Swallowing a Donkey's Eye Page 4

  Now, I am no lawyer, but I reject their thoughtful recommendation as is within my rights stipulated by line-item 15.15.23.4 in the basic Farm contract, and request my case be heard by the Arbitrator. The Arbitrator will hear my case in two-to-four weeks. They blindfold me and transport me to the Hole.

  8

  A LITTLE CITY IN THE HOLE

  I’m in the Hole now. I’ve been in the Hole for two weeks. I’m told I’ll be here for another week, maybe more. It is dank, soil-infested with bugs and mice, a six-by-eight-by-six of living space with my bathroom bucket in one corner. They give me a new bucket once a day. There’s a porous tarp covering as a ceiling. Rain and sunlight drip through it. They feed me three meals of tepid water, stale bread, a hunk of something that once belonged to an animal, and some fruit but not the good fruit. They give me rejects that show obvious signs of falling out of trees, and yeah, the fuckers are mocking me. My bed is a mat of damp straw and hay. My blanket is scratchy wool pocked with moth holes and cigarette burns. They give me two packs of cigarettes every morning, but I don’t smoke them. I’ve stuck a bunch in the ground, buried up to the filter so only the rolled-tobacco sticks poke up, like little columns and posts. They give me a pack of gum every morning, and I chew, but after chewing I use the gum as adhesive joints and attach cigarettes horizontally to the columns, to the posts. I’ve made struts and support beams. It looks chaotic, but I know it works. I use the paper plates to cover it, making a ceiling, or a floor depending on your point of view. I stick paper cups on top of the plates, making buildings and houses and stores.

  I’m making a scale model of City and its Pier below. Can’t explain why I’m building it. Just like we don’t know who-why-when the real City and Pier were built. There are many origin legends and theories, and there’s even a religion that worships the Pier. All of it is quaint, folksy, entertaining, and about as useful as an abacus in my everyday life. It doesn’t matter. City Pier’s existence wouldn’t change any if I knew the why.

  So why am I building the model? It’s something to do, I suppose. The cigarettes as the Pier, as all that wood, as all those stripped-but-still-standing sequoia trees with trunks as thick as skyscrapers, branches molded into the intricate lattice of support beams, struts, joints, and elbows, the cigarettes as stand-ins for the practically infinite network of wood stretching for miles and miles along the coastline, the cigarettes as the giant wooden shoulders of City, sprawling two hundred feet above the ocean, a manmade forest pushing City to the clouds. Bugs crawl on my City and on my Pier. There’s a fat cockroach walking the wrong way down a one-way street between two cups, two buildings. That one is where I grew up. My home was an eight-story tenement building, four apartments on each floor. Me and Peter (he lived on the fourth floor) used to catch cockroaches, some as big as the one crawling on my City, and put them in a ring box and scare the neighbourhood girls, or we used them as bait to catch rats. We never caught any. Now, this cockroach on my model is fat enough to be a cab, or even a truck going down my street. Peter’s dad drove a cab, and then a truck before he and his family left. I don’t know where they went and my parents never told me.

  Flies land and eat some unseen morsel off the plate-floor, or plate-ceiling if you’re below City. They wash themselves and then take off and then land and then repeat ad infinitum. There’re more flies underneath the plates, hanging out in the Pier. Spiders and other bugs join the flies, climbing the Pier cigarettes. I hear them crawling. I hear a few bump into the ceiling above them. The ceiling that’s a floor. After Peter and his family left I asked my mother the hard questions. She told me that they moved. Dad-the-psychic then told me that he could sense and see Peter and his family living happy in a more affluent section of City. My parents told me they weren’t homeless. They told me even if they were homeless, City’s homeless policy went into effect the year before I was born, so Peter and his family would be exempt by the grandfather clause. I don’t know if what they told me was a lie, exactly, and I never bothered to check up on it. Maybe I’ll ask Jonah if I ever see that two-faced prick again. That said, my parents’ story about the homeless policy being a recent innovation has all the feel of a parental lie, one that’s supposed to be good for you as a kid. You know, hide the ugly truth from the innocent because it’s so ugly. I’m sure City has always deported its homeless below City and to the Pier. I’m sure there has always been street sweeps and the deportees have been forever crawling Pier’s lattice. My City-Pier-why theory is that people wanted to build a place where they could literally sweep it all under the rug, a magical rug that would never get pulled from under their feet. The fuckers, all of them. I’m under that rug right now. Or at least a tarp.

  My model City and Pier is done. I won’t need any more cigarettes. Now I just sit and watch it under the weak, green light that makes it though the tarp. I’m watching the residents of my City scurry around.

  I wonder which of the bugs crawling on my model represents my deserting father, or my mother. I wonder if those plates are a floor or a ceiling for her. I wonder if she’s a spider or a fly.

  9

  NO US IN HER ME

  This happened three years after Dad moved out:

  I crawled back to the apartment after another night of running the alleys behind the strip joints and sex clubs in the Zone, trying to sneak a peek. As usual, no dice. Instead, we did what we usually did: drank cheap wine and beer, tipped dumpsters, and threw stuff at windows. I was fifteen.

  My mother was waiting up for me. She sat at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette. Her legs were crossed with a free arm wrapped around her chest. She was wound tight, coiled.

  Old grocery bags dripped off the table. The faux-chandelier fixture above had two working bulbs out of six. Mascara-filled tears ran down her cheeks and onto her lips. She didn’t wipe any of it away.

  I swayed on unmoored feet and wanted to leak out of the kitchen, pretend I didn’t see her, but it wouldn’t have worked. So I said, “Get a haircut today?”

  “Yes.”

  Her hair was real short, tight to her skull. Everything was tight.

  “I like it.”

  My mother was only eighteen years older than me. She looked my age, and she looked fifty years older than me.

  “That bastard dumped me today.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wasn’t, really. Whoever this new boyfriend was, I didn’t care. She’d told me all about him but I made it my business to forget. He might’ve been a cop, a banker, a cabby, a classmate from night-class, anybody. I didn’t remember. I used to work at not remembering.

  “The worst part was that he fucked me before telling me it was over.”

  The room got fuzzy, her words made me more drunk, if that was possible. Her words crossed my wires and killed the engine of my brain, so I leaned on the wall. It didn’t help.

  She said, “He made so many promises. He was going to take me away from here. He was going to make my life better.”

  The fifteen-year-old me noticed there was no us in her me.

  And right there is the obvious: the fifteen-year-old me still blamed her for everything. I was such a painfully predictable teen. Angry at the person I needed the most, but it was mutual. She was angry at me too, and might still be.

  More black tears fell out of her eyes, but she wasn’t crying, at least not in her voice. Her legs and arm squeezed tighter and she chomped on the cigarette. “I knew I was just a fuck to him, but I couldn’t admit it to myself.”

  Almost numb from embarrassment, I managed another, “I’m sorry.” Then I hugged her, knowing I smelled of garbage and alley and booze, hoping she’d say something to scold me, hoping she’d say anything else.

  10

  YOU GOT MAIL

  The tarp above the Hole rustles. I sit up, wanting food. A security dweeb pokes his head inside.

  “You got mail,” he says.

  I didn’t realize the Hole received postal service. An unexp
ected perk, one I’d gladly trade for a piece of barbequed clone-meat.

  Security dweeb tosses me an envelope. It’s too light to be a care package from someone who cares.

  I open it. It looks like this:

  Account terminated.

  I’m not daydreaming anymore. The now-me, the shouldn’t-be-here me, the sitting-in-a-fucking-pit-waiting-on-my-death-sentence me notices the choice of word. Her bank account wasn’t cancelled or closed or moved or reassigned or discontinued. It was terminated.

  11

  ARBITRATOR, APPLES, AND EVE OH MY!

  Security pulls me out of the Hole and blindfolds me again. We take a ride. Then we stop. They force me to walk with my hands behind my back. Then an elevator, and a long hallway. Their shoes clack and crack on the linoleum. We enter a room. I sit. They uncuff me. I’m told to put my hands on the table. They take off the blindfold. It’s still dark and I still can’t see, but I know I’m back in the same conference room.

  The last of the security leaves and light fills the room. I’m blind again, but it’s a new blind. It takes more than a few minutes of squinting and blinking to adjust. Across from me is one large mirror covering the entire wall.

  Eventually there’s a voice. It fills the room.

  “Am I speaking with employee number 42-9-33LB-A?” The voice is modulated: deep, digital, metallic pitched. They’re protecting the identity of the Arbitrator, if there really is one. Could be a computer or Zombo the Clown for all I know.

  “Yes.” I stare at my reflection in the mirror. An older, beat-up man stares back.

  “Why have you requested an Arbitrator?”

  I have to pull it together quick. I want out of here, but I don’t want to be, you know, dead. I cough and rub my face. “I wholeheartedly disagree with the lawyers’ recommendation of death. I don’t deserve to die.”

  “Everyone dies.”

  “I don’t deserve to die now, then.”

  “I’ve been reviewing your case for the past three weeks and I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “Please, ask away.” I’m suddenly homesick for my Hole, my bugs, and my little City Pier. I can live in the daydreams, too.

  “Do you feel remorse for your act?”

  Best to keep it simple. Don’t want any sarcasm slipping out. I’ve tried not to dwell on how angry I am that they’re willing to terminate me over a fallen apple. But I manage a “Yes” to that question, and I drop my head like I’m so broken up about my transgression that I can’t stand to look at my mirror self.

  “Are you sorry you were caught?”

  “Yes, I mean, no. No, I . . .” Wasn’t expecting that question. I should’ve been. I certainly had enough time to prepare for this interview. I’m about to float out some glad I got caught because I learned an important lesson, yes sir! lie, but the Arbitrator jumps right in.

  “Thank you. Do you know what Farm does with its fallen apples?”

  “No.”

  “Farm is developing thrashers and plows that run on the fallen and rotting apples. Nothing here goes to waste, as you should know.”

  Sounds like a so-full-of-shit Jonah-story to me. I say, “Wow. I did not know that.”

  “Would my telling you that I am a woman strike you as ironic?”

  Talk about out of the blue. I say, “No, I don’t think so.” I’m telling the truth.

  “Do you know anything about Christianity?”

  I stop myself from asking what does any of this have to do with me? “No. Not much. My father used to say ‘Jesus Christ’ a lot.” This is a half-truth. That’s all she gets.

  “Do you know about Eve and the apple?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Like most, I never learned much about religion.” Yes, I’m pretending I know less than shit because you seem so much less threatening when you’re stupid, so much less likely to be able to make your own decisions. Goddamn it, I’m following the same legal advice Jonah gave me a long time ago. Like he hasn’t done enough to me already.

  She says, “My time and talents are being wasted on you.”

  I have no answer to that. Anything I say will sound smart-ass or unappreciative of the Arbitrator’s efforts. Pissed off or not, I do not want to piss off the person deciding whether or not I die because of an apple. And believe me, none of this strikes me as ironic.

  She says, “I was hoping for a deeper conversation today.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m nervous.” That’s the wrong thing to say and I know it as soon as it falls out of my mouth.

  “Are you implying that if you weren’t nervous you’d be able to discuss Eve and the apple, and irony?”

  “No. I just meant . . .”

  “Are you implying your nerves are compromising the integrity of our meeting today?”

  “No.”

  “What did the apple taste like?”

  This is worse than the lawyers. I’ve lost any semblance of control so quickly. “It tasted old, bitter, I guess.”

  “You’re guessing?”

  “No, I’m answering to the best of my ability.”

  “On the morning of the incident, why did you make an inquiry to your financial records?”

  “I wanted to see if my mother was still getting the money I send home.”

  “Is she?”

  “I don’t think so. According to my financial records, her bank account has been terminated.”

  “What are you going to do with this information?”

  The questions are coming fast. I answer quickly and stare at the mirror. It’s like I’m talking to myself in two different voices. My mouth opens and closes and my voice and her computer-modulated one come out. “Try and contact my mother. See if she’s okay.”

  “Will you follow proper protocol while attempting contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happens if you can’t find her?”

  “I’ll keep trying.”

  “You do know your contact options are limited. What happens when those options are exhausted?”

  “I’ll just keep trying.”

  “Why did you eat the apple?”

  “I was hungry.”

  “You knew you weren’t supposed to, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you hate Farm?”

  “No.”

  “Do you hate your Barn Manager?”

  “No.”

  “What about your roommate and co-worker, Jonah?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Can you still work and live with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your mother’s name Eve?”

  “No.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “No.”

  “If a starving man was next to you in Orchard would you willingly break the rules, consequences be damned, and feed him an apple?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Probably, yes. Maybe.”

  “If your mother has fallen out of contact, what do you fear has happened to her?”

  “That she’s homeless. That she’ll be shipped below City to the Pier.”

  “Do you hate your mother?”

  “No, of course not. I love her. She’s the reason I came here.”

  “Do you see your mother as Eve being banished from the garden?”

  “No. City is no Eden.”

  There’s a silence.

  Then:

  “Did you say Eden?”

  I said Eden, didn’t I?

  She says, “You must be less nervous now since you suddenly seem to know more about Christianity than you previously claimed.”

  I shrug my shoulders and can’t look at myself in the mirror. Caught and caught so easily. I’m screwed. So fucking screwed. Why the hell did I listen to Jonah’s long-ago legal advice anyway? I should’ve just told her anyt
hing and everything she wants instead of playing goddamn games.

  She says, “You must do one thing for me before I render my decision. I want you to fully explain your, and not your mother’s, current situation in terms of irony and the Eve-and-apple parable.”

  What do I do? I hesitate, rub my beard stubble. Look at the mirror for an answer, there is none.

  “This is very important for you,” she says.

  “I’m Eve. I ate the forbidden apple. Ironic because I did it purposefully to be tossed out of Farm, banned from our little Eden. Ironic because those fucked up gender roles are reversed: me as Eve, you as God, or the Christian God, anyway. Ironic because God didn’t make these Farm-engineered apples, unless you want to get metaphysical about this whole mess, or unless you’re still God, then I guess it’s possible that you made the apples, though unlikely since your Arbitrator duties likely don’t leave you time for engineering and growing. Ironic because . . .”

  “Thank you.”

  “Should I compare myself to Snow White next?”

  “No. Please wait patiently for my decision.” I hear a door shut behind the mirror.

  I wait. I beat myself up for everything I said, especially that Snow White crack at the end. I wait. I think about my mother and her terminated bank account and my stomach is a mess. I wait. I think about how I screwed up, and I think about how Jonah said it was always a gamble to go to the Arbitrator as her decision is final and legally binding, but applying even my most base and admittedly lacking logic training, I figure my sentence can’t get any worse via the Arbitrator. It just can’t get worse than death.