Black Tickets (23 page)

My mother said to stay inside. She said those sleeping drunks in the halls would steal my clothes. I counted marbles I’d won and left the best ones out to show her. The Bronx smelled of garbage left in a heat, smelled of a whole city wasting. I watched the electric fans revolve their whirring heads. I turned off the lights and watched them in the dark; the glinting circles they made.

When my mother got home we played cards. Crazy Eights or Slapjack. She was quick at slapping Jacks. Her hand came down hard on their faces, their jeweled capes, their little hatchets. She wore no rings; her nails were blunt-cut straight across. After she’d won all the cards she shuffled the deck and dealt us hands of eight. Sometimes she let me win. I changed suits to hearts or diamonds, neat red shapes: I still see them when I look at neon signs. My mother smoked Pall Malls and took the combs out of her hair. She was always old. She rolled down her heavy support stockings, rubbed lotion on her calves. She rubbed gingerly at places where the dark blue veins were coming up, as if she were afraid of her insides. She told me twice she never knew my mother. Other times she’d say how sick she’d been when I was born.

Once we heard a shuffling in the hall, snarls and squeaks. One of the alley dogs had got in and caught a rat. The dog had it by the throat and their eyes were wild, wide open, rolling. I called her to look and she grabbed me. She pulled me back from the door, from the window that fit my eyes. She held me to the opposite wall and stood shivering while the sounds went on. She kept her hands on my neck. I looked up from beneath her and saw her parted lips, the edges of her teeth. And her eyes had sharp edges to them, watching the metal door.

Each time, I do the same things. I come home and lock the locks. I have a mattress on the floor and a box of clippings. I read them over and over and listen for his voice. It starts coming every night; my Uncle is there all the time. I go for weeks and then it is time again. I take the gun out and look at it.

When I went in the army my mother cooked a big dinner. She fried chicken and mashed the potatoes. She stood cooking gravy, stirring it with a fork. The skin of her arms was cracked and crossed with tiny lines. She thought the army would be good for me: I could go to school on the GI Bill. I watched her standing at the stove. She wore white waitress shoes with thick soles and she had a big safety pin fastened to the collar of her dress. She saved rubber bands, paper clips, thumbtacks, safety pins. When she found them in the apartment she put them in a pocket or fastened the pins to her clothes. She stirred the bubbling gravy and hummed hymns. By then her face was pasty and she wheezed. She hummed “We Gather Together.” The army, she said, maybe I’d be an engineer. Design machines and engines. I’d always been smart, she said, why shouldn’t I have the best.

At Fort Dix I was a typist. I hated the khaki uniforms. I hated the southern boys and their jokes. They only noticed me when they told their dirty stories. If I didn’t laugh they said I needed a whore. They came close to my face and their little pig eyes glittered through slits.

I learned how to shoot. I practiced. I shot at clip-on targets printed in red and yellow rings. The black bull’s-eye spiraled
deep. I hit it and dreamed of hitting it. In dreams I laced up my boots and walked in the dark to the target range. I saw each step and when I touched the gun I saw through the bones of my hands. I kept shooting into the eye of the black and a star burst up each time. At first I didn’t notice the girls. Then, one by one, they started filtering out of the woods; slim girls in knee-length dresses whose bare arms stayed still as they walked. They walked slow, their hair billowed out. They stood dotting the meadow and gazed at me like waiting deer. I kept shooting. Stars in the black bull’s-eyes burst brighter and brighter. The girls stayed motionless, their faces toward me. The sky grew lighter above their pale dresses. Their feet were hidden in grasses. Across the rolling field their arms gave off faint glows.

I wait for a weekend. Saturday night. All day I wait for the dark. My Uncle is with me though he is not present.

I look at the gun and I touch it. I turn it over and touch it everywhere. I have everything I need and his voice has stopped and I go where his voice has said to go. I park the car and I walk a few blocks. I have the gun in my pocket and the note I have signed for his voice. I don’t wonder about the girl; I’ll read about her later, her parents, where she lived, what she did. Now she is dancing or she is getting smoke in her eyes from the cigarettes in the crowded room and she is getting ready to walk outside. I hear a buzzing and my vision flickers. In an alley by the side entrance of the club I have my hand ready; I see her hair and her red coat. Sometimes they don’t see me but she does and that’s good, it’s very good; because she shakes me, I’m fluttering, she rushes in like electric shock in the instant she looks at me and knows—I never hear the gun—But after she falls there is a
loud crack. Something big caves in. The whiteness comes up brilliant, sudden, stutters sparks and spreads its burning arms. Then a flash like imploding air. I pass through like flame. My shoes bleach concrete where I touch. Sometime, someone will see and follow me. I’ll say they found me with special eyes; I’ll say they have grown up in light.