T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

IN THE FIFTH-GRADE PRODUCTION OF BILLY GOATS GRUFF, ACHILLES WAS CAST as the troll, a role Troy reprised two years later. On the opening night, nervous Achilles forgot his lines. The stage manager whispered them from the wings, but Achilles couldn’t hear under the green wig, so he edged closer to her, and in doing so upset the bridge and the kid playing the youngest goat. After the show, his mother said, “You’re too handsome to be under a bridge anyway.” His father said, “Son, you were great. So you made a little mistake. That happens to everybody. When you make a mistake, you have two choices. You can ignore it and go on with your life. Or, you can acknowledge it and go on with your life. So what if a whiny little goat falls off a paper mâché bridge? Sometimes the screw-up is the best part of the show.”

But his father never explained what to do if the screw-up hurt somebody, and the shit floated downstream, which Achilles feared was the case the next morning. For a long time he lay under the covers listening to Ines snap at Sammy. Ines’s walk held the key to her mood. Her steps were slow, heavy, dragging: announcing anger, disappointment, and hunger.

Next thing he knew, he heard a yelp and peeked out to see Ines shaking Sammy by the hair. Sammy was yelling about a Mrs. Babcock. Ines screamed, “No one volunteered for this! In elementary school, no one said they wanted to be homeless or on crunch or stuck on a fucking bridge to die of dehydration!”

Ines jerked Sammy with each word she yelled. The drapes were twisted around her arms, and as she shook him the curtain rod quivered and finally collapsed, flooding the room with light and silhouetting them against the window like paper dolls. Sammy had one hand to his neck and the other on Ines’s arm. She slapped him four times in quick succession before pushing him to the floor. Sammy emitted one high-pitched squeal, hugged his knees to his chest, and rocked back and forth, whistling like a teakettle.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Ines kept saying, dropping to her knees and reaching out to Sammy, who scurried away, squeezing himself between the chair and the wall as swiftly as a salamander. He started babbling. When she reached for him again, he squealed like a gerbil; this time so loud and sustained that Achilles had to cover his ears and the guests in the room next door stumbled out to the hall, mistaking the sound for a smoke alarm.

Ines was crying silently, mouth open, body heaving, gasping for air. A string of saliva ran between her lips as she pointed to the television. On the screen, images of New Orleans underwater flashed by. People stood atop the arches of undulating highways rising from the murky waters like the humps of mythical beasts. Achilles held Ines until her breathing steadied. With his other hand, he rubbed Sammy’s neck and back while Sammy rocked back and forth chanting, “It’s O.K. Mommy’s here. Come to Mommy. It’s O.K. Mommy’s here. Come to Mommy. It’s O.K. …”

Sammy peeked out from behind the chair and Ines turned away, motioning for Achilles to do the same thing. Ines and Achilles remained facing away from Sammy for fifteen minutes, silent, until Sammy fully emerged and climbed into bed.

Achilles helped Ines up to the chair and kneeled at her feet. He took off his shirt and wiped her tears. “What happened?”

“The news. It’s terrible, Achilles. Bodies are floating down the street. People are stranded. And Sammy said, ‘They were warned. Sometimes people are in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ Apparently it’s something his teacher, Mrs. Babcock, said. I lost it. Maybe you can talk to him when he wakes up. He’s always hearing it from me. He should hear something positive from a black male.”

It was late afternoon, the streets quiet, as if all Atlanta were inside watching storm coverage. Sammy had slept for three hours, which Ines explained was normal after an attack. Until that afternoon, Achilles hadn’t believed that Asperger’s was real. He assumed it was like ADD, that Sammy needed a father to kick his ass. But the distant gaze and eerie tone when mimicking his mother had convinced Achilles otherwise.

Achilles had driven Sammy into the city, and they were walking along Highland Avenue. They turned down a residential street where all the trashcans were lined up like parade spectators, or Katrina victims, thought Achilles. Sammy wanted pizza and cheerfully pointed out every neon sign, whether it said pizza or not. It was amazing how quickly kids rebooted. They came to Johnny’s Pizza on Highland, where a bum was collapsed on the sidewalk near the door. Achilles lifted Sammy to his shoulders, stepped over the bum, and went inside.

“You’re strong.”

Achilles grunted his thanks, preoccupied with how to fill his appointed role as positive black male role model. Could he say anything positive because he was black? Or did he need to say something black and positive? He had a beer while they waited. It was a new-old restaurant, with black marker scribbles scrawled on the wall to give it character. The cashiers and waitresses had jagged haircuts designed to look accidental. Beside the oven, a guy with Boss tattooed on his neck assembled pizzas with the slow, gruff movements of a mechanic, dropping everything from six inches above the counter, like army cooks. They’d ordered a pizza with everything except broccoli. Sammy didn’t like broccoli, unlike Troy, who’d loved the stuff. They had to keep his hands out of the basket in the grocery store because he gulped it down at every opportunity, pretending to be a giant eating trees.

At the table next to them, a little girl with a clear view of the front window kept tugging at the father’s sleeve and asking, “Soon?” Her father would answer, “Yes, honey.” A baby dressed in blue slept in a car seat beside the mother.

Sammy drained his soda.

“You know your auntie I didn’t mean anything by all that commotion in the hotel room,” said Achilles.

“She sure seemed mad,” said Sammy.

Achilles fought the urge to laugh. Wasn’t Sammy supposed to say yes? “I mean, sometimes we hurt people we love and we don’t mean to. We hurt them because they’re the only ones in striking distance. She wasn’t mad at you. She was mad at other people.”

“But she pulled my hair.”

Achilles chuckled. The girl at the next table tugged her father’s sleeve again.

“She was very, very mad.” Sammy chuckled too. “She pulled my hair very, very hard. My cheek burns. I feel like one of those duckies at the carnival.”

Achilles laughed so hard his belly ached. “Sam, your auntie I wants people to get along better than they do. She wants people to care more than they do. She wants the world to be a better place than probably it ever was or will be. She believes these things strongly. She believes we’re all …” Achilles paused. We’re all what? We’re not all the same. We’re not all equal. She was irrational on that point. The world had never been peaceful, fair, just. A quick history of warfare proved that. The little girl at the table beside them started sobbing softly and was soon inconsolable. As her parents tried to calm her she only grew more upset, shaking her head, her pigtails bouncing with each sob. She started talking loudly, but her words were hard to understand. Achilles could only tell that a promise had been broken, and she could not abide it. Achilles slid Sammy’s soda to the dark end of their booth. “Your auntie I wants us to get along.” Achilles interlaced his fingers for effect. “She wants us to be better people.”

“Is this like when the guy at the museum said we’re all related and we all come from the same particle before the Big Bang explosion?” asked Sammy.