The Mirrors Page 16

  They may have had biohazard suits, but I had scissors. I furtively slipped them out of my purse and hid them behind my back. I walked up to the bully-boy and feigned defeat so that I would have the element of surprise. I forced my face to look sad, my spirit broken. “Don’t say that about me,” I whimpered.

  “Aww … look at the little white trash body-borrower,” one of the girls said through her speaker. “I think she’s gonna cry!”

  “And I think you’re going to die!” I yelled. I brandished the scissors and lunged at a place on Pipken’s calf, a flap of biohazard suit that offered itself up as the perfect target—far away from defending hands and sturdy boots. The suit was made of a rugged plastic that resisted my scissors’ intrusion. I made a dent. With a second effort, I pushed the scissors harder. The plastic yielded, stretched.

  But it did not tear.

  The boy grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me to the ground. The scissors flew from my hand. One of the girls bent over (with some effort, as her suit was fashionably snug) and grabbed the shears from the ground. She then waddled forward. “You like scissors, eh?” She then started to succumb to a coughing fit. When she regained her composure, she reached for me. “Come here, body-borrower, and let me give you a haircut, if you like scissors so much.”

  I didn’t like the idea of losing Mama’s scissors to Pipken and his gang, but I liked the idea of public humiliation even less. I rose to my feet and decided to abandon the scissors and run home. My little legs worked away at the ground and my little arms pumped hard and fast, until a cold plastic glove caught up to me. It clasped onto my right upper arm and threw me back to the ground. Hard.

  This second crash knocked the wind out of me, and I lay there not even able to grunt when I saw the blades coming; I lay there not even able to protest when I heard the first whine-grind-chirp of the shears doing their work. Wispy brown locks were caught up, like dandelion seeds, in the breeze. By the time I had enough breath back in me to mount a struggle, the deed had been done. My curls, butchered.

  I ran back home, bawling. I ran awkwardly, covering my head with my hands (as though that would be effective in hiding my shame). I ran to tell Mama about the mean kids in the park who’d hurt me. But when I arrived home, Mama was busy. She was out in our apartment complex’s parking lot, signing some papers given to her by a man who’d just gotten out of the driver’s seat of a hearse. After she’d finished signing them all, the hearse driver used a gurney to remove a body from the back. It was (that is, it had been, in life) a man.

  “Not so fast,” Mama said to the driver. “That gurney won’t work too good—we’re on the second floor.”

  He sighed. “No elevator?”

  “Nope.”

  A crowd of neighbors started to gather around the scene. Only a few owned biohazard suits (many, in fact, looked feverish and boil-ridden), but they all came out to sell their services as body-haulers. About two dozen gathered around the body and started carrying it up the stairs, without Mama even giving them permission to do so. So numerous, in fact, were the helpers, so persistent and excited were their mumblings and whispers and coughs and giggles and sneezes and gossips, so chaotic (I might even say “festive”) was the scene around the body, that it was difficult to concentrate and remember just who was there, actually lifting the corpse, and who had merely accompanied the procession up the stairs.

  They all had their hands out afterward.

  Mama settled up with them as best she could, offering to take ten percent of her payment from the funeral home and divide that up twenty-four ways to pay them all. There was much grumbling among the newly minted sub-subcontractors at this news, and a few particularly disgruntled types actually tried to lift the body off the living room couch (where it had been placed) and take it back downstairs in protest. The more practical among them, though, knew that this would only make it easier for Mama to retract her offer when the funeral home’s payment arrived. In the end, the cooler heads prevailed, and everyone agreed to the terms offered.

  Mama shooed them all out of the apartment, but the scent of sweat from the exertion of the body-haulers lingered long after they’d gone. When combined with the smell of formaldehyde coming out of the pores of the deceased, it created an unbreathable atmosphere. Our little apartment had been made into an inhospitable, alien world.

  Mama rested her hands on her hips and surveyed the situation. Despite having been worked on by the embalmers and makeup artists, the dead man’s face looked swollen and disfigured. Pockmarked, as though someone had taken great effort to lance boils and had unconvincingly covered up the resulting scars. A tag on his toe announced the cause of death (“heart attack”) and several statistics about the deceased (“Age: 52; Height: 5ʹ11″; Weight, 155 lbs.”). It did not, however, specify the dead man’s name. She looked at him, then she looked at me. “What did you do to your hair?”

  I told her about the bullies in the park. I told her I never wanted to go there again. I told her that I hated anyone who owned a biohazard suit, and that I wished they all were dead.

  She embraced me for the first time in a long time. Squeezed me tight, and whispered to me. “Don’t say such things. Why do you think I’ve started to take in the bodies? This shit pays, honey. Pays enough so that, someday soon, you’ll have the cutest little biohazard suit you could ever dream of. So don’t go wishin’ rich people dead. We’re gonna work so hard at this that we’re gonna be rich. And you wouldn’t like it if someone wished you dead after you got your suit, now would you?”

  She had a point. “No, Mama,” I said. “I suppose I wouldn’t.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. You see, you shouldn’t hate them. You should try to be like them.”

  I pointed to the dead body on the couch. “But … I mean … we’ll never be like them. I mean, not really. They made their money working in banks or law offices. You make yours doing other people’s laundry and borrowing bodies!”

  She smacked me hard in the face. “That’s for sassin’ me!”

  I whined. “What?”

  “You know damned well ‘what.’ That sass-word. ‘Bodyborrower’! I never want to hear that in this chapel again, young lady!”

  I wanted to point out to her that the living room of our shabby little apartment wasn’t really a “chapel”—that, in fact, it was no more a “chapel” than it was a “stadium” or a “courthouse”; but I didn’t think it was the right time. I feared she’d give me another walloping if I opened my mouth. So I kept quiet, but she seemed to be able to discern what I’d been thinking.

  She sighed. “Here’s somethin’ I’m gonna tell you about this world. Names have power, and we have to choose the very best names and titles for ourselves these days. Sometimes stretchin’ the truth is the best way to be kind to ourselves (and we need, now more than ever, to be kind to ourselves). So let’s not think of this as a livin’ room any more. From now on, it’s a funeral chapel.” She grabbed paper and pencil, then looked at the clock. “And let’s think of this time right now not as a mother-daughter argument, but instead as this nice gentleman’s visitation. I think the funeral home pays for visitation by the hour, so I’m officially declarin’ this poor ol’ soul visited, if you know what I mean. And, seein’ as the funeral home shipped him over to us without the benefit of any paperwork sayin’ who he is, let’s not just think of him as some random gentleman—let’s give him a name.” She walked over to the couch and examined the dead man. “He looks like a Frederick to me. Frederick Keys, I think we’ll call him. Has a ring to it, don’t it?”

  Hadn’t she considered just calling the man “John Doe”? Had she forgotten that the Frederick Keys were the minor league baseball team up in Maryland that my dad had left us to play with?

  “You see, honey, if I decide to call this man Frederick Keys, well, damn, I’m sure as hell that he’s not gonna object. Somethin’ tells me his people ain’t gonna track him down here and object. We has us some power then, you see. Power to give names to th
e dead.”

  “But the funeral home must have his name somewhere. They must have just lost track of it.”

  “I’ll bet you five dollars right now that I’ll be able to submit a bill to the funeral home for the visitation and funeral of a certain Frederick Keys, and I’ll bet you they’ll pay. You just have to have some imagination now, girl. The funeral home is just workin’ a business like anyone else. Do you think they care what happens when that body comes off the gurney? Hell, no! If they did, they wouldn’t have started subcontractin’ in the first place!”

  I gave voice, weakly, to my objection. “But his name isn’t really Frederick. It’s a make-believe name, it’s not real.”

  “When you do a job no one else wants you make real— at least as far as that job goes. Remember that, and you’ll go far in this world.” She yawned and stretched. Her flabby arms wobbled when she raised them, like rising flags in a breeze. “I’m gonna go lay down,” she said. “It’s been a long day and I’m plum wore out. Now you stay here with Mr. Keys and have a good visit. Go ahead now and mourn him. Mourn him good.”

  Mama decided that the visitation and funeral for Frederick Keys would last three whole days (it made good business sense, given that we were getting paid by the hour). Mama and I took turns staying in the so-called “chapel” with him, lest anyone from the funeral home stop by to inspect the premises to make certain we were legit.

  No one from the funeral home or the state funeral home board or the city health department stopped by, though. Our entire city, in fact, had lost its prior aura of creaking-clanking industrial busyness. The road outside our street took on the same forsaken appearance it had early on Christmas morning. The park, too, was abandoned. (A pity, since it was such a lovely day. Alas, only the bumblebees seemed to be enjoying it.)

  “This is creepy, Mama. Where is everyone?”

  Her eyes darted back and forth, assessing the situation. “I’ll be damned. I betcha a whole bunch of people signed up to be subcontractors. They’re probably all tucked away in their own personal chapels, visitin’ the dead. I betcha that’s where everyone is—tryin’ to barge into our business!”

  I went on the Internet to see what explanation I could find for all the quiet, but the local newspaper hadn’t updated its home page in two days. The big headline at the top of the page made reference to the soaring number of heart attacks and strokes, and provided helpful tips for good cardiovascular health (“Exercise at least three times a week, for at least a half an hour each time,” the website advised).

  Mom nudged me out of the seat. “Move,” she said. “I need to use the Internet to submit our bill to the funeral home.” And that’s exactly what she did. Two days later, the money was direct-deposited into our bank account.

  Mr. Frederick Keys had begun to smell of something other than formaldehyde. I asked Mama whose job it was to bury him. She scratched her head and started thumbing through her contract. “You know, that’s a very good question! Doesn’t seem like that’s covered here. A loophole, it seems. We might-could do it ourselves, and tack on another charge. But before we do, let’s see if the home has another friend ready to visit us!”

  Mama took out her cell phone and called Higgenbotham’s Home for Funerals (the folks who had provided us with the body that now lay moldering on our sofa). She got voicemail. She left a message asking when a new body would be ready. Then she hung up. The same thing happened when she called the other two funeral homes she’d signed on with.

  A day passed without getting a return call. A handful of houseflies circled the deceased, periodically landing on his nostrils and eyes. Mom shrugged and submitted another bill to the funeral home. Twenty-four additional hours of visitation. She got an email telling her the claim had been rejected. The reason given was as follows: “You have already reached your maximum reimbursement for this transaction.”

  “We should just bury him,” I said. “It can’t go on like this.”

  “The first rule of business is not to do anythin’ to put yourself out of business! I mean, you’re right about things not bein’ able to go on. I sure as hell ain’t gonna keep him here without gettin’ paid. But you know what? I think this doesn’t look like Mr. Keys, layin’ here.” She shook her head dramatically. “No, no, no … This looks like someone else entirely, don’t you think?”

  It took me a few seconds to get what she was driving at. But I was starting to become sufficiently accustomed to Mama’s shell games and shams to know that she was suggesting we introduce a more ballsy fraud into our business repertoire.

  “This man here, I think this doesn’t look like Frederick Keys at all. I think you must’ve gotten a new body from the funeral home while I was in the kitchen. I think this here is none other than …” She paused, mulling over her options. “Mike Mussina.” (Again, she should have picked a different name. Mike Mussina was the name of a starting pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles that my dad had worshipped when he was growing up.)

  She found, however, that when she entered the name into the online claim form, the automated system accepted it for up to three days of visitation/funeral time. In a matter of days, more money had been direct-deposited into our bank account.

  “Now we have enough to re-stock on groceries,” Mama said. (Our routine was to make one single, large trip at the first of the month.) “Looks like we might even be able to splurge a little.”

  “But Mama,” I said, “no one’s out and about. The newspaper hasn’t updated their website. Do you think the store’s even still … well … you know, open?”

  Mama looked at me, scowling. “There you go again. Always the glass-half-empty type, ain’tcha? Well, you’ll find out when we get there that you worry too damn much!”

  I’d looked forward to getting out of the apartment because I’d looked forward to getting away from all the flies. But there was no getting away from the flies. They swarmed in abundance in our second-floor hallway, and Mama was forced to gag at the pungent, fetid odor that lingered there. Even in the best of times, mind you, that hallway always smelled musty. (And it didn’t surprise me when Mama tried to attribute the odor to “that mold the landlord never gets around to cleanin’ up.” But I knew better.)

  I’d feared the streets would have no cars on them at all. This fear, at least, was unfounded. Cars littered the road here and there. Some had crashed into telephone poles. Some had pulled over onto the median. The drivers of all the vehicles were slumped over the steering wheels. Even from a distance, you could see their disfiguring boils.

  “My, my,” Mama said. “Looks like those drivers had heart attacks behind the wheel! Or, you know, it could have been strokes.”

  I wanted to point my finger at each of the bodies and shout “Plague! Plague!,” but Mama’s denial was simply her way of being kind to herself. (And who was I to rob her of that kindness?) So I nodded. I even joined in. “They should have exercised,” I said solemnly.

  Mama brightened when she realized I wasn’t going to take away her self-delusion. “Yes, we need to start doin’ calisthenics, you and I, together out in the park. That way we won’t be like them.”

  Of course, I knew that we would never be like them. Mama had worked at the laundromat all that time and had never gotten even the slightest sniffle. Perhaps, as Mama said, the “Good Lord” had loaded the dice in our favor, but I judged that line of thinking to be just another of her ways of being kind to herself. Kinder, indeed, than believing that the answer to the riddle of our survival rested in the unfathomable depths of our genes. Kinder, still, than believing that the riddle had no answer.

  The grocery store parking lot was packed. The cars were festooned with corpses, either sprawling over their hoods or seated within. All bore a series of boils—sometimes purple, sometimes black.

  “They’re all dead,” I said to Mama. “Every last one of them.”

  She took a deep breath, put her hands on her hips, and darted her eyes about. “Not dead,” she said. “They’re all just in a
coma. Didn’t you know that can happen when people have heart attacks and strokes?”

  Mama had to nudge one “stroke victim” aside with her shoe (his fallen body had gotten in the way of the supermarket’s automatic door). Once inside, we grabbed a cart. Mama took her shopping list out of her purse, just as if it was any other trip to the store.

  We didn’t loot. In order to loot, Mama would have had to admit to herself that chaos had descended on us. She couldn’t find it in herself to do that. So we simply loaded up the cart with our usual goodies (and a few extras, like ice cream). None of the cashiers were left standing (although I did catch a glimpse of one, on the floor, still moving—she trembled and writhed behind her work station, her arms and legs getting entangled in thin plastic bags). We didn’t go into her line.

  We didn’t go into any line, in fact, staffed by a cashier. We went through one of the automated cashier lines—the kind where you scan everything yourself. It took a long time, because we had more than fifteen items in our cart and the way it’s set up, it’s only supposed to work like an express lane. We had to put stuff on the conveyor belt a little at a time.

  While I was there, helping Mama put things on the belt, I realized I’d forgotten something. I went back to the school supplies department and picked up a pair of scissors, then hurried back to the line. (Why did I hurry? No one stood there behind us, tapping her shoe or giving us the hairy eyeball. Some habits even managed to survive civilization.)

  Mama raised her eyebrows when she saw I wanted to add scissors to our order. “You need those?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I think I want to keep my hair this way,” I said. The automated cashier told us the cost in a pleasant, calm, automated voice. Mom inserted her check card, and everything went smoothly. We bagged our own groceries and went home.