The last time I-
Ruth.
Hmm?
Not you.
The last time I was here I was really in here. I have been here. I know that I have been here. These people are in my home and they are watching my TV. The carpet below my feet has been walked on a lot. Cauterized, like a wound or a wart. It doesn’t look like grass anymore. It has a surface. It’s like a thick and curly head of hair. I don’t know what I can say anymore. It’s my house I should be able to say what I want. I should be able to say. I should.
They keep talking to this kid. I know this kid. This kid is me I am in this kid. He has his mom’s cheeks, which are my cheeks. He talks to the television. I did that but I don’t remember what I say.
Up here, it all goes away but it all doesn’t really leave (none of it really leaves). I remember how it started. I could tell you what my parents would say, but nothing they actually said. My father wouldn’t have said anything and my mother wouldn’t have said anything about Jackie Robinson. They didn’t talk much at the end either. I don’t remember if they said anything.
I remember Mom said to me once When you get to my age, everybody asks you to tell them something… Like you got something to say. Truth is, Ruth, only thing you figure out when you get as old as me is that there ain’t nothin’ to know, except that you know nothing (you don’t know nothing). I don’t know a thing, and everything I know how to do I can’t.
This little shit with my name is on his knees in front of the TV. His face is too close to the screen and I don’t say anything I can’t say anything. The camera is doing the same.
There is a woman on screen with pocks under her foundation that I wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t wearing makeup and if the goddamn camera wasn’t so close to her face. She’s beautiful even if she is older than she wants to be. Her hairline is low and her cheekbones are high, and she annunciates like a like a like a knife on a cutting board, her tongue is upsetting and precise. She is saying things well but she isn’t saying anything. What there is around, in town. How to avoid it.
She trades with a man whose jawline could support a staircase. His hair can’t move and his teeth are lily white. His voice is like gargled honey, and he is talking about a man killed by another man today in this town. He says that he’ll tell us about the snow after the break. This child has his face inches away from this screen. If this man speaking has dimples, this child would know.
Ruth
Hmm?
No, Mom. I mean Ruth in front of the TV. Back up, you’ll go blind.
Nothing bad is ever going to happen to that him and I am wrong wrong wrong. This kid is me I am in this kid. I am trying to scream because I am trying to talk and my body cannot. I never learned sign language, but that wouldn’t make a difference today. I could have forgotten sign language by now but I don’t remember that either.
The screen goes back to the tailored man and woman and the camera goes back to being too close. If that camera was pointed at me I would look down its barrel and say, My Name is Ruth Decatur and this is the saddest I’ve ever been.
This kid is running around this room now, on this green carpet. His brother who looks to be twice his age is asleep on my chair. He is by this tree there is a tree in this room. It is the tree is making my eyes hurt but he runs to the shine. He is picking up boxes and shaking them and a woman who is calling me Mom is telling him to stop. He does.
If there is a brightness in this room this kid runs to it. He is old enough that he almost understands what it is. If it is a light reflecting off a window he wants to look at it closer. There is a light shining off of the cabinet that is a gun rack. He is standing on a chair to look at it. He can’t stop moving.
Here it is: I don’t own anything not a single thing. I was given nothing by my family save for my name. A lie, or something I can’t prove to be true. I was given plenty as I grew up and nothing as they went away. They had nothing left to give, nothing that they’d been given. I was prepared for this. My mother died young, much younger than I did, and my father had nothing to his name, less in the bank. I ask him how this is possible once, how could your family have been here for so long, 5 generations back behind you and you own nothing? There’s nowhere that’s ours. And he says nothing, Nothing, and moves his shoulders. I’m there and I’m here and I’m gone, in this house, with this green carpet, with this screen on and these people this kid. I’ll give them what I can, which is this house and Nothing.
Ruth!
Hmm!
Mom, not… Ruth, honey, get down from there.
She is now making him sit and talking to him low. The only thing I can hear is the parts of words that match up with when she is pointing at this kid’s face. This kid doesn’t know what he did wrong.
I killed animals with those guns. She watched me do it. We had days where we would sit all day in the cold before I would kill animals. She is beautiful, Theresa is beautiful.
This kid is now looking at these guns in this cabinet, but not like he wants to grab one. He doesn’t really know what they do that’s why he’s looking at them. He doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong. He doesn’t understand why what he did was dangerous. He doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong.
When I was – and I was – a girl, my mother would take me to the Christmas show in the town square. This town square. The one walking distance from this moment. The one with unspeakables in its past. The kind of ones we don’t talk about. I tried to talk to her about it once and it was none. None doing. She’d say Well I didn’t do none, and that was that.
In the square, the kids in the high school orchestra would wear better than their Sunday best. They’d keep the European’s tuxedo rental in business for another year. None of these clothes fit these kids they look even smaller than they are. Swallowed in the sheets of fabric. Every year my mother would bring me, and every year they’re going to play the ones from Christmas you remember, but the ones with God in them, too. Joy to the world, they say, the strings. Joy to the world. He’s come. He’s coming. Let us receive him then, in the town square, surrounded by one another, where we all know. We all know what happened here, what has happened. Our sin. Sins. A town like this, that looks like ours. Even as a young girl, I know this to be true – no one will say what it is, no one will speak the horrors into our memories. I know in my bones – my crumbling, bleak bones, cursed by the bastard child of Man: Time – I know it, who has been touched here, and how. I know it because I can feel it. It’s in the space between us – God, and the memory we all share. I ball my fists, dig my fingernails into my palms.
This is the feeling, this is what I feel:
I am blindfolded and there is something in my hands. I have held this thing many times. I am being told this by me, by my head, but I also know this to be certain because I can recognize it. I can remember this weight, this texture. But I cannot name this something in my hands. There are words on my tongue, but they are incorrect. It is similar to lighting a firework that will refuse to go off. A dud. This feeling is the feeling of a dud.
If I had the ability, I would stand and walk to this cabinet and I would glance at this kid as I did it. I would take the longest gun I could hold, the most weight I could support, and I would look down its barrel and say, My Name is Ruth Decatur and this is the saddest I’ve ever been.
Earlier, on this night, before we’re all looking at the broadcast, before I’m staring down the barrel, we’re back out at that same square. In the center of town. Me, myself, my girl, her boys, one of whom is me as well. I can’t say, but I can’t imagine coming back here. She thinks she’s doing me a favor. She thinks I want this. This event, this activity, it’s one of those that none of us want to do for entirely equal and opposite reasons. But we all do them because what else is there to be done.
The kids are in warmer clothes now. No one in their bests, only their instruments. It’s a warm winter night this night. The kind you expect usually down here. This doesn’t always happen, but it happens enough, enough that you want it, and then enough that you want it so much that you expect it, almost in spite.
You’re not smart. If you ever were, it’s gone with the wind. Or, it’s gone long ago. That’s a part of this feeling. You don’t know how to do anything and you’re forgetting how to feel that you ever did. It’s not turning around in the kitchen, empty-handed, and asking What was I doing? It’s turning around in one room and laying down in another, hungry, hoping someone has fed you.
Your girl’s kids are good sports, though. The little one, the kid I am in this kid, squirms. But he’s there. He seems to be okay. Not just being led around, but there like we all are. There like I have to be. A face on. There, like the tail of a snake. Where does it start and where does it end?
The orchestra, the instruments, are taking the whole evening. At the beginning, and then at the next beginning, and then again, they must start the instruments over. They all hum together. Tuning, finding the same place, as if all making eye contact and nodding to one another. My mother, when I was a girl, when I was, would tap me on the arm every time. Listen. They’re doing it again, beginning, and I’m listening. A gesture at the same note. All together now. Tune in one at once. And there, before we’ve found it, there it is. My mother’s eyes close. The sensual buzz of a fly. Hmmm.
Her husband Theresa’s husband is already asleep. He’s been asleep all night. Her older son is asleep in this room. I am one of the last three people in this world. This room this world this green, green carpet. Like the fastest putting green in the world, shaved to its depths. Sound is noise at this point and I can’t remember when sound was sound, but I know that there’s a difference I’m just not sure what that difference is. It is noticeable. I am noticeable.
I am not noticeable I am not the only me in this room. This kid is me I am in this kid. Neither of us had a choice but it is now only true. The air overhead is spinning. She turns it off, Theresa turns off the spinning. This man is back on the screen his jaw is back and moving and talking about this snow. He says there is a high chance of snow tomorrow, but it is tomorrow already, and snow is already coming down, and I don’t need to be noticed and I don’t need to be on television and I don’t need to be something right to tell you that a high chance is wrong right now because it is tomorrow and it is snowing.
From the beginning, there was nothing. And then from eastern Europe they came here. These towns were here, and then they built on top of them. A school, a hospital, a square. Then that was too much. The things they built for themselves they built too big so they moved away so they couldn’t be seen. They went to great lengths to be great lengths away, from sight and oversight. Sight and oversight. Then, when they would do the horrible things, they’d gather again in the square, in full view of the school and the hospital. Because they wanted us all to see. This is who these people were and they made sure they made a place for themselves, here, in this place.
Does anyone see me here? In this chair. Can anyone hear me? I’m trying to scream and I can’t. Can’t try even. I’m trying to try. I’ve found it so easy to forget. Easier and easier. It’s like I’m learning. On my worst days, I don’t give in. The worst day is a day fighting it. All my life I fight, fought. Fighting is losing. The winners aren’t fighting. They’re letting everyone else fight. Down here, we lost long ago, and we have to live with that. Not only that we lost, but that we ever fought in the first place. We have to walk around with that, to one another, when we can, waving and nodding. Good morning I’m sorry Good morning goodbye.
My father died in anger quiet and none giving. He’s almost chained up in his hospital bed by the various wires and needles. I die in my bed just a room over from my girl and her boys. This kid who is me I am in this kid. The broadcast has long ended and this kid who is me has let go of my leg. I’m brought to my bed and I’m gone. It’s quiet, and it’s none painful, but there’s nothing peaceful about it. Here I am at the end of the world. Not a whimper, not a bang, but a brass note singing out from the depths of my belly gesturing out at my last breath as I let it go. Grasping. Here it is at the end: I’m inside and out, relieved of my head and now more soul than body. Finally finally finally. Who else is there in the world? How many left?
I am one of the last three people in this world. She is Theresa is taking herself and this kid away to sleep. She is Theresa is telling me to come too. That I don’t need to be up this late anyway. That tomorrow is an early day.
But I have seen my last morning and I don’t know what I know, but I know that to be true. She’s turned off the shine and the hum of light in the room is gone.
This is the feeling, this is what I feel:
Daylight is bright and night is dark and I no longer run to the shine. I know what it is I can even see it. I know to run to the shine but I do not know how. Everything I know how to do I have forgotten.
This boy this kid runs to me now, away from her from her from Theresa. This kid is me I am in this kid. He holds my legs where I am sitting and presses his face against me and he turns his face outward to breathe.
I touch my hand to his back. This kid looks at me and he says his Merry. I can’t say but I say My name is Ruth Decatur and this is the happiest I’ll ever be.