hold close. Others have waited until we were ready to share, until we trusted them, but there’s no time here with the court’s demands looming. Only a few days from the day of decision, il Dottore’s recommending that we continue in therapy, that we remain on the tightrope indefinitely because there’s only one alternative—confinement—and we wouldn’t want that. Would we?
I’m born ten years ago, when our body is in its twenty-fifth year, my siblings and I floundering, as always, especially Tina after days and days of remembering. The darkness is so intense we can barely move through it, every chore becoming an insurmountable obstacle, the sink full of dishes, the bedroom floor heaped with dirty clothes, the bathroom smelling of piss. And all of us thinking this is it, this time she’ll succeed, this time she’ll kill us.
Escape the only option, I fly, newborn, through the door and into the street, putting time and space between our body and Tina, my instinct protective, let her rest, let her fall into the oblivion between animations. I walk straight up Flatbush Avenue, lost in the cacophony, a baby learning the difference between reality and memory for the first time. I knew there would be people, cars, and trucks, knew there would be lights and stores, horns and sirens, but I can’t sort them properly, can’t bring them to scale, sound overlying sound, image overlying image, and what I should simply know I have to construct from the memory of others.
As I pass finally beneath the great arch at Grand Army Plaza, sculptured soldiers above and on both sides, I feel like a foreigner, an alien, the wars of America someone else’s history, not ours. And then I’m in Prospect Park and I begin to run though not a fugitive, though unpursued. The late June day is warm and I’m slick with sweat, my body making itself felt, skin and bone, nerve and muscle, taste and touch and smell and sight, my breath running ragged in my lungs, my thighs on fire, half-blinded by the sweat dripping from my brow, at last alive.
I finally turn off the path and stumble down a hill onto a large meadow, others there ahead of me on blankets, scattered about like offerings left for a ravenous god. I fall to my knees, reserves spent, and roll onto my back, patiently waiting for my breathing to calm, for the pulse in my head to fade away, until I can sense the blades of grass against the back of my neck, until clouds and blue sky move apart and I feel a yearning so deep I cannot turn my eyes away. I raise my arms, palms open, reaching upward beyond the illusion of a flat and solid sky—searching, searching, searching—my heart craving the one who truly comprehends the folly of words. Instead I feel yearning in every particle, every galaxy, every solar system, to stop the momentum, to shrink down, eon by eon, to draw closer and closer, now touching, now smiles everywhere.
Call it what you want. Call it Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Zeus, Hera, Parvati, Lakshmi, Amaterasu. Call it Chango, Elegua, Ogun, Yemaya. Call it the creator who endowed us with certain unalienable rights. It hardly matters because the yearning runs both ways and I know my creator is as helpless as the specks of dust lying out in the meadow. I arch my back, lift my head, reaching up, until my something looks back for a time too short to measure, and my brain whispers: alright, alright, alright.
I don’t speak a word of this to il Dottore, not a syllable, not a whisper, my posture at all times submissive, the flower child at night, her petals folded. “Color,” I tell him. “My job is to supply color.” From a distance, I hear Victoria applaud.
“And do you succeed?”
“Of course. The gray of our lives is sequential, flowing from light to dark, so that a single yellow rose in the center is a thousand yellow roses, enough to light a room.”
Halberstam nods, his dismissal apparent, I’m the obvious nutcase described by Martha when I made her late for her appointment, a self rarely in control of the body, a self on the way out, don’t let the door hit you in the ass. He takes me through the abuse routine—do I remember—knowing that my response will only be more of the same. The body had been around for more than two decades before my appearance. That job belongs to Tina.
“And will I see Tina soon?”
I want to say only the shadow knows, but I remember Victoria telling me in the plainest language not to get in il Dottore’s face, the man believing that patients should always be told, should never tell. He’s bored with me besides, the real stars absent—Tina, Eleni—and won’t they have stories to share. I finally note the lust in il Dottore’s gaze, his flat blue eyes now sparkling.
Ten minutes later I’m on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan, still in control, a big surprise because I can feel Victoria’s breath in my ear, a sure sign my time on Earth is almost over, at least for now. But Victoria’s whispering: “You did good, honey child. You told him exactly nothing. You didn’t give him a single excuse.”
It comes to me in a flash, the revelation: my sister loves me, loves us all, even Eleni, even those she’s marked for elimination, for death, because love doesn’t matter here, only survival. Victoria wants to survive, Martha, too, their combined will to live, no matter how bleak the conditions, far more powerful than my own.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MARTHA
I give the elevator button a nudge on my way to the stairs. I’m not expecting much because the elevator’s been down for a week. No biggie. The elevator’s broken about half the time and we’re used to the stairs. Not this time, though. The blue light above the call button flickers and I hear the elevator descend from somewhere above. It bangs against the housing, a hollow boom that echoes in the hallway.
The elevator door slides back a few seconds later to reveal Roberta, whose last name I don’t know. Roberta’s a black woman well into her seventies. She’s been living here longer than any other resident and she knows everyone. I watch her move into a corner when the door opens, pulling her shopping cart along. I’ve also brought my shopping cart, which I wedge against the back of the elevator. Then I ride down with my butt against the door.
In New York, food stamp grants are posted to an account accessed through your Medicaid card. That transforms Medicaid cards into temporary credit cards, dispensing dollars until your allotment runs out. Which it always does. Making the day your card refills a spontaneous holiday.
Some people spread their stamps out over the month, but I’m a splurger. I like to fill the shelves, the refrigerator, the tiny freezer. Never mind that two weeks from now I’ll be cursing myself because there’s no money. I just need to see the cupboards full. I need abundance, no matter how temporary.
“Hey, Carolyn, how you doin’?” Roberta says. “You off to C-Town?”
“Uh-uh, Pathmark.” It’s mere coincidence that our cards are filled on the same day, but we meet fairly often to discuss what’s on sale. Mostly, I look forward to Roberta’s company, though I prefer to do the actual shopping alone. I like to weigh every purchase, to calculate and recalculate. One hundred dollars to last a month. Every gram counts.
“Woman come by askin’ about you.” Roberta’s tone is neutral, her eyes turned away. “Name of Porter. Wanted to know if y’all was trouble, makin’ noise, confrontin’ your neighbors. Wanted to know if y’all have a lot of visitors.”
I nod, but I’m too humiliated to say anything. Roberta’s not familiar with the others because I do all the shopping. But she knows something’s wrong when a healthy, childless woman receives food stamps.
“I told that Ms. Porter, ‘Lady, if this is all you got to do, find another job for yourself and save honest taxpayers the cost of your pension.’”
“What did she say?”
“Nothin’, just laughed fit to burst.” Roberta smiles. “Now there’s a woman don’t take a bluff.”
We linger in front of the building for a few minutes. Discussing