Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

There was a window, but were there chairs inside? A bed? An occupant?

— What can I do? I asked.

— This is quite a surprise.

I couldn’t see Uncle Arms because I wouldn’t stop watching the cabin. Tricks of lights against the window; when I tilted my head long shapes squatted.

— You wouldn’t find it hard to open a door, would you?

— I want to do something better than that.

— You don’t understand me, Anthony. This one gesture would help me a lot.

— How much?

He said, — I wouldn’t have to plant any of the protestors inside. I can’t trust them. They won’t wait until the right time. The second one gets in he’ll start chanting and throwing flyers. They’re too energetic.

— Are you going to hurt the people inside?

— I told you I wasn’t a monster.

Fierce loyalty is a boy’s game best played at night when the imagination can transform every shadow into a foe. Uncle Arms went back in the house and returned; he was as thin as a cane. He brought out two small glasses, the green bottle.

— At a certain time during the evening’s pageant you’ll hear a knock at the back of the auditorium. Then you’ll open the emergency door.

Here I’d thought the whole world was telling my story only to find myself stumbled into his.

While he’d gone into the house I hadn’t stepped away from the cabin. We drank five feet away from it. I didn’t want to get closer, but I didn’t run.

Uncle Arms asked, — Does your sister win a lot of these things?

— No, I said. She never has.

— Maybe this would be her year.

— Could you do that?

— Winner’s name means nothing to me. If it assures your cooperation and a few years of silence I’ll give her quite a bit.

— She was the girl with the old woman tied to her back.

— The orphan! Uncle Arms laughed. I like the blood you come from, he said.

I was glad to do something for my sister, but also to feel like a grown man. I entered the cosmos of backroom economies on November 11th. Her professionalism aside, Nabisase’s victory was rigged by an endomoprh and a goblin standing in crabgrass, and she would never know it. There are so many lives decided in this way.

After finishing the bottle of green liqueur I could barely stagger and I fell forward against the cabin walls. Once I was closer the silhouettes inside were easier to recognize. The backs of two wood chairs and iron pots hanging over the fireplace. A low slim bed in the corner. There was a form, wide as an oven and twice as tall, pressed up against the right side of the window pane like it was looking out. When I stumbled closer it moved away.

The door was made of three wide slats of wood joined together. They weren’t decorated. There wasn’t even a handle, only a hole in the door about level with the lower end of my stomach. Hanging through that hole was a leather string, like a bootlace. The hole in the shape of a heart.

Uncle Arms whispered from behind me.

— All the Quakers had to lock this door was a wooden board on the inside of the cabin. That leather string hanging out the hole is tied around it. When visitors are welcome the string dangles out. A visitor pulls on it, the board lifts and you walk inside.

He said, — That’s where the saying comes from. A hole in my heart. When the string wasn’t hanging out it meant that company wasn’t welcome.

— Who’s in there now?

— Open the door.

— What will I find inside?

— The unseen hand, he said.

My whole body was eager to find out. I touched the door and the wood was cold. I grabbed for the string, but it moved without me. Curling away slowly. It disappeared. Pulled backward from within.

Nabisase, thirteen years old, not safe, ossified, looked out the window of Grandma’s room; so stiff she might have been there for eighty years and continue for eighty more.

Grandma lay on her back on her bed on her best behavior in the Comfort Inn room.

Nabisase turned away from the low hills outside to sit on the bed and touch Grandma’s hip. Grandma made little gasps not only from pain, but in anticipation of more. She flinched. My sister pressed on Grandma’s thigh, asking, — Does it hurt here? Here? Where?

I’d driven over from Miser’s Wend at ten that morning. A Sunday. November 12th.

Mom’s bed, the one farther from the window, was tucked so professionally that it couldn’t have been slept in.

Rather than call ahead, as I’d tried the day before, I got on the elevator, pressed third floor and nobody stopped me. Walked the hall and right into Grandma’s room. I could’ve done that on Saturday, but I’d assumed there were guards posted.

Grandma skittered, sat up quickly, when she noticed me inside the room. The move made her squint with pain and she yelled, — How did you get in?

— Through the door.

— Wasn’t it locked?

— Mom’s gone. Nabisase spoke to me, but I didn’t recognize the voice. Not frantic or angry, even irate; the tones I was used to.

— Did you hear me? my sister asked.

Grandma rose to her elbows. — We haven’t seen your mother except Friday.

— We should tell the police.

Nabisase only repeated herself. — Mom’s gone.

— I thought she stopped doing this, I said.

Grandma said. — She did. For some time.

I felt fevered, but not them. Now I wondered if her message had sounded more despondent than I recognized. — What did she tell you the last time you saw her?

Grandma said, — She left as my eyes closed.

— We can call the cops from here.

— Forget the police, Nabisase said.

— Why do you sound so grown? I asked her.

My sister sat down next to Grandma. Their postures were the same, but Grandma had reason to hunch over. She was ninety-three and her hip might be broken. While my sister was soon to be awarded Uncle Arms’s gold prize. She didn’t know and I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t think she’d believe me. But soon.

Even as they sat there confused, I was happy. I’d never felt like an oracle before.

— Were there any notes?

Grandma said, — Do you believe she gives a thought as she waves out the door?

Grandma was tired. Uncle Isaac. Mom. Me. How does a parent go on living, really pretty healthy, while watching her children decompose gradually?

— She’ll be back by this afternoon, I said. I was optimistic. Sometimes Mom forgot her life and it lasted for a few weeks, but most often she got confused, wandered for five hours then came back to us.

— I’m not waiting to see, Nabisase said.

— We can’t let her run around town getting in trouble, I pleaded.

— Can’t we?! Grandma yelled.

This isn’t the start of things I’m telling about. It’s not the middle, too.

I stood, surprised that I’d become the paladin of compassion. — I’m going to get her back.

Nabisase and Grandma, both, touched their hands to their eyes.

— You’ll have to take Grandma, Anthony. They have a woman who can help me with my hair backstage, but it’s only me who’s going to steam my dress. And I have to go find some glitter to put on my shoes.

— Will you miss the announcements? Grandma asked her. Of the winner? With the tiny man’s contest?

Nabisase punched her own thigh. — Forget about that. It’s not important. I have to be ready for tonight. Uncle Allen wasn’t looking for pretty girls anyway.

I should have urged her to get the fuck downtown, right now, and collect her prize, but the offhand way she described herself made me angry. More than angry. Just a blubbery bitter boy. Petty because I wasn’t good-looking.

— We may help? Grandma offered her. To prepare yourself.