It’s clear that these pages with the first person POV with the arm tattoos and clocks aren’t Gountess (like how some people expected at the start of the Doll Festival arc)
It’s Enjin’s pov from when he was younger
He’s the only Charachter to have arm tattoos that cover his whole arm (and to cover up whatever label tattoos the kids have on their forearm)
Back in chapter 32, he’s even shown with that clock we see in these new pov panels so we know this particular clock is linked to him
The real question is what does the clock symbolize / mean to Enjin and his lore
I’m clipping stems off the flowers in the back room, and through the half-open door I can see Faye standing behind the counter. She surprises me with her exchanges; she is all at once affable and responsive and self-assured with the customers. Her posture’s good. Her back faces me; it reminds me of my mother’s, somehow. Admittedly, she looks a little unfamiliar behind that counter, all her soft edges neatly tucked away, and if the mask chafes her she doesn’t show it.
In the back room, I align the stems perfectly, cut them cleanly, kick them under the chair. There is a strange catharsis in clipping, the sense that anything could happen and I could still cut them just like this, just as always. There is a sharp, green, acrimonious smell in the air, a smell that clings to my hands, gets underneath my nails. It’s not a smell that comes off easily. I wish my husband would complain about it once in a while.
I glance back up at Faye and see, with some surprise—frustration strikes me a bit later— that the hard line has gone out of her posture. She is leaning an elbow against the countertop in such a way that I think to myself, No that’s too casual. You can’t convince anyone with that. You’ll just give yourself away. There is a girl I recognize at the counter—but of course I recognize her, because up until very recently I would’ve considered her to be someone “close” with Faye. Inseparably close, close since the second grade, that kind of friend you stay up late with and walk to school with and confide in indiscriminately. She is that kind of close friend who one day inexplicably can’t stand to be near you. They exchange very few words at all, and I wish Faye would at least tell this girl what she really thinks. The hardness has returned to her posture but it is a brittle hardness, trembling with some feeling she won’t express.
A ceramic flower pot slips from the girl’s hands and shatters, and almost on impulse I move to the doorway. Faye turns quickly toward me, sensing me there. “Sorry, it’s my fault,” she says. “I was being careless.” Behind her, the girl takes a startled step backward and a piece of ceramic crunches under her heel. There’s dirt in the cracks of the floor. It flecks the toes of her shoes.
I look at Faye a moment, but she can’t seem to bring herself to meet that look directly. “You know where the broom is,” I say at last.
The girl leaves and Faye returns a moment later from the supply closet with the broom and dustpan under her arm. She probably isn’t aware that she’s gnawing at the corner of her lip, and for a moment I wonder if she’ll chew a hole straight through her cheek. There is something compulsive and agitated in the way that she moves the broom back and forth across the tiles of the floor, as if she couldn’t forgive herself for missing even the smallest piece of the broken ceramic pot.
I go to the back room again and keep the door half-open. I have finished my clipping and can now begin wrapping, instead. Wrapping isn’t without its own charms, I think to myself, though not quite as satisfying as clipping. Still, there is a finality in gathering the flowers up and rolling them in crinkling, clear plastic sheets, tying them with ribbons tight enough so that nothing comes loose.
My husband comes into the back room and sets his teacher’s bag down on the floor. It is swollen and bulky with essays and his uneaten lunch. He watches me for a moment, looking half-impressed and, in his mild, forbearing way, half-amused by me. It is an expression I can never quite find a good reason for. I never know what he’s thinking, and I feel slighted by this, somehow, stung by the unfairness of that knowing look in his eyes.
“Let me help with that,” he says, but I purse my mouth at him.
“If I had the time to rewrap half of the bouquets, I would’ve asked for your help when you walked in,” I tell him flatly.
He had expected that response, of course, and he smiles without hurt or anything less than his usual exhaustless quantity of saintly tolerance. “You’re a pitiless woman, Dina."
When I think about a person, yeah, just that word: person, I think of a woman. She is standing right in front of me. Her short black hair falls down to about the base of her neck. It’s straight and sleek, slightly messy. She has an amazing smile, a few crooked teeth here and there. They’re white, though slightly stained. She’s wearing a necklace. It’s silver and it looks expensive. She has thin lips coated lightly with fulvous lipstick. Her right arm is curved oddly around a child. She’s holding him. Her fingers are curled under the boy’s thigh. Her shirt is striped. Black then white and repeating. So are her pants. They kind of go together with the lip of her shoes, which are navy. She’s wearing an oxford slip. They’re easy to put on, walk in, or run, if it comes to that. They’re practical.
The sun sits in the upper right. It looks very hot. The scene behind her is simple, large towers bubbling over with black smoke. It must be an industrial sort of place. Sometimes I change the background. I flip between Venice or Madrid. Every now and then, I like to see her in a starry night in Paris or in a messy favela. The streets of Buenos Aires seem to work too. I’ve never seen what she looks like from behind. All there is, is that smile and the boy.
Except for the people. There’s a crowd behind her. They are smiling, although some grins look fake. I guess these are the people I think of when I think of people. Eclectic scores of diversity, though most are white. But the woman is in front of them. My woman. My person. Her smile. Her boy. A simple toast to euphoria.
Is this how God sees me?
Her hand is outstretched, as if waving. Why does she say hi? In fact, they’re all waving. All of them, amongst their black and white garb, are rattling their hands in the sky. The boy she’s holding, doesn’t wave. He is pointing. One hand is in his mouth and the other is pointing straight.
Some days I don’t pay any attention to the woman. The people around her can be much more fascinating. Most of them are thin. I think one of them is asleep, though, only one of his eyes are closed. It’s sort of frightening. His mouth is open too. And I think, maybe, an insect has emerged. I can’t be sure. This image isn’t clear. All I can make out is an array dots hovering a couple of inches away from his mouth. And I can see these dots because behind them is a background - the white stripes of another man’s pants.
This man is intriguing as well. His child is, at least. His hand is on the child’s head, with his fingers sort of intermeshed with his hair. I’d say his boy is about five. I can only see the left side of him and his face, the cute little thing. He looks confused. His eyes are wide. The tip of his left index finger is tugging at his bottom lip. Wait. Now I see something different. The father’s hand, his right one - the one on the child’s head. I can see his index, middle, and ring fingers poking through the child’s hair. Nothing new, but, and I hadn’t bothered to look for the rest, now, I can see his thumb and pinky. They’re on either side of his kid’s head, squeezing. And is that a tear on the child’s cheek?
And when I think of the word, word, well, first, it ceases to be a word at all, but word makes me think of propaganda, which is a word that makes use of lots other little words. Like prop. Was the boy that man’s prop? Or Ganda. G-A-N-D-A. A member of an African people. I wonder to whom did these people belong?
My mother used to say the word a lot: propaganda. That’s all it is, she’d say. They’re making us into a propaganda piece. I’ll smile. I’ll wave. But I’m not happy.
But I like to think that my mother was happy. She had always wanted to be a model and when that camera flashed, she lit up. She made the dismal exciting - and the drab she was covered in, comforting.
She was slender - and getting thinner. But that didn’t worry her. I needed this, she preached. I needed to eat less. I needed less water. A good model is thin, blue-eyed. She winked after that. That was a sort of signature of hers. Of course everyone winks, but she would use it ten times more.
Those winks could get her things, especially from the men. She’d wink, smile, follow them to some different place, and come back with bread. She’d feed it to me in gobs, rolling it around in her hands and then placing it in my mouth to chew on. I’d say I was the fattest kid there! The other moms would look at me and grimace. I’d always just wave back. It looked to me like they were trying to hold in a sneeze when they looked at me that way.
They were furious with me and my mother, but they weren’t allowed to touch us. The men wouldn’t have it. Instead, they made us sleep on the floor, although their arrangements weren’t much better than ours. The living quarters often carried a strong stench. Especially in the day. The heat would bake whatever grimy evil resided there, producing this abhorrent smell.
These were not fun times, though good memories do stick out. Even the bad, I must say, are laced with a brilliant amount of love - my mother’s love. And my love for her.
These memories, well, I don’t know if I’d use that word because they’re not quite that anymore. They feel more like synapses written into my psychology. These words, to me, are characteristic, more than articles of speech or squiggly characters on a page. All of these are labeled. Like a filing unit. One word for each memory. And from each word, a hoard of synesthetic feelings emerge. Unfolding from the last sensation, a dictionary, this unalphabetized litany, comes to life.
There’s one day I can picture vividly, or more, I can feel vividly: White. The soldiers called us out of the barracks early in the morning. It had started getting colder around that time so my mother put a blanket over me. They had us to all line up. Children would be by their parents. Mothers would hold the kids and fathers would stand next to them, lovingly. There wasn’t much film so the soldiers were very particular about getting the shot they wanted the first time around.
My mother was the prettiest. They’d put her in front of the rest. Quickly, they’d give her an expensive silver necklace and nice shoes to put on. They also made her put on a bit of lipstick. She usually chose bright colors, reds and lightly hued blues. On that day, she mixed red with orange. The lipsticks weren’t hers, no. All of it belonged to the soldiers, or their wives, I suppose, who they couldn’t have cared for. The way they took to my mother was not conducive to any marital values.
They placed her in front. She held me, using her hip and right arm. One hand had to remain free. And we stood there, waiting until they got the camera set up. They fiddled with the thing every time we’d have to take a picture.
There was a boy in the line of people behind us yelling up to his father. Bread Papa. Bread. His father kept trying to console him, fearing what the soldiers might do if he didn’t calm down.
Look straight, his father begged. There’s no bread now. Papa has bread for after the picture. He smiled softly at his son, but the poor kid probably hadn’t eaten in a day now. He started crying then quickly broke into screams.
I’m hungry Papa! The boy alerted one of the soldiers by the camera.
Get that child under control. You will be fed after.
You see! Food will come. Be patient. Be patient my son. Your food will come. The child stopped crying. His father picked him up.
Down! One of the soldiers called over. Fathers stand with their sons!
His father reluctantly let him back down. His son continued to pout. Let me up Papa!
His father responded discreetly this time. The soldiers would not accept a third interruption. He placed his hand on the boy’s head and turned it towards the camera. You will smile, he whispered. The boy was defeated. And I could hear him whimpering quietly.
A soldier lifted his gun and pointed it at the group. I could feel my mother’s fingers tighten under my thigh. Everyone smile and wave! The camera flashed.
And with that, one of the men in the line fell to the ground. Flies scattered from his mouth. This happened sometimes. Flies would lay eggs in open wounds and maggots would gnaw at their flesh. I’d seen this man before. I’m not sure why the soldiers let him come out for the picture.
A soldier went up to the man and prodded him with his gun, checking to see if he was dead. The soldier chuckled a little and then reached down for the man’s ear, dragging him away by the lobe. His head and body crept along effortlessly. His legs and arms were so apparently gangly. My mother covered my eyes.
This sent the other soldiers into a fit of laughter. HAAA, one soldier laughed. What large ears they have!!
Once they calmed down, we regrouped and they took the picture. I have the first copy, the one with the dead man, and the second, where we looked happy. As a boy, I didn’t know what great danger we were actually in. My mother had a way, with her winks and toothy smile, to shroud my consciousness from the dismal reality of it all. Even on that day, when I pointed instead of waving, I was fascinated by how the snow mixed with the ash from the towers. White and black falling together. Salt and pepper at the same time. That didn’t happen often.
Now that she’s gone, I tell people what it was like and what she did for me. The pictures are a critical point of my testimony, though most don’t understand the photos at all. In fact, my daughter said it best when I showed it to her here at the hospital.
Well, Dad, she said confused. Her face was scrunched questioningly. She was still that cute little inquisitive girl I had raised. These are just lists of words.
