Hydroplane: Fictions (8 page)

I imagine my father laughs at some point, lying there on his back, facing nothing, the sky, and who knows what it looked like, the sky, that night, and, really, who cares.

I imagine, too, he had a bit too much to drink, and suddenly the whole thing seems very funny to my father, lying there, a fucking genius, an inventor for fuck's sake, his back pressed to the street.

Then he tries to move his arms to get himself up and the pain moves in faster than he can lift his body from the ground and he starts thinking it's not really so funny anymore, this life, the utter absurdity of it all, this life, I mean, really, the minute by minute tedious choice between pain and death.

Is this too much.

On the low-lit street the date ran like hell. She didn't come in to work the next morning.

She left me there, my father said.

My father and I sat at the table. No one was eating. My brother sat on the floor.

Pow, said my father.

Brass knuckles, he said.

And, he said, he has my wallet.

And he really socked me good.

My brother laughed.

My father looked over at my brother.

My father said, Is something funny.

My brother was laughing on the floor.

My father got up and walked toward my brother. My brother's sneakers were cockeyed, the Velcro undone.

My father was staring, noticing something.

I said, Don't stare.

He said, Tie your shoes, son.

But there were no ties.

He said, Did you hear me, son.

He walked closer to my brother.

My brother back-crept to a corner.

My father said, You think this is funny.

He said, You think it's funny that your father got socked.

My brother laughed. I knew he was laughing at the word socked. I knew he would think this word was funny. And my father said it thick and slurred. It sounded more like thocked. And that was funny.

My father said, What's funny, son.

I said, Did you thock him back.

My father turned to look at me. His eyelids were swollen.

Who do you think you are, he said.

You should have thocked him, I said.

My father's nose was bleeding again.

My brother was laughing his head off.

My father turned to my brother.

I picked up the pitcher.

You should have thocked him, I said.

My father turned. He said, You know nothing.

He said, Do yourself a favor. He said, Put that pitcher down.

You should have crushed him, I said.

I was standing by the table.

Then I was standing on a chair.

He said, Get off that chair.

My brother put his headphones on. He turned his music up. I could hear his music. Some metal song I had heard before. And I heard the ocean. Or was it the air. Something whistled. My brother's head rocked. Light came from the window. There were millions of dust specks in the light. I said, This place is fucking dusty. Then something crashed. Then something else.

As my father was getting back into the car he said to me, You don't know shit.

The date climbed into the back.

Drivers swore at us. My father drove. We ate somewhere in the city. Rice and beans. Plantains. Everything was soft and wet.

My brother read his comic. He wore his headphones.

The date looked at her lap. She was devout. A good one. But her pants were pink and up her crack. In the States she would have been another kind of lady. My brother and I saw this kind of lady when we took the long way home from the park. Some of the ladies were men. They called my brother Sugar. This made my brother laugh.

I should say, before I forget, that I liked the city. San Juan. Music came from every doorway. There were dogs on the sidewalks. Hookers on the sidewalks. Smells like the smell of burning meat.

On the ride home from dinner no one spoke. I sat as far from the date as I could. I pressed my face to the window and thought of my face pressed to the window. I thought of what it looked like from the other side. I thought of some kid in another back seat. How he would look at me with my face pressed tight. He would know I was stupid and from the States. He would know I couldn't climb a palm. I couldn't split a coconut. I liked American coconut shredded in a bag. Hamburgers on rolls. Kentucky Fried. And I thought of the goat who ran into weeds. And I thought of how to find the goat. And if I found the goat of what I would do. I would treat it like it was a dog.

I don't believe there was a man in a ski cap. I think the date punched my father in the face. I think the date's husband punched my father in the face. I think a hooker punched my father in the face. I think a wild kid stabbed my father in the face. I think a lady driver ran over my father's face. I think a Coco Loco split open my father's face. I think the concierge shot my father in the face. I think the goats bit my father's face. I think the rats chewed my father's face. I think the ghost of my mother punched my father in the face. I think my brother laughed in my father's face. I think I threw a pitcher at my father's face. I threw a pitcher at my father's
face. I was aiming for my father's face. My father ducked. I threw a pitcher at the wall behind my father.

My brother was the one called retarded in school, and I was the one who punched the kids who called him retarded.

My brother could say the alphabet backward and he could count backward and he could do other things that I couldn't do. And I wasn't stupid. So he wasn't retarded.

There was a night, late, my father out, my brother and I sneaked to the beach. We saw kids on the beach and a fire burning. The Coco Locos and their friends around a fire.

When they saw us they screamed out, America.

They said, Stupid fucks.

But they laughed so we walked even closer.

A radio on the sand played fast-speed music. Some kids danced in the sand by the fire. Sparks from the fire scared my brother. He looked like he was about to cry. He started to back-creep to the hotel. I felt that weirdness in my gut. But before I could call him a fucking retard, and before someone else could call him a retard, and before I could punch that person in the face, someone, a girl, held my brother's arm. Next thing my brother was walking toward the fire. Next he was dancing on the sand. I have to say he danced like a retard. It wasn't his kind of music.

And there was a night my brother and I walked home from the city park. The street was unlit and we were the only ones. A car slowed beside us. We kept on walking. It was Baltimore and we knew how to get home. The car crept along and we walked a bit faster. The window went down. The man said, Get in, and we ran.

And I always wondered, years after the man slowed his car and said, Get in, where we might have gone had we gotten in.

My father stood with a fork in one hand. A glass in the other. Blood dripped into his mouth.

There was bread on the floor. Fruit on the floor. Splinters of glass and broken dishes. Egg yolk stuck to the walls. To my arms.

I was still standing on the chair.

The silver pitcher had rolled back and back and back then stopped.

My brother went to the factory. The ladies would give him pan de agua. They would call him Sweetie and play with his hair.

I don't know how long we stood like that.

My father picked up the pitcher.

I don't need to say how fucked up it was.

My father said, Who do you think you are.

I was taller on the chair. I was crazy, monstrous, on the chair.

I said, Who do you think you are.

The pitcher had hit the wall behind him. It was all fucked up. I don't need to say how dented.

My father said, I know who I am.

I wanted to see myself on the pitcher. It was all dented now. I wanted to see what the pitcher could do.

My father said, You know who I am.

I could have jumped him from the chair. I could have made him piss his pants.

I'm a genius, he said.

I could have crushed him to bits.

I'm your father, he said.

My brother could hang upside-down on the monkey bars and the blood never rushed to his head.

He could jump off the monkey bars and land on his knees or his face or his back and not cry.

So he was the one to jump off the monkey bars that one time, that last time we went to the park. He was the one to land on those kids and I was the one laughing my ass off.

And on the monkey bars that last time, I remember thinking, Don't do it, because I could feel what he was about to do.

And I remember thinking, Do it already, because who knows why. I just did.

My mother had already died. My father was moving around the house. He was putting things into boxes and bags. He was trashing his failed inventions. None worked the way they should have worked. We were leaving for the summer for the island.

So that one time, the last time we went to the park, my brother jumped onto those kids.

And I can't tell you how scared those kids were. I mean they nearly died. They never saw it coming. I just laughed my ass off. And at that moment I felt very alive. And I knew that I was very alive. And I knew that the moment would pass. And that's how I knew I was very alive and that living was the step before not living. I mean that living was the step before dust. And dust was some crazy kind of eternal. And the whole world felt crazy, and I was laughing too hard. And before I fell from laughing so hard I was yanked down from my perch. And we both got punched and punched and punched. And it was worth it.

But every time before that time we sat there silent, unmoving.

At home my mother drifted in and out of what was next.

My father, the TV blue on his face, half-slept on the edge of a chair.

Below the kids pissed onto the swings.

The kids made out in the sand.

The city blinked like stars.

And when the sky was blackest and the kids left the park, my brother and I jumped down from our perch and walked the long way home.

there's the ceiling, the ceiling fan spinning dust, the bed undone underneath, and you're in the bed waking, no, you're always awake when it's this hot, this late, the ceiling fan humming, spinning dust in the dark, then in daylight, its motor a car sound, an idling, a bus sound humming, the fan blades stirring, sweat streaking the bed and the streaks widen, stain, your eyes closed tight, and the room seems outside, open, a bus motor idling, the spin of leaves and rain, a school trip in fall, standing curbside on Lexington near Lexington Market, standing lightheaded in the yellow glare of raincoats, in the hum of the buses, in the squeal on the streets made of glass, they are, said your father, again and again, made of glass, and they glitter, and you need to be inside, shut in the school bus,
warm in the bus where your teeth won't chatter, where your skin won't creep, where you're sheltered, clearheaded, and you open your eyes and you're inside, waking, no, always awake, and it's no longer morning and the rain is sweat, the leaves are heat, the yellow raincoats dull to hot air, an undone bed, black shoes in the corner, the black like a pit, like a hole to a cave where you can't hear the fan, where you can't hear it spin, when in Baltimore and in summer, when on Fayette Street, when the phone rings the head throbs, don't answer the phone now, it's time for a walk, when you're ready to stand, you're not ready, get ready,

the pills soften in the throat and the water comes late, warm in the glass, leaving a taste everyone knows as white, aspirin, and white is bitter everyone knows, even your father said, don't chew, swallow, bitter, aspirin, and the pills will kick in, not yet, in an hour, aspirin takes an hour, from noon to one, and you float through the room, slip out of clothing, slip into clothing, under the fan pushing dust, its motor humming, and you hold your black shoes, one in each hand, you float to the window, it's open already, Baltimore shimmering through the window in a haze, Howard Street, Lexington, Calvert, Charles, made of what, said your father, glass, you said, and it glitters in the light, in the white haze of summer, as you drop your black shoes from the window to the walk, and the black shoes will wait for you on the walk, and your hands are free and you can hold air solid, cloudy, on a finger, in a hand, in the crook of an arm, as the phone rings, let it, and the air feels like foam, like sap, squeezed tight in a fist, in the crook of the neck, and below are your shoes curled on the walk, turned to their sides, crooked like what, like pain, no, like laughing, it's funny, and you can't reach the shoes as you live on the top floor and heat rises, everyone knows, even your father said so when you had a fever, when the school bus took you from Lexington Market to in front of your house and you saw
the sign for 30
^th
Street, where you ate and slept, where you lived with your mother, your father, where you fell lightheaded to the wet leaves and grass, heavyheaded you had fallen face first to the wet, fainted, said your father as he ran outside, his word riding on a cloud to bring you to, to bring you in, and the heat rose to your head from your wrist and your father said, fever, gave aspirin and ice and covers and you slept, you waked, you slept, you waked,

the glass of water shatters to the walk, to Baltimore, to the shoes on the walk, it was an accident, the glass was wet and slipped, and the water in the glass was warm anyway, and the grass jutting up through cracks in the walk needs the water anyway when there's never rain, not even a spray or mist to break the heat, not even a raincloud, and the water was warm anyway in the glass from the sun throbbing low through the window, and you can hear the sun sounding like a pulse but it's a pulsing in your head, blood pulsing in your wrist, and you can see the blood-pulse jump in one wrist, now the other, as your arms hang limp in the sap, as they hang out the window, and looking at your pulse is looking at your life in slow-motion, how you will always be this, this, this, how your life and the sun are the same pulse-throb throbbing, and your father called you blue-blood from the veins in a wrist, blue-blooded from fainting, he took your pulse, you took an aspirin, don't chew, then covers, ice on your wrist, then quiet, sleep, car sounds in sleep, dreams of fights, of car horns blaring on 30
^th
Street, and you waked in the same place, in the same bed, to your sponge-faced mother, another aspirin, water, Lexington Market still afloat in your head like clouds, like rain, the crabs sideways crawling in wet glass boxes, the birds strung up with blood-soaked rope, the cows staring blankly behind small windows, the buzzing of lights and the smell of food was it, or slaughter you could say today, was it slaughter, the blood, and you wondered of the cows, why everyone laughed in their
yellow raincoats and yellow boots, they laughed at what happened behind the small windows, the cows were back there blankly staring, you turned your back to their stares, your front to the scattered raincoats like all the suns burning your eyes when you opened your eyes in Lexington Market, on Lexington Street, on the bus going homeward, on the grass at home, inside with fever to take an aspirin, how you opened your eyes at noon today, in this place, Baltimore, St. Paul Street, Fayette Street, word-named streets, where the buildings shimmer in a sun haze, where the sun seems stuck up there like in glue or in a spread of white plaster, where the shoes on the walk look disfigured, distorted through the heat like shadows of crabs crawling up St. Paul, Fayette, and the heat floats you from the window,

the heat floats you to the darkest room to its darkest corner and you find yourself standing barefoot in the kitchen, you find yourself standing crooked, useless, and it's funny to be barefoot in a kitchen when you almost remember like a dream of what was it when you see your bare feet pressed to the floor and realize there is no one, was there ever, when you were younger with fever, you were sheltered, now you're older with veins in your bare feet, blue blood running through your hot feet, you're older, you're this-old this-old this-old, like twenty like thirty, and the kitchen is dark, the freezer is empty, just ice and cold air, no longer a cave like when your father gave ice, he said, go back to bed you have fever, and, no more Lexington Market for you, and, you can't handle these trips to the market, and you looked in the freezer when you were burning cold-hot and your father said, climb in it's a cave to cool you, and it looked like a cave of frozen dirt, of scratchings on walls of cows and trees, climb in, said your father, but you were already too big and if you could have made yourself smaller, if you could now, if you could crawl inside and curl and sleep like a bear in a cave,

the pills will kick in in an hour, who said an hour, someone said, it's only aspirin, your father said, one hour, he said, you'll be fine by tomorrow, though they don't always kick in, aspirin, and what is the magic of an hour when your head is splitting from no sleep, from heat, what is the magic of timing time when you're always looking to the end, when you always need the other side of an hour, when the other side is sixty minutes away and when you get sixty minutes away you are sixty minutes older and sixty minutes older, when you're lucky, when you're not, when you're lucky,

the staircase is soundless, bare feet are silent, thank goodness, when you're throbbing, splitting, and the shoes are waiting there for you on the walk, and the door shuts behind you and you're outside, shoeless, sweating, squinting upward to your window, and it's hard to believe you live behind that window where the fan spins slowly on the ceiling and it seems it should do more, all that life, it should sound more like a bear, less like a motor,

when your father said, go to sleep, you asked of the cows and your father said, sleep, you slept, you heard a motor in your head, a fighting fever-dream, awake in an hour, screaming for your father, the fever unbroken, the dream fading out like a day, almost forgotten, another aspirin, your wrung-out mother saying, swallow,

the phone is still ringing, your father calling from someplace, outside, Florida, but you can't rush inside, it's too hot, you can't rush in to answer, and it's just your father from outside by his car, the motor running, in that place, Florida, saying, hello blue-blood, as he said when you were hazy from fever, he said, come back blue-blood, when you were out there in a fever-dream, burning like summer, when your head was sap, as the sky gets in summer, when
your head was a cow's head, blood-rushed and hot, pressed heavy to the wet leaves and grass,

you're standing shoeless near curled shoes and funny to throw your shoes from the window so they could curl in the sun, but the staircase was soundless, goodness, and what right shoes curl from heat, what right shoes crab-crawl on the walk and who said to crash the glass to your shoes, your only glass, but that was an accident, and you're standing shoeless on the shards, an accident, and your foot is bleeding, an accident, really, who can think on a white-hot day in Baltimore in a sun haze with a throbbing split-up head like with fever, like when your father said, come back, he thought he lost you to fever, isn't this right, it doesn't seem right when there you were in the same bed in the same room in the same house on 30
^th
, waking in an hour to your dried-up mother by the same bed in the same room, just your mother in the room saying, swallow, when your father went, is that right, it wasn't that day was it but another, it wasn't that day was it when he left, don't think it was that day when you were fainted from fever and really can't remember,

when the fever broke you walked to the kitchen and your mother stood withered, barefoot, looking at the window and it was already funny to be barefoot in a kitchen and you looked in the freezer and it was just a freezer, no longer a cave but dim walls and cold air, how it's dim walls and cold air on this word-named street in this same old city on this glaring hazy day today when the sky is so thick and white you can't see clouds floating and you have to ask if anything is still afloat,

it's time, just a walk around the corner, just some air, and you should turn and walk before someone looks from your window, but there's no one, just the phone, but you should walk before someone
calls from your window, but really there's no one, you're grown now, you're thirty, you're twenty, you're nineteen eighteen fourteen thirteen, you're nineteen, you're thirty, you should turn and walk before you rush back inside, before you answer the phone, before your father says, hello blue-blood, how's Baltimore blue-blood, can you see the glass streets from your window, can you see Lexington Market from where you live, can you see the crabs sideways crawling in watery cases, can you see the cows' heavy staring and the birds strung up with rope, and he would never say this, but if he did, but he wouldn't, but if he did you would tell him you can see the whole market shimmer from your window and you can smell the crabs, the sand and salt, the blood of the cows, you can hear their blood pulsing when the air is thinner, when the sky is bluer, you can see the window in the market from your window and the cows' heads past the window about to hit the straw floor, the cement floor, and you can see the laughing yellow raincoats, you can see how funny it is to be on the good side of a window and the cows can see you laughing and laughing because you can take it now because you really don't care now because you're grown now, this old, and the cows can see their last see-through and it's you there laughing it up before their heads hit the floor before their time is up,

when the fever broke you walked to the kitchen and your mother stood tired, barefoot, looking out the window, and your father walked in wet-haired, withered, goodness, that day, you remember that day, he'd only been out for a walk,

listen, the phone's still ringing behind your window and listen, the fan's still spinning behind your window and look, the sky's a white glare in your window and look, the sun's a white haze in the sky in your window and look, there's oil from your eyes and salt from
your eyes floating like hairs on the sun in your window and look, there's blood on the walk hot under your feet before you slip on your shoes, before you turn to walk,