Dracula's Children

by Richard Lortz

  Distress furrowed Kathy’s forehead, tightened her mouth.

  “She’s been real sick this time. I mean it. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “You know what’s wrong.”

  “No, no. It’s not what you think.”

  Sarcastically, since his middle name was Liar—“Yeah!”

  “Kathy, I swear! —For your mother’s sake. She needs you. Suppose she dies. She might be dead even now; lyin’ in there dead.”

  Dead drunk, most likely. There was no point in believing anything he said.

  She moved back under the arch, hiding herself in the dark shadows.

  “Kathy—?”

  “Kathy—!”

  He gave up temporarily, moving away from the window with a string of muttered obscenities, the only words she could hear being “fuck, shit, and goddamn.”

  Despite many years of compulsive heavy drinking and the sporadic use of a variety of drugs, Milagros had retained a lean body and almost all of his youthful good looks. His mixed Irish and Spanish ancestry had surfaced the best of both races: he had film-star features, the bluest of eyes, and hair of such fine texture and luxurious smoky-black thickness, it was the lip-bitten envy of every woman he’d ever met—these virtually as numerous as the stars.

  To account for his youth while they themselves wilted and aged like rotting apples, his friends decided he was “pickled”—every cell of his body so saturated with alcohol he might be walking about in a sea of formaldehyde. One of them joked that when he died, if he ever did, there’d be no work for the mortician, since he was already better preserved than the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

  His wife, Ana, drank also—though her illness was of more recent origin and, unlike him, it had aged her quickly—well beyond her thirty-eight years, bloating her flesh and features sufficiently to give her a subtlely unfamiliar, misshapen appearance—the one thing more than any other that had troubled and pained Kathy deeply. Loving her mother the way she did, she had to strain beyond that gross carnival look to find vestiges of the once calm and caring and beautiful woman she had known as a small child.

  Too—and again unlike Milagros who, if anything, became more active when drunk, Ana had always to take to her bed with varying degrees of hysterical paralysis. Of course it never affected the hand that raised the glass to her lips, but always her legs, which became useless, unable to bear her weight, the joints shot through with severe recurrent pain. The logic became twisted and reversed itself; she didn’t become paralyzed because she drank as, indeed, the clinic doctor had told her; no, in the ocean of self-pity that engulfed her, she drank because she became paralyzed, Proof: between the whiskey bottles that lined her dresser and night table burned a dozen votive candles in their small ruby cups, petitioning a cure for the curse and affliction that prevented her from being wife to her husband and mother to her child.

  With the vague hope that Ana might just possibly be dead, and Kathy heir to a five-thousand-dollar insurance claim which he, naturally, must manage since his daughter, though mature for her age, was barely more than thirteen, Milagros pushed open the bedroom door. But no— There she was, face down, nude, the tangled hair fanned out on the pillow, the mouth opened and the dry lips cracked from prolonged heavy breathing, the top sheet a wet, yellow-stained scroll twisted between her legs and under her hips.

  “Ana—?”

  He knew she could neither hear nor reply, but it was his habit to speak to her, even frequently touch her, anyway.

  “Your darling daughter is home. After three days. Or is it four? Ain’t you glad?” He leaned over the bed, shaking her by the shoulder. “Come now. It’s time to celebrate.” He lifted her up, a life-size doll, slapping the gray face while her head lolled back and forth as if the neck were broken. The handling made her exhale, and the sudden stench of her breath was a shock. With disgust he let the limp body drop back, picking up a bottle that had rolled from the bed. It contained a half-inch of whiskey which he drained promptly, then, suddenly seeing with pleasure his own handsome if half-clothed self in the bureau mirror, expanded his bare chest, turning profile, exposing as many beautiful, diamond-hard, milk-white teeth as he could find available.

  “Well, Milagros, I see there ain’t goin’ t’ be no welcoming home party after all. ’Cept by you and me.”

  He moved closer to the image, still grinning, Ana’s hairbrush in hand, tidying his black mass of wild hair. “You and me, pal . . .” Now he splashed some cologne into his armpits, and behind his ears the way he had seen women do. “But we’ll just see what we can arrange . . . to liven things up; right?—maybe make it . . . real nice, for both of us. . . .”

  At the window he bellowed.

  “Kathy— !”

  When he saw the girl move out and look up—“Last chance. Your ma says to come up.” And for every neighbor and all the world to hear—“If you don’t, then fuck it! I got better things to do than yell out a winder all night. You ain’t here in two minutes, I’m locking up with the chain.”

  And with that he slammed the window shut, a fitting final gesture, punctuating his angry ultimatum, only to open it again immediately because of the overpowering heat.

  The apartment door opens onto the kitchen and as Kathy pushes it in, she sees her father at the table, the Daily News spread out, ostensibly absorbed in reading, unconscious to all else as he sucks noisily at a can of beer, pretending so obviously not to hear her, not to notice. The door to her mother’s bedroom on the right is shut. In all, the situation seems falsely calm and fake. When the faint odor of the perfume he has doused himself with reaches her, it seems doubly suspicious.

  She stands so long and undecided in the doorway he must finally notice and become irritable.

  “Well, stupid?! Come in or go out.”

  Better judgment tells her to leave, regardless, but—“Why is the bedroom door shut?”

  Milagros shrugs, mixing irritability with surprise. “How the fuck should I know? Maybe Uncle Sam did it. Or the Wicked Witch of the North.” Pause. Glaring at her—“How’d you get so dirty? Oh boy, look at you! One of your freakin’ two-inch boyfriends must have been banging you in the Gobi Desert.”

  Sometimes he “got” her purely through insult, she becoming so angry and outraged, she wanted to stay and fight, risking all danger.

  ‘You shut up, Papa!”

  With mincing sarcasm, mimicking her tone—“You shut up, Papa!”

  So it began, her fear of him quickly blurred by the desire to hurt him: mortally, mortally, if she could.

  Because he had risen—“Don’t you come near me!”

  Sneering—“Near you!? Who the fuck wants to come near you?”—so rough, so crude, yet underneath it, his handsome face is alive with slyness and the subtlest of smiles, as if you both shared a secret and this were all just a game to frighten you, until he grabbed you in innocent fun, and spun you in dizzy circles, with laughter and kisses and cries that he loved you. . . . “I just wanted to see that scratch on your face, you stupid kid. Better wash or you’ll have it infected.” And while he spoke he moved toward her.

  Warning him, her voice trembling—“I’ll call Trina!”

  This stops him and brings a healthy laugh as he returns to his beer on the table, staggering a bit. “Trina! Honey—that tub of painted lard would lick the dog shit off my shoes if I told her. Don’t you know that by this time? Don’t you know that when—”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”—hysteria, sharp and wild in her voice.

  Silence.

  Kathy swallows the lump in her throat again and again as it rises, and her father breathes a bit heavily, hiding his emotion in a display of indifference, feeling a heat and a hunger grow in his groin, mixing with the anger in his heart. His jaw aches because his teeth are so tightly clenched. The grip on the beer can tightens until the metal caves in, and the amber liquid shoots out in a small explosion.

  He laughs at that, and looks back at Kathy to see if she has enjoyed it too. Such a small sill
y thing to calm them both!—but it does, for the moment at least.

  Giving in with a little laugh—“Papa, look at you!”—the hair on his chest foaming with beer, his face dripping.

  She brings a towel from the kitchen sink, and dries his face and, with hesitation, his chest, her strokes becoming slower and more self-conscious until they stop. As he takes the towel from her hand his fingers brush hers.

  She pulls away quickly, as if his touch were a burn, and turns her back.

  “Does Mama really want me?”

  Bluntly—“No.” After a moment—“But she soaked her bed, and I’ll be damned if I clean up again. Your turn, sweetheart.” And as Kathy moves to the bedroom door—“The laundry bag’s in the closet. If you need help moving her, call me.”

  Is the woman on the bed truly her mother? Couldn’t it be someone else, some . . . strange person, unknown to her, never before seen?

  It is always a shock to see her nude, no matter how many times it happens, and Kathy feels the blood warm her cheeks. Ana’s face is hidden because of the angled twist of the body in the sheets; one leg hangs over the side of the bed, and the dark-brown breasts are ponderous, with a sheen of sweat, the nipples almost black—as round and flat and wide as silver dollars.

  Embarrassment and shame actually prickle in the girl’s cheekbones and around her eyes, and the heartbreak is the kind that puts a stone in her chest. The evil smell of the bed reaches her; it is the smell of a public toilet where a thousand men or women have pissed into the broken yellow porcelain of a thousand dark holes in the ground.

  The girl can’t move; she stands in a staring stupor until her father is at her side with a muttered oath and a “Well?!”

  He crosses to the closet, takes out a laundry bag, removes two wrinkled sheets which he throws to the floor beside the bed.

  He handles Ana so roughly he might be a butcher with a carcass of beef, untwisting the tangled wet sheets, lifting legs, arms, head as carelessly as those of a corpse.

  “I wouldn’t bother but the place stinks!”—pulling the second sheet from under her. “I feel like I’m livin’ at the zoo. Or the circus —The animal cages, that’s what! Piss and more piss”—loathing them as he kicks the soaked sheets toward the door.

  “I worked for a circus once.” He staggers, looking back at his daughter, gripping the foot of the bed for support. “You didn’t know that, eh? Well I did. —All that slop and stink. Nothing’s worse than an animal. Unless—” looking at Ana and grinning at Kathy “—unless it’s a human being.”

  As he kicks the sheets out of the room—“Move!”—because Kathy stands in his way.

  Now he’s at the bed again, throwing Ana to her back, folding the arms across her chest like a body newly dead. Next: a single clean sheet is draped across her.

  “There. That’ll do. Why waste two sheets, eh? She’s soaked the bed anyway; and will piss again before the night’s over. Let her stew in her own juice; right?”

  The metaphor tickles him, and he laughs so hard it makes him dizzy. Stumbling, a naked foot cracks a few toes against a bottle on the floor. With a yelp of pain, he bends down, seizes the bottle, and flings it out the window.

  Kathy hears it hit the pavement, and then an angry male voice—“Hey! Who the fuck t’rew that fuckin’ bottle out the winder?” And a second voice, equally graphic—“Hey, asshole. Show yuh fuckin’ face. We got somethin’ nice for yuh!”

  Pleased, his excitement growing, Milagros edges up for a cautious peek out the window. As he does so, a good chunk of brick flies into the room like a rocket, smashing into the bureau mirror which fractures into an instant web of angled cracks, all of it sliding to the floor with a tremendous crash.

  Even more pleased, Milagros is virtually dancing tiptoe about the room, barely suppressing his laughter, waving at Kathy to stay back. He picks up an empty bottle from the floor, carefully approaches the window by hugging the wall, peering out obliquely.

  Calling suddenly—“You wanna play games, Mother? Let’s go!”

  And he lets the bottle fly. A crash and just moments later another rock enters the room, but this time through the top panes of the window, smashing through the double glass. It showers over Kathy, who with a cry of surprise and a too-late gesture to protect her face, moves into a corner, one cheek smally-cut but bleeding.

  Milagros is gleeful. He lets another bottle fly, and another. There are laughter and muttered obscenities from below where the fight is also enjoyed. Another rock, two, the last bouncing on the bed and rolling against Ana’s face. Two more bottles, the hollow, explosive crack and tinkling crash of them as they splatter across the pavement. Then—silence, footsteps, faint laughter and fading voices, the rock throwers having lost interest and walked away.

  Milagros moves full-view into the window, calling after them—

  “Chicken!”

  And louder—“Chickenshit!”

  And bellowing—“Mother-fuckers!”

  And finally, straining hoarsely—“Eat shit. Eat shit!”

  But no obscenity is strong enough to pique their interest and bring them back.

  Frustrated, disappointed—because the fight wasn’t nearly long and strong and violent enough to purge him of his liquored rage, he is left with a roomful of broken glass, a stinking, half-dead body on the bed, no more whiskey to drink, and his dirty, barefooted, wide-eyed, bleeding daughter, crouched in a corner like a beaten puppy.

  Can there be any doubt about what he wants to do, has to do next?

  But it takes a bit of cunning. The first step is to position himself quickly between Kathy and the door. This done, and interest renewed, his frustration and disappointment disappear. It is obvious that his daughter has already guessed the name of the game, and has no choice but to play.

  And play well she does, having played it before. She rises to her feet slowly, her eyes on his, reading his intention, her back flat, pressed to the wall, while one quite steady hand curls around the neck of a bottle lying on a corner of the bureau.

  It is a pleasure to watch, to remember how strong she is for her age, to realize that if she can she will gladly and truly kill you before it is over, split open your skull, or, if she decides to smash the end off the bottle, grind the circle of jagged glass into your face, twist it, rip at your eyes.

  That’s the kind of daughter to have if you’re the kind of father that Milagros is.

  He smiles his handsome smile, alert, elated, even slightly sobered, marshaling all his wits, uncertain but enormously curious to learn what her next move will be.

  Surprisingly, there’s to be dialogue along with the drama; for in an irresolute moment, one of apparent weakness and confusion, she wavers, and an imploring, pathetic word, a shaken plea for help is spoken, addressed to the inert, senseless form on the bed.

  “Mama—?”

  And then, with equal pathos—“Papa—?”

  But he’s not to be undone and denied his prize so easily.

  “Yes, love—?”

  She speaks once—with no sound at all. The second time he hears her—“Please—?”

  He takes a step toward her. “Please—what?” No answer. Another step. With a fake aside, exaggerated frowning concentration—“I don’t seem to remember all this—fuss the first time. Oh—” a small laugh “—maybe—just a little, at the beginning.” Two small steps, veering to the left, giving her a possible opportunity to run around him if she dares. “Seems all girls like to pretend not to want it at first; part of their nature; ain’t that right? But you liked it after awhile, I remember; oh boy, did you love it! I can still hear you yelling!” And now he mimics her voice obscenely, his voice high and ecstatic: “Oh, Papa. . . .! Papa . . . ! Papa . . .!”

  He is stopped on the fourth “Papa!” by the explosive crack of the bottle smashed on the end of the bureau. And in the next moment she’s at him, slashing toward his face, so quick that despite his preparation he is taken by surprise, the jagged glass raking the air, the longest gli
ttering green tooth of it just missing his eye and cutting him open from cheekbone to chin with a deep ragged scratch.

  Shocked, enraged, he seizes her wrist in one hand and with the other grabs her shirt at the throat, ripping it from her body.

  She is incredibly strong!—so astonishingly so that his smile is no longer a smile but a frozen grimace as he strains to force her arm back and behind her in an effort to twist the glass from her hand. He succeeds only inches at a time, but finally, with a gasp of pain, her fingers open and the bottle drops.

  He then grabs her about the waist in a tremendous bear hug, crushing the breath out of her, walking her backward, lumbering toward the bed.

  She writhes, twists, kicks, scratches, her teeth seeking anything they can find. She is so impossible to control that Milagros fears he will lose her. Frenzied, he pulls back, freeing one arm, and with a blow that could easily have felled a two-hundred-pound man, brings up his fist under the girl’s jaw.

  She falls, loose-limbed, limp, shapeless, like a stocking-doll, unconscious at his feet.

  She has a rocking sensation, and for a few sweet moments half-dreams, half-imagines that she is a tiny child, secure and loved, cradled firmly in gentle arms that rock her back and forth, back and forth, in a blissful rhythm as soothing as the sea.

  Her eyes open, consciousness feathering back, but nothing is real or meaningful initially; the room isn’t a room but a high open space, the bed isn’t a bed but a drifting cloud, and far below, where the earth should be, is a shattered rainbow, a blazing desert of fragmented color that dazzles her senses.

  It is long before the room rights itself and walls become walls, and the rainbow just pieces of broken glass on the floor, gleaming in the faint glow of dawn from the window.

  She’s . . . ? Where? Home?—yes; on her own bed?—no; because next to her angled head that hangs half over the edge, so close it is blurred, she can make out the outline of her mother’s open-mouthed, sleeping face.

  The rhythm, the sensation of being rocked persists, and, awakening, becoming progressively more alive through the pervading numbness of her whole body, is the strange, frightening feeling of movement below, of oppressive weight and massive pressure, of something burrowing deep and hard inside her, filling her to a total fullness, virtually lifting her body from her bed in pulsing waves of intense pleasure mixed with intolerable pain.