The Whore of Babylon, A Memoir

by Katrina Prado

  “I was thinking,” Rob begins. “Maybe after Robyn gets out of that place, we could move back to Aztec. But we wouldn’t have to stay with your Mom or anything,” he quickly adds. He prattles on about eking it out, how sort of romantic it would be starting all over, just living the simple, unencumbered life.

  “And I swear to you,” he says. “I’d go to A.A. I would. I think I even remember where meetings were; behind that First National Bank, on Chaco Street.”

  His voice is distant, like a radio station that only partially comes in so that I hear only every other word or so. I am suddenly tired, I feel like now I can finally sleep. Really sleep for a thousand years without a care, now that Robyn is safe and sound. I collapse to the bed. I sit slumped and mop the hair off my forehead and with it a sheen of sweat. Rob stops his little fairy tale and peers at my face.

  “Are you okay?”

  His arm finds my shoulders.

  “Hey,” he whispers.

  “Nothing,” I murmur, my eyes staring blankly at my lap.

  He sits beside me, cloaking me. The pong of stale sweat curdles my nostrils. It seems a Herculean effort to say even a single word, but I manage.

  “What did you say?” he asks, his voice filled with anxiety.

  I turn and meet his gaze.

  “Please, just leave.” My voice is as dry as dead leaves. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  September 26, 2002

  The coffee maker burbles and coughs to life as I review my to-do list. Finish cleaning the house; put the laundry away, and my appointment. My hand edges to the Los Medanos Community College catalogue on the counter, my fingers skimming over my handwritten note concerning my appointment with a counselor this afternoon. Though it is a Friday, I arranged with Carmelita to take the day off. Carmelita was so grateful that the situation with Robyn had been solved that she readily agreed if it meant getting me back to a semi normal schedule.

  I smile inwardly as I open the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink and retrieve the Comet and sponge. It seems indescribably splendid to be thinking about school again. Already my mind is beyond the two years I’ll be at Los Medanos and is plotting how I’ll manage getting to classes at the UC extension in Concord. By that time Robyn will be college-aged herself. Perhaps the two of us will go to school together; trading silly commentaries on our professors, sharing notes as we sit in the cafeteria, books and papers sprawled over a table, as we linger over café mochas and decadent cinnamon rolls.

  Earlier, I dusted and vacuumed the entire house, taking special care in Robyn’s room, having arranged everything just so. Yesterday I bought and hung new curtains with a matching comforter and pillow shams, all in a lovely pink with lavender and green colored sweet peas. I am hoping that when she returns and sees her room so perfect, so welcoming, she might realize how much she is loved.

  As I cross the living room making my way to the bathroom, I glance at the living room window; the curtains are parted slightly, permitting streaks of morning sunlight into the house. I imagine that the days must be growing cooler, disregarding the sweat that covers my body like a wetsuit.

  I soak the sponge beneath a rush of cold water in the bathroom sink and shake the green powder across the top of the wet sponge. The tang of the disinfectant coils through the air, giving me a feeling of deliverance from the past two months of hell. I scrub the porcelain to a bright shine and then start in on the silver spigot. This ritual, this ablution, is a comfort. It is a reminder that everything can be made right if only enough rigorous effort is exerted.

  As I finish scouring the bathroom sink I think of Rob. He’s been gone two weeks, has called and left several messages, but we haven’t yet talked. In truth, I don’t know what I want to say to him. Most of me misses him terribly. Beyond that I haven’t allowed myself to give any thought.

  I am midway through sluicing water along the walls of the bathtub to remove the last of the cleaner when the telephone rings. I mutter to myself as I peel off the yellow rubber gloves and sprint for the phone. The remote is in its stand in the kitchen, right next to the caller ID display. I know there are two messages left by my mother, and until now, I’d managed to forget about the need to return her call. ‘Unknown caller’ shows on the readout. I know from previous phone calls that it isn’t John Simpson from Peaceful Acres. I think momentarily of letting the answering machine pick it up, but then think better of that decision and grab the phone, depressing the ‘talk’ button.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” I say again.

  “Es no finish, señora.”

  My heart is suddenly a staccato of gunfire in my chest. I will never forget that voice. It is BLU BOY.

  “You will never see Robyn again!” I yell into the phone. “Do you hear me?”

  I hear laughter, the sound of evil incarnate.

  “ No puede hacer nada.” He laughs again and then his voice is a thin whisper: “she es mine.”

  “You will never ever touch her again. Never!” I scream. I click the ‘end’ button and drop the phone. It clatters to the counter. My body is shaking with rage. The phone begins ringing again. ‘Unknown caller’.

  I let it ring but the caller hangs up when it comes time to leave a message. I pull out a chair from the kitchen table aware that my legs feel like wet ribbon. How did BLU BOY get this number? I can’t believe that Robyn would have given this monster her home number. Maybe Chevy knew and BLU BOY beat it out of her. If he knows the phone number, maybe he knows the address too. A feather of dread whispers down my back.

  I stand suddenly and lurch for the front door, twisting the lock with all the force my hand can muster. I am on the couch now, peering surreptitiously from behind the drapes, looking for the telltale BMW. But all I can see is my neighbor, Mrs. Cotillo, watering the dogwood hedge that separates our property.

  I storm back to the kitchen and call the Pittsburg P.D. but they offer less than any help, telling me that without a crime having been committed, there is nothing they can do. I phone Bart Strong but only get his answering machine. I leave a message.

  Now what? After whisking Robyn out of ‘ Sodom and Gomorrah ’, I hadn’t planned on this animal invading my life; our lives. I expected that with my daughter’s departure he would find some other poor soul to prey upon. What did Sister Margaret tell me; there are hundreds of runaways on the streets of San Francisco. My stomach is suddenly roiling with an acid foam. I reach for my bottle of Axid and open it, popping two of the white tablets into my mouth.

  I have never before in my life understood how one human being could take the life of another. At least not until now. I could kill BLU BOY this very minute without batting an eyelash and walk away feeling completely free from any wrongdoing.

  An hour passes and then two. I cannot clean, nor can I think straight. Shards of fear and dread needle my skin. The appointment with my counselor looms. I should be in the shower, getting ready, but I seem frozen inside the house, cocooned by an oppressive disquiet. My mind tells me that Robyn is perfectly safe, down in Newport Beach, tucked safely within its confines, getting the help she so desperately needs. No one knows where she is other than Bart, his helper Freddie, Rob and I. John Simpson, the director of Peaceful Acres said that Robyn would not have access to the outside world for the first thirty days, and even after that she would be allowed contact with immediate family only. There is no way that BLU BOY can know where she is, much less get to her. And yet. I try dislodging the fear from my body by briskly running my fingers through my hair. My mouth still feels dried up as dryer lint and my heart hammers inside my ribcage.

  I wander back into the kitchen and bolt down three more Axid’s, realizing that I need to talk to someone. My mind jumps immediately to Sister Margaret. I reach for the phone just as it rings again. For one harrowing second I worry it might again be BLU BOY, but caller ID says: ‘Aztec, New Mexico ’. It is my mother. I groan but pick up the phone anyway. I need to hear somebody’s voice in my
head other than BLU BOY.

  “Hello?”

  “There you are!” Gladys’ southern accent already grates on my nerves.

  “Hi Mom. Look, I haven’t called you back because it’s been really-”

  “How you doin’ Sugar? I hadn’t heard in a couple of days and thought you might have forgotten about my biopsy.”

  “On your arm, right?” I say, proud to be able to call to mind her latest medical predicament.

  “My land, you should have seen the size of that needle!” she bellows. “I liked to had a conniption, it hurt so bad.”

  “When do you get the results back?”

  “Day after tomorrow, bless Patsy. The sooner the better, I say. But look, I didn’t call just to bore you with all my problems.”

  Really?

  “I wanted to let you know how the photo shoot went.”

  Ah, The Baby and her commercial launch into greatness. Gladys recounts each and every elaborate iota of information about poor Petra ’s dreadful ride to the airport, the traumatic flight, the harrowing cab ride, and the unmitigated filth of the city. Followed by the glitz and glamour that surrounded The Baby, the pomp, and the fanfare, as studio execs fawned and slavered around the sweet little dear until I think I might go into diabetic shock. Gladys finishes by telling me to be looking for the launch of the new Gerber Baby Food commercials soon, staring the cutest little baby on the planet.

  “But listen to me go on,” she says. “How’s Robyn?”

  “She’s doing great,” I say, my eye on the latest magazine cover lying on the table. The cover article is about the latest pop sensation, Avril Lavigne. Her face is that of a child. Her eyes are heavily made up with thick black eyeliner. Another sign of the times.

  “She got the lead in the school play,” I lie. “She’s playing Juliet.”

  “Oh my!” Gladys says.

  “And she placed first in the spelling bee,” I add, my thoughts far away, wondering about how BLU BOY got our phone number.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize they had spelling bees for high schoolers,” she says.

  I am jolted from my daydreaming.

  “Oh, it’s just a local thing that the English class did. No big deal,” I say.

  “So anyway,” Gladys says, changing the subject. “Is it still hotter than the hinges of hell out there? News said you got a real spell goin’ on.”

  I toy with my prescription bottles, arranging them like little soldiers.

  “I have to go, Mom. I have an appointment,” I say looking down at my watch. Already I am half an hour late to see my counselor. My heart sinks. I extricate myself from the telephone conversation with my mother and decide to blow off my appointment with my counselor.

  Instead, I call Sister Margaret. I tell the little nun all about Robyn’s rescue, Rob’s arrest and subsequent departure from the house, and of my overwhelming feelings of betrayal. Sister Margaret said she could use some help the next morning at the church and could I please be there by nine in the morning.

  September 27, 2002

  “Grab those candles; replace those on the altar that are in the candlesticks up there.”

  From a box on the front pew I remove two large, crème colored candles and hand them to a small Hispanic woman with hair as silver as a candelabra. From the number of people milling about, slowly exiting the church; it is evident they have just had a morning service. There is a young man with dark brown skin still sitting at the organ, toying with soft, dulcet chords that float through the air like winged seraphim. Sister Margaret though, is a flurry of activity, directing several volunteers who are dusting and sweeping the mammoth area that is St. Dominic’s Catholic Church.

  “We’ve got less than three hours until a wedding,” Sister Margaret says to no one in particular. She is busying herself with deadheading a vase of roses left by a parishioner. She plucks the faded blooms and tosses them into a large plastic trash container at her side that one of the volunteers has just dragged to her side.

  I have come to this place and I don’t know why. I am not a religious person by any stretch, certainly not Catholic, and yet. Sister Margaret seems to be the only person that I am able to talk to without fear of judgment or recrimination.

  As I pull faded gladiolas and wilting lilies from a huge glass vase, my chest is squeezed by strangled emotions. What have I hoped to find within these neo-Gothic stone walls? The high altar looms, castle-like, enormous and beautiful; its carved crucified Christ with bowed head seemingly endorsing my presence here. The stained glass windows, twenty plus feet high above the altar evoke a sense of transporting one’s soul back into history itself. How can I not find comfort here?

  We prep and preen vase upon vase of blooms until my head nearly aches from the sweetness of the blossoms. Sister Margaret dusts off her hands and then instructs one of the male volunteers to remove the plastic garbage can to the parking lot to be dumped in the trash bin. She stumps her hands on her hips and regards me a moment.

  “Come on,” she says, “follow me.”

  The nun is on the move again. We amble to the right, between columns to an open area. At its center is a gold box and beside it, several lit candles. There is a small grouping of pews and except for one older Vietnamese man at the very back, the area is unoccupied. At the front, above the candles is a large white statue of a woman holding a baby. Mary and Baby Jesus. Sister Margaret makes her way to the front pew, pulls down the kneeler and then lowers herself to her knees and crosses herself.

  I am unsure what to do, and so stand there dumbly. Those vivid gray eyes smile at me in a friendly, mocking sort of way and she motions for me to sit down next to her. After a brief moment, she lifts herself off the kneeler and sits next to me. From the shadows of her habit, she removes a long circular string of crystal beads interspersed with gold plated roses. At the very bottom is a crucifix. It looks like a necklace. She hands it to me.

  “This is a rosary,” she says. Then from the same hidden pocket she pulls out a small booklet titled, “ How To Pray The Rosary ”. “Here, put this in your purse. You can read it later.”

  She stuffs the little booklet into an open pocket of my purse.

  “Do what I do,” she says. She takes hold of the crucifix with her right hand and crosses herself again. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” she says. I clasp the crucifix in my right hand and cross myself in the same way. It feels strange and intimate at the same time. She prays words I’ve never heard before, but that somehow sound familiar. She moves her fingers along the beads with each prayer, demonstrating for me to do the same. I recognize the Our Father, but am not sure if I should pray with her or remain silent. As she leads me through a series of Hail Mary’s, I begin to feel the constriction in my body loosen. A sensation, ephemeral yet immutable at the same time falls over me as the recitation of words becomes a sort of meditation of grace. After the first set of beads, Sister Margaret stops and crosses herself again. She sits back in the pew.

  “That was one decade,” she says. “But you’ll read all about it in that little pamphlet I gave you.”

  “But I’m not Catholic,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says, winking and ribbing me with her elbow. “Nobody’s perfect!” She lets out a quiet cackle.

  “Listen, Sister Margaret, this was very nice, but it doesn’t really solve anything. My husband is still a drunk and he is still gone.”

  “Are you going to find him and drag him into a hospital?” she asks.

  I let out a flustered giggle. “No,” I answer.

  “Well then, there you go!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You pray, dear. Pray to know God’s will.”

  “I’m not so sure about this whole ‘God’s will’ thing; I mean there’s so much evil in the world. So many people who do bad things. Sometimes it seems to me that God doesn’t care.” I say this in a whisper because I suddenly feel ashamed of my own doubt.

  Sister Margaret looks
up at the statue of the Madonna.

  “If you take all of the evil in the whole world, throughout time; all the Hitlers, and killers, murderers, every bad thing you can possibly think of and lump all of that together, all of it combined wouldn’t be equal to a single drop in the ocean compared to God’s love for us.”

  “But then why is there evil in the world? How can God allow all of that?” I ask. I’m aware that I must sound like a petulant child, but she brought up the subject.

  “The more important question to ask is, ‘why do we allow it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean how can a middle class, average person walk down the street, say, walking to their daily job, and pass by someone who is obviously homeless, hasn’t eaten for a week and is dying of AIDS, and do absolutely nothing? Or how can a businessman, on his way to a lunch meeting at a fancy restaurant, step over a drunken bum in the parking lot and do absolutely nothing? Is this God’s fault? Or is it ours? We can hardly blame God for allowing the suffering that we ourselves let our brothers and sisters endure every single day.”

  I had never thought about these kinds of issues this way. I remain silent, and stare at the rosary in my hand.

  “In the world there is a disconnection. There is an ‘us’ and then there is a ‘them’. When we evolve to a point where the ‘us’ realizes that we’re exactly the same as the ‘them’, we could end to world hunger, and homelessness just like that,” she says, snapping her fingers. “Once we see that the homeless vet isn’t just some man, but he’s our brother, our father, our uncle, we will truly be able to say we are Christ-like. Until that time, we reach for that ideal.”

  “We can’t all be Mother Teresa,” I say. I do not mean to sound so ill-tempered. The words are out of my mouth before I even think.