Ursula Pflug - Seeds and Other Stories

Only to be of any help to him, I had to unlock all my boxes, and they were glued mighty shut. Yanking all those rusty nails out cost me more than it did him. It cost him too, but by the end of the week he’d gained some. He didn’t even hate his mother anymore. Saw that where her handiwork left off, his had picked up. That surprised him. It always does.

It’s like kindergarten, really; making animals out of clay. Just for the hell of it, you think you’ll make a monster. Then when clay class is over, you’re stuck with it, saying, “Where did this monster come from?” Like you hadn’t made it all by your lonesome. But by the end of the week, he’d finally understood. That if you got the itch to make something, there are other things besides monsters. It’s not like it’s written in the rule book somewhere, that a monster is what you have to make. Only a lot of people see it that way. Some make big monsters, some make little ones. By the end of clay class, you’ve got one hell of a collection. And all those monsters, boy, do they have some party.

He told me about his daughter. Miranda. His stories of her felt like me. That’s how come I could get at him; I knew her so well. After he left I had to call, explain things. It’s policy. Dumbfuck policy, but you know how policy gets. It’s stick to it or your job. It was just my luck she answered the phone.

“Hi,” she said, all breathless, like I was her girlfriend or someone she’d been expecting.

I sat there in that grey-walled room, the telephone in one hand, his gun in the other. I’d made him leave it, but now I was wishing I hadn’t. I was thinking I would shoot myself instead of talk to her. Not for her, you understand.

For me it would be easier. But I did. Tell her. I told her her daddy wasn’t coming home anymore. Told her why, what it was he’d planned. Told her things he’d said, things no one in the world but her could’ve known. Things that made her breathing go funny over the telephone.

I hoped she wasn’t crying. I wondered what it looked like, the room she was sitting in. Not grey. Please, for her sake, let it not be grey.

“I hate him,” she said, when she could say something.

“I know, honey. I know. He won’t hurt you now.”

Now, if he hurts anyone, it’ll be himself. But I didn’t say that part, didn’t tell her I couldn’t get rid of the monster, could only turn it inside out.

“I only know your word that what you said he was gonna do is true. I know you said you made it so he’s never coming back. I know I loved my daddy. I love him. Even right now I do.”

His gun lay stupid in my lap, stupid and silent. I couldn’t use it now. I never could have used it. On me. On anyone. I’m just not made that way. She’d led me to the spot, the one we come to, all of us, sooner or later. The spot that was my job. Take people there, take them out of it again. If you can. Everyone but me. For me the spot was made of memory, the feeling of a little girl I’d been, all crumpled up and thrown away. Was still. So I told her. I couldn’t do anything else, just tell her and tell her, how it had been with me and him.

She listened to me, like the little trouper she was.

She was just a kid, like I’d been. Only for me there hadn’t been anyone to explain. Why I survived, when my testimony sent my daddy away for good. That I loved him too, always would, no matter how much I hated him. That neither love nor hate would make me free.

That it was him who was bad, and not me.

And after I’d said goodbye to her his monster was still with me, sticky like glue. I felt like it was mine now, and not his. Even after four years, you sometimes forget how to let it go. His murderous heart was circling me, in orbit around my soul like a darkened moon.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Only one place this comes from,” I said, smearing a line of blue powder down my nose. “Help yourself.”

But he was already painting it around his eyes, laughing at himself, a blue raccoon. That’s how it works. It sinks into the skin, gets absorbed into the bloodstream.

Finds the heart, the brain.

“Thank you for loving me as much as you do,” said Little Davis.

Oh, The Blues, you learn to live The Blues. The Blues is what we call it because of its colour, little packets of blue powder, fringe benefits to the trade. If you have the habit, you’re Living the Blues. Officially it’s not habit forming but what else could it be for how it makes you feel. Like you’re loved. Like you love. Love. That’s our other name for it. Love and Blues, two opposite kind of names, for the paradox it is, the double-edged blade.

We’re given an allotment to use in therapy on the clients where nothing else works; sometimes it can make people see the truth of themselves, but without violence, without pain. Makes them able to perform that open-heart surgery of the psyche that is necessary to their survival, to ours. Gives them a little light to travel their dark river. We are only their guides, and not always good ones. We suffice.

Ostensibly the government bureaucrats who administer the Clinics issue it to us for therapeutic use only, but they give us a lot more than we need to patch up all the broken suckers that walk in the door. It’s an open secret that it’s our danger pay. The breakdowns, the burnouts among therapists are so high they know the only way they can keep us is with The Blues. And by the time we realize how dangerous, how hard the work really is, and are ready to quit, we’re hooked. By then we’re strung out. ’Cause after you’ve emptied yourself, after you’ve torn yourself into tiny pieces leading some poor stranger home, you need a little solace for yourself as well, a little Love to get you through the night. And after a while you just need.

It took Little to teach me that as good as it works, it isn’t the real thing. You lose that distinction. If you ever knew the difference, you forget. Little died, and I remembered. It’s an imitation, and a cheap one, and the closest so many people ever get to love.

“How much did it cost?”

“Did what cost?” asks Benji, rolling a joint.

“Your peace,” I say. “I don’t trust it. You got to tell me how much it cost.”

Benji. For the first time I see what looks like an emotion on her face. A little half smile like a voice breaking. Since Chuckie went away, Benji has learned how to be still, how to be alone. But somewhere it still hurts. I can tell. In this business, you learn all the signs.

“It cost,” says Benji. “It cost.”

“You just like the wife killers, Benji.” I say it through my teeth, slouching way down in the grey chair: “You just like the twisted fuckers you is paid to fix. You just ain’t as far gone.”

“How so?” asks Benji, supercilious, raising an eyebrow. In this business, we learn bad games. We even learn to like them.

“You just like them, Benji. Deep down all you want is to be loved.”

She laughs. Benji’s laugh. “And you, Ruby, what do you want?”

“That is so easy, Benji, so easy. I want Little to be alive again. I didn’t love him enough. That’s why he dead, Benji, because of me. His jalloo murdered him, but it could just as well have been me.”

“But honey,” she says, “you didn’t even know what love was. How could you know, being what you are?”

We went home to my place. We walked there, stopping in alleyways to paint ourselves with blue graffiti. I live in a loft, further down the river on Kenya Road. All the way there Little kept telling me he loved me. It got to be embarrassing. This guy is such a kid, I’d think, letting the stuff go to his head so much.