Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

At last, I got a crumpled bit of paper at the bottom of my locker saying Gramm would be alone at his house on a Friday afternoon. I left school early that day and walked the two miles to his house. When I rang the doorbell there was no answer and I sat for an hour on the front lawn before I saw Gramm coming up the hill. He spotted me from a hundred yards and slowed his pace. When he reached the driveway he gave a nod and then stood mute for a minute or two, glancing from the tarmac to the house to me. He looked tired and nervous. When he headed for the back door, I followed him inside. In the kitchen, Gramm hesitated by the sink and from the way he hunched over it, I thought he might be sick to his stomach.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Why did you come?” His voice had no sarcasm in it now.

The question plagued him.

“I got your note,” I said softly, knowingly, the way I imagined a lover would speak of such things. He bowed his head, shamed by the memory, and as I saw his cheeks redden I felt a pity for him so overwhelming it brought tears to my eyes. I crossed the room and laid a hand gently on his shoulder. His body convulsed as though my fingers were the live ends of a power cord. He jerked from under my touch, reaching back to swat away my arm. I stepped forward again and placed a hand on his chest.

“Don’t touch me!” he shouted.

I ran my fingers through his golden hair.

His fist smashed into my stomach and I grabbed at his upper arm with both hands but he shook himself free and pushed me onto the floor. I rolled onto my belly and lay silent, my erection throbbing against the hard tiles.

With my eyes closed, I imagined him as a gladiator, wearing breastplate and shield, the sun warming his full shoulders, the crowd cheering him on. With a nod of the head, the emperor tells his champion to give the people what they want. I smell the bronzed skin of his ankle, listen to the masses roar.

Behind me, the cupboard opened and I heard his lips on the mouth of a bottle.

“Get up,” he said.

I made no response, and he yelled again—“Get up!”—kicking me in the flank. But I held my ground.

Twice more the force of his shoe nearly lifted me off the floor, stripping my mind of everything but this lucid pain. His voice filled the void.

“Garbage,” he whispered. “You’re garbage.”

He crouched over me and using both hands yanked my pants down from my waist. Standing, he pressed the toe of his shoe between my legs. “My father says people like you are sick. You’ve got some kind of moral sickness. Like you want to be a woman but you’re just a weak, puny shit of a boy and everything your sick mind wants is dirt.”

He removed his shoe from between the cheeks of my ass and kicked me there, forcing water into my eyes. But I made no sound.

“Talk to me, you little fuck!” he shouted.

Something heavy and sharp edged struck my back and I couldn’t help letting out a groan. Across the kitchen floor, the tabby cat stared.

I heard Gramm take up the bottle again and leave the room.

For some time, I lay quiet. My side ached and I could feel blood leaking from the cut. The sound of television echoed in the other room. I got up and stepping out of my crumpled pants walked half naked into the den. On the TV screen, cops pinned down a Latino man who was yelling something as a group of small children wailed on the shoulder of a freeway. The shuddering of a helicopter’s wings muffled the voices. A giant recliner faced the TV. As I walked closer I saw the top of Gramm’s head over its back, his legs stretched onto the footrest. He lifted his bottle to his mouth and swallowed. I walked around to stand between him and the television. His mouth hung slightly open as he gazed at my body, stripped from the waist down.

“You must want to die,” he said.

He stepped out of the chair. I closed my eyes. This must have been a fresh insult to him, for as soon as he reached me he slapped me across the face. Once the first blow came, the rest followed in a hail, knuckles to my temple and cheek, a knee against my chest. I fell to one side, collapsing onto the carpet. My mind drifted as I heard him pull down his jeans and then I felt his warm flesh against my back as he crawled on top of me, spreading my legs with his knees. The children’s keening rose above the beating of the chopper’s wings and the roar of the crowd in my head. Furiously, he stabbed me, again and again.

“WHAT ON EARTH have you been doing?” Mrs. Polk asked when I stepped into the living room. “Watch out! You’ll get blood on the carpet.”

Her mother hauled her attention from the television and shouted, “WHO’S THIS!”

“THE BOY!” Mrs. Polk yelled back. “THE BOY! The one who lives with us.”

“OH!” her mother shouted before raising the volume. A couple in riding gear cantered over the lawn of a manor house. I leaned against the door and fainted.

NATALIA, THE MAID, drove me to the emergency room, where they washed the blood from my face and thighs.

A nurse in her twenties, wearing lozenge-shaped silver earrings like the ones my mother had on when I lifted her head from the oven to rest on my lap, asked me lots of questions about where I had been and what had happened. I told her I was walking home from school when a guy in a van full of sheet glass offered me a ride; he brought me to a clearing in the woods, I said. They took X rays and told me there was no permanent damage. The nurse said I should come back and talk to someone at the hospital but I told her I already had a shrink. Natalia gave me a crucifix and begged me to wear it around my neck.

At school, most people were too afraid to ask what had happened, except the lady in the office, who wept when I gave her the doctor’s note. A mugging in the city, it said.

The few times I saw Gramm, he walked quickly in the other direction. He stopped coming to Mr. Raffello’s class, which for me was the only place I felt any sense of purpose. I gave my pine chest another sanding with the finest grade of paper, smoothing every sharp corner and point. With a cloth, I applied the first coat of stain, a dark, amber brown that brought out the grain of the wood nicely. When it was dry I put on another coat, and over that a shiny polyurethane finish. To complete the design, I chose a brass lock from the hardware and affixed it to the lid.

Mr. Raffello went around the classroom examining students’

work. When he reached my bench, his eyes wandered my face, reading the marks and bruises like a story he’d heard a hundred times before.

“Who hit you?” he asked.

I stared at the hem of his black shop coat, imagined it as a ferryman’s cape. Maybe he’d think my tale unremarkable, having known so many. Maybe he’d listen in comprehending silence as he rowed me across.

“Nobody,” I said.

“What are you going to do with the chest?”

I pictured myself curled inside it.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, you’ve done a good job,” he muttered. “Put your address on it. I’ll drop it off next week.”

I’D KEPT A set of keys to my parents’ house and as the real estate lady hadn’t found a buyer yet, the place was empty. I’d go in the afternoons to sit in my room, where the water glass still waited on the bedside table and the clock radio faithfully kept time. From the window, where I watched for Gramm, I heard my father turning the pages of his newspaper, my mother whispering; the sounds floated in the hallway just outside my door. The house was rotting. I’d left just one note in Gramm’s locker, telling him that I came here after school, asking him to visit. For days after that, I didn’t see him.

Someone mentioned he was sick and had been missing soccer practice. Still, I went to my house and waited.