M: The Flu

Chapter: Kid, the Flu

For days we have been lying around the apartment. My little sister and
I are so sick we don't eat. My mother sometimes gets up and brings us
glasses of water, but she is also sick, so the glasses of moldy-tasting
water are rare. I don't mind. I have a row of glasses in different
shapes and sizes lined up by my bed on the floor. I can look at them.
When my little sister drinks her water, my mother holds the glass for
her. She sings, "Flu, flu, go away, come again some other day," as my
sister drinks, but my mother's voice isn't cheerful. I don't think my
sister even hears her.

My big sister seems unaffected, a blur who goes in and out of the front
door. My mother doesn't try to stop her or say anything, even when she
comes through the front door, back lit by the morning light. Instead my
mother opens one eye and watches my sister as she walks across the
living room with her head down. To get to her room she has to step over
me. Sometimes her foot catches my leg, or my side, but it doesn't hurt.
My big sister doesn't say anything, either, ignoring us and staying in
her room when she's home. I hope she is feeding the cats, who stay away
and make noises in the kitchen. Maybe they are feeding
themselves.

My school calls. My mother talks into the phone. She sounds like an old
woman. "Sick," she says, "I said he's sick." She hangs up the phone and
then takes it off the hook. It beeps for a while, and then a woman's
metallic voice comes out of it. I can't understand what she's saying.
Finally the phone just sits there, silent.

I wake up one night, confused. The room looks hazy. The clock by the
couch is flashing twelve o'clock over and over. I lie on the ground
watching it, and worry that I will be late for school if the alarm
isn't set. Then I stand, my hand on the wall to keep my balance. My
little sister and my mother are on the couch, their heads at either
end. The light from the kitchen shines on their sweaty faces, and they
both frown. Their blankets are a dark tangle on the floor, and I
consider covering them up. But the apartment feels hot, and besides, it
would be strange to cover them up. We don't do that.

I make my way to my bedroom, which has a bed centered under the window.
I've never slept in this bed, even though it has a blanket printed with
characters from some space movie and blue sheets I picked out myself.
The curtains match the bedspread. Mostly my mother uses the room as a
closet for her clothes and shoes. We all sleep in the living room, sick
or not, except for my big sister, who has her own room and a closet and
a lock on her door. Somehow I know my mother's high heels and bras and
skirts look funny in this room, but we are the only ones who come in
here, anyway. Tonight I don't care how it looks.

I push a pile of dirty clothes off of the bed and lay down. The
coolness of the bedspread feels good. I stay still, saving up the
coolness on the rest of the bed for later. I don't have a pillow, and
remember it is on the living room floor where I was before. I'm too
tired to go get it, and use my arm to prop up my head instead. I drift
off to sleep.

I am awake. The brightness in the room makes me squint. I reach up and
pull back the curtain behind the bed, and see that it is still dark
outside. When I turn around, a cloud swirls above me. It looks like a
thundercloud, or a cloud of smoke caused by someone who is smoking and
forgot to open a window. The ceiling light is on, hazy but still bright
behind the cloud. I am curious but not scared, wondering how the smoke
got into the apartment.

Something moves at the foot of the bed, catching my eye, so I sit up to
get a better look. Sprouting from the carpet are two heads, the neck
disappearing into the ground. One of the heads turns towards me. "You,"
it says.

I jump off the bed and back up against the wall. By now both of the
heads are looking at me, the faces huge and deformed. They start to
grow, to rise out of the carpet. One of them smiles, which sends me
running through the door into the living room. Everything is too
bright, too sharp. I can see my mother and my little sister still on
the couch. Now they are waking up. I hop straight up and down, and I
hear a scream. I am screaming. My little sister scrambles to my
mother's end of the couch, and I realize my back is to the monster
growing in my bedroom. I run towards the front door.

"People, people!" I manage to yell to my mother, who by now is pushing
my little sister and me through the front door and into the apartment
hallway. I can hear my name being said back in the apartment as my
mother pushes us outside the building, one hand holding her robe closed
and the other grabbing for my sister, who is shirtless and
silent.

"What people? What?" my mother asks. I look behind us, and out of a
bush next to our building walks the two-headed monster, now fully
formed, with two legs and two arms.

"You," it says, still smiling. I begin to run in the opposite
direction, my bare feet slapping the sidewalk. I can hear my mother and
my little sister behind me.

I reach the end of the sidewalk and stop. My mother catches up to me,
dragging my sister, who is still quiet but wide-eyed. I scan the bushes
while my mother herds us towards another building, which I recognize as
the apartment manager's. My mother knocks on the manager's door, softly
at first and then harder. She shouts, "Hello?"

The door rattles, then opens, a security chain keeping it from opening
too much. The manager looks out at us, her family standing behind her
in the apartment. Their voices rise and fall in Vietnamese. They are
all wearing pajamas.

The manager disappears for a moment, shouting something behind the door
that sounds like the screech of a huge baby. Then she comes back to us.
In English, she says, "What is the matter? It is very late." She is
angry, as she always is.

"Someone's in our apartment. Someone broke in," my mother says, "My son
saw them."

The manager looks over my mother at me, then shuts the door. I hear the
security chain being undone, and the door opens fully. Her name is Mrs.
Ving. She knows who I am.

"He looks sick," she says to my mother, "Is he sick?"

"Yes, we all are," my mother answers. Mrs. Ving steps back.

"Tell her what you saw," my mother tells me, moving out of the way. It
occurs to me that, like my sister, I am shirtless. I cross my arms over
my chest.

"A man. A man with two heads," I begin, but saying this suddenly makes
no sense. I try again: "In my room, then in the bushes. He followed me.
Us." I look at my mother. The brightness inside the hallway flutters,
then dims. My sister sits on the floor.

"A doctor," Mrs. Ving says, "He need doctor. You take him to hospital
now."

"Yes. Yes, I guess that's what he needs," my mother says, staring at
me. Her mouth is partially open. She looks suspicious. I wonder what I
have done wrong. "Can you call a taxi?" she asks Mrs. Ving, who is
already closing her door.

"Yes," Mrs. Ving answers, "But you need money. Go back to your
apartment. Get the money and then the taxi come and take you to
hospital." A fine spray of spit comes from Mrs. Ving's mouth when she
says hospital. I look away so she won't know I've seen it.

"Thank you," my mother says, pulling open the hallway door. Outside, we
walk slowly back to our apartment. The bushes don't move. Even in the
darkness they look normal. So does the sidewalk, and the spaces between
the cars. But I won't go back in the apartment, instead waiting with my
little sister on the sidewalk. My mother comes back out with a shirt
and shoes for both of us. We dress quickly. My shoes feel damp, but I
don't want to go back inside to find socks.

A taxi shows up, creeping along and stopping when my mother raises her
arm. The driver doesn't turn to look at us as we get in the back seat.
My mother has changed out of her robe but I notice she isn't wearing
socks, either. She tells the driver to go to the nearest hospital, and
he turns around and looks at us. "You're kidding, right?" he says,
"It's just up the street." My mother stares at him but says nothing. I
want her to say something, anything, or maybe slap the driver in the
face. When he looks at me, though, his face changes. "Okay, okay," he
says, then starts driving.

The trip is short, and I am surprised that the driver was telling the
truth. The hospital really is just down the street from our apartment.
I've never seen this brick building, tucked away in a field and
surrounded by an empty parking lot. There are no trees, only street
lamps that make circles on the concrete. The taxi driver drops us off
next to an ambulance.

I am put into a bed, and stuck with a needle attached to a tube. The
tube leads up to a bag of clear liquid. My eyes burn from the lights in
the room. My little sister sits on a chair next to the bed, her feet
dangling while she watches me. She hasn't said anything.

My mother stands outside the doorway in the hall, arguing with a man I
can't see. "But he doesn't do drugs," she says, "We've all been sick.
I've already told you that."

The man's voice is a murmur; I can't make out what he is saying. When
he comes into the room, he tells me to sit up. He handles me roughly,
putting something cold on different parts of my back and telling me to
cough. At one point he slaps me on the back, and I cough for real. His
hand around my arm is damp but warm, and he smells like soap.

"He probably has the flu," he tells my mother. Surprisingly, my mother
doesn't roll her eyes, or act fed up, because the doctor is telling her
something she already knows. I wonder if this man is the doctor. He
says, "He needs rest, and plenty of fluids. Is he eating?"

My mother ignores his question and looks down at me. "But what about
these things he's seeing?" she asks. "He scared me half to
death."

"It was probably his fever," the doctor says. "I think he's over the
worst of it, if he was seeing things. If it would make you feel better,
you could leave him here overnight."

I shake my head at my mother, not wanting to stay in this too-bright
room with a needle in my arm. I'm not crying yet, but I will. My mother
looks from the doctor to me and asks, "Would it matter, doctor?" So he
is the doctor.

"Not really."

"Fine," my mother says, "What do I do now?"

The doctor tells us to wait for the nurse, who comes in sometime later.
She is more cheerful than the doctor, sliding the needle out of my arm
while talking about a man who just came into the emergency room with a
knife wound. "Those drunks," she says, smiling, "They just don't know
when to quit." My mother says nothing, nodding at the nurse.

In the taxi on the way home - a different driver this time, who doesn't
mention the short distance - my mother leans against the car window and
stares straight ahead. My sister is between us, her hands resting in
her lap and her feet sticking straight out. "I should have called your
father," my mother says.

Back in the apartment, my big sister meets us in the living room. She
is holding a pair of scissors in one hand, and asks us what happened.
She tells us that she was hiding in her room, under the brown bean bag
that sends out tiny flurries of white filling whenever someone sits on
it. "I thought somebody had broken in," she says, looking at me. "You
sounded like you were getting killed."

"Go to bed," my mother tells us. She and my little sister are already
lying back down on the couch. My big sister looks at me, shrugs, and
walks back to her room. I sit on my bed on the floor, too awake to try
and go back to sleep. My mother has turned her back to me. I sit like
that, watching her and my little sister and the flashing clock, until
there is light behind the living room curtains.