The Whore of Babylon, A Memoir

by Katrina Prado

  “My God,” I say below my breath. “Why can’t the police just shut this monster down?”

  “I know,” Freddie says, “but it’s not as easy as you might think. They have to actually catch him breaking the law since every hooker that the cops arrest and try to pump for information refuses to divulge any details on Peña.” He pauses, and then adds, “And if it wasn’t Peña it would be somebody else. It’s the way of the world.”

  “Well it sure shouldn’t be.”

  Freddie wheels the van into the parking lot of the Martinez Gun Club.

  “I gave Breed the picture of your daughter and your telephone number. He promises to keep an eye out for her and says he’ll call if he sees her.”

  Freddie opens the door for me.

  “Do you think we should try looking in Stockton or Sacramento?” I ask.

  “No reason to yet.” He closes my door and leads me by the elbow into the main building of the gun club. “But you might want to think about investing in a cell phone.”

  Inside the main building is a large snack bar with a tufted leather armrest running the circumference of the bar. Arranged in precise order around the snack bar are bright red stools with the word ‘ Winchester ’ running around the side of the leather seats in large white letters.

  Freddie exchanges pleasantries with a portly woman behind the counter and gives her some money. Above her, on the wall are mounted various animal heads, nearly all with large, pointed antlers. She hands him two paper targets the general shape of a human torso with various lines and numbers on them. Next she gives him two large things that look like plastic ear muffs and two pairs of safety goggles.

  We exit through the back door of the building onto the general shooting range. Since it’s a Saturday, the range is fairly packed with people. Mostly men sporting long shotguns, but I do see a couple of women amongst the groups, all in various stages of either shooting or consulting targets containing clean round holes.

  Inside the handgun range, Freddie sets up a paper target and then shows me how to load my gun.

  “Pop the bullets in like so,” he says showing me the chamber. Once full, he snaps it closed. He puts on his red ear protectors and eye gear and instructs me to do the same.

  He hands me the gun.

  “Now imagine that target out there is BLU BOY.”

  I draw in a deep breath and focus on the shape that is yards away. If only the flat two dimensional figure before me was Antonio Peña. If only, by one small bullet that weighs less than an ounce, I could eliminate my most pressing problem and bring Robyn back home to me; would I do it? Maybe more importantly, could I?

  Afterwards, Freddie drives me home. Dusk is rapidly being swallowed up the approaching night, lights from homes on my street wink out at us. I am thinking of a hot bubble bath to ease my aching body, and hopefully Rob will be home and amenable to going to get something to eat so I won’t have to cook. I close my eyes, allowing myself to sink deep into my thoughts.

  “Is that cops at your house?” Freddie says, suddenly.

  I lurch in my seat, my eyes pop open to see a Pittsburg Police Department black and white parked in my driveway behind the old Corsica. From the large living room window, I can see lights on and figures standing, talking, one of whom looks to be Rob.

  “Let me off here,” I say, three houses ahead of mine.

  I open the door and fly out of the van scarcely before Freddie has even come to a complete stop. My heart thuds in my chest as I fly across neighbors’ lawns and driveway bounding up the steps of my front porch. Mrs. Cotillo stands on her porch, clasping her jacket tightly to her body, peering intently at me. Her beady eyes remind me of a rat.

  The front door hangs open, the wood at the top and bottom hinges splintered. Two policemen stand with Rob, their voices low, telling him something. As I walk into the room all eyes turn to me.

  “Where have you been?” Rob asks, doing his best not to sound accusatory.

  I look around. The living room is a shambles. Furniture upturned. The couch, lying on its side, sports a long knife-edged gash along the entire length of the backrest. The TV is gone. Mail from the kitchen along with various other papers lies ripped and strewn across the floor.

  “What happened?” I ask. “Is it about Robyn?”

  Rob shakes his head no. “Someone broke in,” he says.

  ***

  I scoop the lamp up off the floor and deposit it to the easy chair. Then I right the coffee table, snatching up the remote control and TV Guide as well.

  The police promised to interview neighbors to see if they saw anything suspicious, but all I can think about is Mrs. Cotillo’s accusing stare. I’m certain that this break-in was instigated by BLU-BOY or maybe his associates. I said nothing to Pittsburg ’s finest out of fear of further recrimination, and more importantly, not wanting to put Robyn’s life in any greater danger than it was already.

  “Where were you?” Rob asks.

  The afternoon with Freddie at the gun range seems a million miles away at the moment. Rob’s question snaps me back into reality.

  “When I woke up you weren’t here,” I answer. “I met Sister Margaret in the City.”

  I move to the kitchen and grab the broom and then return to the living room and begin sweeping the shards of broken glass of the light bulb from the lamp. I choose to omit my outing to the Martinez Gun Club.

  “Where have you been?” I ask.

  “Meetings.”

  “Meetings? What kind of meetings?” I ask.

  “AA meetings.” He makes a step towards me. “Margot, there’s so much I have to tell you.” He reaches for my arm, drawing me to him. “Stop for a minute. Look, everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be,” he says. The look of earnestness in his face defies logic.

  I step away from him, spreading my hands over the air in the living room.

  “That’s what you call all of this?” I ask, incredulous.

  “I know, I know. But we have to accept things as they happen. Acceptance, Baby, that’s the key to everything.”

  I move away.

  “Help me with the couch,” I say. All I can think about is that if I can just get the house in order my mind will follow. The physical act of doing something mollifies the nearly palpable feeling of violation that is surging through my body. A part of me even sniffs the air to see if I can detect any odor of the persons responsible for the destruction.

  Rob just stands there like a mute.

  “Have you seen Pickles?” I ask.

  He shrugs no. After I get this mess cleaned up I will have to look for the cat. If she got out, she could be hiding out somewhere afraid.

  “Are you going to help me?” I ask.

  “Nothing happens by accident,” he says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

  “I mean that everything happens for a reason,” he says.

  I struggle with the armrest of the couch, trying to yank it upright, but stabs of pain at my surgery site prevent me from exerting any more energy. Rob makes another move towards me.

  He grabs my arm. “Everything,” he says, his eyes shining with intensity.

  I huff out a sigh of exasperation.

  “Now that I’m sober, I see things so much more clearly.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean us, here. Robyn.”

  “What about Robyn?”

  “We keep looking and looking for her. But maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

  A sheet of red flashes before my eyes. I slap his face.

  “She is a fiftten year old little girl,” I growl. “A child.”

  “She hasn’t been a child since we moved to California,” he says. “Have you been blind to the fact that she’s been out of control ever since we’ve been here? The friends she hangs out with, the kind of clothes she wears? The way she talks to us, like we were lower than pond scum? Criminy, Margot, can’t you see what’s been happening around here?” Rob’s f
ace is animated. An untenable mixture of anger and enthusiasm.

  “How dare you!” I shout. “You have nothing to say, do you hear me?” I am screaming now, and I don’t want to stop. “I haven’t been the one staying out till all hours, coming home drunk, or not even coming home at all!” My hands are in fists at my side. “I’m not the one who can’t be bothered to do one single thing to lift a finger around here; and that includes being a parent to our child. And I’m not the one who can’t even keep a job!”

  This last chastisement wipes the smug, holier-than-thou look off his face. But I can’t stop now, even if I wanted to. My thoughts of rage spew out into every crack and crevice of the room.

  “And now you come waltzing in here with a whole week of sobriety, telling me that everything is as it should be? That I have to accept the fact that Robyn is out there somewhere, selling her body to the lowest form of dirt and filth?” “Don’t you even go there,” I menace. I hold my hands in the air defensively.

  “In fact,” I add just for good measure, “I think I liked you better when you were drunk.”

  The end of this tirade produces the look of hurt I so vehemently intended.

  Rob crosses his arms in front of him and glares at me.

  “Yeah? Well at least I’m not screwing some guy in our home.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mustache man, that’s what I’m talking about!”

  “You mean Freddie?” I ask.

  “Are there more?” Rob says sarcastically, shoulders shrugged, palms in the air, animating his question.

  And on it goes; the fighting and evisceration of each other’s hearts, carving away every last vestige of care and affection that ever had hoped to exist within the gossamer mantle of our marriage. The rubble and draff that I had so hoped to leave behind us in New Mexico has caught up with us and is here now; a firestorm of fury and discontent that threatens to burn up both of us, leaving nothing but cinders.

  “If you were ever around, you would know that Freddie was recommended by the private eye, Bart Strong,” I spit back at Rob.

  “I told you to let the police handle it,” Rob retorts. “But noooo; you’re on a freakin’ crusade. You’re gonna save every hooker in San Francisco with your buddy, Sister Mary of the Bleeding Heart Liberals!”

  “Stop it!” I shout. “Just stop. Fighting isn’t helping anything. And it certainly isn’t going to bring Robyn back home.”

  Rob wipes the sweat from his forehead, chuffs out a sigh of exasperation.

  “I’m tryin’ here Margot, I really am. I just wish you wouldn’t make it so freakin’ hard.”

  He bear hugs the end of the couch and flips it upright in one motion.

  When the doorbell rings, I wonder momentarily if I imagined the sound. But as Rob turns his head in the direction of the front door, scarcely dangling from its hinges, I also look and see the shadowy figure of a young girl. My heart spills out of me.

  It is Robyn.

  “Hello Mama.”

  October 10, 2002

  The scent of pancakes fills the kitchen. Though I am exhausted to the point of breaking, my heart sings so loud I wonder that even nosy old Mrs. Cotillo next door cannot hear its joyous strains.

  I flip the next batch of pancakes from the electric skillet, and pour out four more quarter cups of batter. As I pour myself another in a series of strapping cups of coffee the microwave croons that the bacon inside it is cooked to perfection. I survey the kitchen and living room, making sure that everything looks right. An old sheet tucked into the corners of the couch obscures the knife gashes, and as long as the eye stays away from the gaping hole where the television used to be, everything looks almost normal.

  The happy homecoming that I’d imagined wasn’t to be. Robyn, who looked as if she’d been dragged to hell and back, had said she was tired and just wanted to clean herself up and go to bed. She promised that we would talk this morning. Rob and I stayed up another two and a half hours cleaning up, in addition to Rob jerry-rigging the front door until today when he promised to make a trip to Home Depot to replace it.

  I return my attention to the pancakes which are ready to be flipped. Behind me I hear the pad of slippers. Robyn traipses into the kitchen. Without saying a word, she heads for the cabinet to retrieve a coffee cup and pours herself some coffee.

  “Good morning, Sweetheart,” I say.

  Her eyes roll up from the coffee pot and skip briefly to my face, glancing momentarily on the wound beneath my right eye, but she says nothing.

  “I bet you’re starving,” I say.

  I toss a stack of pancakes onto a plate and add three pieces of crispy bacon to the plate and bring it to the table.

  “Here, come and eat ’em up while they’re hot,” I say.

  “I’m not hungry,” Robyn says.

  “Oh that’s silly,” I say, a forced gaiety to my voice. “You’re nothing more than skin and bone. I’m sure you haven’t been eating right.” I force a smile. “Come on, honey. How about just a couple of bites?” I pour out a liberal amount of Log Cabin syrup on top of the pancakes. “For old Mom?” Keeping the smile pasted to my lips I drag out the chair. The feet of the chair squawk against the tile floor in protest.

  “No,” she says.

  I suck in a deep breath and replace the chair. My stomach contracts in pain from my recent encounter with BLU BOY, but I swallow down the distress.

  “That’s okay. You can eat later,” I say. “I’m just so very glad you’re home,” I say. I approach, holding my arms out to embrace her.

  “Mom, please!” Robyn says. Her voice is all irritation and angst.

  I open my mouth to reprimand her but just at that moment Rob rambles into the kitchen wearing only pajama bottoms. It is then I notice that some of his chest hairs are starting to turn white.

  “Hey Princess,” he says to our daughter.

  “Hi Dad,” Robyn says.

  He wanders past her towards the coffee pot, his meaty hand tousling her hair as he passes. She ducks from his show of affection, but he either ignores her rebuff or doesn’t notice it and gets his coffee.

  In the back of my mind I am thinking about the day ahead. Since so much of our mail, including bank and credit card statements had been rifled through with the break-in, I will need to close all of our accounts and open up new ones. I also want to address the issue of school with Robyn. She will have to be enrolled today. I can only imagine the amount of catch up work that she’ll need to do in order to get back on track.

  “Anyone gonna eat this?” Rob says of the plate of food growing cold on the table.

  “Go ahead. I’m going to get cleaned up,” Robyn says.

  I frown as Rob sits down and begins devouring Robyn’s breakfast.

  “Good,” I say to Robyn. “You can come with me then.”

  This time it is Robyn who frowns. “With you? Where?”

  “I have some errands to run and we have to get you registered for school. You’re already a month behind.”

  “School?!” Robyn looks as if I’ve just slapped her across the face. “I am so not going back to school.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I counter. “Of course you are.”

  “The hell I am!” Robyn says, her voice is pinched with anger.

  “Criminy!” Rob shouts. “Can we just have a little peace and quiet around here?”

  “You have to go to school!” I say again to Robyn and then turn to Rob, as if giving directions. “She has to go to school!”

  “Why in the hell does everything need to be decided at eight o’clock in the freakin’ morning?” Rob growls back.

  “Robert Skinner!” I complain. “Don’t you dare tell me that you’re considering that our daughter will not go back to school?”

  “Relax, will ya?” Rob yells back. “All I’m saying is that Robyn hasn’t even been back home twenty-four hours and already you’re planning her whole life out before breakfast.”

  I stump balled fists o
n my hips. “I’m not planning her entire life! But I do expect her to get her high school diploma.”

  “Well, why don’t you at least talk to the girl, and see what’s goin’ on in her head?”

  “Rob, a high school diploma is non-negotiable. You of all people should realize that.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means that if you’d gotten yours and gone on to college or some vocational school we wouldn’t be scraping by just to make ends meet,” I declare with more bitterness in my voice than I intend.

  Rob nods slowly, his eyes screwed in umbrage.

  “Oh, I get it. It’s time to play the ‘blame game’, huh?”

  “I’m not blaming you, Rob. I’m just trying to point out that Robyn can do better. Better than both of us. But she needs the chance to succeed.”

  “Oh, and you’re livin’ in some dream world where you like to think you’re a CPA; you’re an accounts payable clerk, for cripe’s sake!”

  “Well at least I’m trying to get back to school and better myself Unlike you!” I shout back.

  “Rub my nose in it, why don’t you? Tell me again what a complete failure I am again. I don’t think I heard you the first thirty thousand times,” Rob shoots back.

  I huff out an anguished breath.

  “This is not about you, Rob. It’s about Robyn.”

  “Well then. Why don’t we ask Robyn what Robyn would like to do with her life?” Rob asks.

  We both turn to Robyn, but she has long since left the room.

  It is then I hear the screak of the shower faucet.

  October 28, 2002

  I stare at the cursor on my computer screen. It is only three o’clock and I’ve yet to complete the report that Carmelita said she must have for the board meeting tomorrow. Thoughts like a school of minnows dart pell-mell inside my head, cluttering any meaningful contemplation I try to achieve. I’ve become accustomed to staying until at least six in order to catch up, but I doubt I can even make it to five, much less six.