Like Wings, Your Hands, page 14
“It seems like you have more experience than I do with this stuff,” she said. Marko was struck by her voice; it had poise and a maturity that didn’t fit her age. She was very smart, he could tell. This made him nervous. He didn’t want to say anything for fear she would think him stupid. Marko was suddenly mute, which was fine because Amanda had a lot to say.
“My parents are getting a divorce. They fight all the time. My mom already has a new boyfriend. She hasn’t told me but I know about him. She started dating him a long time ago, so she cheated on my dad.”
Marko wanted to tell her about his parents and how they used to fight and that his dad left and had a new wife. But he couldn’t get himself to say anything.
A nurse came in to get Amanda and take her to surgery.
“Well, it was nice talking to you, Marko,” she said. Marko still hadn’t said anything. He wanted to say something to her, but not just anything—he wanted what he said to be perfect. He wanted to say something she would remember forever. He ached with the desire to deliver just the right words to Amanda. Something about her face, her very round face with red lips and eyes more closely set than average, made him want to make a lasting impression. But more than that, he wanted to know her and he wanted her to know him.
But then she was leaving, and Marko would never see her again. Panicked, he stuttered as her bed was being wheeled out and said, “I—I—It—It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see.” Amanda smiled wide at him and winked, and then, to Marko’s astonishment, she blew him a kiss. Marko felt the immediate reddening of his face. Was he supposed to do it back? He couldn’t react fast enough, so he gave her an awkward wave as she rolled out of sight.
Kali walked back into the room smiling, looking dreamy. She bent double to hug Marko hard; his face smushed between her muscled arm and her head. Her thick black hair threaded with gray smelled like lavender, her scented shampoo. Her skin didn’t have a scent, but it smelled like her—the olfactory signature of her essence. He inhaled it and felt secure. She leaned back and held him by the shoulders, out in front of her like a painting she was admiring. Her eyes darted back and forth between his two eyes. He wondered if his were doing the same. His head hurt.
“You’re the bravest soul.”
Marko was more pleased with this approval and attention than he could adequately express.
“Thanks, Mom, you’re brave, too.” He knew that compliments were to be traded, never just accepted. He’d learned this from his dad, who had always immediately reciprocated every compliment, usually in kind.
Marko had collected many examples of the kinds of compliments people traded. For instance:
“You have a great smile.”
“Thanks, you have a wonderful smile yourself!”
From a woman: “
That’s a handsome tie.”
“Thank you, your dress is stunning.”
Marko couldn’t remember when he first realized that most things said and done between people are transactions, but it was something he solidly understood by now. His mom, perhaps the only exception to this rule, laughed at his response. “Honey, you can just take that I’m proud of you, really take it in. You don’t have to always say the same things back to me.”
This criticism made red heat of fourteen creep into Marko’s cheeks again as he felt flustered and embarrassed. Everything he thought he knew about the world and how to be in it seemingly never applied to his mom. She always wanted him to be “himself,” but Marko didn’t know who himself was. Nor did he know how to act like he knew and that he was being it. He wished he could tell her this, but he didn’t want to spoil the moment. So he forced a smile and nodded.
By the time the surgeons were ready for Marko, he and his mom had had the opportunity to speak with two more kids awaiting surgery, the only remaining two on the floor at that time. The two experiences were much the same as the others—Marko spoke with the child while Kali spoke with the child’s parents—but Marko couldn’t stop thinking about Amanda and what he would have said to her. Both the kids he talked to last were boys and both surgeries were minor. But they were both still scared and wanted to talk to Marko about their fears. During the last visit, the boy Marko was listening to asked him a question while he was spaced out thinking about Amanda. Marko tuned in to see the boy looking expectantly at him, waiting for his answer. Not wanting to admit that he hadn’t heard the question, Marko shrugged and said, “Uh, I’m not real sure.” The boy’s forehead wrinkled in confusion and then turned to sympathy. He probably thought Marko was slow. Marko started to say that he didn’t actually hear the kid’s question, but it was too late; they came to collect this boy, too.
It was a long while before they came to get Marko. When they finally did, the sun outside the windows was already low in the sky.
32. March 15, 2015: Cambridge, MA
When Marko went into surgery, Kali went home to get a shower and change of clothes before heading back to spend the night. When she arrived home, Lydia was there waiting for her. The shards of smashed wood that had been the dream bed were sticking up from a box she’d put them in. The box sat by the door.
“I told you not to let him in that thing,” Lydia said. Kali sighed and dropped her bag on the floor. She sat in a chair across the table from her mom and glared at her.
“If I want your advice, I’ll let you know, Mom.”
Lydia stood up and walked into the kitchen. She started doing dishes. She looked up from the sink at Kali and said: “Hot water and chemicals must have caused it.” Her eyes were a blaze of revelation and devastation. It was the kind of epiphany that kicks you in the kidneys.
“Yeah?” Kali challenged, her voice as sharp as a blade. She stood up. “Well, Mom, it could have been that. It could have been chlorine. I even drank coffee, Mom. I didn’t know I was already pregnant and I was tired and I drank about a half a pot of coffee for the first time in my life.” She watched the blaze in Lydia’s eyes turn to ice instantly. Her mouth turned down and she stood up straight, correcting her slant, a horrified poise.
“I always wondered why I felt nothing when I chugged all that coffee and now I know it must have been because the little fetus in my womb absorbed it all, straight into his unformed spine. Straight into his unformed heart. And the unfinished business of a body in formation was permanently marred and it was my fault.” Kali moved across the room as she spoke, closer to Lydia. Lydia backed away, and Kali raised her voice. Her mother turned from horrified to frightened. The turning was seamless, like a ripening.
“There is no way you can make me feel guilty, Mom. You know why? Because you can’t pour more water into an overflowing cup. There’s no room for more guilt inside me, Mom. It’s already oozing out of my every pore. Yes, I sat in hot tubs filled with chemicals for the entire length of my pregnancy. The nurses already told me that the elevated temperature for long periods of time could have harmed my baby. Do you know when they told me that? While he was having his first surgery, in the first twenty-four hours of his life. While they were closing the hole in his back over his spine.”
Lydia was crying, like she always did, and Kali backed her to the wall where she couldn’t retreat any further. Anger and fear burnt in Kali’s gut, right at the center point of her body, so hot that she swore she could smell smoke.
“And then two months later, when the first shunt they put in his head to drain the cerebrospinal fluid failed and they had to replace it, cut him open again, do you know what the nurses asked me again for the tenth time in two months? Do you know, Mom?”
“Please, stop,” Lydia blubbered, howling into her palms covering her face. She closed her eyes.
“Mom! Look at me, Mom!” Lydia opened her eyes.
“Did I take any fucking folic acid! That’s what they asked me, Mom.”
Kali picked up the closest thing to her, a lidded tin can filled with notepaper and a little pencil, and hurled it at the side wall in the kitchen. It burst on contact and bits of paper bloomed out. They seemed suspended for a long moment before raining down. The clatter of the pencil and the can hitting the floor were so satisfying that Kali had to have more, and louder. She grabbed the edge of the kitchen table and upended it.
“No I didn’t fucking take any fucking folic acid and yes I sat in hot tubs and guess what, everybody? While I’m on trial you might as well know that I fucking ate sushi, too!”
The table and chairs seemed to tremble at the sound of her fierce, ragged scream. The sight and the silence left in the wake of her fury formed a tableau of pain, so white hot it was molten. The devastated table and chairs. Everything that had been stationary and peaceful was shattered and strewn. Lydia crouched and curled tight on the floor against the wall, snot and tears covering her long hands, which were stretched across her face. Too frightened to make a sound.
33. March 16, 2015:Cambridge, MA
When Marko woke, it was the next day. The surgery had taken thirteen hours. It took another few hours for Marko to wake up fully. Marko was shocked: what could possibly be happening for thirteen hours? But the surgery was a success, they said, and Marko would be fine. After the initial pain of healing wore off, he should have no more headaches. “Should” was a word Marko distrusted. But then, as his mom always told him, there are never any guarantees.
In the days following that surgery, Marko recovered at home. There were times when his mother couldn’t be there with him, so his grandmother was there. His mom and his grandmother had settled on an agreement that his grandmother would drop the counselor assessment idea if his mom agreed never to leave Marko alone and to dispose of what was leftover of the dream bed. But Marko felt lonely with just his grandmother and sad at the loss of the dream bed. His grandmother doted on him every minute—could she get him this, could she get him that? A drink, something to eat, a sweater, a cold washcloth, some more pain medication, anything at all? Marko politely declined most of her offers, but he did accept a few. Not because he actually wanted anything, but because she seemed hurt that he didn’t need her help. In this way, she was more of a drain on Marko than a help. If he couldn’t be with his mom, he would have preferred to be alone. He would have preferred to be Emil.
To soothe himself, he watched baseball. When his grandma went to the bathroom, he took a break from baseball to read his mom’s diary. It was an account of one of her shamanic journeys in the dream bed.
I had a dream that I’d been shot through the middle of my body with a cannonball. It didn’t hurt but to ache and make me feel hollow. Walking down the street, I felt the wind blow right through me. It was the most unbearable feeling—the yearning to be whole was overpowering.
I went into a restaurant and ordered everything on the menu. I ate until I was sick but the hole was still there. I went into the restroom and masturbated until my genitals were numb but the hole was still there. I went to a bank and robbed it so that I had enough money to buy anything at all that I wanted. I went and bought a car and drove it around. Many people noticed me in my new car. But the hole was still there and the longing was worse than ever. I picked up a handsome man and had sex with him in the car. After that, a woman. Several men and women followed, but no matter how much sex I had, the hole remained.
I bought a beautiful dress and hid the hole, but when the wind blew hard enough, the dress billowed into my hollow.
I loved and was loved; the hole remained.
I made small miracles with my talents and was revered and admired; the hole remained.
Perhaps if I gave the rest of the money back, the hole would get a little smaller. But I couldn’t find the bank and was instead in a new and unfamiliar neighborhood. I gave the rest of the money to a person walking by who seemed homeless. The man was dirty and stinking with weary eyes and stained clothes. He received the money skeptically, asking me what I wanted in return. “Nothing at all,” I said and he smiled. His teeth were yellow and brown, his gums, gray. The man hugged me and I felt my hole widen against his coat. I pulled away and ran off.
Then I had an idea. I went to a library and checked out two hardcover novels of the right size and shape. Next I went to a hardware store and found what I needed: glue, bubble wrap, Styrofoam, tape. Carefully, I taped over the hole in my back, glued the two books together vertically, then aligned their spines with the broken cross sections of my backbone. I fortified that with a ballast of Styrofoam and then added tightly packed bubble wrap. Finally, I taped over the front of the hole, securing the whole contraption. After I walked out of the store, I realized I had not paid for anything. I thought about going back, but I didn’t have any money. So I kept walking, no longer feeling the wind blow through me.
I could feel the stories inside me and they made me cautiously hopeful. Cautious because the stories were too formulaic, like neat equations, as though anything in life were solved that way, as though anything were ever that ordered.
As I walked, the tape in the front began to bulge. I placed my hand on it and felt movement underneath. I pushed down and felt a twinge of pain inside, which meant I was whole again, or at least growing whole. This made me happy and so relieved but the pain kept getting worse and the bulge grew bigger. I sat down on the sidewalk and breathed deeply. I got up and squatted and pushed; something was coming out.
That’s when I woke up, but not into real life. I woke into another dream. I was back in the delivery room giving birth to Marko. Zach was there and the nurses, those wretched nurses. There I was, the younger me, so naive and unsuspecting. I watched the scene from the vantage of the ceiling and I noticed new details I never could have noticed then. One of the nurses was staring at Zach with a sinister look, her eyes darting back between my legs whenever he caught her staring. Zach was close to my face, bent over me, whispering something. I was screaming and drooling and growling. The nurse delivering Marko was elbow-deep inside me, her face flushed, her bangs pasted to her forehead with sweat.
“He’s crowning,” the nurse said and smiled, revealing strange, pointy teeth. The smile was clownish, almost maniacal, and her face was so dark red it was nearly purple. The baby slid into her arms. She frowned deeply and peered closely at the baby. She looked at the other nurse, who was also frowning at the baby. Zach, positioned at the foot of the table between my legs now, did not frown, nor did he look happy. His expression was frozen in a state of shock and awe. I was speaking, telling them I was hungry, asking after the baby. The two nurses got busy separating him from my body. They cleaned him carefully and swaddled him. They were too quiet and did not answer my questions. I started to raise my voice. The nurse walked toward the door with Marko. I screamed at her. She turned around and said, “He has a hole in his back.”
I woke up. The inside of the dream bed was damp. I’d been sweating. I got out and rubbed the spot on my back, which was actually itching. It wasn’t burning or feeling slimy like usual; it was itching deep below the surface where I could never reach. The room was dark and cold. I shivered and heard my teeth clatter. I got off the floor and took off my damp clothes. Through the window, the dreary winter morning was just breaking. Images from my dream stayed with me as I dressed in dry clothes and went to the living room to start my morning yoga. The dream had seemed too long for only one session in the dream bed. The end, where Marko was being born, had seemed different than it was in reality—spooky. The pointy teeth and the sinister look. Then, as I was warming up with spinal flexes, I realized I had woken up before the nurse gave me Marko to hold. For some reason, this bothered me and I had to go check on Marko in his bed.
He was there, sound asleep, breathing rhythmically in the dark. I sat beside him and watched him, the side of his face so peaceful just then. I wondered what he was dreaming about and hoped it was a good dream. Then it hit me: did Marko dream about walking like I sometimes dreamed of being in a wheelchair? Did he dream about being whole when I dreamed about having a hole through the middle of my body? The spot deep down itched again and I scratched at the surface far above it, sating it not at all.
34. March 17, 2015: Cambridge, MA
Marko needed to walk. He tried many ways but couldn’t get his grandmother to leave. Then, he had an idea. He saw her yawning a lot and suggested they both take a nap. He claimed he had slept badly and was tired, too. Marko went to his room and she lay on the couch in the living room. He waited until he heard her snoring and then he went to his mom’s room. The dream bed was gone, as he had known it would be. There was nothing but empty space under her bed. Marko slid under. He lay there with his eyes closed. Maybe the surface where the dream bed had touched would have retained some of its magic. Maybe he could still go back. He lay a long time before he fell asleep.
Marko woke, and he was Emil again. He was back in Thailand but he was standing in front of an abandoned building. He felt his legs beneath him and looked down. He was wearing uniform pants. They didn’t look like Emil’s legs. But maybe they were. He took off his pants and his underwear, his shoes and socks. His legs were Emil’s, he could see now: strong and covered in dense, black hair. His penis and scrotum were Emil’s, too: nestled in a shock of black hair, a perfectly shaped phallus growing longer and firm under his observation. He took a tentative step, then another. He walked, then ran, then sprinted, barefoot, toward the building.
It was Emil’s dormitory, overgrown with weeds and ivy and moss. The jungle had encroached on the grounds; the place was empty and untended. It was as though Emil had returned to the place but behind time. Time had moved on, carrying all the people with it, leaving this version of Emil behind in the emptiness.
The heavy double doors to the dormitory were ajar. Emil pulled them open and stepped through. The hallway smelled of mildew and was covered in dirt and dried leaves and jungle debris. He felt cold with no pants on and his erection started to throb and ache. Emil walked the corridors until he found the space that had been his room. It was empty and the cot was upended, the thin mattress on the floor. Emil sat on the mattress and took the erection in his hands. Other than the sound of blood pumping in his ears, there was a pervasive silence spread over everything. No animal noises, no wind. The head of the penis was bone white and vulnerable, but sweet. The patches of skin on his inner thighs were hairless and untouched, taut, beautiful. He took a deep breath. He kept his eyes on his groin, not allowing himself look away or hide from his simultaneous reverence and revulsion. He thought of scaleless fish, but shut the image out of his mind. He thought of knives. He thought of the woman who had mounted him the last time he was in this room. In that moment, he could smell her. Her sex was still on him. Even alone, he felt shy but proud.
