Where We Are, page 11
“Here,” I say to the dogs, and I kneel down beside them and hold the T-shirts out to them. They dip their heads down and snuff in the scent. They know what to do. Second by second, they turn serious and focused.
“Shaolin?”
It’s Sebastian. He and Inky are standing in the doorway of Micah’s room. I look up and around the room, seeing it the way they must be seeing it. They’ve never been in it before. Micah’s bed, a mattress on the floor with a striped bottom sheet and no top sheet—Micah doesn’t believe in top sheets—and a huge gray comforter he rolls himself up in like a sausage to sleep. Old City Pages covers taped around the wall. The dresser that I’m kneeling in front of. The closet with its door hanging open, shoes and boots and dirty clothes strewn around inside it. Except for the frozen dead air, Micah’s room looks like an ordinary room that’s lived in. A room that someone comes home to. A room that someone left one morning expecting to come back to that night. I rise from the floor and give a tug to the leash.
“Come on,” I say. “He’s somewhere out there. He’s somewhere not far away. That’s what I believe.”
That’s what I have to believe. But I don’t say that.
13 Micah
IF THE WORDS are only in my head, is that still writing? If I picture them as I say them, like lines running across my notebook, does that count as invisible writing? What if I forget what I’m pretend-writing? What if I forget what I’m actually thinking?
These are the questions that run around my brain. Rats chasing each other’s tails. I watch them run and I wish I could run. Sometimes I used to run to your house, Sesame. It was 1.5 miles from my house to yours, an easy run but still a run. Sometimes I made it a longer run by running around Bde Maka Ska first, then veering off on 34th Street so I could stop at the Little Free Library there. You know the one, on that dead-end street, so only walkers and runners pass by. The white one, with Karma painted on the side in blue letters.
Sometimes I carried your poems with me when I ran and I left them behind in the Karma library. You think the owner of the Karma library ever watched me from behind the window? You think they wonder why I haven’t been by? You think they miss the poems? Because I do. I miss you reciting poems to me.
Here’s something that happened.
Prft: “Room inspection.”
Me: “What, we’re military now?”
Prft: Silence. Walks into the laundry room. Pokes at the cinder blocks. Ducks his head to see beneath the laundry tubs. Peers behind them. Tries to push them to one side so he can see behind them, but they’re heavy and the prft’s weak.
Me: “What are you looking for, prft?”
Prft: Silence. Turns his back to me and tilts his head up at the screened crawl space. (Don’t look there. Turn around. Look at me instead.) Studies the dark and dirty frame of the crawl-space screen. Turns back to me. “Open that.”
Me: “Open what?”
Prft: “That window.”
Me: “It’s not a window. It’s a screen that covers the crawl space.”
Prft: “Open it.”
Me: “Why?”
Prft: Silence.
By this time others have gathered at the entrance to the laundry room. Little pale people all lumped up together, their big eyes staring through the doorframe. Little jeering children led by Krystyna and Jerald. In the back I see my mother. It kills me to look at my mother, my mother who was never quiet, never silent, but who is silent now. My mother who hugged me every day before I left for school because I’m your mom and you are my only child and I love love love you, Micah Stone, got it? My mother who took no shit from people, on the phone or at work or on the street. But look at her now, taking shit along with everyone else down here. She looks as scared as the others. No, she looks more scared than the others. Because her only child who she loves loves loves is in trouble. A geyser of anger boils up inside me. If you love love love me so much, why don’t you stand up for me, Mom? Same for my father. Why don’t you call him out, Dad? You looked at me lately? No. You look everywhere but at me. I’m your goddamn son.
I keep losing points.
Eyes boring into me. It’s a showdown. An MMA bout about to begin. One contestant’s famished and dizzy, the other’s stuffed with rice and potatoes and whatever other white food they’re eating now in the rooms beyond the laundry room. I rise up on the balls of my feet and make my hands into fists. The prft’s eyes flicker from my eyes to my feet and hands. I bounce a little, jog from foot to foot. The prft will be knocked out in the eighth round. Already he’s losing ground in the face of my balled-up fists, my dancing feet. He’s shrinking. The crawl-space screen will not be removed and my words will be safe. The notebook will stay hidden.
Lies.
Deeson pushes through the lump of scared watchers and stands between the prft, who’s not shrunken at all, and me.
“I’ll do it, Prophet,” he says, and he looks at the prft, seeking approval. You can hear the difference between his Prophet and my prft. It’s immediate and clear. The capital P, the rounded o and definite t. The way I say his name, it comes out in a crunched-up swallow, dark and ugly. The prft nods at Deeson and before the nod is finished, Deeson’s hauled himself onto the laundry tub and is balancing on the edge with one hand pressed to the cinder-block wall to hold himself steady. The other hand claws at the screen and the whole screened frame comes right off the wall—because that’s what I designed it to do—and the musty black interior gapes at us like a crypt.
“Inspect the interior,” says the prft, like a fucked-up commander of a fucked-up branch of a dark militia, and Deeson pushes himself up on his toes and claws around the blackness with spread fingers, turning his head so he doesn’t breathe in the moldy dust that comes wafting out.
“AHA,” says Deeson, and his dusty clawed fingers bring forth my pencil.
So fucked up.
When did everything get so fucked up?
We all filed down into this basement and pulled the roof of the world over our heads.
* * *
How Hello Kitty and the potato escaped Deeson’s clawing fingers I don’t know, but they did. Maybe because Deeson’s arms are shorter than mine, maybe because he can’t stretch as far as me into the darkness, maybe because he wasn’t looking for anything in particular, so when he found the pencil, he was stunned and thrilled to have found anything, anything at all besides dust. Hello Kitty and the potato might be covered with musty black dust and cobwebs, but they’re still there. Vong’s poem is still in the notebook, on the first page: Roses are red, violets are blue, someday I’ll write a poem TOO.
Are you still out there, Vong? Still speaking in a British accent?
Here in my corner of the laundry room I hunch into a ball and set things up invisibly, only in my mind: my notebook, my pencil, and the drip drip drip of the white robes I washed this morning—or was it last night? or the afternoon? I don’t know anymore—hanging from the white crisscrossing laundry lines above me. In my mind I hold the pencil lightly, the way they taught us to in elementary school. I bear down lightly on the paper, so I don’t waste graphite. In my mind I write small, so I don’t waste paper. Who knows when more of either pencil or paper will appear? Who knows how long we’ll be down here? Who knows when my points will be gone? Who knows what will happen then?
Sesame.
Sesame.
Sesame.
Sometimes I say your name inside my head, and sometimes I say it out loud. Can you hear me? Sesame, I’m sorry. We had a plan and it got messed up. I didn’t think it through. The situation felt like a joke. It is a joke, but it’s a joke that could cost me everything. Sesame, I’m sorry. This must suck. You must be losing your mind, even if no one but maybe Inky and Sebastian know it. Are the three of you in the conference room right at this minute? Is it day or night out there? I listen for the sirens and the dogs, but sirens and dogs are all day and all night. How long have I been awake? Have I slept? It’s hard to remember. When was the last time they fed me?
Jesus, Sesame, did you hear that? When was the last time they fed me? That is so, so different from When was the last time I ate?
First they took away my clothes.
Then they took away my cot.
Then they locked me in the laundry room.
Then they took away my food.
Then they took away my pencil.
Everything I do and say is an infraction. I heard my mother asking pleading begging the prft to let her give me some of her points.
“Not possible,” the prft said. “You have no points. You are not on a points system. Micah is the only member on a points system. He gains and loses points on his own.”
“How can he gain them, then?” my mother said. I could hear the franticness in her voice, humming below the pleading surface.
The prft didn’t answer. Or at least I didn’t hear him say anything. My mother can’t donate her points to me because she has no points to give. There is nothing to stop the erosion of mine.
* * *
What does it take to turn someone into a follower, Sesame?
What does it take to break someone who’s not a follower?
Are these the only two choices?
* * *
If I knew whether it was day or night, that would make a difference. If I could sync myself up with the above world, or even with the Lightlys, who are going about their daily and nightly routines, that would make a difference. But the prft and Deeson have now cut off contact with the laundry room for anyone but them. Deeson comes every day and unlocks the door and delivers more dirty robes for me to wash, and then he locks the door again. It smells in here from cold and dirty laundry, and the waste bucket in the corner that serves as my toilet. None of the children venture down to this end of the hallway. Neither do my parents. I guess no one’s allowed.
Is this what it feels like to be in solitary confinement?
If I knew that soon I would be out of here and on my way to your house, Sesame, that would make a difference. If I had something to eat, that would make a difference. If I weren’t sick and starving and cold, that would make a difference.
You want to know what happened to the pencil after Deeson clawed it out of the crawl space and handed it to the prft? He put it on display. It’s in the Room of Secular Refuse, propped up on the display table. What else is on the Secular Refuse table: that same condom (still in its wrapper). Andrea K’s debit card. A bottle of beer. A pink hairbrush (plastic). And now my pencil, with the impression of Deeson’s shitty claw fingers imprinted on it in crawl-space dust. How I know this is because they unlocked the laundry room and marched me out and down the hall and through the big door and down the other hallway to show it to me.
My big outing.
Like seeing my pencil was going to impress upon me the seriousness of my crimes? I haven’t even done anything. Hear that, assholes? I didn’t do anything.
I won’t call it a compound.
I won’t call him the Prophet.
I won’t call my pencil Refuse from the Secular World.
Makes me sick to have the prft or Deeson’s DNA on anything that’s mine, but whatever. We’re all breathing in each other’s DNA down here. And up there, up in the real world, if you think about it. None of us are immune. Arm yourself with that knowledge, Sesame. Know that it can happen fast. Others have been dragged down slowly, over time, like frogs who start out in cold water over a low flame and end up boiled alive. Be on the lookout.
14 Sesame
“HI, OFFICER EMMANUEL. It’s Sesame Gray.”
“Hi, Sesame. How are you?”
“Not good.”
“I take it you haven’t heard from him yet? That must be very hard, especially on Christmas Eve.”
Her voice is polite and gentle, as always. I can sense over the phone that she’s just being patient with me. Hearing me out. Probably thinking something like, The poor girl doesn’t want to believe that her boyfriend’s breaking up with her/ghosting her/doesn’t want to be with her anymore/decided that an extended camping trip with his brainwashed mother and father is preferable to being with her. Those thoughts come crowding into my brain, but I push them away. I will keep Micah on Officer Emmanuel’s radar if it means I have to call every. Single. Day.
After hanging up, I head outside. Into the breach, as someone once said in a poem, or a play, or a novel that I read somewhere. Or watched. Or listened to. I don’t know. Lines from poems are blurring around in my head. It’s hard to think when Micah’s been gone so long. When I haven’t heard anything from him. When every day my goal to find him brings nothing.
The stack of notes and poems from the poem boxes grows daily. People are taking the flyers, but no one’s called with a possible sighting. A week ago the notes were short and full of energy:
I hope you find him!
I’ll be on the lookout!
He’s cute! I’m sorry he’s missing!
Lots of exclamation points. Lots of smiley faces. Lots of sad faces. As the days have gone by, though, the notes have become more elaborate. There’s always at least one new one in each poem box. I make my rounds every day, restocking the boxes with Micah flyers and removing the notes people have left behind.
Dear poem box attendant, my family and I don’t know who you are but we enjoy reading the poems you leave. The poem box is a great addition to the neighborhood. PS. We are on the lookout for Micah Stone.
Dear friend of Micah, just FYI we put one of these flyers on our fridge to remind ourselves every day to look for Micah. We have trained ourselves to scan every face on the bus and light rail. Even just crossing the street downtown, we are looking for him.
Dear poem person, Come back, Micah. Micah, come back. Come back, Micah. Micah, come back. This is what I say to myself every morning and night. It’s like a prayer but I am not religious. Call it a chant. Know that you are not alone looking for him.
It’s hard not to feel alone, searching for Micah, but the notes help. I have no idea who any of these people are, and I guess they have no idea who I am, but we all love poetry. And even though I’m the only one of us who actually knows and loves Micah, it still helps, even a tiny bit, to know that others are thinking about him.
Prince and Peabop are dogs but they do know Micah and they do love him. Every morning, before our first search-and-rescue walk of the day, I kneel down in front of them and explain what we are about to do. I recap the whole situation: the Prophet, Micah’s worry about his parents, the South Compound. I remind them that this is a search-and-rescue mission, not a search-and-recovery mission. Big difference. Huge difference.
“So that’s the deal,” I say, every day, and every day I hold out one of Micah’s T-shirts from his dirty laundry basket for them to sniff. “Take a good whiff. We’re going to find him, and I can’t do it without your help.”
I swear to God they understand me. They look at me, look at the T-shirt, snuff its scent up into their dog noses, and sit back on their hind legs, ready for the leash. Then we ease out the Jameses’ front door into the city to search. As we walk up and down the streets and alleys, I tell them they need to be careful if they ever run into a dog like the Prophet, a dog who will drag them down into the darkness with him. I’ve started talking out loud to the pups, telling them they need to be vigilant and protect themselves.
“Here’s the thing, though,” I tell them. “Ask for help. Definitely ask for help, from the Jameses, from other dogs. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
People sometimes look at me a little funny when they hear me talking to the pups, but I don’t care. The pups and I are on a mission and they’re not. Something else I’ve started doing, besides poking my stick into vents and cracks, and calling through broken windows, is looking for footprints in the unplowed lots next to them. It hasn’t snowed since Micah disappeared, and footprints leading to the door of an abandoned building would be a definite clue.
(1) A white passenger van with a GOT HOCKEY? bumper sticker, along with (2) footprints leading from it to the door of an abandoned building, along with (3) a sound of any kind in answer to my calling, “Micah! Micah? Are you in there?” when I run my stick into broken windows and vents?
That would be the trifecta of the Micah Stone search-and-rescue mission.
“Micah! MICAH!” I call now. We are at the back door of a half-demolished building. It doesn’t fit the exact definition of an abandoned building, but so what. “Anybody here?”
I also keep a lookout for bushes and hedges that might be hiding secret doors. Any place where someone could lie in wait for another human being and then pop out and drag them underground. You can drag people underground in broad daylight, though. All you have to do is change their brains. Tweak the way they think, little by little by little, until you wake up one day and realize the tipping point was reached while you were standing by, ignorant, thinking everything would be okay. And now they’re missing.
* * *
Nighttime is the hardest. When the sun is out, even if it’s behind clouds, I feel stronger. I go through step one and step two and step three as many times as I need to, and I keep moving, because it’s daytime and I’ve got Prince and Peabop, and the world is awake. But at night, ugh. The city and the alley and the walls of my house close down and close in. Nighttime is when the panic flame jumps up, like someone put a match to dry kindling that’s been waiting all day long to burst into fire.
And the worst thing? I can’t do anything. I can’t go out in the dark cold with a flashlight and look for him all night long. But not looking for him feels like a crime. Like I’m letting him down, like I’m wasting precious time, like every minute I’m not searching for him is a minute wasted, but the fact is I have to sleep or I won’t be able to search when it’s light again. The Jameses are sleeping, Prince and Peabop are sleeping, Inky and Sebastian are sleeping.
