The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (6 page)

A flash in my eyes blinds me, but I can hear them. ‘Nurse, hold him still now!' Another flash. I struggle, but I'm held firm. ‘Turn him round.' I am moved to my stomach, my legs held apart. Another flash behind me. I squint past the floating spots and see two policemen across from me, standing, frowning, and drinking from steaming paper cups. I scream and kick. ‘Help us out here, Officer, if you don't mind.' One moves forward, putting down his cup, and presses down on my back. Another flash. ‘To the side, turn him.' My body is turned and held sideways on the white paper spread beneath me.

‘What's your name?' the cop says, his stale breath coating my face. I kick out hard as I can. ‘Goddamn it! He hit the camera! Hold him still!' The hands clamp down on me, pushing my head and chest down hard onto the mushy vinyl tabletop, the paper ripped and soaked from my drool. ‘What's your name?!' the cop says again. ‘They found ID in the car?' Another flash above me. I see my clothes crumpled in a corner, and the red-stained towel pokes out from a trash basket. I'm naked.

‘He needs stitches, you about done?' Another flash.
The cop blocking the door, still drinking, rests his other hand on his gun. I scream again. ‘Nurse, restraints!'

‘One more photograph! Turn him sideways . . . spread his legs . . . wider . . . perfect, OK, great! Thanks, guys. Hope you get the bastard that did this, see ya.'

‘Let's get these restraints goin'.'

I'm pushed onto my stomach, my arms are pulled out, as are my legs, and soft cuffs freeze them to the board. Something is sliding under me, lifting my hips, and straps are pulled across my legs, back, and head. Voices rumble around me. ‘Tell me your name!' the cop standing above me orders. ‘You want us to catch this guy?!'

‘OK, you're gonna feel a sharp stick,' the doctor says.

And off in the distance I hear the beating,

‘OK, one more stick.'

of their wings . . .

‘And one last stick.'

and the room bleeds with their jagged red feathers

‘OK, here we go . . .'

and razor beaks filled with

‘Gonna fix you right up.'

parts of me.

T
HE WOMAN HOLDS
two dolls. Her hair is in a tight yellow bun that pulls the ends of her eyes back into slants. She smiles quick little flashes at me, then frowns down at the dolls. The big man doll's pants go down, she takes them down. His thing sticks out, dark yarn surrounding it like a dirty mop head.

‘The little boy doll is blond like you,' she says.

The room we're in is pink, with pictures of smiling children hanging on the walls. There's a dollhouse in the corner with a rubber family inside. I'm sitting on a rug that has games woven into it, like hopscotch, and a marble circle. I'm sitting on the alphabet Indian style, the way she is. The boy doll has a round hole for a mouth and ‘freckles like you have,' she says, and pats my nose.

The man doll fits his thing into the boy's mouth like a puzzle piece. She makes him do it. Her shoes end in sharp little points, and some of her foot skin hangs over the edges.

‘Pay attention,' she says, and clears her throat. ‘This is bad.' She shakes her finger at the dolls. ‘Bad, bad man.' Her fingernails are red, like Sarah's. She makes the man
pull the little boy's pants down with his mittenlike hands. I dig my fingers into the Day-Glo fuzz of the alphabet rug and make them disappear.

‘Are you watching? Watch the dolls now, pay attention.' She shakes the dolls. The man's thing bounces up and down. The little boy's thing wobbles. There's no yarn around it. ‘Owie owie,' she says while she puts the man doll's pink thing into a round hole in the boy doll's bottom. She shakes them in the air, their feet dangling like they've just been hung. ‘Owie owie,' she says as she brings them together and apart, together and apart. They sound like two pillows hitting each other.

‘How does the little boy feel?' she asks me, not stopping them. There's a large box behind her. It's painted like a toy drum, blue with white Xs. A large braid with a red bow hangs out over the edge.

‘Watch now, come on, pay attention.' She shakes them harder. ‘How does he . . .' She taps the little boy. ‘Feel? Hmm? You can tell me, it's okay.
You are safe now
.' She smiles vaguely and extends her arms so the dolls are closer to me. There's a little brown stain on her peach blouse. I'm careful not to stain my clothes so Sarah doesn't get pissed, because people will think we're trash.

‘Stained clothes is how you can tell trash,' she says while reaching into her bag for the small bottle of Clorox bleach. ‘My father is rich and educated, a preacher.' She pours the bleach onto some McDonald's napkins, then rubs it on the ketchup stain on my T-shirt. ‘Not trash,'
she says, then wipes my face and hers with more bleach until it stings. ‘You gotta look and smell clean.'

Sometimes we go into the ladies' room. I go into the stall with her. We pull down our pants and our underwear. I hold two clumps of toilet paper. She pours the bleach onto them, soaking them. I hand one to her. ‘Folks can smell sin on ya,' she whispers. Our hands holding the bleach-soaked tissue disappear between our legs. She covers her mouth with her free hand and cries into it.

‘Are you paying attention?' The woman holds the dolls on her lap. ‘This isn't the little boy's fault . . . see?' She picks them up again, the thing going in and out of the hole in the little boy's behind. ‘Ow ow ow,' she says in a high-pitched voice. ‘Bad man, bad man,' she says in a low, growly voice. ‘Repeat after me,' she says, and scoots closer. The dolls slam together faster. ‘It's not . . . c'mon, say it, you want cartoon privileges back?'

I said nothing last time I visited with her and the dolls, so I hadn't been allowed to watch TV or go to the game room in two days. I stayed in my room and reread the same books. I didn't mind not seeing the other kids. Some are bald and bloated, their lips peeling like fingernail paint. Some are in wheelchairs or on crutches, with tubes that wheel around with them. One boy has to be hit on the back all the time. He coughs all night when he isn't crying. I especially don't mind not seeing their parents. They come with shopping bags filled with goodies. They don't like to unpack them in front of me in
the day room. ‘Let's go to your room, honey,' they say, glancing at me. They usually have to talk loud, because as soon as I see them coming I raise the sound on the TV until a nurse comes running in and takes the remote away from me.

‘It's not . . .' I whisper.

‘What? Yes, good, you spoke. See, it's easy . . .' She bounces the dolls on the rug. ‘It's not the little boy's fault,' she repeats. I stare at them jumping up and down across the alphabet, held together by the man doll's thing. ‘The little boy's fault,' I mumble.

‘Great. See, that was easy . . . now you can watch cartoons after dinner. You're getting better.' She leans over and pats my head. ‘Time to go.' She gets up, wiping rug fuzz from her beige pants. She carries the dolls to the drum bin and drops them in. ‘Let's go.' She holds open the door that has a cartoon poster of laughing children on the outside. I walk past the box of dolls; it looks like a massacre grave pit, some naked, some dressed, and on top lie the boy and man. The man stares up at me with his arms around the boy. I can tell by the blond boy's face that the man is still inside him. I reach down to pull them apart. ‘No, no,' she shouts, ‘leave the toys.' She walks toward me. ‘We've got to get you back upstairs for dinner. You can play more tomorrow.' She pushes the lid down, and it seals with a slam.

Some children disappear. They're kept in their rooms, wrapped in tentaclelike tubes, and suddenly their rooms
are empty, just the fluorescent light beaming down on the military-made bed, all cards stripped from the walls, all balloons that were tied to the bed gone. Some kids leave with their parents. They take their balloons and stuffed animals in big shopping bags, and the nurses hug them good-bye. But I tricked them all; they never discovered what I'd done to my fuckin' fosters. I kept my mouth shut the way Sarah taught me so nothing could escape and I wouldn't get arrested and sent to hell.

I left without any hugs or waves or shopping bags of goodies, but I did have a stuffed bear a nurse gave me when I first came and only stared at the walls. ‘He's yours,' she told me. He looked almost like the one I'd had way before, the same yellowish fur. I didn't say thank you. I left him on the floor of the day room. She put him in my bed. ‘He has no place else to go,' she told me. Later that night when I woke up suddenly, my heart bursting inside me, my sheets wet with sweat and pee, I grabbed the bear and buried my face in his neck fur. That spot was wet for days.

I leave with a woman the nurse says is my grandmother. ‘They have custody of you,' she says. I nod, not understanding but excited to be leaving with someone. The woman signs papers while I stand quietly behind her, arms stiff at my sides. ‘You haven't visited before,' the nurse says.

‘It's a long trip,' my grandmother says, her voice a soft, musical lilt, her hair a tight crisscross of blond braids on top of her head. Her face is a stern, drawn version of
Sarah's. I follow her to the elevator and look around, and cough loudly, hoping that everyone will see me leaving with somebody.

‘In God is my salvation and my glory,' she says, staring straight ahead as the car winds through the cracked mountain roads laced with frost. ‘The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times; God is a refuge for us.' I hear her swallow. ‘Psalm 62:7–8' She says nothing else until we get to the house.

The trees open out onto a wide clearing. Horses run inside fences as our car drives past. A steeple is visible over a distant ridge. The road smoothes out to soft black tar. An older blond boy on horseback gallops next to us. He stares at me, then whips the horse twice and races away over the low green slopes.

We drive past gray weathered wooden barns that look propped up by haystacks. Another five minutes and we turn into a wide pebbled driveway. Four white columns hold up a sloping overhang. Two oak and stained-glass doors sit in the center. It looks like a museum. ‘This is a house of the Lord,' she says, and stops the car in front of the doors. We get out and she opens the unlocked door and light streams into the dark hall. I squint hard to see.

‘He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in their sight.' She pats my shoulders. ‘Psalm 72:14.' She walks away from me into the gloom of the hall. I stand still, waiting.

I
HEAR THE
footsteps long before I see anyone. The click click sounds like an eggshell being torn apart rhythmically and with anger. ‘The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the Lord: but he loveth him that followeth after righteousness.' The voice echoes down the hallway, staccato and sharp.

‘Jeremiah, do you know where that is from?'

My grandfather is suddenly standing in front of me. He says my name the way Sarah does; she's only said it a few times, but when she does I feel reassured and remembered. ‘Jere-my.' My, like you're mine.

‘The only reason you're here is the bastard wouldn't let me give you a wire hanger for a head,' she said between swallows of the Wild Turkey that she called ‘chicken' when we went to the liquor shop. I got used to the bitter taste of ‘chicken' in my Coke and how easily I fell asleep after I drank it. ‘Trip on the train' is for Midnight Express. It's the same sour burning as ‘chicken', but I liked hearing Sarah ask for train more.

‘Once you got here,' she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, ‘he wouldn't give a dime to feed or keep ya.'

But he had wanted me. He had protected me. He had saved me. I had made him look like my fucking fosters' grandpa, but better, with a white Santa's beard and rosy cheeks and chocolate coins in his pocket. I'd show him I wasn't bad. It was her, Sarah. I smile up at him, we're on the same side, you saved me, I'm Jere-my, I'm yours.

‘You know where that's from, Jeremiah?' The damp air from his words smells like peppermint.

My, mine, yes.

‘For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteousness: But the way of the ungodly shall perish.' His mouth is turned down. I tilt my head to the side, and now it looks like a smile. He doesn't have a beard; his face is thin and tightly stretched across his wide cheek and jaw, which he's working back and forth as if he were chewing leather. His eyes are the same distant clear blue as Sarah's; they give his delicate features an ominous look, like ragged ice glaciers overhanging a smooth cave entrance. Even though he's not really smiling, his eyes are squinted as if he were. I smile wider. He nods once and steps back. I nod in return and wink the way Sarah does. He lifts up the thick black book that he has been holding behind him.

‘You will not mock the Lord, Jeremiah. You will learn not to mock me. Jeremiah, you will find these tracts.' Each time he speaks my name I force a wave of warmth
through me. All he says after my name sounds garbled, as if it were floating through water. ‘Jeremiah, you will know them. If you cannot read, you will learn quickly.' He lowers the book and hands it to me. ‘Jeremiah, is that clear?' I watch his other hand to see when the hidden chocolate will appear.

‘This is your pillow, Jeremiah. You sleep on it. You keep it with you always. Jeremiah, is that clear?'

I open the book, but the tissue paper page is only words. I turn some more pages but can't find the pictures yet. ‘Thank you,' I mumble. I was going to call him Grandpa, but something chokes off the word.

‘We will begin tomorrow at seven
A.M
., Jeremiah.' He places his hand on my shoulder. I tilt my head toward it. ‘Do not lean in my presence, Jeremiah.' He pulls me forward with a short jerk. ‘Or in the presence of the Lord.' He releases his hand and turns and walks back down the hall, still talking: ‘He
maketh
a way to his anger: He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence.'