-August 30th-
As usual, the air raid alarm went off Wednesday afternoon and the town dripped out of their front doors and headed for their designated shelters. The shelters were wonderful places to socialize and catch up with friends and now people treated Wednesday afternoons more like church meetings than anything else.
That day, it was raining.
And droplets of water tipped from heaven's watering can drummed fingers on the rooftops of the shelters and snapped against the pavement like tap dancing shoes. Umbrellas were sprouting mushrooms and the town was as solemn as Islamic women on dusty street corners and clothed in gauzy burqas of rain.
Charlie's mother wasn't hurrying anywhere and the walk from the house to their shelter was a couple blocks down and she had to stop twice to light cigarettes. She took her time. She said to Charlie that she was just getting old.
Regardless, there was too much slack in the air for Charlie.
He needed to be moving. And since Mother was plodding, he ran around the street collecting half-drowned worms and depositing them on grass and dirt, away from unseeing boots. Water dripped down his forehead and became little depression-era men committing suicide off of the bridge of his nose.
About three-quarters of the way to the shelter, the rain let up.
At about that time, the sound of airplanes also appeared over the horizon and, like a flock of geese in V-formation with engines honking and choking and snarling, bombers paraded overhead. Mother swore and the cigarette in her mouth dropped to the pavement.
Next thing he knew, Charlie was under her arm and they were sprinting towards the shelter.
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-September 11th-
There was a doctor at the foot of his bed with skin that was dry, cracked farmland with plow marks scarring it and eyes that were shrunken up and nearly disappeared into his face. A stethoscope hung around his neck like a feather boa curling around the neck of a socialite woman. Beside him was his nurse.
Charlie looked at them blankly.
The doctor said, “He's making a tremendous improvement in health and stability, but all the surgeons I've talked to just aren't willing to take his case.”
“What's the big deal, huh? You take a scalpel and scrape. And then you take some plastic and fill up the holes.”
“Malpractice.”
“Malpractice. They're worried about saving their asses, when this kid could be like this for the rest of his life.”
“I guess it's their choice.”
“And the government's not willing to help.”
“Sugar, the government's got enough on it's hands as it is.”
“Is there anything we could do?”
“I don't know anything about this. And besides, he's gonna live, at least until we ride through the storm, anyway. I've got other people to help. Other people that are going to die, while this kid just needs a lot of botox and a mother.”
“You can look at him from a purely medical standpoint, doctor. You can sympathize. But can everyone else? Huh? Are they going to keep from laughing and pointing and running this kid's life on the rocks?”
“I can't be worried about aesthetics.”
“And what about cancer?”
“I've got collapsed lungs and failing hearts and puncture wounds and sawed off limbs. He'll live. Just let him recover.”
***
Charlie's father was an only child.
Charlie's mother had a single brother who lived in Chicago with pupils the size of sentence periods and granules of cocaine clinging to his nostrils like salt on the rim of a margarita glass. His body had still not been recovered.
Both sets of grandparents were dead.
***
-September 13th-
When they stepped into the room, everything grew tired.
Things became hollow and shabby like old cars with rotting seats and ragged grills sinking into the grass and rust. The lights became dim and they cast a jaundiced glow, making the walls the faces of liver cancer patients.
Joseph, the man, was thin and his back was bent over slightly and his clothes were draped across his shoulders. Liesel, the woman, had a tight, shriveled face and her back was as straight as that of a death row convict sitting in an electric chair. They were gray people. And the oxygen that they circulated was stale.
Charlie stared.
As he usually did.
The doctor ushered them to his bedside and gestured at him.
“Here he is.”
The man returned his stare with glassy, wall-mounted deer eyes. The woman's face puckered even further and she turned away shaking her head and swearing.
“Godssakes, no! There's no chance in heaven or hell or anything in between that we'd let that thing live under our roof. It's disgusting.”
The doctor shrugged. “That's your choice, I guess.”
“We need the money, Liesel,” Joseph said.
His voice was hard and biting, like pebbles inside the combat boots of soldiers, pinching feet.
“God did not intend for people to look like that.”
“It doesn't matter.”
“We'd have to close our drapes and lock our doors and plant bushes all around our yard. And we'd better be recognized as saints and have our names written on the guest book up in heaven.”
“It's him or bankruptcy.”
Liesel sighed and turned to the doctor. “He has to stay here for a while longer, right?”
“A few days maybe.”
“And there's nothing that can be done?”
“The surgery required would too dangerous, too costly, and could make things worse. If he develops cancer, then we'll start cutting things out.”
Liesel turned back to Charlie and looked at him and covered her mouth with a handkerchief as if he were some kind of beggar with sores on his skin begging for nickels and dimes on streetcorners. She shook her head and crossed herself.
“God help me.”
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Most Sundays I sat on the church pew in the very back of the cathedral sitting next to Liesel as she prayed and listened to the congregation singing hymnals whose notes were strung together like black birds on telephone wires. I would sit there with my mask and pretend I was somewhere else. I would pretend that I was not the one the people were praying for or whispering about or pitying. Usually nothing could take me away from the cathedral. My mind was like an American kidnapped by terrorists and tied to a chair in front of a video camera.
The priest sprayed words like a fire sprinkler.
See, I came to hate the church not because of the teachings necessarily, but because of that fact that it represented everything that Liesel was. It was her life. It was the basis of every decision she made. So I came to associate sickness and despair and anger with voices reciting Kyrie, and sacramental wafers.
When stained-glass faces smile at me or church choirs pushing all their sin out of their lungs and into the air as music, I feel Liesel punching my stomach or beating my back . I hear her screaming:
Bastard.
Mutant.
Sinner.
An aside: she never hit my face when she disciplined.
Because she couldn't bear the thought of touching it.
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-September 14th-
The bandages sagged from Charlie's face. His hands, arms, and head were completely wrapped in them and over the course of fifteenth days they had almost become a second skin. Underneath them, Charlie felt like an Egyptian pharaoh shriveling up so that his limbs became as thin as Victorian women stuffed into corsets, surrounded by jars filled with his organs and earthly possessions. It was a comfortable feeling. It was warm and quiet and although Charlie was gaining movement in his fingers and toes and arm joints, he chose to sit completely still, completely silent so that maybe Death, while making his rounds, would think he was dead and sit by his side for a while.
Like ravens landing on the outstretched arms of scarecrows.
Maybe Death would bring him news on his mother and father's situation.
So far, though, Death was too smart.
The only things that landed on Charlie, burrowed into his ears and took up residence there as echoes, were all the night sounds replayed during the day like mockingbirds burping up swear words. He had long since stopped talking to the other people in his room, because the policeman and one of the teenage girls had died and their beds were empty now and he didn't want to make the effort of laying his soul naked if all the audience was going to do in response was die.
On day eleven, the doctor and two nurses came into his room and stopped at the end of his bed.
The doctor said that it was time to replace his bandages with smaller band-aids.
He also said that it may hurt a little.
The two nurses, with hands gloved with latex, began unwinding the bandages masking his head and they gathered in intestinal coils on his stomach. Eventually, the nurses reached the point where the gauze was tacky with Charlie's blood and pus, took a deep collective breath and began scraping at the bandages like gum on the undersides of school desks.
To Charlie, it felt as if his face was being ripped away.
It felt like someone had decrowned the crucified Christ and was shoving a wreath of thorns into his forehead, cheeks, chin.
Charlie began to scream.
And the walls allowed his noise to pass through them and into the other rooms of the hospital with all the other sounds like border patrol guards perusing immigration papers and visas.
