by Jason Carney
Murmur illusions from the organs of our sex.
Laughter and lust flicker like wasps
tongue upon tongue, a vespine dance.
Disguise our bodies in bitter bouquets.
We fracture. Use our bones to plumb
the depths of each other’s scars. We grind
salt in between our teeth—nuzzle forever
at our lips. The flower of your eye tears
like communion behind brown hair. You
bellow as a puncture wound. Our fingers stain.
Our love evokes the crimson throat of the son.
FIRST JOB
1981
“I HATE BABYSITTING,” I SAY.
Every morning starts too early for an eleven-year-old on summer vacation. Awake and out the door before the sun is up, I return home most evenings around nine.
“I don’t care. You keep your commitments,” my mom says.
She volunteered me for the job three weeks earlier. Debbie met a couple at the pool; they have two children—a boy eight and a girl two. As she reached into the cooler for another cold one, my mother oversold my skill set as a latchkey only child who knows how to make dinner without burning down the house. Bad choices for important decisions always go down better with a buzz.
“Jason is really excellent with children, mature for his age,” she told them. Debbie likes to talk out her ass after she’s killed a few.
I have tread water for twenty-seven days. The twenty-eighth day should be my last. I fear drowning.
“I want to have fun. It’s summer,” I plead. “I want to go visit Dad.”
“Goddamnit, boy, don’t be so fucking selfish! Now, get your ass ready.” Her last words on the subject ignore the brittle despair in my voice. I am in over my head. “Don’t forget to make your lunch. Load the dishwasher before you go,” she says, shutting the front door.
Babysitting is a high school girl’s job. I still have to go spend the night with my grandmother when my mom goes out on the weekend. I want to go swimming.
Each thought anchors deep animosity, the weight of which slows my legs. My blue Mongoose bike crawls past the townhome community pool, as a light mist levitates above the grass. Everything is surrounded by the cloudless sky in a humid purple swelter of morning.
“You’re late,” the woman scolds me, as if I was her child. “Today, do a better job on the kitchen.” She scurries about the living room inspecting everything; her focus is putting on her earrings. “Don’t forget to vacuum and dust. Where’s your lunch?” she asks, grabbing her purse. “Hun, let’s go! Jason, don’t eat all my food.” She does not even look at us as she leaves the door half-open behind her.
“All right, little man,” her husband says.
He brushes the milk off his mustache; the thick, coarse brown hairs remind me of Magnum PI. All he ever offers me is criticism. Don’t eat my snacks; clean the kitchen better; don’t complain, this job is easy.
“Have fun today, buddy,” he says. Seated at the table with his son, he reaches out and strokes him on the head. As he stands, he leans over to kiss him. The boy smiles back, tickled by the texture of his father’s upper lip.
Something inside me cringes. My insides course in two directions. I crave a father’s attention, strokes on the head at breakfast that would fill me with confidence and aspirations, someone to teach me about mustaches and aftershave. I imagine secret manhood rituals take place standing over a sink, where fathers and sons exchange riddles of the universe. Two reflections meld to one in a fogged-up mirror. The father and son at the table give off the pungent scent of adoration. It smells of red tackle boxes full of lures and stink bait, the guts of a catfish squished in your palm, peanuts and soda at thirty-five thousand feet. All the things I do alone. I despise this whiff.
The man and woman exit to their workdays without offering a thank you, goodbye, or an estimated time of return.
“There’s a note for you,” the little boy says.
He is thin, practically half my size. He hides his face behind brown hair; it dangles into his cereal bowl. He hates me about as much as I hate being here. We never play together. Most days he is out the door by nine, I do not see him until lunch at three or four. Then he is gone again. His summer is an abundant imagination raw and at full tide.
His friends gather at the creek to fish. They jump their bikes along the climbs and dips of the dirt trail. They sweat and build grime under their nails, howling like animals running the wooded trails of the creek. Bottle-rocket bicycle, chicken fights, watching fourteen-year-olds shoot fireworks at one another; they compare scorched clothes and burnt skin with explosive laughter. The younger kids school together on the sides like fish, educate themselves by gazing mesmerized at the remains of the launched projectiles. They race their bikes through the small U-shaped streets of the complex, calling each other names, douche bag, pussy lips, ball sack. They express their freedom by mimicking the older boys. They splash the daylight from the pool, late in the afternoon, when the concrete has absorbed the sun’s heat. At night, the concrete regurgitates the full contents of its belly. The heat cascades up through the darkness back toward the stars. The boys return home exhausted. They live the summer of my dreams.
I do his chores, his parents’ chores, and the little girl’s, five days a week. I hate it. Last night’s dinner dishes pile in the sink, clean laundry in baskets ready for me to fold. I’m overworked and underpaid; his parents shorted me twenty dollars each of the first two weeks. The first time, I ate too much. The second time, I apparently did not clean enough. They never come home on time. I babysit through their happy-hour indulgences. Last Friday night they arrived at midnight, drunk, without any money left to pay me. Dirty dishes, soiled clothes, drunken adults, and dirty diapers: I hate the parents as much as I hate the boy.
As I look at the handwritten letter, the large hurried swoosh of the ink scrawls create visuals in my mind. This woman whose streaked-blond Farrah Fawcett hairdo—each strand hair-sprayed to its neighbor, as if they were one cohesive, paralyzed body and all five years out of date—bounced in a unified resentment as she wrote. My eyes roll as I read.
Do a better job cleaning! My daughter, she now has a rash. Also, do not tell my son what to do. He has permission to play with his friends and monitor himself. You boys are too close in age for one to rule over the other. Do not tell him to clean up. You are the one paid to babysit.
“Why don’t you babysit, then?” I ask him.
“I’m not old enough,” he smirks, getting up from the table. The boy prances upstairs, leaving his mess on the table for me.
The little girl wakes up at eight in the morning. Her room is perfect. The walls covered in brightly colored pictures of angel-winged teddy bears, flowers, and white fluffy clouds embracing rainbows. The crib lined in white lace bedding with pink swirls matches the cushions of the rocking chair angled into the corner next to it. This room is safe and full of love, creating a carbuncle of jealousy under my skin. I imagine her daddy rocking her into a giggling slumber. Every toy is clean and flawlessly arranged. I retrieve her from the crib, remove her pajamas, and begin the laborious diaper changing.
I hate this responsibility. She smiles right into my frustration, her happiness confounding me. I tolerate the discomfort, similar to the visits to my dad’s house. I live all year waiting for summer, clinging to a lonely child’s dream.
Maybe this year I will fly to St. Louis, be the center of my father’s life, even if only for a couple of weeks.
For a few years, I did climb aboard a Boeing 737 with unlimited peanuts and sodas. I spent my days fishing at the pond on my stepmother’s family’s pig farm. At night, we gathered in the house my father owned with his new family. We cooked what I caught and we ate at a walnut-stained picnic table. I sat across from my dad, his gaze fixated on the smile of my little half-sister perched in his lap like a songbird. I never found my way to the black center of his eye, where I looked for some magical love evoked from his heart, a magic other
than the violence-saturated memories of his first family. My sister never left his smile.
* * *
The diaper looks awkward and off-center. I fumble with the white adhesive straps across the sides. She wears only the diaper. We wait until after her nap to pick out an ensemble. I long for her nap time after lunch. Her closed eyes are the only break from my responsibilities all day. She looks like a doll, bubbling curly blond hair around bright loving blue eyes. I make her laugh with funny voices and imitations of animals.
“Moo, moo,” I say, exaggerating my facial expression. “MOO!”
“Mil,” she says with a smile of confidence.
She only speaks two words: Daddy and milk.
Once we come down, I secure the baby fence along the base of the stairs. We eat Cheerios and drink orange juice; she likes to stick the cereal to our faces. I enjoy the gluey wet fuss of her hands decorating my cheeks. We spend our morning watching television. Sesame Street turns into Bob Barker’s models, selling trips to Austria with their bathing-suit smiles. She loves game shows. I love women in bathing suits.
“Come on down!” I yell as I tickle her stomach.
She giggles and tries to tickle me back. Soon, the boy bounds down the stairs carrying a toy machine gun and a backpack. A green bandanna tied around his forehead, and wearing camouflage pants and a T-shirt without sleeves, he resembles the brainwashed offspring of a backwoods militia man training for the great race war. He packs a lunch large enough for a legion of men: six sandwiches, seven little bags of chips, three apples, and a six-pack of Coke; he even empties a whole package of Oreos into his brown paper grocery sack. He loads the bag into the backpack. Rethinking his menu, he removes three cookies, placing them back into the package. I think this is curious. He leaves the package on the table, next to this morning’s breakfast mess.
“I’m going to the creek to play war,” he announces, slamming the door behind him.
I stare out the window into the blinding sun. He peddles into the white-hot morning, disappears around the corner. He carries my dream of freedom with him. I sit down empty.
I fold the laundry, taking my time to ensure no complaints before they pay me. The little girl plays with a floatation device she uses at the pool. A brightly colored ring, it resembles a beach ball. I had one just like it when I could not swim. She bounces her bottom off the edges, trying not to wobble onto the floor. She laughs every time she falls.
The laundry folded, piled neatly into the plastic baskets, I walk into the torture of the kitchen. The dishes unrinsed, piled all over the counters, pans crusted with pork-and-beans and fried potatoes, and the sink a jumble of cups and coffee mugs. The leftovers rotting in the trash can open my nostrils, the stink tangy upon my tongue. The mess reminds me of home and that I already cleaned a kitchen today.
Shit, this is going to take forever.
I unload the dishes I did yesterday from the dishwasher. Sunshine pours into the enclosed patio off the living area. Drawn into the comfort of the glow, my will to finish the kitchen vanishes. The deep green of the leaves gives the room a sedate feeling; the enclosed patio sparkles with tranquility. I take a break. For lunch, I plan for fish sticks and applesauce. Hungry, I grab an Oreo from the package and inhale it. A small band of black crumbs escapes out the sides of my mouth; I smear them across my cheeks with the back of my hand. The front door opens.
“Hey, sunshine.” I recognize the man’s voice. “I forgot my wallet.” He hurdles the baby gate, taking two stairs at a time.
He descends the stairs slowly, counting the contents of his billfold. I lurk at the entry of the kitchen, wondering who he distrusts: his son, his wife, or me. He enters the kitchen nudging my shoulder with his arm. A smile across his face indicates everything in his wallet is in order.
“What the hell is this mess?” he raises his voice at the sight of the half-cleaned kitchen. “Goddamnit, Jason!” His eyes catch the empty bag of cookies. “You have to eat every fucking one of my cookies?”
“I didn’t eat the cookies,” I say.
“Don’t lie to me, you little pig, there are crumbs all over your face. Clean this shit up. Put some fucking clothes on her.”
He snags the last two Oreos as he huffs toward the front door. My frustration at being blamed for what his son did, the names adults call me, and these disheveled jackass people—their laziness, using me as a slave to scrub burnt tuna casserole off metal pans—drives the passivity from my mouth.
“Your son ate the cookies!” I scream.
“Don’t yell at me, little boy,” the man replies. “Blaming your theft on my son will not get you paid tonight.”
He bends at the waist and picks up the girl. His determined footsteps, each an assertion of anger, conjures my father. He stomps toward the stairs. His foot comes down on the flotation ring, the seams bubble under the pressure, fissures erupt along the body of the adhesive. The detonation reverberates off the walls as the seams explode. The little girl and I bust with emotion as the halves separate from what was whole. My life changes forever.
“Cocksucker!” he screams. “Clean this shit up!”
The red fume of his face matches the color of the tulips in the center of the dining room table. His feet tangle in the flat ring, he knocks over a laundry basket. He stumbles. The clumsy way he pitches her on the couch as he falls causes her to roll off the cushion. Her head smacks the floor.
“See what you did, Jason? Pick this shit up! You are worthless!” His eyes glare like my father’s, full of venom and death. “I got to get back to work.”
The door slams heavy. The coatrack falls off a nail and gashes the wall. The little girl bawls. A red welt visible on her forehead, she crawls to the door, clutching after her father.
“Fuck you!” I scream tears down my face. “GGGGGGGGRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA!”
My guttural roar scares the girl. She claws after the doorknob just out of reach. She wants someone to hold her, ease her pain, and kiss her injured forehead, making the boo-boo better. My head swirls with rage, my reflection in the living room mirror reveals the anguish of a drowning boy. The edges of my vision blur to blackness. I tingle from head to toe, every nerve ending alive.
Who is she to feel hurt when I am the one they shit on?
“Shut up!” I scream.
“Dada. Dada. Dada!” She stretches on her tiptoes; snot and tears run down her belly.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” I yell.
“Dada! Dada!”
“He isn’t coming back. Shut up!”
Our eyes connect; a hatred of everything small and fragile flows through me. I slap the back of her head with my right hand. She cries louder, and her pleas touch a place of fear within her for the first time. I recognize it in her eyes. My father showed me this anger that dwelled like a beast within my bowels. When its hideous mouth opened, I felt its infectious tongue, I found comfort within its embrace—a nightmarish life of powerless lust. I no longer fear that beast. I relish its comfort. I desire its power.
“Shut the fuck up!” I scream, slapping her head, both arms flailing in unison with my words. “They don’t love you! Shut up!”
I pick her up and throw her on the couch. The red welt on her forehead the least of her pain, she quickly gets up and starts for the door. I grab her, lifting her to eye level, and shake her in my face. Her shoulders and neck jerk uncontrollably.
“Will you shut up? They’re not coming!”
Her face swells with tears and her eyes jump wildly around the room, glossy and abandoned. I push her back onto the brown fake-leather cushions. Her cries morph into screams, into the fiendish prayer of innocence, an incorruptibility I no longer know. The realization of what I lack drives me over the edge.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”
A strange supremacy rushes through me. I cannot identify this passion. The will it gives me to choke this little girl, to silence her screams, to heal my wounds through their infection of another. I smile, sucking
in the wetness from my jowls. Goose pimples erupt on my flesh, a million little fangs on my skin clamor for more. I am hungry for more control, more power, more contact with this vile lust. No thoughts direct me. I travel a braille map of scars along my insides. I am recreating a familiar horror.
I am my father’s son.
SECOND STRING
1985
“WERE THOSE BOYS MAKING FUN OF YOU?” Mom asks.
I shrug and dig my fists deeper into my pockets.
She’s talking about the boys at the football banquet hours earlier. Tonight was the much-anticipated Oak Park High School letter ceremony, a potluck dinner celebrating the efforts of the small suburban football team. The ceremony and dinner were held in the fully carpeted gymnasium. Even the basketball court with its big eagle emblem is made of carpet. This small community at the edge of Agoura Hills, California, is secluded and tight knit. It’s so small that the high school and junior high are on the same campus. There are only around 140 students in both schools, so everyone knows each other, has grown up together, and the majority of the people here are Jewish. No one here talks with a twang. All the parents, players, and coaches treated the barbecue brisket my mother made for the banquet as some kind of foreign delicacy, never before seen or tasted. The dish was much more popular than the bucket of Pioneer fried chicken the starting quarterback’s mom brought and served.
Oak Park is the smallest place we have ever lived. We moved here with my stepfather in July from Glendale, California. It’s a true hellhole for an awkward kid from Mesquite, Texas. Frankly, I think the whole state of California sucks ass—palm trees, street gangs, the ocean, smog, Disneyland, traffic, and those fucking singing raisins. I have taken many opportunities to show my disgruntled view of the current state of affairs, in ways most people would not see as positive. I never wanted to move here.
“I thought you were doing better here,” my mother says. “Aren’t you happy?”
