I Will Rise Read online

  The world in my head.

  The world in my palm.

  Sweat beads, my nose runs and my eyes twitch side to side in crazy anticipation. My left palm begins to buzz and the fingers dance slow contortions. As the automatic doors slide open, I am blasted with a burst of warm air. My eyelashes curl, my lips crack. The hot air cools my sweat-sheen body. I plod ahead a few more paces only to find the girl gone and the world intact. With disappointed optics I take it all in.

  Unchanged.

  Static.

  My heart shakes terribly and drops, plummeting end over meaty end down an endless, dark chasm.

  The grocery store intact. The parking lot intact. No world of memory, just the real, grimy, noisy, overpopulated earth of old. Automobiles and hair gel and cell phones and commerce, commerce, commerce.

  Fixed.

  Concrete skeletons. Electric veins, plastic membranes, fiber-optic plasma. World without end and as if on cue, at the center of it all, the bright shining stars of this bright, shining world come traipsing into view: a perfect family, a beautiful union of man, woman and child, hand in hand in hand, gooping one another in thick, thick waves of love-love.

  They walk across the parking lot, happy heads bobbing, Daddy patting Kid on the back, slyly pinching Mommy’s rear and Mommy screeching in response, playfully slapping Daddy on the arm as Kid giggles and wonders what transpired between them.

  I read somewhere (stupid useless books) that our bodies are these massive, vibrating collections of cells and that each of these cells, having a specific job to do to maintain homeostasis, keep things going smooth. In the beginning, each of these cells are nonspecific, generic, but as they develop and undergo differentiation they become one of four cell types. These four types—muscle, nerve, epithelial and connective tissue—work together to form organs, and the organs work together in systems to make up the body. Watching Daddy, Mommy and Kid move about, each one playing off the other, I picture them as one big, fleshy organ.

  I feel sick and small and entirely insignificant.

  Wincing inside, I fear that alone we are nothing. Undifferentiated. Generic. Only when we bond with other cells do we make a difference (if we even make a difference. This example of humanity, these relationships, these emotions, should make one feel good about one’s species. We are a race of mortal gods. We are superiors. Intelligent, emoting beings like ourselves cannot just die. We can’t. It defies all reason. But here we are imitating, through actions and thoughts and dependencies, the behaviors of cell matter. The same cell matter found in expendable, sure-to-die plants and animals and insects. The same cell matter found in the inanimate). And as this family, this fully realized, difference-making organ, gets closer and closer the air around me gets harder and harder to breathe, as if it’s meant only for them.

  Not for me.

  Not Me.

  Unevolved me, breathing carbon dioxide in and out.

  Me existing in a vacuum: a single, autonomous cell in a test tube: a grimy, glassy prison.

  I look at my palm. The buzzing has stopped and the fingers react accordingly, agreeably. The family gets closer, almost to the doors, almost entering the store to buy items that will undoubtedly increase their bliss (bastards). I frown at my palm and bore imagined holes into its insubordinate surface. Now, I think.

  Now!

  Now!

  Now!

  But of course there is no response. No freak-out. No paralysis. Only at the most inopportune times, remember? So fuck it, fuck you, palm! I will have what’s mine! I will have what I need! And in a frenzy of spasmolytic brilliance that would put Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance in My Left Foot to pathetic, community-theater shame, I drop to the ground moaning, hand raised high above my head.

  “Hheeellllp meeeeee.” Sound it out. Every letter, no skipping, and you get the exact pronunciation of my exact words.

  I live for this.

  The family pulls together tight, contracting. Kid hides behind Mommy’s well-toned leg and Daddy puts his arms out stand-back-style. The initial reaction is always fear. Who knows? Could be, this undifferentiated loser, this generic nonspecific, might infect and disease the perfect, homeostatic, fleshy family organ. Defenses go up.

  Daddy trying to look threatening.

  Mommy going for determined strength.

  Kid mewling for sympathy.

  I turn on the agony, writhe harder, and watch for signs of transformation out of the corner of my eye.

  It starts with a slow softening of the features. Once they realize they are not in danger everything loosens up. It hits Mommy first. If you look deep, focus on her pupils and force your way in, you can see the fear dying, draining of heat, and evening out. In a second or two a warm blanket of sorrow descends upon her brain and starts soaking up the guilt. She puts a hand upon one of Daddy’s defensively outstretched arms. The sorrow-guilt-understanding shoots wild, traveling through her body and charging her fingertips with emotion. The moment those fingertips touch down upon the meaty flesh of Daddy’s biceps his demeanor shifts. He joins Mommy and stares at me with sad, uncomprehending culpability. Something inside feels liable. The two of them have done nothing wrong, but suddenly they feel like total and complete shit. They feel bad that I am afflicted and they aren’t, that I roll around on the ground like a dog with Parvo while they walk hand in happy fucking hand, healthy, strong, successful.

  At this point one of two things can happen. The family organ can look the other way, avoiding my pained stares, and pretending I don’t exist, all the while pretending the world beyond their vacuum of joy doesn’t exist. They can be cruel and soulless and pay me no mind as they enter Albertson’s to buy lunchmeat and juice and anything their conjoined hearts desire. Or, they can ask me if I am all right. They can offer to call an ambulance. They can lend support. They can prove their decency and worth as human beings by recognizing me as a human being, by recognizing my decency and worth.

  I cool the spasms and wait.

  My decency and worth?

  When I get down to it, I am doing this for them. I’m selflessly flailing about so that these people can feel good about themselves and be proud of the fact that inside, where it counts, they are decent and kind and caring. All I want out of this is to be noticed, to be assimilated into an organ system, if only for a moment. I want to connect, if only for a moment. True, I don’t really like people and their annoying habits, but in the end I’m one of them and in the end I need some of the same things. Boo-hoo. Yeah, I know, I do it to myself. I don’t have friends or family because I don’t want friends or family. I can’t deal. My views and opinions and sexless attitude just don’t jibe with the world around me. I don’t fit, but I find moments like these to force myself in. I create these unreal, dreamlike moments because it’s the only way I can coexist.

  The entire organ has come around and even Kid looks at me with sad little eyes. They don’t pretend not to see me and they don’t run off. Instead, together as a family, they slowly approach. Daddy bends at the waist and begins with the standard line of questioning. My eyes are trained on his hand. The hand moving toward me. The hand firmly taking hold of my arm and giving it a tender squeeze. The hand: a cipher, a conduit of warmth and validation. Daddy’s mouth moves, but I hear nothing. Shock waves of pure sentiment explode from his reassuring palm and surge by way of my flesh into my bloodstream. I go light-headed, swimmy, and high on responsiveness. Mommy touches Daddy, resting her hand upon his back, and the rush intensifies.

  Something like euphoria, dark and beautiful and growing, blinds me from the inside out.

  “Sir?” Daddy as strength.

  “Are you all right?” Mommy as concern.

  “Mommy?” Kid as fright.

  “Thannnnk youuu. Um finnnnne.” Me as complete. Total. Body humming like a loving machine, sugary, sappy, all soft and wet and gooey. Newborn. Baby babble. I don’t think I will ever be able to pull away from the delirious, encapsulating joy inside my head and this thought makes me s
mile. This is where I want to be forever, not living life but dreaming it. Not physical, hurting, wishing, praying. Not dying. Nothing. Just here clumped up inside pretending to be part of something bigger.

  At long last, Daddy removes his hand and the connection is severed. The rush peters and the lights dim. I drain out, but flitters of care and the residual confirmation that I matter, really matter, in some way to somebody, remains. Vision flickers back statically as I realign and see the distressed faces of my benefactors as a globular jumble. The family organ seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief as my eyes flood with being. A weak smile paints my lips.

  * * *

  I get to work twenty minutes late. My boss gives me this look and the slick bastard manages to break me down without a word. Dropping my head I stare at my grimy shoes and hurry off to join Jose stuffing jumbo prawns with Brie.

  Mr. Shithead (he has a name, but I’ve long stopped using it) paces about, hands locked behind his back like a gestapo general, encouraging his staff of scrambling servers and illegal kitchen help to move their fucking asses. For the most part he purposefully avoids me, snaking his well-oiled eyes past mine without missing a beat. I try to catch his gaze, partly to mess with him, partly for acknowledgment. I may be a fuckup, but I’m here in three dimensions and the way his eyes cruise past as if I were nothing more than wallpaper irks me to no end. When I finally lock him up, the tension between us becomes almost visible as twin laser beams of distaste shoot from one pair of eyes to the other. I don’t hate my boss. I don’t think he hates me. But, then again, I could be wrong.

  My left hand—precise, machinelike, controlled—flays prawn after prawn. The blue, veined underbelly of prawn number eighteen (I work fast) comes apart. I glob it with Brie and then it’s off to Jose to be breaded and placed on a metal storing sheet.

  Somewhere between my flaying/stuffing and the handoff to Jose, the prawn begins to lose its very prawn-ness. My eyes widen as the prawn elongates, thickening, bulbous, grotesque. All prawny attributes have stretched beyond recognition, rippling, developing and ripening. My jaw drops. Before me, what used to be a jumbo prawn is a Mr. Shithead fetus, embryo, baby-thing, squirming, growing, slick with bluish placenta, hurriedly becoming a chubby Mr. Shithead toddler and then, fast, fast, fast, as if viewing a time-lapsed film, an awkward, pimply Mr. Shithead teen. Finally, after much contorting, Mr. Shithead the adult emerges, naked, hairy, floating in midair, impossibly balanced upon Jose’s outstretched hand. Like the prawn, he is slit from throat to pubis.

  Layers of fatty goop and intestine rope about, steaming, spilling over and out. The Brie, resembling infection, pseudo-pus, goes from white to pink to overwhelming red and dissolves within the wet chaos. Each visible organ links up to another and fuck me if Mr. Shithead’s insides don’t look happy.

  Coming unglued I snatch the Mr. Shithead prawn back from Jose and dice it into violent bits. My knife work is thorough; all that remains of the prawn is a bluish paste smeared across the cutting board. Jose raises his eyebrows, shakes his head and looks at me like I am crazy.

  Every member of the kitchen staff speaks Spanish. No English (save for the chef) excepting an odd word here or there. I only speak English. I don’t know Spanish from French or Portuguese or Nonsense. Jose knows this. Hector knows this. The one called Primo knows this. They all know this and I’m positive they all talk mad shit about me. To my face. Behind my back. The waves of laughter from the peanut (or should I say bean) gallery clue me in. It used to bug me. I still go flush from time to time, but really, when I think about it, I couldn’t care less, so screw it, let them have their fun.

  Every so often Mr. Shithead or one of the fool servers is on the receiving end of their Spanish humiliation. In these instances I’m suddenly one of the guys, laughing along, trying to fill in the unintelligible Spanish floating inside my head with clever English barbs.

  Right now, however, Jose isn’t laughing or firing up his amigos. He just raises his eyebrows higher and looks past me. I keep expecting a Spanish comment, ready for the abuse, but nothing. Nothing and Jose turns and fumbles and tries to look busy.

  “Charles?”

  Shit!

  Mr. Shithead.

  I wonder how long he has been standing there.

  “Look, Charles, I think you better go home. Take it easy. Get some rest.”

  So, without a word I’m off and this time it might be it. A few days ago I dropped an armload of plates. Last week I spilled a vat of barbecue sauce. A few days before that, while trying to smuggle some Parmesan cheese into my backpack, I knocked over a tray of chicken breasts. Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. What can I do? The hand manifest. My body a nervous jumble of tics and spasms.

  Very soon my phone will ring and the night manager, Buck (no lie, that’s his honest-to-goodness name), will give me the ax. Maybe. Probably. I think Mr. Shithead has had it with me. Before he leaves for the day he’ll hand over the orders to headsman Buck and that’s it, I’m toast. Maybe. Probably. I don’t think my boss hates me. But, then again, I could be wrong.

  I might as well start looking for job number forty-eight. Forty-eight. I began working at the age of fifteen, I’m thirty-three now, that’s like two and a half jobs per year on average. Of forty-seven jobs, I’ve been fired thirty-eight times. Tonight’s possible canning will bring the grand total up to thirty-nine. Ninety percent of the time it’s the hand’s fault. An involuntary spasm here, a mini freak-out there, the shit adds up.

  Sudden slips.

  Always sudden, unplanned, unprepared.

  Suddenly the trash can falls over.

  Suddenly there’s bleach all over the linoleum.

  Suddenly things break.

  Suddenly I’m unemployed.

  It’s far too easy for my employers. I’m an iffy hire in the first place. Once they realize I’m prone to accidents, it’s all over. Every once in a while I’ll get a manager who feels bad and lets me slide until I make a mistake too big to ignore. In those cases I all but fire myself.

  Name a job, any minimum-wage-paying job and chances are I’ve held it.

  Movie theater: I knocked the usher’s podium over and spilled bucket upon bucket of hot buttered popcorn onto a small child. My boss fired me midshift.

  Business office: I broke a copy machine and spilled hot coffee on one person too many.

  Gas station: you don’t even want to know.

  And the list goes on and on and on, world without end, amen.

  When I think about how many times I have failed, how many times I have let someone down, I get depressed. Most tell me not to worry about it. They tell me the job just wasn’t right for me and that sometimes it happens; sometimes personality and vocation just don’t mesh. But honestly, how are you going to tell me I’m not cut out for cleaning grease traps? Sweeping floors? Making tacos? I know, I know, I know, those telling me not to sweat it and offering words of comfort are just trying to be nice. I should appreciate their civility. And I do, but it’s hard to take someone seriously when their mouths are saying one thing and their eyes are saying another.

  I can see the disgust.

  I can see the anger and frustration my ugly incompetence brings.

  And I feel ashamed.

  I feel low.

  Less than low, beneath the dregs, fired from the very bottom, but fuck me, I’m trying! Fuck you, I want to work! I want to pay my own way! I’m not homeless. I pay rent. I live in a rat box, but I pay for it nonetheless. And when I get fired or quit (it happens) I’m working the very next day, whether it be day-laboring with the Mexicans or landing a quick fast-food gig.

  I try. Despite my thirty-eight strikes, I try.

  When filling out applications I leave the job history blank and this doesn’t seem to matter because the only type of job I can get doesn’t really care. As long as I can nod my head and give the impression that I can follow orders, I’m hired. Me and the FOB (fresh off the boat). What’s the difference between us? I can speak English. I’m an Ameri
can. I graduated from goddamn high school. And these are the only jobs I can get? These are the only jobs I’m qualified for?

  Over and over again until my eyes burn with tears: What is wrong with me? These are the worst jobs, the easiest, the smelliest, the slave laborer, hell-on-earth jobs, and I can’t even hold one down!

  Every time my phone rings with news of termination crackling through the receiver, I feel my entrails turning and my brain sputtering and goddamn would someone please give me a gun. Every time an employer approaches with that look in their eyes and dismissal upon their lips, I feel oh so worthless and would someone give me a knife. Give me a thirty-two-ounce thirst buster of Drano. Give me a bowl full of rat poison. Give me a plastic bag. Give me anything, but mostly give me the nerve to get on with it because this isn’t living. I barely have my head above water, scraping by, eking out an existence. This isn’t what I expected, ugly, gimp hand and all.

  Where’s my Honda (okay, since we’re fantasizing here, where’s my BMW)?

  Where’s my five-million-dollar home?

  Where’s my wife? My two-point-five children?

  My money clip?

  My top sirloin and crème brûlée?

  Fame? Fortune? Power? Legacy?

  My purpose? My grand quest? My holy grail?

  Where?

  TV has promised me all of these things since day one. As a child, domesticity crumbling around me, constant upheaval, financial destruction, and shoeboxes for shoes, but no worries because there was always TV. There was always that glamorous glow promising riches. That’s what life is supposed to be about. We all grow up to be rock star supermodels with money to burn.