—
I WENT HOME ecstatic. I barely noticed the rain as I drove. A book: Of course this was what came first. Not just any book but a magical book, where the heroes were children, and children on the side of good. In the damp cold jail a book could be a fantasy, a refuge, a separate place.
Patrick continued to gain momentum. For homework, I’d asked him to choose one child from the book whose feelings he related to. It had not occurred to me that Patrick would see himself in Edmund, who betrays his siblings and gets tricked by the Witch. I had imagined he was more like Lucy, who was on a journey, or Peter, who was the eldest and protected everyone.
Lewis had written, Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Patrick wrote:
Every since I had my terrible incedent. Some days I wake up hating to be in Jail. Hopeing it was really a dream to began with. Although it was’nt then, as soon as I try to forget or look around being here. Once I dreamed my mother was sick or had died. When I awaken the sense was so devastating. My mind wouldnt let me call home an check right off. Those are a couple of reasons I chose Edmund.
Patrick had clearly labored over each letter. Each period was a circle that he’d carefully closed. Difficult words were correctly spelled: awaken, devastating, reasons. He must have taken the time to use the dictionary I gave him.
Patrick watched me as I read his work. “It’s probably pretty lousy, because my head was hurting.”
I said, “It’s not lousy. It’s good.”
I would correct the apostrophes later.
“I saw your sisters yesterday afternoon,” I said, changing the subject to a more pleasant topic.
Patrick jolted up, excited.
I had started, on a regular basis, to pick up cigarettes from his house rather than buying them. This time, all three of his sisters had been home, the picture of pleasing domesticity. The eldest sister, Willa—this was Jamaal’s mother—was attempting to read some kind of textbook as Jamaal grabbed her hair. She was taking a class at the community college. Patrick’s father and Pam both seized Jamaal, trying to hold him back, as they competed for his affection. The worn-down couch sank under the weight of their struggles. Kiera had just woken up, having napped after a long night shift at the retirement home, where she worked with her mother.
“Pam be okay?” he said, asking about her first.
“She seems really nice.”
At this Patrick grunted. “She too nice. People always be trying to put their kids on her, but they don’t pay her. These grown people, they already got babies and they trying to put their babies on her. They take advantage ’cause they see she got a good heart. I try to tell her, ‘People will use you, they ain’t your real friends.’ I don’t know if she know or if she don’t care. That’s how she is.”
“Pam is very trusting,” I agreed. “She and Kiera told me to tell you they’re hoping to see you soon.”
This was the wrong thing to say. Patrick flinched and brusquely waved his hand in the air. Did he know they’d put off visiting him because coming was too hard? Or did his wave mean that he already understood and forgave them?
Patrick fingered the cover of the book.
“Narnia,” Patrick said. “That a real place?”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I wish it were.”
I shook my head to indicate I was sorry that Narnia wasn’t real.
“But, Ms. Kuo,” he said. His brows, insistent, were ridged with concern. “It got a map right here.”
Patrick opened the book, expertly creasing back the spine. He pushed into my view a map of Narnia, its borders designated by hand-drawn lines. “And that a compass,” he said, gesturing to the star in the corner. It was apparent that he had already studied the map in earnest.
“I’m guessing the author drew the map, too.”
He seemed less disappointed than baffled. “So he made this all up?” He was thinking aloud and didn’t appear to expect an answer. Then his face lit up. “Maybe Narnia be like that place he from—where you say he from?”
“England.”
“Yeah. Maybe Narnia be like that.”
“That’s possible,” I said. “Though I don’t think there are half-men, half-goats there.”
At this Patrick gave a little chuckle.
“Ms. Kuo,” he said. Distracted, he held his fingers on his chin. “A man once told me you can do one thing that could change the rest of your life. Man locked up in cell next to me. He told me that right in front of my house.”
The man’s duplicated proximity to Patrick startled him, as if converting the man’s words to prophecy.
“Do you think that one day is going to change the rest of your life?”
“It have already.”
—
“HOW IS IT?” I asked finally, hesitant to interrupt him.
“Great.”
I had started to carve out time where I just let him read. “Like silent reading,” I said, hoping he remembered. While he read, I corrected his homework, but usually I finished before him.
“Which part are you on?”
“Part where the stone table cracked.”
“You like that part?”
“Yeah, where they be battling, Edmund and Peter. First they fighting with the Witch, and Edmund’s the one that kept them going.”
“What do you like about it?”
“Edmund,” he said, without hesitating. “He be real smart. He just a young boy, you know. The Witch started turning him into stone and he thought to knock the wand out of her hand when everybody was doing something else. And Edmund be on the Witch’s side at first.”
“Why do you think he was on her side?”
“He be fooled by the Witch. I believe he went along because he was alone. And because he took that Turkish Delight. And because he wanted to be a king. He be mad at his siblings because they gave him the cold shoulder, wouldn’t listen to him.”
“How do you think he changed?”
“He became”—here Patrick struggled to find the words he wanted—“a lot stronger and wiser.”
—
I WAS THERE when he finished the book. From the corner of my eye I saw him reach the last paragraph, his pinkie finger tracing the words. Disbelieving, he turned the page: It was blank. He turned the book again to the back cover, as if the book were playing a trick on him, as if books did not truly have endings. Then he leafed backward, looking for a chapter he wanted to read again. He continued to read for a bit longer.
Later, I would draw an upward-sloping line. “This is how a story is structured,” I would say. “What is the rising action?”
He wrote, He abandoned his siblings with the beavers and betrayed them for the witch.
“What goes at the peak?”
He wrote, Edmund been forgiven and granted a sword.
—
I HAD THOUGHT I was choosing a fantasy into which Patrick could retreat. But Narnia was real to him. What made the story fantastical for Patrick was that Edmund was able to change.
7
* * *
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Deep autumn—
My neighbor
How does he live, I wonder.
—BASHO
New Year’s Day—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.
—ISSA