Page 6 of Antihero

Please help me.

It is all I have to ward off evil—purse snatchers, the fury of my nervous system, the stainless-steel curve of the hand pole three feet from my left temple.

Fourth choice is a man with children.

Fifth—a pack of girls, preferably working-class.

No matter how hard I try to reduce my vulnerability within myself and before the world, it is unavoidable. Reminders are everywhere, in the backup stack of laminated index cards on my office desk in the church basement, in the way I constantly catalog faces of strangers, in how I clutch my backpack in my lap right now, the pillow inside stuffed atop my work files for easy access.

I’m twenty-five but I look no older than nineteen, which I don’t say with vanity (because I’m still too young to care to look younger). I say it because a nineteen-year-old-looking girl is at even greater risk when she must trust herself to the charity of the world.

My father named me Anca, which means “merciful grace,” because his heart broke wide open at the first sight of me. Imagine how fortunate I am to play this role in our family mythos. Wreathed in smoke from the Pall Mall riding his gesticulations, Tată used to puff himself up big when he told it, full-hearted in his Orthodox Christian chest. How he loved the tiny parentheticals of my knuckles. My impossibly diminutive toes. My light blue eyes.

I’m dark-skinned, which isn’t as rare for Romanians as you might think. We are descended from Romans and surrounded by Slavs, so we have all the passion of Italians with Russian defeatism sprinkled atop. Depending on who you ask, we are either optimistic pessimists or pessimistic optimists, though Tată definitely belongs to the latter category. Our family has a hint of Asian somewhere back from all the cross-continent invasions, Genghis Khan and the Ottomans and whatnot. Plus us Southerners are just a stone’s throw to East Asia, so who knows who got up to what. In Tată’s eyes, I was a great beauty, but I know I am merely pretty-with-some-effort (Tată also taught me to be mindful of humility).

All the more miracle, his love for me, is that I came at the expense of his greatest love. Obstructed labor, the impossible choice—her or me. Together they chose me. In her dying moment, Mamă chose me.

The blessing of that. And the further blessing that my father viewed my creation as a painful miracle he would honor, this immaculate conception of another type—a daughter born from purity.

That gives me something to live up to every day, however imperfectly.

When I was no more than a year old, my father brought us across the world to the affordable Bronx. His great American hopes never materialized, not in the way he hoped, but I never once wanted for food and he held on against the dark spots in his lungs until I graduated high school and finished a year at Mercy College.

He was so strong. That wrenching cough rattling the bathroom walls when he thought I was already asleep. The rust-speckled balls of Kleenex. The coats that hung costume-like on his diminished frame. He stayed for me until three days after my eighteenth birthday. Until I was a legal adult able to get a job and keep our roof over my head. He did that for me, shouldered all that pain for love and duty.

The sixth choice is an elderly man.

Seventh is two females.

Past seven the rankings blur together. At that point, it’s up to how much kindness you sense in people’s eyes.

The 2 line keeps rocketing north, shaving beneath Central Park. A sketchy stretch, my least favorite. I chose this particular car because it was crowded when I got on in Brooklyn, but by now the passengers have thinned out, my options dwindling. From what I can see on the snaking turns, the neighboring cars are mostly empty, but I’m not too worried because there’s a girl about my age sitting across from me. A micromini skirt shows a whole lot of her body. She has chewed-down nails and wears too much makeup and looks a bit lost but her eyes are soft and soulful and the way she sits with the heels of her hands jammed to the seat at her sides, her elbows locked, and her shoulders jabbed up by her ears makes her seem fragile. I am grateful to have an Option Three.

As always I am dressed modestly, a winter coat over my shirtdress with long sleeves. The floral pattern sets tiny lilies against a cornflower-blue background. I am coming back from visiting Ioana, an elder from our parish who lives all the way out in Brownsville. It’s a bit of a trial for me to get home but it’s a broken hip and she cannot get out to the grocery shop and no one else volunteered. I started out after Vespers so it was late to begin with and we all know Ioana needs care and conversation. Despite the complexities that govern my existence, the church has trusted me to be director of social services and that is a responsibility I honor as best as I humanly can.

At the moment it’s a bit past midnight. The last-gen subway car is torn up from the crime surge, one of the harvest-orange seats shattered jaggedly into plastic fangs. Across the ceiling ads curves unimaginative graffiti—a giant dick, a floating pair of boobs, and a street tag that resembles bird-shit splatter. With matching black spray paint, the dome casings of the embedded security cameras have been turned opaque, the tang of shellac still heavy in the unvented air. The cabin lights are flickering on and off, too, a quicker strobe than that of the passing stations, and I reassure myself that the lighting change indeed originates from the subway and not inside my head.

We stop at 116th Street. Most everyone else clears off and then it’s just me, Option Three, and a passed-out meth-head at the far end. Even over the roar of the train, I can make out raucous laughter in the trailing car. A hyena pack of young men.

A group of young men is always the Last Option.

I look down.

Beneath Please help me resides the second line, which serves as a caption.

My Seizure Plan.

My condition urges me to hold perennial humility and for that I am grateful despite how challenging everything else can be.

Don’t be scared, the next line pleads.

I get up to two seizures a day.

They last between one and three minutes.

Then I list the basics. Lay me on my side. Keep me away from sharp objects. Please don’t call an ambulance—I can’t afford it. I’ll be awake soon! Please stay with me until I’m back inside myself.

I still debate over the sole exclamation mark in case it seems manipulative instead of merely comforting, which is my intent.