A Body Without Organs by Miles Efron

Abdi barges into my craft room, without his glass eye. Which he knows I hate.

“Hey, Mom?” he says.

“Did that Zoom call already finish?” I ask. This homeschool group is such a jerkoff. Why do we even pay for it? I mean, I could teach him nothing by myself for free.

“I found this snowglobe eyeball online. It’s so cool. I could flip my head upside down and then…”

“You’ll just lose it,” I say, going back to my batik encaustic. But then Abdi shuts the door, so now it’s just the two of us. Fifteen years old, he towers over me now. It’s like there’s a tree in the room.

Abdi holds his finger to his lips. Shhhh. From the kitchen, I can just make out the sound of Tim knifing the Miracle Whip dregs from the mayo jar.

Then Abdi says, “Mom, I know you’re collecting hair again.” He points to my closet, the one stuffed to the ceiling with Hefty bags I’ve filled with human hair from the salon. He says, “I found it when I was searching for my eye this morning.”

Like, who’s the parent here anyway? …Seriously. You adopt this orphan from war-torn Ethiopia, and what thanks do you get?

“If you’ll buy me that snowglobe eyeball, I won’t tell Dad.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“Last time, the hair talked to you,” Abdi says. “That’s what Dad told me. That’s why you went to the hospital.”

“But it’s nothing,” I stutter. “So what if I bring a little hair home from the salon at the end of the day? It’s just arts and crafts stuff…”

“Get your laptop,” Abdi says, smirking. “I’ll show you that eyeball.”

#

It’s later that afternoon, and I’m still at my computer, listening to the buzzsaw racket of Abdi and Tim riding father-and-son four-wheelers up and down the driveway. Our property sits on a hillside so steep it feels like we’ll all tumble down into the the creek at the bottom. The engines scream as “my two boys” speed downhill. Then they labor back to the top. This place feels like we’re perching on the face of a cliff. I certainly didn’t choose it. Way out here in buttfuck Watauga County. But it was the only place we could afford on the salary of a hairdresser and a handyman. And anyway Tim and Abdi love it. Apparently I’m the only one…

Anyway, I’m still at the computer because I just stumbled on my old Ph.D. dissertation. I double-click on the little blue 666.docx icon. And up pops The Body Without Organs and Spinoza’s Impossible Directive to Action. “Submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of…” I can’t believe I used to talk like this. Thank God I quit.

Later, when I pad into the kitchen to fix myself a mint tea, Abdi and Tim come back inside. They’re all pink and loud from the cold. Covered from head to toe in Carhartt. I notice Abdi was riding his ATV wearing Crocs and I shudder at the thought of toes in machinery.

They speak in a dialect I don’t understand.

“Dad. Dad. Dad. Did you see that dirft I swung around the curve?”

“Fuck yeah, bro,” Tim says. He body slams Abdi into the kitchen wall and Abdi gives Tim a playful gutshot right below the Grizzly Adams beard. And everybody but me breaks out laughing.

“Don’t you mean drift?” I say. “You said dirft.”

They both stare at me.

#

That night I’m lying in bed and the walls are breathing, thanks to the weed rice krispy treat I gobbled. I got so stoned, after Conan finished I had to climb the stairs on my hands and knees. When Tim came to bed, I pretended to be asleep.

Now Tim lies next to me, snoring. I can smell him—that mix of beer and his favorite crunchberry vape. I consider rolling over and grabbing his dick. But instead I let the rice krispy treat play DJ with my memories.

…How we flew from Winston-Salem to Addis Ababa, and it seemed to take a week to get there—each airport brighter and stranger than the one before. In Ethiopia I had to cover my head with a scarf, which fucked my peripheral vision. I felt like I was going blind.

At the orphanage the tiny woman in charge, Maria, explained, “It’s nothing to worry about, but Abdi has a brother Fikre. Who may soon be adopted by a family in Canada.”

Tim and I looked at each other. “Brother?” Tim asked. “What does that mean? Like for us?”

Maria went on, “So it’s no problem! You take Abdi America.”

Suddenly we were paying Maria $5,000 in cash from my fanny pack, which added to the hectic mood of the whole transaction. “Are we splitting them up?” I whispered to Tim. “We can’t split up brothers, can we?”

“Just be cool,” Tim said. “I think this is almost over.”

Maria fetched Abdi for us. We met in a bleak multipurpose room, and he looked like a scared rabbit. Abdi stared at the ground so determinedly, it wasn’t until the three of us were on the plane home that I realized he was missing an eye. I thought, God, I’m already a shit mother.

#

Days pass.

I’m in my craft room when Abdi sends me a text: 👀

“I’m just in the other room!” I scream into the house at large. “If you want something…”

Another text: 🫃🏼

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”

Suddenly Abdi appears in the doorway, and his basso-profundo voice startles the shit out of me. “Mom, the FedEx guy came. Check this out…”

I look up from my watercolor, and Abdi’s eye socket is sporting a winter scene. A happy snowman weathering a blizzard. Abdi bends in half. And when he comes back upright, the snow flies inside his eyeball.

“Happy now?” I say.

Abdi comes and hugs me, and I hear him jog down the hallway, back to his video game console in the living room. Call of Duty gunfire resumes through the surround sound.

In the closet, the hair says, “He doesn’t deserve you. Neither of them do.”

I walk over to the closet and I open it. Which of course causes the hair to stop talking. There are too many bags to count. Not without dragging them all out onto the floor. I pull one close to me, and I uncinch its puckered drawstring orifice. All that hair inside. Different lengths. Different colors. Suddenly I’m sobbing. Snot runs out of my nose and I wipe it away with my palm.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” I tell the hair.

#

That night the three of us roast hot dogs around our giant fire pit in the front yard. It’s freezing out, so the boys build what Abdi calls “a bonfire,” dragging chunks of downed tree and disassembled shipping pallets to burn. Sparks swirl up into the dark.

I keep waiting for Tim to notice Abdi’s new eye. Or for Abdi to rat me out to his dad. Any of which would precipitate a marital fight I’m not at all ready for. So I find myself saying nothing. I just keep eating hot dogs and feeling like a fat-ass.

“Can I try your vape?” Abdi asks Tim.

Tim takes a giant pull, exhales vapor like Old Faithful, and shakes his head no. “Not till you’re eighteen, my man.”

Maybe Abdi will blackmail you into it, I think. Hey, Dad. Lemme try your vape or I’ll tell the cops how you stole that copper sheathing from the job site in Todd. But that’s unthinkable. Their relationship is not wired that way.

Then, as Tim helps Abdi drag a twelve-foot poplar branch into the fire, I start in on my second rice krispy treat of the evening.

#

Now it’s a few days later. Tim and I always have sex after I shave his head. So here we are. The two of us. In bed, full-on afterglow. When Tim suddenly asks, “Hey? You Ok?”

“Why?” I say.

Tim is on his back, plucking gray chest hairs, leaving the brown ones where they are. He puts each plucked hair on his nightstand. I’ll collect them later. I mean, he just leaves them there.

“Help us!” the chest hairs say.

Tim smiles, “Can’t I ask if you’re Ok?”

I kiss his shoulder. “Of course you can. Thank you.”

“Just talk to me, Ok? Tell me how you feel.”

I do not.

Nor do I mention how I got fired this afternoon. Yes, I could play for him the rude voicemail from Tina. Though not as rude as I deserve, having failed to show up at the salon for I don’t know how long.

“But you’d tell me? Like, if you needed my help?”

“Please hellllllllllp us!”

“You know I would.”

#

Of course Abdi continues to blackmail me. I buy him credits for his online games. I take him to the CVS where they have a Bitcoin ATM. And eventually the two of us drive all the way to Banner Elk for a pair of $200 Air Jordans. This all sounds way more manipulative than it feels. Honestly, it’s the most us-time I’ve ever shared with Abdi.

But today he is evasive and sullen. Usually extorting me brings out his chatty side. All I get now are one-word answers. Yes. No. No. No. No.

“What’s going on with you?” I ask as we walk back to my Jeep with his shoebox.

Abdi shrugs.

But what a beautiful evening. Crisp. Wind in the dogwood branches. The sun setting behind the Blue Ridge.

The whole drive home, the black bulk of Grandfather Mountain towers over us. The sky takes on the color of deep water. And the first planets and stars appear overhead. I find myself thinking, It’s not so bad here. I need to try again with the gratitude lists. Maybe I can find a new salon. Meanwhile, Abdi just mopes, watching the majesty wheel past us. What does he remember about his old life? He’s never mentioned the orphanage or Fikre. He speaks with the blandest American accent now.

We’re starting back up our driveway when Abdi looks at me and says, “I’m really sorry, Mom.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I felt like I had to tell him.”

And the front yard is coming into view. I see a throbbing orange Halloween glow dancing on the windows of our house. There’s Tim, standing next to the fire pit. He has dragged all my Hefty bags out onto the lawn. He’s tossing them into the raging fire. His face is grim. The bonfire glints in his wet eyes.

I throw the Jeep into park and I start running across the gravel driveway, practically twisting my ankle with each step.

“Stop it!” I scream. “Stop it!”

But Tim won’t acknowledge me.

I run and run, crunching across the pea gravel. But it’s like a nightmare, I’m far too slow.

Finally, I reach the fire pit just in time to see Tim throw the last bag onto the blaze. Stinking, black smoke curls up into the poplar branches—the stench of melting plastic and charred hair. I stand there weeping, trying to collect my thoughts. What can I say to explain myself? I try. Sincerely, I do try. But it’s hard to think, because all I can hear is the hair screaming as it burns.

Miles Efron

Image by JaymzArt from Pixabay – an eye with a snowglobe integrated showing a swirl of snow over a blue map.