The Best of Science Fiction 12

I keep thinking about this sticky-slippery kind of land but I think about legs too, a lot more than I think about arms. I don't know why. Maybe because I always hear walking sounds. Around the house I hear the floors creak and thump, accepting feet. Outside, the lady's heels tick-tock, tick-tock, measuring out time in distance covered. Steps per minute about sixty-five, breaths twenty, heartbeats seventy-two. It takes me ten heartbeats to cross my mattress. Rolling. Well, more like five heartbeats or four. Four little bird heartbeats. (I exaggerate myself, but sometimes I feel pretty exaggerated.) Doorknobs, on/off switches, buttons, zippers, drawer pulls, toe-nail scissors, the little thumb screws that hold my reading stand, the handles on the sides of my mattress, the armholes of my shirt, even birds ... When they sit along the wires they remind me of feet, robins-red-breasted feet cut off just above the ankle; flying, they remind me of feather fingered hands flip-flopping themselves into the sky, palms down. For them the air is thick enough.

But I have one thing.

When I was young I felt the world two ways, by mouth and by that one impetuous finger (I cannot say between my legs) that would rise up in curiosity at any interesting texture or temperature. Now it seems not so inquisitive. But then, it has already tested cotton, wool, wood, paper, the wall, the floor, the reading stand and so forth. It has ventured, (omnivorous can one say?) into holes in the sheet. It has examined the interior of a velvet purse (silk lined). It has pushed a toy car. It has entered a shoe. All this in its younger days.

There is, in my world also — well, it isn't really my world. As I said, mine would have to be a lot slushier. Anyway, I've got balance, rolling, flopping and the arching of the back. Balance I have never completely mastered. I suppose I should mention other small diversions such as defecating, urinating, the blinking of eyes, the wiggling of ears and watching TV, And I've got drama too. Down the hall at five o'clock or so comes Mrs. Number One all dressed up like a nurse. I think I must, at some time, have been bought outright, else why does she keep me on like this? She doesn't get paid any more. Who would pay her? And what do I give in exchange for the emptying of bed pans or a lift into the bathroom, for food so considerately cut up so I can feed myself? Why, only what I can give. She likes it with brute force. "Rape, rape," she says, but not loud enough to attract attention outside of my little room.

I bounce her on the point of my one and only (or she makes me believe I do). Actually, I couldn't rape an. old glove. At the time I think I would not trade this one for any other protuberance, but afterwards I think two legs are well worth one of these.

However, the price is too high. If I had three of them it might be possible to come to some terms, but one, even as well functioning as this ... No sale!

Rape, rape, to me was Run, run.

That day (the day she locked the door and said, "If you ever tell ... " But there wasn't anybody to tell. I think I was forgotten the moment I was born.) — that day I thought I knew what running felt like. This was skimming over the earth, rampant, halfway to the ceiling with only the soles of the feet touching bottom. This was one foot, lightly, before the other, the swing of the leg underneath, the body riding smoothly on top of it all (amazing), the counter-balancing arms, back and forth, the toes giving a last pushoff, the knee raised, bent, the foot circling upward, pivoting out, falling ahead to catch the ground, then pushing off again, and so on. Hundreds of take-offs, and that's what this was too, a hundred take-offs until I flew into the air, but I came to rest again, flat upon the mattress.

I suppose she was grateful. One of us was.

She has been my nurse since God-knows-when, since before I knew what a calendar was or that time was anything but fresh sheets now and then. I must have been about ten, a backward, slobbery ten when she came, squashing about on her nursing shoes. She squeaks when she turns. She bites into the floor, squashily saw-toothed, as if she felt as I do about the surfaces of things. Maybe she wanted me to have a better view of those aqueous soles of hers because the first thing she did was to have my mattress put upon the floor. I admit I gained in freedom and that my distances could then be measured. I learned that the wearing down at the heel was a long time.

But Mrs. Number One isn't the only person in my life. There is a Miss Number Two, oh yes, and quite beautiful, too. Miss Spanish eyes, Miss — I wonder if it would make any difference if Mrs. Number One were beautiful — Miss White Gloves (the white gloves just in case she might, by some mistake, touch me). She came to me fresh from racing cars, mountain tops, airplanes, at least it seemed so to me, but I see things from a floorish point of view. Everything may look like that from here.

What she brought first were the ABCs, then Run, Tom, Run, then The Easy to Read Book of Far Away Places, and all the way up to books-of-the-month and Shakespeare.

I think that Miss Number Two is, most probably, my sister.

Not that there's ever been anything sisterly-brotherly between us, but I have a hundred clues. The most obvious, that she's always been around, one way or another, in a sneaky way even before she came to me with her books and that Nefertiti tip of her head. I remember a breezy kid not much younger than myself in a tree outside my window, blue jeans, red shirt, sticking out her tongue at me, and I happy that the gesture was one I could return. Now and again I remember a furious voice from some other part of the house screeching for her to "Get down, my God, get down." I remember an eye, brown, lustrous, like a little mouse nose waiting at the crack in the door, sometimes during my bath. I even remember the knob turning and the door opening to make that crack. Later a decision was made, out of a sense of obligation or out of resentment, and she, or someone else, decided and she came to me, I cannot say with happiness. I think I was happier before, and then, with five o'clock drama, everything might have seemed complete to me. No, it wasn't happiness and she knew it.

And yet I count on her for my salvation. If anyone is going to rescue me I know it will have to be bold Miss Number Two and, even though I first approached Mrs. Number One, it is Number Two I had in mind all the time. I was afraid. I was in such a cold sweat of hope that I didn't dare to go to Number Two and I didn't even mention to Number One what I really had in mind.

What a vision I had then ... I still have. I see myself in a bright and revealing costume, all Harlequin colours and diamond shapes. I am in a stall with streamers, festoons and flags, American flags ... no, flags of all nations. I belong to the world. Loud speakers on the roof send out fanfares interspersed with Handel's Fireworks music and I, highlighted with a pinkish spotlight, perform upon my mattress such movements as I can perform (and many of these require the utmost skill and concentration). After the day's work, and I do think I can call it work, I see myself in a close and comfortable association with the rubber man, the fat lady, the human pin cushion and the half-man/half-woman.

Though I have this grand vision in mind, and really even grander than this for I see myself as a champion of champions, though I have this vision, I decided that I would ask only that Mrs. Number One should borrow a camera and should take a dozen pictures of me from various angles and in various poses.

I thought I could not only use these in some way as an advertisement of myself, but also to get some real idea of myself since I had, so far, never seen myself in any way at all. It was from the pictures that I thought I could make my further decisions about my future. It's true that it's hard to be really self-evaluating but I thought I might judge well enough if I detracted a certain percentage for too much self-love and another equal percentage for self-hate. The good thing about photographs would be that any initial shock I might have at my first real view of myself could be gotten over by getting used to the pictures. I felt I might get enlargements made and I would have Number One tack some along the walls and I promised myself I would make no decisions whatsoever for at least two weeks of living with them. Then I hoped to be able to look at myself with a truly cold eye.