American Elsewhere

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE




Time stretches on in the dark. On and on and on.

More than once Mona goes into a fit of rage, kicking at everything in the car, breaking the wiring to the taillights, grinding the balls of her feet into the roof of the trunk, anything…

Nothing gives. She is stuck here. And the trunk is getting f*cking hot with the sun beating down right on it.

She gives up. She decides conserving her energy is the wisest thing possible. Because she is going to go f*cking wild when she gets out.

If she ever gets out.

So she waits. And there, in the dark, with all the world hot and close and still, the truth of what Mr. First told her becomes inescapable.

Mother.

Mother, Mother, what am I?

And as she wonders this, she remembers something.


All her life, Mona’s family was moving. Her father’s job required it: he had to keep up with the drills, with the oil, and move from place to place, always new homes and apartments, almost always rentals.

And though Mona’s mother was never really happy in her life, she was always happiest when they moved. “It’s a fresh start,” she would say each time. “A new chance. We can do it right this time.” And Earl, being Earl, would simply grunt.

Mona was never quite sure what her mother meant by this. What had they been doing wrong before? And what was it they had to do right?

She had only asked her mother this once. The answer was simple: “Everything.”

Yet these dizzying, anticipatory highs never lasted. When they would arrive at the new house, and actually walk through it—seeing, in almost every case, the awful carpet, the Pergo walls, the dim, dreary living room—her mother would go silent, and fall into a deep depression that would last for days.

Mona was never sure why this was, but it troubled her. She did not want her mother to feel so hurt, so injured, by something as simple as a house. Which, of course, would change eventually, when they moved again.

She tried to cheer her mother up, but it never worked. Her mother would simply say, “It’s not worth it. Not worth doing anything to it.”

And Mona would say—“Why not?”

“It’s supposed to be perfect. Everything’s supposed to be perfect. It can be, so it should be. But I can’t make this perfect. Not this house. It’s not even worth trying.”

Mona asked her mother to please forget that, to please try to be happy anyway.

“I can’t. Things must be arranged a certain way. Things must be beautiful, my dear.”

When they moved once more, just days before that afternoon with the shotgun and the bathtub, it seemed the same as all the other times: there was the ecstatic joy leading up to their arrival, a million plans dreamed up, a million possibilities; and, upon arriving, the crushing, complete disappointment, thorough and abysmal.

But this time it was a little different. Her mother, weeping, said, “I can’t stay here. Things can’t be perfect here, not like this. I have to go back. I have to go back and get everyone else. And then we’ll come and make a place where everyone can be perfect and happy, forever.” She looked up at Mona then, and there was something alien in the way her eyes looked out at the world: they seemed strangely glassy and shallow, like the eyes of a doll.

Her mother said, “And I will come back for you. I promise.”


And now Mona understands. Whoever said those words was not Laura Alvarez. And possibly that desire for newness, and perfection… perhaps that had no earthly origin, either.

Give up, says a voice. Just give up.

And she does. She is all too happy to give up.

But as she gives up something awakens inside her, unfolding with the gruesome delicacy of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis: it’s as if the release of all that energy has prodded open the third eye in her mind, that black, merciless shark eye she just discovered. And now that she knows that it’s there, it seems so much easier to use it.

She sees…

So much. Too much. Far, far too much.

“No,” she whispers. “No. No, God…”

But one thing she’s learned during her time here in Wink is how to control what she sees, and how she sees it. She must have been using this undiscovered eye of hers all along. So though her body is limp and her eyes stare blindly into the roof of the trunk, she focuses, and sees…

Something. A light in the dark.

A room.

A rounded stone chamber, a bit like a crypt. There is a pile of tiny skulls in the center. And beside it, sitting Indian-style on the floor and staring into the ground, is a man in a filthy blue rabbit suit.

Oh no, she thinks.

He seems to feel her watching him: he sits up, and turns to look. His face is once again concealed by the wooden mask. This time he does not take it off. Yet she gets the impression that he is very surprised to see her watching him.

He raises a hand to her. Then drops it.

She is a bit confused by this. Mona says: Hello.

The man nods slightly toward her. He stares at her a moment longer. (Where is she, anyway? How can he see her? It seems very hard, all of a sudden, to keep herself in one place.) Then he looks around at his chamber. The light is dull and dusky; here all things are yellow and crumbling, a world rendered in musty stone and fading parchment and rusting chains.

He points at her. Then he points at the walls. Then back at her. Then he cocks his head a little.

Mona is not sure what he means. Then she understands: You are imprisoned? Like me?

Mona says to him: Yes. Like you.

And immediately she understands that this is how she can see and speak to him, that this might be why he chose not to harm her when they first met: the two of them are alike. Not just in circumstances; not just because the two of them are currently captured. That’s just the start of it. The real reason is that Mona, like this ragged, filthy man, is a child left behind, neglected, and eventually forgotten, a sibling of a family she never got to know. They share the same story, the same nature: though he is much older than she, and she is the youngest, the two of them are connected. She understands this immediately, without words, without gestures: she understands this more than she has understood anything in her life.

She says: You are my brother.

He nods.

She says: Can you help me? I am trapped.

He looks at her. Then he shakes his head slowly.

What can I do? How can I free myself?

He lifts a hand and pats his chest, where his heart should be. Then he holds his hand out, and makes a fist. He clenches the fist so hard that his knuckles quiver, and trickles of blood begin to ooze down his palm. Then he relaxes it, reassuming his Indian-style position. His hand smears the canvas on his knee with dark blood. Then he hunches over, and resumes staring into the ground.

The connection fades. The vision falls away from her. And she is back in the trunk again.

She realizes she hasn’t breathed in quite a while, and takes a deep gasp that quickly turns to coughs. Apparently this astral-projection thing—or, rather, pandimensional thing—takes some getting used to.

But though he did not speak, there was no mistaking his message:

Rage makes your heart free.