The World Doesn't Require You Page 10

  Numbers-boy, the water-woman in the front said. Hey, numbers-boy. You got a number for me?

  All those women turned into one. She reached for me and caressed my face. You’re beautiful, she said. Anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful?

  She grabbed my hand and placed it on her naked hip.

  Don’t be afraid, she said. When I looked into her eyes, we lived a whole life, from awkward first steps together to deep commitment. I could never look at another.

  Loretta, a voice called from the island.

  Your name is Loretta? I asked. Like my Loretta?

  No, she said. I’m better than your Loretta.

  Without another word, she turned and dived back into the river. Perhaps she didn’t have all of me. Some of me was back with my Loretta, because I realized this was a trap. This was exactly how Miss Susan described water-woman seduction in her books. So many lovers, like the poet Roland Hudson, dived to their ends after these deadly tricksters. I took a step toward the water. And then I stopped. Self-preservation kicked in and I remembered they weren’t even women, or even human.

  The island descended from midair through a thick fog, sinking slowly into the black water. And even though it nearly caused my death, the feeling I had there by the Cross River was the greatest feeling any man could ever experience. I cried hot tears that night waiting for the water-woman’s return.

  I knew nothing in life would ever feel like staring into her brown eyes, touching the warmth of the flesh at her hip. Nothing. I decided I would love Loretta harder, but I wasn’t enough, or maybe it was that part of me became a burning beacon at the river, calling out to that water-woman. Whatever the reason, Loretta left in the spring. With her gone from my life, I figured I would live as powerfully as I could. I would chase women, try to experience bliss in all things, but no experience I ever had could fill my soul like the feeling I had with that water-woman by the Cross River, but if I ever returned to the river and that island decided to rise up, I knew I would die.

  Not a bad way to go, huh? Drowning in a water-woman’s light.

  5.

  Carmen disappeared, not by train, but by wind. To hear Amber tell it, they had spent the afternoon downtown on the way to purchase a ring when she walked out ahead of him. She smiled, not the slant-smile, but a broad true one, and then she stretched out her arms like a bird preparing for flight. Oh, Amber, were her last words before the soft brown of her flesh turned into a fragrant white powder. When the breeze came, scattering pieces of Carmen throughout the town, Amber grabbed clumps and tried to put her back together, but the grains of Carmen slipped between his fingers, leaving traces of her in the creases of his hands, embedded between the threads of his clothes and curled always in the coils of his hair.

  It’s like my dream, I said the night of her disappearance.

  The numbers, which usually twirled in the air, stopped to watch Amber with pity.

  Water-women, I said. A plague of them.

  I need to smoke, he said, walking to the door. Come and get me in ten minutes so we can finish the ledger. Business first, right? I’ll be okay by then.

  It only took two minutes to figure out that he was going out into the pitch of the night to find Carmen by the river. He had left the car, so I figured he was walking briskly south toward the bridge. Their voices would soon be screaming through his head, crowding his lonely thoughts.

  Turns out there couldn’t have been a worse time for Carmen to blow in the wind. I took two steps into the street and felt a hand grab my arm: It was Fathead Leroy, a guy who took numbers for Amber over on the Southside.

  Man, he said. I got rolled for my number slips. I don’t know that shit by heart like Amber.

  Who got you? Somebody with the Jacksons?

  Naw, look, you know Todd who work for Elder Mr. Hawkins? Him and a guy I never seen before. A white guy. I think he from Port Yooga. They looking for you and they looking for Amber. Told me to tell you not to burn nothing you can’t pay for. Cracker punched me and threw my betting slips into the river. I don’t got the standing to do nothing against someone as high up as Todd. You and Amber gotta get this shit right for us out on the streets.

  I looked over Leroy’s shoulder. It started to play as a setup. Not too far in the distance I saw Todd with a big white man who stomped toward us like a gorilla. How could I leave the office without my piece? Love-blind Amber probably hadn’t spent two thoughts on packing. I dipped my head and turned from Leroy before breaking into a jog. Perhaps they ran behind me, but I wasn’t willing to spare a glance. The shadows of the Wildlands called. When I entered them, the dark grew heavy, and I swore as I dashed through the stream that pieces of the black flaked off and covered me. I came out into a clearing and could see the gleam of the moon casting down on the earth. This was a circuitous route to get to the bridge, but it would keep me alive long enough to find Amber. I imagined him wading in the water, waiting for Carmen to beckon him beneath the choppy surface.

  The closer I got to the river, the louder the buzzing vibrated in my head. I felt as if something kept lifting me into the air with every step. It was as if I were walking along a beautiful tone shooting from the deep. My skin grew warm, suddenly flush with blood. Part of my mind called me to turn around to save myself. Who would I be if I bowed to the gods of self-preservation when Amber was in danger? But Amber could already be a bloated corpse, the beasts of the river tearing at his dead limbs. What a liar I am. This death march felt good, and that was the truth. That was now the only reason I plowed deeper into the forest. It felt just like floating on my back beneath the sun when the river rocked with a loping rhythm. All that remained was for me to dip my head under.

  While I indulged this daydream as one of the last I’d ever have, I came out of a long blink and before me stood Amber with his ankles steeped in the river.

  That’s when the whispers began. Images of Loretta. My Loretta. Then the water-woman Loretta.

  I wanted to call out to Amber, but what if I missed my Loretta speaking to me?

  A burst. A loud popping, like fireworks. I looked to the cloudy black of the sky, now hiding the stars and obscuring the moon. Another pop, or rather this time it was a bang, closer to me now.

  Amber didn’t move. Didn’t react at all. He just stared down at the river, trying to see the whole world in the water.

  Another shot burst toward us, this time from a different angle, and there was Todd on a hill looking down upon us.

  Amber, I called. Amber! Run!

  The whispering in my head grew louder. I saw the white man approach, an albino gorilla burning with murderous intent. There was nowhere we could run; Todd and the White Gorilla were tactical geniuses, cutting off our paths of flight.

  It was often Mr. Washington’s habit to give members of the family he killed lavish homegoing ceremonies, full of food and celebration. I imagined the twin homegoing Amber and I would receive.

  My skin warmed and I figured I’d shut off my mind and give in to the creeping pleasures of the beckoning woes.

  Just as I decided my time lay at an end, the water parted and up in the sky rose that diamond island, the land of the water-women. Scores of them—brown and nude and river-slicked—floated down to us. Two of them caressed Amber. I locked eyes with a Woe and she whispered my name. Tall and skinny, with a sharp, gaunt face. She bounce-walked and after a few steps her movements nearly resembled floating. The Woe put her arm around me, softly touching my chest. With my eyes, I searched her naked body for gills, but soon I gave in and began softly kissing her neck and kneading her soft wet flesh, growing more aggressive with the increasing intensity of her breaths and her moans. Together they sounded like a new language.

  There was that pop again. And another pop, itself a language I no longer cared to understand. I placed my tongue gently in my water-woman’s mouth. We were melting into one being. Pop. She jerked and shuddered and I felt a hot wetness. I gasped. My heart felt as if it had shifted and now beat in the center of my body
. My lover went limp in my arms, her head flopping to the side, her skin turning cold and scaly and silvery and blue beneath the crack of moonlight that spilled from behind the cloud cover.

  I looked at the blood and chunks of flesh that covered my skin and my clothes. Some of the water-women ran and dove back into the river. I scanned the water’s edge for Amber. He held a water-woman in his arms and another stood behind him rubbing his back. The one in front took hold of his hand and led him deeper into the water.

  I ducked, expecting a flurry of bullets to buzz by like mosquitoes. Todd and the White Gorilla stalked toward me. I crouched to the ground with my hands covering my head.

  What happened next, in my state, I never could have guessed.

  Todd and the White Gorilla stepped over me, mumbling apologies. They stumbled toward the river and its bounty of naked women.

  As grateful as I was for their mesmerism, it also saddened me. That was to be my fate, my thoughtless death march to a land under the water.

  I rose to my feet and ran to Amber. He screamed and cried as I snatched at him and held him down. I knew it was just a matter of endurance. When the island sank back into the depths of the river, he’d regain a certain sanity. His water-women didn’t fight—that’s not how they did things. They blew kisses and walked out into the river until their heads were fully submerged.

  As for Todd and the White Gorilla, water-women gazed into their eyes, laughing playful laughs and twisting their naked hips. It was a beautiful invitation to a drowning and they accepted, holding tight as they walked to the bottom of the river.

  For Amber, the sinking of the island was the worst part; he twisted, thrashed, and cursed. But when it was over, when that island was again tucked beneath gentle currents, Amber grew calm and docile. He lay on his back atop the wet soil with his hands on his face.

  Take me home, he said. I need to go home.

  I looked off into the distance at the glowing town and realized that Amber and I would never again be allowed there. He moved his hands from his face and it was as blank and innocent as a newborn’s. His voice sounded simple and soft. Part of him was now submerged somewhere within his depths and would never surface again. He was my responsibility now and I had no idea where we would go.

  A Loudness of Screechers

  The first of the screecher birds appeared that year like a hero in the sky. I hated these cold walks home from the bus stop. Josh had grabbed my butt and dashed off as a dare. He looked back with a dumb smile just as the impressive thing was coasting overhead, massive wings spread wide.

  Nigga’s childish as shit, said Andrew, the boy who dared Josh, as he sidled up next to me, too close; his breath smelled of peppermint, cigarettes, and tooth decay.

  I breathed deeply, hoping the air would freeze and then crack my heart. One more week until Christmas break; Josh and Andrew wouldn’t be in my face every day and I could ignore them more easily. Just ignoring them is what my mother would advise anyway. Daddy would tell me to punch them in their heads. That’s far too angry. My Uncle Charles would say: Smile and don’t let them dumb niggas see you sweat.

  Go somewhere before I call that screecher down to snatch y’all, I said. There was a smile on my face that poisoned my words, made them sound joyful.

  Josh mumbled something about the birds never straying so far from the Wildlands, while I looked at the claws on the circling thing and imagined it swooping down and snatching the boys, piercing their chests with sharp talons, digging into their guts, pulling out their intestines to gobble them like early birds gobble worms from the dirt.

  • • •

  Just before Christmas the sky turned black with a loudness of screechers flying in impossible patterns. Cracks of light peeked through their ragged feathers. Their wingspans took our breaths from us, my little brothers and me, and we pointed and oohed by the window. Every so often the birds would flap their impressive wings and we wondered how they stayed up there with so little effort. Both day and night the bawling from the sky left us awake and red-eyed. Some called the birds cry-crys because of their anguished wails, but screechers always sounded truer to me. Mahad and Jamal ran about flapping and squawking until Umi told them to shut their mouths. This is not the joke you think it is, she said. My father, my uncle, and about six or seven important men sat in my dad’s study talking real quiet. Josh’s dad was there, as was Andrew’s mother, the only woman in the bunch. From time to time they raised their voices in anger, but it would always settle back to a low grumble.

  Do ’em like the wolves, a voice, not my father’s, said. Bang. Bang. Do ’em like the wolves.

  Sorai, my mother called. Take your brothers downstairs, please.

  It wasn’t at all fair of Umi to tell me to wrangle two curious five-year olds. Seems to me now that was her job, but I didn’t complain back then; I said, Okay, you little rats, you heard Umi, downstairs.

  The little rats ran about—one clockwise, the other counter—squawking, squawking, squawking, saliva running down their chins.

  My father stepped from the room looking taller than usual, his face disturbed and heavy. I froze, grabbed the fleeing Jamal as he dashed by, and pulled him close. I’d seen this face on my father before, and a beating usually followed.

  He called our names and knelt so he was eye-level with my brothers. He pulled us all in, hugging us too tight. The boys squirmed. My back hurt, but I didn’t fight. Daddy pressed his face to my stomach. I felt the wetness of his tears soaking my shirt.

  I love you all and your mother loves you all and your Uncle Charles does too, he said. My uncle walked by, a silver platter in his hands, atop it the charred wolf that was to be our holiday centerpiece.

  Charlie, my father called, but my uncle didn’t look back as he moved swiftly out the door.

  We watched by the window as Uncle Charles bowed before the flying birds in an exaggerated gesture of respect. The important men mumbled among themselves while my parents watched stoically, and when my father could take no more he turned and shambled away. One of those big, black things landed in front of my uncle. With its beak, the bird knocked the wolf from the platter and stared down at Uncle Charles with a condescending glare.

  Good Lord, Josh’s dad said, the offering—

  It screeched in Uncle Charles’s face, a sound like twelve air raid sirens. I could feel the sound vibrating at my feet. My uncle was surely now deaf, his eardrums ruptured. Another bird landed and let out more screeching. The two birds rose above his head, beating their wings into one another, pecking at feathers and flesh.

  My uncle raised his arms in protection.

  My father burst into the room, shotgun in hand. No, Andrew’s mother called. This is the ritual.

  Fuck the ritual, my father cried. That’s my only brother. Some of the important men screamed and snatched at him; he held firm to his weapon, swinging it all about. I’ll shoot, he called. I’ll shoot.

  My brothers clung tight to my legs, tears staining their cheeks and shirts. I assured them things would be fine, but my wet face was no better than theirs.

  Reynold, my mother said, finally. Reynold. This is the ritual. He held his gun at her, the only thing between him and the door, but the tension had broken, we all knew my father couldn’t shoot my mother. This is the ritual, she repeated.

  Fuck the ritual, my father said, lowering the gun, tears in his eyes. That’s my little brother.

  By then one screecher lay dead and the other had snatched Uncle Charles, talons piercing his sides, blood dripping to the streets. He flopped about like a doll in that bird’s embrace, climbing higher and higher into the sky. The layer of screechers that blocked the blue cleared, first slowly and then all at once.

  The loudness flew off, leaving nothing but bird shit and ear-splitting wails in its wake. For the first time in weeks we could see the turquoise and we could see the sun and now all I felt for them was a fierce hatred.

  Mercury in Retrograde

  Their footsteps registered heavy as
soggy metallic splats through the underbrush. I held tight to Fiona’s hand. She slowed, growing tired of moving. As for me, my system felt overtaxed and in need of quick reboot. Her eyes glowed a bright, bright green. If I could detect our enemies running, they could detect us.

  Raindrops pinged against my exposed metal parts. Humans need shelter; the elements wear them down. We do too, but most of our components are harder and more resistant to weather extremes. Plastic and metal trumps flesh most of the time. Fiona shivered. I forgot sometimes that she was made of mostly genetic material. Probably because she thought so beautifully and perfectly like a fully operational wires-and-circuits-Vast-Neural-Network-interfacing machine.

  Shards of moonlight cut through the leaves above. I sent signals—bright, blinding, and blue—through the Vast Neural Network to confuse our pursuers, but my system grew tired and many of my programs hung and froze. My attacks were weak, slow, and easy to dodge.

  Jim, she said, Jim. Jim!

  It’s going to be okay, I said. Be calm. Be calm. The last signal I sent had a virus. They won’t be anywhere near us. Be calm.

  Jim, she said. She pointed behind me. I looked, but at first I couldn’t detect what she was drawing my attention to. The jitter in my system shook like my CPU was the epicenter of the most brutal tectonic movements.

  Please, Fiona. Please. Please. Be calm. I need you to be calm. All these programs going at once. Ah—

  My hard drive grunted. Thousands of pigs inside me, grunting, grunting, grunting. I could feel the discs spinning roughly. There was my natural electric fatigue, and alongside it swarmed the storms of the planet Mercury, somehow its movements wreaked havoc inside me. Something like the moon controlling the tides.

  The humans are foolish; they don’t believe in astrology, not as we do. We feel it. Every time the planet Mercury goes retrograde our processes grow heavy and slow, causing all robotic beings like myself to malfunction, to lose our sanity. Mercury is an awesome God—a robot joke (we know there’s no God—unless you count the Master as God), but a true joke if I’ve ever heard one.