We the Animals (4 page)

Talk to Me

W
E WERE SEATED
at the kitchen table, hungry, impatient, clamoring. We threw our heads back on our necks and grasped our bellies. Every night we died of hunger. Ma was suckling her fingertip; she had cut herself on the jagged edge of the soup can. The phone rang, and Ma spun around and popped the cut finger out of her mouth.

"It's your father," she said but didn't answer, just dumped the soup into the pot and resumed her bloodsucking.

We stopped whining and looked back and forth from each other to the ringing phone—this was a new game. We rested our elbows on the tabletop, held our faces in the palms of our hands, and watched her back, mirroring her silence, waiting for the next move, but she didn't look at us or offer an explanation; she just kept stirring. The phone rang as the soup simmered and hissed, the phone rang as Ma splashed the broth into three bowls and slid them under our faces, the phone rang as we extended our chins and noses into the steam and stuck out our tongues to taste the hot air. We hadn't seen or heard from our father in weeks.

Ma ripped open a bag of crackers, scattered them across a plate, clattered that plate onto the middle of the table, and said, "What? Eat."

She joined us, her chair turned sideways. She unlaced her work boots, slipped off her socks, and massaged her feet. The phone rang just above and behind her head. She knew where Paps was at, knew the secret of his urgency, and she wasn't going to tell us. The foot massage was a bad sign, but worse was the smile when we asked for more dinner.

"That's it," she said, smiling her crooked tooth smile, staring at her painted toenails. "That's all there is."

We stayed at the table for another forty-five minutes, running our fingers around our empty bowls, pressing our thumb tips into the cracker plate and licking the crumbs off, lulled into a trance by the even tempo of the phone's ring, immobilized by the repetition, listening carefully, hoping it would never stop. He was somewhere, at some phone, in a phone booth, or sitting on the edge of a someone else's bed, drunk or sober, and it was loud and hot, or cold, and he was alone, or there were others, but every single ring brought him home, brought him right there before us. The tone of the ringing changed too, from desperate to accusatory to something sad and slow, then it was a heartbeat, then it was eternity—had always rung, would always ring—then it was the piercing bell of an alarm.

Ma stood up from her chair, lifted the receiver, and placed it back down again in one swift movement—and for a moment nothing, maybe even a full minute, long enough for our ears and clenched muscles to relax, long enough to remember and realize fully something we had long suspected: that silence was absolution, that quiet was as close to happiness as we would ever get. But then it started again, the ringing, and continued.

"What if he's having a heart attack?" Manny asked.

"What heart?" said Ma.

"I'm going to get it," Manny said, and without even a second's hesitation our mother grabbed his bowl and smashed it onto the linoleum.

And still the phone rang.

Ma dismissed us, and Manny went and shut himself up in our room, so Joel and I headed down to the crawlspace, where we sharpened popsicle sticks into points, preparing for war. Footsteps were amplified in the crawlspace, voices muffled, and the phone didn't exist at all.

Paps finally arrived home, and they made thunder, stomping above us, chasing each other, tumbling furniture. Their screams and curses reached us not as words but as soft, blunt rhythms. One of them finally got in the car and left, then nothing, silence, except for the light scraping of a broom.

We climbed farther back in the crawlspace, as far as we could go, to the cinderblock wall. We found a heap of relics, a patchwork purse with fake, crackling leather, a broken typewriter, and our old yellow phone. Joel spun the dial.

"Ring ring," he said.

I used my thumb to hear and my pinky to speak.

"Hello?"

"Mami, how come you don't answer the phone when I call you?"

"'Cause you sound so ugly!" I said, and we bust up laughing.

I grabbed the phone and called him.

"Yo, yo, whassup."

"Woman, this is your husband talking to you right now, you better act right."

"What do you want from me?"

I stared at the receiver in my hand; I couldn't think of anything to say, so Joel took the phone and called me instead.

"Hello?"

"
Dígame,
Mami," he said. "Talk to me."

"I been missing you, at work, them long-ass hours, I been missing you real bad."

"I know, Mami, I know."

We both hung up; we weren't really laughing anymore, weren't really looking at each other, but we were smiling. After a pause, Joel called me.

"Hello?"

"I got a job!"

"You got a
job?
"

"Yeah, baby, everything's going to be real fine from now on, just real fine."

We both hung up, but I called him back right away.

"I'm sorry."

"Nah, baby," Joel said. "I'm sorry."

The next time Joel called me, I made my voice sexy.

"Hey, you," I said.

"Hey yourself," he said, and we both hung up, blushing.

I called Joel.

"Hello?"

"What are we gonna do?"

"What do you mean, 'What are we gonna do?'"

"It's just going to be like this forever?"

"No, baby, it's not going to be like this forever."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well, we'll do whatever it takes, I guess," Joel said.

I was confused about who he was pretending to be.

"What does it take?"

"I'm not sure yet." He stretched the cord like a bow and arrow, then let it fly.

You Better Come

N
OW THAT PAPS
had returned, he wanted to be with us, all five together, all the time. He herded us into the kitchen and gave us big knives to chop up the onions and cilantro while he picked through the dried beans and boiled the rice and Ma chatted at him and smelled the air and sent us winks.

After dinner he led us all to the bathtub, no bubbles, just six inches of gray water and our bare butts, our knees and elbows, and our three little dicks. Paps scrubbed us rough with a soapy washcloth. He dug his fingernails into our scalp as he washed our hair and warned us that if the shampoo got into our eyes, it was our own fault for squirming. We made motorboat noises, navigating bits of Styrofoam around toothpicks and plastic milk-cap islands, and we tried to be brave when he grabbed us; we tried not to flinch.

Ma was leaning over the sink, peering into the mirror, pulling out her eyebrows and curling her eyelashes with shiny metal instruments. "Be gentle," she said without even looking at him, without even blinking her eyes.

They were both topless; Ma was in a flesh-colored bra and heavy cotton work pants, and Paps had taken off his shirt to wash us. We saw everything—how our skin was darker than Ma's but lighter than Paps's, how Ma was slight and nimble, with ribs softly stepping down from her breasts, how Paps was muscled, the muscles and tendons of his forearms, the veins in his hands, the kinky hairs spreading across his chest. He was like an animal, our father, ruddy and physical and instinctive; his shoulders hulked and curved, and we had, each of us, even Ma, sat on them, gone for rides. Ma's shoulders were clipped, slipping away from her tiny bird neck. She was just over five feet and light enough for Manny to lift, and when Paps called her fragile, he sometimes meant for us to take extra-special care with her, and he sometimes meant that she was easily broken.

Paps stood to piss and we saw his stout, fleshy dick, the darkness of his skin down there and the strong jet of urine, long and loud and pungent. Ma turned from the mirror; we saw her watching him too. He zipped up and stood behind her, then slid his hands under her bra, and mounds of flesh rolled and squished between his fingers. It made us giddy because it made her giddy, even though she pushed him away. They were playing with each other, and no one wanted to leave the bathroom, no one wanted to fight or splash or ruin the moment.

Paps leaned against the wall and watched her adjusting herself back into her harness; he grinned and he growled. We watched him watching her, we studied his hunger, and he knew we were seeing and understanding. Now he winked at us; he wanted us to know that she made him happy.

"That's my girl," he said, slapping her bottom. "Ain't another one like her."

"They're going to catch pneumonia," Ma said, so he fished us out of the tub, one at a time, and stood us on the toilet seat and toweled us dry. He grabbed our ankles and dried the undersides of our feet, and we had to hold on to his shoulder for balance or grab a fistful of his Afro. He ran the towel between our toes, our butt cracks, our armpits, tickling us, but acting as if he couldn't comprehend what was so ticklish. He dried our heads for a long time, until we were smarting and dizzy.

Each time Paps finished drying one of us, he would place our palm against his own palm. He didn't say anything to Joel or Manny, but my hand he held up a little longer, looking close and nodding his head.

"You grew," he said, and I smiled and straightened my back, broadening my shoulders, triumphant.

Ma and Paps started talking to each other about our bodies, about how quickly we were changing; they joked about needing to make some more boys to take our places. We watched them; they looked each other in the eyes, teasing and laughing; their words were warm and soft, and we snuggled into the gentleness of their conversation. We were all together in the bathroom, in this moment, and nothing was wrong. My brothers and I were clean and fed and not afraid of growing up.

We climbed back into the empty tub, still in our towels, and our parents pretended not to notice. We saw them pretending and it thrilled us. We slid the shower curtain closed and huddled together, looking at each other with wide-open, eager eyes.

"Hey, wait a minute," Paps said in mock surprise, "where did the boys go?"

We pressed our fists into our cheeks to keep back the giggles.

"Oh my," Ma said. "They just disappeared."

We clenched ourselves together into a tighter ball. Our knees tensed with excitement. They were going to find us. Maybe they'd scare us, yanking back the curtain and shouting "Gotcha!" Maybe they'd scoop us up and tickle us; maybe they'd be sneaky and stand on the rim of the tub and peek over the top of the curtain, waiting for us to notice. Maybe they'd roar like dinosaurs; maybe they'd devour us. Maybe Paps would take Joel under one arm and Manny under the other, and maybe Ma would grab me and swing me in a circle, but whatever happened, we would be found, my brothers and me, huddled together; they would grab us and take us up and into their arms and own us.

But then they didn't look for us at all; they found each other instead. We listened to their kissing and soft little moans, and after a while we got down on our knees, lifting up the bottom edge of the shower curtain and spying on them. Ma was balanced on the sink, her back to the mirror and her legs folded around Paps's waist. She dragged her fingers up and down his back. Her hands were little and light, with painted fingernails that traced ridges into Paps's skin.

Paps's hands seemed massive on her tiny frame. He clutched her hips, moving her toward and then away from him, steadily, stealthily, squeezing hard enough so that his fingers appeared to be sinking into her sides like into quicksand, and when I looked at her face she looked like she was in pain, but she didn't look frightened, like it was a kind of pain she wanted.

We saw everything—that Paps's blue jeans were faded in the spot where he kept his wallet, the muscles of his stomach, that Ma closed her eyes but Paps kept his open, that he bit, that they were both gripping tight, that Ma's ankles were crossed and her toes were pointed. Her legs clutched and released him, and he was leaning her back so that her skin touched the skin of her reflection, like a picture I once saw of Siamese twins. The faucet poked into the base of her spine, and it must have hurt her, all of it must have hurt her, because Paps was much bigger and heftier, and he was rough with her, just like he was rough with us. We saw that it must hurt her, too, to love him.

Paps leaned Ma all the way back, her hair mixing and reflecting, doubling itself in the mirror. He bit into her neck like an apple, and she rolled her head over and spotted us. She smiled. She pulled Paps's head away from her and turned him until he spotted us too.

"I thought you disappeared," he said.

"You were supposed to look for us," said Manny.

"I guess I found something better," Paps said, and Ma slapped him on the chest and called him a bastard. She unwrapped herself from him and fidgeted with her clothes and smoothed her hair. He tried to kiss her neck again, but she wiggled away.

"Get my boots from the closet," she said. "Please, Papi, I'm already late."

We sighed and sank onto our butts, but the moment Paps left the bathroom, Ma turned off the light and shut the door and got into the tub with us, pulling the curtain closed behind her. It was completely dark; we couldn't even see her, but we could feel her arms around us, her hair tickling my bare shoulders.

"We'll show him," Ma said, and we loved her then, fiercely.

We heard him clomp up the stairs. We got ready to pounce. Then his hand was on the doorknob, he paused, and for a second it seemed as if he might have figured us out, but he came in and flicked on the light, and we rushed out from behind the curtain, tackling him into the hallway and onto the floor. Ma sat on his chest and we tickled him everywhere. He laughed a throaty all-out laugh, kicking his legs, saying "No! No! No!"—laughing and laughing until he was wheezing and there were tears in his eyes—but even then we kept on tickling, poking our fingers into his sides and tickling his feet, all of us laughing and making as much noise as we could, but no one as loud as Paps.

"No! No! No!" he said, crying now, laughing still. "I can't breathe!"

"All right," Ma said, "that's enough."

But it was not enough. Our towels had slipped off, and blood pumped through our naked bodies, our hands shook with energy, we were alive and it was not enough; we wanted more. We started tickling Ma too, started poking her, and she collapsed onto Paps's chest and covered her head, and he wrapped his arms around her.

Then Manny slapped Ma hard on the back. It sounded so satisfying, the thwack of his palm on her skin.

"You were supposed to come find us," he said.

Joel and I froze, waiting for some sign of trouble, waiting for Paps to react, threaten him, hit him, something. We stood there, hunched and alert like startled cats, but nothing came. Manny slapped her back again, and still nothing. Silence. Ma only moved both her hands to Paps's wrists. Her hair covered their faces, and we understood that we could do this, that this would be allowed, and never spoken of.

Joel kicked Paps's thigh as hard as he could.

"Yeah," he said, "you're supposed to find us."

I joined in, kicking for Paps but hitting Ma; it felt dull and mean and perfect. Then we were all three kicking and slapping at once, and they didn't say a word, they didn't even move; the only noise was the noise of skin and impact and breath, and then our protests,
why don't you come find us, why don't you do what you're supposed to do, come and find us, why don't ya, because you're bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, why don't you do right, why can't you do right, we hate you, come and find us, we hate you, everyone hates you, you better come and find us, next time, next time you better come.

We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful—little animals, clawing at what we needed.