Fiction by Mahyar A. Amouzegar
“In the beginning, you will sympathize with me, and try to feel my pain, and you might even cry for me. But as I tell you more, you will realize the cruel joke and you’ll be angry and you’ll curse me; yet you will still want to hear it because you know it’s true, even though you don’t want it to be.
“My name is Jackie Goodwin. Do you know me? Do you remember me? Don’t worry if you don’t because no one else does. To be honest, I’m surprised I still know me. I’ve been given five to seven years. I don’t remember the judge or the jury, but I vividly recall the judgment.
“Five to seven years. I was in my little apartment in the periphery of San Francisco one day, and then as if by magic I was here, living in putrid yellow cinderblock housing. Five to seven years. Did I say that already? I’m sorry, but it echoes in my head every minute, and I sometimes feel compelled to say it out loud as if it’s a release valve and without it I would explode.
“I walked in … or rather appeared in my new abode with somewhat of a fanfare. The smell of dust and dank hit my nostrils first, and then, the wind picked up, which brought the added acrid air of the massive construction across the river. I laid on my new bed, small and narrow, but surprisingly soft. The ceiling was low, and I thought if I reached up, I could touch it. Someone had drawn in a cloudy sky on the ceiling, making it appear even lower than it was. The clouds were grey and heavy, and it seemed at any moment they might release their burden on me. I have a small kitchenette on the side, and the lone cupboard holds one cup, one plate, one fork, and one knife. Food appears and then disappears with the same rhythm as the rest of the world around me.
“I’m not the only occupant, though. You are here, of course, and there are other men and women (where are the children?), each relegated to their penance. They see me and I see them, but we don’t connect. They fear me. I don’t know why, but once when I was behind a building, I heard them talking and they said a whisper from me would end the little solace this place has offered them.
“Whisper? Is this possible?” You nodded. It was done slightly and reflexively but I saw it. So, I should believe it too? Do you think mere words have such power? It sounds like an old cliché; words are mightier than the sword bullshit. Well, this isn’t like that. I’m not like Medusa with words. I’m like a regular person (most times) and I can speak normally to others, though not for too long because I don’t have the patience. You know, how they say we’re only using ten percent of our brain, and if we could use 100% of it, we would be gods? This is ridiculous because we are using our brain, all of it, fine, and gods are no better than us anyway. I see you agree. But how do I know that?
“I miss my old apartment though. I miss the city. I miss the steep streets sleek from the fog and the rain. I miss the morning seabreeze, sitting in the Cliff House, looking at the ocean. I miss my old life when I was free, and I only knew as much as one should know. Knowledge is only power if there is only a bit of it; too much knowledge is a curse. No, it’s like a poison without an antidote. And I feel I’ve been poisoned. You’re not convinced, are you? Doesn’t matter.
“Every morning I walk to my car and open the front door and sit on the driver side. The car is my only link to the past and when I sit in it, I feel I’m back. I am normal again. The old leather seats and the now antiquated dashboard and the rusting body is all that’s left of my car, but it is also the only tangible item in my prison.
“Five to seven years. But how does one count time in this prison? Certainly not by the erosion of the remaining metal in the chassis of my car, and not by the images in the mirror.”
I’ve been listening to Jackie’s tirade as we stood side by side in the yard, staring at the metal fence that surrounded the field. We could see the construction across the river, as large machines pierced the earth making room for something giant. She looks at me with her piercing eyes for a moment and tries to read me. She frowns a bit and pulls her long hair away from her face. She wants to concentrate on me. Her hair used to be dark, but hours of standing under the intense morning sun in the yard have produced light reddish strands that glisten as she turns. She purses her lips in concentration, but nothing happens, and she gives up, as she had done many times before.
“Five to seven years,” I say it for her, knowing that she would again.
She looks across the yard and then spits on the ground as if she had tasted something foul. Her saliva hits the blades of green grass and spreads like a spider web, then slowly moves over the surface of the grass, forming a white translucent sphere before disappearing into the earth.
Jackie only speaks to me as if she feels she has known me or has some connection with me.
She turns around and faces me. “Did you arrive before me or after me? I can’t recall. Is that strange?”
I shake my head and smile. “It’s the nature of this place.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Not long enough, if you still have to ask.”
“Still?”
I nod but don’t know how to respond. There isn’t anything I could say that might help her. The large machines continue to pound the ground and at times the earth trembles beneath our feet.
“It feels like an eternity,” Jackie says.
“You don’t know what eternity is until you’re condemned like I was.” My response was harsher than I meant it to be, but I had spent a lifetime waiting and then another one looking for her.
She turns again and stares at the hills beyond the perimeter fence and asks, “How long?”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Because I’ve done something bad …”
“No. You’re a victim.”
“Am I, now? I don’t think the judge and the jury felt the same.”
I nod with a certain understanding, remembering my own judgment. “Do you know me?” I ask.
“Are you Joseph?”
Her question brought a smile, but I shake my head again. “No, I’m not Joseph, though I can see why you would think I am.”
“Then who are you?”
“I’ve answered that question many times already.”
“Tell me again then.”
“No. You must first tell me how you got here.”
“How I got here? How would I know that? Why should I know such things when I know nothing else?” She takes a deep breath and thinks for a moment. “I remember my little planter box on the balcony of my apartment. I used to grow tomatoes and basil. I had to cover them with plastic wrapping to protect them from the wind and the cold of the city. I can still smell the turned earth, the sweet green aroma of the plump tomatoes, and the subtle licorice fragrance of the basil leaves as I rubbed them between my fingers. That was heaven.”
I had closed my eyes and joined her reverie but then she stopped. “Please try and remember how you got here,” I press the point as I had done so many other times.
“Weren’t you the one who brought me here?”
“You must be certain, Jackie.”
“Why must I? I’m certain of nothing but my old car. That junk of a car is the only certainty here. It exists, and as long it does, so will I.”
“And what you hold?” I ask even though I knew it would not resolve this.
“What I hold?” She asks, now uncertain, and then she pauses and taps the side of her head with her fingers and for a moment she remembers. “Oh, yes. My little secret.”
“Yes, the Gift.”
“It’s no gift. Who told you it was a gift? What kind of person would consider what I was given a gift?”
What do you do when you know you have the answer? The answer. The answer to the secret. Do you have to know the secret first to know the answer or the answer leads you to the secret? Or the secret is the answer? It doesn’t matter, at least not to Jackie, because it’s all poison to her, tearing her apart, corroding her body. She is strong so she is protecting herself from it by forgetting it. But it’s still within her and the end is inevitable.
She hasn’t eaten properly for a long while, even though she claims she has. She used to have full lips with a heart-shaped face, but now she looks drawn and tired. Her skin has lost its luster and her hands tremor as she speaks. She is now in the habit of lacing her fingers together to stop the shaking, but it doesn’t always work. Her strength lies in her eyes. They still hold her power.
“Do you still have it?” I ask. I could no longer feel it as she has put solid protection around herself. She is powerful but she doesn’t want to recognize her power. It took me a long time to find her and this place, and then even longer to gain entry.
“I don’t know. This place is so bland, and no one speaks to me, so I don’t know if I have it or not. How would I know?”
“You know when it’s gone,” I tell her, hoping she would lower her guard.
“Who are you?”
She wants to know. She has been asking the same questions from the moment we met. How does a god tell a mortal that he is a god? You might think it would be an easy task, and there was a time when that was true. We told them we were gods and they believed us, and they worshipped us, and we roamed with them. But no more. We are relegated to the past and the depth of human minds, replaced by imagination and doubt.
I gave them the tiniest piece of me. I gave them the seed of knowledge to help them and they took it and spread it amongst themselves, but like most things in nature, it didn’t grow evenly. Knowledge became both a blessing and a curse. They used it to help each other and to hurt each other, and then they used it to dismiss us and then forget us.
They were not ready when I gave them this gift, and as a punishment, I was banished from them for almost two millennia and my essence was given to another, and he became Joseph. And this custodian of my power performed his task well and guarded my soul as long as it was possible. But in the end, Joseph too succumbed to the lure of humanity and abandoned his duties. He bestowed my precious gift to a man who wasn’t ready and would never be ready to take on the immense power of knowledge and what was meant to be a gift became a poison to him. The man — Amani was his name, was weak and not worthy of the gift. So, he ejected it and, in the process, poisoned Jackie. Now she is being tested as I wait for its return. Five to seven years is not her sentence but ours.
Jackie is still looking away from me, perhaps forgotten the question, as she has done many times before. But I was wrong. She shifts her weight and leans closer to me. I could feel the warmth of her body and the energy of her power. “Who are you?” she asks again.
“I was the custodian of what you hold. Knowledge is my essence.”
She laughs and shifts her weight again and looks across the metal fence. “I thought Joseph was the custodian?”
“He was for a time while I was banished. But I’m the creator of it.”
“Banished? How? Where?”
“You might think I would know the how, given knowledge is me, but I don’t. And the where is not so clear either. I could have been here in this place, but I am not certain.”
She takes a deep breath and considers what I’ve said for a moment. She closes her eyes and taps her head with her fingers a few times as if settling her memories. She opens her eyes and looks at me intently. “I know what you mean. Ask me to solve Maxwell’s Equation and I wouldn’t even know how to start. Ask me the distance from the earth to the moon and I wouldn’t know if it was two hundred thousand miles or two hundred million miles. And yet, at times, I feel I hold the answer. At moments like this, I remember that I have the answer. How is that possible?”
“Because you’re not ready.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means your kind was not ready for this gift, and as you often like to point out, it became a poison to you,” I tell her, and I am ashamed of my own hubris.
“Then why give it to me? Then why infect me so cruelly?”
“That was not our intention, and you can give it back to me if you wish, Jackie.”
“Give it to you? Why would you want this poison?”
“It’s not detrimental to me. It’s my essence,” I plead and for a moment I think I have reached her.
She shuffles a bit and then turns around and looks at me as if debating her next move. She opens her mouth and then closes it sharply and before she could say anything, it’s time to eat and her memory suppresses again.
I nod and allow her to walk back to her little house. She would go in and take out her single dish from the cabinet. She would take out her single fork and put some of the food into her mouth. She would think it was Chinese food because that’s all she remembers, though she is never sure. She could never be sure about the food she was eating, not that she ate much. She believed it was Chinese and therefore it must be. She would come out again shortly and would wonder out loud what others ate though no one ever ate with another. We would stand side by side and we would begin our conversation anew.
