THE OPPOSITE OF GRAY

Phong Nguyen

Waste Management, India Point
1996

The sky burns pink like raw meat. Low tide smell washes over the city on a low-grazing cloud. At 5AM, the sun and the moon hang together, and it’s so early I can barely tell the difference.
     Mounting the trash truck with one hand leaves the other one free to plug up my nose. A rookie habit. But already the route is a kind of ritual—the shrimpers passing under East Providence bridge; the joggers; the hangovers; the retarded kid on the corner waiting too early for the bus, clutching a pinwheel; the guy who watches us through the window every Sunday, thinking “The trash truck driver is a spy.”
     Today, for some reason, instead of hiding behind a curtain, he’s out on the lawn, walking the perimeter of his property. A human fence. He watches us empty his two aluminum bins—stares at us really—and blinks, like we’re figments in a dream that he wants to erase.

Warwick Penitentiary, A-Block
1987

The best and only thing about prison is Television. Wheel of fortune. Donahue. Soaps. I never had time for it when I was a kid: I got out of school for the day, my folks wanted me to stay away from the house. Far back as I can remember, I’ve had to break into my own bedroom to sleep, much less fill my days with professional wrestling and music television. I never owned a door-key. And when I finally ran away from there for good, I took the damn TV with me.
     In here, they screen all the programs. But everything is screened. It’s the only way to be completely safe, they say. If you relax the code, then the ordinary, everyday feuds between men become killing affairs. But I don’t see that happening, to be honest. The only screaming I hear comes from the bathroom. It’s like all we eat is peanut butter, raisins, lunchmeat and soda. Food is engineered for anal discomfort. It moves through our pipes faster than Zep. Keeps us up at night. Takes the fight out. Not that we had any from the start.
     What a sorry bunch of inmates. As a kid, I had a vision of prison life: The quiet guy with the Manson beard. The black bunkmate with a soulful voice and a sob story. The innocent guy; the brute; the bitch. Spanish mafia. I’m not saying we’re all white collar types. We’re not. But it ain’t Alcatraz either. The best company I’ve got is a guard who tells me stupid things about his life outside. Like waiting in line at the DMV and they close for the day just as his number is up.

Providence Public High School, Truant
1983

Fifteen years old I get my first pair of shades, red as the devil. From the Stopmart. They go with the canvas shoes, gel-spiked hair, and suntan. Torn denim. Ear pierced. But I’ve worn the lenses too long and next day all I can see with my naked eyes is a green wash, like the whole city is photosynthesizing.
     On the color wheel they have up on the wall in the art room, the opposite of red is green, and if I’d ’a bought those Wizard-of-Oz, emerald-city glasses instead, afterwards the world would have ran red, like the first plague.
     Stop or go? My streetlight flashes green.

Waste Management, India Point
1996

Home from work after picking up Carla’s kid, Anthony, I empty my pockets into the hand basket in the kitchen. I still can’t get used to owning my own set of keys. The certainty of knowing that they will always fit in certain places. The fear of losing them.
     Prison guards hold the keys. My parents hold the keys.
     I guess you can always blame the parents. But taking care of Tony, now, after ten years in the pen for manslaughter, I have a real appreciation for forgiveness. And, though my own folks never visited me the whole ten years, I don’t hold a grudge. But I don’t visit them either.
     Tony, nine years old, wants to know what “man’s laughter” is. I bet he read one of Carla’s letters. Or mis-read it, anyway. What else did he find in there?
     You can’t always be right up front with a kid. “What do you think it is, senor?” He’s taking Spanish in school, and the only way I know of to help out is to drop words here and there.
     “Um…” He has a lip-biting stare that says he’s trying to avoid getting into trouble. “Like, tickling?”
     I nod slowly. Then I fire off the tickles. He wriggles like a pig. Anthony watches pro wrestling every day, but when the fingers are flying all he does is tuck in his limbs and squirm.

Warwick Penitentiary, A-Block
1994

I finish high school in the pen. I figure I spend more time doing Math and English in here, just counting the days and writing letters to my lawyer. I’m hammering out one right now on an old Remington (six sentences in, and I’ve already used several phrases that sound like bad legal thrillers: “just cause,” “double jeapardy,” “due process”). We don’t use computers in here, and they don’t allow pens or pencils, or even feathers dipped in ink. Technologically speaking, we’re stuck at about 1940, toward the end of the depression.
     One guy in here started a newsletter, “Prose and Cons,” and he got every literate dick on A-block to pitch in a piece. Mine started out being about understaffing in the warden’s office, but then the ranks got hold of it and it turned out to be about the prison work ethic. Funny how you think you’ve said one thing, and it turns out that isn’t what you said at all. My mistake. That’s why it’s called the corrections facility.
     I make some quick calculations. If I spend eight hundred more days in here, then that could be divided up into twenty thousand hours, which is a million minutes, or sixty million seconds. A stop-timer like they use in the Olympics can accurately measure time in thousandths of seconds, of which I have sixty billion remaining to my term. To go on with partial numbers, fractions of fractions, yields a number that forever approaches, but never becomes, infinity. Everything is bounded by numbers. Comforting, I think.

Providence Public High School, Truant
1986

I’m at the arcade with two of my buddies and one fatty who tagged along. The screens all emit a soft blue radiance into the room, like perpetual twilight. Each of us is tapping on consoles, manuevering joysticks, watching ninjas get ha cked up by some Rambo with pointed pecs.
     “Hey, why do you think dudes have nipples?” I ask Jimbo.
     “I dunno, Chuck,” he answers. Jimbo is a joke. He’s the one you expect to see picking up your garbage some day, or pacing around a prison cell. Not me. I play it safe, even when taking risks. “Why do you think Will has tits?” We crack up.
     Will, the fatty, starts talking to me. It’s like he doesn’t even hear Jimbo:
     “You know, male mammals have nipples ‘cause they actually have mammary glands. That means they can produce milk, just like mothers do. Yeah, if the females are all dead or missing or something, then the men can actually breastfeed the babies. Freaky, huh?” Jimbo and Dan are smirking, and I’ve got the serious game face on, the ninja-slaughter face. Even my pinky is seeing action now.
     “That’s some sick shit, Will,” I say.
     “Speaking of titties,” says Dan. “Angel knows you bagged Carla.”
     I freeze up, and just a second of distraction causes my Rambo to lose his life. He’s getting pounded by a big boss, the ninja leader. Continue? Insert two quarters. “No fuckin’ way. How the hell, man? Did you tell h im?”
     “No, man.” Dan looks like he’s enjoying himself. He can’t stop smiling. He gets off on that shit. The instigator. “He knew you were sweatin’ his girl. And now she’s pregnant.”

Waste Management, India Point
1997

Tony is on the phone and the TV. The video game he’s playing is cutesy, but action-packed. Something Japanese. His phone buddy is Japanese too, I think. A techno whiz kid. Future engineer.
     “C’mon, we’re gonna visit Mama,” I say. Kid stays where he’s sitting on the carpet. Just the mention of his mother and lockjaw sets in. “Get in the car, or the snake goes back to the pet store.” He shuffles aroun d to get ready. I don’t care what the childcare professionals say: bargaining works.
     We’re hit with one of those middle-of-the-day storms, where night and day alternate. Wipers on, wipers off. The sky is black in some places, completely white in others. Checkerboard. I let Tony take his Gamestation along, and he’s making little crosses with his thumbs, oblivious to all the signs from above.
     They’ve got his mama in an observation room, for visitation. A horde of doctors stands around in the hallway, muttering conspiratorially. I can sniff out the interns. They haven’t decided yet whether the rest of us are human beings, or just subjects.
     Inside, she’s sitting at the end of a long table, as if expecting a host of guests for dinner. She’s wearing hospital blues, and her usually oily hair is sculpted into stalagmites. She’s got wristbands on—that was the fashion when we were kids—which she uses to cover up the scar tissue. Now every time I see aerobi cs on TV, I will imagine those same deep red lines underneath all of their fuzzy armlets.
     “Baby, how are you?” She asks, turning mommy so quick I almost forget who she is, how she got here. She pockets the pack of Lucky Strikes she’d been handling.
     Tony says nothing at first, and I’m about to nudge him with an elbow when he comes out with, “You’re the one in the loony. How’re you doing?”
     Carla laughs, nervous. She’s not yet used to her new, sardonic son. “Did you write a thank-you card to the Fagley’s?”
     I cut in. “It’s on our to-do list.” It’s too much to explain to a committed woman that the family she left her kid with got divorced, soon after they took him on.
     “When do you get out?” He asks. He’s got Puerto Rican hair, like his mother.
     “As soon as I’m better, baby,” she says, “and the doctors say that I’m getting just a little bit better every day.”

Warwick Penitentiary, A-Block
1995

“Gimme the spoon, Dershowitz,” Big Doug says. An officer, he gets twice the respect of the other ranks just on account of his size.
     “Give him the damn spoon, Dershowitz,” some guard orders.
     “We’ll take your recreational privileges,” Big Doug reminds him. “We’ll take your outdoor privileges…” He pauses, to let it all sink in. “If you get a real bad report, the y might put you in lockdown.”
     “Shut up! They’re not gonna put anybody in lockdown. Look. All’s I want is the bathrooms cleaned so I don’t get nobody’s clap.” Dershowitz got himself entwined with the bars and his torn orange jumper. Somewhere in the tangle of flesh and metal is a spoon.
     “Look, man,” Big Doug says, confidentially. “Ain’t nobody getting ass up in here. And if you lucky, nobody’s gettin’ into your junk neither.”
     “There’re microbes. There’re bugs. They get on my clothes; they get on my hair. I just want clean toilets, then I’ll give up the spoon.”
     “Give it up. Give it to me. Just give it up, just give it. Give it up…”
     This is what I have to listen to, as I lay on the thin plastic mattress; when I drift off, my thoughts are full of it. The ceiling above is gray, cracking. The average tone of metals, especially when the lye has worn them down to a dull luster, is gray. Faces look gray. Eyes. It must be spreading.
     “You too, Wonicki,” Big Doug says, to me, when they finally force the spoon out of his fingers, as though there’d even been something to you-too me about.
     And when I wake up, Dershowitz is gone but Big Doug is still trolling the block, though the lights have shut down and all th e cells are quiet.

Providence Public High School, Truant
1986

I pull up in front of the suburban ranch, kicking the curb with rubber. I never could parallel park. A rotweiler is snapping at the air behind a fence. I ding the bell and rap on the door, because I don’t own a key. Carla opens up and goes right away to sit on the sectional sofa. That’s like our place. We sit on those torn-up pieces of couch and bullshit all night, or we smoke and play gin, poker; sometimes I come over and she’s already crying and she won’t stop until she’s asleep.
     “I heard you were, like, pregnant,” I say.
     “Yeah,” she says, as though it’s a passing affliction.
     “Is it Angel’s baby?” I ask.
     She laughs, crooked.
     “What?” I try to read her face.
     “You think I’m a hooker or something?” She says.
     “No, no. Carla, I was just…”
     “Don’t worry. He asked me the same thing.”
     My temples flare. I can feel the tension in my skull. “Why? Does he think we’re…” I gesture.
     She laughs again, but it’s a snotty, tear-welling laugh.
     “ Apparently, someone’s been saying…”
     She’s too full of fluids to go on. I scan around for a tissue or something. Ashtray. Remote. TV Guide.
     “What?” I feel a pang in my side, as if my apprehensions wielded knives.
     “That… I’m, like, your personal fuck toy and that, like, we do it all the time and shit like that.” She looked up from under her hair.
     “Who said…?” Looking at her—really looking at her now—I notice the welt on her cheekbone, and a red mark where her neck meets her shoulder. “Did Angel…?”
     A thumping at the door. The rotweiler picks up the rhythm.
     “Shit, he’s here.” Carla’s tears seem to harden on her face like wax.
     “You don’t have to answer it. He doesn’t know you’re home,” I suggest.
     “I’m gonna let him in,” she says.
     “Don’t do that,” I insist.
     “I’m gonna let him in.”
     I look around the room again, this time for something blunt and heavy. Instead, I settle on a fork that’s still sticky with syrup. I palm it uneasily.
     Angel busts in looking pumped, revved up. I remind myself to be calm, but as he advances, I raise the fork above my head like a knife-wielding maniac in a horror flick— and suddenly there’s a snap in my ear, and Angel is lying on the floor, and blood is easing from a wound in his side. A second shot. I look over at Carla, and she’s holding the pisto l unsteadily, drooping from her two hands while her face turns the other way. Under her tank top, I notice for the first time a very slight bulge in her belly.
     “Look at me,” I say, a few times, before it registers. “Look at me… Look at me” By the time she looks up, it’s like hours have passed. We can already hear the sirens sounding in our heads.
     Angel lets out a faint croak, and his spasms become more infrequent. I snatch the gun from Carla, and it loosens easily from her skeletal grip. I rub it down with my shirt and, holding it steady in my hand, like a joystick, I sit on the edge of our sofa and wait.

Waste Management, India Point
1997

The boy is laying flat on the sidewalk, fresh from a bicycle accident, when we pass by on our route. I motion the driver to stop, then hop off and sit beside him. He says he’s hurt, but the only thing I can see is scrapes on one shin. “Whatchado?” I ask.
     “I tried to pop a wheelie,” he says, “from the curb.” His talk strains, like he’s constipated.
     “You weren’t thinking,” I say, as if reporting the facts.
     “I flew for a couple of seconds,” he says. “I was like, whooosh.”
     “I’m not getting you another bike. You better take care of this one.”
     I help him sit up, like he’s a convalescent patient. “Can I have something to drink, pop?”
     It’s just like Tony to milk a weakness. I fish out an energy bar from my jacket pocket. From GNC. “How’s this, Tony? Bueno?”
     “Si. Bueno.”
     We share our meal replacement bar, chewing alone in our separate sensations. For a second there, I think we’re about to share a good silent moment. Then he asks, “Do you ever feel bad about Mom?”
     “Why?” I say, keeping it light.
     “That she crazy?”
     I clear my throat. I try not to look at him. “That’s n obody’s fault, Tony.”
     He’s still looking at me. He’s got a big forehead, and dark eyes, like Angel.
     “Yeah, well. That’s all I have to say.”

Warwick Penitentiary, A-Block
1996

They let me out on a Wednesday. It’s too late in the week to go looking for a job, and too early to relax or settle in. But Carla’s pop— Tony’ grandpa— knows what happened, and sets me up with a job in the his department: the department of sanitation.
     From the back of a truck, I graduate to sales, though I’m still dealing in trash. Nothing essential has changed—just the job description, to which new lines are added every day I show up for work, it seems like. I used to just pick it up and pass it on. Now I sell it.
     There are companies that buy the shit you throw away. Or, if they do business with the wrong people, we make ’em buy it. Point is, we get it from you for free. Then we sell it as many times as we can, cleaning money from other sources. Then more money comes in for us to dump it—tax money, anyway. So what it all amounts to is billing. Accounts payable. Invoices. Receipts. Eventually, I guess, I’ll be a full-on collections agency.
     But at the moment, we’ve got the truck stopped at a SpeedMart, because I have a bitter taste on my tongue—probably from the fumes—and I need a dose of sugar. I fill a handcart with chewy, colorful candy, and step in line. Next to me, a revolving display case reads “frames for all occasions.” Some are wiry and fragile, for light use. And others are heavy, sturdy, made for rough climates.
     But sunglasses only come in one color now— dark. The John Lennon look is dead as disco. But I know for a fact that that color wheel still hangs in the art room of my old high school. I went there once when I got out. No particular reason. I was just a kid when they put me in, and it was the only place I really knew. When I did, I noticed that, while all the rest of the colors are out at the edges, gray is in the middle of the wheel. As it turns out, the opposite of gray is… just gray. So you can look through gray glasses your whole life if you want, and when you turn your eyes back onto what’s around you, instead of seeing something different— some new quality of light— all you see is more gray.

Providence Public High School, Truant
1986

When he’s got me in the back of the car with cuffs on, he wants to know how young I am. That’s how he says it, “How young are you?” I just turned eighteen. He whistles, but you can tell it’s a practiced whistle. Back at the station, he wants to know if I’m a lefty. Like he wants me to pitch for little league or something.
     When I get up the courage, I ask him, “What’ll it be, do you think?”
     He looks grim. “Manslaughter. Ten to twenty.” Casually, he dispenses with a decade or two of my life.
     “Guess I’ll never be President,” I say. He snorts. Then I wonder how many times he’s heard that. I’d hate to be a typical arrest, another day-in-the-life.
     At forty, I’ll practically be an old man. Carla will have been a mom for twenty years. And Angel will still be eighteen and dead. As I’m brought to the station, and as they process me, and for a while afterwards, I actually envy Angel— I envy him, and envy him, until enough time goes by and I don’t envy him anymore.