Fanon (27 page)

And because she's old and can't work miracles, often my mother thinks of herself as a roach. Nasty and useless, scared and doomed as one of those panicked roaches scrambling everywhichway after her mother, my grandmother, Freeda, crept tippy-toe before anybody else out of bed winter mornings and lit the kitchen oven to warm the frigid ass-end of the rowhouse on Cassina Way, and the big dumb bugs—still busy picnicking on scraps and crumbs, forgetting like they do every time that fire's coming and the all-night party the last one for a whole bunch of them—would come flying and scooting away from the heat to discover Grandma Freeda waiting for them with both feet alert and a carpet slipper in one hand whap, whap, whap, deadly as god. My mother, scurrying along one of the hospital's long, gleaming, piss-stinky corridors, is sure god has his reasons she wouldn't understand any better than roaches understood my grandmother's murderous slipper, good reasons for being angry with creatures he fashioned in his likeness who behave no better than dirty, pesky, good-for-nothing insects even though she wonders
why god on his high throne would waste much anger or time on them, wouldn't he just roll his eyes, suck his teeth, and go on and do whatever else he needed to do, no surprise, was it, human beings still hurting and killing one another by ones and twos and hundreds and thousands these Last Days, just like they been killing for thousands of years, people killing people almost as fast as birthing people it seems, even though it seems the people population growing fast as roaches every day. She could see why god would despise such sorry creatures, but he wouldn't
despise,
would he, after loving us into being,
despise, hate
the wrong words for what he'd feel toward humans he'd given a human nature, just as he gave roaches roach nature, why would he be surprised roaches act like roaches if roach is what he put in them, why crinkle his brow or fuss or punish the things people do to one another and to themselves, it's not news, not the score of a Super Bowl he didn't already know before it started which team would win, so not a matter of hating or despising, maybe, more like just being bored, like he's tired of the foolishness and ugliness on TV, and strikes a match, and quick, opens the oven door, and quick, sticks it in the fire to catch the swoosh of gas filling up the oven. Jerks his arm out the way and quick slams the door. Waits with a slipper in his hand for them to come tearing out the holes they had sneaked into. Whap.

He's coming down the hall, slipper in his golden hand. Whap. She smiles to herself thinking what a foolish thing for an old crippled-up woman in a wheelchair to think the master of the universe didn't have nothing better to do than chase her down a hospital hallway. Mashed-up, bloody old slipper in the same fist had squeezed light from stars and set planets spinning like tops and shaped her out of mirey clay and lifted her up close enough to his sweet lips to blow in a breath of life. All those wonders performed and here she comes this morning busybody minding some other body's business, as if she didn't know better, as if she didn't know she should leave well
enough alone, as if she could play hide-and-seek with him, as if her old stick arms, these wheels for legs could scoot her along too fast to be noticed from where he sits on high. As if he's finished with her. Nothing to lose, nothing of her left worth breaking or stealing or humbling she's down so low down to a bitter nub and all alone at last with nothing but her pitiful roach self in this pitiful chair he got to be done with me she thinks out loud and wonders why he isn't, why she feels his breath on the back of her neck, why her skin's hot with shame and guilty knowledge because here she goes again poking her nose into somebody else's business, whoever the person was behind a door she guesses is locked and the key in a bear's pocket.

A few nurses in this hospital she wouldn't blow her nose on or wipe her ass with and then again a few of them tending her couldn't be nicer. If being a nurse her job, would she be one of the nice ones, the angel kind who never said no, never said too much or too little, who poked and stuck and drew blood the same gentle way they tucked her in or said good morning how you doing today, Mrs. Wyman, so the words sounded new, not like a scrap of food swept up off the floor nobody decent would think of putting in their mouth.

Nice like nice Nurse Mimi who reminds her of Cora Brunson at church in her all-white missionary uniform leading old folks to the particular pews where they been sitting each Sunday since way before Cora Brunson—who ain't no spring chicken—born, since before there was a Homewood AME Zion church on the corner of Bruston and Homewood, old people occupying the same exact seat every Sunday, a seat some of them couldn't locate if it wasn't for Cora Brunson remembering and leading them to it, poor old brains fuddled and fogged, further gone than hers, my mother thinks, worried about her little bit of roach brain left, enough left in those old ghost people to get dressed and out the house on Sunday morning and know the wrong place if somebody don't lead them to the right place they'd refuse to sit down in the wrong place, wag their
old heads
Huh-uh. No indeed,
and vanish, carrying off Homewood AMEZ with them if it wasn't for angels like Cora Brunson her hand guiding an elbow or taking the papery fingers slipped into hers. Cora a large woman, heavyset, you know, looks twice as large in all that missionary white with her bowlegs and overstuffed white gym shoes and little weensy white veil pinned like a bride on top her head. Even if your head bowed and eyes shut praying you knew when Cora Brunson passed up or down the red-carpeted aisle by the squeak of her bound up in fully packed nylon undergarments rubbing against the white uniform with not an inch to spare, squeaky like a man breaking in a new pair of Stacy Adams. Just like Cora Brunson, Nurse Mimi too big and black to be any kind of angel my mother would have thought before she knew better, way back when in Sunday school, a pale, empty-headed little color-struck girl, but today no doubt about it, an angel's what Nurse Mimi is. Thank you, dear. You're a real angel. You know you're an angel, don't you, Nurse Mimi. If nobody's told you lately, somebody sure needs to, so I will.

Oh, Ms. Wyman. Thank you so much. Do my best around here. Surely I do. But I sure ain't growing no wings.

You're kind, patient, respectful. As good as wings in this mean place.

Thank you. Like I said I do my best. When I change my mind about that, I'm outta here.

Stay as long as you're able, please, Nurse Mimi. Can't be easy, is it.

Know something, Ms. Wyman. This ward the easiest I've worked in a good while. Hands stay plenty busy, but this ward far, far from the worst.

Where's it hardest, if you wouldn't mind me asking.

Course I don't mind. It's preemies. The neonatal ward, Ms. Wyman. Doctors keeping newborns alive younger and younger. Means smaller and smaller. Some them poor little things look like they ain't got no business out here in this cold world. So tiny and
shivering and shriveled-up, you know. First time I worked the preemie ward I could hardly believe some them was real babies. More like shrunk-up old people dolls. Or little pink mice or puppies. Too tiny and funny-looking for human being babies. But that's what they surely are. Little-bitty people got personalities no different from you or me. Afterwhile you start thinking the big, fat, healthy babies lined up in the nursery window down the hall is the strange ones. But them preemies do take some getting used to. So small and weak. You be halfway scared to touch them. Ain't easy for the parents neither, Ms. Wyman. Can't blame them in a way. Who wants to claim a child look like it from Mars. Some scared the baby ain't gon make it, so they just can't touch. Some the mothers too young and dumb to be mothers. Babies theyselves. Pass on they crack habit and that's about all the preemies gon get from them. Anyway, we gown and glove up the mothers and some would hold the babies all day if we let em. Doctors better and better at keeping the wee-little ones alive but some come here ain't spozed to stay here. No way. So we still lose babies and it's hard. Little things ain't done nothing wrong to nobody but they ain't never had no chance. Me, I always be picking one the worse-off ones and giving it special attention. The little fighters ain't got nothing going for them but fight and your heart's rooting they make it even if your head figures ain't no way. But you hold them and talk to them, keep them fighting breath by breath. You ain't slighting the others. A particular one just plays on your mind all day while you working. When you home you hoping she still be there when you go in for your shift. Stay on an extra shift sometimes trying to keep one breathing. Don't pay to be softhearted if you working with the preemies. Lots the nurses up there don't sleep well. You on double double shift but what good's double days off if you can't sleep. Some the girls get into drugs, you know, to keep theyselves going. I wasn't no better, Ms. Wyman.

Anyway, it's hardest on the preemie ward. I been on post-op and
critical care and cancer but preemies the hardest. Takes the most out a person. Don't know how the girls work there regular stick with it. Did my rotation many a time, then I had to let it go. Never forget the day I walked in there and thought I was in jail. Seem like all the preemies in little cells, tied down with those tubes and wires hooked up to the monitors and alarms. See, you got to have alarms cause they cry so quiet. Can't holler to get your attention. Lungs one the last things grow in right. Lung problems finish most them preemies don't make it. I walked in one morning and seems like all them making that pitiful
peep-peep-peep
like baby chicks' noise you can barely hear instead of crying and hollering out loud like full-term babies. That quiet little sound got to me, Ms. Wyman. I thought to myself these babies asking me why they locked up in here, in this goddamn slam, excuse my English, Ms. Wyman, and nothing I could do but march my big self on by like some goddamn prison guard.

The preemie ward on Five, isn't it. Tried to visit the newborns once but the nurses turned me around.

Uh-huh. Only parents. Sounds like you getting familiar with this place. And getting around better too, ain't you, Ms. Wyman. Good for you.

Did you know there's a policeman guarding one of the rooms on Three.

We get police and paramedics in here when they bring in hurt people off the street. Sometimes they bring an inmate from over the prison for an operation. Usually the poor man's half dead before they bring him in here. And after they cut on him he ain't hardly ready to jump up and run away. Guard on the door kinda silly if you ask me. The man up on Three a different story. Whole hospital talking about him. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Did you know this. Did you hear that. Poor man can't walk, can't talk, barely breathing but they scared to death of him. Guard him night and day. You'd think they got Bin Laden himself with those sad, pretty eyes up on Three. Say he's from
another country. Say he's black as me and can't speak no English if he could talk. Say he hates white people and wants to kill them all. Now if he don't speak English what I want somebody to tell me is how any these fools round here know who the man hates and don't hate. A troublemaker big-time, they say—you know, like they say about our Dr. King and Malcolm. Say he was a bad fellow back wherever he came from and he's very sick now, but they must still be scared cause he's locked up in here so they can keep an eye on him till he dies. Heard people say his name but I can't call it to mind. A funny kind of name I ain't never heard of. If he's like our troublemakers, bet somebody somewhere sure knows his name. And ain't gon forget it. Know what I mean, Ms. Wyman.

So that's how they got together, my mom and Fanon. One likely story anyway. If you need a story to stay on board my story. And now that I've showed you mine, it's your turn to show me yours. Isn't that how it goes. Isn't that only fair.

One day, though the weather outdoors rainy and dismal, inside the hospital it's dry and bright as artificial illumination can fake, and inside Fanon's head a sudden and from his point of view suspicious clearing. As a psychiatrist he'd been trained not to trust his patients' sudden turnabouts or conversions. Such dramatic swings more likely symptoms of disease, signs of deterioration rather than progress toward a cure. A light bulb flaring up just before it quits. Is he being manipulated by the constant flow of drugs pumped into his body. Truth serum, poisons, placebos, consciousness-altering substances. Is this instant, wonderful clarity a reward the doctors can give and take away. Are these Americans, these lynchers, softening him up, beginning a calculated process of conditioning. Training him like a Pavlov dog. Will they addict him to pleasure, then manipulate him by withholding or administering sweet doses of what he can't bear to
live without. Pleasure some argue more persuasive than pain—catch more flies with honey than vinegar the old folks say. Couldn't the simple absence of pain bring pleasure. Especially after an intense, prolonged session of torture. Doesn't this momentary truce, this bright, unbelievable interval of simply being himself, depend upon the threat of pain,
pain
always there just below the threshold of consciousness crouching in the shadows around the next corner ready to spring. Please, doctor. Don't talk this reprieve to death. Don't waste it. Enjoy yourself, my brother. Fly as high and happy as you can fly.

Fanon can't remember any stories about torturers extracting information from captives by making them happy. Inflicting pain more efficient than throwing a party. He makes a note to himself to raise these issues with his patients. Do torturers or the ones tortured understand pain better. Whose pain. Are pleasure and pain inseparable. Please, doctor. Stop. Why ask questions. You know damn well there's a difference between pleasure and pain. Don't spoil this gift of clarity. Believe it for as long as it lasts.

The explosion of gushing water is not a river overflowing its banks, not Mount Pelée erupting, not a black hole swirling open in the sea and sucking down the troop transport
Oregon,
it's one of the policemen flushing the toilet they share with him. Why are they afraid. Why don't their eyes meet his when they enter and leave. Not
they.
Though different policemen guarding him, and once a policewoman, it's one, always one at a time ignoring him, fearing him. One at a time in the tiny cubicle just inches from his bed, so he tries to resist
they.
But
they
lock the stall behind them.
They
flush to be certain the toilet clean for their dirt. Then
they
unroll paper, reams of paper, to wipe the toilet, the sink, line the seat, cover the floor, wallpaper the walls.
They
grumble, maneuvering their large bodies in a small space. He thinks of cowboys in American movies, awkward as armored knights in their leather chaps and vests, giant hats and holsters, belts, bandoliers, spurs, and boots, cowboys dismounting, jingle, jangle
from snorting broncs. Even for a stand-up piss, the
flics
can't get at their pissers without unbuckling, lowering the beltful of rattling paraphernalia. A big sigh when finally they plop down. Their giant pillows of ass smothering the hole his shrunken hams would sink into if not for a nurse bracing his arms. Routinely, their shits move the earth. Then they flush again. Or flush twice. Leaving no shit for the prisoner's shit to contaminate. More water running, more paper, more rattling and squeaking, zipping, buckling up. Enough water consumed flushing, washing, and rinsing to quench the thirst of a drought-stricken Algerian village. If famine deprived them, he had no doubt these husky carnivores would devour one another. Imagines himself flat on his back, legs poking up like a roast chicken on a platter, while
they
big-bellied their way to the dinner table, polite hippos waddling on their back legs, napkins under rolls of chin, knives and forks in their fat hands.