A Million Little Helicopters

Afterwards they lay in the room with the curtains drawn tight and shadows upon their perspiring skin. They lay without touching at first: she preoccupied with the privacy of her post-orgasm quivers, while he was simply too exhausted to move. Soon he felt an emptiness setting in, so he reached over to wrap his arms around her. He pushed aside her dry auburn hair, a mass of tangled roots, so that they did not scratch his face. She pulled the sheets over the both of them.

“Do you want something to eat?” he said listlessly.

“No,” she said.

She wondered if it was dark outside already.
She felt the need to speak very softly:
“Sometimes I thought maybe there was nothing outside of it. I imagined living in a city floating free of the world, the biggest city in the universe. I read books all day after school, only to reassure myself that I did not live in such isolation. There was one book I liked very much, a collection of strange happenings around the world.
“In Macau, China, there were hotels with painted ceiling and jade pillars attached to casinos shaped like royal palaces. Thousands of tourists went to gamble each year, but no one ever saw the mermaids except for the beggars. The beggars knew that a herd of aged mermaids came to the Pearl River estuary every spring to bask in the glory of the casino’s neon lights, for it was believed that bright lights smoothed out the wrinkles around their mermaid eyes. However, as soon as they were captured, they asphyxiated in the air and shriveled and dried like jerky. That was why no one, except for the beggars who slept on the estuary banks, who never bothered to lay a hand on them, ever saw the mermaids.
“In Dairut, Egypt, there was a kind of beautiful tortoise called the Testudo Kleinmanni. They are gone now, but they used to be everywhere on the west bank of the Nile. Once a poor man rescued one of them and carved his name onto its shell. The tortoise returned to him every year holding a large golden pearl in its beak. This continued for decades. Finally the man became rich and built a mansion. Everyone asked him where he got the money for it. Being an honest man, he told them about the tortoise. The next year, when the tortoise visited the man again, the neighbors captured it. Everyone came to carve their names on to its shell in hope of receiving the same gifts. They carved and carved, name upon name, until the tortoise’s shell hollowed and caved into its own body, its beak still holding a golden pearl.
“In Napyidaw, Burma, a monk with three eyes promised to never burn in fire. On the sidewalk he doused his clothes in gasoline and lit himself. He sat in the full lotus meditation position, and closed all of his eyes aside from the one on his forehead. At first the fire swallowed him whole, but after a few minutes, it lowered itself and formed a blue ring around his folded legs. He sat comfortably inside the ring of fire and stared at people with his steady open eye, never blinking once. Eventually he became bored and summoned the rain to put out the fire. It would rain for weeks on end after that.
“These were the stories I read and believed in as a child.
“Our apartment was on the seventh floor of a twenty story building, in a little suburb nestled right in the busiest mess of the city. From our window I could see the farmer’s market downstairs. Each vendor had a hut with a wavy tin roof. When the wind blew, all the tin roofs rattled together like lightning. The angle of my bedroom window allowed me to see most clearly the butcher’s hut. The butcher was a nice man, but he had a wife with an angry red face. All day long the butcher sliced bloody thighs of lamb and pork into transparent sheets on his silver slicing machine. He sold these pieces by the kilogram. At the end of the day, he would bag and sell the leftover feet of pork that the machine could not slice through. My mother sometimes bought the feet to use as soup bone. We were poor and could not afford the good meat. The butcher’s wife looked at my mother with suspicious bloodshot eyes.
“My mother told me to wash out the feet good, for she was afraid that the butcher’s wife poisoned them. She bought a sturdy bristled brush and taught me how to brush between the split hooves. Sometimes I would find splinters of hay still stuck in the pink hooves, and through them I saw the pig that was once attached, rolling around in mud in a generic countryside. Even though I was born and raised in the city, I had seen pictures of the country. Also, inside the bag of feet, I would always find a few pieces of good lean meat.
“Are you awake?”
She turned her face toward his until her nose touched his cheek. He did not say anything, but tightened his arms around her. She rolled to her side to face him. She kissed him on the lips. She knew he was not asleep from the way his lips felt, even though he did not kiss her back. She tried to see what time it was, but did not want to move too much in fear of him letting go of her arms. She knew he had to go soon, but she continued:
“Even in my dream, the antique smell of the box made me want to fall asleep. It was a small redwood box with carved roses on all four sides, crimson and dark green, glazed over with clear lacquer. My mother put it on top of the dresser next to my bed, and covered it with a yellow silk cloth embroidered with dragonflies so that dust did not fall on it. I was forbidden to open it under any circumstances. People who came into our apartment spoke of the potent smell that saturated every corner; they said it was a sour and moldy smell, like old paper and vinegar. She touched the box intently on a rainy afternoon, fingered the smooth cold glaze over those roses. And then she decided to tell me: what is inside this box, my dear, are your father’s ashes. He left us most of the time, and he didn’t leave us much, but now he is with us all the time. Aren’t you happy?
“My father was a traveling salesman of pianos. That was all I knew about him. I tried not to show my despair as I thought about how I opened the box out of curiosity on many sleepless nights, running my fingers through the gray sand and thinking, what is so special about this dust? I even tasted a pinch of it once, spread it on the tip of my tongue and scraped it back and forth with my front teeth, trying to decipher every little flavor. It was slightly sour at first, then slightly bitter, but it did not taste bad. I stared at the curves of the roses behind my mother’s fingers, as my mouth remembered the taste of my own father, dead and burnt to ashes.
“When it rained I slept with my mother. The sound of rain made the apartment big and hollow. I clung to my mother’s body, my small bony legs intertwined with her round fleshy legs, like this. And I rested my hand on her pillowy breasts. I could not hear or feel her heart beat through her layers of fat, but I believed it was there because I confused my own with hers.”
“Hmm,” he said, “are you hungry?”
“No.”
She pushed her face under his chin and closed her eyes. Her hands clasped behind his neck. She liked the rough texture of his skin, the little bumps from the irritation of shaving. He slowly caressed her shoulder blades, the web of his fingers catching on strands of her sturdy hair.
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she said.
“No,” he elevated the syllable like a question, and chuckled terse and awkward as if it was a joke. She waited for him to say something more. The room was filled with a solid, desperate silence. Now she regretted asking such a stupid question. As if to comfort her, he tightened his arms around her and kissed her twice on the forehead. She opened her eyes wide, but could not see anything. She felt the heat of his flesh on her naked eyes, and for a second she wondered if she was going blind.
When the moment passed, she continued:
“Another story in my book went like this. In Western Nigeria there lived a city of beautiful women who sprayed spider webs from their belly buttons. They ejected strands of these webs at will, shot them out like arrows. Their city was near the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean. There were often lost sailors and explorers who wandered to them, parched and disoriented. The women captured them by forming a circle around them and spraying their moist webs continuously, eventually weaving them into cocoons. They waited for the cocoons to dry and harden before impaling them through their mouths on long sharp spikes. Then, over the next few days, they patiently ate each dismembered body part over a spit roast. They used pieces of the cocoon shells to scrape out the intestines, and—”
“Okay,” he said. He slowly untangled himself from her cuddle and took her hands into his. He held her hands in front of his heart and then relaxed again. From this she knew that he was not enjoying her story. She smiled inconspicuously; glad that at least she was able to disturb him in some small way. But then maybe he was just annoyed.
“Half the time I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said languorously.
“I’m talking about the city,” she said, “I am talking about this—
“On a normal day after school I came home and climbed on top of my mother’s big mahogany bookshelf. She got it from her grandmother when she married, though she had no books to go in it. It stood mostly empty in her bedroom.
“I used the shelves as climbing steps. I still remember the way my small soft feet felt clenching edges of the moist red wood, trembling unsteady. From the top I could see the whole room. It was a strange perspective, especially during dusk. I saw specks of dirt suspended in the air, like a million little helicopters, illuminated silver by rays of the setting sun. It always made me feel cold, so I brought blankets and pillows up there to make a nest. Then I brought up my books and saltine crackers, my favorite snack. I would stay there for hours, reading and watching my mother coming in and out. She acted like she was very annoyed by it. She said I was destroying her antique furniture with my weight. But in my heart I knew she was scared, for I saw her from the same angle that God would see her—if there were a God.”
Right then, she could detect the pity and condescension easing into his face, that smug half-smile half-frown he put on whenever she wasn’t making sense to him. She rubbed away the confusion in his forehead with two fingertips, massaged his eye brows and eyelids in smooth circles until she felt him relax. Then she rolled away from him on to her right side, a signal for him to cuddle her from behind. He did. He threw a leg over the curve of her hip. She felt like the leg pressed all the air out of her, but did not say anything to object. She cradled his hands and forearms that locked around her chest from behind.
“Then what?” he said.
“I’m making clam noodles with spinach and artichoke hearts tonight, maybe a stuffed pineapple bread roll for dessert. I already have the clams thawed and cleaned and the dough has been rising all day.”
“You know I can’t stay.”
“I know.”
She did not have clams. She did not even know what a stuffed pineapple bread roll was. Delighted by the little cruelty she exerted over him with her elaborate lie, she swallowed the onset of a giggle and licked her lips.
She said:
“One day my mother came into the room with a shoebox she held up with both arms, a wide smile on her face. On top of the bookshelf, I peeked out from my nest of blankets and pillows. She looked like she was making me an offering, which I liked very much. She asked me to come down to see my surprise, and I refused. I could tell she was in a very good mood and would indulge my temper. I would not have refused otherwise.
“To my indulgence she handed the box to me on tiptoe with outstretched arms. As soon as I felt the warm, live weight of the box I became extra gentle with my hands. Upon setting it down, I heard the tiny chirps. They tugged at my heart like fast fingers on zither strings. My mother had gotten a dozen chicks from the butcher.
“My mother warned me that the butcher may have tricked us by dying them into this beautiful sunny yellow. She doubted that chicks this beautiful would be given to her as a gift. He just wanted to get rid of these sick ugly chicks so he didn’t waste feed on them. She recommended giving them warm soapy baths to reveal their less desirable natural coloring, but on second thought, why bother? They were going to die anyway. She did not provide me with any instruction on how to care for them.
“I feverishly resisted the idea of their deaths. My mother thought it was obsession, but really it was love. I loved them with a love that I could not comprehend. I kept them inside the box, inside my blankets, on top of the bookshelf, so not even my mother could get to them. I practiced getting on and off the bookshelf incredibly fast and nimble, so that I would be able to save them in the event of a fire or an earthquake. I only ate half of my dinner, and gave the rest to them, though they never ate anything. It seemed that they did not know how. I gave each of them a new name every day; for I could not keep track of the names I gave on the previous day. They all looked the same, but they were, each of them, my best friend.”
He chuckled in sympathy and tightened his embrace, knowing what was coming. Her hip and thigh were going numb from the pressure of his leg. She did not move at all. She stared into the dark space in front of her, feeling his breath on the back of her neck, feeling so strange that she could barely recognize her own apartment. She continued:
“They could have died from many causes: lack of proper feed, lack of ability to feed on their own, stunted growth due to limited space, thirst, anything. But instead they asphyxiated because I forgot to leave a corner of their shoebox uncovered when I got off the bookshelf one day. Later I found their sunny yellow bodies piled on top of each other, wings crisscrossed in panic, their thin gray eyelids shut tight. They must have struggled very hard to use each other as stepping stools to climb out of the shoebox. My mother was not surprised. She was not upset with me. She knew it all along.
“My mother started bringing in many small pets, all gifts from the butcher. It was revealed to her that he had a farm of all different kinds of animals raised for food, some of them highly unusual. The Brazilian snake-eyed turtle died because my mother told me that these turtles could endure up to a hundred times their own weight. To verify her statement I stood myself on his back, swaying my arms to maintain balance while pretending like I was surfing on the back of a sea turtle. I lasted longer with each practice session.
“The hamster died from a long durum wheat noodle. Upon seeing how the hamster stored all sorts of food in his cheek pouches, I was curious to see how he would manage to store a whole noodle. Then I saw: he stored a whole noodle by impaling himself. It came out from the other end.”
He groaned. She felt the muscles in his arms and leg tense and then go limp again. She did not know whether he was irritated or bored, or maybe a bit of both. She felt his attempt to lift his head in order to see the clock. She knew that from where he was laying, he would not be able to see the clock. To prevent him from asking what time it was, she said: “It was love, believe me now, really.”
She rolled her body around to face him, and wrapped her arms around his head. She pushed his head down to her heavyset breasts, and let a loud playful moan. He laughed until she squeezed his head so tight that he felt his face melting into her cleavage.
“It’s probably almost dinner time.” He eased himself out of her embrace.
“Don’t,” she said, feeling the sharp edge of each of his syllables all over her body.
“I don’t want to, believe me. But she’s going to get suspicious and nag me again.”
He tossed aside the sheets and sat up in bed, stretched and yawned for an eternity. Then he stood up and felt around for his clothes. When he could not find them, he stumbled toward the door for the light switch. She jumped up from the bed, forgetting the numbness in her hips and thighs. A wave of painful tingling radiated through her body, and she fell to the carpet wanting to laugh and cry and cuss at once. Before she could ask him please don’t turn on the light yet, bright white light stabbed into her pupils, dilated by darkness.