At the time, I had only thought of how strange it must have been to be there, to walk down a street and see red and yellow houses next to rubble. People in bright wigs and painted-on smiles next to those suffering.
23
Dear Tanya,
I’ve been back a week, and every day they have me take different tests. Vocabulary, identify pictures, look at gradients and arrange them from darkest to lightest. I’m still being asked to memorize words—tuxedo, baseball bat, cinnamon—but I haven’t been given additional doses of the medication. Almost everyone has been out of the office doing separate studies or taking breaks. It’s quiet and has almost convinced me in its slowness that I can make it another four, another eight months.
Tom and I eat lunch together, we talk about his garden. He showed me a picture of his tomatoes—they’re a fancy kind that I’d never heard of, Cherokee Purple—and they’re big. Lena, he said, they’re the size of both of your fists already. He had to set up special cages because of their weight. But he said the ripe ones so far have tasted like garbage. Literally, garbage. Like when you drive past a dump and the air gets in your car and your mouth and nose.
This town is cursed, I said. Tom said I sounded like a local. You would love the way they talk about this town. Whenever something is weird, something is wrong, they talk about how a great chief once lived and loved this land and cursed it for all white men. Yes, it’s racist. But I’ve heard old white men in the donut shops using it as an explanation for why there are bad cell signals, an increasing divorce rate among young couples in the area, drugs. Why a girl was murdered here in the early 1970s. No blame on the man who did it, the father of a child the girl was babysitting. And for “the mysterious illness going around town.” It sounds like a bunch of people have summer colds, some rashes, they feel weak, headaches, and it’s all been conflated into one big illness. People here are wild.
Today, after work, I went running for the first time since the—I don’t know what to call it—I guess the experiment. Downtown, near the courthouse steps, people were protesting something. They were holding signs and yelling. When I got close enough, I could see one sign that read STOP HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN THE USA. They were all wearing Sharpied shirts that read Freedom from Government Tyranny. Human rights, Human dignity, they yelled. If you’re in a study, we can help you, a white man with dreadlocks yelled.
The longer I’ve been here, the better I’ve gotten at making my face a mask. I keep it polite: never react too much, especially if someone is doing or saying something that is annoying me. Whenever I’m listening to someone speak, I force myself to make my eyes a little wider. I know it makes me look younger, more innocent. And I rarely wear makeup for that reason too. Especially as a younger woman who is also a very small person, I already know most people don’t think of me as a threat. But I add to it. Smile a lot. Apologize for things I don’t need to acknowledge. Laugh often. And I make sure not to do that forced, giddy laugh people do that can sound too desperate. I try as hard as possible to laugh like I’m delighted. The cuter I am, the more agreeable I appear, the less people notice how much attention I’m paying.
It’s changed me. I can’t just be any longer. When I was at my mom’s, I noticed I was watching her, and trying to anticipate what she wanted from me. In some ways, it wasn’t that much different from when I was growing up. I realize I’ve spent most of my life watching someone, making sure I was doing everything possible to not upset her in some way. Pushing my reactions down so I didn’t add stress to the situation. Maybe that’s why college was such a relief for me. It was the first sustained amount of time I could remember when I could think about me first. When I could know who I was when I had some space.
When the protester, the white man with dreadlocks, yelled the “word” study, my eyes instantly darted with fear. My mouth started to open. I looked at their faces, hoping I would recognize them on second glance. I thought they might be observers trying to see if someone would break. I had never seen these people before in my life. One of the women shoved a flyer into my hand. I kept running. Waited until I was two blocks away to stop and read it.
Written at the top of the flyer was Stop operation lightbox!!! Below it in a much smaller font was: They have been testing on us since the Cold War. This is a human rights violation. They are tricking you into making your body trash. They are rounding up the meek and turning them into murderers. The poor, the sick, the queer, the black, the small, the victims of the great credit scam, the natives, the disabled, and using them for experiments. Wake up, America!!!!!! We are eating ourselves! Go to stoplightbox.net.
Stoplightbox.net was blocked on my phone.
Below that a drawing and a comic strip featuring Uncle Sam. The drawing showed Uncle Sam eating a person, which looked like it was modeled after Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. I hate that painting, but this version of it made me laugh. The comic strip had Uncle Sam hitting either a husky child or a very short man with the American flag. Progress, he yelled. Next panel, the child burst like it was a piñata. After that, Uncle Sam gathered the organs. Then he labeled them. A heart was $1776. Intestines were only $74. Skeleton, $1.50. I did not understand what was being said here or Uncle Sam’s value system. On the back was an all-caps rant. I skimmed it, but the highlights were the US government is sewing the heads of dogs onto men. Women were being given pills to make them more subservient. New lab meat was being grown only for the rich, and the grocery-store meat was making everyone shorter. Facilities were all over the world.
Three of their flyers were taped to the lamppost next to me. Another flyer taped above that: IF YOU’RE A SUBJECT IN A RESEARCH STUDY, YOU CAN BE RESCUED. Around campus last semester, some kids had done—I guess I would call it an art project? A prank?—where they put up posters claiming squirrels weren’t real. ALL SQUIRRELS YOU SEE ARE ROBOTS! You probably remember seeing one. The website said they were vehicles for tiny aliens from a distant galaxy. I told myself it could be the same style thing. The protesters I ran past were a little too old, though, to be doing fake internet hoaxes.
I threw my flyer on the ground and ran on to the closest donut shop. Sweaty and tired and gross, I sat in a booth, ordered a glass of water and a chocolate donut. How long have you been in research studies? a woman’s voice asked. I shook my head, sure that paranoia and anxiety were making me hear things. A man said that he wasn’t in them, he just was sure they were happening in this town. He had been hearing rumors for years. I know I should’ve left immediately. But I was too curious. I wanted to know what he meant by years.
The average person is most interested in someone who might give them attention. They would notice me if I turned my head or was obviously eavesdropping. I pulled out my phone, opened the notes section. The man said he had heard stories since he was a boy: You don’t ever go to the basement of the old hospital. He said colored people were always coming and going. The woman said Colored? in an I-beg-your-pardon way. It made me like her. I always like anyone who hears something racist and can immediately react, not get caught in the processing loop of what-the-fuck-did-I-just-hear. I wanted to see who they were, so I posed and took a selfie. Took another.
The woman was wearing a black blazer and small red reading glasses. The back of the man’s head was balding, a little sunburned. He could’ve been anyone. The woman looked like a television show’s idea of a reporter: a cute white woman with dark hair that was a little messy, like she was too busy hunting down stories to get a trim.