by Cory Hiles
I didn’t know that I should have friends, or that my mother should have been taking care of me. I had no idea that the lifestyle I was living was completely inappropriate. I simply assumed that it was the normal way that people lived.
At any rate, if someone had asked me what I thought of my life at that point I would have probably shrugged and said something like, “It’s ok, I guess.” I knew I was bitterly lonesome, but I could mostly fix that with books and television. I knew I was scared a lot, but I could also mostly fix that with books and television. It wasn’t until June 12th, 1990—the day when dawning realization crashed over me like tidal surf—that I understood how bad my life was…and it was about to get worse.
CHAPTER 5
During my mother’s rousing rendition of a starving savage clubbing a pig to death with a Playboy magazine, I’d blacked out. When I awoke my first thought was, ‘Dear God! That crazy Bitch knocked my eyeballs out of my head!’
My second thought, which followed pretty close after the first, was ‘Whoa, Buddy, you’d better cut back on that cable television talk before that lunatic finds a reason rip your tongue out too!’ After these two thoughts finished their journey through my jumbled mind I took panicked stock of my situation.
I truly was blind. I blinked a few times, shutting my eyes at tight as I could and then popping them open suddenly as if that manic action would force them to work better. It didn’t, I still couldn’t see anything at all and I began to panic a bit more.
I started screaming for my mother.
“Mama…Mama!” I screamed. “Where are you Mama?”
There was no response and I noticed that my voice sounded muffled, like it was being absorbed into its surroundings. A thought tickled the back of my mind but I couldn’t quite bring the thought to maturity. My panic grew.
I started to thrash around (as if that was really going to do any damned good), and winced as my sore, tired body protested against any sudden movement. I decided that laying still and screaming my fool head off was a much better solution to my problems.
I screamed louder, my panic escalating from blossom to full bloom.
“Mama! I’m scared, Mama! Where are you?”
My voice still sounded odd and that thought was still tickling my brain. If I had been able to calm down and scratch the itch that the thought was creating I probably could have saved myself from the sore throat I ended up with, but I was too busy panicking to think coherently.
I lay on my back with my head up and screamed at the top of my lungs until I was hoarse. I begged, pleaded, threatened, and even cursed at the top of my lungs. There was no response.
When I was too tired to make much more noise than a small scratchy whisper I finally stopped. I laid my head back down a bit too hard and winced as it connected with a solid, irregular floor.
When my head thumped on the floor it seemed to knock that niggling, tickling thought from the back of my mind to the front.
‘Why is the floor so hard?’ I wondered. ‘Why does my voice sound funny and yet familiar? Why is the air so musty?’
I put my palms against the floor and felt around. The floor was rough and cold. Small ridges swirled beneath my palms as I dragged them across the surface. A small pile of grit built up under my palms as I swept them across the surface.
“Cement,” I croaked out loud with triumphant satisfaction. I had unraveled the mystery of the floor and with that revelation several others came bursting forth like Fourth of July fireworks exploding in my brain.
‘I’m in the basement! That’s why my voice sounds funny! I’m not blind, it’s only dark!’
As these revelations washed over me they washed the last of my panic away with them. I was going to be okay after all, I thought. All I had to do was figure out where the stairs were and crawl up them and head out the door.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and began to swivel my head around. Taking stock of my situation without the blinding effects of panic worked out much better for me. For starters I could see that it was not actually pitch dark as I had originally thought. Directly behind me there was a very faint wash of light on one end of the small basement that originated from a bright horizontal line of light about seven feet above my head and off to the left.
The line of light was only about a half inch thick and about three feet long. I puzzled on that line of light for a couple seconds before I realized that it was light shining under the door that led out of the basement.
I closed my eyes and visualized the basement the way I’d seen it with the light on and figured that I was right in the middle of the small room. To my left would be the washer and drier. To the right would be a rack with several shelves filled with dry and canned goods. On one end of that rack would be the big upright freezer where I loaded all the overflow of perishables that wouldn’t fit in the fridge and freezer in the kitchen. The other end of the rack pointed towards the stairs.
Since I had turned around and was now facing towards the door and stairs, I knew that I was facing north and directly behind me was all the storage. Boxes filled with miscellaneous knick knacks, old clothes, Christmas decorations, and other such odds and ends were stacked against the retaining wall on the south-east side of the basement.
A couple old lawn-chairs, a table with a broken leg, an old wicker picnic basket, a musty old twin mattress, and a bunch of other stuff that my mind couldn’t quite bring into focus was piled up against the south-west and west walls.
All around the washing machine to my left would be baskets of clean and dirty laundry, (mostly dirty). My mother had long since given up on washing clothes and I was honestly not that particular about doing it myself, although I had learned how to do it and did occasionally wash a few clothes and towels when I started feeling particularly grubby.
There was a shelf above the washer that contained all the normal things you should find in a laundry area, soap, bleach, and drier sheets. Right in front of the Washer there would be the small stool that I had dragged over months prior so that I could reach the items on the shelf.
On the south side of the washer was a big cabinet filled with linens. That cabinet had not been opened for months as my mother had stopped changing the sheets on our beds when she went bonkers, and I really didn’t care if my sheets were dirty or not.
Directly beside the washer, on the north side of it, was the drier, and directly north of the drier was a large trash can where the lint from the lint screen was deposited.
With my visualization on the basement complete I felt confident enough to stand up and head towards the stairs. I opened my eyes and focused them on the narrow strip of light that shone several feet in front of, and above me. I took two confident strides towards the stairs and then tripped ungracefully over the small stepstool that I thought should have been further off to my left.
I threw my arms out in front of me as I flew forward and caught the fingers of my right hand on the bottom edge of the right hand banister of the stairs, bending them backwards further than they were ever meant to go.
The pain was sharp and sudden and I was fairly certain that I broke the middle and ring fingers. I cried out as I continued to fall, (my fingers apparently not quite strong enough to stop my forward momentum).
I must have done a bit of a pirouette as I fell because I hit the stairs hard on my right side. My right shoulder hit the edge of the third stair up from the bottom, my forearm hit the edge of the second stair, and my hip crunched against the edge of the bottom stair.
My head swung down on a neck that suddenly seemed to be made of rubber and smacked my right ear against the edge of the fourth stair. When I came to rest I was all twisted up with my left arm pointing straight out and up like a rodeo rider trying desperately to get his eight seconds of glory, and my right arm curled beneath my body having taken a major portion of the impact.
The cry I had been uttering as I fell evolved into a scream of acute pain when I landed. White light speckled with big red blotches flashe
d in my eyes. My arm, fingers and hip were all forgotten. All that existed was my already damaged right ear, burning and throbbing from its impact with the edge of the stair, it pulsed with infinite pain and I had a sneaking suspicion that I might actually have sliced it in half.
As I continued to scream, (a long single note fairly reminiscent of my Mother’s banshee like screech) the thought passed quickly through my head that I had finally done what my Mother couldn’t, I’d completely destroyed my ear.
‘Well, this oughtta make the old Bitty happy.’ I thought. ‘What she couldn’t knock off my head, I’ve managed to sever on the friggin’ stair.’
My lungs ran out of air fairly quickly and my scream faded into the padded silence that the basement created.
I lay there for a bit trying to catch my breath, trying to think coherent thoughts, but unable to because the all consuming pain that enveloped my body (especially my ear) felt like the walls of an over tight womb, and it was crushing my thoughts as well as my breath out of my body.
I was completely wracked with pain. My throat was filled with fragments of the imaginary crystal that my Mother’s screech had shattered. The fingers of my right hand were bent unnaturally and were smashed against my chest, throbbing with every heart beat.
My right shoulder and forearm felt like they were smashed against a knife edge that radiated pain in ripples like the circular ripples on the water when a pebble is dropped into it. Each individual ripple hit my body like a baseball bat, thumping against my arm and shoulder and making my whole body shudder. My hip was likewise in a sea of pain. It felt like someone had performed surgery on it but left the scalpel wedged in the socket between the bones to grind and press against them.
Above all this, however, was my ear. I was certain that it had been sliced in two. The pain was indescribable. It burned, it pulsed, it throbbed, it ached. There aren’t enough words in the English language to adequately describe it.
With every pulse of pain, stars danced before my eyes. Flashes of red, tinged with white auras floated randomly before me in the dark. I lay there for a second considering how nice it would be to go visit Joe right about now and then I passed out.
I don’t think I was out very long. When I woke up I was still lying in the same position. I lifted my head off the stair slowly, wincing not only at the pain in my ear, but now also in my neck. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that my head was not stuck to the stair in some puddle of gory fluid that had leaked out while I slept.
I rolled stiffly over onto my back side and sat up on the stair that had been crushing my hip. I reached across my body with my left arm to examine my right ear, (my right arm was hurting and I just wasn’t ready to explore that injury yet).
I put my fingertips gently against my head just above the ear and dragged them down very slowly until I felt the top of my ear. It hurt like the dickens to touch it but I went ahead and traced the outline of my ear anyway, swallowing the pain as I went. When I had traced the whole outline of my ear and decided that it was all there, not turned to hamburger, and not even bleeding, I nearly wept with joy. I had been so certain that I had lost the ear that I could barely believe that it was all intact.
After inspecting the ear, it was time to check my right arm which I had thus far kept tucked against my chest. I pulled it away from my chest fully expecting to find it broken in several places. I visualized white fragments of bone poking through the bleeding flesh while the arm hung limp, bending at unnatural angles.
Using the fingers of my left hand I felt along my arm. It had a tender spot and a slight dent where the forearm had hit the stair, but I could feel neither torn skin nor blood leaking from it. It felt as if all the angles were in the proper places. It was hurting, that was for damned sure, but I didn’t think it was broken.
I raised my arm above my head slowly, grimacing at the pain this caused in my shoulder. The shoulder creaked and groaned in protest, but with a slight pop and a little grinding, it finally loosened up and allowed the arm to move around in the socket joint with a little less resistance and a whole lot less pain.
I brought my arm back down and rested it in my lap. I had to check my fingers. I was afraid to do it because I knew for sure that if anything was broken, it was them. I started with the pinky. I figured it was the one digit aside from the thumb that had no pain and was therefore least likely to broken. Holding my breath, I pinched the tip of the pinky gingerly between my left thumb and pointer finger and wiggled it slowly back and forth.
The movement caused a slight pain in the knuckle at the base of my ring finger, but no pain at all in the pinky. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. I didn’t want to continue checking the other digits but I knew I had to. I decided to move onto the thumb. Rather than pinch my thumb with my left hand fingers, I decided I’d just wiggle it around under its own power. I wiggled it. It wiggled freely. I really wanted to feel relieved by that, but I had already known that would be the case and that sort of made it a nonevent.
I sat on the stair for several minutes before I summoned the courage to continue checking my fingers. I reached out for them several times, only to pull my hand away again at the last second. Finally, taking a deep breath and gritting my teeth, I reached over and touched my remaining fingers.
I brushed the pointer, ring and middle fingers of my left hand gently against their respective twins on the backside of my right hand, starting at the lowest knuckles and dragging them outward towards the finger tips. A small groan escaped my lips as I confirmed my fears.
My pointer finger felt a little swollen and tender to the touch but was at least pointing straight. My middle and ring fingers were a different story. Both of them were swollen to the size of little sausages and extremely sensitive to the touch.
The knuckles near the palms, at the base of the two sausage fingers had irregular lumps protruding from them and felt to be roughly the size of walnuts. Both fingers were pointing off towards the pinky; the wrong direction.
I had already suspected that my fingers were in bad shape, but having discovered the physical evidence of their injury that proved my assumptions correct did little to fatten my ego. In fact, the knowledge made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. Actually a lot sick to my stomach. I leaned forward and puked all over myself.
When I was done puking I began to feel dizzy and started to shiver uncontrollably. I could feel beads of sweat breaking out on my forehead. I had seen enough nonfiction television programs to know that I was going into shock, but knowing I was going into shock didn’t do anything to make it stop happening.
For one crazy second I considered calling out for my mother, half believing that she would come and rescue me; that she’d come running when I called and throw open the basement door like some kind of superhero, casting me in a warm glow of light. Then she’d run in and scoop me off the floor and hold me tight, telling me all the while that everything was going to be okay. That thought passed quickly and I realized something else in that moment.
Once I understood that my mother was completely insane I regarded her as poison! I didn’t want her help. I wondered briefly if I still loved her but quickly decided that this was not a good time to ponder deep moral issues.
‘For God’s sake,’ I thought, ‘I’m going into friggin shock here!’
I took a few deep breaths to try and calm myself and tried to remember what the people on those shows had done to stop people from going completely into shock. The first thing I remembered was that I needed to get a blanket wrapped around me, so I figured it would be a good time to try ascending the stairs again so I could get to my bedroom for a blanket.
I stood very carefully and reached out blindly with my left hand to find the banister. I pawed the air like a cat pawing at a piece of yarn dangling just above its head until my hand finally connected with the rail. Once I had it in my grasp I put a death grip on it and began to pull myself upwards, feeling carefully with each step to make sure I didn’t miss a step. After
the day I had been having, the last thing I wanted was to take a tumble down the stairs.
I ascended the stairs like a geriatric old man, reaching slowly out with my left foot for purchase on the next step then pulling myself up with the aid of the banister. Using that forward momentum I’d lift my right foot up behind it so that both feet were on the same step. There were only twelve stairs between the basement floor and the door above that led to the kitchen but it felt like it took half a lifetime to reach the top.
Once I reached the top I stood for a second with my left foot resting on the topmost stair and my right foot resting on the stair just below it, catching my breath. I was still shivering and feeling a bit nauseous and the exertion and fear that came from climbing the stairs had completely exhausted me.
Fear seemed to be such a constant companion to me since Joe died that I regarded the feeling with a certain level of reverential awe. As I sat there panting at the top of the stairs I wondered if it was only exhaustion that kept me from reaching out and opening the door. I decided it was more than exhaustion after all.
I turned my body carefully to the side and placed my left ear against the door and listened intently for my Mother’s footsteps or any other sound that would let me know she was in the vicinity of the door.
Hearing nothing except the muted ticking of the large wall clock that hung in the kitchen directly opposite the door, I finally summoned up enough courage to open the door. I pulled my head away from the door and released the death grip I’d had on the banister and felt around for the door knob. When I at last had a handful of cold brass I leaned in and listened again. Nothing but ticking was audible on the other side of the door. I turned the knob slowly with a feeling of apprehension growing in my chest. I wasn’t certain why I was so terrified but I was powerless to stop the feelings.
When the door knob turned to its maximum limit, I heard the small click of the catch being released from its hole in the door jam. Then a tsunami of images roared through my head. I could almost see my mother standing silently on the other side of the door, wearing that damned wedding dress, her face puckered, glowering at the door; waiting.
