On the taxi ride to the hospital his mama screamed Fug fug fug in the backseat with Adine’s head in her lap, his sister’s face not so much bleeding as just opened up, as if the top layer of skin had been wiped away. Sam noticed that he’d torn the knees of his jeans — and for a moment thought that this would be why he’d get in trouble.
A nurse appeared and whispered something to Sam’s mama. Outside the sky had gone purple. Okay, said his mama, Sam, we’re going home. There’s nothing for us to do here now. There’s nothing we can do.
At home Sam sat inside the armoire thinking about blindness, that his sister could be blind. He closed his eyes to see what a blind person saw: black. But still he could perceive a thread of light between the armoire’s doors, facing it the darkness behind his eyelids brightened.
He heard his mother shuffling down the hallway and called to her.
What do you want, said her voice. Why are you in that thing.
Mama, said Sam.
There was a pause and three short barks that was his mama coughing. And Sam looked and there she was, through the crack between the doors, her cigarette sparking orange in the dark and the light from the hall flooding in behind her. Don’t call me that, she said. Mama, don’t say that to me.
Sam scrunched his eyes so tightly they ached. Is being blind like this.
His mama’s voice was tight: You call me Connie, hear me. No more Mama.
Like this, said Sam, when it’s all dark. When I close my eyes it’s dark and —
Your sister can’t see nothing, his mama, Connie, said.
Nothing?
Nothing. You did it to her, and now she can’t see nothing at fuggin all, said Connie, and then she went down the hallway and shut herself in her room.
Sam sat there thinking about nothing. Nothing was a cold black space, an empty coffin. But then a coffin had walls so it was something. And a clump of smoke scudding over a field was something. And the deepest darkest depths of the ocean were something. And the farthest outlying nowhere of the universe was something. Even the air was something if it kept you alive, and even if not. The idea of nothing was impossible, it couldn’t exist because for it to exist it had to be something, which it wasn’t.
And Sam thought about what Adine’s world would be with eyes that saw nothing and it seemed too big to think of or too small. There were no words for what it was because every word was a thing and nothing meant no things. What was nothing if even the dark was something — if even black and empty had to be seen?
Sam tried to make his brain go blank so it was nothing but even the blank was something because he was thinking about the blank and it was a wide white disc. He scrunched his eyes as tight as he could and when he opened them they ached and the air sparkled the way the TV did when everything dissolved into static.
Maybe death was the only way there was nothing. Heaven was a place to go when you were dead but if you did not believe in heaven, if you’d stopped going to church, there was nothing. Then your life slipped from you like ash caught in a draft: it went swirling away and your body was left a hollow husk. Then instead of burying you your family pushed that body into a fire where it burned to ash and ash was something that could get caught in a draft and go swirling away and be gone.
THE NEXT DAY Sam began his mission to become nothing. He sat by himself on the frontseat of the bus and spoke to no one and kept his eyes closed and tried not to let his brain register the darkness he saw there or the jostling of the bus or the whoosh of cars passing by or the wind or the other kids shrieking. Sometimes the kids would come to him in pairs or in threes and call him Welfare or demand what he had for lunch, because instead of flats and apples he usually had crackers and a candy bar, and the kids would want his candy bar. Sometime he fought for it and sometimes he was too tired so he just gave it away. But today he was nothing so if they came they would come to no one. But they didn’t come. Somehow they knew.
At school all the kids spilled out of the bus and Sam slipped silently after them into the school and down the hallway to his classroom where he slid behind his desk. The desk made a noise when he opened it so he stopped and went slower, in increments, and stopped every time the hinges squawked and bit by bit opened it. He took his things out and laid them as softly as possible on his desk, his binder and pencils and workbook, and lowered the lid.
Sam did not put his hand up when the teacher called for answers even if he knew the answers. He did not laugh when a kid said something funny and the whole class laughed. He did his work in silence.
When the bell rang for recess Sam filed into the back of the line and glided out after everyone and then walked across the playground alone while the rest of the kids shrieked and hollered and chased one another around. From the ballfields came a mad scramble of voices cheering on other voices or disputing calls or championing themselves. Usually Sam hung around the ballfields, just in case someone asked him to play, but today he did not. He stationed himself by the parking lot and waited for the bell to ring, trying to clear his brain of everything.
Lining up to go back inside, sometimes the other kids would talk to him or about him but today he was nothing so they didn’t. Sam stared ahead and said nothing. Then everyone filed inside and back into the classroom and it was math and then lunch and at lunch Sam sat alone and ate slowly and on the playground once again retreated to his quiet corner and stood with his eyes closed and waited for the bell and back in school waited for the final bell and then he walked home, alone, through the crunch of autumn leaves he tried not to feel or hear and the vinegary smell of apples rotting on lawns he tried not to smell. And even though he’d been nothing all day he couldn’t believe that no one had asked him about Adine, not even one of the teachers, though by their quiet careful way he knew they knew. Everyone knew, yet no one said anything.
At home there was a bicycle against the steps. In the living room Sam found his mama, Connie, on the couch with her shirt hoisted to her neck and Bruno on his knees slurping at her breasts. Connie’s eyes were closed, her head tilted back. Bruno looked at Sam standing there in the doorway, then went back to sucking and licking and kneading. Connie moaned. Sam ran down the hall to the armoire and shutting himself inside closed his eyes and vowed to Adine, fiercely, that he would never open them again.
SAM OPENED his eyes. Out the basement windows the sunrise blushed the lawn. But he didn’t get up. He lay in bed and thought about the illustrationist — about those eyes, the emptiness in them. Sam tried to understand them but could not. He put on his watches, lined up on the bedside table, the final one still ticked. And yet, from time’s machine, silence. Though upstairs too there were clocks.
After listening to ensure that none of his housemates were awake and about, Sam headed up to the kitchen. The microwave said 7:09. He waited. It ticked ahead one minute. Good. He placed a nuclear breakfast in the microwave, and while it nuked his food Sam watched the bulbs gleam and the digits tick down, and lost himself in the light.
Time disappeared then. Where did his mind go? In a panic Sam caught the microwave only four seconds before 0:00 — very close. He opened the door, took out the meal, ate thinking about the towerclock and Raven and the work, took an apple from the fridge for later, went to the bathroom, and in there was a miracle.
It was the uniform worn by the men in charge. The full uniform — pants, shirt, jacket, everything a brownish yellowish non-colour, the colour of the sleep crust he knuckled from his eyes. Sam touched it: in places the material had gone crispy, and an orange stain yawned down the front of the shirt. But stilclass="underline" this was a gift, and a sign, it had been left for him. His face tingled with nervous joy, was he dreaming, he fingered the scab on his jaw and felt the real-world sting.