This is my dream:
I am standing at one end of the long hallway in my aunt’s tenement apartment where I was raised. The hallway, lit by a single lightbulb in the middle, runs most of the length of the apartment from the front door to the living room where I now stand. There is a wall on one side covered in floral patterned wallpaper panels, some peeling at the corners, others bulging at the bottom. Opposite the wall are the bathroom door, the kitchen, then one of the bedrooms.
I notice these details clearly in the dream, but there, at the other end of the hallway, is where the clarity ends and the surreal begins as the apartment’s front door is obscured by an opaque, shadowy mist. As I watch, it moves, turbid and roiling, a few feet passed the bedroom door. Somewhere in that fog, in his room, my father sleeps.
I am not alone. At my side is my grandson, Ender, all of six years old (as he always appears in my dreams). He wears a tee shirt too large for his small frame, and jeans with slashed open knees. He might have looked scruffy if not for his top-of-the-line, brand new sneakers. He holds my hand and sings in a sweet child’s voice, a tune I’ve since forgotten. It is beautiful.
“Stop,” I say, “he’s sleeping.”
The boy doesn’t hear me, so soft is my voice.
“Stop.” I say, just a little louder, “Please.”
He stops singing, opting instead to hum. and looks up at me, questioningly.
A crash echos down the hall, shaking the walls and making the tattered wallpaper flutter. It is a fist pounding the weak tenement walls. The boy and I both jump.
“Who the fuck is singing?” The words are growled, a low, guttural snarl like a bear preparing to charge. They are slurred so “singing” comes out sounding like “Shinging.”
Ender’s song ends abruptly. He’s never heard such rampaging fury directed at him. He doesn’t know what to do except to cringe, his eyes wide.
There is another crash, followed by a series of loud, floor-rattling footfalls. The wall of darkened mist slowly begins to shift along with the footfalls, closer. It fills the hallway from wall to wall, ceiling to floor.
“Did you hear me?” my father roars in a voice like a thousand cigarettes and a dozen razor blades, “Who d’fuck is singing?” His words are slurred so “singing” comes out as, “shinging.” He is halfway down the hall now. The fog rolls under the light bulb, effectively snuffing the poor light. We can see the fog
swirling, inexorably closing the distance between us. Our shadows are thrown in front of us by the dim living room lights behind us. “What ‘re you, a fuckin’ shinger now?”
Ender, still holding my hand, cowers. His beautiful song is forgotten. I watch him shrink behind me and my heart breaks. This lovely, talented boy has done nothing wrong. He’s just a boy. His fear is a wild thing, filling him entirely. I know that fear. It is familiar. but I begin to realize, with some shock, that I am not shrinking in terror. There is something growing, brewing, and bubbling inside of me. I am angry.
The beast from the end of the hall is coming; that same drunken animal that plagued my childhood and infests my dreams. I am assailed by memories; dreams within the dream. I see it all; if I presented a drawing, just a child’s rendering f a dog, “Whata, you think you are? An artist now?” If I brought home a relatively good report card, I got, “What, you’re a fuckin’ genius now?” I never knew what he wanted from me. He never explained anything, or taught anything. There was only a steady stream of derision without elucidation or end. My anger grew.
The wall of roiling fog passes the kitchen, getting closer to the bathroom door, but I am seeing it for the first time from a different point of view. . It is gradual but steady; a slow assuaging of its opacity. I notice that the fog no longer stretches from wall to wall. I can even see the faint glow of the lightbulb through the mist.
I’m an adult now, I think, and not a six-year-old boy. The swirling haze continues to dissipate leaving behind nothing more than wispy strands of smoke. And there, clearly visible, is my father.
He is exactly as I remember him, disheveled and barefoot in his sleep-wrinkled shirt and pissy pants. There is three days growth of scraggly beard on his face with a lit cigarette jutting out of the middle of it. His black skin is pale and his eyes are blotched yellow and red, barely opened.
I take a deep breath and say, “I heard you.” even as the words roll off of my lips, I begin to understand something that eludes Ender now as it had eluded me at six. This man is not a beast in the dark. He is not a bear in the bedroom at the end of the hall, something to sneak past as you leave the apartment. He is not a giant filling the hall from floor to ceiling; truth be told, he stands a few inches shorter than I am. Hunched as he is, he is even shorter.
“Are you some kind of... kind of a shinger now?” He blinks. The growl is gone out of his voice, replaced by a kind of drunken confusion, “Are you?” his last was directed at Ender, who he is just noticing.
“Yeah.” I say, surprised by the calmness of my voice, bringing his attention back to me, “I’m a fucking singer now, and an artist and a writer and I still play a fairly good harmonica. I got decent grades back in the day.” I stand straighter, planting myself between my grandson and my father. “And if you come near my grandson, I’ll fucking kill you.”
I want to say there is fear in his eyes now, but that’s not what I remember. He takes a step closer; his squint deepens. His hand darts out to remove the cigarette from his lips. It’s a feint. I don't flinch.
“Yeah?” He says, "And what the fuck, you think you a man now, you fuckin’ bum?” His words end in a fit of coughing. I wait for the cough to subside.
“I am a man now,” I say, “a better man, not a drunk pissing himself in a shitty room.” His eyes grow wider with every word, “I don’t need to take my shit out on a little kid. And,” I paused, “If you try that shit with Ender, I’ll kill you.”
He doesn’t respond with words. Sometimes he eschews words when fists suffice. Instead, he tries to lunge past me to get to the boy. I understand. He isn’t seeing the familiar fear in my eyes, but he can still scare a six-year-old. He does not make it past me. He is slow.
I reach out easily, languidly, and wrap my fingers around his throat. As I do, I know what he has been hiding from me for so many years: His throat is hollow, his skin paper thin. Made of paper, in fact. He crinkles. I discover that this man who haunts me is nothing more than an origami figure, light as a bag of feathers. There is nothing to him. Nothing. He is a hollow man.
I hold him gingerly so as not to break him. He does not fight me or shower curses on me, his illusion is broken; his power is all gone. His feet leave the floor as I push him away from me. I don’t hurl him. I don’t need to. I shove him and, like a helium balloon, he floats back towards his room, bouncing off the hallway walls as he goes.
I am not breathing heavily. My heart is not wildly beating in my chest. Neither do I feel a sense of triumph, only sadness and pity. So many needless years of being afraid of this paper man; all of that pointless time and energy. I’d believed him when he told me I was a failure, a fuck up. I ‘d believed him when he told me my life would never amount to anything; when he called me a bum. I had believed it all.
I looked down at Ender, who comes out from behind me, fresh and new. In his young life, he is always praised, always loved. He knows his family is proud of him, especially his grandpa.
“Go on, boy,” I say as I put my hand on his shoulder. I have to reach down a bit to do it. “Sing your song. I want to hear it.” He smiles that beautiful six-year-old smile and begins to sing. After a few minutes, I join him.
And I wake up.
I remember that dream vividly, like watching a movie. and I relive it whenever I hear that gravelly voice in my head asking, “What, you think you’re a man now? You ain’t a man.” And still, sometimes I listen to that voice and believe it.
But sometimes I remember the hollow paper man and how light and empty he’d been. I remember how easy it was to stand up to him in the dream and I draw strength from the memory. Sometimes, I sing along with my grandson.