He speaks. They are not his words, not his voice, but they are coming from his mouth.
“I’m not afraid, Mama,” he says.
“I know you’re not, puddle.” She kisses the back of his head, and he knows that she’s calming herself, too. He really isn’t afraid, though. She’s gotten them this far. She’ll get them farther still.
“Let Mama hear some of your English,” she whispers. “Let me hear your words, and we will make a new home out of them.”
And he remembers. Remembers being too poor to pay for English lessons but never questioning why his mama brought home videotape after videotape – not downloaded like at school or even on disc, but played on a massive, ancient machine held together by electrical tape – of black-and-white or flamboyantly colored films in English, a language that both leapt forward into wide-open spaces and then looped back to cramp itself up. They would make a game of it, him and his mama, trying to match the English dialogue to the subtitles.
He was smart, his teachers always said, some even saying “freakishly,” and he started picking it up against all odds, practicing it on the few English-speaking tourists who ventured that deep into the country. Even trying his hand at the moldy old English-language novels someone had donated to the local library.
He’s learned enough, he hopes. They are here. They are inside the borders. They have almost reached the end. He really, really hopes he’s learned enough.
“‘To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing,’” he says now to his mama, quoting a film, straining hard to remember, for her, “‘may be like losing your fortune. To lose both means that no one cares.’”
“Good, good, puddle,” his mama says, understanding less than half of it, he knows. “More.”
“‘You were only supposed to bleed open the doors off,’” he says, “‘and blow them away.’”
“Yes, my darling.”
“‘Of all the jukeboxes in every bit of the world –’”
There is a sudden sharp cry from the women around him – and he remembers now that it is all women and a few children like him – as a lock is loudly undone and the massive metal door begins to open, booming with its own weight. The women make sounds of relief when they see that it’s the friendlier of the two men who’ve brought them this far. The one with the kind smile and sad eyes who speaks to them of his own children.
“You see?” says his mother, standing them both up. “A few words and the world changes.”
But the women start to scream as they see that the kind man is holding a gun –
55
A hand shoves Seth hard in the chest, Regine, her full weight behind it. He tumbles to the mud-covered pavement. She stands next to Tomasz, who’s looking down at him now, too.
“What did you do?” Tomasz says, horrified. “What did you do to me?”
“Co się stało?” Seth says.
In Polish.
“What?” Regine says.
“What?” Tomasz says, coming over to him. “What did you say?”
Seth sits up, shaking his head. He can still smell the fear in the cramped room, still feel the press of the women against him, the terrible, terrible panic that swept through the group when they saw the man’s gun –
“I said –” Seth tries again, in English this time, but he doesn’t get another word out before Tomasz strikes him across the face, hard, the cloth wrapped around his hands cushioning it hardly at all.
“You have no right!” Tomasz says, hitting him again and again. Seth, too stunned to defend himself, can already feel his nose bleeding. “That is private! You have no right to be there!”
“WHOA!” Regine shouts, grabbing Tomasz’s flailing arms. She wraps her big frame around him, straitjacketing him, but he still looks furiously at Seth.
“That was not yours to see!”
“Would someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Regine says, then she sees the back of Tomasz’s neck. “And why is Tommy’s light blinking?”
“I don’t know,” Seth says, pulling himself back up, wiping the blood from his face. “I don’t know what happened. I just touched him and –”
“I am right here!” Tomasz shouts. “Do not speak of me as if I am not present!”
“I’m sorry, Tomasz,” Seth says. “For both things. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean anything by it –”
“It was not yours to see!” Tomasz says again.
“What was it?” Regine asks Seth, still holding Tomasz close.
“I think . . .” Seth says. “I think it may be private.”
At that, Tomasz’s face crumples and he really begins to cry, buckling at the knees and dropping into Regine’s embrace. He speaks long sentences of Polish with his eyes squeezed shut.
“Okay, seriously, what the hell happened?” Regine says to Seth, holding Tomasz to her stomach. “I don’t need to know what you saw, but you touched the back of his neck and then you both just froze. Like you left your bodies.”
“I don’t know,” Seth says.
Regine sighs angrily. “Of course you don’t.”
“Regine –”
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I’m mad at this whole stupid place. You say you’re remembering and you just can’t imagine how much I want to know, but all that seems to mean is new pain. That’s all that happens in this life. One shitty, horrible surprise after another –”
“You weren’t a horrible surprise,” Seth says quietly.
“And the weather makes no sense and there’s some immortal freak in a black suit chasing us and . . . What did you say?”
“I said you weren’t a horrible surprise,” Seth says. “Neither of you.” Tomasz is still snuffling into Regine’s shirt, but he turns an eye back to Seth.
Seth wipes his nose. “Listen,” he says, but then stops. He runs a hand over his short hair, his fingers finding the rise at the back of his skull, knowing it’s blinking, not knowing why, despite the mess of it churning in his brain. Not knowing anything at all, in fact, except that he’s here, right this second, with Tomasz and Regine. And it feels like he owes them more than he can ever repay.
“I killed myself,” he says.
He waits to make sure they’re listening. They are. “I walked into the ocean. I broke my shoulder on a rock, and then that same rock crushed my skull, hitting it right where the light is.” He pauses. “But it wasn’t an accident. I did it to myself.”