Peter Carey - His Illegal Self

At the turnstiles she released his hand and pushed him under. She slipped off her pack. He was giddy, giggling. She was laughing too. They had entered another planet, and as they pushed down to the platform the ceiling was slimed with alien rust and the floor was flecked and speckled with black gum-so this was the real world that had been crying to him from beneath the grating up on Lex.

They ran together to the local, and his heart was pounding and his stomach was filled with bubbles like an ice-cream float. She took his hand once more and kissed it, stumbling.

The 6 train carried him through the dark, wire skeins unraveling, his entire life changing all at once. He burped again. The cars swayed and screeched, thick teams of brutal cables showing in the windowed dark. And then he was in Grand Central first time ever and they set off underground again, hand in hand, slippery together as newborn goats.

Men lived in cardboard boxes. A blind boy rattled dimes and quarters in a tin. The S train waited, painted like a warrior, and they jumped together and the doors closed as cruel as traps, chop, chop, chop, and his face was pushed against his mother’s jasmine dress. Her hand held the back of his head. He was underground, as Cameron in 5D had predicted. They will come for you, man. They’ll break you out of here.

In the tunnels between Times Square and Port Authority a passing freak raised his fist. Right On! he called.

He knew you, right?

She made a face.

He’s SDS?

She could not have expected that-he had been studying politics with Cameron.

PL? he asked.

She sort of laughed. Listen to you, she said. Do you know what SDS stands for?

Students for a Democratic Society, he said. PL is Progressive Labor. They’re the Maoist fraction. See, you’re famous. I know all about you.

I don’t think so.

You’re sort of like the Weathermen.

I’m what?

I’m pretty sure.

Wrong fraction, baby.

She was teasing him. She shouldn’t. He had thought about her every day, forever, lying on the dock beside the lake, where she was burnished, angel sunlight. He knew his daddy was famous too, his face on television, a soldier in the fight. David has changed history.

They waited in line. There was a man with a suitcase tied with bright green rope. He had never been anyplace like this before.

Where are we going?

There was a man whose face was cut by lines like string through Grandma’s beeswax. He said, This bus going to Philly, little man.

The boy did not know what Philly was.

Stay here, the mother said, and walked away. He was by himself. He did not like that. The mother was across the hallway talking to a tall thin woman with an unhappy face. He went to see what was happening and she grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. He cried out. He did not know what he had done.

You hurt me.

Shut up, Jay. She might as well have slapped his legs. She was a stranger, with big dark eyebrows twisted across her face.

You called me Jay, he cried.

Shut up. Just don’t talk.

You’re not allowed to say shut up.

Her eyes got big as saucers. She dragged him from the ticket line and when she released her hold he was still mad at her. He could have run away but he followed her through a beat-up swing door and into a long passage with white cinder blocks and the smell of pee everywhere and when she came to a doorway marked FACILITY, she turned and squatted in front of him.

You’ve got to be a big boy, she said.

I’m only seven.

I won’t call you Che. Don’t you call me anything.

Don’t you say shut up.

OK.

Can I call you Mom?

She paused, her mouth open, searching in his eyes for something.

You can call me Dial, she said at last, her color gone all high.

Dial?

Yes.

What sort of name is that?

It’s a nickname, baby. Now come along. She held him tight against her and he once more smelled her lovely smell. He was exhausted, a little sick feeling.

What is a nickname?

A secret name people use because they like you.

I like you, Dial. Call me by my nickname too.

I like you, Jay, she said.

They bought the tickets and found the bus and soon they were crawling through the Lincoln Tunnel and out into the terrible misery of the New Jersey Turnpike. It was the first time he actually remembered being with his mother. He carried the Bloomingdale’s bag cuddled on his lap, not thinking, just startled and unsettled to be given what he had wanted most of all.

He forgot so much, but he remembered this, years later-it was a good seat, an armrest between them which the mother lifted so the boy could rest his face against her upper arm. When she had crammed her big pack between her legs she spelled out a tickly secret word onto his palm, her fingernails a natural seashell pink, her fingers brown.

I know what you wrote, he said.

I don’t think so.

He got the stuff from the back pocket of his shorts and found his chewed-up yellow pencil. He rested Cameron’s father’s business card on his knee and carefully wrote DILE on the back of it. When she had read it he returned everything to its place.

Wow. That’s a lot of stuff you carry.

My papers, he said.

I didn’t know boys had papers.

The boy could not think what he could say. They sat awhile. He looked up the aisle. He had never been on a Greyhound before and was pretty happy to see the toilet at the back.

You’re very tall, Dial, he said at last.

Tall for a girl. Not everybody’s cup of tea.

You’re my cup of tea, Dial.

She laughed suddenly loudly, putting her lovely hand across her mouth. He wished he could call her Mom.

You have lots of colors, Dial. The boy’s ears were burning. He did not know where all these words were coming from. Grandma would have been amazed to hear him talk so much.

The mother took a hank of her hair and pulled it over one eye like a mask, squinting through it, a field of wheat, every seed and stalk a slightly different color. She had a big nose and wide lips. She was very beautiful, everyone had always said so, but this was bigger than they said, better.

I’m a bitzer, she said.

What’s a bitzer, Dial?

Suddenly she kissed his cheek.

Bits of this and bits of that.

He was shy again, looked up the aisle. The windshield glass was starred with sunlight.

Dial was searching in the big hiking pack between her legs. She had lots of books down there, he saw them, candy too, some yellow socks.

How will Grandma find me?

The book she now removed had two dogs fighting on its cover, blood was everywhere, she was giving him a Hershey bar. The chocolate was soft and bendy. Thank you, he said. How will she find me, Dial?

She opened her strange book at the beginning. He noted with disapproval that she cracked its spine.

Grandma knew we were going to run away?

Uh-huh, she said, and turned a page.

He tasted the melted chocolate, considering this.

Is the chocolate nice? she asked at last.

Yes, Dial. Thank you. It’s my favorite.

She lowered the dog book to her lap. You’ll talk to her real soon, she said. We’ll phone her.

Where will we go?

You heard-Philly.

Apart from that.

It’s a surprise, sweetie. Don’t look so worried. It’s the best surprise you could ever have.

She went back to her book. He thought, If my grandma had known I was leaving she would have kissed me good-bye. Also-she would have made him take his own suitcase and promise to brush his teeth. So his grandma was against all this. A good sign, so he figured.

What sort of surprise? he asked. He could think of only one surprise he wanted. His heart was going fast again.