Zazen - By Vanessa Veselka Page 0,49
webs of eye makeup under her eyes. “What are we going to do with it?” she asked when she got breath.
“I was going to give it to my brother for his birthday zipped in a body bag with ‘For the Fairest’ written in Greek across the front and a My Pretty Pony inside.”
She didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t know what I was talking about. It didn’t matter. She sat up, flushed, looking about thirteen years old.
“Let’s take it somewhere and let some kids bash the hell out of it!”
We put the head in a pillowcase and caught a bus to the Ukrainian neighborhood out near the suburb of Pretty Little Hopes. The rain had let up a little but the sky was still dark. On the way we got bags of candy, a cheap baseball bat and some twine. Everywhere around us people were glued to their televisions or on the phone. Sirens sounded intermittently. A couple of times I wanted to turn back but she wouldn’t let me.
We found a tree near a middle school and strung it up. Kids started gathering even before we were done. I let a tall fat boy with an Ozzy patch on his jacket have the first go. We blindfolded him with his friend’s bandana and spun him around. His first swing missed but his second cracked the cheek of John the Baptist. Next up was a girl with stringy hair and new breasts. She crushed the Prophet’s chin. After her came two boys, one after another, each small and fast but neither of them left a mark on the head.
A sheet of sunlight came through the rainclouds and fell on the children, lighting up half a face, or the top of an ear. It made the gold crosses on their pale necks flash. Then it shifted and broke, streaming through the cracks in the dark gray sky, and played off the tips of reaching fingers. It turned the baseball bat white as it cut through the air.
A girl stepped into the pit and all the kids started yelling in Russian, trying to get her to swing one way or the other but she just stood there while the head of John the Baptist swayed above her. I swear to god she was listening to it move. She bent her knees slightly, wrapped her fingers around the bat and swung. The bat came down across his left eyebrow and split the head diagonally. Candy rained down around her and the kids started squealing.
“My kind of religion,” said Tamara.
The tall fat boy with the Ozzy patch jumped at the battered Prophet and got hold of an ear. He yanked and tore off the back of the head. A few more pieces of candy fell out and he dove for them leaving the papier-mâché skull shapeless on the ground. I walked over and picked up the piece. I recognized the handwriting on the inside of the brain case. It was a personal note from a council officer at the Paleontological Society asking me to attend an event. I threw it down and kicked it. I never felt so free in all my life.
Tamara and I began to walk. I folded the pillowcase up and stuck it in my bag. A large droplet of water splashed down on my scalp. Then another.
“Here it comes again,” she said but we didn’t walk any faster.
“That’s something I’d remember,” I wiped water out of my eyes, “if I was a kid. It would stay with me until the day I died. Do you think they knew whose head it was?”
“No. I don’t think they cared.”
“Would it have been better if I told them, do you think?”
“Probably not. By the way, I really liked the thumbtack eyes.”
“Thanks, I enjoyed pushing them in.”
“And the junk mail hair.”
“That was fun too.”
“Was your diploma in there?”
“No. I cut it up and gave it to a toddler who wanted to color.”
When we got on the bus we were drenched. Tamara buried her chin in her coat, “You should come out to the farm. Stay with us for a while. It’d be good for you to get a break from the city.”
“Yeah, I heard you got goats.”
She laughed, “That too. But more importantly people, we have people who think like you do. There’s a bunch of us out there. You should really come.”
She got off at the next stop and I watched her shrink as the bus rumbled down Colony of