came to see him. Most of the time he was staring too, but every now and then he’d start groaning, trying to move. It was almost more sad ’cause he had some inkling he was fucked. Some inkling of what he used to be. Some inkling that he was alone and he was gonna be alone for the rest of his fucked-up miserable life. Most days the orderlies would just line the three of them up in front of the TV. They’d shit their pants and piss on themselves. If they was lucky, somebody would turn the channel. In some ways it wasn’t much different than how half the people in the fucking world lived. And whether they believed it or not, none of them, not Ben or the other two, or all the rest of the motherfuckers in the world, had a choice.
I came twice a week. I’d moved back to the Bronx. Back to the same apartment. After everybody heard what had happened, we left the farm. Maybe a few people stayed, but most of us went back to whatever we had been doing before we went there. We didn’t stop believing in what Ben taught us, or how we lived with him, we just spread back out. Decided to take it back to the real world. That’s how it always started. There was one person. One person who understood. Who could see. Who knew. And that person would share what they had, and it’d just spread ’cause everybody touched by that person would be sharing it. In Ben’s case there were enough of us. Enough to help each other and maybe some others. Enough to know what it felt like to feel real love. To see real love. To live with real love. To share real love. Love that wasn’t about hating or judging or where you was from or what color you was or where you grew up or who you loved. There was enough of us that had been changed that we could change some others. Change them over before all this shit goes fucking boom and explodes.
Mercedes had plenty of people helping out with her. She was growing up real sweet. She’d always ask if she could come see Ben ’cause she missed him so much. I’d kiss her goodbye and tell her some other time and ride the subway over and come and sit with him and hold his hand. I knew he couldn’t feel it, but I did it anyway. And I’d talk to him. Nothing like all that God bullshit the other man’s wife would talk about. Just tell him what was going on in my life. I was working at a clothing store. I was doing school at night to get my GED. I was starting Mercedes on letters and numbers so I could get her into a better school. And I was pregnant. I was pregnant with Ben’s baby. I knew he wouldn’t know, but I’d tell him anyway. I was gonna have his little baby.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been pregnant with him. First time was when we was at the farm. I’d known right after we got there and Ben and I talked about what to do and he said it was my choice. I asked about what God would say to him about that and he laughed and said God didn’t make choices about what women did with their bodies. Women got that right. Only women got that right. No man, no God, nobody else did. And he said if I didn’t want the baby, he would go with me, and hold my hand, and love me, and make sure I was okay when it was over. And we went, and he did what he said he would do, and it was the hardest moment of my life, but sometimes you got to make hard choices. And at that point, being on the road and not having no money and not having no idea about what the future would be doing, I couldn’t have that baby. I remember when we was walking in. All these people had signs about God and us being killers and was yelling at us. They had verses from the Bible on their t- shirts. Ben just smiled at them. And that got them real mad, even madder, and he just kept smiling. One of them got real close and called him a murderer and said he was going to burn in Hell. Ben took the man’s hand and kissed it, kissed it real soft and long, and it looked like that man was going to die, and his friends was all shocked. Ben let go of his hand and whispered something in his ear and the man smiled and hugged Ben and walked away. I ain’t got no idea what he said, just what I saw. Ben loving another man. There ain’t nothing wrong with a man loving another man. It’s all the same. It’s love.
I was keeping this baby, though. I wasn’t expecting it to be no Messiah or nothing like that. All I wanted was a healthy little baby. A healthy little child that was part me and part Ben, this man I loved with my whole heart, and this man that loved me, loved everyone he knew. I would tell Ben about how I was feeling, what I was feeling, what I was eating, the names I was thinking about, had some for if it were a boy, and some for if it were a girl. I’d tell him about my dreams, about how maybe we was gonna go back to the farm after I got my GED, about how maybe I hoped I’d fall in love again sometime. I’d tell him about how people was still showing up at the apartment sometimes looking for him and people was still talking about him in the ghetto and the jail. When I got sad, and I always did get sad, looking at that shell where there was once a beautiful man, looking at the vegetable where there was once the man I loved, I’d tell him how much I missed him and loved him and wished he’d come back to me. I’d ask him to perform one of his miracles on himself, to make himself better, to heal himself so he could get up and walk again, and talk again, and smile again, and hold my hand again, and kiss me again, and say my name again, just one more time I wanted to hear him say my name, and I wanted him to love me again, and make me feel perfect and beautiful and peaceful and safe again. I’d ask him, and say do it Ben, please do it for me, but he wouldn’t do nothing. And even if he could, I knew he wouldn’t. Thing about him that made him what he was and who he was, if he had one more miracle, one more hiding in his back pocket, one more hidden in his cheek, he’d use it on someone else. If he had two, he’d use both on other peoples. If he had three, there’d be three lucky motherfuckers out there. He wouldn’t ever do nothing for himself. He’d always give before he take. He was giving until it all got took.
After a couple months, my belly was getting real big. The people at the place knew me enough to let me take Ben outside sometimes. They’d put him in a wheelchair and strap him all up so he wouldn’t fall out, not that it would make a difference. I’d bring a blanket to put under him to help with his sores, which would be seeping blood and pus and looking like they hurt real bad, even though I knew he couldn’t feel nothing. I’d just push him around the neighborhood. Tell him what I was seeing and smelling and hearing. Make up little stories and shit about the people that’d walk past us. The facility wasn’t far from the water, and sometimes I’d go down to the boardwalk along the ocean and I’d sit on a bench and put Ben’s chair right next to me and hold his hand and watch the waves come in, one after another. And they kept coming, one after another, just like they’d been doing since billions of years before there was any people on this planet, and just like they’d be doing billions of years after we had killed each other and was gone. It made me feel small, watching those waves, realizing how little a mark we made on this world, and how we was just one little planet in a universe so big we couldn’t understand it, and how short we was alive in this life that we got, and how we got to take it and use it the best we can. Not to do anything but love, like I was loving Ben by holding his hand, and he had been loving me by changing my life.
Summer turned to fall turned to winter. I was almost ready to have our baby. Mercedes kept asking about Ben so I decided to bring her along one day. I also had pictures of our baby still inside of me, sonogram machine pictures that I wanted to show Ben and put up on the wall behind his bed. We got to the hospital, and they had him all ready to go. I had asked if we could take him out to the boardwalk, even though it was cold and had snowed a little the night before. He was wearing a winter coat and a cute little hat and some gloves that was worn down but would still keep his hands warm. Mercedes was all excited and a little confused about why Ben looked the same but couldn’t move or talk or do anything. I thought about what to tell her, but she wasn’t ready for the story, for the whole story, for the story of Ben’s life, and who he was and what he did and what he meant and why they killed him, their courts and their orders and their surgeons with their scalpels. Why they killed him, with their bullshit laws and religions. I thought about what to tell her, but she wasn’t ready, so I said Ben was just being quiet for a little while and left it at that. We went to the water. The waves were still breaking. There was an inch or so of snow over everything. We were the only ones making tracks. A newspaper blew by us, and I could see all that was in it was bad news. People dying, people killing, governments lying and starting wars, corporations robbing and thieving. Same as the news had always been, same as it would always be. We went to a pier that went out into the ocean, and it was a little windy and a little cold and the waves were louder, breaking right underneath us, just like they had been doing for four or five billion years, and just like they would be for four or five billion more. All those waves, one after another, one after another, just rolling along, rolling into the shore. We got to the end of the pier and stopped. I was going to turn around but my phone rang. It was someone calling about a job I had applied for and they was wanting to schedule an interview. I took the call. I was holding the phone with one hand and Mercedes with the other. I didn’t think Ben would be going anywhere. He didn’t have no brain left. He couldn’t walk or talk or move or think or feel or do anything. I didn’t think nothing. I turned around and took the call. It lasted like a minute or so. Wasn’t nothing, just bullshit about time and place, shit that we all deal with and think matters but really don’t at all. When I turned back around, Ben was gone. His chair was empty and the clothes was sitting on it and he was gone. The cute little hat was right there, and the gloves. He was gone, though. I didn’t know what to do, whether I should scream or cry or laugh or what to do. There was no possible way what was happening could be happening. I didn’t hear no splash and there weren’t no tracks anywhere except mine and Mercedes’ and the ones that got made by the chair. And later, after the cops came and they looked at the videotapes made by the security cameras, there wasn’t nothing to see. One second Ben was sitting there. The next second he wasn’t. And I didn’t know whether I should be crying or screaming or laughing or what, but I felt love, I felt the same kind of love I had felt when he was
