MONSTER

We want our monsters to scare us exquisitely. Hollywood knows this and produces movie after movie with terror refined to make us gasp and close our eyes. After the adrenaline rush and the film is over, we critique how good it was on the scream meter. I refused to go to those movies as a kid. I detested and feared being scared, and hated to admit it to others, who swaggered it’s no big deal.

Growing up, I find I don’t have to look to fiction for thick-necked ghouls. Depending on the color of our skin, we know this personally. Or, because we’re not stupid, we realize fear comes in normal shapes and sizes. They don’t need horns or scales; they only need to think and act that you are worthless. Moral and legal niceties don’t apply to you. Consider a summer day in Mississippi: a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family’s grocery store, has an exchange with a young Black man from Chicago, Emmett Till. Remember Jonathan Roth, the ICE agent on snowy Portland Avenue in Minneapolis, who encounters a thirty-seven-year-old mother, Renee Good. Lynchings occurred for over fifty years. The Klan, at its peak, had five million members. How do ordinary people become imbued with a righteous belief that empowers hatred? That they do should convince us that monsters live in closets, just as we believed as kids.

The naked burgher fresh from his shower, soft and white, pulls on his undies, gives his prize a squeeze and from his closet, picks a shirt, suit trousers, leather shoes, maybe a tie, and a belt with a silver buckle stamped with his initials. He might have a pin or a ring of a fraternal order, or the flag for his lapel. The burgher combs his locks, checks for outcroppings of nose bristle, and swishes mouthwash over teeth, even and upright as soldiers. Ready, he might whistle on his way to the kitchen. There, his wife fries two eggs sunny-side up, kissed by sizzling bacon slices wrinkling in a pan, hugging crisping potatoes and green onions. When she turns and sees who comes through the door, she doesn’t scream; she brushes away a stray lock and kisses the father of her children and helpmate. A matched pair, girl boy, eat their Cheerios with banana at the table, spit-shined for school. Their lunches, bagged and labeled, wait on a sideboard. They smile at each other, the dad and kids, and answer his staccato questions with respect. Finished, he stands, wipes his mouth, kisses the missus plus a pinch of her silky bum. Briefcase, coat, hat, a wink and a flick of his brim to the kiddos, and out. The oak-stained front door hisses and, with a rifle click, shuts.

The breadwinner goes to work. Someone stamps orders in a neat pile, commands keeping his shirt cuffs clasped, a slash of white quick marched out from his coat sleeve, or performs the business of death behind a lectern with his trousers nestled comfortably on shoes glowing with confidence, conducts confinement by sealing an order with a stylish pen and manicured nails, treats abuse like a sly cat that slinks onto his lap and purrs. Somehow it becomes morally invisible. Familiarity sanitizes a contagion of lies. Someone in authority thrills to own the cliche the buck stops here.

Is he like you and me? Our closets are alike. Do some dress alike not to be noticed? Do some want to be counted? How many will resist?

Sharing a sink, she bumps him away now that he’s done brushing his pearlies. He’s known for wandering hands when she’s moist from the shower and partially dressed. A can’t blame him smile pleasures the mirror. Her hip shot corner pockets him at their closet. He sings out to the children to keep going, clothes on, no lollygagging, no playing with the dog. Snug in his jockeys, he chooses slacks, pulled on a sweater, slipped into a sport coat, brushes his thick hair straight back. To the mirror, he says, weep. They all land in the kitchen at once, like Keystone Cops. The girl and boy in school uniforms. They bend the knee on Sunday, altogether that family. A picture of Il Papa with his Cubs hat smiles on the scene from the fridge along with Taylor Swift and Barack Hussein Obama. Dad sets about making lunches. Mom puts food in George’s bowl and starts chopping up fruit, then fetches a tub of yogurt. A fat container of granola waits in the center of the table. The kids find bowls for everybody. In a blink, shiny, eager faces spoon fruit, yogurt, and nature’s crunchy. Conversation is impossible to understand as they speak while crunching nuts and berries. Dad shoots up, grabs the leash, and out the door with G.W. the yellow lab. Around the block, the business bagged then a run home. Mom and Dad put their whistles around their necks. They study a list of neighbors. Later they will deliver groceries. There is a blur of feet, hands, and heads circling the table; bowls disappear into the sink, rinsed, the granola stashed. Dad calls an audible; lunches tossed, kids catch, Mom one-handed. M+D clinch, children kissed and out they go with a bang. George Washington watches through a window; his tail fans the air.