The Malleable Morning Bruises
Installment Three
by Larry Sutin
Kwame has learned to read. A teacher in the local school, Leopold, took extra time and helped him after he had observed, one day, Kwame squinting at a poster taped to the column of a traffic sign. So intent was Kwame in seeking out a pattern to the shapes that he scarcely noticed how close the cars in the street were coming to striking and killing him. It made the teacher shiver, and he made Kwame the bargain of which we have partially spoken—Kwame has learned to read; the teacher has given Kwame extra time. And Kwame has promised the teacher, in turn, that he will steal narcotics from the local hospital to feed the addictions of Leopold, who is too old to go out stealing and too poor to keep up his habit and too broken in spirit to care that he is sending Kwame, this young boy of heart and promise, into danger.
But Kwame is reading now and he is pleased to steal for the teacher, such is his gratitude for mastering at last the shifting letter-shapes that once had plagued him. No one dares to make fun of Kwame’s eyes any longer, for they are not merely large but nearly all-knowing. Kwame reads all that is placed to view for those who pass by in the streets. He reads menus with meals he cannot afford to buy, headlines on newspapers that speak to a world that spits on his life, posters for movies he cannot endure to attend all alone, no matter how alluring the adventures and romances promised. Kwame has even read books set forth on the shelves of the local mission library, books on freedom and love of God. Kwame wants a lover, not God, and he wants freedom. He does not realize that maybe they shouldn’t come in that order. He knows only this much: that he is tired of fetching ingredients from the market for his grandmother, who believes herself to be a cook but is, to Kwame’s mind, a torturer of vegetables.
Leopold has promised him some payment if Kwame steals for him. It is the teacher’s way of saying that breaking the law is a greater thing than teaching someone how to read, and in this Kwame agrees with him. With the money Kwame will get from the teacher, he can rent a room of his own and buy a bicycle and find a girl and a job or else steal for a while until he finds first one and then the other.
It is Kwame’s conviction that when he is committing a crime the fact that he does not believe himself to be in any essential way guilty will lead to his being invisible to other persons who might otherwise falsely judge him. And so Kwame walks into the hospital, not yet invisible but preparing to be as he gets closer to the narcotics. For now he is radiating the sweet green aura of a young boy coming to visit a sickly elderly relative. To make himself convincing, he inwardly imagines his foul-breathed grandmother choking on a yam
Up to Four West he goes. There is a weary, driven doctor who swiftly passes Kwame by without so much as raising his head to observe the young boy who has no reason to be there. Kwame notes the resemblance between this doctor and his teacher Leopold and draws the conclusion that this doctor is heading for what Leopold would head for if he were a doctor in a hospital with keys to narcotics cabinets in his pockets. Kwame follows the doctor who suddenly opens a door and is about to close it behind him when Kwame, invisible as he knew he would be, grabs the doctor by the throat and shoves him on ahead, slamming the door behind them both. They are in darkness, and the smell of cleaning chemicals fills the air they share. To Kwame, who has never smelled narcotics, it is a sure sign of success and the start of a new life.
“Delia,” says the doctor with a sweetness belying Kwame’s chokehold, “if this is what you wanted all along, you should have said so long ago. I’m yours.”
- Click here to read “The Malleable Morning Bruises: Installement One” by Philip Graham
- Click here to read “The Malleable Morning Bruises: Installment Two” by Nance Van Winckel
- Click here to read about the Exquisite Corpse Project
- Click here to read more fiction
