Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

Jerry Ganz was the gigantic man I’d seen taking notes at the McDonald’s foofaraw. He wore very small glasses, the frames strained to reach both ears.

— Rumors were circulating that the students had a bomb planted somewhere in the audience. If it had gone off who knows how many lives would have been destroyed?

Jerry Ganz was standing in front of the marble Lumpkin library as a man in frayed jeans and tatty T-shirt cleaned the steps behind the reporter.

— But we wouldn’t even bring this news to you if it was just one long sad story. There are enough disappointments in the world. It’s true that Miss Innocence was ruined. But there were actually two pageants that weekend. The second, a local event in its third year. It was conceived by one very special man.

— Ah neva hade it easeh, nut fo’ one minut ov ma lahf.

— His name is Uncle Allen. That’s what he likes to be called. Most of the year he’s in his office in downtown Lumpkin helping people of all incomes to buy a home. Uncle Allen is a mortgage broker. And how did he get started?

— Ah wish yawl cood see mah back, ah tell ya. Gots enuf bruisuss fo a fooball team. I dun hahd woik an’ ah buhleev dat good peeples awlwuss comes out on top.

— Uncle Allen, the son of men and women who had to work on their knees, now has the money to help others stand. And how does he do it? With his own contest. One that rewards girls for their character. He’s only got one question when they come on stage: Have you suffered?

— Because Uncle Allen knows, maybe better than most of us, just what rewards suffering can bring.

— Ah calls ’em mah Goodness Girls. Da winnas.

— And what good fortune really for Uncle Allen and his Goodness Girls. If the Miss Innocence pageant had gone on without incident we may never have known about Uncle Allen, whose pageant brings modeling contracts to girls of all sizes and shapes.

As proof they scrolled a few of the past winners and their advertisements across the screen. I couldn’t disagree about his standards. Only about a third of the girls had waistlines. They modeled ponchos, long jackets, overalls, serapes. Circulars for Good Will, an Army & Navy shop.

— This ends with a mystery though. One of the Goodness Girls is missing. As we speak.

— She left a picture, but not her name. Maybe she didn’t expect to win. A child who, Uncle Allen says, stole the show when she stepped on stage. We have only the Polaroid, taken when she registered, carrying her sick grandmother on her back.

— Uncle Allen hopes she’ll contact his office if she sees this, and the number is at the bottom of our screen.

— But maybe it’s fitting that she went off without a trace. A beautiful girl is just a daydream. We’ll end with her snapshot on the screen so you can see, as Uncle Allen put it, what an angel looks like.

Nabisase didn’t want to celebrate with me. When I reached over the couch and rubbed the top of her head with my sweet fine knuckles, she jumped away.

Grandma even stood up, painful work, and said, — Anthony, don’t do that!

— I was congratulating her!

My sister touched up against the entertainment center, one hand on the television screen as if it brought her more warmth than me.

She didn’t want to celebrate at all.

Nabisase put on her coat and left the house. She didn’t even tell Grandma that she was going. To the Apostolic Church of so-and-so. That’s where she called Uncle Arms. Same evening that the program showed.

After she left I told Grandma, — She shouldn’t be scared of me.

— It should be the other way round? My grandmother laughed. At least her award package came to the house. Nabisase still used it as her mailing address.

When the Federal Express guy asked for a signature I was the only one home. Let me correct that. Grandma was home, but if I’d called her over she’d have taken thirty minutes to shamble from her room.

I took the envelope. Overnight Delivery. It arrived early on the 22nd. Closed the door.

I didn’t open it though I dropped it a few times on the chance it would pop open and let me inside.

Candan rang the front doorbell and when I answered it he said, — I saw the FedEx man.

I didn’t invite him inside, but stepped out there. He was taller than me by a head. I wanted to press his minuscule ears; they were the size of buttons.

— I wondered if it was something about your mother.

— That letter was for Nabisase.

— From your Mom?

— Uncle Allen, I said.

— I thought your Uncle was dead.

— Then it’s a message from the grave. I walked down the steps just to make him follow me. You have any reason to be expecting her? I asked him.

He shrugged. — I’m not her family. You would know.

— I know she’s not coming back for you, Candan.

I was standing by my Oldsmobile, looking at my reflection, but he’d stayed by the front steps. Candan snapped his fingers. I thought he was commanding me to come over to him, but it was the dog, that Doberman, pressing its face against the hedge. It wanted to push the way through, maybe to eat me, but when Candan snapped the animal returned to the backyard.

— Did she say something about me? he asked.

I didn’t even turn around. — She was too busy driving off with some Indian guy, I said.

— She didn’t.

— She did.

He opened my gate, shut it and walked back to his house.

I left the house after Candan went away because I couldn’t sit for hours, alone with Nabisase’s letter, and not open it. Not for hours.

I brought a small pot of tea and two sandwiches to Grandma’s room. Changed her socks and helped her to the bathroom before going out. I wanted to get in a van and ride the way up to Queens General so I could find out about the attraction between that bacterial-bozo and Nabisase. I should have gone and pulled the tubes out his veins, but I was too tired. I felt like I hadn’t slept even one night my whole life.

Ishkabibble is who I wanted to see, but I had no home phone number. He called you, but couldn’t be reached. If I tried to find him whose home would I check? Nearly everyone was indebted to him so he told no one his address.

Finally I ended up in Brookville Park because I knew he liked it there. Quiet. Empty. No one angry because he wants the check. Its small ponds had sprouted tan reeds that tossed dryly against themselves.

The most distinct landmark in Brookville Park was the rigid purple monument at its east entrance. An abandoned semitrailer that had been scratched, cut, spray-painted, signed. It was specked with spots of orange rust.

Its support legs had fallen off a long time before so that the semitrailer leaned forward, a Muslim kissing soil for the third time in a day.

I was happy for my sister, but jealous too. She was ten years younger and already poised for something spectacular. Fun, at least. I wondered if my bitterness was only going to get stronger until the time when I stopped remembering my name and how to care for myself. Maybe one good side-effect to flipping out was that I could forget how little I’d done.

— Hide me!

Ishkabibble came out from the trees, running. His overcoat snapped behind him and one of his dress shoes had come off. He ran so fast I almost missed him; attache case in his right hand knocking the back of his right thigh.

— I’ll take you home, I said.

— You’re not fast enough. He looked over his shoulder. Hide me now!

I pulled at the door to the semitrailer. He was fast, but I could be strong. Not strength, but power. Grabbed the handle and simply leaned back.

The door opened and it was like night time in there. He was tentative. It smelled of mildew; there were small plants growing in the standing water. When I opened the door both our shoes were splashed.