The Collection Page 7

  So I thought I'd do something a little different.

  My wife is a hard-core recycler. Cans, bottles, newspapers, grocery bags-she saves them all. Even on trips, she brings along plastic bags in which to col­lect our soda cans.

  I exaggerated her compulsion for this story.

  Anything can be taken to extremes.

  ________________________

  Shari has never seen a working toilet. She will-she goes to nursery school next year and I know they have toilets there-but right now she's only seen our toilets. Or what used to be our toilets before Father turned them into station­ary storage containers for soybean chicken.

  I don't know why I thought of that. I guess it's because Shari's squatting now over the biodegradable waste recepta­cle that Father makes us pee in. There are two receptacles for our waste. The blue one for urine. The red one for excrement.

  I don't know how Shari'll do in school. She's slow, I think. Father's never said anything about it, but I know that he's noticed, too. Shari doesn't catch on to things the way she's supposed to, the way I did. She was three before she could even figure out the difference between the red and blue receptacles. She was four before she said her first word.

  Sometimes I want to tell Father that maybe his seed shouldn't be recycled, that there's something wrong with it. Look at Shari, I want to say, look at The Pets. But I love Shari, and I even love The Pets in a way, and I don't want to hurt any of their feelings.

  I don't want to get Father mad, either.

  So I say nothing.

  My period ended a few days ago, and I know I was sup­posed to wash out my maxi pads in this week's bathwater and then use the water on the outside plants and hang the maxi pads out to dry, but the thought of my blood makes me sick, and I just haven't been able to do it.

  I've been saving the maxi pads beneath my mattress, and tomorrow I'm going to stuff them in my underwear and take them to school. I will throw them away in the girl's bath­room, just like everyone else.

  I feel wicked and nasty.

  I hope Father doesn't find out.

  But I know he will when he takes Inventory.

  I try to tell Father that we can donate my old clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, that they will recycle my f clothes and give them to other people. I hint that I can buy pants and blouses that have been worn by others at those same thrift stores and that this will contribute to the recy­cling process and allow me to have some new clothes, but he will not hear of it. The clothes we have are the clothes we will always have, he tells me, and only after death will they be passed on to someone else.

  So he cuts up the material, takes out old stitches, and re­fashions the cloth into new blouses and pants.

  I attend school dressed as a clown, laughed at by my classmates.

  When I come home, I feed The Pets. They are kept in an enclosure in the center of the back yard, the low fence surrounding their habitat made from refashioned cans and cardboard. I feed them the crumbs and leftovers from yesterday's meal, mixed in with the compost of our own waste. I think this is wrong, but Father says that our bodies are not as efficient as they should be and that both our solid and liquid waste contain unused nutrients that can be fully utilized by The Pets.

  I stand outside their enclosure and I watch them eat and I watch them play. When I am sure that Father is not around, I pick them up and hold them. Their bodies are cold, their skin slimy, their wings rough. I gave them names at one time, and sometimes I can still call out those names, but I'm ashamed to admit that I no longer know to whom they be­long. Like everyone else, I can't tell The Pets apart.

  I do not know why Father keeps The Pets and why he in­sists that they be fed, and that frightens me. Father never does anything without a reason or a purpose.

  Every so often, when I'm standing there feeding them, I think to myself that their habitat looks like a pen.

  Sometimes I try to tell the kids in my class the horrors of recycling, but I can never seem to find the words to describe what I mean, and they always tell me that they enjoy ac­companying their parents to the recycling center on Satur­day and dropping off their cans, bottles, and newspapers.

  Cans, bottles, and newspapers.

  Once, during ecology week, I told my teacher that any­thing can be carried too far, even recycling. She tried to explain to me that recycling is important, that it will help us preserve the planet for future generations. I said that instead of recycling everything, maybe it would be better if we used I things that didn't have to be recycled. She said that I didn't understand the concept of environmentalism but that at the end of the week, after I had completed my worksheet and seen all the videotapes, she was certain that I would.

  That night I went home and urinated into the blue bucket and defecated into the red.

  It is Thursday again, and I know what that means.

  I sit quietly on the couch, tearing the sections of today's newspaper into the strips that we will wash and screen and turn into my homework paper. I say nothing as Father enters the living room, but out of the corner of my eye I can see his dark bulk blocking the light from the kitchen.

  He walks toward me.

  "I feel The Need," he says.

  My stomach knots up and I can't hardly breathe, but I force myself to smile because I know that if he can't have me he'll start in on Shari. His seed can't really be recycle (although he tried it once with frozen jars and the micro­wave, using his semen first as a skin lotion and then as a toothpaste), but he does not want it to go to waste, so when he feels The Need he makes sure that he finds a receptacle where it might do some good. In his mind, impregnating me is better than letting his seed go unused.

  That's how we got The Pets.

  I take down my pants and panties and bend over the back of the couch, and I try not to cry as he positions himself be­hind me and shoves it in.

  "Oh God," I say, recycling the words he taught me. "You're so good!"

  And he moans.

  It has been four days since Shari last spoke and I am wor­ried. Father is not worried, but he is unhappy with me. He felt The Need yesterday, and I let him have me, but I could not pretend that I enjoyed it, the way I usually do. He got angry at me because my unhappiness meant that his emotion was not recycled. He does not want anything to go unrecycled. He feels that, in sex, the pleasure that he feels should be transmitted to me. I am supposed to be happy after he takes me and to utilize that transmitted pleasure, to stay happy for at least a day afterward (although usually I'm mis­erable and sore and feel dirty), and to do something nice for Shari. Shari is supposed to recycle that pleasure again and do something nice for one of The Pets.

  But I don't feel happy, and I can't fake it this time.

  I tell Shari to lock her door when she goes to bed.

  When I come home from school, Shari is crying and strapped to a chair at the dinner table and Father is in the kitchen preparing our meal. I know something is not right, but I say nothing and I wash my hands in last week's dish­water and sit down at the table next to my sister. Already I can smell the food. It is meat of some sort, and I hope Father has not decided to recycle a cat or dog that's passed away.

  No matter what type of animal it is, I know that I will have to clean and carve the bones afterward and make them into forks and knives and toothpicks.

  I try not to look at Shari, but I notice that her crying ha not stopped or slowed even a little bit and that worries me.

  Father comes in with our meal, carrying it on the single large plate that we share in order not to waste water, and is some kind of casserole. He is grinning, and I know that grin: he is proud of himself. I take a close look at the ingredients of the casserole, at the meat. The piece I poke with my fork is strangely white and rubbery. I turn it over and see on its underside a darkened piece of skin.

  Slimy, lizard skin.

  I throw down my fork and glare at him and Shari is crying even harder.

  "You killed one of The Pets!" I scre
am.

  He nods enthusiastically. "In the future, it may be possible for us to be entirely self-sufficient. We may never have to go outside the family for a source of food. We can create our own meat, nurturing it with our own waste. We'll be the prototype of the family of the future." He grins, gesturing toward the casserole. "Try it. It's good." He picks up a fork; spears a chunk of meat, and puts it in his mouth, chewing, swallowing, smiling. "Tasty and nutritious."

  I stare at the food and I realize that it has come from my body and will be going back into my body and will come out of my body again, and I suddenly feel sick. I start to gag, and I run out of the room.

  "The yellow container!" Father calls. "Yellow is for vomit!"

  I can hear Shari crying louder, the legs of her chair making a clacking noise as she rocks back and forth and tries to get away.

  As I throw up into the yellow bucket, I wonder if our din­ner is one of The Pets that I had named.

  Father is rougher now. He seems crueler than before, and I wonder if it is because I disobeyed him.

  I would run away if it wasn't for Shari.

  In school we are learning about taking responsibility for our own actions and how we should clean up our own messes without Mommy or Daddy telling us to do so.

  It is hard for me not to laugh.

  Father says that I have caused him a lot of pain and emo­tional distress, and he beats me as he prepares to mount me from behind. My pants and panties are down and I am bent over the couch as he pulls out chunks of my hair and slaps my back and buttocks with the hard side of his hand. He is making Shari watch and she starts to cry as he shoves it in and begins thrusting.

  I scream for him to stop it, that it hurts, not even pre­tending to enjoy it this time, but that seems to satisfy him and I know that he thinks he is recycling his negative emo­tions by imparting them to me.

  When he is finished, he hits my face until I am bloody and then leaves the room.

  Shari approaches me after he is gone. She stares at me with wide eyes and white face, frightened by what she has seen, and I try to smile at her but it hurts too much.

  "Father hurled you," she says. She frowns, thinking for a moment, and she hunkers down next to me. "Is he a vam­pire?" she whispers.

  "Yes," I say. "He's a vampire." I don't know why I'm saying this, I don't know what thought process made Shari even think of it, but it sounds good to me.

  Her eyes get even bigger. "Then we better kill him," she says.

  Kill him.

  I smile at her and I force myself to sit up. "Yes," I say nodding at her, wiping the blood from my nose and mouth, "We better kill him."

  I make a stake from a recycled piece of broken broomhandle that I find in the tool cupboard next to the wash-bucket. Father has been saving that piece of broom handle for some time now, knowing that it has an untapped usage but not knowing what that usage is.

  I have found a use for it, and I feel good as I stand next;' to The Pets' habitat and sharpen the end of the stick.

  We kill him while he is sleeping. Shari asks why he sleeps at night if he is a vampire, but I tell her that he is doing it to fool us and she believes me.

  Because I am stronger, I hold the pillow over his face while Shari drives the stake through his heart. There is more blood than I expected. A lot more. It spurts everywhere as he screams and his arms and legs thrash wildly around. Both Shari and I are covered with it, but we've both seen blood before, and I think to myself that it's not as bad as seeing my own.

  I continue holding the pillow until he is still, until he has stopped moving, until the blood has stopped pumping.

  He is smaller in death, and he suddenly looks harmless to me. I remember all of the good things he's done and all of the fun we've had together and I think maybe we made a mistake.

  Shari blinks slowly, staring at the stake. "He really was a vampire, wasn't he?"

  I nod.

  "What we do now?"

  I tell her to take our clothes and the sheets and the pillow­cases and wash them in the plant water. We strip and roll up the linens. Naked, I drag Father's body into the processing portion of the garage.

  I place the biodegradable bags next to the butcher block, and as I take the knife from the drawer, I plan out where and what I'm going to cut, what I'm going to do with his skin, his blood, his hair. I try to think of the best way to utilize his bones.

  Old habits die hard.

  Bob

  There don't seem to be many traveling salesmen any­more. The Avon Lady and the Fuller Brush Man be­long to an older generation, a different time. But a couple of years ago, a traveling salesman actually came to my door. Only I didn't know he was a sales­man. He was delivering an order for a customer on the next street over and had accidentally gone to the wrong house. I thought he was giving me free stuff. It took several minutes to straighten out the mix-up, and by the time I finally closed the door, I had the idea for "Bob."

  "I'm so glad we found you at home!"

  The aggressively overweight woman standing on his doorstep shifted a small black purse from her right hand to her left and fixed Brandon with an exuberant smile. He was still holding on to the half-opened door, but she grabbed his free hand and shook it. "I'm Ida Kimball."

  "I'm sorry-" he started to say.

  "These are all friends of Libby's." Ida motioned toward the group of women behind her. They smiled at him encour­agingly.

  Adjusting the small matronly hat on her head, Ida leaned forward, lowered her voice. "May I use your rest room?" she asked.

  He was about to direct her to the Shell station over on Lincoln, but he saw the look of almost desperate pleading in her eyes. "Uh ... sure." Brandon opened the door wider, stepped awkwardly aside.

  Ida fixed him with another blinding smile as she pushed, past him. "Thank you so much."

  "Make yourselves at home, girls!" she called out to the women behind her. "I'm sure Bob won't mind. I'll be back in a jiffy!"

  Bob?

  "My name's Brandon," he said, but Ida was already strid­ing through the living room, headed for the hallway. "First door on the left!" he told her. She waved a wiggling-fingered hand in acknowledgment.

  "There's been some mistake," he said to the other women filing past him.

  A thin older lady smiled, nodded. "Of course," she said.

  "I don't know who you think I am-"

  "It's okay. We're all good friends of Libby's."

  "I don't know Libby."

  "Of course not," the old lady said.

  He counted them as they walked past him into his living room. There were six of them altogether, seven including Ida. He stood there numbly, feeling strangely disassociated from what was happening. It was as though he was watching what was going on, viewing it from a distance as he would a movie or an event happening to someone else.

  He didn't want to close the door, wanted to make it clear that there had been some mistake and that after Ida finished going to the bathroom they would have to leave, but it was hot outside, humid, and he didn't want to let flies in, so he closed the door and walked into the living room.

  Two women, the older lady with whom he'd spoken and a mousy-looking woman with pinkish cat glasses, were snooping around his bookcase, trying to read the titles on the shelves. The others had all sat down on either the couch or the love seat and were quietly, politely, patiently waiting.

  There was a roar of water and a rattle of pipes from under­neath the house as the toilet flushed, and a few seconds later, Ida emerged into the living room.

  She didn't wash her hands, he thought, and for some rea­son that made him suddenly much more eager to get her out of his house.

  "Well, Bob-" Ida began.

  "My name's not Bob," he interrupted. "It's Brandon."

  "Why, of course it is. But the reason we dropped by today is because of Libby-"

  "I don't know Libby."

  "Of course you don't. But Libby is -how shall we say it?-going through some tough times. S
he hasn't exactly been herself, as you might imagine, and, well, we just wanted to meet you first. You know how it is. We just wanted to make sure she was doing the right thing, that she wasn't mak­ing a big mistake." She looked around the room, blinked, brightened. "I'm sorry! I forgot to introduce everybody! Where are my manners?"

  "That's okay. I think-"

  "Girls!" Ida said. "Best faces forward!"

  The women straightened and smiled, facing him, acting in unison as though they were in some suburban version of the military and Ida their commanding officer.

  "This is Shirley," Ida said, motioning toward the mousy woman with cat glasses still standing next to the bookcase.

  "Pleased to meet you," Shirley said, offering an awkward f curtsy.

  "That's Francine next to her."

  The older lady smiled, nodded, and put back the book she'd been examining.

  "Alicia and Barbara," Ida said, nodding to the two nondescript women on the love seat. "Elaine and Natalie." The women seated on the couch stared at him, unsmiling.

  "I guess that's everyone."

  They remained staring at him, apparently waiting for him to speak, and he quickly sorted through a variety of responses in his mind: Thank you for coming, but I think it's time you go. I enjoyed meeting you, but I'm really bus today. I have a dental appointment and I have to get going. Who are you? Get the hell out of my house.

  But, of course, it was Ida who began talking first. She laid a dry powdery hand on his. "Now, Bob, we don't want to intrude. I know you're probably a very busy man and have a lot of preparations to make, so we'll only take up few seconds of your time."

  He looked from Ida to the other women. They reminded him, for some reason, of his mother and her friends, though; he was not quite sure why. There were no outward similarities, and his mother certainly wasn't as pushy as Ida, but something about the dynamic rang a bell.

  Ida was smiling. "As I said, we're Libby's friends, so, naturally, we're concerned about her."

  "-don't know Libby," she finished for him. "I know how these things work." "How what things work?" "Libby's told us everything." She mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key. "Don't worry. We won't tell a soul."