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the ILLUSTRATED VERSION of THINGS

FC2

Chapter One

But the ringing keeps on so I pick it up and a couple breaths cripple by on the other end, and on my end, or rather, what would be our end—because I'm staggered out on my grandparents' bed and my grandparents, they're in this too, they've got me, there in the middle, and we're all laid out because it's morning now, but still we haven't slept and the three of us, we're all dressed up, and what could be different about us, besides the fact that I'm eighteen and they're in their eighties, is they go to bed in their shoes, but I've given up on all that, all that outrunning at any given moment and while I'm on the phone there's this dumb flopping mutter that I shout through, because I know who it is and even if the caller has never been shown affection this is no excuse.

I hang up. The ringing starts again.

"Will one of you pick up the phone?" Dziadek asks. He can't do it. He has two on either side of him, but he won't answer. We're hemmed by telephones, by button, by wire—the idea is to have ourselves surrounded from any point throughout the house, we have modern, we have past, they beep in pastels, sing in primary, they hook, they cradle—they're made ready for our hands so we can be warned when we need to leave.

My grandmother wonders who it could be. In her wondering she flexes, readies her body to fold or shrink, whatever the avoidance of disaster might require.

"It could be anyone," Babcia says. "It could be anyone but your sister or my sister or your brother or either of our parents. They won't call."

"Because they're dead?" I ask.

"No one should assume anything," Babcia warns. "They were all proud and none of them was buried properly."

"My mother's name was Esther," Dziadek says.

"That's my name too," Babcia points out.

"I know," he says. "Esther." And he reaches across me to take her hand.

"That means you knew my name before you even knew it was mine," she says.

"I know," he says. And then the mattress starts to leak because the mattress is made of water and my grandfather's boot heel has punctured its surface. He leans toward my grandmother. They make brief, contained noises of happiness as the water leaves the mattress, their bodies sinking lower into the bed. Then, suddenly, they part.

"It seems a good idea not to enjoy things anymore," Babcia says.

They go back to admiring their cowboy boots, because actually, they're not wearing shoes. They're wearing cowboy boots, they've always worn cowboy boots, it's their original footwear. These are the first things they bought after leaving Poland.

"Will someone please pick up the phone?" I say. "I got it last."

And so Babcia calculates what's nearer, the touch tone behind her head or the rotary on the nightstand. She goes for the touch tone.

"Hello. Yes, yes, she is right here," she says, and the receiver mouths toward me so fast I have time only to think of how I don't know how to talk.

"I'm sorry?" I say.

And then she says my name so I know it's her, the one that's always getting scraped by a curtain. I've noticed that wherever she goes there are curtains. And small, stained tables. Bits of glass. Doors, sometimes chairs, bathtubs too, and her body slurs against it all so fast that I could forget the proportion of one thing to another if there weren't sudden peals of her voice to my mind, wherein I cover her mouth with my brain and her mouth disappears, taking my thoughts with it so that the white erase of her voice becomes my sole unit of measurement.

"What do you want?" I ask.

She cries a little. She says this is her one phone call. As in the one.

"So," I say. "That's for real? They really only give you one phone call?"

She goes on to explain that this might be more of a cliché than the truth because she's called a couple of other people before me but they weren't home, they were off—who knows what they were doing.

"So what am I?" I ask.

"Number three," she says.

"That's good. Number three. I must be pretty important."

"You are," she says, "you are important."

This is what she tells me. But I made some of it up.

"What do you need?"

She needs me to get her out of there. Inside there are a whole lot of men who would take advantage of a woman like her, and there are other women too, creatures with tongues worn out and necks amuck; it's all uphill as far as being human goes in there and she realizes she isn't much different and so this is frightening.

"Do I look okay?" she asks me.

"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen you for years."

Then she starts to cry again.

"You look good," I tell her. "You look good."

"Please, just get the money. Get the money so I can get out of here."

"I'll get the money."

"Thanks." And then there's this pause, then she says, "So how's school? You must be graduating soon."

"Not really."

"You'll be the first one to graduate from high school," she says. "The first one from my side at least."

But I think even she can tell that I'm not thinking about that.

"How'd you know I was here?" I ask. "How'd you know where to find me?"

"A mother always knows these things," she says. And then her time must have run out because she hangs up.

"What was that about?"

"That was my mother."

"A bad person," Babcia says. "Came from a bad family, came into our family, and now look."

"Can I have some money?"

"Of course," Dziadek says, and he hands me a five.

I catch a bus across town. I try to pay the dollar but the driver won't let me, she says, oh no honey you only have to pay two of those quarters since you're so young. I don't correct her because at this point, anything saved is good. I go to my little brother's school. I haven't been to school for three or so years now myself, but I know that I've probably changed more than school has, which means that I probably shouldn't hit back and I probably shouldn't make eye contact with anyone but my brother. Which is fine, because he's the only one I want to see anyway. My brother is a freshman and he always has about five dollars. I figure five dollars can't hurt in helping our mother. I find him in the cafeteria, sitting alone in the back. It takes some looking to recognize him because when I last saw him—this was two years ago—we hadn't eaten in a very long time, and now he's wide and drinking out of a straw.

"Hey," he says. "When'd you get out?"

"Yesterday."

"What do you want?"

I explain the situation. He's not impressed.

"We're family," I say.

"About that—"

"Yes?"

"It's come to my attention," he says, "that you and I probably do not have the same father."

"You sure?"

"Positive," he says. He wears paper napkins splayed across his lap. The polite napkins make him even less recognizable to me, even more of a stranger.

"Who are your sources?"

"Listen," he says, and he blows a bubble in his milk. "I'm Mexican. Hispanic. You know, a bean bandit? When I grow up I'm supposed to whistle at girls all day from the back of a pickup truck but my ancestors may have been kings."

"What are you trying to say?"

"Look at us. Just look at how different you are next to me."

"Of course we're not the same. I'm older, you're younger."

He bites into his...