If you want an exact start date, it was November 14th. My wedding anniversary of all days. I missed the first broadcast that fateful night. But come the next morning at Wheelset Manufacturing, I found several of my work buddies in a cryptic huddle, intensely debating their theories about it, about her. I remember pushing past them to the timeclock. They were way too embroiled in their conversation to even scold me for jumping the line, and that was damn weird.
Anywho, at 8pm on November 14th, everyone’s cable had gotten interrupted, or hacked, or hijacked, or we all got hypnotized (everybody jumped in with their own personal theory and highly credible hearsay… my sister’s cousin’s friend who does the wife of a cable exec said…) No matter what show or what channel, anyone watching the tube got to see her for the first time; the her I will now refer to as the Gidgidoo. At 8pm, the Gidgidoo materialized on computers, televisions, phones, tablets, to make her first prediction, or whatever you want to call it, and started the damn apocalypse.
So how do I describe her? Well, I am pretty sure she was Indian. Indian, from like, India. Yep. Okay. You’re right. I’ll never be a poster boy for political correctness, and Beth would have scolded me for just making an assumption like that. But this is my yarn, dammit, and the big, bad “G” looked Indian to me. You work in a loud, sweaty machine shop all day with a bunch of old white guys, no radio, and two glorious 15-minute breaks, and let’s see how globally educated you can get. And I didn’t start calling her, a her. That part was not me. Everyone was calling it a her. Maybe it was just easier to think of it as a woman. She sure as hell inflicted pain like one. Yeah, that was probably a sexist remark, too. Congrats on catching it. If your ethical odometer is on overload, you can always stop listening.
So, whatever, there she was. This person on TV. Telling us that the very next day, all child abusers would wake up with a purple mark on their foreheads, so all the world can see the truth. That was her first broadcast, and those, her only words. All of Gidgi’s broadcasts always went down the same way. Any channel you were watching would fade out to a white-grey static, like in Poltergeist with that guy from Coach? Then this skeletal figure slowly comes into focus. Creamy, light brown skin, dressed in a white gown (looked a lot like those paper napkin gowns they give you at the doctor’s office), seated on a white floor, in a white, windowless room. A crumpled, somewhat dirty, urine-yellow blanket was laid over her skinny legs. Course I never saw the legs. I just assumed she had legs and wasn’t a mermaid or something. Her stick-like body would be turned away from the camera, and her twizzler-ish arms pushed straight down onto the floor, as if supporting what weight she had. But her head would be twisted backwards, looking back at the viewer over pointy and protruding shoulder blades. It looked really uncomfortable for her, but that was how she always appeared. Same way, every time. Like some sexy model position for a magazine that could have been titled Disturborexia or Brittle Broads or some such thing.
One of my friends, Lens Sozak, called her “The Mantis,” which was a darn good description if you ask me. Good old Lens was killed in a mob-action, as they’re being called these days. He developed a blue mark while vacationing at the Grand Canyon with his family. Nobody stopped to ask him if his mark was due to being a war vet, which he was. A crowd of people just picked him up in some sort of mosh pit ballet, and tossed him over the South Rim, right in front of his wife and three boys. Mob-actions were like that in the beginning. Now you really don’t see mobs, everyone pretty much stays on their own. But, it still doesn’t make strangers any less dangerous.
The Gidgidoo’s skin was pulled smooth, which might have made you think she was maybe twenty-five or so, but her eyes were kind of… sunken. Big, round, black-pupiled oglers, with wide, dark, old lady circles cradling beneath. To me, they made her look about two hundred years old and counting. And then, of course, there was her hair. She did have hair, a long, black shiny mane, probably her most woman-like feature, but only in some places. So if you’re having trouble with the visual, just picture an upside down spaghetti strainer, with black clumps of hair pulled through just some of the holes. And no, it wasn’t like she lost the hair. It looked like that was just how it grew.
Three blocks from Tommy’s Deli now and crossing the street. My heightened peripheral catches a flash of light. A flashlight, to be precise. Someone is hanging out in a side alley with a flashlight. They aren’t moving, and they aren’t chasing me, so I just keep on. The top tips of my ears feel like they’re literally burning off my head. Wicks on a roman candle. Idiot, I could have at least wrapped up my ears. I’m already in a purple quilt, what difference would a set of Biya’s socks around my ears make at this point?
It was Biya that named her the Gidgidoo. I never really asked why. The name seemed to fit. And I don’t talk about that with my daughter at all anymore. She’s got few other ideas to stew on as of late. Like why she can’t go out, or when’s Mommy coming home, or how come we only eat once a day.
I never saw the Gidgidoo interruption that first night. I was in the basement of our apartment building, battling with a broken storage cage. My jerky neighbor had yanked it off its post when he forgot the combination to his kid’s bike lock. Joys of renting, baby. Guess he thought destroying our shared storage space was a far better idea than just asking someone if they had bolt cutters. The only reason I found the damage in the first place was because the storage locker was my only safe, Beth-Free Zone (thank you, mini-centipedes) for hiding her anniversary present, a jet black angora sweater. It had a cowl-neck, was tight, and kinda beatnicky. We had seen it in one of the ladies boutique windows in town. Think the shop was called Mystafy Designs, but of course I was teasing Beth and calling it Misfire Designs. I made her go in and try it on. I knew she loved it when she emerged from the dressing room, all a-smile. God, she had a great smile. While waiting for her to sweater-up, I had uncomfortably perched my butt on a cubed platform, under an armless mannequin garbed in some red atrocity of an evening gown, punched with silver rivets. Rivets make the woman, you know. Two pinched-faced sales-women-witches, clearly unhappy with me parking there, and thus ruining the strategic and cohesive visual design of the entire store, shot me occasional glares as they busied themselves organizing silk scarves by color and shoving credit card applications into the unwilling hands of strangers. Beth had half-popped, half-snuck out of the little stall in the sweater, and I whistled loudly. More to annoy the sales staff than embarrass my wife. She then took one look at the ornate gold cardstock tag bearing the $189.00 bad news and guffawed like a donkey. Pinch-faces rolled their eyes at us, and I knew right there that little angora number was going to be the best surprise gift ever.
Anyway, that is where I was when the Gidgidoo appeared on the TV screen, in the basement of our apartment building, playing Mr. Fix-it, and doing a horrific wrap job on the sweater. Beth missed the G-woman, too. She was in the kitchen, gently trying to unravel herself from one of those killer marathon phone calls from Mom; blah, blah, blah, when are you two buying a house? Blah, blah, blah, when are you bringing Biya up for a visit? Blah and double blah.