The Atlas of Reds and Blues Read online

  After the Youngest goes to bed, her mother cleans up the toys and occasionally finds a baggie. When her hero calls from his layover in Honolulu, Mother cradles the phone in one ear and puts the plastic bag, this one filled with broken animal crackers, to her temple.

  These are examples of what it means to experience ghost pain.

  &

  The agents’ voices dissolve into one another, forming an indistinct murmur. It is the sound the wind makes when it is dying down.

  &

  Just maybe she changes the day she is sent to the Happy Trails Trailer Homes & Community to interview a mother who survived the death of her children, and to gather materials for the children’s obituary. An electrical fire that left a single mother burned on her elbows and stomach and knees for crawling to safety on a smoldering carpet, the toddler and infant in question dying from smoke inhalation. The grandmother opens the door to the neighbors’ trailer and introduces her daughter, arms and legs wrapped in gauze, tongue wrapped in the aftereffects, no doubt, of sedatives and painkillers. “She wants to say something,” the grandmother says, handing over a family portrait of the daughter and two granddaughters, in matching pink dresses and headbands; to give to the photographer who is taking pictures of the nearby scorched trailer. “She needs to.” The grandmother’s face is smooth and her skin is clear; the circles forming under her eyes will soon resemble matching bruises.

  Real Thing looks at the young mother, and says as quietly as she can, “You don’t have to.”

  The young woman cries, her straw-colored hair smells of a forest destroyed by fire. Her mascara runs. “I’m dead though my body is alive,” she says. “I’ll never get past this.”

  Real Thing looks at the woman and her mother. “You can’t see it now, but one day you’ll be able to,” she says, trying to sound hopeful.

  “I’m twenty-two,” says the mother whose children will now sleep forever.

  Real Thing looks down at her notebook and writes down same age as me.

  &

  A dog barks. It sounds like Greta. But Greta’s been dead for almost two years.

  &

  Maybe she changes when she spends too much energy thinking about things she cannot change. Perhaps she spends entirely too much time replaying that one-sided conversation. She knows the one, where the vet says Greta has a degenerative arthritic condition, that Greta’s nerves are turning into overcooked vermicelli, that it’s just a matter of months before all that will be left of her will be the ghost of her bark, warnings her family will be unable to hear when outsiders are drawing near.

  &

  What she wants to do is shake her head, like a bobble-head doll, and repeat, “No.” But she can’t move her neck, and cannot speak.

  &

  Her Greta, who doesn’t live long enough to warn her when those agents begin banging their fists; when those agents swarm her house and yard like a battalion of wasps; when those agents raid her house and her body at gunpoint. Those agents whose questions about her hero don’t stop.

  &

  Maybe she can still change the future.

  “How come there are only dollhouses?” the Middle Daughter questions.

  “Where are the doll schools?” the Eldest replies.

  “Where are the doll temples and churches?”

  “Where are their banks?” the Youngest asks. She always wins Monopoly, that one.

  “What books do they read?”

  “How come the only cars they drive are jeeps or convertibles?” the Eldest asks.

  “How come all the boy dolls have clothes that mean they’re either going to fight or going to work?” the Middle asks.

  “Why are there a lot more clothes for girls?” the Eldest asks. “How come other people decide what clothes the girls get to wear? How come it says so on the box, right there?”

  A pause. Toys strewn all over the family room floor, covering the carpet, creating a plastic minefield for those foolish enough to be walking around without their shoes. Raining. So no possibility of going outside to play. The unpacking of their lives into the new house remains under way. The water pelting the ground sounds like a generation of frustrated young girls beating the floor with their fists in protest of rules set long before they were born. Mother sits on the couch, surveying the landscape before her. The Youngest Daughter, who has been watching in a trance, looks expectantly at her. Mother finally answers, “It’s only a game.”

  The Youngest says, “But it’s not fair.”

  “You can always change the game. You can always change their clothes.”

  “I know I can change them.” The Eldest’s tone is haughty, her chin and nose are high in the air. One day, after she conquers the world, that profile must go on the side of a coin. “That’s not the point. Other people shouldn’t tell us what to do with our own toys. Other people shouldn’t make the toys without making all of the stuff that is supposed to go with it.”

  “That’s part of the game,” Mother says, her throat scratchy and worn as though beaten down by the fatigue of an unceasing cough. “Other people make the rules and you have to figure out how to break the rules without hurting anyone.”

  &

  The object of the game, she decides suddenly, is not to lie in a pool of one’s own blood.

  &

  In 1997, Barbie’s tiny waist finally got remolded to fit with ’90s fashions. For thirty-six years she was advised by Mattel to restrict her diet because the buttons and zippers and seams of her clothing were making her look “big.”

  &

  Mother pulls out the license and registration. Again. Fourth time this week, first time on this stretch of road so close to the Department of Motor Vehicles, just after breakfast. One last errand and she’s off to the car depot, the airport. California vacation on the horizon like the rising sun. The soft-boiled egg in her stomach scrambles and she tries not to gag when she sees the figure in her side-view, walking up to her. She does not say hello to the trooper, who bears an uncanny resemblance to David Crosby, the singer. In his hippie, drugged-out days when Neil Young was still part of the band, and Carter was still president.

  “Do you know why we’re here today?” The trooper’s voice booms like a preacher on the mount, delivering brimstone before Sunday brunch. He snatches the documents from her and turns them over, as if she were an artist of the counterfeit variety.

  She wants to answer but the scrambled egg has found shoes in her stomach, is lacing them up to make the hike back up her throat. She shakes her head.

  “You could have killed yourself back there,” he said, pointing with her documents to the start of the turn lane some fifty feet away.

  Mother doesn’t bother to look back or answer. She doesn’t remember wanting to kill herself fifty feet ago. She stares straight ahead at the traffic light, changing from yellow to red. “I’m sorry,” she says aloud, but regrets the apology, insincere and soaked in sarcasm, as it leaves her mouth. The egg has begun its Himalayan climb, and her stomach rumbles seismically in warning.

  The trooper leans down so that his face is close enough for a slap. Or a kiss. She is doubly reflected in his aviator sunglasses. “Are you sassing me?”

  She watches herself shake her head.

  He straightens up. Maybe he smelled her breath, maybe he recognized that odor and knew to distance himself. “Don’t move,” he commands, before adjusting himself and ambling back to his vehicle.

  She tries not to. She tries really hard, but then that egg. That goddamned soft-boiled egg, dash of pepper on top like an afterthought, she ate this morning.

  It comes back to visit.

  &

  The sun tussles with a cloud and the glare dims for a moment. Goosebumps crop up all over. Her ears clog as if she were flying in the vacuum seal of an airplane. If only she could yawn and relieve the building pressure. But she cannot move, she is lying on her back and the concrete is cold.

  She identifies this feeling as jet lag. The fog that comes when
your mind recognizes that you’ve changed locations and circumstances but you’re a body still living in the past.

  &

  Maybe she has misunderstood all along what the purpose of the telephone is. Her mother, the Grandmother, calls again. The same conversation, no matter the topic. The same topic, no matter the conversation. She is an Indian mother so the two focal points on this elliptical path are constant: food and weight. Mother and Grandmother have this conversation every week, ever since the children were born.

  Grandmother asks, “Why don’t you go to the gym? Why are the children so skinny? Why aren’t you skinny like the children? Why are you cooking so much? Why aren’t you cooking enough? Why are you wasting so much food? Did you eat the brownies I sent you? Why did you eat the brownies I sent you? You mean, you threw away the brownies I baked?”

  She, Mother, stifles a yawn, and unpacks her artlike practice of sighing.

  Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

  Sigh. Sigh.

  Sigh.

  Unfortunately for her, the day’s last sigh is audible.

  “I can’t believe how disrespectful you have become,” Grandmother says, voice as cold and remote as the very Himalayas she used to trek when she was younger and her daughters still children. “I can’t believe you turned out this poorly.”

  &

  The owl hoots again, a fourth question, a compound sentence, as if he has already forgotten the sound of the assault rifle being fired.

  &

  The questions are repetitive, a sound of gunfire rat-a-tat-tat.

  How long have you lived here? rat-a-tat-tat. Your English is so good. When did you come over? rat-a-tat-tat. Who taught you? rat-a-tat-tat. Where? rat-a-tat-tat.

  Her heartbeats answering, rat-a-tat-tat. “I’m American.”

  Yes, yes. Now, now. The answers come in pairs. Of course, of course. When did you take your citizenship test, again? rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat.

  “At birth,” rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. The entirety of the near world now looking at her, looking through her. She clenches her fist briefly to stifle the eye roll, to stifle the sigh.

  The questions change slightly, a spray of gunfire now deliberate and the tone more insistent, though coaxing. The volume higher, the enunciation slower as if she the listener, despite the good English, doesn’t understand. Maybe I wasn’t clear, where did you come from? RAT-A-TAT-TAT. How long have you been here? RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  It’s the insistence she cannot abide: she is supposed to be grateful for their attention. She is supposed to meet them, all of them, more than halfway. She is supposed to be happy that they take any interest in her at all. She is supposed to thank them. They are expecting her to demonstrate how well she knows the word obeisance. “Over there.” She points in the general direction of the nearest hospital, careful to look just past their shoulders into the expansive eyes of blue sky, into the stoic hearts of oaks or the spindly branches of pine. The houses display the American flag, when thirteen colonies declared their independence. RAT-A-TAT-TAT “Native speaker” RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  The laughter that follows is tainted with incredulity. What do you do? RAT-A-TAT-TAT You do work, yes? RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT. RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  She stifles a yawn and blinks rapidly to keep her eyelids, suddenly so heavy, from closing. “Writer,” she says instead of journalist. RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

  Their eyes roll as inevitably as sunsets, as low tides.

  &

  Maybe if she lies still, they’ll grow tired of this game. Maybe the agents will grow tired and take their guns and their bullhorn and their bulletproof vests and go home.

  &

  Her beloved Greta arrives in the new house, after a lengthy doctor’s appointment. She walks from room to room, sticks her wet nose in everything and sniffs. At the front door she waits patiently for her human mother to take her home. Seeing this, the children bound downstairs and wait with her. The girls smile and Greta pants. Unfortunately, Mother met with her real estate agent and closed on the old house the day before. A nice older couple from Kentucky and their sons live there now.

  &

  The agent who searches her is not the same agent who discharges his weapon. The agent who fires his assault rifle has blue eyes and a wisp of a mustache.

  For the first time in years, she cannot swallow her feelings down the dark hole of her esophagus, and let them flutter like bats in the center of her stomach. For the first time in years, the act of swallowing is dangerous. What if the agent notices she’s awake? Will he finish the job? She is on the driveway. If she were in a hot yoga class, this would be the corpse pose. Except that her legs are not two straight lines, her toes are not pointed.

  &

  Matt coughs into his closed fist. He uses the same hand to give her the assignment. She wants to douse the paper first with the sanitizing gel and then with the cigarette lighter fluid on his desk and set his office on fire.

  She tries not to frown, she tries not to look directly into the city editor’s crystal blue eyes.

  She looks over the typed words, clipped instructions: the fortieth anniversary of JFK’s death, another series of cold calls to strangers, hoping someone is old enough to remember what they were doing the moment the president was shot. She knows how these stories go, inevitably someone will ask her the same question, and she will have to tell the truth.

  That she wasn’t alive then.

  Well, at least not in her present incarnation.

  The City Editor is astute. “You don’t have to do this assignment, you know.” Matt’s tone is conversational, as if she has a choice. But the smile on his nicotine-stained lips does not reach his eyes.

  Not doing the assignment is tantamount to being fired. She uses every muscle in her face to form a smile that mimes gratitude. “I look forward to it,” she murmurs, and leaves the office, careful to close the door behind her.

  She stands by the bank of desks, like a girl at a prom, waiting for someone to ask her to dance. She doesn’t have to wait long. Her old buddy from j-school days swivels his chair around from his computer screen. “Come sit next to me,” Chris says, pointing to the unoccupied desk across from him. “Grant is sick today.”

  She smiles at him and walks over, puts down her bag, plants herself on Grant’s elevated seat. Grant is a fierce business reporter and can bark at the presidents of Fortune 1000 companies when he doesn’t like their answers to his pointed questions. Grant has spoken to her mother-in-law before, on a number of occasions. Grant is also four-foot-eleven, with a sweet tooth for doughnuts that forces the lower buttons on his blue work shirts to pop off onto the newsroom carpet.

  Chris sees the assignment sheet and holds up his own copy. “This should be riveting,” he says. “Four years of j-school, a graduate degree, and bone-crushing debt have really prepared me for this moment of asking older people to relive a particularly traumatic moment from their youth.”

  She laughs, breathes in the smell of someone’s lasagna or pizza heating up in the break-room microwave a few feet away.

  Her former classmate Jess, general assignment reporter often stuck covering school board meetings and zoning board votes about mixed-use developments, pokes her head up from her seat, warms her hands around a steaming cup, presumably coffee. “I’ve received one of those, too.”

  The other business reporter on duty, Scott, strokes his flaming red beard and readjusts his Coke-bottle frames. “Me, too,” he says, his voice gravelly, tired.

  Chris smiles. “Let’s have fun,” he says. He picks up a pack of playing cards from his desk and shuffles them expertly. The red-and-blue design on the back looks like a pagan goddess from where she sits. After a long moment, he spreads the cards out like a fan before him and asks her to pick a card.

  Mother chooses a jack of diamonds.

  Chris nods. “Remember it,” he says and takes back the card, begins shuffling furiously. He cuts the deck several times as he spe
lls out the reporting rules for this JFK assignment: the pages in the phone book will only be turned to sections where surnames match former presidents. “I’m buying beer later to anyone who can get an Eisenhower or a Taft,” he says.

  She chimes in. “We are in Georgia. No Carters unless it’s Jimmy.”

  Scott laughs. “The copy editors are going to key our cars.”

  Jess sniffs. “I took the subway.” That is not the name of the public metro system in Atlanta, but Jess uses the term she learned when she and the Real Thing were in New York together, for graduate school, a decade ago.

  Chris pulls out the jack of diamonds from the pile and hands it to her. “Your card, right?”

  Mother cannot understand why she is being given this assignment. She cannot ask intelligently of anyone to reexperience a traumatic moment like that. Most of the names on the potential list of businesspeople are friends of her bosses on the City Desk; the nepotism is so thick it’s strangling her supply of oxygen. Inevitably the question will be asked of her, and her answer will short her credibility.

  “How can you convey accurately what you haven’t seen or experienced yourself?” one old woman will ask.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she will say, tossing her hair back like a horse’s mane. “I wasn’t alive during Partition, yet I see the effects and consequences of that decision every day, through the years, imprinted on everyone’s faces. Everyone around me who was brown and Bengali as I was growing up. What it means to be forced to leave.”