The Call for Something

Let me say first of all that you can never read all people write, since it always starts by remembering, and remembering has as much to do with what you forget. So I’ll just start and I hope I don’t forget too much. And since I haven’t had a chance to forget it yet, let alone remember it, I guess it would be best if I began with the end; so I’ll start there and then. Right now I’m at the subway, headed to Union Station in DC; and I’m taking inventory. It isn’t difficult. All I have is what’s in my backpack—a pen that I stole with the name of the place I stole it from printed on it, which I hope nobody notices; and some empty sheets of paper—I grabbed as much as I could get my hands on, but it probably won’t be enough. I have my Anthology of Rap that I carry everywhere, which my friend Connor Grunoigen gave to me. Although I don’t know if he’s still my friend. Not that I have to worry about that now though, since I’ll probably never see him again. What else. Not much. I have no cell-phone—I never did, except for a couple of months one semester back in high school, during my second junior-year (I got held back). But then one day I went totally bananas and threw it off Key Bridge, into the river. I remember it was the one thing my dad actually praised me for—getting rid of that cell-phone. He doesn’t like cell-phones, and neither do I. I guess that’s the only thing that we have in common, my dad and I. My sister tells me he and I are so much alike, which is why we don’t get along; but I don’t see it. I don’t think we’re alike at all. Anyway I don’t like cell-phones and I realize I’m probably the only twenty-two year-old who can say that. I don’t like credit-cards either, even though I have one, but I especially hate it now since I have no job. So that’s me: a pen that I stole and some paper, my anthology of rap and a credit-card. I have no clothes, except what’s on my back; and I have no job. I also have no home. I’m jobless and homeless. But I have been homeless before. It ended badly though—with me catching pneumonia and somehow ending up at the hospital, where my information was taken and my dad contacted. What I probably should have done, since I’d run away in the winter, was not buzz my hair so close. I should’ve let it grow out. But it’s a habit: I always keep my head buzzed low and tight. It’s great in the summer, but not so good when it’s cold out, which it was that time that I ran away and wound up almost dead. Therefore I should probably go to California this time, or maybe Florida, or at least somewhere hot. Although it is hot now; it’s hot as hell. Anyway I remember, vaguely, waking up after an epic five days of insanity, all around the Independence Day holiday, right in the middle of the summer. And all I can remember is that as soon as I woke up I re-realized all over again that this wasn’t my home—that I’d already been kicked out. I’d gotten myself into all kinds of legal trouble with the police and I’m not totally sure if my dad knew all the details or not, but if he did then you can be damn sure he didn’t want me hanging around. At this point he probably hated me almost as much as he hates the cops, which is saying a lot: my dad can’t stand the cops. He had a lot of bad experiences with them in his childhood, growing up in Jamaica. So for me to bring them to his front door was definitely not a good thing. Anyway that’s where I start remembering, is with me in the middle of a Saturday morning, in the middle of some terrible nightmare and I’ve got a nasty headache. A bar of light is coming through a curtain slat, slicing my eye open like, and I feel like I’m bleeding from my ear. Meanwhile my dad is yelling in my other ear—what else is new—but I’d take bleeding over that, any day. And now before I know it it’s gone to late morning and doors are banging open and all it is is yelling, yelling, yelling. And you’d think I could just take any of a million conversations I’ve had with my dad, since they were all the same anyway; but I really can’t. I mean it’s like I can’t remember a single word. And maybe that’s why they turned less into conversations and more into plain old shouting-matches, which I never won, because I’m not much of a shouter. But he’s right though. Whatever the hell he said, he is right. I’ll give him that. I’ll give him anything, if he’ll just go away and let me go back to my nightmare, which he did eventually: he went away and now it’s going on early afternoon and the bars of light are moving across the walls and now Dad has really got my attention all of a sudden, because he isn’t yelling anymore. He’s got that cold Gestapo voice like he’s already come to a decision; and when a Jamaican goes cold and starts talking quietly, that’s when you know you’ve got to worry. I’m still asleep when he comes in and starts saying stuff and I start talking back, but I’m asleep, so I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. We must have come to some sort of agreement though, because the next thing I realize I’m nodding like a madman and saying Yes to everything, just to get him out of the room. And the reason for that is that I start remembering. All the last couple of days are coming back to me and I’m thinking Holy crap, that wasn’t just a nightmare; and maybe he sees it on my face or something, because then he says he’s going to buy the paper I think, which is when I remember—the paper. I hear the jingle of keys and all the locks on the door cackling and snitching and all I can think is the paper, the paper. So I get up, kind of—I’m still kind of sore and I have a headache like you’d never believe, but I’m not dizzy now at least—and I feel under my mattress and sure enough there’s all those papers there. And I just can’t help myself: I go back to reading—studying. Making sure my confession, or my statement or testimony or whatever you want to call it, isn’t too incriminating. I look at the papers and weather, the humidity or the heat, had already made some pages yellow; or maybe I’m just not used to the light this time of day; but one sheet still has the red stains on it and god knows if that’s the blood, or maybe it’s the wine; but either way it’s all coming back to me and that means everything is true and God, I’m such a bastard, and I’m wondering How much does my dad know and maybe that’s why he left, is because he knows. And you really shouldn’t be here. He’s giving you the chance to get out before he calls the cops. Not that he would call the cops—would he? No, he hates the police—which is exactly why he wants you to get out. Get the hell out of his life and don’t drag him into all this mess. It’s my problem and I’ve gotta go. So I grab all the papers and crap and shove them all together and I figure I’ll just figure it all out later, somewhere else, like preferably somewhere safe and as far the hell away as I can get, which is probably why I pick up the phone to call Vic, but while I’m dialing, something feels wrong—which is when I remember that You can’t call him anymore; his phone is dead now. I’d forgotten that. So get some more paper since you’re always running out of it; grab some paper and get out. So I did. I grabbed some empty paper; and I left.