Tama Janowitz

They Is Us


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      THEY IS US

       A cautionary horror story

       Tama Janowitz

       Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      The Friday Project

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Copyright © Tama Janowitz 2008

      Tama Janowitz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9781906321307

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007380954 Version: 2016-10-05

       Dedication

      To Fay Weldon and Nick Fox

      

      “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

      

      Walt Kelly, poster caption for World Earth Day, 1973

       Epigraph

       The Small Loaf of an Artist in Society

      Two chihuahuas have tiny pillowcases

      pulled over their heads with holes cut out for eyes and noses. Are they members of the Ku Klux Klan?

      We do not know. Only, they must

      itchy in this warm dampness, this summer sprinkled with peppery flies over the ash can of our lives.

      What has blighted the stout cart-

      puller, the homebody, the watch cur, Beware of the Dog, a sign leading to reticence in strangers.

      All is changed, deranged and gone,

      even slouches have a political roll to fill. This is not a country for old schnauzers or dull doubters

      who muddle and fiddle and refuse

      to remember the name of the street they live on simply because they’ve changed address once too often

      and their furniture grows

      molds and fungi in a warehouse in Walla-Walla Washington. Changes! Get used to them! Some young rabble

      rouser keeps yelling in the parking

      lot on Twenty-Third street, where the organ grinder used to play O sole Mio just beneath the windows

      of our mansion and his monkey tipped

      his hat in mock thanks for the penny that we threw him, although he cavorted on hollyhocks and crushed petunias in

      our Moorish garden, but it’s too late

      for giving an artist advice, who having taken on the guise (gorge and hackles) of a purebred dalmatian, is polymorphous perverse now, indeed always has been.

       Phyllis Janowitz

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       7B

       8

       9

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

       16

       17

       18

       19

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