Unlikely Brothers

by John Prendergast

  Getting to know Michael and James made me want to learn more about homelessness in general. It turns out that most people that go to shelters aren’t the folks with mental illnesses that we usually see in the streets. That’s a very small percentage. Most are families or individuals who have lost jobs, are battling drug or alcohol addictions, or have come out of prison with no support structures. Nearly half of the people who spend time at shelters have worked in the past thirty days. That has always blown me away. Shelters are definitely the last safety net, but the system is full of gaping holes and crushing indignities for the people in them, and not enough has been done over the years to address the root causes in terms of developing treatment programs, employment opportunities, and subsidized permanent housing. If, as they say, a society should be judged for the quality of mercy for its least fortunate, America has a long way to go.

  When they finally did get an apartment, down in Southeast D.C., their old Uncle Artie came to live off of them. He was about the skinniest man I’ve ever seen, and completely spaced out all the time. Near as I could tell, he didn’t do anything but sit in the house and drink all day. He was the friendliest parasitic fella I’d ever met; if the boys had fifteen cents in their pockets, he’d figure a way to get it off them so he could get something to drink, and do it all with a smile. Michael and James were probably eating every day, but it’s not like it was always at the same time and with the same people, and most of the time it was probably cereal, chips, or white bread out of the package with a little peanut butter.

  The boys didn’t have one single positive role model in their entire life. I had this idea that having gotten to them early enough, I could show them a positive way to be a man. And that I could do it in a way that wouldn’t cost me anything. I thought I could swoop in, make a splash, do something of lasting value, and get out without much personal responsibility on my part—sort of a rent-a-dad.

  A part of me thought that I could use Michael and James to correct my father’s mistakes. I told myself that unlike my dad, I would appreciate the boys for who they were instead of creating some impossible ideal in my mind that would constantly be disabused by reality. And I would stick by them no matter what they did or what they became, I thought. My father may not have been able to deal with it when I became a teenager, as so many parents can’t, but I’d be bigger than that. I’d be smarter. I’d be more compassionate.

  In retrospect, it seems that yet another way I was using my relationship with Michael and James for my own gratification was that for the first time in my life, I wanted to be seen. I’d spent so many years hiding—in the bushes, in the neighbor’s garage, in the basement, behind towels—that I’d forgotten how good it could feel to be visible. When Michael, James, and I were out on the street, you couldn’t not look at us; we were like a circus barreling along—running, jumping, shouting, throwing balls in the air. And I was loving it. I felt needed by the boys, and for the first time I really wanted to be visible.

  So there I was, checking off boxes, earnestly rubbing my guilt-inflamed Catholic martyr’s ego up against the problems of the world, externalizing and intellectualizing everything, and Michael and James did an end run around all that and completely unmanned me. I’d go to pick them up, they’d gaze up at me with those eager faces of theirs, and something inside my chest would simply dissolve. They were the first people I’d encountered who were thoroughly nonjudgmental; they didn’t see acne scars or any of my other flaws, and they didn’t measure my performance. They were just kids, wanting to go out and play. And unlike everybody else I encountered, Michael and James were completely available to be nurtured. Against my will I was finding that they were stirring up a part of me that I’d let atrophy all those dark years. I’d grown a thick skin against everything, it turned out, but unconditional love. They directed a big fat beam of it at me and knocked me right over.

  I found myself, for the first time, not skipping off to the next thing. I found myself looking forward to seeing them, to heading down to Southeast D.C. not to punch my ticket, and not out of any kind of save-the-world altruism, but because I couldn’t wait to have fun with those little guys again. Some of the neighbors down in Southeast told me they thought I was a cop. What other white guy would come down there? I was driving the ugliest car ever built—a big beige station wagon my buddies called “the fleshmobile.” I’d load the boys into that, drive over to our favorite getaway, and we’d get out there on the Potomac River with our fishing rods, or go ramming around in the woods on the island. After all the hard work I was doing, being with the boys I’d completely lose myself in being a kid. With nobody judging me. Nobody expressing disappointment in me. With Michael and James I could enjoy brother-play in a way I’d never done with Luke. I felt like a fist unclenching for the first time.

  One thing I learned early on was that even though they had let him down in every way you can think of, Michael was, naturally, absolutely committed to his family. If I asked something like, “Did anybody feed you today?” Michael would peel back his little shoulders, looking like he was ready to throw down. “My mom’s got it hard,” he’d say. “She’s doing the best she can.” He never blamed her, never held anything against her. He even defended Uncle Artie to me; said he was a good listener. Artie!

  Michael would bring it up again and again. We’d be fishing, or lying on our backs in the park looking at clouds, and he’d suddenly say, “I’m going to get my family settled someplace. I’m going to get them a house, someplace they’ll be safe.” Eight years old! I guess being the oldest son in a family like that, he could have gone one of two ways. He could easily have said, Screw it, I’m going to do like what I see around me and just get mine. Instead, though, he drew the opposite lesson, that he was going to do well and support his family when he got the chance. How he planned to learn a better way was a mystery to me. He had nobody to look up to around him. I mean, I held jobs and all, but I was not the greatest child-rearing role model.

  James was more of a puzzle than Michael. Michael was sweet all the time—open and trusting. James, though, … James kept a part of himself guarded. We’d have fun together, and James would play and be as giggly and rambunctious as any kid. But part of him would hang back; he wouldn’t engage with me as deeply and as willingly as Michael did.

  And then there was his temper, which was genuinely scary. James would be smiling and joking one moment, and the next he’d be a damned dervish, swinging his fists with reckless abandon. Often I wouldn’t even know what set it off. We’d be fishing, or throwing a football around in a park, or climbing on a jungle-gym somewhere, having a great time, and suddenly James would be whaling the stuffings out of some poor kid on the playground. I’d have to pull him off. Later, I’d try to deconstruct what had happened, and it was always something tiny. A kid fouled him playing basketball. Another kid taunted him from the top of the jungle-gym. Somebody grabbed a bite of his popsicle without asking. Each time, it seemed, the thing that set James off was some slight, some tiny gesture of disrespect—something that any other kid, like Michael, would probably let go. James couldn’t let anything go.

  James had a real feeling of aggrievedness in him—a deep, tortured sense of having been wronged. Somebody in the family told me that James had been abused when he was really young, but I didn’t know any details, and I never confirmed the story. Kids who act out in this way often have suffered trauma and abuse. I’d try to ask Michael and Denise about it, but they’d evade the questions. All I ever heard was what a good man James’ father Willie had been before he got sick and wandered off. Still, I couldn’t help wondering. The wounds in James were so fresh, so painful, and so close to the surface.

  That summer of 1983, I was supporting myself by working weekends with a family of Russian-American landscapers in Philadelphia, related to my buddy Nick, one of my old high school basketball teammates. I’d race up I-95 on Friday from D.C. and bust sod in the hot sun all weekend. The work was hard, but it was cold cash, and two days
of it would support a week of living like a monk in D.C. I’d stay with my parents while in Philly, despite the fact that I was still not on speaking terms with my dad. The yelling had lessened, but the volcano was smoldering; I simply refused to acknowledge he existed.

  One weekend I asked Denise if the boys could come with me. For some reason James couldn’t go, but Michael was available and he was eager for anything. Denise said sure. I’m sure she was glad to have at least one of them out from underfoot for a couple of days. By that time, she also had Elsie, who was just a baby.

  Michael and I traveled up to Philadelphia on the train for some reason; maybe the fleshmobile was broken down. You’d have thought I was taking him on a rocket to Mars; he was so excited. It was his first train trip. I bought him something to snack on, and he sat by the window, shouting out everything he saw. I’m sure it was a long trip for the other people in the railcar.

  When we arrived at the station in Philadelphia, my parents were standing on the platform, which floored me. They gave Michael a hero’s welcome, as though he was their grandchild and not a complete stranger dragged home by their odd, uncommunicative son. Yet here was my dad, hugging and clowning with this little kid he’d never met, simply because I’d brought him home with me.

  I could see Michael’s eyes grow wide as we pulled into the driveway of the house in Berwyn. It had so much green grass around, such big flowering shrubs and towering trees. To him, it must have looked like Beverly Hills. My dad kept up his usual little-kid patter the whole way home—playing car bingo and “I Spy” and telling stories in a torrent of good cheer. In retrospect, it seems an act of supreme selfishness, on my part, to bring an eight-year-old stranger to my parents’ house and expect them to look after him while I went to work with the Russian landscapers. But hard as my relationship with my parents was, I knew that they would love having Michael invade their space. Luke and I were grown. It had been a while since they had little-boy energy filling up that big house of theirs. Perhaps my dad couldn’t deal with a teenager who talked back and had his own ideas about his life, but a boy who hadn’t already heard all his jokes and stories? That was heaven.

  Was I hesitant about imposing a little kid on my parents? Not at all. Michael was one of God’s children. He needed love, and they had plenty to spare. And along the way, Michael could be a great Robin to Dad’s daily Batman adventures. Also, you’d have had to be made of stone not to find young Michael Mattocks completely loveable.

  Michael, baiting a hook

  3. “The Gifts Which We Are About to Receive”

  MICHAEL MATTOCKS

  My mother got herself a good boyfriend down in Southeast. His real name was Larry, but everybody called him Don. He worked at NASA and made real money. Don was a clean-cut dude, and jolly. Being a janitor and all, he kept his place real nice. Before he and my mom started seeing each other, she’d bring all us kids by his apartment so he could babysit. He would correct us if we were out of line, but he was never mean to us. He used to buy us Christmas, and take us places. We all liked him a lot; he was probably my favorite of my mother’s boyfriends.

  J.P. was coming around a lot in those days. Sometimes it would be every day. He never stayed around the house with us; the whole point seemed to get us out of the house. Sabrina would go with us sometimes, but usually it was just me and James. I tried to be good all the time with J.P.; I knew he was doing something nice for us, and I didn’t want to be no trouble. James, though. Just about every time we’d go someplace, James would end up getting in a fight with somebody. I used to feel bad about that; I mean, bringing that all down on J.P. wasn’t fair. J.P. didn’t seem to mind too much though. He’d just pull James off whoever it was James was fighting, and right away everything would calm back down. My mom could never do that. She’d break up a fight and then give James a licking, and the whole situation would get louder and more tense.

  One day J.P. said he was going to visit his parents in Philadelphia for the weekend and did I want to go. Did I? James didn’t come with us; he was sick. J.P. took me to the train station, and there on the platform sat this big-ass shiny silver train. It was hissing and rumbling, and I was about out of my mind with excitement. J.P. bought me a bag of peanuts and let me have the window seat. I couldn’t believe how fast that thing went! We were flying! Before I knew it, we were in Philadelphia. “Come on, buddy,” J.P. said, standing up as the train slowed down. He always called me “buddy.” Then he looked through the window, saw something, and said to himself, “Whoaaaa.”

  His mom and dad were waiting for us there on the platform. It looked to me like J.P. hadn’t expected that and didn’t quite know what to make of it. His mom gave him a hug, but it was like he and his dad were in two different worlds; they didn’t even look at each other. I could see right away something was a little weird between them. J.P.’s dad, though, he wrapped me up in a big old hug. I hadn’t had a man hug me like that since Willie. J.P.’s mom too; she hugged me.

  I admit I was a little scared getting in their car and driving off with them. If J.P. hadn’t been there, I probably wouldn’t have gone. The whole thing was so new and different. All this fuss they were making over a kid; I wasn’t used to that. And the big, rich houses out the window were like something out of a movie or a storybook. J.P.’s father seemed to be working awfully hard to make me laugh and keep me calm. He kept up a solid stream of jokes all the way home. I wasn’t all that used to men to begin with, especially ones making a lot of effort to be nice to a kid. I admit that until I knew J.P.’s parents better, I felt a little like those kids in the fairy tale who get given lots of candy by the witch to fatten them up for the pot.

  And man, their house! It was on this long road with no sidewalks, and we turned into a driveway like another whole road. It ended at this big-ass house, standing all by itself and not attached to the ones next to it; I hadn’t seen too many of those in my life. Trees all around, flowers, big bushes with blossoms on them, and a big dog. I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into.

  J.P.’s dad took me through the house, while the big dog followed us licking me and trying to get me to play. They had lots of Jesus things on the wall, I do remember that. And pictures of J.P. and his brother everywhere. The house went on and on, rooms after rooms. All the furniture matched. Nice rugs. Clean. And quiet—quiet like I’d never heard in Washington. Out the back door was a little swimming pool! J.P. had taken me to pools a couple of times in Washington, but they were indoors, and kind of mossy, and full of people. This one sat out in the sunshine with the water all sparkly, and it was all for them. Nobody else in it. J.P.’s dad said he’d teach me to swim.

  Mrs. P called us in to dinner, but as I started approaching the table, she took me by the shoulders and marched me into a bathroom where she stood over me as I washed my hands. We sat at a table set all nice like in a fancy restaurant, and I reached for a thick slice of bread poking up from a pretty basket with a napkin in it. But J.P. touched me on the arm. His mom had her eyes closed and her head bowed, with her hands folded in front her. “Let us pray,” she said, and I folded up my hands like hers and bowed my head, but didn’t close my eyes. I wanted to see this shit. J.P. had his hands folded and his eyes closed too. “Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.” We unfolded our hands, and Mrs. P started handing around food.

  I always got enough to eat at home, but man, the meal Mrs. P cooked for us! It was vegetable lasagna; I’ll never forget that. Vegetable lasagna! And milk! Mrs. P put a big glass of it in front of me and told me to drink it all up. I didn’t drink much milk, usually. We put it on cereal. But something about that milk, all cold, in a real pretty glass, tasted special. I drank it all up, and she poured me another glass. We had salad with lots of things in it I didn’t recognize—cucumbers, probably. Radishes. And a cake for dessert. Man!

  We played Ping-Pong in their big basement after dinner, and then when it was time for bed, they l
et me sleep in J.P.’s old room. I wasn’t used to sleeping in a room all by myself and was a little freaked out there in the dark, and the quiet. Then came a tapping at the door, and in walked J.P.’s dad. “Hey,” he whispered. “Want me to tell you a story?”

  “Sure,” I said, struggling to sit up.

  “No, you stay lying down. Close your eyes. Now this is the story of a little boy who lived in the swamps of Florida back in the last century. And you know what? He had a pet deer. He called his deer Flag because when it ran, its white tail popped up like a flag. Now, this boy …” On he went, for what seemed like hours. The boy and his dad killed a big bear, and went hunting, and got lost. Then one day the deer ate the family’s garden, and the boy had to tie him up, but he got free and finally came the day that the boy’s mother shot the deer. Only she made a mess of it, only hit the deer in the leg, and it ran off, and the boy had to chase after it with a gun and kill it his own self. My eyes started to close because I figured that was the end of the story, but he kept right on going. That boy built himself an airplane and went flying out West where he made friends with lots of animals and formed them up into a little army, and they went around freeing other animals from zoos.… Well, at some point I fell asleep. I don’t know how long J.P.’s dad sat there telling that story, but it sounded to me like he could have gone all night.

  The next morning J.P. went off to work some job. Mr. P drove me into town, and as we were speeding along, he suddenly said, “Hold on!” and the car went over a really big bump. For a second it felt like we were flying. I laughed and laughed, so hard that Mr. P said, “Should we do it again?”

  “Yeah!” I shouted, and damned if he didn’t stop that car, turn it around and go back over that bump at top speed. And then again. When we got tired of that he took me to a shoe store and said I could have any pair of shoes I liked. I got me some sharp Nikes; my first. Then we had some ice cream. J.P.’s dad was a lot like J.P. He asked me questions all the time: How many brothers and sisters did I have? What did I like doing after school? What’s my favorite flavor of ice cream? What’s the best part of Saturdays? Did I go to church? I did my best to keep up, but damn, the questions kept coming. He was also like J.P. in that he just took me around no matter what he had going on.