Big Machine (46 page)

And off our father went.

But by the sixth day, my mother hadn’t returned, and I became too much for Ms. Rush. Forty-eight hours she could handle, but not a week. She’d already been plenty generous to me. But never let me pretend that a religious cult attracts the stablest people. By week’s end Ms. Rush left me and the Washerwomen altogether.

I didn’t remember any of this, by the way. Daphne only told me about it years later. It came up right after I told my father about her hidden plastic yellow ring. An hour after my father made Daphne melt it on a frying pan, she was kind enough to explain this family history. Ah, siblings.

Ms. Rush left me in a Burger King on Main Street in Flushing, and the manager fed me fries until Social Services arrived. They weren’t going to return me to three women who were rewriting the Bible in their own image, bet on that. Daphne escaped my fate because the Dhumals kept their doors shut. Sargent Rice, only six days into his assignment, had to come back from West Virginia.

The term
orphanage
sounds melodramatic, so let’s say I was kept in the back of an office instead. Some space in midtown Manhattan, with a large sleeping area for the kids in back and a small room up front where a caseworker explained the circumstances to my dad.

Apparently, if you abandoned your kid in 1968, the Child Welfare Agency only gave you a verbal warning and asked you to sign two forms. That’s it. Soon as he did this, my father was free to take me back. He received a date for a hearing in Queens County family court, but the caseworker told him it was pure formality. The city had respect for all religious communities. Just go to court and the record would be closed. The only way my dad could mess it up was if he didn’t show. Then they’d leave the file open. And even if it took years, they’d find their way back to him and me and the Washerwomen again. Child endangerment. The city wouldn’t forget.

Sargent signed and agreed but didn’t listen. In his mind he was already back on U.S.-119.

Afterward, he didn’t bring me straight home. Instead, my dad took me to lunch.

What happened at that meal? This is the question I always asked him, but his answer never helped. We ate. That’s all he’d say as he sank deeper into the cheetah-print couch. But I wasn’t asking for a menu, I wanted a diagram of his thoughts.

I could imagine him with a napkin tucked into his shirt collar, just the way I’d always known him to eat in public. How long did that hour feel? When did he make his choice? What did he say to himself as he returned to that midtown office and gave me back to the orphanage?

As the feral cats in Murder’s basement chewed through me, I didn’t think of struggle or escape anymore, only that lunch with Sargent Rice. And the question he never answered: how could my father leave me like that?

I asked myself this even as the cats ground their teeth deeper into my bones. The foundations of Murder’s home soaked in the rainstorm, and a thick, moldy air entered my throat. I coughed and choked.

I got a lot of mileage from that story about my dad. Leverage against him, I mean. It was a pretty selfish act, after all. And, like children do, I punished my father with it whenever he asked too much of me. Whenever he annoyed me. By the age of ten I’d bring the story up if he just told me to wash the dishes. I even reminded him of it on that morning when the police surrounded our building. Rose had whispered in my ear, and he’d barged in, and I’d felt angry for the interruption. So when he asked me to leave with him, I said, You’re going to leave me behind.

That shut him down every time.

But now, in Murder’s basement, I’d reached the dying time, and that old game of manipulation seemed pointless. Self-pity was even worse. Sargent Rice died in 1998, and in 2002, at thirty-seven, I was following him. Did I really want to spend the last moments of my life throwing one more tantrum?

And there in Murder’s basement I realized the real question. The one I should’ve asked my father when I had the chance: at a moment like that, when someone needs you, why does a man hide his heart?

WHEN I WAS TWENTY-NINE
, I took my girlfriend Gayle to a women’s clinic in Jackson Heights. We went in together. We’d argued a lot, but now we agreed. Then, soon after checking in with the front desk, Gayle begged me to take her out of there. We sat on a blue Arlington sofa. We were waiting for an older woman to call us in for Gayle’s abortion.

Gayle worked in a cooking school at that time, helping affluent kids file their class schedules. Holding their hands through the paperwork process as if they were in grade school rather than college. They weren’t
nice to her at all. She was only an office temp to them. They sniped at her suggestions and mistrusted her kindness. At night I’d find her half-asleep in bed, still wearing her work clothes. I’d pull her pants and panties off, and while she lay on her stomach, I’d rub her butt.

She had such a sweet little butt. When I caressed her, our bedroom would get so quiet I’d think she’d fallen asleep, but then, very faintly, she’d groan. Not sexual. More like the contact reassured her, relieved her. At least one person cared. Everyone wants to believe that. Gayle was an office temp, and, at that time, I worked for a moving company. We scored dope on the daily. But at night Gayle was my woman and I was her man.

When Gayle and I sat in that women’s clinic, she rested against my right shoulder and cried. She squeezed my arm tight, but pretty soon that charge wore out and she was left with nothing but those familiar groans. She did that as we sat right in the women’s clinic. In front of three other couples going through their own private debates. Gayle called to me for relief, but this time I wouldn’t give it.

Although she wanted that baby, I relied on one thing about Gayle: she was terrified to do it alone. Didn’t feel she could manage the enormous work of a child, not with making a living and, of course, heroin. So I didn’t have to threaten or force her to have the abortion. I only had to become intangible, invisible, hardly there. Hide my heart. Her own fears did the rest.

Gayle pressed her forehead against me, but I only studied my big dumb hands.

A woman stepped out from the back rooms, and she called Gayle’s name.

WE CROSSED A LONG OVERPASS
that led to the Port of Garland, and when we came down the other side, it was as if the whole city of Garland had been muted. We were too far away to hear anything but our footsteps. The two Swamp Angels were far ahead of us. It was just me and Adele and that pulse, still strong, along my spine.

There’s a living thing inside me, I thought.

We moved down Middle Harbor Road, which showed signs of hurried escapes, cranes with shipping containers midway between the ships and the shore. Trucks abandoned in the road, their doors open. Some of the engines still chugged.

There were hundreds of shipping containers stacked a hundred feet high on either side of the road. Red, blue, silver, and orange shipping containers with corporation names painted on their sides. They surrounded us and rose above like valley walls.

“How could you kill the Swamp Angels if you know they’re doing the Voice’s will?”

“I don’t know that. Joyce Chin suggested it, that’s all.”

“They tried to make you shoot Solomon Clay. If he’d died down there, the people at Laguna Lake would still be alive. The Church of Clay wouldn’t exist.”

She slapped her purse. “How the hell could I have known, Ricky? You can’t put all that on me!”

I said, “I’m not trying to down you. I would’ve done the same thing.”

“Please, Ricky,” she said, looking at the street. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”

“Half the world would’ve done what you did.”

We hobbled along quietly for a few paces.

I said, “But now the Swamp Angels are leading us. They want us to do something.”

“You don’t know that. That’s just what you want to believe. And stop all this Angels’ mess.”

“Why do you have such a hard time admitting what they are?” I asked.

“I’m a working person, Ricky. Nothing more than that.”

“Stop hiding behind that bullshit,” I said.

She flinched, faintly, but didn’t argue.

“I don’t know what the task might be, Adele, but I want us both prepared to do it. Maybe they want us to kill, maybe they want us to protect.”

“Protect who exactly?” Adele asked.

San Francisco lay far across the water, but it seemed safe. Looked safe. Maybe because I knew there were National Guard units controlling its border. But much closer, just a few hundred yards to our right, I saw the majestic eastern span of Stitch Bridge. Its upper roadway looked like a reflecting pool as daylight glared against all the windshields, each car waiting to be ushered through the checkpoint. A process that didn’t seem speedy at all. Those folks sat in their cars, aggravated but patient. Unaware. Unguarded. Men and women and kids.

Thousands and thousands of them.

MY RIGHT LEG FELT FRIGID
, right up to the shin. A soul wasn’t devoured in just one bite. My body shivered, but the hungry cats were as indifferent as erosion. My mind returned to Gayle.

The old woman led Gayle and me into the back of the clinic, where there were very few windows. The waiting room had been bright, but it turned gloomy here. The thick carpets were old, and they silenced our footsteps. The walls had been painted light green of all things, the color of nausea.

Gayle and I walked into a narrow exam room, and the old woman told Gayle to climb onto the table. She said this quietly, even nicely, but that didn’t calm Gayle. There was a folding chair right next to the exam table, where I was meant to sit. The old woman left. There was hardly enough room in there for the two of us. The place seemed no bigger than a walk-in closet. And yet, in a moment, three more women fit themselves in. All young, in their twenties.

They helped Gayle onto the table, lifted her feet and rested each in a stirrup. The whole time they were talking, asking the same questions. Are you all right? Are you sure you want to do this? Are you all right? Are you sure you want this done?

Gayle couldn’t be counted on for answers anymore. She cried quietly. I only knew she was crying because she sniffled. When I looked, her chin and cheeks were slick with tears.

“Are you all right?” the trio asked.

“Are
you
sure you want to do this?”

They wouldn’t speak to me. They wouldn’t look at me. And yet if I’d gotten out of that chair, if I’d tried to leave the room, those women would’ve bopped me in the head with hammers. If I wasn’t willing to be a father, I better damn sure be a witness at least.

So I sat there quietly, looking at my feet now instead of my hands. The room only seemed to get darker as the three women moved around. There was only one window in this narrow room and too many bodies. Gayle lay to my left, only inches between us, squirming on the exam table, a woman holding each hand. The third rubbed the tops of her now bare feet.

“How are we doing?” the doctor said when he walked in. A guy in his fifties, kind of round and unthreatening. He smiled at her, and, when I looked up, he even smiled at me, but there wasn’t anything calming in the expression. He looked like a man who’d stumbled across a grizzly bear. Make nice. Make nice.

“My name is Dr. Hamilton and I’ve been working with this clinic for seventeen years,” he said. He spoke in a chipper tone, I don’t know what else to call it. Like he was at an auto show, admiring a prototype car.

“It’s always been my belief that a woman should have the right to make her own choices. That’s why I’m here today.”

Gayle squirmed less as he talked, though the three women didn’t stop touching her. They surrounded her. The one holding her right wrist nearly boxed me out entirely. I stopped looking at my shoes and looked at Gayle, who only stared at the ceiling now. She hardly seemed conscious. She hardly blinked. Her lower lip jutted forward and drooped.

“All right,” the doctor said. “Do you feel like going ahead?”

Gayle didn’t speak, she only nodded.

He said, “This is called a speculum. You see? I need this so I can see your cervix.”

I heard, but I couldn’t watch. Only Gayle’s head and neck were visible to me anymore. The woman next to me hid the rest.

“This is just a swab,” the doctor said calmly.

And it went on like this, step by step, until finally the doctor nodded to the woman who stood right next to me, and she left the room. I didn’t try to peek now. I looked at my feet. I looked at the door. Twice I looked at Gayle, but she wasn’t studying me.

In that time the doctor might have said more, but I hardly noticed. When that woman let go of Gayle’s wrist, it was as if Gayle had been untied. Her body squirmed. A new fear animated her. It was time. Could she really do this? Gayle looked to the other women.

“Are you
sure?
” one asked.

“You can still say no.”

“Of course you can.
Of course
.” The doctor said this sweetly, but his arms were crossed.

I remained in my seat and listened for Gayle’s decision. But we’d gone too far into the clinic, all the way to the last room, and she couldn’t generate enough power to propel us—herself, the baby, and me—out again. Gayle wriggled and shivered, but that’s all.

Then the third woman returned with a big machine.

It came in on wheels. A gray box with coiled tubing attached to the side. It looked like a jury-rigged robot in a 1950s movie. Nothing but a typewriter balanced on a wastebasket. The woman wheeled it over to the doctor, then she stepped between Gayle and me again.

The doctor turned it on.

In the pamphlets at these clinics they used one word all the time.
Gentle
. The speculum will gently stretch the cervix. The woman will feel a gentle tug. The machine will make a gentle noise. Obviously I can’t say if the first two are true, but the last definitely isn’t. Dr. Hamilton turned that machine on, and the sound of the vacuum was a terrible whir, as loud as a tree shredder.

The noise bounced off the narrow walls and only became louder. When I looked at Gayle, she’d stopped crying, but her head and shoulders were raised off the exam table now. Was she trying to see or to push? I couldn’t say.