“’RILLAS”

So-Baba, she say, Started with the cigarettes, it did. Took them away they did. Off the tee vee. Off the pages of the reading things. Out of the hands of the people in the big buildings we throw the rocks at and spray the words on, the big empty buildings.

Started with the cigarettes, she says, nodding her grease-face at me when I was real small, sitting on her lap playing with the cracked buttons on the old lilac sweater, and Ma, she say. So what Baba, so what? So they took away the cigarettes. Who can find them any­how? Can’t eat cigarettes, Baba.

So old So-Baba, she say real soft, hard to hear because her teeth cracked when the yellow plastic dish fell off the table, so she talks with half a mouth, Didn’t stop with the cigarettes. Didn’t stop with the liquor. Didn’t stop with the books, or the tee vee or the ray-de-o. Didn’t stop with santa claus or the—

And Pa, he say, Baba! and makes the mad eyes at her and she don’t speak, but her grease-face nods. And nods at me. I didn’t have the ’rilla things then, so I couldn’t hold onto them when Baba say the mad-eyes from Pa things, couldn’t rub the ’rilla things in my fingers and say the ’rilla words soft in my head.

I do that now. But So-Baba don’t say anymore, only Du-duh-uh and paws at the grease-face with yellow curved nails in the bed under the pink blanket with no shiny strip along the top. Ma puts the grease on So-Baba’s face for her, to keep away the wrinkles, like So-Baba wants. But So-Baba is old anyway. No wrinkles, but no say anymore because she’s old and her mind kind of fell, like her teeth did in the yellow plastic dish, only we can’t see the crack. But it broke up there, under her limp hair gathered in the big-holed net, makes her say Du-duh-uh, only I know it means Didn’t, but the rest of it I don’t know. She already say about the cigarettes. And the tee vee and the ray-de-o.

The things Ma and Pa wouldn’t tell me what they were. Because they were banned. By the men in the big buildings that have the broke windows, and the big words on the sides. The men who took away the things I hear Ma and Pa whisper about when they think me and Bobby are asleep.

The cross and the good book, things like the tee vee and ray-de-o, the things Bobby and I tried to picture in our minds, only it is like trying to do the ’rilla sign without knowing the ’rilla sign. So we can’t make the pictures of the cross and tee vee, or the other Don’t say! things.

But we have the ’rillas. Them we’ve seen. And the ’rilla things we have in our pockets, that make the ’rilla thoughts and words come easy.

Maybe So-Baba’s mind cracked because she kept trying to say about what she couldn’t see anymore.

If I had had the ’rilla words and things to rub in my fingers when her mind cracked under the big hairnet, she could say more than Du-duh-uh.

Because ’rillas have big power.

Me and Bobby and Jerrie from down the hallway, we found the ’rillas. Because the hall wallpaper was coming down in the big curls, like it always does when outside is cold and inside is steamy wet near the heat places and shivery cold away from the heat places. Ma and Pa were in our place, taking care of So-Baba, and with the big door with the locks and bars closed, me and Bobby couldn’t hear So-Baba say her Du-duh-uh or hear Ma say So what? anymore. Jerrie was making little thin curls out of the big fat curls of paper, ripping them and putting them on her head, to cover the places where her hair was so thin it was gone. Me and Bobby don’t need curls, but girls like them. All our Mas, they wear big squares of cloth, tied under their chins. They don’t sit in the halls and make curls of paper for their heads. The hair in So-Baba’s net, it comes off when the net comes off, or most of it anyhow. So Ma keeps the face-grease away from the net, so it can stay on.

Me and Bobby, we sat down on the floor of the hall and ripped little curls for Jerrie too, taking turns putting them on her head. Some fell off, but most didn’t. Another big curl peeled down while we ripped, and Bobby pointed at the wall behind and say, Look! Hairy! And we all looked, and say, So big! Like our Pa but hair. Look at the hair. And Jerrie brushed off all her flaking yellow-backed curls, and say, I want hair like that, and pointed at the picture on the wall, the one the paper had been hiding.

The picture of the ’rilla, only we had not learned the ’rilla word then. Or found the ’rilla things. Or learned the ’rilla signs.

More heat come through the heat things set in the floor, and the picture curled off the wall, only we did not rip it into curls for Jer­rie. We held it out flat on the dirty floor, and Jerrie tried to read the words next to the hairy thing there. Her Ma and Pa, they write the words on their kitchen wall, because they don’t say to each other anymore. They make mad-eyes and write on the greasy wall with hard words of black, and their say hangs in the air like memories. Sometimes they say to Jerrie, sometimes they say on the wall to her, so she can read. Or sometimes she might not eat if she can’t read her Ma’s say about where to get the food. When So-Baba was young like me and Bobby and Jerrie, she say Pas and Mas like Jerrie’s could stop being a Ma and Pa together, and live in different places like they had never been a Ma and Pa in one house. In one bed. But then, she say, that too was banned. Like the cigarettes, and the tee vee. All banned, she say, and nobody protested because they hadn’t when it started, with the cigarettes and the taking away of santa claus, so when di-vorce was banned, no one could protest. Because, she say, the people couldn’t. So-Baba she start to say, And when they said there was no G—but me and Bobby, we don’t hear the rest of her say because Pa say loud, So what? What is gone is gone, Baba, don’t do worrying about it! It won’t bring anything back. Bringing back your god won’t change things, Baba. And he made the mad-eyes at me and Bobby, and So-Baba sat and nodded her grease-face, and made sad-eyes for the things we couldn’t picture in our minds. And me and Bobby could say nothing, not even the ’rilla words, because we hadn’t seen.

When the picture from behind the curls of paper was flat, Jerrie bent down near the floor and almost touched her nose on the paper, and finally she start to say the Broo—ooklin Z—z—oo pr—oudly announces the a-a-rrival of the nuh-newest guh-guh-’rilla in the monkey hau-house. Then she couldn’t say anymore because the paper under the picture was eaten at the bottom, tiny crescents bitten away.

We all sat back among the ripped paper curls from Jerrie’s head, and watched the ’rilla paper curl up a little when we took our fingers off the edges. In the middle the ’rilla stood big, and hairy, and upright, like our Pa in the rooms inside, but not like Pa either.

There was a man, like our Pa only with hair and fat on his body, and he stood next to the ’rilla, only there were bars with space between them in front of the ’rilla and behind the man. And the ’rilla, he stood taller and heavier than the man, and had so much hair he needed no clothes. That was the first Sign, of the ’rilla’s power.

Me and Bobby and Jerrie and our Mas and Pas and So-Baba, we all had almost no hair, and very little fat on the bones. And we shivered in our clothes, even when the trees had the curled leaves on them in the courtyard, in the few weeks when the sun shone down almost warm, and in the weeks before the curled leaves turned funny gray and fell in crackling piles that we’d jump in after scooping them into a bigger pile. Even then we needed clothes. Lots of clothes, in layers like So-Baba wore her slip and her nightgown and her old dress and her lilac sweater with the yellowing buttons like horny fingernails and yet she still said she was cold. Even when the wet heat comes through the heat hole in her room.

But all the ’rilla wore was lots and lots of thick hair, and pads of fatness on the bones.

(So-Baba, she say before her mind cracked like old teeth, before the sickness came, we were all fat on the bones. We wore clothes to ac-cent-you-ate the fat, because the fat places were considered to be sexy—and Ma she say, Shuttup, Baba! For shame, saying the banned words! And to the kids! And later Ma wouldn’t let So-Baba have the last of the grease from the pan for her face, just to show her. And warn her, too.)

And me and Bobby and Jerrie, we began to say, The ’rilla was lucky, not to be cold in the outside. Because when we looked at the man, he had clothes on, only not so many as our Pa wore. But clothes anyway. Not thick hair and fat, not the freedom from smelly layers of clothes that itched in the places where the tiny dark things crawled, or stuck together, where the food had spilled on them.

And me and Bobby and Jerrie, we all say The ’rilla must feel good to have air on his body all over, not just the face and hands.

The ’rilla’s face was not like ours. It was dark, shiny in places, with the nose pushed big and flat in the middle. But the eyes were like ours, and that was all that mattered. Some people, in our building, they had worse faces to look at, all slipped down and funny colored, or mottled like the skin of the dog me and Bobby and Ma and Pa and So-Baba ate for three nights in a row. Some of the people, they had no skin on the bones, which was worse than having no fat on the bones. Some hid. Some didn’t. We didn’t look anymore either way. Some of the people didn’t have eyes to look back at us, so it wasn’t fair to look if they couldn’t do the same back to us.

But the ’rilla had eyes, nice eyes like ours, and dark like Jerrie’s. So we could look at the picture because it might have been able to look back at us. If it hadn’t been just a picture. The man in the picture, we couldn’t see his eyes. They were bit away, along with half his head and face. What head there was had hair though. Looking at the picture, me and Bobby and Jerrie decided that this was another Sign, one of the ’rilla’s power, because the ’rilla’s face and body were not bit away. It was like the small things that squeaked and crawled in the halls, making the layers of paper ripple with their passing couldn’t eat away the image of the ’rilla.

Jerrie she say, Look at the bars. My Pa, he write on the wall that the heat from below us is captured in a big metal drum, because it is so powerful. If it wasn’t held in, it would get out and overpower us all. The ’rilla is held in. See? He must be powerful, or else he’d be out with the man. Bobby he say, And wearing clothes. Then I say, He has thick hair and fat on the bones, they are warm enough. Bet he doesn’t itch all the time.

Not itching and smelling bad was a wonderful thought. Maybe the thick hair of the ’rilla kept away the sting and burn of the rain that makes lines in the glass of the windows, until sometimes the rain ate through the windows and Ma and Pa hurried to throw the plastic table cover over the window, to keep away the cold burn of the rain. Maybe on the ’rilla, the rain would only carry away the smell and the hard biting things on the skin, leaving soft thick hair that shone in the weak light of the sun. If me or Bobby or Jerrie went out in the rain without our clothes, our skin would blister and peel and make the red sores; and even if we did wear our clothes, they’d get holes and ragged places in them, but we’d have to wear them like that unless Ma or Pa could find us some different ones in the rubble and jagged wood near the outskirts of our big housing place. And the new ones might not fit, or might smell worse.

So, the first Sign of ’rilla power was a strong one, and it became the first of the Signs we wrote on the wall, only that came later.

When our Ma and our Pa called me and Bobby inside, and Jerrie hears her Pa and Ma bang on the floor of the hall, but the ’rilla picture was safe inside the layers of Bobby’s clothes, because he had seen first.

* * * *

Come our next time in the hallway, seated next to the heat hole in the floor, Jerrie say, My Pa, he write of the ’rillas. On the wall by the stove. He write that the zoo was a place of animals, all so powerful they stay behind bars, in cages. He write that ’rillas were strong, and loud like the rain sirens. But gentle. He write that when he was small like us, a ’rilla saved a boy like Bobby when he fell into the ’rilla cage in a zoo. The ’rilla was big and powerful, but he did not hurt the boy. Many were afraid that the ’rilla would show his power and overcome the boy, but the ’rillas left the boy alone. My Pa, he write that on the wall. By the stove.

When Jerrie say that, me and Bobby could think of no say of our own. Then we could not read, but Jerrie could, and if she say it was written on the wall by the big cooking stove that ’rillas did not hurt small ones such as us, enough though they had big power, we knew that ’rillas must have the biggest power. The power not to use power.

(Our Pa, he say, The sun is so dim because some people had a power only it was a bad power because it got too powerful and it got away from the men in the big empty buildings who thought they’d caged the power, and when it got away the sun went dark and the sky burned and even the air burned and stung on open skin. Like only the rain does now.)

Thus we figured out the next Sign of the ’rilla, that its power was a good power, not a dumb power that got away.

We did not rip apart big curls into little ones, and while we all sat and sat, our heads were bare of much hair or paper curls. But we had better than hair. We had the ’rillas, even if we didn’t have the words or things yet

The ’rillas were known to us, and that was all that counted anymore.

Me and Bobby, we made the next ’rilla find. On the wall of So-Baba’s bedspace, where the wallpaper curled like a mossy tongue away from the corner of the wall. By the floor. Up on the bed, So-Baba made her say, Duh-uh-uh, and waved her yellow nails at us but when I saw the picture on the wall under the curl of limp pa­per, me and Bobby didn’t listen to her say, but pulled the wallpaper away carefully, so as not to rip the picture below.

Because we could see the arm of the ’rilla, all hairy over the fat on the big bones. And there were words, not too bit up. The pic­ture on the paper was big, and when me and Bobby pulled it off the gray plaster of the wall, So-Baba she try to say Uh-uh-uh but even her fingers they didn’t move, and me and Bobby smoothed the wallpaper back over the open plaster, so the cold wouldn’t come through So-Baba’s layers of clothes and chill her fatless bones. The picture we hid in our clothes, and took outside into the hallway before our Ma or Pa could see what we done. Out in the hallway, under the better bulb up on the ceiling, the one with more light than the sun outside, we looked at the ’rilla, and saw the little cat baby it held in its big arms. We hadn’t had a cat around since that orange-furred one we ate last year, at the time when the curled leaves dropped in crackling piles against the curbs. But the ’rilla wasn’t eating the cat, even though it looked to have sweet fat on the bones. It was holding the cat, like our Ma held Bobby when he was too little to remember when So-Baba could say plainly.

There were words under the ’rilla picture, not too bit up, but we had to wait for Jerrie to come out before we knew what the paper write below the ’rilla and the cat.

Jerrie look and look then say, The words they say that this ’rilla is named Koko, and the cat is her pet. The words not say what pet is, but it is held like a baby, see? Like your Ma held Bobby. And the words they say…they say this Koko ’rilla can say!

Me and Bobby both say, No! ’rillas can say?

Jerrie nodded, her few strands of hair tossing back and forth under the yellow shine of the bulb above. Putting her finger under the words, Jerrie say, Here, it say that Koko uses sign language. She say with her hands. Say signs that mean words.

And it was that afternoon that we learned of the ’rilla’s next Sign, that the ’rilla-animal could say. Like So-Baba, like Ma and Pa and us too. Only with its big hands. The dogs and cats and mottled things that barely walked that Ma had to cook until the fat on the bones didn’t need chewing couldn’t say. Either with their mouths or hands or paws.

And with that picture we learned the next Sign, could see it for ourselves. The ’rillas like cats, kept them as pets. Which was something like the way Ma held Bobby long ago. Like he might break inside, and she didn’t want him to.

(Jerrie say too, The words are part gone, but this Koko she lost another pet, and was sad. Then there was this pet and she was something that has been bit away. We couldn’t tell from the ’rilla Koko’s face what that something was. Koko looked the same as the ’rilla who stood behind the bars with the man. ’rillas didn’t smile, but that was all right. We had all seen many people who had no smile, some who had no lips. But Koko ’rilla’s eyes were kind.)

It was then that we got the idea of keeping the ’rilla things, only we didn’t have the things. Yet. But Jerrie, she say, Maybe, if we held onto a cat, we’d be powerful too. And hairy.

Bobby, he say, Our Pa, he kept the skin from our last cat. All of a piece after taking it from the fat and bones. We could hold that. And rub it. For power.

For hair, Jerrie say, then patted her bare scalp where the hair was falling out in strands that clung to her first layer of clothes. Me and Bobby say, For lots of hair, and we all giggled. Then Jerrie, she say, Besides the hair, we should rub the fur for good power. Like the ’rillas have. Maybe the hair goes with the power.

That made sense, since the hair and the power and the liking of cats was all a part of the whole ’rilla. Like skin and fat and bones were all a part of something living, and something was wrong if something was missing. Then that person had to hide away, inside their home and only reach out for food brought to them. And ’rillas didn’t need to hide, so they were complete. So the hair and power and cats all went together. Plus saying the signs with the hands.

Our Pa, he didn’t notice when me and Bobby cut the bits of fur and stiff white flesh off the edges of the cat skin, since Pa was looking out the window with only bits of glass in the frame, and our Ma was cooking what she’d found that morning out near the rubble pile.

When me and Bobby and Jerrie each had a piece of cat skin, we found places to hide the bits of orange-striped fur, places where we could reach in and feel the silky smoothness of dense hair under our fingertips, and think about Koko and her cat while we rubbed the fur under our fingertips. Only the cat Koko stroked was warm and alive. But the bits of fur and skin were a Sign of the cat, the best we could do.

And the ’rillas, being full of good power under the fat on the bones and the thick hair on the skin, they’d understand our sign. Jerrie say that the words on the paper say so. Since that was how they said themselves. In signs.

Soon the cat fur sign was joined by the food signs, not real food, but the plastic pretend fruit that Jerrie’s Ma showed her. Jerrie’s Ma, she showed Jerrie the odd pieces of brightly colored, waxy to feel fruit, and she write on the wall, This is what fruit used to look like. Before the power got away from the men in the big buildings. Before it turned warty and the skin slid around over the meat inside. This fruit was to look at always. But not to eat. You kids play with it now. I cannot look at it anymore. There is no more fruit like it to eat, and I cannot eat wax. Jerrie she say, My Ma cried a little after she write the last part. But my Pa, he write on the wall by the big stove, Those ’rillas you say about Jerrie, they eat fruit. No cat no dog no slow walking things. Only fruit. This wax fruit if they want to. Jerrie she say then, My Ma cry and cry and Pa laughed, only he made no sound, but his mouth was open and his finger pointed at Ma and it was like laughing anyway.

Me and Bobby and Jerrie, we each took a piece of the fruit, which felt like candles on the outside only there was no wick for the flame to eat up. Me I took an apple, Bobby he took a round orange thing, and Jerrie she took the long string of little green balls with the uncurled waxy leaf on one end. We each say about the ’rillas eating fruit, no meat, and each of us then say all at once ’rillas don’t eat the cooked fat from the bones, yet they have hair and good power. And keep cats. And we thought something more, something we only say later to each other, that maybe eating the soft cooked fat from the bones wasn’t a ’rilla thing to do. Maybe eating the cooked fat made us hairless and weak. Not like the way ’rillas were.

At first, our Ma and Pa, they don’t notice how me and Bobby just play with the food on our plates, and put it on So-Baba’s plate when our Ma and Pa have their heads turned away. We take double of the steamed weeds from over by the rubble piles, so our bellies don’t rumble. All So-Baba she say, Uuuhh.…and make the slurp­ing sounds when she sucks up the gray cooked fat off the white bones.

But one meal, Bobby he say, I don’t want the cooked fat before he realized that we wasn’t just with me and Jerrie, and our Pa he say, This food isn’t good enough? You better eat it unless you can find something better. Now eat, but Bobby he pushed the plate away and say, ’rillas they only eat fruits so I can’t eat the cooked fat or gnaw the bones.

Pa he say, ’rillas? So-Baba, you say about gorillas to the boys? Shame, So-Baba! And So-Baba she drool and say, Uuuuhhhhhh…and Ma she say, Baba can’t say, about gorillas or anything. Who say about gorillas to you boys? Jerrie? Her Ma or Pa? They write about goril­las to you?

Me and Bobby we rubbed our cat fur under our fingertips where Ma and Pa couldn’t see, and each of us say, We heard no say about ’rillas. Just a silly say, that’s all, but Pa he didn’t believe me or Bobby, and say, Just tell me who say about them. You two shouldn’t listen to stranger’s say, out in the streets. A stranger say about gorillas to you? Me and Bobby say, No, and look down at our empty plates.

Ma, she say, Oh forget about it…the boys had to hear say sometime of this. Any day the gorillas might come here, to this dwelling building. Next door, the woman say her sister say the gorillas have been in the outskirts of the city. Looting, shooting, taking the cooked fat from the kitchens. And worse. Better they hear say of it before it happens here. Better to know so that they can hide in time.

* * * *

And while our Ma and Pa and So-Baba sucked fat from dead bones, me and Bobby chewed on tough weeds, tasting the bitter tang of the cooking water, and thinking of the richly colored wax fruit hidden in our clothes, the round orange thing and the apple so red and smooth.

Jerrie she say, My Ma and Pa, they write to me to beware of the ’rillas, only they write it funny, g-u-e-r-r-i-1-l-a, but maybe they have eaten so much of the cooked fat they can’t spell anymore. Ma’s been losing more hair. Her cloth fits closer to her head. But Pa, he write, The guerrillas are dangerous. They kill and maim, and steal cooked fat from stove tops. Me and Bobby, we say, Our Ma and Pa say the same thing. But they never say about the thick hair or good power. Or the cats or fruit But the paper, it say and it show different.

Me and Bobby took out the pictures, and all three of us bent bare heads over them, looking at the kind eyes and cradling arms of the ’rillas, and we didn’t see our Ma as she came out of the big doorway and watched us for I don’t know how long before she say, What are you kids looking at?

All of us say Nothing, but she didn’t believe us and bent over and snatched up the ’rilla pictures. She looked and looked, and then laughed until the sound turned sour in our ears, and she tore up the ’rilla pictures and say, Stupid kids…stupid ’rillas. No wonder you two wouldn’t eat your supper. Get your minds off these animals, the last of them has been dead for years. Dead and rotted down to bones and dust. Worry instead about the guerrillas, listen to what people say. Because someday, the guerrillas will come and get you, every last stupid one of you! And the only way to fight them is with your hands and brains. Not with stupid pictures of gorillas. Throw­ing the shreds of paper to the dirty floor, our Ma went back into the dwelling and slammed the door shut behind her with a sound we could all feel in our bones.

Without a single say, we scooped up the bits of ’rilla paper, each of us putting a few pieces of it next to our fruit and bits of cat The hallway wasn’t safe, we couldn’t say in private. And only Jerrie could write then, so we couldn’t write on the walls. But we had hands, and the ’rilla things wound around us, safe in our clothing. And the shreds of paper, they say that ’rillas say with signs, so me and Bobby and Jerrie, we worked out the signs (not the Signs, which were something different, those we would say to ourselves, in bed before we slept) between us, and soon we could say with no sound, yet by seeing we understood the say and could say in return.

And as we did the hand says, we hoped that the ’rillas might be able to understand too. Because when Ma say that the ’rillas were nothing more than bones (which may have been true, when Jerrie say to her Ma and Pa, What were zoos? they write back, The place where the animals used to be kept, before most of them died or were eaten) we each say to each other, Bones are powerful too. They last after the fat is cooked and eaten and the skin and hair shrivel into a small hide.

So even if the ’rillas were dead, all of them, we still had seen them, so we could think about them in bed at night. Not like the things So-Baba say of, the tee vee and the ray-de-o and santa claus. The things that had been let to die without bones left over. The things that had been banned, like our Ma say.

Our Ma, she say, The ’rillas or gorillas or guerrillas have been banned. Like the cross and good book she and Pa whisper about because they remember them but can’t say out loud anymore Because they’re banned.

The ’rillas might have been dead, but not being banned, they couldn’t be bad, like the banned things were say to be by Ma and Pa, but not So-Baba.

Me and Bobby, we got to thinking about that part of it, how So-Baba used to say of things banned and bad, and Bobby he say Maybe So-Baba would understand about the ’rillas. Maybe they could help her. Like they’ve helped me and you and Jerrie.

(Bobby, he say about the first of the good powerful things the ’rillas did for us. A few weeks after we all stopped chewing the cooked fat, a soft fuzz of hair appeared on our heads, not long or thick like ’rillas but something where nothing had been. Which made the ’rillas all the more real in our minds and hearts. We loved the ’rillas, for helping us that way, through their Signs.)

Me, I say, So-Baba she liked to say about the old things, and ’rillas are very old, bones I think. She’ll like the ’rillas.

In the darkness of the room we shared, me and Bobby got out our ’rilla things, the bits of paper, the fruit, the scraps of orange fur and skin, and hugged each ’rilla thing to us, like Koko ’rilla had done with her live cat, before taking them into So-Baba’s room off the kitchen. In the near dark, with only a sliver of faded moonlight to illuminate the service, we softly say the ’rilla Signs over So-Baba, and made the ’rilla signs with our hands.

First we say, The ’rilla has hair so thick the rains do not sting, and fat on the bones so thick the clothing doesn’t come in layers.

Second we say, That which crawls in the walls and squeaks cannot eat the image of the ’rilla. It remains so that we can see the ’rilla.

Third we say, The ’rilla has the biggest power, the power not to use power, in his hands and in his body.

Fourth we say, The ’rilla say with signs of his hands, and the ’rilla holds his own without hurting or crushing it. ’rillas like cats too.

Fifth we say, The ’rillas don’t eat cooked fat off of bones, but eat fruit, and their hair doesn’t fall out and their skin is fat over the bones.

And while we both say, me and Bobby make the ’rilla signs, which were secret, and both of us kneeled down by So-Baba’s bed, the ’rilla things on the worn carpet between us, and then the bulb came on above us and our Ma she say, Crazy kids! Doing banned things in front of the open window! Shame, Baba, giving them bad ideas! while So-Baba grunted and say, Uuuuuuhhhhhh through the thick yellow drool in her toothless mouth. Ma she took the ’rilla things away and threw them down the trash chute in the kitchen near the stove, and she say soft but real mad, You do things like that and they can come up and take you away! To the place where the banned go! They watch below, where they say what is and what is not right. They hear and they see, and they take away those who say bad. Baba, she say bad things, and she got the broken mind. If they come and get you for say the bad thing, they do worse than Baba’s bro­ken mind!

But after Ma put us back to bed, after So-Baba tried to say something that had that G-sound So-Baba had tried to say a long time ago, me and Bobby found out that the ’rilla words were still with us, and we missed the ’rilla things but didn’t need them, ei­ther. Not like we thought they would be missed.

Nobody could take away our ’rilla pictures, or ’rilla feeling inside.

Soon after So-Baba heard the ’rilla words that night, Jerrie say to me and Bobby, My Ma and Pa they write to me Danger coming. The guerrillas are in the outskirts of the dry. They all say so. You can’t go out, into the hall when they come near. We have to hide. Everyone hide, and hide the cooked fat and dead bones. When Jerrie finished her say, she pulled out some of her round green pieces of fruit, plus a new one we had not seen before. Long and yellow it was, with a gentle curve. Smiling under her fuzz of darkish hair, Jerrie say, My Pa, he write that gorillas like this fruit best of all fruits. More than cats. He write that the bad guerrillas like them too.

Me and Bobby, we say to her that the ’rilla things aren’t needed anymore, but Jerrie she say back, But if they come for us, they’ll see right off that we believe in them. She then say, Maybe our Pa and Ma have it wrong. Because they eat the cooked flesh and have no hair. Maybe the ’rillas had so much good power the rain didn’t kill them, or they didn’t let people eat them. Maybe the ’rillas made their signs at each other and nobody else understood their say so no one knew where they went to. Maybe their cages got ruined like the buildings people write on.

Me and Bobby thought about it, and decided it might be a true thing. If the ’rillas could say, they had to think too. Otherwise there was no point in saying anything in the first place.

And maybe the ’rillas never ate the cooked flesh, and never lost their thick hair and fat on the bones. Then they could live in the rain without layers of clothes, moving free and clean-smelling in the outdoors, not having to pick through bad rubble for clothes that smelled and itched.

We had to say so much we ran out of signs, and used words when we had to, until our Ma opened the door and loudly say, Be quiet! And stop saying about you-know-what, it might be a banned thing. And the slam of the door shook all our fatless bones.

Soon everyone on our floor say, Guerrillas coming! and after a few days, people shorten their say, to g’rillas coming! and one morning all they had to say was ’rillas! and no one would venture forth from behind locked and barred doors, and the candles were brought out against the coming of the dread ’rillas! that people say of with such rolling of what eyes they had and such shuddering of the bones. It was say that ’rillas liked to break light bulbs for sport, if they were lit.

Finally came the day when people say the ’rillas were coming, and our Ma scooped up me and Bobby and made us go in the house and all we could do was make a ’rilla sign at Jerrie as her Ma saylessly pushed her into her house, and Jerrie made the sign in return, a smile playing on her lips under the faint coating of hair on her scalp. She knew what took me and Bobby a while to know—the ’rillas were coming, but they didn’t want cooked fat or to shatter light bulbs. Just the day before Jerrie say, I dreamed about the ’rillas. They were big, and had a smell like sweat and cat fur, but not too bad a stink. And small things crawled in their thick hair, and when those small dark things were eaten, they popped between their teeth like crisp bits of fried fat. And they would pluck small crawling things from each other’s fur, as a sign of companionship. And in their arms they carried cats. All colors, all sizes. Their pets. And they didn’t eat the fat on the bone of their pets. And they understood the signs we say with our hands, and knew of many more besides our few hands says. And with his hands the biggest he say to me, Come, be free under the sun, and safe from the sting of the rains under your coat of hair and thick fat on the bones. And then I climbed up on his shoulders and went away with him. To a place where the weeds were raw and the soft white wiggling things that crawled without legs tasted juicy in my mouth.

Me and Bobby had almost gagged over that last part, but it didn’t sound too much worse than the gray shreds of cooked fat clinging to the dead bones. And Jerrie had say, They understood the sign of our hands.

It had to be true. The ’rillas were coming for the ones who believed in them, and understood the signs and the Signs. If they could get to me and Bobby and Jerrie.

Because all the grown-ups, they say, Hide, hide from the ’rillas! If they find you, you’ll die!

And so there we all were, me and Bobby and Ma and Pa and So-Baba, who say, Uh-uh-uhhhhh.…from her place under the bed, and we were all wedged tight in the dark, with only the candle and matches nearby, and down in the courtyard we could hear the sound of the coming of the ’rillas through the rain-ruined window, and the say of those who hadn’t hidden, No, no, go away! and garbled screaming says that rose high and thin all the way up to our win­dow. And in a low, shaking say, our Ma began, My Ma, she say to me that the ’rillas were filthy, with guns at their sides and hate in their eyes, and they roamed in search of places to give pain and steal cooked fat and other things which are banned from us now, and while Ma say, So-Baba nodded her grease-face in the close darkness and I could feel the bob of that hair-netted head near my shoulder, and in my head I began to say the ’rilla words, and soon my mouth began to say them too, and then Bobby began to say and this time Ma didn’t say to shut up, not to say the banned words because she was sorely afraid and Pa kept saying, We’re all dead meat, oh God we’re all dead meat, but it wasn’t like he believed anymore, so it didn’t sound like a banned thing he say, but just a thing, a plain old word. But our ’rilla words were better says, because we knew that the ’rillas were real.

Because we’d seen the pictures that were not bitten away.

Because we’d given up on the cooked fat, and our hair grew again.

Because the ’rillas had kind eyes, and could speak in hand says.

Because they had been real, and could be real again.

If we believed in them, and kept hold of the pictures in our minds, and made the signs when they came, we’d be able to join them. Like in Jerrie’s dream.

The sounds of the ’rillas was a terrible thing outside our door, as they went down the long hallway. At first I thought I heard says from the ’rillas, guttural sounds of says in a tongue I didn’t know, but I knew that true ’rillas only did says with their hands, making the ’rilla sign by which me and Bobby and Jerrie could understand them, and make say in return.

And as I thought that to myself, and mouthed the ’rilla words, my Ma and Pa and So-Baba wailed and made horrible-sounding says deep in their throats, and shook under their layers of stinking cloth­ing, not stopping when me and Bobby tried to lead them in a say of the ’rilla words and did the ’rilla signs before them in the thick semi-darkness.

And the footsteps of the ’rillas made a deep booming sound that traveled through the floor and into the marrow of our live bones, and as me and Bobby did our say of the ’rilla words out loud, plain so the ’rillas could hear, something happened out there in the dank hallway which spilled a thin scattering of light into our dwelling through the space at the bottom of the door.

Something wondrous, but not unexpected to me and Bobby. And Jerrie, over in her Ma and Pa’s home down the hallway.

The heavy thud of the ’rilla’s clumping footsteps grew soft, hair-padded, and while heavy, the footsteps were slower, less resonant in our bones. And the lights did not shatter in the hallway.

Somewhere down the hallway, a door clicked open, the hinges making a scree of noise. The footsteps stopped, then began again, coming close to our door, and Ma and Pa and So-Baba began to really say in voices of terror and fear, and behind me and Bobby they clustered together, and the last clear thing I heard was Pa, and he say, Better to go now than let them kill us, and soon the says of Ma and So-Baba were nothing more than bubbling gurgles like cooked fat bubbling in the foul water on the big stove, then Ma and So-Baba were silent and did say no more.

The light along the bottom of the door was broken by chunks of blackness, and me and Bobby got out from under the bed just as Pa’s big hands closed on our collars and pulled hard, and with a rending of rotted cloth me and Bobby broke free and crawled under the bed, and from under the stinking sweat-sour place we could hear Pa gurgle as he did something terrible to himself, and he too was to say no more, but we could barely hear his last burble because the locks opened noisily as the door broke inward from the middle, the door splitting from the top to the bottom down the middle, letting in the hallway light in a blaze that hurt me and Bobby’s eyes. But we could smell the ’rilla smell, and felt the big strong hands upon our arms and legs as they lifted us high up into thickly furred, fat boned arms and onto broad shoulders, where the crackling crawl­ing things hide under the thickness of the hair.

And me and Bobby and Jerrie rode out of that hallway, littered with guns and holsters and bullets that came from we knew not where, riding high and safe on the shoulders of the ’rillas, where we rode unblemished through the stinging rains out of doors, and made the ’rilla signs to each other as we rode, popping the hard brown chewy things with our teeth.

And me and Bobby like the way the little crawling brown things sound when we crunch them, but Jerrie she say she likes the soft thick crawling white things much better than the cooked fat from bones even.

And the ’rillas smile and make the sign of that which is good before each of us. And the cats in their arms purr loud in the sun­light.