DARREN DOYLE
This island was too small. Not here. Not anymore. There were whole new worlds in this house that came out when he came in. He walked through the gates into dangerous territory, the walls painted in bright colours. The sky was blue overhead, the wind blowing through the bougainvillea sprawling untended at the walls. Inside it was darker; his aunt smiling when she saw him. He gave a smile in response but held himself back from a hug. There were grass clippings at the base of his pants, dirt collected on his knees and hands, and sweat making drooping patterns down the front and back of the t-shirt he wore. Aunty Parisha ignored all this and brought him in anyway.
“You good, D’Adrian?”
He nodded, “As good as mornings an’ nights.”
She was going out — slightly frantically and distractedly — as he came in, leaving him with the house. She explained to him as she left that his cousin, Junior, was sleeping in the back in his crib now. D’Adrian didn’t have to do anything, just check in occasionally, but don’t touch him if his hands were dirty. Take a shower before handling him or at least wash his hands. But he didn’t have to worry too much because Junior was sleeping soundly and she would only be gone a little while. He could go ahead and work as he normally would. He walked out with her and stood near the gate as she got into her car. She drove off, pulling away from the pickup he had trundled up the hill after her call which had inadvertently cornered him into coming to the house even though he didn’t want to.
From where D’Adrian stood now, he could turn and make an assessment. While everyone had been distracted, the foliage had fallen into chaos. The lawn needed to be mowed, ixora and hibiscus needed to be trimmed and there were vines creeping up the pillars that supported the roof off to one side. He took what he needed from the truck bed and walked back in to tackle the greenery. He laid everything out over the oil stains in the driveway and went in to check on his cousin. He went by the TV his aunt had forgotten to turn off, the newscaster talking on low volume about radars and a raid. He stopped to turn it off. He found his cousin sleeping soundly, just as his aunt had described. A floor fan circulated the hot, torpid air around his crib. He only glanced at him before he left the room for a glass of water from the kitchen. Standing there after finishing it, he caught sight of the first inhabitant of one of the worlds within the house.
The Thing flashed by, momentarily visible through a doorway; leftover creations that went hurtling wildly down hallways, looking for safe havens. D’Adrian followed it out, tracking its traces into his old bedroom but from there he wasn’t sure where it had gone. He checked under the bed, chest of drawers and inside cupboards but those, he knew, were too obvious. He found it hidden in a forgotten cup, which must have rolled off the bed and landed with its mouth facing the corner where two walls of the room met. He shook it out into his palm. It looked up and observed him as he observed it, so small it could dance on a fingernail; it was almost weightless and bursting with a feathery light. It brimmed with an unmistakable energy so that it felt like it might burst apart at his touch. He set about the business of undoing it.
If there was one there would be more, given how long he had left it here. He knew he had gotten lucky with that one, though. He glanced around with recognition at the room. Startled at the thought of where he was, he left quickly. Outside, he took a stick of gum from a packet and slipped it into his mouth. He liked to have something to chew while he worked. It allowed him to focus his attention elsewhere.
D’Adrian moved around to the back of the house and started up the lawn mower. Unconsciously, he found himself pushing it along slower when his right ear — his good ear — was positioned towards the house and faster when it wasn’t, listening out for the cries of a baby. He had lost hearing in the left: a childhood accident, playing unsupervised with fireworks. He wasn’t even sure he could hear the sound of a baby crying over the churning of a lawn mower’s motor. He felt uncomfortable whenever he slowed. Taking your time among The Things, for any reason, had to be a bad idea. At any moment one might raise its wispy head, its pores tingling, sensing his presence from its position further up the hill this house rested on. It might float up through the ceiling of the house that sheltered it — the house he avoided even more than the one he was in — and up some more until it floated above the neighbourhood. It would drift from side to side as it came down over the overgrown trees until it reached his aunt’s house and looked across but didn’t see him. He was hidden away in the backyard after all.
He cut the lawn mower now. There was a toad in front of it which had stood perfectly still even as the loud machine approached it, staring sidelong at the red of its hood. Even after he stopped the engine it refused to move. He had never seen anything like it. It must have felt like it was cornered with a chain-link fence off to one side, the lawn mower on the other and overgrown grass in front of it. See, that was the problem right there – things like that; odd things. This island was too small; chaos could erupt at any moment and the green mountains walled you in. Not here. He didn’t like coming here. Not anymore. Not when it dragged up memories of exchanges with Angela. He spat out his gum and took another from its packet, sticking it into his mouth.
***
D’Adrian keeps thinking about the emptiness of the house as his phone vibrates intermittently with the conversation. It is pouring rain outside and the raindrops against the galvanised roof fill the silences between her responses.
U home? – D’Adrian | 7:43pm
Yeah – Angela | 7:47pm
Anybody by you? D’Adrian | 7:59pm
Why u always want to know dat? Angela | 8:00pm
Gyal… D’Adrian | 8:06pm
Yuh see u… Angela | 8:06pm
Who by you Dawson? D’Adrian | 8:06pm
My brotha here n mummy gone out to come back. Angela | 8:07pm
U comin? Angela | 8:19pm
Nah. Today is my rest day. Walk down to the standpipe yuh need d exersize. D’Adrian | 8:28pm
Wah you talkin bout? Angela | 8:30pm
You gettin fat. D’Adrian | 8:34pm
Haha! Wah you talkin bout? Angela | 8:36pm
You still coming right? Angela | 8:51pm
***
Inside now he found another one of The Things dead in the living room. He leaned over to examine it and a breath out of his mouth blew it to dust. He wondered if it had suffered when it died. He wondered too if it had suffered while it lived. The first time he had made one of them he had been about seven. In the excitement of its discovery, he announced its appearance with a shout to his mother who just gave an unfocused look at where he pointed and carried on with the phone conversation she had been having. The second time he started speaking to The Thing quietly. Annoyed by it, he told it to go away, and his mother jerked her head violently to ask him who he was talking to. After he explained, she took his head in her hands and started praying. He said nothing about them after that.
Over the years it became apparent that he would never be able to stop making them when he didn’t want to, they would always squeeze into existence through some accidental manipulation of his hands. If he kept his hands still, perfectly still… but sometimes even then they popped into existence. They came out however they pleased. Once he made one that looked up at him mischievously at the moment of its creation and took off before he could stop it, its legs somehow backwards. He had made another that looked like flames were dancing on its flesh which frightened him so much he had jumped. Another scurried off and he found it later, halfway through building a little floating globe a thousand times its size in the corner of an unused cupboard in his bedroom. One time he made two in one go, another time three appeared out of his hands all at the same time.
He had spent most of his teenage years here at his aunt’s house, a host of The Things left behind when he left. Growing up he barely knew his father who had wandered distractedly to the peripheries of their lives, and his mother – who had been pouring large portions of herself into her work at one point; waking before dawn and returning late at night – had asked her sister to take care of her only son when she couldn’t. All in all, a very Caribbean arrangement.
He hid inside now to escape the claustrophobic feel of the outdoors and to wait out the toad. He made himself a sandwich from the things in the kitchen, throwing the gum he chewed into the kitchen bin, and biting in. He sweated in the kitchen as he had been sweating outside in the sun and his toe hurt. The baby toe on his right foot. The one he had managed to slice apart as a youth when he had tripped running barefooted with scissors. He came out of the incident with nine and seven-eighths of his toes and the ability to predict the weather. In perhaps a reverse of the way arthritic people could tell it would rain by the pain in their joints, when it was about to rain his baby toe would be painless.
He wandered the house as he ate. He found cobwebs in the corridors between the rooms and listened to the old, familiar noises the house made as it settled in the midday heat. Here, on the smooth tiles of the back verandah, was where he broke his hand rocking one of the chairs that wasn’t meant to be rocked. And this was the vase he had cracked playing football in the house; he stopped, turning it to examine the massive fissure that was cleverly hidden against the wall. And that kitchen rod in the living room was the one that had held up the curtain he briefly set on fire while playing with matches. Back in the kitchen he found an old cellphone on the counter he had used in his teens. Picking it up, he tried to figure out how it might have gotten there.
He had been a sullen child growing up, all alone with his uncle, aunt and cousins who were all much older than him. It was in this solitude that he discovered the mysterious power he possessed. Not to create beings but to influence them. Other people who commanded respect did it, like politicians, with a falseness of wisdom or composure but D’Adrian Lourde was so much more. In the way people drank to get incredibly drunk you could drink him in to get incredibly sober so that suddenly your inhibitions were raised and revelry and discomposure seemed absurd in the face of everything. People were drawn to this, a certain brokenness which they found in him. Angela was infatuated by it.
Angela would sit and talk to him about her family, using their names as though he was supposed to know them too. When finally he came across them he would study each individual until he knew for sure that he could match them back to Angela’s descriptions.
When, all those years ago, his Aunt handed him the phone with his mother on the other end telling him he could now come home, Angela could possibly have been the reason he stayed even though she was definitely the reason he later left. He sat in the living room with the white handset pressed to his ear and listened almost mutely as she explained the arrangements for his return. He threw out some questions to derail the effort: Aunty Parisha know? (I talk to your Aunty already, D’Adrian.), I have a lot of t’ings to move across (I will come pick you up in the car — and you don’t have to move everyt’ing across one time, y’know.) And, uhm, so Marlon does drop me to cricket practice on Wednesdays. (Yes, I talk to your Aunty already. I could drop you after I come home from work and if I runnin’ a li’l late you could always call to ask Marlon to pick you up and drop you off.) and finally, I would have to go to a new school? (You could still go to the same school — it a li’l further away but y’ll jus’ have to get up earlier in the mornin’.)
They talked some more before hanging up and the next day, a Saturday, his mother showed up in her old silver Nissan just as she promised. They spent almost an hour packing his things into the car, his mother smiling and laughing. At the end of it, D’Adrian went in to go look for something he had forgotten in his room. Almost two hours later, his aunt and his mother who had been chatting in the front yard went in to see what he was up to. They walked in and found him with tears hidden in the corners of his eyes and understood that he wanted to stay.
***
The moment he decides to leave comes soon after that Saturday. He is sitting alone in the house when Angela’s name flashes up on his phone screen. He answers.
“D’Adrian?”
In the background, voices:
You need to calm down.
I can’t calm down, Sterling.
“D’Adrian?”
He hears a woman’s voice say again, viciously:
No, I can’t take it easy. We have a teenage daughter who’s so…dotish she get herself pregnant in the first place and then t’ree months later she still don’t know she pregnant.
In a whisper, “D’Adrian?”
“Yeah…”
“I… you saw the tex’?”
“What tex’?”
“I jus’… the one I jus’ sen’ you?”
“No… Hold on, eh. Lemme check… Wha’ you sen’ me that for?”
“What?”
“You wasn’… you wasn’ wit’ Gary before me?” Silence on the line. “Hello?”
***
No response because Angela is confused. So confused that he would think it possible someone else besides him could be responsible and after a moment of reasoning remember that it isn’t and later in the heat of the moment when her parents ask (Who is the father?) grow so ashamed by his rejection she does not speak D’Adrian’s name. Not then. Not ever. And when they press, staring down at her disbelievingly because they had worked so hard to build the right environment for their daughter to thrive in, finally she responds, “Nobody.” Which prompts her mother’s hands to fly up from where they are positioned, akimbo, on her waist, “Well, kill me dead,” she says, “We have the Virgin Mary sitting on we couch, oui.”
***
The voice comes into focus again for D’Adrian:
Where she gone? Where that little… I will wring that little gi’l neck, ‘u’know. Sterling. Call your daughter please before I… Angela!
Down the line he hears her jump.
***
Outside, he poured gasoline into the brush cutter. Setting the can aside and moving to pick up the equipment he felt a familiar sensation, like a release, in his hands. He was too slow trying to pull them apart. A jolt, and it was there where it hadn’t been before in the space between his palms. It appeared in a flash that was gradual, like lightning crackling across a sky — The Thing coming into existence in stages from the top of the head, downwards to the very end of its toes. Reflexively, he snatched hold of it, pulling it apart before it had a chance to escape. It vanished just as quickly as it came into existence, from beginning to end a look of confusion on its face. Staring at the empty space where it had been he felt a stab of guilt. There was something about the way it had stared at the world in the second that it existed. Then an urge that he had never had before. He leaned over to wipe his forehead against his sleeve, giving himself a moment to consider it. He raised his head and his hands, with no idea what he had to do or if it would work. But it did, almost immediately. This one — short and thin — popped into existence with its mouth open as though in the middle of a sentence. It raised its head to stare him in the face, shutting its mouth slowly.
He held its gaze unblinkingly, something like panic building inside him. Then, as though it could sense what he was about to do, it shifted its tiny features and bolted. In response, he moved too quickly to grab hold of it, tripping over himself and landing in the grass of the backyard. He looked up again to find it but couldn’t. What he found instead was a metallic taste in his mouth. He stood, bending over to spit. The gum he had been chewing came out, but no blood along with it. Although, the side of his mouth hurt where his teeth had clamped when he fell.
He looked around forlornly, finally turning his attention to the chewed bit of gum nestled in the grass at his feet. Without the fixation, the yard started feeling more oppressive. The house felt like it was growing darker and more demanding. He reached into his pocket finding that he had used his last stick of gum. Jumping at an excuse to escape, he left everything as it was and in a moment he was in his truck, driving towards the new grocery he saw on his way to the house. There was a tension in him that made itself known by virtue of fading the further he drove from the house. His grip loosened on the wheel, his entire body relaxing into the seat. At the same time, he had this thought in the back of his head like he might have left the iron on that he knew it was best to distract himself from.
It was the last Saturday of the month and there were lines of cars in the grocery’s parking lot. Walking in, the newness of it all washed over him like a salve. There had been a woman in the parking lot coming out of the car next to his who had leaned in to talk to a baby the woman next to her was carrying. She asked it expectantly if Mummy had remembered to bring the handkerchief to cover its head seeing as it looked like rain was about to fall. D’Adrian’s toe agreed. He looked up and saw grey clouds.
The woman’s words followed him inside all the way to one of the shelves just in front of the express lane where the gum was stacked and all the way out again towards the exit. The door slid open as he made his way out and warm air rushed in from outside, sweeping the cool air of the grocery away. A boy ran in and stopped just past the door, spinning around to look out again towards someone unseen. He seemed to be about the right age; a thought. A second boy, an exact copy of the first, ran in to stand next to his twin briefly before running back out again. Walking by them both, D’Adrian saw a face he recognised.
It looked like Angela though it probably wasn’t. He was past her in a heartbeat and all the while she had her head turned away from him towards the woman next to her.
But as he left, now hurriedly, one of the twins went running past Angela (because, of course, it was Angela) and she turned to call him back trying one name and then the other: “Emmanuel!?-Emmerson!?”. When she glanced up and saw D’Adrian, recognizing him immediately even though she had only seen his back, it set her blood boiling. The moment Emmanuel/Emmerson was within reach, she dragged him to her, setting his head shaking like a rag doll’s and lambasted him for running off. She was so aggressive, it startled the other shoppers. The boy, too surprised to remember to cry, stood stock still while D’Adrian, the unknown god of his existence, made his retreat behind him.
Getting into his truck, D’Adrian paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead before he tumbled the engine and backed out of his spot. He sat behind the wheel navigating the parking lot, trying to make his way out. With the grocery so busy, cars were lined up all through the narrow lanes between the parking spots. He studied the situation grimly, taking a second to realise the honking he was hearing was directed at him. There was a woman directly in front of him who leaned off her car horn when he took notice giving him the sign of utter disapproval. He studied her. There was nothing behind her, he realised. He was trying to create an exit where none existed. That was the problem right there. This island was too small, old allies could attack at any moment, everyone walled you in and memories lived on every corner.
***
In the weeks following the argument with her parents, Angela hides herself in the bathroom to sneak messages to D’Adrian. She must remember to type in the number correctly each time as she has already erased his existence from her phone.
D’Adrian? Angela | Sunday 11:36pm
Hello? Angela | Sunday 11:38pm
Hello? Angela | Monday 11:15pm
I didn’t tell them it was u… Angela | Wednesday 11:26pm
Hello? Angela | Yesterday 11:45pm
***
It was only when he was climbing out of his truck at his aunt’s house that he remembered the baby. He had been away maybe twenty minutes. He had completely forgotten his cousin and now the memory came rushing back again. It was alone in that room, all alone in that house, all alone in the world. All alone, a mere blink, in the vastness of time.
Before the baby’s time. Before it’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents looked up from the things they played with while they crawled in the dirt. Before the earth that would cradle its kind hurtled, crashed and cooled. When it’s very universe was a toddler, a baby, an entity just being born. Before this baby existed might have well been an eternity and after it died the same. Then the baby’s parents plucked it out of non-existence. Plucked it out and set it in the middle of two eternities and somehow contrived through the passing off of responsibility to forget it.
D’Adrian hurried inside, checked the crib and found it empty. He was kneeling, shifting the crib aside anxiously to scan the spaces there for a baby that might have stood up, climbed out and gotten stuck, asphyxiated maybe, when he heard a noise behind him. Aunty Parisha stopped at the door, jiggling and cooing at a gurgling baby. Her eyes were set hard on him, her face was completely expressionless. “You jus abandon the chil’ and gone your way?”
“Woman, wha’ you talkin’ ‘bout? Is right there by the grocery I went.”
“Who you callin’ ‘woman’?” She shot him a look that bludgeoned him into silence. A moment more of it and she moved away, her footsteps receding down the hall. He was left staring at the empty space where she had been, angry that he had been defeated so easily.
Although, he wasn’t sure that was why he was angry. The anger had come in before and bided its time, waiting to be released. The anger was a result of coming to the realisation that any life was bigger than the lies you told yourself. It was anger that came from discomfort. You just couldn’t be permitted to create anything that complex only to destroy it with ineptitude.
It took him several moments — how long he wasn’t sure — but after a time of dark thoughts in his head and staring blankly at empty space, he caught a glimpse of light coming from the space he had created pulling the crib away from the wall. Distracted, he leaned closer to stare at it; what The Things had built. He had never seen one so developed before. They had a planet and a sun, stars, black holes, solar systems and galaxies. Everything revolving — working crudely. He marvelled at it all briefly before he leaned in closer, his intent to unbuild it.
How to unbuild a universe: Do nothing. After all, any decent universe is merely a disaster billions of years in the making.
Or…
If you simply must, it is frightfully easy to unbuild a universe. Just set one thing off. Gravity. Light. Space. Time. Matter. Step into their lives and destroy their world as they know it. Set their universe grinding to an unsustainable halt. Watch black holes form from their imploded stars. Supernovae explode and incinerate worlds. Interfere with orbiting satellites and send them crashing into planets. Poke at those planets and watch them spin out of their orbits, ice over or combust. Pull at space or squeeze it tight and watch the very fabric of their space-time continuum wobble and collapse. Make time run out of order; the past, the present; the present, the past and the future so certain it feels as though it has happened or is happening. Fiddle with matter until it transmutes. Watch their environment transform into something that makes their lives untenable. Have them suffocate on chemicals or watch their planet spin into gas at their feet. The whole thing is so easy you can do it by accident.
