A Tree or a Person or a Wall Page 2

  Not until the bowl of melons on the nightstand had dwindled, until the walnut shells on the floor fell into dust.

  Whatever happened to the man with rough hands had happened outside the locked room, and so the boy would never know what word-shapes described the man’s end, his capture or his death.

  All the boy knew was what the ape named Sixes could tell him, by saying EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA over and over: that the man with rough hands would not return, and that the locked room would stay locked, and also the boy’s bucket would not get emptied and his sandwiches and soup would not be brought, and Sixes would receive no more melons or walnuts.

  Worst of all, it meant the boy would not twice a day see the window named Escape, or the tree or person or wall beyond that window.

  The boy panicked and said, EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA, and then EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA and then EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA, which sounded like the hunger in his belly and then the aching in his back and then the itching of fleabites on his legs and his arms.

  The ape named Sixes let the boy say EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA until he exhausted himself, and then it said EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA back.

  It said, EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA, but not in the way it had always said it before.

  What was different, the boy could not say, not even after the ape named Sixes had already said EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA many times.

  When at last the boy was readied, the ape named Sixes said, The door is locked and can only be unlocked by the man with rough hands.

  Or, rather, a man with rough hands.

  It said, Once, there was another child in this room. A little boy, as different from you as he was similar.

  There was another boy, and there was another man with rough hands.

  There was a boy and a man, and I was always here too.

  I was here because wherever there is a boy kept in a locked room and a man with rough hands, then I am there.

  Because the other is not coming back, I can tell you now that you can leave this place without going through the window you named Escape, but you cannot do so without becoming a man with rough hands, because you cannot open the door to the locked room without becoming such a thing.

  You can escape without going through the window, but not without leaving me here to await your return.

  One day you will come back, and on that day you will bring with you a boy, a boy whose boyish hands will be held by your rougher ones.

  You will bring me a boy, and I will watch him for you so that when your need is great you might watch him too, and in return you will give me all the melons and walnuts I desire, and then finally you will give me the boy as your man with rough hands has given me you, whether he wanted to or not.

  The ape named Sixes said, EEEEECHHHHHSCR-

  AAAAA, and then he said, Now you know all there is to know, but knowing alone changes nothing else, so if you try to step off the bed as a boy, then I will kill you and you will never see the other side of the door that leads to the hallway that leads to the window.

  The boy laid his body down on the broken bed for a long time.

  There were no more sandwiches or soup, but after a while the boy did not miss either.

  There was no one to empty his bucket, but without food or drink eventually the boy stopped needing to use it anyway.

  The boy knew he was supposed to be growing bigger but also that he wasn’t, and maybe as long as he didn’t try to grow he wouldn’t again need to eat or drink or defecate.

  Lying in the caved-in rut of the mattress, the boy fit himself into the space left there by the boy the ape named Sixes claimed had been there before, whose own laps around the edges or jumps from the center might have been the ones to break the box springs, crooking the frame boards that bounded them.

  The boy thought about this other boy, and he wondered what he looked like.

  He held his own hands in front of his face in the dimness of the nightstand lamp, wondered what he himself looked like too.

  It had been so long since he’d seen his own face, if he’d ever seen it.

  If he’d ever seen it, it had happened outside the locked room, and so he did not remember.

  What the boy thought was: What was the name of the thing a boy could look in to see himself?

  A window? Was that it?

  Was that what it was called?

  And if not that, then what?

  To the ape named Sixes, the boy said, I cannot remember everything you told me to remember.

  He said, There is something wrong with my head and I cannot find it, no matter how many times I feel with my fingers for the crack that lets in the buzzing.

  The ape named Sixes bared its yellow teeth in a snarl or else a smile, and then it said EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA, or, maybe, There is not much left to remember.

  The ape named Sixes pointed at its white chest with a white finger: Remember that I am an ape named Sixes.

  It pointed toward the locked door and said, That is a locked door you cannot reach, and while it is unreached and still locked, then this is the locked room, which you cannot leave.

  The ape named Sixes dipped its pale fingers into its bowl and took out one last melon, and then it cracked the fruit open. It said, Beyond the locked door there is a window, and the window has a name, a name which you gave it and that it never had before. I have named the window Hope, but that is not its right name. It is more like a joke. Do you remember the name you gave it?

  The ape named Sixes said, If you have forgotten the window’s name, then it is too late for you to be saved, and you will become a man with rough hands, and I will be your ape, and my name will be Sevens.

  The ape still named Sixes, it said, What is the window’s name?

  It said, Boy, do you remember the window’s name?

  And then the boy thought.

  He thought for a long time, and while he thought he searched the nest of his hair with his fingers, hoping to find the crack, to hold its leak shut so he could at last hear something else.

  Boy, the ape said.

  Boy.

  What is the name of the window?

  The boy said, The window’s name is EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA, and before he was even done naming it the ape named Sixes had already begun to stomp and screech upon its chair. The ape flipped over the nightstand, destroying the lamp, their light, and also its own bowl and the half-chewed rinds of the melons, releasing the seep of their juices into the always damp murk of the carpet.

  •••

  It was dark in the locked room, and in the dark the boy heard the EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA but did not know if it came from his mouth or his head or the ape named Sixes and furthermore he did not know if it mattered which of them it was.

  The boy followed the EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA for a long time, first with his ears and then with his body. He followed it around and around his bed, and as he followed it he once again began to grow.

  He grew not bigger but older, and he grew older by growing smaller, or at least that was how it felt in the dark.

  He did not rest often from the following of the sound, but when he did, he still searched his skull with his fingers, until one day the skin on his face and scalp told him his hands were now rough where once they had been soft, and then the next time he reached for the crack he found a doorknob instead, and when he turned the doorknob he found a hallway with a window.

  He walked down the hallway, but not before locking the door behind him, because inside the room was an albino ape that he did not wish to allow to leave.

  How he locked the door was he put his mouth to the keyhole and then he said, EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA.

  After the door was locked, he again put his mouth to the door, and then he said the name Sixes.

  He said, Sixes, I will be back, and I will bring you melons and walnuts.

  He said, I promise, and the ape named Sixes said nothing back, because that was no longer its name.

  Leaving the door behind, he walked down the hallway, past the window, through which he had once seen a tree or a person or a wall. At last he knew which of the three it was, but it no longer seemed important. He named what he saw and then he kept walking.

  The hallway brought him to another door, another hallway, and then another door, on which was written the many, many syllables needed to sound the word escape.

  He was free now, he thought, even without going through the door.

  He was free to do whatever he wanted, and so he touched his soft face with his rough hands and wondered what he looked like.

  It had been so very long since he had seen, and he was sure he had changed very much. More than anything, he wanted to know who he had become, but for that he would need to see his new face. He had been in the locked room for a long time, and in that time he had forgotten the names of so many things. Now he couldn’t remember: What was the thing you looked at to see yourself look back?

  A window?

  A door?

  A tree or a person or a wall?

  Or a boy named EEEEECHHHHHSCRAAAAA?

  Doll Parts

  THE YOUNGER SISTER—if she could still be called that, since she was no longer anyone’s sister, nor younger, lacking an older to be younger than—did not want a girl doll. What she wanted instead was a boy doll, one that could do all the things the brother had once done.

  The sister said, The doll must have brown hair. And brown eyes.

  It should look like it is the same age as me, and only we will know it’s older.

  It must have freckles, but not too many freckles.

  There is a perfect number of freckles, and that is how many I want my doll to have.

  And so the mother sewed—inexpertly but with great care—a boy doll as tall as the girl, with soft cloth limbs chubby with cotton stuffing. With a premade rubber head, on which the mother painted brown hair and brown eyes and not too many freckles, adding a few more when the sister objected to the count. The sister watched impatiently through the long days of the doll’s construction, and when it was nearly ready she tore it from the mother’s arms, squeezed it to her own small chest, hugging the doll so tight its stuffing pressed at its seams.

  The mother said, It’s not done yet.

  She said, I haven’t finished sewing its clothes.

  The doll wore only a pair of plain white underpants, imperfectly sewn, unevenly concealing the flat crotch, the just-as-flat buttocks. But the sister didn’t care that there was no shirt to cover the doll’s chest, no shoes to cover its nearly webbed feet.

  Mine? she whispered.

  Yes, the mother said. On one condition.

  The mother knelt in front of the girl, put her hand on the hard rubber hair of the doll. She said, The doll must never go outside. If you take the doll outside I will take it away and you will never get it back.

  The sister squeezed the doll tighter, turned to put her body between the mother and the doll.

  But why?

  Never. The doll stays inside. You stay with the doll.

  Before the brother died, they used to play outside all the time. They played in the front yard and in the backyard and even, sometimes, in the woods that stretched far behind the house, to where the brother said there was another road.

  The brother had never taken the sister to see this second, far-off road.

  He had wanted to, but she was too afraid to follow.

  She was not afraid of the road, although she was not supposed to go near roads either, but of the woods.

  Inside the fence was safe. Inside the fence was home.

  Outside the fence was everywhere else. Outside the fence was the woods and the road and then whatever was past the woods and the road.

  •••

  What happened to the brother was that one day the sister had been too sick to play. She had been too sick even to climb out of bed, and so the brother had gone outside to play alone.

  The sister did not see him at lunch that day, or at dinner, or at bedtime.

  At bedtime, she did not see the father either, only the mother.

  Normally, she saw the brother and the father and the mother all together, gathered for a bedtime story selected from a book of tales the brother and sister loved, but tonight there was only the younger sister, only the mother.

  When the younger sister asked where the brother was, the mother said the father had gone to find him.

  But when the father came back in the morning, he did not have the brother. And now the younger sister wasn’t allowed to play outside, the only place the brother might yet be found.

  The sister did not say any of this to the mother.

  To the mother, what the sister said was, The doll will protect me. It is big and strong and handsome, like brother was. And it is not afraid.

  The mother shook her head. The mother said, The doll is so frightened that if you take it outside, then it will stop loving you. The doll will stop loving you, and then I will take it away.

  The sister thought about how much the doll looked like the brother, just as she had wanted, and how the brother had not been safe outside either. Once she started thinking about the brother, she could not stop thinking about him, or about his kisses, about how he used to leave his bed and crawl into hers so that he could kiss her cheeks and her lips and her nose. So he could kiss the palms of her hands, the tips of her fingers.

  She could not stop thinking about how he had loved her so very much, and how he had told her so every single night while he lay beside her in her bed, even though he was supposed to be in his own bed on the other side of the room. Even though mother said he was too old to sleep with her anymore, that she was too old to let him.

  But to the sister, they had not seemed old at all.

  The sister thought about the brother, and about how much the brother loved her, and then she decided this was how much she would love the doll.

  The mother asked again, Will you keep the doll inside?

  The sister told the mother yes, and then for a long time she did not speak to her or anyone else. Not to anyone but the doll.

  The doll was hard to carry, with its body heavied with stuffing and its heavier rubber head. If the sister set the doll down in a chair, its head lolled forward onto its chest, or else backward, impossibly, as if the doll’s neck had been broken.

  The doll was not beautiful, but the sister knew that you could make an ugly thing beautiful if only you loved it enough, and so she loved the doll very much.

  What the girl was trying to do was to learn to love the doll for what it was, as the brother had loved her.

  The brother had loved her even though she was the ugly twin, born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, five breathless minutes after the brother.

  The brother had loved her even though one of her eyes was slightly lower than the other, even though her voice was not beautiful like his.

  Her voice was not something anyone wanted to hear too much of, the mother had once told her, in a moment of exasperation.

  Children were better seen but not heard, the mother had said, but the sister knew she was not much good for looking at either.

  The brother had loved her even with her straw hair, which she could not help twisting from her head strand by strand by strand, which she could not help swallowing afterward, always three strands at a time.

  The girl thought perhaps the brother had been taken away because he was too beautiful, but what she really wondered was whether or not it was because he was too beautiful for her.

  When the sister had first asked the mother where the brother had gone, the mother said that the brother was never coming back, which was not at all what the sister had asked.

  The mother said that the brother lived inside the sister now, in her heart, but the sister did not believe this either. If the brother lived within her, she would feel him, would be able to talk to him, to tell him how much she missed him.

  The sister didn’t ask who had taken the brother, but the mother said that it was God, that he had taken the brother home to heaven. But the sister wasn’t stupid. She knew better than that.

  It wasn’t God that had taken her brother, but a man. Or else God wore a red raincoat with big wooden buttons.

  The mother and the father talked about the brother only when they believed the sister was asleep. But sometimes she would leave her bed to sneak into the hallway, where she could listen at the mother and father’s bedroom door, because often they talked about the sister instead. That was how the sister knew that the mother and the father thought she rarely talked because the brother was gone. But that was not the only reason.

  The other reason was because, home sick on the morning that the brother disappeared, she had seen the man who took the brother at the edge of their backyard, standing just inside the tree line—but also just outside the fence line—and although the sight of him in his red raincoat had made her shake, she said nothing.

  She saw the man standing in the few feet of grass between the trees and the fence.

  She saw his red raincoat, slick with rain.

  She saw the wooden buttons attached to the cords on his hood.

  She saw the cords pulled tight, so that the hood was drawn close to the man’s head, so that his face could not be seen.

  She saw him raise his naked wrist, as if he was checking his watch. The man tapped the space where his watch would have been, as if trying to make a stalled hand move. Then he lowered his watchless arm and walked back into the woods, the woods where the brother had gone to play alone.

  Where the man still was, the sister thought.

  Where maybe he would always be, she told the doll, the only person she still spoke to, always in whispers. Perhaps the man was still there, only deeper in the woods now, so deep she couldn’t see him, so deep no one would ever find him, like they never found the brother.