The Alex Crow (17 page)

A seventeen-year-old
boy named Isaak ruled over the twelve other—thirteen, counting me—orphan boys who lived inside a drafty, leaking tent that became my home. This was my next family, Max, and it was not good. Isaak was a terrible, cruel, and demanding tyrant.

But what could I do?

This was the way things were now.

Let me tell you what it was like to live inside a tent full of orphans for those nine months. It was worse than being in a refrigerator. And it was as though every one of us were waiting to be born into a new life again.

Unlike the others who lived in the city of tents, the orphans came here without people or connections. We were the true refugees—waiting for the opportunity to run away again and again—and we had nothing to speak of, which is why Isaak and three of the other older boys—his sergeants—forced us to steal. It didn't matter what we stole, either; we only had to give things to the four boys who ran the tent just to keep them from beating us or taking what little we had—the clothes off our backs, our shoes. If they got mad enough, and a boy had already been stripped of his jacket and shoes, they would hover near at mealtimes so you would know not to touch your food or they would beat you at night.

They did worse things than that to some of us, too. And it all went unnoticed by the aid workers in the city, who were too busy to spend much more time than was necessary tending to us. There were more important things to take care of in the city of tents.

I will say that I had a sense of hope when I came there. Garen and Emel had given me new clothes to wear, the guards were nice and they spoke English to me, but when I entered the tent—the new boy among the thirteen others who lived there—I saw what this next life was going to be like.

The floor of the tent was covered with blue plastic tarps. I found out this was because so much water would seep in through the tent's seams during the winters when it rained and snowed. Against one wall was a stack of thin mats—the beds we'd sleep on, that had to be picked up every morning to save them from being trampled on and torn. There was a broom and several buckets—one for cleaning the floor (I found out all about this one), and two for carrying water in for the boys. The only other thing in the tent was an oil-burning heater that stood in the center of the floor.

There was nothing else inside, except for some of the boys who hadn't gone outside to play, to beg, or perhaps to steal things for Isaak and his friends. And as soon as I walked in, accompanied by a guard with a
UNHCR
patch on his uniform, all the collective eyes in the tent looked at me with suspicion and contempt. At least, it felt that way to me. How could I be certain? But I did learn from my American brother Max that no boy welcomes the addition of another boy with whom he might have to share his space—or anything else for that matter.

This was the new order of things.

The four older boys were sitting cross-legged on the floor. They were playing a little game where they tossed stones into a grid they had drawn on the tarp.

One of the orphan boys pointed at me and tossed a stone at my foot. “What's the dead boy's name?”

At first, I thought he might have recognized the clothes I was wearing and mistaken me for the boy named Ocean. I realized this was an absurd thought.

The guard, whose last name was McCauley, said, “Be kind, Isaak. The new boy's name is Ariel.”

And that was my introduction to the king of the orphans and his sergeants.

Isaak stood up and looked at me. He was tall and his shoulders were square. The other boys got up, too.

Isaak put his hand on my arm. I knew right away it was not a friendly gesture. You know how you can just sense that kind of touch, like a live electric wire.

He looked at the others and said, “Come on, Ariel. We'll show you around. So you know what to do.”

Of course I didn't want to go with them. What could I do?

Isaak walked on my left, so close our arms touched as he and the others who boxed me in like a captive led me through alleys formed between rows of tents, turning here and there, dodging people. I was instantly lost.

“Are you a good thief?” Isaak said.

“No.”

“You are now,” he told me. “Bring me something tonight, or you will pay.”

“What am I supposed to bring you?”

“Surprise me. Make it nice.”

“I don't think I can steal.”

“Think again,” one of the other boys said, and pushed me hard from behind.

Isaak stopped and pointed down another narrower alleyway. “Here we go. Let's take him this way.”

We turned another corner and the boys ushered me inside a tent. It was mostly empty except for a heater and an electrical wire that connected to a small hot plate. The place smelled like food, tobacco, and sweat. This tent was smaller than the one the orphans lived in. I could tell it was home to one or two families by the rugs and clothing that were neatly laid out. At the back of the tent hung a carpet that served as a sort of flimsy room divider, which curtained off a smaller, darker place.

Isaak and the boys grabbed me tightly and pulled me toward the small room at the back of the tent. I resisted, tried to jerk away from them. When I turned my face back toward the doorway, one of the boys—his name was Abel—put his dirty hand over my mouth and nose, and shoved me forward.

“Shut up!” he told me.

I was so scared, Max. They pulled me behind the curtain and forced me down onto the floor while they punched my ribs and back. All the while Abel's filthy hand pressed into my face. Abel held me still by twisting his opposite hand into my hair. It hurt me, and I was terrified.

Instantly, I was sweating and crying.

“Don't make any noise,” Isaak put his face right up to my ear and whispered.

The other boys pinned me flat on my belly. The thing I remember most was how bad they smelled, like piss and armpits. I was thinking that I wanted to ask them,
what are you doing? what are you doing?
But there was part of me that knew what the boys were going to do to me, even if I didn't want to believe it.

“Don't fight. Hold still or we'll hurt you more,” Abel said.

Two of the boys pulled off my shoes and pants while Abel pressed my face into the floor, cursing me in a whisper and telling me over and over to shut up, to be quiet or they would beat me worse. Then the boys stripped off my sweater and undershirt, and Isaak climbed on top of me. Isaak braced his bare knees against my legs, straining to push himself up inside me. The other boys laughed and called me names.

It was sickening. I'm so sorry to be telling you this, but it's what happened to me that day.

I struggled and tried to move my body away from Isaak, but the boys holding me down were too strong for me. They kept telling me to shut up, and that it was going to be their turn next, so I better take it or it would only make things worse for me. Isaak grabbed my shoulders hard and forced himself all the way into me. I screamed, but Abel's hand sealed my mouth and nose, suffocating me, and Isaak pressed his chin against the side of my neck and slobbered on my face as he pushed and pushed and pushed.

Abel whispered, “You like it, don't you?” Then he jerked my head up and down, forcing me to nod, and laughed. “Well, I'm next after Isaak. You're going to like me even more.”

Abel licked the side of my face. I shut my eyes and gagged down vomit.

“Shut up. Don't cry.” Isaak's dripping mouth was right in my ear. “If you tell anyone, little chicken, we'll kill you.”

“Hurry up,” Abel told him. “Let me at him.”

Isaak grunted and trembled.

Finally Isaak stopped. He put his teeth on my neck, panting and dripping his sweat on me.

I bit the filthy kid's hand, and he cursed and jerked it away from my face.

Then I screamed as loud as I could, over and over, cursing Isaak and telling him to get off me, to get off.

Someone came into the tent, shouting.

“Hey! What's going on here? What are you doing there? You again? Get out of here, you rats! I told you before! Get out!”

Isaak and the others ran past the curtain and the man who'd been shouting at them to get out of his home, leaving me lying there crying on the mats of what had been this man's bedroom.

The man yelled at me, “Get out, you little pig! Get out of here!”

Everything was a terrible blur.

I glanced at the man. He looked as though he wanted to hit me, but was afraid to touch me. It was the most terrible thing, Max. I tried to pull my pants on and fumbled at buckling the belt Garen had given me, but my hands didn't work and nothing went back into place. I remember that I was crying as I gathered up my shoes and the rest of my clothes in one hand, held my pants closed with the other, and ran outside into the daylight.

I'm sorry for giving this to you, Max.

- - -

Another of my lives ended that day.

After that, I hovered for so long between an old there—a refrigerator—and a distant somewhere else. Who knows where? It was like that ridiculous gate we'd pulled the wagon through. We could have gone around it just as easily, but crossing through the thing—the actual gate—somehow gave a measure of significance to the passage that would not be diminished by doubt. The gate was certain, and we had gone through it, and that was that. And here I was now—lost, so lost.

I will tell you this, Max: I can't remember where I went after I came out of that tent. It was as though I moved through the city in a state of consciousness with neither identity nor language. Nothing made sense; no components could be categorized, defined, broken down. And at some point I found myself standing beside a spigot where a woman worked over a bucket, filling it up with water and wringing out a cloth to wipe the face of her child, and at that moment I knew who I was again, and remembered what happened to me and why I was standing there holding my pants up with one hand and my shoes and the rest of my clothes in the other while my belt dragged in the dirt behind me like a donkey's tail.

I managed to button my pants and thread the belt through the loops. Then I slipped my shoes back onto my feet and put on my pink undershirt and the dead boy's sweater. I don't know how long I stood there watching the woman and the bucket.

She held the cloth up to me and said, “Here, son. Do you want to wash your face?”

I must have looked terrible. I could feel the tightness of dirt where it had dried around my eyes after I'd stopped crying. But it was almost as though I couldn't understand what the woman was saying to me at all. I shook my head and turned around and walked away from her.

Of course I didn't know where I was going. How could I? The sky was fading to evening, and I was completely lost in that city of tents. But something occurred to me, Max, and it may strike you as the thinking of a crazy boy. I realized that I had to steal something for Isaak.

I'm sorry. It's irrational, I know. But I had to do it.

- - -

It was well past dark when I finally found my way back to the orphans' tent. The boys had already been fed, and most of them were lying on their mats on the floor, sleeping.

I'm not proud to admit any of this—or that I became a good thief. The things I'd stolen were hidden against my belly, tucked inside the sweater and pink undershirt Garen and Emel had given me.

Isaak and his sergeants sat nearest the heater, in the center of all the other boys. I hadn't realized how cold it was. I suppose I wasn't feeling very much at all. But the older boys instantly saw me when I stood inside the tent's doorway.

Isaak nudged Abel's shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Look, there. Our new friend has come back.”

Everyone turned to look at me. I felt sick, like I would have thrown up if I had eaten anything at all that day. I looked down at the blue tarp floor and wondered how many times someone had vomited on it.

Isaak said, “Jovan, get Ariel a bed. He must be very tired.”

And Jovan, one of the boys who'd held me down and stripped me that day, got up from his place near the heater and carried a mat to where I was standing.

Jovan said, “Did you bring something for Isaak?”

I nodded. I took my bed and placed it outside the group of orphan boys, who all made orbital rings that tightly packed them in a cluster around the heater. I put the mat against the edge of the floor so I could lie down facing all the others and keep my back against the tent's wall.

“You're going to be cold there,” Abel said, and laughed.

Isaak laughed, too.

“Well, let's see what you got,” Jovan told me.

Isaak kept his eyes directly on my face as I carefully stepped between the beds of the other boys. I would not look at him, but could feel his stare on me. I was sick and scared. Abel and Paul, the other boy who'd held me down for Isaak, scooted over slightly so I could stand in front of the bigger boy.

Abel nudged my foot with his. “Don't forget. It's my turn next.”

I will tell you this, Max: I thought about fighting then and there. I knew they would kill me if I did.

Isaak said, “Did you bring me something, Ariel?”

I nodded.

I slipped my hand up inside my shirt and pulled out the thing I'd stolen for Isaak. It was a crucifix, made of wood, and as big as both of my hands together. On the crucifix was a painted plaster Jesus, small nails through both of his hands and feet. Plaster Jesus's head lolled onto his right shoulder, and his pale skin was streaked and smeared with rusty blood. To be honest, the blood looked real; I'd seen enough of it to know. And Plaster Jesus had an agonized and pitiful expression on his face, his eyes rolled upward as though confronting a tormentor with the question that didn't need to be answered:
What are you doing to me?
He wore a stained knot of rags slung around his hips that barely covered his groin.