But Biya did see it, and named her two names. The Gidgidoo, and, The Scary Lady. Of course, on any other night, Biya would have already been in bed (cause she’s friggin’ four), curled up with that ladybug doll she likes, dreaming under a ceiling of glow-in-the-dark, peach-colored stars. But no, my unsupervised daughter was happily flipping channels on our (never set parental control) remote. So first, a little of the The Shining, and then, the Gidgidoo. Yeah, yeah, I know. Nice parenting, Doyle and Beth.
The purple marking was the Gidgidoo’s first promise to all of us across the world in TV land, and damn if it did not happen the next morning, just as she said it would. And then every week after that at 8pm. A new announcement. A new color. And a new sinner would wake up marked, unveiled to the world, awaiting punishment, or running from it.
A blast of wind, frizzled with swirling ice-snow, slams into my face, immediately making my eyes water. I’m pushed back a step and almost lose my footing. I feel my left heel kissing a thick rounded ice patch and my heart jumps. Not sure, but I think some sort of cartoon “Whoa!” escapes my mouth. Yet, my arms seem to blessedly flail in all the right directions and I regain my balance. Slowly, as if not trusting the touchdown, I bend over, place my hands on my thighs and stare at the concrete. My body starts to involuntarily shiver now. Not from the cold, but from the near-miss realization. That could have been bad. Real bad. What if I cracked my head and knocked myself unconscious? Or broke my leg? If I couldn’t make it home tonight? Oh my god. I take a deep breath. Then, another. I’m okay. I’m a block from Tommy’s. Almost halfway home, little girl.
Purple was first. The Gidgidoo had said anyone who developed a purple mark on their head was a child abuser. She didn’t tell anyone to do anything about it. She just said it, like it was an indisputable fact. Like the way you say water boils, or that Superman can fly. Of course, Biya thought she said child shoes, of all things, so she thought marked people got shoes. I didn’t deserve that small miracle.
That year, there were an estimated 40 million children worldwide subjected to abuse, and I only know that ‘cause me and Beth, everybody at work, and about a bazillion other people hit the internet that week to learn just how many purples were hiding amongst us. I mean, if you believed the lady with the blanket. I didn’t, but I was curious about the numbers. Then it was all over the news. It was practically all the news there was. Purple-headed folks, spotted and rounded up in droves. For a little while, it was really probably a great time to be an attorney, a highway paved in gold by thousands of budding cases to defend: unreasonable search and seizure, illegal arrests, targeted arson, and accidental deaths. Lots of accidental deaths. I think for a moment, even amid all the violence, many people thought it was a good thing. I mean, if it was true, then it was kind of a miracle, right? We could identify and get rid of all these evil pieces of crap that hurt the world’s children every day.
But I guess that was not enough action for the Gidge. Nope. A week later, she reappeared from the snowy miasma, and I saw her this time. The seductive cadaver of hair plugs, selfishly crashing a rerun of Gilligan’s Island, to announce that a yellow marking meant cheaters. Cheaters on taxes? Cheaters on spouses? Kids who cheated at Monopoly? Who knew? Like I said, she wasn’t one for details. Let’s just say there were a lot of unhappy couples the next morning, and the IRS got an increase in its budget to take on some extra staff.
The deli I’m shopping is the only one still open that I know of in the once bustling retail strip off Vernon Ave. Most of the other local food places Beth and I used to haunt in Perth Amboy have had those chainmail doors in full lockdown for a while now. We never owned a car, and in some suburbs in Jersey, you don’t need to. I make the walk to Tommy’s twice a week. Don’t know what I’ll do if he ever closes. I go once it’s dark. Less people on the street after dark. The windows of the apartments above the shops I pass are lightless, or boarded up, perhaps to strategically indicate no one’s home. But I know better. There are living souls behind some of those dark windows, marked and unmarked. I am sure at least a few of those people saw my little Doyle On Ice show back there, or heard my extra manly “Whoa!” and were currently focusing some recently purchased binocs on my naked brow. Zoom in all you want, shadow people. My head’s clean. Though you might see some pretty interesting acne patterns from my processed food diet as of late.
Tommy’s red glass vintage lightbox sign is also off. The glass pane in the deli front door and the big picture windows to either side, replaced months ago with plywood, bear the age old proverb: This side up. As much as I want to grab the door handle and launch my body into that warm buttery yellow light, I don’t. I peer through a wood slat and count first. Two customers. One of them I know from my building. Wick Carmien, seventy-eight and teetering on his cane. Harmless. Jeez. Musta taken the dude an hour to get here. I’ll try to get my goods and roll fast. No freakin’ way I am walking him home. The other customer is a woman in her early thirties. Pretty. Hatless, too. Chestnut brown hair pulled back tightly into a ponytail so her whole forehead would be clearly exposed to the world. Welcome to the club, my sista. Tommy is at the front as usual, shotgun leaning on one shoulder, writing something on cans with a black sharpie. Out of labels I suppose.
Seems okay. Seems fine. I notice the glass doorknob is gone, though. Tommy’s got some sort of mechanical keyless entry contraption with a push down lever on it. Must have been some trouble. Looting, another sport in full revival these days. That magical moment when people decide that it’s okay to throw bricks through store windows, as long as they all do it together.
There’s a Twilight Zone episode (the title eludes me), where a whole bunch of people living in some suburban neighborhood, on a street called Maple, just start attacking each other. Throwing rocks. Breaking windows. Breaking skulls. And it’s all because houselights and car engines are going on and off for no reason and some kid says there must be aliens among them. I always thought it was a good episode, mostly because it had a cast of Zone regulars, so the acting is pretty good. It also stuck in my mind, even when I first saw it at 13, because the story was so far-fetched. Yeah, I know, the show was an endless parade of far-fetchedness; robots, gremlins, and little girls who fell out of bed and slipped into another dimension. I get it. But it seemed really impossible that within 20 minutes (plus commercials) a whole neighborhood of people could go from being mildly concerned that one car doesn’t start, to murdering each other out of fear.
The tipping point came for all of us Maple Street people of the world when the Gidgidoo appeared on the tube with her fourth unsolicited declaration. The third had been red. But the fourth, the fourth was a biggee. “Blue marks mean murderers.” Fini. So here is the thing about adding murderers to the party list, with no specific categories. We all just assumed she meant that a blue meant some Jack-the Ripper type, with pure evil in his heart. It never occurred to us in the first few days of blue it could include soldiers who fought in a war (hence my buddy, Lens), staff who worked in an abortion clinic, corporate execs whose authorized unsafe working conditions were followed by an accident, kids who forgot to feed their fish/rabbit/turtle, or even acts of justifiable self-defense. Well, and then let’s not forget all those self-righteous everyone’s who had just played a part in killing a purple or two over the previous few weeks. Don’t forget about them. Over a billion people woke up the next day and either found out they now knew a killer, or were one themselves.