Fatherland
Drew Pisarra

 
Last night, Mother had dinner alone. She didn’t eat so much as push the whitefish with white sauce into the rice so she could hear her plastic fork click against the plain bone china plate. The problem was too much salt. That and a feeling of… She didn’t feel like curling up with either book she was reading at the time because they both had the same title despite their different authors. She stared at the milk in her frosted glass, stared at the pearly skin of her boiled fish while the sound of a television station gone dead broadcast in the background. Mother contemplated the glazed ivory walls, the eggshell curtains, the plush cream carpet. She saw it all and discerned some quality was missing. Which she decided was a flag. The American flag. That old red, white and blue. Those vibrant colors. The red standing for blood. The blue for… blood. And the white for… No, that can’t be blood. That must be what separates the blood. Or the stripes. And the stars. Mother pushed her blond wood chair back from the blond wood table then lay herself down in the middle of her plush cream carpet where she dreamt oddly enough of snow.

What do you get when you flap your arms and legs for as long as you can in freshly fallen snow? A poor imitation of something that doesn’t even exist.

When I was in fifth grade, there was a blizzard during Christmas break. The snow was three feet high, too high for making angels, but you could build tunnels as well as caves. Newscasters warned parents that children who dug too deep could grow light headed, fall asleep, then die. No children died but parents were scared. My mother enrolled me in the nearby Catholic school’s winter break program even though I was two years too old. It was cheaper than childcare and she said it would help cultivate my artistic inclinations, as if pinch pot ashtrays and popsicle stick napkin holders held together with garish thread could possibly express any child’s esthetic vision.

I skipped school except for first period during which attendance was taken (History on Mondays and Wednesdays; Religion on Tuesdays and Thursdays; Fridays, they had Crafts). The rest of the day I spent digging tunnels, and sneaking back inside to steal candy bars from the other students’ lunch bags or coins from the teachers’ purses. (It’s true: Teachers don’t get paid enough.) Eventually, I graduated to vandalism.

One day I got caught scratching the term “dildo” on a bathroom stall door. The interim principle was infuriated. I didn’t see what the big deal was, partly because I thought “dildo” meant “clown.” Like “bozo.” After that the vandalism didn’t stop. I'd merely become more clandestine. Attended all my classes, even Latin, and took pee breaks which were short but constructive. My mother became suspicious of my growing bounty of candy bars and fancy pencil erasers, not to mention my jar of quarters, but said little outside of how she was concerned about my growing likeness to my absent father who had always been a secretive man. “May he rest in peace,” she stated unequivocally. And then I heard her murmur, “Soon.”

Up till then I’d been a model son: studious, quiet, excessively neat. And picked upon. The public school system had cast me among the untouchables. Now I was slashing a teacher’s tires. I can’t remember why. I didn’t need good reasons. I was in it for the rush, the euphoria that came with breaking the rules and not getting caught. I was a source of awe. Most of the kids in Winter Break Program were a few years younger than me, and I was bigger than them sheerly because of the age difference. There was a certain pleasure I got from putting the fear of God in them, watching their eyes get wide as saucers, and their faces blanch with fear. I never hit any of them. Just chased them. Hounded. Coered. All purely innocent. But there was one kid who never responded, didn’t quake in the way the others did. Never let out a peep, merely picked up his pace if I was following him, or stood staring blankly as I threatened in a tone that left other kids trembling with tears. He was actually a year older than me, though a grade below, and I felt challenged by his insurrection. I concentrated on making him crack. As my persistence persisted, I found that in fact I had no feelings towards him whatsoever. He was responsible only for his excessive plainness, an attribute easily shared by the rest of the class. Still, at the end of the day, I chased him home, watched as he slipped on the ice then fell on his ass. He looked so funny the way he fell. 
   
Then I’d wait for him to get up, so I could chase him again. Until he’d fall again. On the final fall, he bumped his head. There was blood, and as is the case when the head is cut, the blood was profuse. I was scared. But I laughed a beautiful laugh, empty of irony, not forced at all, and the beauty filled me with power which let the laugh redouble, then triplicate itself. My laugh was an unclogging drain until he burst into a scream: Stop picking on my just because I’m… What he said then doesn’t concern me now. Chinese. Jewish. Whatever. For what he was hadn’t occurred to me at all. My violence had seemed random, directed by Chance. Until then. Then I realized that violence is random only to the perpetrator. To the victim it is always specific. The one attacked always feels singled out. We create our own reasons, and sometimes we’re close to the truth.

I felt my power corrupt. My laugh became forced then died in the air as a trail of condensation. And as quickly as I went from reveler to oppressor, he went from source to object. With the utterance of a single word, a radical shift transpired. He was self-labeled like a can of Boston baked beans. I recognized the power of labels, how labels distract, categorize us, and only suggest our essences. We’re not Virginia Hams or California Oranges after all. But we are food. Man is meat, all of it coursing with blood, the red as it flows from the heart, the blue as it returns. My revelation was Man should be eaten. Licked. Sucked. Devoured. Consumed. I don’t mean to imply this realization was instantaneous or immediately palatable. The truth is as hard to swallow as an old bit of beef jerky or holy communion. It’s dry and catches on the throat, stimulates the gag reflex even as we try to get it down. But this was years later. He was twenty; I, nineteen. I’d learned to suppress the reflex that tells us not to swallow. So I lay down in the snow, for that year too there was snow, albeit light, a shallow flurry already turned to slush, not clear. And he lifted me up. For he knew I was cold. He knew I was wet. He knew I was just like him.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

About the Author: Drew Pisarra has worked in the digital sphere on behalf of a number of iconic TV series (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead) but now writes short stories and plays instead. His work has appeared in Swink, Thin Air, and St. Petersburg Review among other publications. His shows Singularly Grotesque and The Gospel According to St. Genet have toured nationally. 
​"Fatherland" is part of a trilogy of stories, The Gospel According to St. Genet, commissioned by the Portland Art Museum.

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