James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

After a couple months, my belly was getting real big. The people at the place knew me enough to let me take Ben outside sometimes. They’d put him in a wheelchair and strap him all up so he wouldn’t fall out, not that it would make a difference. I’d bring a blanket to put under him to help with his sores, which would be seeping blood and pus and looking like they hurt real bad, even though I knew he couldn’t feel nothing. I’d just push him around the neighborhood. Tell him what I was seeing and smelling and hearing. Make up little stories and shit about the people that’d walk past us. The facility wasn’t far from the water, and sometimes I’d go down to the boardwalk along the ocean and I’d sit on a bench and put Ben’s chair right next to me and hold his hand and watch the waves come in, one after another. And they kept coming, one after another, just like they’d been doing since billions of years before there was any people on this planet, and just like they’d be doing billions of years after we had killed each other and was gone. It made me feel small, watching those waves, realizing how little a mark we made on this world, and how we was just one little planet in a universe so big we couldn’t understand it, and how short we was alive in this life that we got, and how we got to take it and use it the best we can. Not to do anything but love, like I was loving Ben by holding his hand, and he had been loving me by changing my life.

Summer turned to fall turned to winter. I was almost ready to have our baby. Mercedes kept asking about Ben so I decided to bring her along one day. I also had pictures of our baby still inside of me, sonogram machine pictures that I wanted to show Ben and put up on the wall behind his bed. We got to the hospital, and they had him all ready to go. I had asked if we could take him out to the boardwalk, even though it was cold and had snowed a little the night before. He was wearing a winter coat and a cute little hat and some gloves that was worn down but would still keep his hands warm. Mercedes was all excited and a little confused about why Ben looked the same but couldn’t move or talk or do anything. I thought about what to tell her, but she wasn’t ready for the story, for the whole story, for the story of Ben’s life, and who he was and what he did and what he meant and why they killed him, their courts and their orders and their surgeons with their scalpels. Why they killed him, with their bullshit laws and religions. I thought about what to tell her, but she wasn’t ready, so I said Ben was just being quiet for a little while and left it at that. We went to the water. The waves were still breaking. There was an inch or so of snow over everything. We were the only ones making tracks. A newspaper blew by us, and I could see all that was in it was bad news. People dying, people killing, governments lying and starting wars, corporations robbing and thieving. Same as the news had always been, same as it would always be. We went to a pier that went out into the ocean, and it was a little windy and a little cold and the waves were louder, breaking right underneath us, just like they had been doing for four or five billion years, and just like they would be for four or five billion more. All those waves, one after another, one after another, just rolling along, rolling into the shore. We got to the end of the pier and stopped. I was going to turn around but my phone rang. It was someone calling about a job I had applied for and they was wanting to schedule an interview. I took the call. I was holding the phone with one hand and Mercedes with the other. I didn’t think Ben would be going anywhere. He didn’t have no brain left. He couldn’t walk or talk or move or think or feel or do anything. I didn’t think nothing. I turned around and took the call. It lasted like a minute or so. Wasn’t nothing, just bullshit about time and place, shit that we all deal with and think matters but really don’t at all. When I turned back around, Ben was gone. His chair was empty and the clothes was sitting on it and he was gone. The cute little hat was right there, and the gloves. He was gone, though. I didn’t know what to do, whether I should scream or cry or laugh or what to do. There was no possible way what was happening could be happening. I didn’t hear no splash and there weren’t no tracks anywhere except mine and Mercedes’ and the ones that got made by the chair. And later, after the cops came and they looked at the videotapes made by the security cameras, there wasn’t nothing to see. One second Ben was sitting there. The next second he wasn’t. And I didn’t know whether I should be crying or screaming or laughing or what, but I felt love, I felt the same kind of love I had felt when he was with me, when he was alive, it was inside me still, and I picked up the hat, and it was still warm from where it had been on his head, and I looked out across the ocean, and I looked out across the sky, and I took my daughter’s hand who I love so much, and I took a deep breath of cold winter air from the sea, and the sun was warm on my face, and I smiled and I thought of him, and real quiet-like I said it, and not just to him, but to everyone, to everyone everywhere, ’cause that’s what it’s really about, what it is really all about.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Thank you Ben Zion Avrohom for your life. Thank you Mariaangeles Hernández, Mercedes Hernández, and Ben Zion Hernández. Thank you Charles KellyJr. Thank you Dr. Alexis Donnelly. Thank you Esther Avrohom. Thank you Ruth Avrohom. Thank you Jeremiah Henry. Thank you Rabbi Adam Schiff. Thank you Matthew Harper. Thank you John Dodson. Thank you Luke Gordon. Thank you Mark Egorov. Thank you Judith Cooper. Thank you Peter Wade. Thank you David Krintzman. Thank you Eric Simonoff. Thank you Jenny Meyer. Thank you Courtney Kivowitz. Thank you Ari Emanuel, Christian Muirhead, Alicia Gordon. Thank you David Goldin. Thank you Andisheh Avini. Thank you Richard Prince. Thank you Ed Ruscha. Thank you Richard Phillips. Thank you Dan Colen. Thank you Terry Richardson. Thank you Gregory Crewdson. Thank you Larry Gagosian. Thank you Jessica Almon, Britton Schey, and Aaron Rich. Thank you Roland Philipps. Thank you Olivia de Dieuleveult and Patrice Hoffman, Sabine Schultz, Claudio Lopez de la Madrid, Job Lisman. Thank you Melissa Lazarov, Alison McDonald, Nicole Heck, Sam Orlofsky, Jessica Arisohn, Rose Dergan, Kara Vander Weg, Darlina Goldak, Andres Hecker, Paul Neale, Julie Van Severen, Jennifer Knox White, Sarah Lazar. Thank you Carter Burden III. Thank you Dr. Alexis Halperin. Thank you Mariana Hogan. Thank you Rabbi Adam Mintz, thank you, thank you.