It was a Sunday afternoon when the street team came to take my mother away. She was in the front yard, spray painting the trees. My mother, as I see it, simply burns more brightly then other people. She is a sensitive person. A creative person with electric sensibilities. Some would call her bipolar. But most just call her the neighborhood crazy. The type who collects social security checks because she's too incapacitated to work.
She had a reason that day for painting the trees. She told me that lately, colors and shapes didn't harmonize for her anymore. She could find no beauty anymore, and it was having an impact on her well being. She was nervous all the time. She hadn't slept in days. And she just didn't know if she could take it anymore. My mother was a professional artist before I was born. She painted a lot of abstract nudes, many of which were hanging in our house. Even though I was eighteen, I still blushed at these paintings, the askew nipples, the stylized vulvas.
So she was painting the trees that day, grapey purple, a blazing orange. I was at the kitchen table reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That's when they came.
An unmarked government van pulled up. Two men came out wearing jumpsuits covered in patches. They looked like race car drivers, only the patches had names of prescription drugs on them. Things like Zovirax, Nimotop, and Cyclogyl.
Ours is kind of a slummy neighborhood at the edge of a commercial boulevard. Our house is a dingy little bungalow with a wire fence, next to a Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut had its flag lowered half mast for God Hates Our Enemies Day. Startled white faces were looking out of the window as the men in jumpsuits escorted my mother into the van. Those folks watching knew what was up. If you're poor, this is what can happen to you. This is what to expect.
And she didn't fight them. The spray can clattered to the ground, and she actually looked relieved as each man took an arm. The shaky desperation that had been showing in her eyes in recent days just slipped away. And they took my mother, a little woman with pink skin and yellow hair and tired eyes. She was a Rhodes scholar when she was young. She lived in Italy for a while. She had many lovers. But now the Pharmies had her. And she didn't even look back.
I was standing on the porch with my arms folded. A third jumpsuit guy, the one who was driving, came over to me, carrying a clipboard. Up close I could see that he was very young, not much older than I was. His blonde hair was buzz-cut under his Noctec baseball cap. He looked Scandinavian. His blue eyes have a slight tilt.
"Robert Erdin?"
I nodded my head, he shook my hand. Tender pink skin, clean fingernails. He gave me some paperwork. Then he started explaining how my mother was being "sponsored" by a pharmaceutical group based out of Texas. Then he gave me some brochures about the greatness of biotechnology. They had cartoons of an anthropomorphic pill named Pete. It's the story of how Pete was developed, and later gets patented. Pete, round and notched like a baby aspirin, grins winningly and gives a thumbs up.
After his spiel, after I signed the receipt, we were both quiet for a minute. We looked at the van, but the windows were blankly tinted. An empty liquor bottle started blowing down the street, clinkety clink, as the clouds come in.
"Congratulations, Robert. You're famous."
If they take someone from your immediate family, you are recompensed with three days of fame. There was a billboard up the road that showed one of the families. The Pharmies took the oldest son. He was a troublemaker. Stealing cars, shooting up, always getting arrested. Now he was gone, and the family was posed on the billboard. They were in a park, all grouped together, one holding a volleyball. Hair gelled, spray-tanned. Underneath them in large letters it said: GENETICS AND YOU: A NEW ERA IN RESEARCH. I wonder if the family is happy now, with that kid gone. They looked happy in the picture.
"Hey listen," he said, "Your mother is what we call a dysfunctional person. But with her help we can come a long way in drug development." I knew his type. That self satisfied look on his face. Private school, trust fund, Abercrombie-and-Fitch-wearing fuckwit. "We can tailor a medicine just for her. And you'll have her back again, better than new. Because we understand genetics better than ever."
Now he was looking at me, looking hard, like there was some double meaning to his words that I was supposed to catch. Or maybe, I thought, it was because we were the same age. But I didn't want to be his friend. Fuck him. Frankly, I was sick of being young. I wanted my youth over and done with.
I wondered why a guy my age would work for these people and believe in such tripe. Genetics. The word made me think not of chains or blueprints, but something alive and capricious, zipping through my blood like tiny neon fish.
After they were gone, I just sat at the kitchen table, trying to read again. But I felt numb, and I mostly looked out the window. It was about to rain. The wind was rattling the chain fence at the used car lot across the street, and the bunches of balloons they had tied everywhere are trembling, burning bright against the storm sky.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead. A college guy who proctored at my high school gave it to me. That was Friday. The telecam was busted so we couldn't have class. So this guy, his name is Ben, saw that I was reading On the Road, and we got to talking about books we'd read. He was twenty, a skinny guy with a full beard, wearing shorts and drugstore flip flops. He told me about the summer before, when he had gone to live in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. He said it changed his life. He wasn't in the same living area as the monks, but he helped cook their food. He said the ascetic lifestyle was something everyone should try.
Anyway, it was cool having someone to talk to for once. The stuff he told me made me feel excited. The possibilities of life after high school flickered and sparked in my head, made my blood hum. And he lent me this book! He told me the book was about how death is part of life, and that things aren't as real as they seem, and permanence is just an illusion.
I held the book, trying to feel again the campfire warmth of our conversation as the rain started to pound. My house was empty.
