“Babble for Me” was originally published in Grotesque Quarterly.

Babble for Me

by Shale Nelson

“We’ll sit outside,” I say to the hostess, a cheery ingénue as pretty and plastic as befits a pricy restaurant with a view of the bay.

“Perfect,” she chirps, leading Sarah and me across the quiet dining room and through a large door that opens onto a narrow, street-abutting patio. Beyond the sleepy avenue, the bay is mostly concealed by rusty scaffolding and dormant construction machinery. Disappointing.

            “Your server will be with you in a moment,” the hostess says.

            “I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a rush,” Sarah says.

            “Perfect. I’ll tell him to hurry.”

            “Perfect,” I say, mirroring her song bird optimism, shifting my eyes to Sarah to see if she caught the joke.

            The girl turns, oblivious, and skips back into the restaurant. “Charles, you’re terrible,” Sarah says, smiling beneath her oversized sunglasses.

            “To sap a word of its potency,” I say, raising my finger like an impassioned politician, “to dilute it to meaninglessness. ‘Perfect’ used to express something—flawlessness, impeccability. Now it’s a dressed up version of, what, ‘Alrighty?’ ‘Okie doke?’ I won’t sit idly by.”

            “Oh, I think you will.” She slides her sunglasses off of her nose, revealing big green eyes that blink at me in the late-afternoon light.

            “Fine, but I’ll complain loudly while sitting idly.”

            “I thought you were cutting down on your adverbs.”

“Gradually.”

            She doesn’t laugh, but the joke registers in her thoughtful eyes as she sets her sunglasses on the table and takes my hand in hers. Her red hair is tied up in a bun, her face tired from work but as pretty and charmingly freckled as the day I met her nearly six months ago. “I never dreamed how glamorous it would be to date an English professor,” she says.

            “Not everyone can keep up.”

At this, she laughs.

            The waiter arrives with our waters. We order and let him know we’re in a hurry. Across the street, a dark figure looms near the scaffolding. The plump man or woman (it’s unclear from this distance) leans over a garbage can and rifles through the trash, then stamps a foot at a squirrel that ventured too near whatever treasure lies within.

“Didn’t this used to be a nice neighborhood?”

            Sarah smiles. “We met around here. Don’t you remember?”

            “That was its peak, apparently.” I turn my attention back to the street, but the homeless figure has vanished. Unimpeded, the squirrel climbs up the latticed metal side of the garbage can and dives inside.

Sarah sighs and kneads the back of her neck. “I’m sorry this has to be so rushy. My boss can’t take care of her own children, it would seem.”

“It’s okay.” I smile across the table. “I’ll see you tonight.”

            “I’d love to just stand up to her sometime.”

            “You just started,” I say, determined to keep the conversation light. “You have to build up some pluck…élan, if you will.”

            She frowns at her water and ripples its surface with a weary breath. “It’s just not what I expected.” A weighty downer, just when the mood was pleasant and the banter lighthearted.

            “Oft expectation fails,” I say.

            “Hmm?”

            “And most oft there where most it promises.”

            “What?”

            “Shakespeare.”

            “Oh.” She takes a small sip of her water and stares at the tablecloth. “Yeah, I suppose.” The unspoken indictment—that I’m being an asshole—hangs in the air for an uncomfortable minute of sipping and checking phones.

The waiter reappears with two perspiring glasses of unsweetened ice tea and a pair of leafy salads. As he turns and leaves, a ragged bundle materializes in the corner of my eye. The scents of sweat and dried urine waft into the dining area.

            “Scuse me,” the bundle moans. “Scuse me. A minute of your time?”

            I keep my eyes pointed straight ahead. “Are you kidding me?” I say under my breath.

            “Just…it’s fine,” Sarah says.

            “Scuse me,” the intruder repeats, “a minute of your time, please?”

            Sarah turns and smiles. “Hello, how are you?” As fond as I am of her warm heart, its boundaries are leaky at best, nonexistent at worst. I’ve tried to tell her to shut the door on beggars and vagrants, that they’re only preying on her kindness, but she simply greets my admonitions with a coy shrug and a smile.

“I’m doing real good,” the bundle moans. Offended more by the grammar than even the stench, I turn and look. A fat elderly woman swathed in bundles of dirty rags and scarves leans over the iron gate that separates the patio from the sidewalk. Her face is a crumpled paper sack, its folds of wrinkled flesh dotted with liver spots and weathered by countless seasons in the elements. A mop of incongruous blonde hair hangs gracelessly over her shoulders. She grins at Sarah, revealing an exorbitant gum-to-tooth ratio, the few remaining nubs of rotting enamel nearly consumed by spongy expanses of inflamed flesh. A cluster of pendants of various shapes and sizes dangles from her neck. Beneath the decorative accoutrements, her bloated frame is wrapped in a rudimentary garment that could be a dress or a hospital gown, depending on the continent and the century.

“I have whatcha need,” she hisses at Sarah.

“I’m sorry?” Sarah says.

“It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Your life.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ignore her,” I whisper. “She’ll go away.”

The old woman raises her lip and swipes her thick tongue across her upper gums. “The word for…hmm…how does it go in the new jargon, now? Confident? Yes. Sure? Yes. Sure of one’s self, that is. Yes, that’s it. That’s the problem here.”

Sarah’s eyes glow with interest. “I don’t understand.”

The visitor fingers one of the pendants, a tarnished silver box the size of a cigarette pack, its interior cloaked by a hinged lid. “It took me twenty-nine years to write this one. That’s a lot of time!” She shows her gums again and releases a sickening sound that lives in the region between manic laugh and agonized bawl. “That’s a youth!”

            Her milky eyes harden on Sarah and a note of malice inflects her creaking voice. “You think I’m old, do you?”

            Sarah’s cheeks burn bright red. “No, that’s not what I was thinking.”

“Well, it’s true enough, dear.” A grandmotherly smile spreads across her wrinkled face. “Youth is priceless, but you have to spend it while it’s still worth a damn. I knew enough to sell high. I didn’t give it up for a pile of careless giggles and cheap words, as many puppies yapped at my ankles when I still had the treats they wanted.”

            “We’re trying to eat here,” I say. I turn to Sarah with an incredulous laugh. “Do you believe this?” She doesn’t look at me.

“You haven’t seen old,” the woman continues, also ignoring me. “I’ve seen them, in the east, in the west. So far west you’ve gone east again! So far east you’ve gone west! I’ve met the hidden ones in the hidden towns. I’ve mastered the words, the hidden levers of the mind. I can do you. And I can undo you!”

“She’s insane,” I whisper to Sarah, but her eyes are frozen to the rusty object resting between the woman’s pudgy fingers. “Sarah, she’s crazy.”

“What is it?” she asks the old woman.

“A word. A line. A lever. I studied, you see. I sacrificed to learn them. Do you think this knowledge is simply given away?” She winces and heaves. “Oh, the things I did. The parts of me I bartered away.” The corners of her mouth droop in an exaggerated display of emotion. “My poor mother and father!” she wails. “My poor little boy! Oh, the thought of it. The very thought of it!”

She plunges her fingers into the cluster of pendants and digs out another one, a simple wooden box held up by a loop of dirty twine. “And this one.” She jerks her head at me and grins. “He’d get a real kick out of it. Took me fifty years to write. Fifty years! That’s a life! That’s a life!”

I stand up and slip my wallet out of my back pocket, fish out a five dollar bill and hand it to her across the iron gate. “Here you go.”

She erupts into a high-pitched cackle that stirs something dreadful in my stomach, the feeling of falling in pitch dark. Her mouth and its vermillion gums somehow take up my entire field of vision. “He thinks…he thinks…” she sputters.

I dangle the bill in front of her face. “Please, just take it and be on your way. We’re trying to have a nice meal.”

She laughs again, a man’s laugh this time, coarse and teeming with malevolent glee. The bill shakes in my hand. “He thinks I’m asking for money!”

“Oh, come on, like you weren’t getting around to it. Just spare us the elaborate preamble.”

She slices a finger through the air, at the level of my mouth. “You talk too much.”

  “I guess we have that in common.” I turn to Sarah, shrug and force a laugh, but my lips involuntarily curl.

            “There are words you don’t know,” the lady hisses.

            “And I’ll bet you’re a walking thesaurus.”

            “…old words.”

“And there are words I do know.” I gesture at the hag, making a show of it, gaining control over my twitching mouth and the situation. “Off the top of my head: vagrant, miscreant, reprobate…”

            “Oh, listen to you!”

            “…malady, contamination.”

            “Fluff, puff. Puffy fluff.”

            “Statistic?”

            She holds her index finger up to Sarah and lets it hang limply from her hand. “Men learn fancy words when they can’t give their women the other thing. Right, dear?”

“Oh, come on now,” Sarah says.

Hot blood rushes to my cheeks. “Do you want me to call the manager or the police?”

The woman’s face relaxes into a satisfied smile. One eye twitches as she casually regards me. Her voice drops an octave. “You’ll babble for me by midnight, boy.”

The air around us has taken on a broiling intensity. My shirt is soaked in sweat. “The choice is yours,” I huff. “Manager or police?”

“You will…” she snarls.

The feeling returns: plunging through inky darkness, my arms and legs flailing in the empty air. “Fine then,” I say, fighting to steady the tremble in my voice. “I’m getting my phone.”

“…babble for me!” She throws her head back and howls with laughter, revealing in full the grotesque dimensions of her rubbery gums. When I pull out my phone and hold it in my trembling hand, she quickly turns from us and shuffles across the street, laughing with glee, dragging her filthy scarves behind her. As she disappears from view behind the scaffolding, her cackle seems a living thing, taking flight and flapping just outside of my ears, then bounding above the walls of the darkening neighborhood before finally subsiding and giving way to the white noise of the city.

In the newly quiet air, I turn back to the table and sit down before my half-eaten salad.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Sarah says.

I jam my phone into my jacket pocket. “We’re never coming here again.”

“That was—” She shakes her head and looks off in the direction the woman walked. “Uncomfortable.”

“She ruined our meal, Sarah.” I throw my hands in the air. “I don’t feel like eating at all.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t have to encourage her.”

She shrugs and holds her palms up above the table. “I’m sorry. She just seemed…I felt like she….” She closes her mouth and looks at her phone without finishing the thought. “Shit, it’s close to seven already.” She pushes her plate aside and stands up. “This is a really a bad note for me to leave on.”

I stare at my salad.

“I’ll make it up to you tonight.” She gives me a warm peck on the cheek and rubs my back.

My mood has crumbled. I’m too angry to respond in kind. “If you see the waiter, tell him I want the check. Now.”

           She sighs and shakes her head. “I will.”

I watch her walk into the restaurant, already feeling foolish for acting like a baby, for letting a weak degenerate get to me like that. The door closes and I’m left alone in the cooling air.

I take a bite of my salad, but can hardly force it down. I push the bowl aside. When I look up from the table, the bundle is moving toward me across the street, wet, gummy smile on top, fat legs shuffling across the ground. Between them, suspended on a piece of twine, the open box reveals a scribbled line as familiar as death: Black lines scraped into clay. Incomprehensible angles. Impossible loops. Audacious patterns no man would…no decent person could…

But my eyes drink it up, gulp down every line and loop. A bolt of pain slices through them and bounces around inside my skull. More laughter, just outside my ears, and I can’t lift my hands to cover them. I can’t shut my eyes. I can’t blink. The garish letters strobe as the world around them turns dark. The intricate swirls and their black logic splash around inside my throbbing skull.

Panic beyond description descends upon me, and on every side of its unknown edges an abyss. I open my mouth and an animal bleat tumbles over my tongue toward the howling woman. Somewhere nearby, squirrels chatter like men.

The panic snaps shut around me. I twist in my seat to escape it and the chair topples over. My hand scrapes against the pavement. I lie breathing. There is blood on my sleeve.

“Do you and undo you,” she whispers. The cackle flaps in my ears, building to a deafening crescendo and quickly trailing off into the evening air. When I pick myself up off the ground, she is gone.

****

“She came back?” Sarah says, her voice hollow and shaky as it crackles through the outdated speaker phone in my Audi.

“Yeah,” I say, steering onto a broad, well-lit avenue. “She opened up one of her little boxes for me.”

“What was inside?”

Safely removed from the situation, my response to the picture, or diagram, or whatever it was, now strikes me as absurd, funny even—the panicked overreaction of a wound-up prude who needs to get out more. Relax, Charles, seriously. Spend some time away from work. Take a trip to the country like Sarah’s been hinting at. Don’t let an old hag ruin your day with a cheap parlor trick. You’re better than that.

“It was just a trick,” I say. “An optical ill…” The city lights judder in the windshield. “Um…”

“A what?”

Behind the vibrating specs of brightness, the purple horizon balloons, stretching out over the landscape toward my blinking eyes. “An…op…” Now the first word doesn’t come, but the second finally does: “Illusion. Illusion. It was just some kind of  op…op…” A burning itch sprouts deep inside my head. I fight the urge to smash my head against the steering wheel. “An op…ill...”

“Charles? Are you okay?”

I force my eyes back onto the road and push the unfinished phrase out of my mind. The city lights solidify into stationary points of yellow and orange. The horizon contracts. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk while driving.”

That’s it, I think: distracted driving. I should know better. Statistics don’t lie. “You’re right,” I say. “I’ll see you in a few.”

“Bye.”

The connection dies. A soft rain falls from the sky, fracturing the light from the street lamps and sparse evening traffic. My arm and shoulder still ache from falling on the patio, but my head feels better. Whatever was hidden in that box, the effects have subsided. Only a nagging lightheadedness and the shadow of a headache remain as I drive through the slick city streets toward Sarah’s apartment in the suburbs.

I click on the radio and the voice of a blathering sports commentator assaults my ears:

“It’s a bad sign for a team that was poised for success going into the season…” I rub my right temple with one hand, steering the car onto a dark side street with the other. “…that defense is built like a slotted spoon.”

Each word levels a blunt, concussive blow on a tender, still-healing region of my brain. The comparison makes me retch. Slotted spoon? It’s just defense, I want to shout at him. It has nothing to do with a spoon!

I change the station to an alternative music program, but the result is no better. The melody and beat are pleasing, but the lyrics strike me as unnecessary and overdone:

I eschewed the old good world

To worship with you in this tawdry shrine

“What?” I say to the radio, slamming my fist against the dash. “Are you kidding me with this shit?” My temples throb. A wave of sickness sloshes in my gut. The nameless panic that visited me on the patio returns, and again I feel myself tipping over the edge of an unimaginable abyss. A loud shriek snaps me back to attention. Sparks fly in my peripheral vision. The car’s passenger side hubcaps scream as they grind against the curb. I jerk the steering wheel sharply left to keep it on the road.

Cruising again through the quiet neighborhood, I scan the radio in search of a soothing sound, something that will deliver me from the pain and anxiety. I land on a classical music station and am instantly assuaged. It’s a rich, tranquil symphony—early Bach, I think. Or Handel, perhaps. It doesn’t matter. I take a deep breath and let the smooth, wordless swell of the music wash over me. There. The ache dissipates. The unease clears away. Simple as that.

The car approaches a trio of six-story apartment towers. I pull into the back lot of Sarah’s building, park and step out of the car. A sign affixed to a chain link fence reads:

No Trespassing

            Behind the sign, a breeze blows in a small grove of trees, reminding me of the spring day Sarah and I ventured back there and tried to befriend a rabbit. Spurned by the timid creature, we ended up sharing a carrot and making out on the grass. Things were nice back then, lighthearted.

Now our encounters have taken on a serious tone. We’re getting to the point where decisions need to be made, and her frequent, expectant glances tell me she’s waiting on me to say the necessary words. I’ve gone from “I like you” to “I really like you” to “I care about you so much” to “You really mean a lot to me” in the span of a few weeks, meaning every one, but knowing full well I’ve yet to say the magic words she’s waiting for. If pressed tonight, I’ll drag out “I’m so enamored with you.” My eyes spin in their sockets. A jabbing pain in my head knocks me off balance. I steady my arm on a parked car to keep from falling over.

            “Charles!” Sarah’s voice calls out from behind. I turn to find her clutching a stuffed garbage bag, her auburn hair damp from the rain.

She throws the bag in a dumpster, walks across the pavement and rests her hand on my shoulder. “What happened? Are you okay?”

            I force a laugh through the fear. “I’m not quite feeling myself,” I manage to say. But her presence calms me, her small hand rubbing my back, the fresh, lilac scent of her body lotion washing over me. The sickness passes. I stand up and straighten my jacket. “It’s probably just something I ate.”

            “Come on inside,” she says. “A cup of tea might be just the thing.”

****

            She sits across the kitchen table from me telling a story I cannot force myself to follow or comprehend. “And then my boss bargululamar… And her son askelushulalalu…”

            I shiver in my chair. Sarah’s eyes go wide. “Charles, seriously, what’s wrong?”

            I set down my tea cup, hands shaking. “I feel foolish saying it, but…that old woman.”

            “Yes?”

            “At the…the…place we ate at…what’s it called again?”

            “Mancini’s?” The room twirls. A sharp pain knifes into the back of my head.

“No, that’s not what I’m thinking of.”

            “Well, that’s the name of the place we ate at.”

I squint down at the steaming tea. “That’s not the word I can’t remember.” I rub the back of my neck. “Do you have any pain meds? Something strong?”

            “What happened? What did the old woman do?”

            “She…showed me something. Some kind of—” The back of my throat shudders. “Word, I guess. I don’t know what it was.”

Her eyes narrow, shining with protective anger. “The homeless woman did this? After I left?”

  “But I can’t think of the name. You eat there.” I snap my fingers spastically above the table. “The…sleep…the…it has something to do with sleep. Why can’t I remember it?”

She shakes her head slowly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I thrust a finger into the air. “No, not sleep. Rest! Rest…something to do with rest, but you eat there.”

She stares. “Restaurant?”

I spin out of my chair and tip over onto the floor.

“Charles!”

I roll over and find Sarah kneeling next to me. My hands shake and grab at her knees. “Sweetie,” she says, taking my head in her hands. I breathe. The pain has fled once more. My hands are steady again. I stare at them.

“It comes and goes,” I whisper. “Now it’s fine.” But tears are rolling down my cheeks. Sarah wipes them away with the cuff of her sweater. “It was just some trick. A stupid trick.”

“Darling, I’m taking you to a hospital.”

            I hold up my hand. “It’s nothing medical. I need to find her. I need to find the lady.”

            “Why on earth…?”
            I push myself up so I’m resting on an elbow. “She said something—‘do me and undo me’—yes, that ‘s what she said. She can help me. She can make it stop.”

            “Let me help you.”

I struggle to my feet. Sarah stands in front of me, holding my hands. “Look,” I say. “I do apprec—” My jaw aches. The pain creeps up my head, throbbing inside of my ears with skull-crushing force. “I am grate—” My body shakes. “I am glad for your help.” The pain subsides. “I am glad, happy.” The ache and panic drain out of me, leaving only a numbing bliss. “I am happy you help me.”

I smile at Sarah, but her eyes show me pain. Real pain. I’ve seen it many times before. I’ve caused it before. It hurts me too. I don’t want to see it again. I don’t want to cause it again.

“I’m happy I have you,” I say. She moves closer to me. Her eyes are searching now. Looking for more. “I’m so enam—” A searing pain ruptures my mind. My shoulders and arms tremble.

            “What’s wrong?”

            I shake it off. “Nothing. I just wanted to tell you…” The word itself hovers in my mind, as if it’s being typed in white characters on an imaginary black field:

Enamor…

Pieces of it flash in space:

Ena…

…mored

En…

E…

            And now the entire word crumbles, piece by piece, dissolves from my mind and my memory, and I’m left only with the feeling that something has slipped from my grasp, never to return.

We stand close together. My face touches hers.

            “What’s happening to you?”
            “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”

“What were you trying to tell me?”
            “I…I am something. I am…” Tears return to my eyes. “I can’t remember.”

            “You can’t remember?”

“I…I am.”

“Yes?”

“No, I do.”

“You do what?”

“I…love you. I love you, Sarah.”

“Oh, darling. I love you too.” Her arms tighten around me. She cries too. “But you have to let me—”

“But I need to go. I have to fix this. I have to find her.”

****

I scramble across the parking lot to my car.

“Charles!” Sarah shouts from the door.

I turn and give her the most reassuring smile I can muster. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

“Let me come with you.”

“I’ll be okay. I promise.”

I climb into my car and turn the ignition before she can change my mind. I can’t bring her to the lady. This is my battle and I must fight it alone.

I crank the car into reverse and pull out of my spot. Above the hood, the sign on the fence reads:

No Trespaladumalamu…

I must turn away, because the vulgar word hurts me. It hurts even worse than when I tried to tell Sarah the word I cannot remember. The thing I forgot.

I spin the steering wheel and jam my foot on the gas, but my mind lingers on the word. I don’t want to lose another one. I hold onto parts of it as I speed through the parking lot and exit onto the street.

Trespa…

Tres…

The letters disintegrate and the agony pushes me to just let go of them. Let them float away. Just let them go.

Don’t come in here, the sign said. Do not come in here. It feels good to think it, to let go of the other thing. The longer one. The hateful longer word.

“Do not come in here,” I say as I speed through the streets, steering the car toward the bay, toward neighborhood where we met the old woman. Yes, that’s must be right. It feels good so it must be right.

Each green sign above the highway presents a new danger. They fly toward me through the damp sky:

Exit…

Merge…

Avenuuwwaa…

Museeeeummnnnmm…

And each word causes such dreadful pain and panic in me as I try to hold it in my mind. It hurts so bad to hold them that I just let them go. I let them crumble and drift away to the blank space. And all of them are dissapp—are dissol—all of them are going away now to that black, empty space where there is nothing. My mind does not hold them anymore. Does not have them anymore. They are gone. Wiped away. And it feels so good.

Another sign comes up on the right. There is a long word on it that is familiar to me. That I know well. That I care about and love.

Universit—

I jolt in my seat. The car swerves to the side of the road. A car honks, then another. I know I should forget, but I don’t want to let this one go. I curl up in the car seat, gripping my head with both hands, because I want to hold on to the word.

Univ—

My whole body trembles. The car flies in the wrong direction. So fast and I can’t do anything to stop it.

U—

And now a loud crash and my head flying forward and a tightness against my chest. A big white balloon swells before my face and crushes my nose. More honking. Many cars honk. I only see white. Something warm drips down my nose. Something warm and salty drips into my mouth.

I breathe for a minute. The white balloon gets smaller. Steam rises from the front of my car. The city lights twinkle behind it. A man stands beside my window. He has gray hair and is wearing a warm coat. His eyes blink in the rai—in the water from the sky. He hits his fist on the window. He opens the door.

I look up at him. His eyes are worried. “Hey, you okay, buddy?”

“What was it?” I shout at him, freeing myself from the belt around my chest.

He shakes his head and whistles. “You drove right off the road.”

“No, what did I forget?” I get up and stand there with him in the falling water. The thing I forgot is gone. I push my brain toward the empty space where the words go, but it is already gone. There is nothing to grab onto. But he can bring it back.

“I want to remember,” I say. “What was it?”

“What are you talking about?”
         “A sign back there.”

“A sign?”

“Pointing that way.” I point where the sign was pointing, toward a place with brick buildings, grassy lawns and smart people. A place I know and feel at home at, even though I no longer know what it’s called. “Saying what is that way if you turn. What is it? What is it called?”

He looks where I am pointing and shakes his head at me. He touches his chin with his hand. “Well, that way is the university, but—”

My head spins away from him. A hot gush blows out of my mouth and splashes on the ground in front of my shoes. Mess from inside me drips down my chin. I wipe it off on my sleeve. Blood from my nose is mixed in with it. My whole body shakes.

The man’s hand is on my back. “I gotta get you to a hospalckadigalleya—”

I twitch and raise my hand to his mouth. “No, no…”

“Look buddy, you’re not in any shape to—”

“I need to find her!”

He shakes his head and breathes loud through his nose. His eyes do not look happy. He takes out a dark square from his pocket and presses his finger against it. It glows in his face.

“No, don’t. No.”

“I’m calling an ambulargadufffargala…”

“No, please…”

He presses again on the black square.

“Stop now. Please stop.”

He holds the dark square up to his face.

“Stop,” I say, but my words won’t stop him. I grab his coat with both hands. “No. Please. I need to find the lady.”

“You need to get your hands the hellackamadu offffaaaallluuuuuu…”

He takes two steps back. My words can’t stop him. My hands will stop him.

“Stop! Don’t!” I grab at his face. “Staaahhhp!”

He pushes me back against the car. His eyes show he hates me. “Look here, you craylabadalusha sonovabeelabeelama—”

“Ahhh!” I scream. “Ahhh!” My fist comes up and hits his face. His nose snaps inside. My fis—my hand in a ball crashes into his face again and makes him fall over. Bloo— red water falls out of his nose. Now it falls out of his mouth too and drips on the ground. His eyes close. I look around and see there are other people nearby. They stand outside their cars. They stand still in water that falls from the sky. Their eyes are afraid of me. “Ahhh!” I shout at them, spinning around in a circle. “Ahhh!” Some of them turn and get back in their cars.

I turn from them and look at my own car and the steam in front and the white bag inside. My car no longer work. I turn to man and look through his pock—look through little holes in coat. I find ke—I find cold metal thing that make car go. I take it. I get in his car and put metal thing in tiny hole and make car go. It start. It drive. I make it go backward and then forward. I make it go away from people who are scared of me.

I drive to neighb—to place in city. I drive to place in city where old lady live. She near water. I know where water is. She can help. I go to find old lady.

****

One street. Two street. I drive car not mine. Car man’s but I drive it. Water still fall from sky. Red water still fall from face. I drive car to place where old lady live.

Three street. Four street. Now come near big water. Big black water past street. Small water fall from sky and join big black water on other side of street. Now I coming to water where lady live. I want find her. I want make lady help me.

I learning how not be hurt. Learning not use head and try think. Just saying bye to things. All things that come into head I say bye to. Need find old lady. Need old lady for help. She give me thoughts back. She give me life back.

Five street…

Five street…

What come after five? I no remember name. I remember from look, not from know name. I remember street with big machines for fix street. Big machines for move dirt and make new street. Machines near place where I ate food. I remember I ate food with… I ate with…

Hurt come back. Big hurt in head. All through body. More hurt than I can…

I stop car and get out. I bend over in water. I bend over and more mess come out of mouth. It hot and yellow and fall on street. Red from nose mixed in with it. I wipe mouth with hand. I stand up in water fall from sky. I no remember name. I try remember but it hurt bad. I forget. I let name go bye like everything else.

She no longer have name. She no longer need name. Just person I like. Just person I love. Just person who has eyes that love me. Just person I want see another time and want tell things from head. Things I no say before. I want say them, but from fixed head, not ruined head. Only after old lady fix me.

I walk on stree—on gray path. Gray path go up hill to where machines that make new gray path. Machines that fix paths. Across from machines is place we ate. Person I love and…me. But who me?

My name go now. My name go bye with all things.

It no matter I have name. I walk up gray path. Just me. Just look for lady. I no need name to walk. I no need name to look for lady. I just walk and look. I no have to be person with name to walk and look.

I walk to machines. I hear laugh. It near. I know laugh. I hear laugh before. It close to me. It find me on gray path. I walk to laugh.

When I turn onto path I see lady. First I see open mouth. So big open mouth and so much skin inside. Most skin. Pink skin. Red skin. Skin color of water fall from man’s nose. Mostly skin and little brown teeth. She sit on boxes with legs spread part. She sit and laugh at me. Laugh close to my ears. Water from sky fall down on her and on me.

I come near lady. She smile. She clap hands. She make happy noise. I want hit her. I want kill her. But no kill. No hit. She strong. She hurt me again. Only beg. Lady have boxes round neck. Me need boxes. Boxes hurt me. Boxes fix me. Me need look at boxes for fix me. Me beg for boxes.

Me on ground. Face close to ground. She laugh. She make happy noise. She clap hands. It all going. No word to say. No word to think. Just need. Just need. I look up.

I open mouth.