Shadowbahn(11)

? ? ?

“I’ve never used it,” she heard her brother.

“I know that,” their father answered, “but I’m telling you anyway. It’s important you understand. You use that word and it means four hundred years of terrible shit whether you mean it or not. So I don’t want to hear it from you and I don’t want your sister to hear it. She’ll hear it too soon enough, but not from anyone in this family.”

“All right,” Parker answered quietly, trying to muster some rebellious irritation with little success, and Zema wanted to jump up and run into the next room and defend him.





the secret song


Because Zema has a secret: she adores him. Although she’ll go to extraordinary lengths to dispute it, she adores Parker even more than she adores her mother and even more than her father, whenever she can bring herself to think of her father. When she was two and her mother came to get her from the orphanage in Addis Ababa, among all the gifts and mementos it was Parker’s photo that the girl clutched in her hand and wouldn’t let go, even if subsequent years might have found sister and brother barely on speaking terms, except when she was provoking him or he was insulting her.

? ? ?

At the depths of their relationship, her secret adoration of him—sometimes almost secret to herself—is such that she has tried to be him. This was during the time she insisted to her family and everyone else that she was a boy, a phase that may or may not be ending now. There have been years she was confused, and more recent years when she may still have been confused or only pretending to be confused. In the thirteen years since Zema came to America, she has never had any idea that having no idea who she is and having no idea where she belongs makes her more American than anyone. For his part, Parker hasn’t so much failed to acknowledge his sister’s adoration as refused to. Neither has yet learned how time lays relentless siege to the denials of hearts drawn most inexorably to the truth.





trans (impunity)


Staring at her cell in the passenger seat, Zema says, “There’s music coming out,” and it’s half a minute before Parker, distracted, barely answers, “Turn it off if you want.”

She looks at her brother and then at the car stereo. “Out of the Towers, I mean,” she says. On the highway they pass slashing blood-red mesas rising like octaves and tiny towns crowned by signs that announce their names from towering bluffs flanked by flags, mostly Disunion. LEVI’S FROM NEW YORK! promises one storefront. Overhead, a skywriter jet unzips the sky. “Music,” she clarifies, “is coming out of the Towers.”

? ? ?

Parker says, “What towers?”

She rolls her eyes. “The Towers we’re driving four hundred miles out of our way for.” She can’t tell if her brother is still distracted or if distraction has given way to confusion. Finally he says, “Someone inside is playing music?”

“No one is inside,” she explains, “there’s music coming from them. Isn’t that what I said?”

“Like, what, it’s a stereo? They’re big speakers or something? One’s bass and the other’s treble?”

“Speakers? What are you talking about? They’re two buildings a hundred stories tall.”

“No.”





stereo (bass)


Zema says to her brother, “What do you mean no?” As they near the Texas border, I-40 turns into a so-called thruway, federal interstate protected by chain fence trespassing Rupture territories marked by more Disunion flags. Since checking out of the Bar Code Motel, Parker and Zema have heard on three different occasions of a rumored thoroughfare unmarked on any map, a secret highway called the “shadowbahn” that cuts through the heart of the country from one end to the other with impunity.

? ? ?

Crossing friendly Union and hostile Disunion territories alike, allegedly the secret highway runs from an undisclosed western point to an undisclosed eastern, as though there is no America at all of physicality or fact, only the America of the mind—whatever America that might be, to whatever mind might ponder it. “They’re not a hundred stories tall,” Parker answers.

Zema practically shouts, “They’re the flippin’ Twin Towers!”

“But not the real Twin Towers.”

She sighs in exhaustion. “We had this conversation.”

“How do you know?”

“That they’re a hundred sto—?”

“That no one’s inside.”





stereo (treble)


Zema thinks a minute. “They would know.”

“Has anyone gone inside?” says Parker.

“Of course not.”

“So where is the music coming from?”

“The Towers.”

“But what is it? This music. I mean, is it Beethoven? Wu-Tang Clan . . . ?” He laughs, pleased with himself.

“Everyone hears something different.”

“So basically,” he reasons, “everyone there is just going nuts.” She starts to challenge this conclusion but stops. “Why hasn’t anyone gone inside?” he says.

She looks at him. “No one wants to.”

“Why not?”