Tabitha Ruth smoothed her yellow skirt over her knees and looked down at the snake-patterns in the linoleum and tried to be calm. She needed to figure out out. A way out. Soon the men in white would come for her with their sticky eyes and long fingers. They would put her on a chair with wheels and push her to a room made of pillows and lock her in. The pillows would be full of dust-mites which are microscopic crabs that crawl into your pores and clip your capillaries with their pincers until you bleed to death. Your toes and fingertips turn red and swollen and the red rises up you like a thermometer in summertime.
How strange, thought Tabitha, to bleed to death with all the blood still in you, to have everything you need, just not in the right place. That’s how it is for me, she thought. I have love and smarts but it is all in the wrong places and hard to get to, like the fresh milk that Papa puts in the rear so people will buy the old milk first, so that no one ever gets milk at its best.
Tabitha’s father had a corner market in Midtown. It was cramped like the city, with every bit of space put to use, with items stacked to the ceiling, and her father used a pole with a gripper at the end to reach the high items. Why didn’t he protect her? Why didn’t he take the gripper and hold her far away until he could be good? Tabitha wished she had a gripper. No, two grippers, at the ends of her arms. She would use them to pick people up as they came toward her and then put them down behind her, where they’d keep going and not come back until they’d circled the earth. Maybe they would get tired and settle down somewhere on the other side and not come back around, but even if they did, it would take a long time.
She could put the grippers on the men in white and push them out the window. It was right there by the elevators. As the men in white came out, she could grip and push them over and out. Grip, push, grip, push, grip, push, until they were all gone, until their bodies piled so high, they’d reach right up to the window and she could jump out and land on them, run down the white mountain – no, no – ski down. She’d make skis of cafeteria trays, with the grippers for poles, and ski down – whoosh!
And then she’d go to the water and make a raft of the trays and the grippers would be oars and she’d sail to a warm tropical island and the sun would be out, not hidden behind clouds like good milk and good thoughts, and the blue of the sky would be out too, not covered in smog like the whole city, and she’d lift the warm sand and let it fall through her fingers, and the waves would say, whew, whew we made it, wheeeew! And the seagulls would cheer.
And then crabs would crawl up from the rocks and pinch her, big crabs, would tear her open like a sardine can, and all her blood would go out into the sand, and the bad thoughts too would sink into the red sand, but the good thoughts, no, the good thoughts were light. They would finally be free, and float up to heaven. She would be an angel.
The elevator went ding. The men in white. But now Tabitha knew what to do. The window. No white mountain, but that didn’t matter. She would fall all the way down and kill the bad thoughts and be an angel. Finally, all the best right in front. Finally free. She leapt up and sprinted. The elevator doors parted. She knew she’d have to run as fast as she could to break through the glass. She knew she could. Like a bullet. She had to. Five more strides to freedom. She saw a white shoe. She just had to make it past. She held her fist forward like a battering ram. Three more strides. Two white men came out. They saw her. Their eyes were big. Tabitha tried to go around but one plucked her up like she was as light and weak as a fluttering moth. He held her easily as she thrashed and squirmed. He was very big and he held her and stroked her head with one great sandpaper hand and shushed her and said, It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.
