Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

(for 4 or more players)

The night before they go in behind enemy lines the children write their names on their chests with permanent markers. They write their names on their shoes with greasepaint. They carve hearts into the plaster beside their beds & cram them full of initials.

The children fall asleep repeating their names to themselves. They discover new names inside their names. The new names are the names their ghosts will have. They knot little nooses of dental floss around the names & tie them to their pinkies.

The machine gun bursts splashes in the sand, as if flaying it with whips. The sky is so blue that someone will have to give it a name like Tom or Beginning. One of the children finds that his gun is made of ice. Another child finds that his gun is made of dried dirt. A third child finds that he is the gun & he cannot stop killing. In Pittsburgh the children are burning the federal buildings tonight.

(for 4 children & an audience of voters)

One child must come from a family that sleeps in the caves. One child must come from a family that sleeps underground. One child finds a hollow tree & fills it with the stuffed animals he steals from the supermarket trash bins. One child bites into a doughnut & breaks his front teeth on a piece of sea glass. The children decide which child is It & the It child must run for president.

The It child walks into crowds of thousands, shaking hands with all the men & kissing the cheeks of all the women & rubbing perfumed oils on the foreheads of the babies. He must appear on TV & pretend like there is no camera in the room. He says words & then some of the members of the audience of voters repeat the words. Other members of the audience of voters go home & rewire their radios.

When the It child is assassinated backstage after a speech the other children write books about the It child. They appear on radio talk shows & discuss the mystery of the It child. They drop a bucketful of pennies into the dryer & listen to them clatter.

The day I got my period, my mother and father took me to pick my madman. The whole time, my dad kept his hands in his pockets and my mom acted like it was her show. I hadn’t let her in on how scared I was that I might be a freak born with endometrial tissue of steel. Apparently it didn’t cross her mind that I might be worried, watching all my friends go through it and what was up with my body. I stopped digging, looked in my pants, and told her what was going on in there, and what she said was, “All right, but hurry and get back out here.”

It was getting toward lunch and we were digging a drainage ditch from the shed down to the woods. With my lateness, our preparations had become elaborate. We thought of everything, and my madman was going to really like his situation, I felt sure. We had a couple chickens he could take care of or else eat. Some of the almond trees still dropped nuts, and who doesn’t like nuts? We had a circle of rocks for a fire pit with a view of the creek and an iron pot handed down from my grandmother, the one that her madman used and her father’s madman used before that. In the shed I’d hung the curtains from my room before I was old enough to make my own decisions. They had a tassel fringe that I thought looked like paper-chain dolls with their hands merged together.

So I ran inside and did my best to remember what she’d told me about tampons when I was like ten, and then I ran back out and we finished the ditch even though I felt heavy and gross. In the shed we freshened up the straw, and then I went back inside again to shower while my mom called my dad at work so he could meet us. A lot of people would consider my mother grim, but I could hear her on the phone, at least until I turned on the water, and she sounded excited about taking me for my big day.

In the shower, I thought about my madman. It was getting hotter, so there were going to be a lot to choose from. Over the weekend, at my friend Carrie’s birthday, we’d told our fortunes with a questionnaire we found online. Her madman wouldn’t come out but we’d heard the basics about him. For what kind of house I wanted I put Treehouse, Houseboat, Malibu Mansion, and for my risk choice, Outhouse. If you don’t put a risk, it undermines the integrity. For what kind of job I put Parachuter, Famous Scientist, Hang-Gliding Instructor, and World Peace —which isn’t a job, but it’s the thought that counts. For who I was going to marry I put Anthony, No One, A Lesbian, and Yo’ Mama. For pet I put Yo’ Mama, Giraffe, Ant Farm, and Crabs. I was completely not being serious by the time I got to car because I know I’m never getting a car so I just put Anything, Flying Saucer, Argh!!! and Who cares my parents are never getting me a car (though the window only had room for twenty characters, so it ended up Who cares my parents ). But the point is I got serious with the madman question. Even kids who seem like they don’t care about their madman are faking it. They care.

“How did you know which madman was yours?” I asked Carrie later, in private. She said she looked each of them in the eyes, even just for a fraction of a second with the fast ones, but then with her madman she got them to take her into his cell — he was in the far back corner and she’d almost thought the cell was empty. He was pale and “Seriously,” she said, “I know it’s hard to believe, but he blended in. ” I wondered if he was an albino madman, which suddenly seemed exotic and perfect.

“Is that how you knew?” I asked.

“No,” she said. All the other girls were asleep. It was dark and we were near the window, face to face with our legs over opposite arms of a giant overstuffed chair, with the black sky surrounding us and everyone’s sleeping bags covering the living room floor. It was like we were in a rowboat, bobbing in a sea made of our sleeping friends. “I went in and he wouldn’t look at me. I put my hand on his chin like this, you know, like when an older man wants to kiss you in the movies.” She shrugged. It seemed like our boat rocked. “I know that sounds creepy, but it’s not. I just felt older than him, and he kept turning his chin and not looking at me.”

“Will he look at you now?” I asked.

“That’s not the point,” she said. “Plus none of your beeswax.” She said she picked that phrase up from her madman.

I wanted one like my uncle had, who was an accomplished musician. Special. Or one time I was downtown, some girl was totally engrossed in window shopping, and her madman was sniffing around the sidewalk, lifting pebbles with his toes, humming very low, very soothing. I pretended like I was window shopping too, to get closer, and when I caught the tune, it didn’t even seem to be coming from him. More like it was surrounding him, moving through him, something like religion, or wisdom. Some people would be surprised how important wisdom is to me. I try to remember what he hummed, but I was young and I can’t remember. I mean, I know I’m still young. But your brain changes.

Deep in the night I woke up and it was just me in the giant chair. Across the room, across the ocean of sleeping girls like waves, I saw Carrie and her madman in the doorway that went into the kitchen. They were silhouetted, standing forehead to forehead, passing a sandwich back and forth. Then the madman reached over and tugged on a handful of her hair. Like ringing a bell, but soft. Then Carrie reached over for a handful of his hair and tugged back.

Of course I don’t remember my online fortune, that’s never the part that sticks, and no one believes it anyhow. It’s more about answering the questions plus what you’re willing to tell people.