Writers of the Future, Volume 28 (33 page)

My Name Is Angela

Where I’m From

I
f I sit still for a long time and think in just the right way, I can see the numbers and colored letters hiding behind my name. The grandfathers are sure we can’t do this, but we can. Sometimes late at night, when I might really be asleep, I think of a ride in a truck. It’s sunny and there are rows of us, all wearing the same white gowns, and I hear the little whirly noise of a gate sliding into place behind us . . .

I don’t think of the truck when I’m in school teaching their fourth graders. Or the numbers. I follow the well-worn groove of times tables and spelling, now and then reading stories or listening to oral reports. Last week there were two knife fights, but that too is a well-worn groove. I stopped them both and got yelled at by some of the mothers and their boyfriends. They saw the blood soaking through the bandage on my arm, but it made no difference. They are just like their children; if they weren’t different sizes, I could never tell them apart.

Bruno says he can tell them apart but he lies about so many things I never know what to believe. His lying makes me tired so I don’t talk to him much. I have my radio and he has his TV. His shows are stupid and so is he. When I’m in the living room with him, he pretends to know who the people are and what they’re doing but late at night, before he comes to bed, I peek and see him shaking his head, mumbling as he clicks from channel to channel.

A good thing about Bruno is that I never have to look up to him and he never has to look down at me. People look down at us all the time, without exception. It’s what we’re for. Of course, I hear pieces of discussions on the radio, usually when the music is boring and I turn the dial. Some are “for” us and some “against,” but I can’t tell their ideas apart any more than I can tell them apart. They’re like empty spaces, white silhouettes moving through the dimly colored background of the world, or fiery beings stretching blazing hands to conduct us like a lackluster symphony written by a mediocre composer. It’s because of the numbers behind my name. I think they control me and the ones for recognizing people are missing.

The grandfathers are sure we don’t understand about the numbers, but we do. When I go to the regional office for routine checkups, they always test to see if I know about the numbers, but they’re so sure I don’t, they never pay attention. The grandfathers are different from other people, more defined and identifiable. I trust them, but I don’t know why. Maybe some of the numbers make me trust them.

One Saturday morning it was raining when I woke up. Bruno was snoring as usual and the side of his face was covered with a big bandage. I was confused, but then I remembered. Last night he wanted sex. I told him no. This was odd because I really
did
feel like that, but I didn’t like him deciding all the time. I thought it should be my turn to decide and I decided
no
.

He didn’t like that. He followed me around, getting in the way while I did the dishes and the ironing. Sometimes he was loud and scary; mostly he was whiny and pitiful. He was really on my nerves!

Finally, I made another decision. I told him, “No!” one last time and hit him with the hot iron as hard as I could. He crashed to the floor and didn’t move.

I got ready for bed as he lay there moaning. When I got out of the shower, he was sitting up, whimpering and trying not to touch his swollen face. His left eye had disappeared.

A few minutes later, he staggered to his feet. He went to the clinic and I went to sleep.

I remembered all that as I sat listening to the rain and smelling the fresh air seeping into the drafty old apartment. It was such a peaceful feeling, like the rain was making its own clean, cool world just for me. In a way it was like the quiet truck ride in my dream, with no numbers, no knife fights, nobody “for” and “against.”

It was like music that had to come from some place greater than the messy, tangled world. Could there be such a place
?

I think that’s when I decided to go to the Soul Man.

Only a Little Soul

E
verybody knows about the Soul Man, just like everybody knows about things like drugs and where to buy stolen goods. The difference is that decent people don’t buy drugs or stolen goods, but any of us can go to the Soul Man if we have money and aren’t afraid of the law. Some go because they want the rest of us to look up to them the way all the made people have to look up to the born people. I never cared about that. In fact, I almost didn’t go because I didn’t want to look down on Bruno or make him look up to me. But every time I almost changed my mind, I would remember the cool, clean rain and the sunny truck ride through the gate. Even though nobody in the truck said a word, I knew we all had the same new, happy feeling, like a place had been made just for us and we were on our way to fit into that place and do things that only we could do.

Of course, I only know that as a dream. I don’t really
remember
, do I
?
My earliest memory is the grandfather at the regional office saying, “Open your eyes.” Nobody else was with me. There was no sun and no white robe, just my first set of drab clothes draped across a chair, waiting for me to put them on. They smelled like mothballs. I knew they’d been worn before.

What the Soul Man did was against the law, so he had to move around to stay ahead of the police. The hardest part about finding him was asking people. We are not outgoing; other than Bruno and one or two of the custodians at school, I really didn’t know anybody to ask. Sometimes I saw people on the el or walking down the street and I could tell by looking at their eyes that they had changed, but you can’t just stop a stranger and ask! You can’t just say, “Where is the illegal Soul Man
?
” It was discouraging.

I began to feel lonely because when you need to know something important and have no one to ask, you really
are
alone. I couldn’t talk to Bruno, because I didn’t want him to know. My plan was to try it and if it turned out to be good maybe I could get him to try it too. In the meantime, I knew I couldn’t trust him. He might pretend to know where the Soul Man was and then laugh at me if I went where he said and found nothing.

I was thinking hard about this problem one afternoon. I had just finished reading
A Wrinkle in Time
to my kids and was waiting for them to get out their math homework when one of them came up to my desk.

“It’s Jamal, Miss Angela.”

I think Jamal was in one of the knife fights, but it wasn’t his fault. I would have recognized him if not for my preoccupation. He always gave me a hug at the end of the day.

“Yes, Jamal
?
Would you like to use the bathroom
?
”

“No, ma’am. Mr. Sam asked me to give you this.” He handed me a note. It said, “I know a Man.”

“Thank you, Jamal.”

“Are you okay, Miss Angela
?
”

“Yes, I am, Jamal. Thank you for asking.”

When school was over for the day, I went down the gray painted steps at the end of the hall and through the doors with the Fallout Shelter sign. Before Sam started working at the school, the steps were greasy and the paint was almost all peeled off. The handrail was rusty, but now it was a nice glossy green. Everything Sam did was neat and clean. That’s why he was such a good custodian.

The door to the janitor’s room was open and I could see the clean white mops hanging on the wall. There was a smell of orange cleaner but not too much. The janitor’s room at our apartment usually had a nasty sour smell with strong pine cleaner fighting to cover it up.

Sam was at a workbench fixing a vacuum cleaner. A bright white light shone on tools laid in neat rows; pieces of the sweeper were arranged on a sheet of newspaper.

Sam was my age, of course, but he wore glasses and looked like an older person. “
We’re all suitable to our calling
,” I thought, remembering the line from
A Christmas Carol.
“
We’re well matched
. . .”

“You can tell when somebody has been to the Soul Man,” he said without looking up from his work, “but I can tell when somebody
wants
to go.” He put down the glasses he didn’t need (none of us do) and turned to look at me with unremarkable brown eyes. “We’re different for a reason, Angela. Don’t go to the Soul Man.”

“I want to,” was all I could think to say.

“Then I’ll tell you a secret,” he said with an odd sort of smile. “You already have the thing you want from him. It’s a trick; all he’ll do is switch around some of your numbers. This will change the way you feel and the way you think, but it won’t change what you are. We’re already
the same thing they are, the way a draft horse is the same thing as a wild stallion.”

“I’m tired of watching stallions.”

“So was I,” he said, “but I couldn’t be one, no matter how much I thought I could.”

“You went to the Soul Man
?
But . . .”

“I went all right. It was a mistake. For a long time I didn’t know what to do; the Soul Man never undoes his work. I finally went to the grandfather to get changed back. I was afraid I would get into trouble . . .” He stopped smiling.

“I still want to go,” I said.

“All right.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Show this at the door. If anybody but the person at the door sees it, tell them it’s your grocery list. I can’t write down his location, but he’ll be there until Thursday. Go to Thirtieth Street Station and take the R7 . . .”

That night I was very nice to Bruno because I had a strange feeling that I would be leaving him the next day. I didn’t know what it would be like after I went to the Soul Man, but I knew it would be
different
. Maybe a different person couldn’t stay with Bruno. Maybe a different person could stay but not be happy.

Maybe Bruno wouldn’t like a different person.

I made a pot of oatmeal because he thinks it’s a treat to have breakfast for dinner and oatmeal is his favorite. Lately he’s been acting careful around me, like he’s afraid to do something I might not like. He picks up after himself and doesn’t pretend to know all about the people on TV. This makes things more convenient. I should like it this way, but I don’t. I just wanted things to be the way they were before they changed again, maybe forever.

When we got into bed, he said it had been a long day. I know he works hard on the docks and they’d been making him work overtime; he
was
falling asleep at dinner but I also had the strangest thought. I could stop an irresistible force, but I could not move an immovable object. I didn’t know what this thought could really mean, but as he lay there snoring, I touched the scar on his cheek and wondered; could Bruno ever be a wild stallion
?

What Could Be in That House
?

I
t was a blustery wet Saturday when I found the Soul Man’s house. I assumed it would be in some dangerous, rundown neighborhood like in a crime show, but it wasn’t. It was a nice old place in a row of old houses on a little hill. The slate walk was lined with hyacinths and crocuses and there was a big dogwood tree waiting to flower.

I thought Sam had made a mistake when a nice old lady answered the door, but she took my “grocery list” and showed me to a little room that smelled like flowers and old books. All the windows were stained glass and the walls were covered with all kinds of symbols. I recognized the cross, the six-pointed star and the yin/yang, but most of the symbols were strange. There was a kind of relaxing music playing softly; it sounded a little like wind and birds and a tumbling brook.

I don’t know what I expected, but when a sharply dressed young man came into the room, I had no idea he was the Soul Man. He reminded me of a grandfather; I trusted him immediately. I noticed he was handsome and this made me feel strange.

“Don’t get up,” he said as I started to rise. He sat on a delicate-looking chair in front of me and stared at my face.

“They say the eyes are the window to the soul,” he said. He was quiet as he looked into my eyes, then he held out his hand and said, “Angela, my name is David. Pleased to meet you.”

I shook his hand.

“What makes you think you want a soul
?
”

“I . . . I’m not sure,” I said. We don’t always think of reasons for what we want, especially the things we want most. “I think it started with a dream I keep having.” I explained about the truck and the rain. I was sure this was nonsense to him and I began to wonder if I belonged there at all, but he just smiled and nodded as if he heard the story every day.

“What does Bruno think
?
” he asked.

“How do you know about Bruno
?
”

“Remember what I told you about eyes,” he said. “Bruno doesn’t know, does he
?
You don’t plan to tell him.”

I shook my head.

“Good. I don’t like doing this for people who just want to be looked up to. Those people don’t understand what they’re getting into.”

“Sam told me I shouldn’t come,” I said.

“Sam
?
Oh, yes, the custodian. Sam is a good friend. Now, there are a few things you should know before we begin. First of all, this is against the law. We can stop now if you like and you won’t get into trouble.”

“I don’t want to stop.”

“All right. Now this is important. You see the symbols all around us
?
Those symbols remind us that only God makes souls. Some argue that it doesn’t matter if you’re born or made; all people have souls regardless. Others say that men make bodies, but men can’t make souls so ‘made’ people are soulless. I don’t know which thing is true. All I know is that at the end of the ritual you will know you have a soul. That means you will be responsible for your life, your thoughts and your actions and you will be accountable to God. Do you understand
?
”

“As much as I’m able to,” I said.

“It’s a big step, Angela. The biggest. This is your last chance. Are you sure
?
”