Trauma

by Graham Masterton

  Bonnie usually sang while she worked. “Love, ageless and evergreen …” But in Naomi’s bedroom she was silent. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the bloody stencil patterns that Naomi’s hands had made across the wall, yet somehow she couldn’t bring herself to clean them off. It would be almost like denying that Naomi’s last few moments of pain and bewilderment had ever happened.

  She found herself wondering what Naomi must have thought of her father, as she crawled across the floor. She couldn’t bear to think that she might have cried out to him to help her.

  Esmeralda came in with a cloth and a Dettox spray. “The wall’s finished,” she said. Without hesitation she sprayed the handprints and wiped them away.

  Bonnie switched off her steam cleaner and it gurgled into silence. “You can start on the couch if you want to.”

  “She’s keeping the couch?”

  “That’s a thousand-dollar couch, easy.”

  “I couldn’t keep my couch if my husband killed himself all over it. Even if it was ten-thousand dollars. I would always feel that there was a dead man sitting there.”

  “Yes, well, I get that with Duke when the World Series is on.”

  The room was hot and humid now, and smelled strongly of damp carpet. Bonnie went to the window and opened it wide. On the windowsill stood a large, leafy fig plant in a terra-cotta pot, and she shifted it to one side in case the drapes blew against it and knocked it over. As she did so, something black dropped from one of its leaves—something that squirmed.

  “Urgh!” she said, and jumped back.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s some kind of maggot or something. It dropped off that plant.”

  Esmeralda came over and peered into the compost inside the pot. A fat black caterpillar was crawling up the stem of the plant, its body undulating as it climbed.

  “That’s disgusting,” said Bonnie. “Look—there’s more of them.” Half concealed in the foliage were four or five more caterpillars, all of them steadily eating, so that the edges of the fig leaves were all serrated in tiny jagged patterns.

  Esmeralda crossed herself again, twice.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” Bonnie demanded.

  “I hate these things. They come from the devil.”

  “They’re caterpillars. They won’t hurt you.”

  “I hate them, the black ones. They bring bad luck.”

  “You’re so darn superstitious, Esmeralda. You’re worse than Ruth. But if you don’t like them, go get the permethrin spray and zap them. Anyways, I don’t think that Mrs. Goodman would appreciate what they’re doing to her fig.”

  Bonnie looked around the bedroom to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything. Naomi’s bed was completely stripped now, and later this afternoon she would come back to take the rest of it away. The bunk beds she would dismantle and take down to the American Humane Association’s children’s home.

  A warm breeze stirred the nets and brushed them against the houseplant, and Bonnie’s attention was drawn back to the caterpillars. She had seen just about every variety of bug and maggot since she had started cleaning up trauma scenes, but she had never seen anything like these before. Maybe the eggs had already been mixed up in the compost when Mrs. Goodman had bought it, and they had only just hatched out.

  Esmeralda came in with the insecticide spray.

  “Wait,” said Bonnie. “I want to keep one of these. Maybe Dr. Jacobson can tell me what they are.”

  She tugged out a disposable plastic glove and blew into it. Then she held it under one of the caterpillars and shook the leaf on which it was perched. It clung tenaciously, but in the end she flipped at it with another glove and it dropped off into one of the fingers. She pulled off a few fragments of fig leaf and pushed those into the glove, too.

  “Don’t want it going hungry,” she said.

  Esmeralda wrinkled up her nose. “Why do you want to keep such a thing?”

  “I’m curious. I’m a naturally inquisitive person, that’s all.”

  “It’s bad luck, that thing.”

  Esmeralda sprayed the fig plant backward and forward until Bonnie was almost choking with the fumes. One caterpillar began to writhe, and then another, and then one by one they dropped off onto the windowsill.

  “I think you’re enjoying this,” said Bonnie.

  “You want me to pretend that I’m not?” Esmeralda sprayed another caterpillar and said, “Die, you wriggly son of a bitch!”

  Bonnie left her to it and went back through to the living room. They were practically all done now. With the help of a muscular young man they had recruited for ten dollars on the corner of Hollywood and Highland, they had already cut the Goodmans’ carpet into three manageable sections and loaded it onto the back of Bonnie’s truck. The walls were clean, although the hole from the shotgun blast remained untouched: Bonnie didn’t redecorate, although she could refer people. The cream leather couch was clean, too, but it had lost its shine. The metallic smell of blood had been replaced by a mildly antiseptic tang, like that in a dentist’s waiting room. Ruth had vacuum cleaned everywhere, although she hadn’t polished. “We clean up, we sterilize, we don’t do maid work.”

  Where Aaron Goodman’s blood had spilled there was still the faintest phantom of a stain, but the only way to get rid of it completely would have been to pry up the floorboards.

  Bonnie walked around the stain. She wasn’t very happy about it. “This is really the best we can do?”

  “It soaked right into the grain. I could have another try with a stronger solution, but I don’t want to bleach out the wood.”

  Bonnie walked around and around, and she couldn’t stop looking at the stain. She didn’t know why. For some reason it disturbed her, like the words of a song that she couldn’t quite remember, or a whispered warning. It was the shape, she supposed—like a huge pale flower, or a giant moth.

  That Evening

  Bonnie arrived home that evening sweaty and lightheaded with exhaustion. Apart from the Goodman home, she and Ruth had cleaned up a natural death scene in Westwood. A woman in her mid-eighties had died in her sleep and lain undiscovered for nine weeks. Her son had prowled up and down the hallway while they worked, a podgy, pale man with a jet-black hairpiece, constantly checking his watch. Bonnie had resisted the temptation to ask him why he hadn’t called his mother in all that time.

  “I live in Albuquerque,” he had suddenly volunteered, as they were stacking away their plastic buckets.

  Oh, really? Bonnie had thought, grim-faced. And they don’t have telephones in Albuquerque? On the way home, she thought: I should have shown him his mother’s sheets.

  She went into the living room, where Duke was watching baseball. She kissed him on the top of his head, and he immediately ran his fingers through his hair to reerect his pompadour.

  “How was your day, honey?” she asked him, perching herself on the arm of his chair.

  “Okay, I guess. I called Vincent at the Century Plaza. He might have some bar work for me.”

  “That’s great! What would you have to do, mix cocktails and stuff? One frozen daiquiri, coming up! Pina colada, madam?”

  “Unh-hunh. It’s fetching and carrying mainly.”

  Bonnie gave him another kiss. “It’s a job, though, isn’t it? It’s a start.”

  “Sure, it’s a start,” he agreed, shifting his head sideways so that she didn’t block his view of the television.

  Bonnie washed up and changed into a flowery yellow dress and a big yellow bead necklace. Her lucky color. She went into the kitchen and took six pimply chicken thighs out of the fridge.

  “Fried chicken okay?”

  “With gravy?”

  She thought about the bloodstain on the Goodmans’ floor. “Yes, with gravy.”

  She sieved flour onto a large white plate and seasoned it with salt and pepper and chili powder. “Has Ray been back yet?” she asked.

  “Ray? Not yet.”

  “Didn’t he say
he’d be late or nothing?”

  “Didn’t say nothing.”

  “Ralph wants me to go to Pasadena tomorrow.”

  “Pasadena? What the hell’s in Pasadena?”

  “Moist-Your-Eyes promotion.”

  “I suppose he’s going, too? Mr. Wonderful?”

  “What is it with you and Ralph? Why do you always act so jealous whenever it’s anything to do with Ralph?”

  “It’s the way the guy looks at you. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. Like he’s mentally taking off your clothes.”

  Bonnie, with floury hands, went to the kitchen door. “Duke—once and for all—I am not interested in Ralph Kosherick. I have never been interested in Ralph Kosherick, and I never will be interested in Ralph Kosherick.”

  “You mention the guy’s name three times in one sentence and you’re not interested in him?”

  Bonnie looked at her watch, then up at the kitchen clock. “Ray’s so late. I wish he’d call.”

  “You can see it in his eyes. Unhooking your brassiere. Pulling down your panty hose with his teeth.”

  “Shut up, Duke. I’m not in the mood.”

  Ray didn’t come home in time for supper, so they ate together in the living room and watched television, the way they used to when they first got married.

  “It’s good,” said Duke, his eyes still fixed on the screen and gravy glistening on his chin.

  When they had finished, Bonnie carried the empty chicken plates back into the kitchen and took a chocolate-fudge cake out of the fridge. She cut a large slice for Duke and another, slightly smaller slice for herself. She crammed almost all of the smaller slice into her mouth at once and ate it while she noisily scraped the chicken bones into the bin under the sink. By the time she returned to the living room she had finished it and wiped her mouth.

  “You’re not having none?” asked Duke.

  “Are you kidding me? That’s three hundred and thirty calories a look.”

  Duke shrugged and took a generous bite. “See this guy?” he said, nodding toward the television. “He ate an entire Volkswagen.”

  “What did he do that for?”

  “How the hell should I know? Like, what do people eat chocolate cake for?”

  Bonnie didn’t answer, but she knew why she ate chocolate cake.

  She was sleeping deeply when the door chimes rang. She sat up in bed, listening, not quite sure if she had been dreaming or not. But then they rang again. She nudged Duke with her elbow and hissed, “Duke! Duke, wake up! There’s somebody at the door!”

  Duke croaked like a frog and eventually propped himself up on one elbow. “What? What the hell time is it?”

  “Three twenty-five.”

  “The hell?”

  Bonnie climbed out of bed, dragged her robe from the back of the door and went out into the corridor. It was then that she saw the flashing red-and-blue lights outside the house and she knew that something was badly wrong. “Duke!” she called. “Duke, it’s the police!” She hurried to the front door.

  Two uniformed police officers were standing outside: one Hispanic with a little mustache, one black. “You Mrs. Winter?” asked the black officer, shining his flashlight in her face.

  “What’s happened? It’s Ray, isn’t it? Tell me what’s happened!”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Winter. Your son’s been hurt, but he’s going to be fine. He’s over at the hospital right now, and if you want to see him, we can take you there.”

  “Hurt? What do you mean, hurt?”

  By now Duke had appeared from the bedroom wearing a short pink bathrobe and black knee-length socks. “What’s going on here?” he wanted to know.

  “Mr. Winter? Your son, Ray, has been hurt, sir. He’s over at the hospital having treatment.”

  “What was it? Auto accident? The kid doesn’t even drive!”

  “No, sir. It seems like there was some kind of ethnic confrontation.”

  Duke pressed two fingers against his forehead as if he were having trouble working this out. “Ethnic confrontation? What’s that in English? You’re talking about a race riot here?”

  “Not exactly a riot, Mr. Winter. But there was a racially motivated assault, yes.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’ve just told me my son has been the victim of a racially motivated assault. I’m just asking you how many of them were there.”

  “Around seventeen, all told. But your son wasn’t—”

  “Seventeen! There were seventeen blacks against just one white? Jesus Christ!”

  “Mr. Winter, your son wasn’t attacked by seventeen other people. Your son was involved in a fight in which at least seventeen people are known to have taken part. Eleven whites and six Hispanics. No African-Americans. All of them sustained injuries ranging from stab wounds to severe bruising. One of them may lose an eye. Three of them, including your son, are still in hospital.”

  Bonnie said, “Ray was fighting Hispanics? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

  The black officer took out his notebook and flipped it open. “Eleven white youths went into the X-cat-ik Pool Bar downtown and a fight ensued. We recovered three knives, a machete and a baseball bat. Unfortunately, none of the customers in the bar was willing to admit that they saw anything, although there doesn’t seem to be any question that this was a racially motivated attack.”

  “No, there’s some mistake here,” said Bonnie. “Ray wouldn’t get involved in a thing like that.”

  “I’m only telling you the facts, Mrs. Winter.”

  Duke started to bluster again, but Bonnie laid a hand on his arm to quiet him. “Tell me where he is,” she said. “We’ll make our own way there.”

  The Young Hero

  They found Ray in a dull green room at the end of a long, echoing corridor. One of its fluorescent lights kept flickering and making a buzzing noise like a trapped blowfly.

  Ray’s head was wrapped in a white bandage that went right under his jaw. One of his arms was in plaster so that only the purple tips of his fingers were showing. Both of his eyes were swollen like plums, yellow and red, and his lips were huge, as if they were molded out of red rubber.

  A Chinese intern with deeply nicotine-stained fingers was checking his blood pressure. “You’re the parents?”

  Bonnie nodded. She walked around Ray’s bed and said, “Ray? What happened to you, baby?”

  “A broken wrist, multiple contusions and abrasions, three cracked ribs, a chipped ankle bone, two broken toes and a mild concussion,” said the intern, impassively. “It could have been worse.”

  “It could have been worse?” asked Duke.

  “Sure. He was kicked several times in the abdomen. Could have ruptured his spleen. Somebody kicked him in the head, too, just behind the right ear. He’s going to have a pretty big egg there for a day or two.”

  Bonnie sat down and took hold of Ray’s hand. “Ray—what were you doing? You’re not in a gang, are you? I was expecting you home for supper.”

  Duke said nothing at all but stood with his arms tightly folded, pulling that chewing-the-cud face he always pulled when he couldn’t trust himself to speak.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Ray croaked. “We didn’t think it was going to turn out this way.”

  “But what were you thinking of, going down to that bar?”

  “That’s where all the Mexican kids hang out.”

  “So? What did they ever do to you? For God’s sake, Ray, the police said you had knives and baseball bats.”

  “They were Mexicans, Mom.”

  “So they were Mexicans. So what? I don’t get it. Why did you have to beat up on them like that?”

  “Because of what they did, Mom.”

  “You’ll have to excuse my stupidity. I still don’t get it.”

  “Because of what they did to Dad, Mom. Because they come here and take American jobs and put people out of work.”

  “You went and beat up on some
Mexicans you didn’t even know because some Mexican took your father’s job?”

  “Yes,” said Ray, and coughed, and winced. “I mean, look what it’s done to you, Mom, both of you. Dad’s all eaten up inside, and you have to scrape up dead bodies for a living, and you two are always having arguments, and it’s all because of some Mexican.”

  Bonnie shook her head in disbelief. “What were you thinking? You could have killed somebody and spent the rest of your life in jail! Somebody might have killed you! Look at you! They almost succeeded!”

  She stood up. She was quaking with rage. “You’re my son, Ray. You’re my only son. I brought you up to do the right thing. Your father lost his job, and that was unfair, and it was probably illegal, too. But for you to start beating up on Mexican people like some kind of Nazi—I won’t have that. No son of mine is going to behave like that, I warn you.”

  Duke took hold of her arm and tried to restrain her. “Come on, Bonnie. Look at him. Don’t you think he’s been punished enough?”

  “Are you serious? Your son went out armed with knives and baseball bats and deliberately attacked innocent people!”

  “Hey, hey, let’s hold up a minute, shall we? You say innocent. But how the hell do you know they’re innocent? These Mexicans, they take work without permits, they don’t pay taxes, they deal in drugs, they smuggle stuff. They’d sell their own sisters, most of them. How can you say innocent? And in any case, tell me, how do we know for sure who attacked who?”

  Bonnie turned around and stared at him. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “You have to be fair, sweetheart. You can’t shout at the kid without knowing all the details.”

  “Fair? I know what this is all about. You’re proud of him, aren’t you? You’re actually proud of him. You think he’s some kind of hero. You didn’t ever think that he’d take your side, did you? But now he has, and you’re so goddamned proud!”

  “Hey, come on, Bonnie—”

  “Forget it, Duke. I’m going home. I’m not staying here to listen to this bigoted crap. Ray—did the cops talk to you yet?”