Sunil Yapa - Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

No more birds, no more grass, alien life in exile, how could we ever ask anyone to fully inhabit the human life of someone so distant? We cannot ask this man to see where his product will go, how far it will travel, all the way to the shores of Vietnam, to the forests and paddies and roads. Hanoi — what the hell is that supposed to mean? We cannot ask him to know or to control the passage of time, how that war will end, and his gas still moving through the world, not yet done with its journey. We cannot ask this man to see the destination of his work, the consequence of what he uses his love and time and life to make. Cannot ask him to see the tear gas falling in the streets of Seattle, billowing around the bodies of peaceful protesters, cannot ask him there in 1964, perfecting CS gas in his lab, to hear the coughing it produces in Victor’s body in 1999, to hear the wheezing or the awful scratching, to feel Victor’s eyes burning in his head, cannot ask him as he fiddles, measuring and testing, ask him to hear above his humming the future screams or the stomping feet, cannot ask him to imagine the human courage required to sit in this cloud of poison gas and not move, to allow it to swirl and gather at your feet, to slide inside your clothes, to kiss your skin with its cracked fever lips, to lick at your face with its burning tongue. No, we cannot ask him to do that. He is alienated from his work. He is perfecting tear gas. He rides his bike to work. He gets terrible headaches. His youngest daughter does not speak. Rent is due.

The granulated mist drifting down like a poisoned spring rain.

Five feet in front of Victor the cops were going after Edie. Edie who had sat down in place of the Doctor. The Doctor whom they’d dragged away by the hair. She was chanting, her arms linked at the elbow to the people on either side of her. Victor watching a fat cop hit her in the face with the pepper spray. The way her chest was heaving as she struggled to breathe made him feel sick and angry, and angry wasn’t really the word, and afraid all over again. He looked at John Henry, but John Henry was lost in the chant.

WE ARE WINNING

WE ARE WINNING

WE ARE WINNING

The cops stepped back to consult in a group. They gestured and talked and glanced at Edie writhing in pain. They decided something and one man went to his truck and returned with a medical kit.

Edie wasn’t screaming. Her body rocked back and forth in silence where she sat.

The cops rummaged inside the medical kit and then approached again. This time they had Q-tips and gauze. They dipped the Q-tips in pepper spray. They rubbed delicately around her streaming eyes. One cop tried to pry open her eyelids, but her head was whipping violently from side to side and he couldn’t get a hold. He stepped over the arms and stood behind her. He put her gray head between his legs and squeezed with his knees. With one hand on her forehead, and the other lifting her chin, he held her still.

They wore white latex gloves to protect their hands from the pepper spray and Victor watched as the man who had brought the medical kit from his truck worked the Q-tips under Edie’s eyelid. Her body trembled between the man’s knees. The man inserted the Q-tip into the other eye and ran it around as if trying to clear some obstruction and Victor wasn’t angry anymore. There was no room left for anger.

The cops stood back again to see what would happen. They looked like some weird version of bedside nurses. Stepped back as if maybe a little curious to see what would happen when you applied pepper spray with a Q-tip under the eyelids of a seated woman whose head was held tight between a man’s armored knees.

One cop snapped his white glove and said something which made another cop chuckle and nod.

What happened was Edie began vomiting. Still she wouldn’t scream. Just handfuls of white vomit spilling from her mouth.

The cops pulled at her arms, but still she wouldn’t let go. They seemed a little confused. They tipped the bottle over, soaked the gauze with the pepper spray, then wiped the gauze around her foam-covered mouth.

They ran the Q-tips up her nose.

Their latex gloves ministering to her body with heat and pain. They rubbed and poked and prodded. Then they stepped back, curious to see what would happen.

Victor fighting the tears and begging her to let go.

Please, Edie.

One cop absently twisted the gauze above her head, squeezing the excess pepper spray into her open mouth.

Victor didn’t understand it. What force inside her allowed her to endure that kind of pain? What inner reserve of strength? What was possibly going on inside this woman that gave her the strength to sit silently and not scream?

She was throwing up from the pain. What inner force?

Love?

Faith?

Conviction?

Vomiting and convulsing and gasping for breath and still not releasing and still not screaming and Victor watching her and choking back the sobs that wanted to leap from his throat. He wouldn’t cry. He would witness. He would be brave.

Please, Edie. Jesus, please, just let go.

Was it love, and then what kind of love was that — love for the action, love for lockdown, some sort of love for the earth and her six billion human fellows? Was her belief in justice enough? Compassion has its limits. It only went so deep, right? Victor thought this pain went all the way down. Whatever it was, Victor found he wasn’t angry anymore. He watched as she rocked back and forth and the cops in their latex gloves stood by curious and talking, absentmindedly pulling on her arms, and he wasn’t scared and he wasn’t angry even as his own chest hitched and heaved.

Finally, it was enough. Edie released her arms and her seated body pitched sideways to the ground. The cops were pulling her wrists behind her back and cuffing her even as she continued to throw up on her peasant blouse and Victor no longer felt the need to fight the tears. He let them come.

He tried a little whisper and his face went hot, a little breath of a chant to beat back the morning air.

The people

John Henry’s eyes crumpling at the edges where the skin gathered in folds. John Henry cracking a smile behind his paint-splattered bandanna. He looked over and dropped Victor a wink.

The second time Victor’s voice was just above a whisper. A sort of croaking carried away by the breeze.

The people united

John Henry’s broken mud-clod voice, chanting. His red beard and crooked teeth. His chunky black glasses. Can another man’s belief sustain you in your fear? Is a friend — nothing more than a friend, a real and true friend — enough?

The third time his voice cracked.

The people united will never—

He felt it in his chest, a growling vibration rising through his ribs, his larynx, his full voice, the rumbling of his vocal cords, the sound climbing through his throat.

The wind died and the smoke descended and Edie’s body was mercifully swallowed back into the gray. A kid went skateboarding through the smoke in a torn shirt and suspenders. The cans followed him with a whisper down the street. Victor’s goggles fogging with tears, and no, afraid was not the word for what he now felt, his voice exploding into the air as if by suicide bomb. John Henry’s fingers reaching for his in the awkward pipe. John Henry barking, his own voice raised in strength to match Victor’s, and Victor roaring now, his voice like thunder growing in his belly and spilling from his mouth, their voices sharing the same words, raised into the air proclaiming their belief, their togetherness.

THE PEOPLE UNITED

WILL NEVER BE

DIVIDED

THE PEOPLE UNITED

WILL NEVER BE

DIVIDED

THE PEOPLE UNITED

WILL NEVER BE

DIVIDED

For five hours now the tear gas had been falling. The streets swarmed with smoke and John Henry coughed and chanted and grimaced behind his bandanna, watching the cops as they stalked and fired.