Mama's Boy

by Dustin Lance Black

  Upon his arrival, the leadership of our ward moved quickly to get Merrill involved in church activities. He soon rose to be the leader of Boy Scout Troop 624, our church’s very own troop, and thus became Marcus’s new Scoutmaster. Merrill liked going to church dances and could be seen spinning and dipping various children on special Saturday nights. And Merrill tended to wear a smile—although it was always a bit crooked, a lot like our old neighbor’s smile after her second stroke.

  Last, but certainly not least, Merrill’s curly hair reminded me of a Brillo pad, and I thought for sure its inky color had inspired his last name: Black. His last name was by far the coolest thing about him. The second coolest was that he didn’t mind spending time with my mom.

  What I wouldn’t understand for several more years was that according to our church’s deepest beliefs, a person could get to the highest level of heaven only if he or she were married. Single people are sent to lower, less valuable real estate—celestial suburbs with a few more fences and a little more crime. And it’s not that the church arranges marriages, not exactly, but concerned that these two “unmarriageable” members might not make it to heaven’s A-list, our bishop played matchmaker. Trouble is, as I’ve said before, when a leader in the Mormon Church “encourages” a member do anything, the understanding is that the request has come from heaven itself and ought to be honored.

  When Merrill finally got up the nerve to ask Anne on a date, her heart didn’t leap. She knew Raul had been her one and only chance at having it all, and she’d grown to accept that perhaps he’d married her only for a draft deferment—or worse, that he’d loved her and she’d screwed it up. Regardless, such happiness wasn’t in the cards anymore, not for someone in her condition, at her age, saddled with three young, mud-loving boys. She was lucky to have been asked at all. And if she ever wanted that perfect body she’d been promised, she needed heaven’s top floor. Merrill held that ticket. So she plugged her nose and said yes.

  Marcus was blunt about the situation. He told me he saw Merrill as a paycheck and a way out of poverty. I didn’t feel our poverty like Marcus did. I ate like a bird, so I was rarely hungry at night like he was. I had only ever known the free lunch line at school, and I liked the plain nature of the clearance-rack clothes. They drew less attention. At four years old, Todd didn’t care how tattered his clothes were. Catching tadpoles by my side was all he knew, and that seemed to be enough for him. Still, I saw the wisdom in having a set of working grown-up legs around. And how cool would it be to have the Scoutmaster as our stepdad? That would surely win me a friend or two, right? So I followed Marcus’s lead and put on my best-behavior show whenever Merrill came around.

  Mere months after our mom’s first date with Merrill came that very special night when all of our mortal and celestial concerns found themselves an answer. My mom’s hair was perfect. She’d put on a Sunday dress despite it being Tuesday. She took her place on our tattered, faux-leather living room couch, and when Merrill arrived, he took his place next to her. Marcus, Todd, and I gathered before them. It looked like a community college theater production of a family drama, and it felt worse. In the end, Merrill was too nervous to share the big news himself, so my mom did it: “Guys, Merrill has asked me something….He’s asked me to marry him.” Silence. We weren’t stunned—we’d seen this coming—it was just that it felt exactly like what it really was: a solution to a problem, not a cause for celebration. She added, “What do you guys think about that?”

  Marcus grinned bigger than he’d ever naturally done, so I echoed his fake smile and added a nod or two. Todd didn’t know what to make of it all and didn’t seem to care much. Our mom finally added, “Well, I told Merrill yes…as long as you guys think it’s okay.”

  Marcus nodded, I vocalized a weird “Yes,” and Todd said nothing. She then laid out what would come next: “We’re going to plan a trip to a temple in Utah. No big ceremony. And children aren’t allowed in the temple, so it’ll just be us. But when we get back, we’ll be a family. What do you guys think of that?”

  Playing his part to perfection, Marcus outright hugged Merrill. Like most of the other “stoner” kids, Marcus had chosen drama class as an alternative to PE and had grown into a rather good little actor. His performance on this night was stellar, and I admired that.

  But I remember looking my mom in the eyes that night, telling her how much I loved her, and giving her a kiss. I’ll never forget the long look she gave me in return. She wasn’t in love. The only joy in her eyes was that which springs from putting your children’s needs before your own. I’d seen it many times before. I just never thought I’d see it on the day she told me she was going to get married—much less the whisper of terror that lived just behind it.

  * * *

  —

  On September 4, 1982, Roseanna Garrison became Roseanna Black in an LDS ceremony that took place behind a Mormon temple’s closed doors. Upon her and Merrill’s return, it was time for me to turn over my role as man of the house to our family’s new “priesthood holder.” And then, as quickly as we could arrange it, Merrill Black baptized me in the font behind the accordion screen in the middle of our church. I was now a man in the eyes of our Heavenly Father, responsible for any and all of my sins moving forward. As relieved as I was to be free from punishment for my few convenience-store baseball-card heists, I was equally aware that if I ever acted on the “homo thing” now, there was no escaping the devil’s hot spot. From here on out, I had to be on my very best behavior, and for me that included chasing away any impure thoughts.

  Beyond concerns of heaven and hell, Merrill’s arrival provided one other opportunity to help cleanse the past. Raul’s last name was a daily reminder of his abandonment. Despite my mom’s assurances that his leaving had nothing to do with me, hearing his last name increasingly led to self-loathing. I wanted a new name, and the courts in Texas seemed willing to hear that wish in the form of a legal adoption proceeding by Merrill. I led the name-change charge, and Marcus and Todd happily followed. I even helped my mom put the court-required ad in the newspaper to notify the world just in case Raul wanted to fight it. I’ll never forget the day my mom came home from work, opened up the mail, and showed us a copy of the court order that made our adoption official. It was on long, legal, baby-blue and white paper. And from that moment on, I was Dustin Lance Black. I loved the ring of it then, and still do today. But Merrill’s last name would prove the only good thing this monster-in-waiting would ever provide.

  II

  The next many months get fuzzy. My memory has mercifully blurred some of the oft-recurring dark episodes. But other moments were so distinct that their details stuck.

  Within weeks of their temple wedding, Merrill moved into our little rental house in Live Oak. It turned out I hadn’t cleaned my room to the standards of an LDS staff sergeant Scoutmaster, and I was getting a good tongue lashing for it. I had always considered myself the tidiest of our trio, so I stood in the doorway of my room protecting it from the intrusion of his standards, my eight-year-old mind reasoning that this man was only our stepfather, and a brand-new one at that. Concessions and compromises would have to be made. Then, rather sure of my argument, I told Merrill just that.

  In a split second, this “nice enough” man we had known for over a year stopped breathing. His face turned a deep blue-red, his forehead wrinkled like a bulldog’s, and the bags under his eyes began to quiver. This was a man I’d never met before. And when he moved again, he did so with the full strength of a six-foot-something military man’s fist crashing squarely into my eight-year-old face.

  Getting punched in the face isn’t what the movies make it out to be. It made a loud smack, not some dull thud. My thin neck whipped back, and my body followed, slamming onto the hard linoleum floor of our bedroom and into my latest Lego creation. Bang! I vanished for a moment or two. I don’t know if he knocked me out cold or if the pain was just too terr
ible to record. When I came to, I didn’t cry. I may have been the quiet, shy future “homo,” but I was no fool or chickenshit. I knew I couldn’t show any weakness right then. Instead, I shouted at the top of my lungs to Marcus, “Call Mom!” But she was at work, a forty-minute drive away. So I stood back up, as tall and strong as I could, and stared into Merrill’s suddenly hollow face, daring him to punch me again, to finish the job. I didn’t bother wiping away the blood that was now dripping from my nose onto the white floor. I made him see it. Because I was a Texas boy before all else.

  My mother raced home and crashed through the door. The blood from my nose was now crusted onto my top lip; my eyes were already turning black and swelling shut. But I wasn’t the most alarming sight. That title belonged to Merrill, who had turned into a sobbing child, hunched in a corner of the room, already begging for my mother’s mercy as snot dripped from his nose. As I look back now, his performance made it clear that this had happened before, likely with his previous family, and he knew exactly how to play the moment. I remember hearing my little mom laying into this big sobbing soldier: “If you ever lay a hand on my son again, I. Will. Kill. You. You son of a bitch.”

  He had no answer for that, just more snot and tears.

  Who’s the pansy now? I thought.

  I didn’t have to go back to school for a while, not until my eyes no longer looked like a raccoon’s. Merrill had to go to meetings with our bishop and my mom each week. Only then did my mom find out that Merrill’s first marriage had ended thanks to similar violence that a church report had labeled an attempted murder. Merrill had asked for forgiveness and sought treatment through the church, and evidently that was enough to make our own bishop leave this detail out during his matchmaking.

  A week or two later, we all donned our Sunday finest and our best fake smiles and snapped our annual family portrait at Olan Mills Portrait Studio. And as the jolly photographer positioned us just so, I could still feel my mother’s gentle brushstrokes where she’d painted flesh-colored makeup over the fading black in the corners of my eyes. Somehow the previous pain all seemed worth it for this moment. My mom’s care and attention is what I lived for. And I’d always wanted to experiment with her makeup but never dared. Now I thought, With her at my side, I can make it through anything. I can survive this.

  Unfortunately, all the counseling in the world from the Mormon Church couldn’t help Merrill control his temper. He would lash out again and again over the next few years, in ways big and small. Such as the time my mom accompanied him to pick up his mother from the airport. Everything had been going great; the house was spotless, some discount meat was in the Crock-Pot, and everyone was excited. Then my mom said something Merrill didn’t like, and he backhanded her hard across the face. Her eyes turned black like mine had, and she told everyone she’d fallen. It was the same lie I’d been coached to tell, so Marcus and I didn’t buy it, and our protective instincts began to kick into high gear.

  But here’s how our situation was different from that of others in similarly precarious positions: we weren’t allowed to turn to traditional avenues for protection. Even after Merrill blackened my mom’s eyes, the church still didn’t want the police involved. They considered ours a domestic dilemma of eternal consequence that should remain in the hands of the church.

  This was my first up-close look at a deep division between two tribes most imagine would be well aligned—a rift between two powerful, conservative institutions: our church and our state’s law enforcement. It’s a divide whose roots date back to the origins of the LDS Church. You see, Mormons were a brand-new minority in the early 1800s, and just too different for most other Christian folks. So in an effort to get Mormons out of town, their homes were burned, their cattle killed; my forefathers were tarred, feathered, and senselessly slaughtered by militias, and our first prophet, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a government that refused to protect him and his “peculiar people.” The church’s second prophet, Brigham Young, even threatened war against the U.S. government if it didn’t stop harassing his faithful.

  Conveniently leaving out our church’s uncomfortable polygamist history, these stories of government-sanctioned persecution were still being shared in Sunday school lessons when I was a boy. And although we were encouraged to run for public office or sign up for the military, a general distrust for the U.S. government lingered—a feeling that at any moment, no matter how virtuous a citizen or soldier we were, our government might come for us again. This further explains the money from the Mormon Church in our mailbox after Raul’s vanishing act. The church would rather we take care of our own and not lean on the government for help. So now, again, we were forced to lean on our church’s instruction during Merrill’s latest reign of terror. We were told to never call the cops.

  I dreamed of calling 911, of the brave Texas police officers who would quickly arrive. Tough and grizzled, they wouldn’t let it stand if they discovered a paralyzed wife and her children were being beaten by a man who smelled like old bread. They believed in right and wrong, not some LDS mumbo-jumbo about who Heavenly Father had blessed with “priesthood authority” in the home. “Bullshit,” they’d bark. And I would ask God to forgive them for the curse word. I dreamed of seeing these cowboy hat–wearing cops bust down the front door, tackle Merrill to the ground, and press his face to the cold linoleum he’d knocked me down onto. A few kicks in the ribs, and they’d read him his rights and drag him away for good.

  Instead, we caved to the fear of eternal damnation, obeyed the church, and lied our asses off at school and in our neighborhood. We must have seemed like the clumsiest kids in San Antonio. My homeroom teacher even chided me when I showed up with a new shiner under my right eye. “Maybe if you kept your head out of the clouds, you could keep your feet on the ground, Dustin.” I didn’t bother telling her that the people I actually cared for called me Lance. I was raging inside: against Merrill, against a world that was set up to allow this. But for now, all I could do was look for ways to make myself scarce at home.

  * * *

  —

  I increasingly spent my afternoons with Todd, whom I tried my best to shield from the terrible truth of our home life. We would go on long bike rides through San Antonio’s flash-flood drainage ditches turned tween bicycle superhighways—anything to keep Todd from landing in Merrill’s crosshairs. Todd was my responsibility, my pride and joy, and I wanted to protect his innocence. Most often we’d end up at Farmers Lake to gather worms, lizards, snakes, and every other sort of witches’ brew ingredient. That lake was my respite. Dappled Texas sunlight under tall trees, cool waters teeming with fish, cutoff-jean swim trunks, knotted-up rope swings, and an endless supply of tadpoles. This was the life I loved. The America I loved. The South I still treasure and hunger for.

  One Saturday afternoon in 1984, Todd and I had just returned from Farmers Lake with a heavy bucket of tadpoles. The most sociable and good-looking of us three boys, Todd coolly crossed the street to chat up two cute girls jumping through their mom’s sprinkler, and I got busy hiding our bucket of tadpoles in the bushes near our front door so I could steal glances over the next few weeks as they grew legs and arms and turned into frogs. Soon there would be a chorus of frogs every night. I was lost in the thrill of the day’s haul when I heard the most memorable sound of my first decade of life coming from inside our house. There were no words; it was more primal than words: it was my mother’s voice buried somewhere deep inside a terrible, ear-splitting scream.

  My adrenaline surged. I rushed through the front door just in time to see my mom racing up the hallway, her arms pulling her torso and legs up and forward with all her might, then thrusting her crutches forward as far as she could, again and again, running for her life as she tried to reach her bedroom door and lock it behind her. In her scream, I heard a plea for me to run, but it was all too nightmarish to believe, and I froze. Then Merrill came charging out of the kitc
hen after my mom, gripping a knife. This was no nightmare. This was real. My mom disappeared from view up the hallway, but there was no way she could outrun a grown man with two working legs. As Merrill disappeared around the same corner, I remained motionless, waiting for the most precious thing in the world to be ripped away from me like all precious things had. This beast, whose name I had just taken, was about to murder my mom.

  Then, like some miniature mob-boss vigilante, Marcus came flying in through the back door. He had an aluminum baseball bat gripped in his right hand, his face raging with a lifetime of hell and rejection. He vanished down the same hallway, and a second later I heard the first terrible Bing! As it rang out, I came unstuck. Taking two steps forward I could now see down the hall. Bing! Bing! Bing! Thirteen-year-old Marcus was beating the living daylights out of Merrill. Bing! Bing! Bing! Fast, brutal, effective. Merrill ducked into the bathroom to escape the blows and locked himself inside.