Assembly(15)
Fig 3.
New York Sunday night, London Saturday morning. You fly the round trip regularly for work. But the attendant stops you. At Heath-row, Sunday afternoon, the attendant lunges into your path before you can reach the business desk. Places a firm hand against your upper arm. The attendant’s fingers – who knows what else they’ve touched? – now press into the soft, grey wool of your coat. You look down at this hand on your body; at the flecks of dirt beneath its fingernails, the pale hairs sprouting from its clammy skin. And then its owner, the attendant, points and speaks loudly, as though you won’t understand, says: Regular check-in is over there.
The attendant won’t acknowledge your ticket, no, just waves you over to the long queue. It winds back and forth, penned in between ropes, all the way to the regular check-in desk. The attendant says: Yes, there’s your line, over there.
Fig 4.
Walking from the library back to college one evening, you spot them huddled on the bridge. Faces lit sickly-green by their phones. A couple have bikes, one girl leans over the side, spitting into the river below. Talking slows, as you approach, they twist and turn their attention towards
you keep your pace. Left foot, then right. Keep your head down, keep going. There is no back, or even forwards; realize this. There’s only through it, endlessly, treading it. This hostile environment. This hostile life. And then, that word – that close-sesame word that imbues even kids on a bridge with the wealth and stature of this great, British empire; its architecture, its walls, statues loom magnificent on every side – that word the spitting girl spits at you, before spraying more saliva through her teeth. Rips into silence, not water, this time
they’re laughing and you’re past them and you don’t look back, you just keep going, and ignore behind you the winding kick-spun sound of pedals spinning fast on their bikes
don’t look
The doctor said I didn’t understand —
I recall Lou, eating lunch at his desk while Philando Castile’s death played out between paragraphs on his screen. He held his burrito up above his mouth and caught falling beans with his tongue as he peeled the foil back from soft tortilla. The doctor had said I didn’t understand, that I didn’t know the pain of it; of cancer left untreated. I’d wish I’d acted sooner, she said. Pain, I repeat. Malignant intent. Assimilation – radiation, rays. Flesh consumed, ravaged by cannibalizing eyes. Video, and burrito, finished. Lou’s sticky hand cupped the mouse and clicked away.
(understand: the desire is to consume your suffering, entertain themselves with the chill of it, the hair-on-edge frisson of it; of suffering that reasserts all they know as higher truth jolts and thrills and scratches the throat as they swallow it whole that same satisfaction of a thread pulled, of pulling, unravelling, coming undone)
In walking, the crunch and rustle underfoot has yielded to dusty whispers; weightlessness, soft treading. I am lost both literally and in the larger, abstract sense of this narrative. Though looking back, down, I still see the house: red brick towering high behind a white marquee. It seems the house and the marquee and the distance are the only things here now at all. Why am I doing this? I’ve reduced the son, the family and their home, to choice moments, flashes, summaries. Stitched them together from the words and actions of others. Of people, real and complex individuals. Transcendence. I am lifting them up here with me, to these as-yet-unconquered metaphoric planes. Where we can play-act who we are to one another on simplified terms. Which is to say, I am thinking. The mother is right, the air invigorates.
Still, I remain physically here. And I do not feel safe. My presence unsettles colleagues, strangers, acquaintances, even friends. Yes, I’ve felt the spray of my co-worker’s indignation as he speak-shouts his thoughts re affirmative action. Fucking quotas. Even Rach, her soft hand on my shoulder as she says she understands, of course. She understands, but it’s still tough, you know? It’s like being a woman isn’t enough any more.
The unquestioned assumption is of something given; something unearned, taken, from a deserving and hardworking –
Though these hills are empty, and I am free to walk them, there’s the ever-present threat of that same impulse. To protect this place from me. At any moment, any of them could appear, could demand to know who I am, what I’m doing.
Who told me I could do that here?
The son – he loves the stories of monstrous men doing hideous things in glossy offices and Michelin restaurants. He takes voyeuristic delight in the pain and righteous struggle, before the eventual overcoming. Afterwards, he smiles and squeezes my hand, he sits easy. Assured by his participation in the quiet, the happy ending. The solution.
He introduces me to his political friends from across the spectrum. Conservatives who oo and ah and nod, telling me I’m just what this country is about. And so articulate! Frowning liberals who put it simply: my immoral career is counterproductive to my own community. Can I see that? My primary issue is poverty, not race. Their earnest faces tilt to assess my comprehension, my understanding of my role in this society. They conjure metaphors of boats and tides and rising waves of fairness. Not reparations – no, even socialism doesn’t stretch that far. Though some do propose a rather capitalistic trickle-down from Britain to her lagging Commonwealth friends. Through economic generosity: trade and strong relations! Global leadership. The centrists nod. The son nods, too. Now that, they can all agree to.