Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

“Come with us, Oly. Stay with us when she examines us. We’re scared of her.”

So we sat on folding chairs against the sunlit canvas wall and listened to the flies buzzing high up around the center pole, and to the twittering of the dozen or so amputees who were waiting in wheelchairs (if they were past the foot stage) or on folding chairs if they were still working on fingers and toes. Chick came and sat beside me with an exotic-bird coloring book and a handful of colored pens, whiling away his free hour by filling in the eyes on the peacock’s tail with slow, painstaking blue. “Doc P. says this is good for my hands,” Chick explained. None of Arty’s followers spoke to us but they all looked at us out of the corners of their eyes. I sat counting the fading yellow grass blades dying beneath the chairs.

When Doc P.’s nurse finally led us up the steps to the examining room of the clinic, Doc P. was not pleased to see us.

“If Chick says you’re pregnant and you’ve missed your period, there’s no use wasting my time. You’re pregnant. Anyway, I’m a surgeon, not an obstetrician. Your father is the one you should talk to. He’s got experience in this field.”

The twins leaned on the examining table, looking humble. She didn’t ask them to sit down. She sat, thick and puffy white, masked and gloved, behind her white metal desk, doing spider-mirror pushups with her fingers touching. I was afraid and the twins were afraid. Doc P. was not our turf at all.

“What they wanted,” I croaked, “was to get rid of it.” The twins nodded on alternate beats. Doc P. rose up slowly, her white masked face pushed forward, her thick glass lenses winking intently.

“Presumably these talented singers can speak. You have tongues?”

I glanced at the twins, half-expecting them to shove their tongues out in dutiful demonstration.

“Rid of it? Rid of it?” Doc P. crooned.

The twins nodded in miserable syncopation.

“And Papa wouldn’t like? Papa wouldn’t do it? No. Papa would want you to hatch the monster, wouldn’t he? It’s been years since poor old Al had a baby to play with, hasn’t it?”

The seeping acid in Dr. Phyllis’s tone wore at my bones, peeling my teeth. I tugged at Elly’s hand, wanting to leave, but they were staring at her as she sat back down and clasped her hands on the desk in front of her.

“No. I could nip it out of you in five minutes and no harm done. Don’t think I couldn’t. But I’m not going to, and I’ll tell you why. I have a contract with your Arturo, and young Arturo does not wish it. He is looking forward to being an uncle. It’s not for me to deny Arturo this pleasure. And it’s not for you to defy him. Drink milk. Eat greens. Your abdominal muscles are strong. It will be months before you show. And one last bit of healthful advice. Whatever you’ve been doing to make Arturo angry, stop it.”

We slogged out past the blank-eyed patients waiting to have their stumps examined.

“It’s odd,” Iphy said as we went toward the Chute, “that’s the first time we’ve ever spoken to her.”

“You never said a word,” I pointed out.

“We’ve never had anything to do with her or Arty’s crowd. Don’t they make you feel strange? They’re always around, underfoot. That slum camp stretches for acres, but we don’t really know what they’re doing or why. Should we find out? Are you going to vomit? Elly?”

And Elly did, in the dust between the refrigerator truck and the cat wagon.

“I was going home for lunch,” said Chick, “when the twins went boo from behind the cat wagon. I didn’t know they were there. They got mixed up with the cats in my head. Elly said would I pick that little guy out of their belly. Iphy too. They wanted me to. I felt kind of surprised thinking maybe I could help them, do something for them, not just moving furniture. Then I felt around, reached in to see what it was like inside, see if I could do it. I try not to go inside people. Sometimes it happens by accident, like sitting on their lap that little guy came out at me! That’s what I do for Doc P. and I try not to do it the rest of the time. But the little guy is in there, all right. I told them that I couldn’t do anything to the little guy, that you’d told me specially not to, not to do anything to get the little guy out of them. Iphy went away into herself but Elly scared me.”

“How?” asked Arty. “Did she yell? Or think hate thoughts? She didn’t hit you, did she?”

“No. She pushed OUT, like a thing that won’t die.”

“Did you ever get any lunch? No? Those girls in the office made pie. Cut me a slice too. And let’s see if you can tell whether I want banana cream or chocolate.”

“Arty, I can’t do that.”

“Try.”

“You know I can’t.”

From the files of Norval Sanderson:

Chaos rules — midway shut down for the first time in years — Arturo in a genuine frenzy — sweating heavily at the radio transmitter in his van — speaking calmly while his whole body twitches, jerks and writhes in his chair. His shorts and a green velvet shirt, sodden black with sweat, the vinyl of his seat smeared with sweat, Arty’s bald pate dripping sweat into his eyes. Little Oly stands by with an endless supply of tissues to mop his face, wipe his eyes. She runs errands. His voice stays clear, unhurried, precise as it goes out over the transmitter

.

Big Binewski pops in and out with his mustache tangled — the mother’s collapsed in bed with a redhead in attendance — the youngest, Chick, is out with the posse

—

Arty, at the radio, is in direct contact with fifteen vehicles full of Binewski guards and other show employees — all looking for the twins, Electra and Iphigenia, who have run away from home

.

Oly, the faithful watchdog, insists that the twins have been abducted. Oly keeps trying to shoo me out of the van, away from Arty, but I see enough. For example

—

Arty is sending the posse to clinics and doctors — the addresses found for him by Oly, who leafs through a stack of local phone books that may cover three states. Oly is getting testy at not being able to get rid of me and Arty evidently doesn’t care. I decide to let her shoo me. This looks like an all-day session

.

Finally she nods me off to the door as though to give me a private word. Turns out she is changing tactics — wants me to go check on Crystal Lil, see if the old broad is still alive, and then — Oly the cool one — would I just drop in on the Admitted Office and see that the Arturans stay calm in the face of this unexpected interruption of routine? Arty is saying, “Chick, are you hearing me? What about the nurse practitioner service I gave you? … Should be within a mile of where you are now.…” with the voice of men discussing mild weather

.

Standing on the step, I look down at Oly — teasing her that I may change my mind and come back in after all. “Tell me, Oly, why is Arty so upset? I’ve never seen him like this!” She shrugs her hump and twists her frog mouth into a pained grin, “Family. The Binewskis are big on family.”

I stroll over to the redheads’ dormitory trailers. They are deserted except for buxom Bella, with a chaw in her jaw, perched in an open door so she can spit at the next trailer while painting her toenails

.

Bella snorts at the twins’ absence — explains that they’ve gone off with Rita (the redhead) and Rita’s sweetie, McFee, in McFee’s elderly pickup. The twins are knocked up, explains Bella, “probably by that pus sack, the Bag Man”—and the girls are looking to get “scraped out” (searching for an abortion) despite “His Armlessness, His Almighty Leglessness” having forbid it