Orphans

28

28 I am on BeiShan, and there is Al B and I smile, because Al B is there for me, always, the past is the past, this is now, this is new and fresh, and I am in need of something, and he will know what it is. There is history and brotherhood , and love and goodness. Al B waves, greeting me, even as he is talking into a cell phone, waving and talking, and then looking up to the sky above you and beckoning something, what? I look up. I have to. Al B is not actually waving to me. I hear them before I see them though, and I feel them before they’re right there. It’s the black helicopters, they have returned; they have found me, and they are coming, their blades spinning, always spinning. I look at Al B questioning, searching and confused. But he turns away and puts his hand up, his palm facing me and telling me to stop: this is not a betrayal, it is what is has to be. So please, stop looking at him, stop judging him, just stop it all. I could, I would, I will, I can’t, I won’t, I’m gone. I am running home, down the street, everything is cold and gray, the world as we know it is spinning away from us like a top at the edge of a table, hovering, turning, faster, faster, faster, now blurring into nothing, curves and edges, whipping around. This is life, now, then, now. Still running, can’t wait to be home, can’t wait to hug my mom; as she pulls me to her chest, the smell of vanilla wafts in the air, the flour specking her hair takes flight, bouncing, floating in the shards of sun piercing the kitchen window. I’m so close, and it’s so dark suddenly, and noisy, the O R P H A N S 94 wind whipping my hair this way and that. I look up expecting storm clouds, but no, no, those aren’t clouds, they’re black helicopters, hovering, watching, and dropping toward me. Why are they coming down like this? Now I’m running faster. I will get home before they get me and before my mother kills herself. Before the light goes out behind her eyes and she follows my father into wherever the world is where parents go when they’re gone—even if they are never truly gone, departed, maybe, removed, no longer present, but still part of your DNA and your life force. No one can take that, and no one can run from it. But I keep running anyway, the blades of the black helicopters nipping at my heels, always just one step behind, and spinning just like I am. I am no longer so small. Nor am I on the streets of my childhood. Somewhere, somehow, I am running home, home to Shalla. How, why, what? Is Shalla going to kill herself too? I don’t know. I don’t know who I am, or what I am, or how any of this came to be. I am looking up at my apartment window, and there she is with me, no not me, a version of me, my Terrax me, and they are embracing, they are intertwined, they are kissing. Briefly they part and Shalla looks at me, no, through me, from the window, a lone tear trickling across her beautiful face. For a moment I believe she will see me, but then she turns away, taking the Terrax’s hand and heading toward the back of the apartment and the bedroom. I need to go to her, run inside, grab her, pin her against the wall and kiss her until her memory has been erased of anything that has happened prior to that very moment. But then, then I look back and the black helicopters haven’t budged, and now they’re inching forward, and I am run- B E N TA N Z E R 95 ning again, away from Shalla, away from home, just away. I wake-up startled, jolted by fear and confusion and the aching desire to find Shalla, hug her, not let go, and not think about what has been or might still come, just be in the moment, lost in her touch and feel and being home. What the fuck...