by Brian Hodge
It was weird. When Buzz and his buddy and Mikey came back from the blind, Mikey looked really upset. Maybe Buzz had told him some scary stories or something, because he looked like he’d been crying. Didn’t make much sense to keep Mikey away from the bullies if someone’s gonna make him cry anyway.
When we got back, Buzz sent us to the showers to clean up for lunch. Mikey hated showering with everybody else. Personally, I thought it was kinda gay to want us all to shower at the same time. I never understood what kind of straight guy would want to be naked with a bunch of other dudes. I was thinking about that when Tom Robertson, dressed in only a towel, went running past where Gideon and I were getting undressed. He had a big red smear across his face, holding his hand over his left eye and calling for Buzz to come help.
Next thing I saw was Mikey and Pete, totally naked and beating the hell out of—well, at first it looked like they were beating up on each other. But after a few seconds Pete just put his hands up to try to fend off punch after punch after slamming-hard punch. Mikey had gone crazy! He was screaming something I couldn’t understand. Something about grapes, I think. I don’t really remember. Mikey just punched and screamed like a gorilla in a zoo. I didn’t figure out for years what he was really saying. Not until the truth came out about Buzz and his friend. Now that I think about it, a lot of people I knew as a kid had dark secrets that didn’t come out for years.
Gideon started out cheering for Mikey to kick his ass. Pete had been snapping Gideon’s sister’s bra daily ever since she got boobs. And when Gideon tried to do something about it, Tom Robertson held Gideon’s face in a mud puddle while Pete kicked him. They were mean fuckin’ guys, but seeing Pete take punch after punch, barely even able to hold his hands up, was … kinda sad. Even Gideon tried to call Mikey off after a while. But nobody actually broke up the fight until Buzz came in. He and Al pulled Mikey off Pete and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. Mikey mumbled something about a snapping towel, and Buzz decided to take everyone home a day early. Everyone blamed Mikey for that, too. No wonder Mikey thought he couldn’t ever catch a break.
Chapter Ten
(Mikey)
Feeling the Calm
I rehearsed in my mind, over and over, what I might say if anyone ever asked me about the redheaded girl. First I was gonna make sure everyone knew that I didn’t really know her; she was just a casual friend of my stepdaughter. Then I was gonna have a whole story in place for why I wasn’t at the grocery store that day. I was driving around looking for just the right ice cream for my wife. She wanted a very particular flavor of Ben & Jerry’s … I’ll say Cherry Garcia … no wait; I’ll say the truth. I couldn’t find it, so I had to drive to five or six different stores. That was a great story, and fit in perfectly with what had actually happened. Dami did send me out for ice cream, and eventually I came home with it. In the end, nobody asked me where I was or anything at all about the girl. Such a waste of a great alibi.
I was shaking when I got home that night. Dami yelled at me and wanted to know what the hell took me so long. I wanted to give her a smack. Even though I was nervous and shaking, I was also calm in a weird way. My new calm feeling kept me from hitting her. I really do believe it’s wrong to hit your wife, even though lots of people do it.
Sometimes I thought everyone could tell what happened with the girl, just by looking at me. There was a hot young girl who was no longer alive because of what happened. Sometimes I’m just sick with myself that I could let such a thing take place. Other times I think of how much better it would be if the girl had just been nice and sweet and not made the Red come over me. Why would she do that? She should have known something bad would happen. All I wanted was for her to like me. Is that really so terrible? There had to be a way to get a girl like that to like me, to kiss me nice, for real. I just had to figure it out.
It wasn’t long after the redheaded girl that Dami took her kids and moved to her mother’s. It was pretty stereotypical, if you ask me. That’s what my buddies said, anyway. I didn’t need her and she could go to hell for all I care—my buddies at T & A’s told me that was the healthiest thing to think. I was trying to keep it in mind.
Truth is, I loved my wife very much. I even loved those little girls, not in a gross way, but in a fatherly kind of way. They were growing up to be pretty hot, but I never would have laid a hand on them. I didn’t want them to leave me, and that would’ve done it for sure. I’m still not sure what I did to make my Dami want to leave.
I’d been a good husband. Didn’t really keep jobs very well, but that’s to be expected. I never seem to have a boss who knows what the hell he’s doing. Most of these places where I work, they do shit all messed up. It doesn’t make any sense. And then everybody has a problem when you bring it up or make suggestions or take any sort of initiative to do something new or different. All the stupid rules you follow, just because the bosses like to mess with people; it’s all so stupid. Let’s see how she’d like working at some of the shitholes I’ve worked. Let’s see my wife clean offices and wash other people’s clothes and haul garbage and telemarket and all the other shit I’ve done, just to keep her and her kids in Twinkies and fancy clothes and computers and every other goddamn thing. People just don’t appreciate what you do for them anymore.
My wife was leaving me, and I didn’t know how to get her back. Months went by. I knew she was seeing someone else. I knew it. Just like that, she’s out dating other guys. It made me wonder if she was already seeing him while we were married. I was gone a lot, going to work and to the movies. I liked that gentlemen’s movie house downtown. Anyway, I was out often enough that she surely could have been getting it on with some fucker behind my back. That’s some gratitude. I’m out slaving away for her and she’s spreading her legs for some asshole. Isn’t that always the way?
I started to realize it wasn’t so bad having the whole house to myself. I didn’t have to get dressed or clean up so much. I could look at whatever I wanted on TV and leave whatever kind of magazines I wanted lying around wherever the hell I felt like. Dami hadn’t counted on me being happy with her gone, I bet. Before I knew it, I’d gone a whole day without calling her. Then I went a week without even wanting to. It was amazing.
I started to daydream a lot about the redheaded girl. It made me think I might like to find someone else to be with, someone who’d appreciate me. Dami never appreciated me; everything she did was out of some kind of duty her mother taught her about. Plus, she was lousy in bed, acted like it would be wrong to move or talk or anything interesting. No wonder I started looking at young girls. Isn’t that what most men do when their wives get old and boring in bed?
Before I knew it, I was spending half my time daydreaming about girls and watching movies and … you know … satisfying myself. I started to wonder how I could find a new girl. I started driving around just to look; it would be so easy to get one of them to come with me. Then I could drive them somewhere and we’d be all alone. They’d have to get to like me, eventually. I just had to figure out what it was girls really wanted in a man.
Chapter Eleven
(Dami)
A Mother Knows
A wife does not cast judgment on her husband’s actions. I have been taught this all my life. She is supportive, loyal, and obedient, no matter what the outcome. I was foolish to marry him. I realize that now. He isn’t half the man my first husband was. Alone with only my daughters after Manu’s murder, I was simply not able to make good decisions. It is clear that Great Ganesh beset us with obstacles.
Each morning I woke, aching and sore from my husband’s clumsy, selfish attempts at lovemaking. It was during Michael’s foolishness that I missed Manu the most.
I prepared a proper breakfast for my family, made sure they were off to school and work looking neat and dapper, that the Gods were on their lips, and their homework had been done.
I was left alone with my thoughts, and the only thought that existed some days was that something was not r
ight in our home. Something was not right with my husband. There was foulness in him, a wrong, even dangerous, predilection toward … something. As my older daughter reached womanhood, I began to realize that this man I was bound to was someone my children and I needed to be far, far away from. My husband was looking at my daughter in a way that was simply unwholesome.
“Is Chandra alright?”
“What?” He seemed startled at my question. “Yeah, she’s fine. Why?”
“You were looking at her as if something might be wrong.” I took care to ask without accusation in my voice. He’d been staring at her breasts in an obvious manner. I thought I had seen this once before, but doubted my instincts. Never again.
“Who the hell are you to say how I was looking at her? You think I want to fuck your daughter? How could you say or even think such a thing about me? I’m not one of these perverts going around these days.” He went on like that for almost a minute. I retraced my every word to be very sure that I had said nothing of the sort. I had made a small, simple inquiry that he turned into an accusation of salaciousness. It was vile.
Divination is a source of debate in my religion. Holy seers are vessels of Parvati. They work in secret, helping the faithful choose their paths in life. Clearly, I needed them now.
There are such people in the United States. Even some Americans are seers. They build shrines just as we do. I decided to visit one of these people with the money my husband allowed me for groceries. Michael had always been very serious about controlling our finances. He did not make what I thought were smart choices. He would not be pleased when there was pasta instead of steak.
Gems of Wisdom was the name of the parlor. A woman called Jade entered the large room in a flurry of twirling scarves and skirts, her short haircut striped with blue and green. Jade introduced herself, with a dreamy look about her. It reminded me of my husband’s marijuana.
“How can I help you?” Jade called from across the room. She lit a piece of charcoal, sprinkled herbs over it, and pushed buttons on a small machine that played ocean sounds.
“I need … I need to decide what to do about something.” I didn’t know how else to put it. Charlatans are omnipresent among mystics. How did I know this woman was truly a vessel of Parvati and not some cheat?
“I see.” The woman picked up a few small items from the shelves behind her. We sat at a round table, where I half expected to see the large crystal orbs associated with American fortune telling. Lavender perfumed the air, and I began to relax slightly. My eye was drawn to a bookshelf that contained several translations of the Bhagavad Gita. I smiled.
“I have a decision to make, and I need advice,” I told her honestly. If she was truly the vessel she claimed to be, she wouldn’t need more information than that.
“About your husband?” Jade fired back at once.
“Yes, and …”
“Your daughters, yes. They are in danger; you are right.” Jade had picked up my left hand and was poring over it with intense scrutiny. “You need to take them away from The Villain. He’s already—” Jade gasped at a sudden realization. “He’s already done something terrible.”
My tears burst forth in an instant. He’d done something to my daughter, maybe even both of them. We had to leave at once. I had nowhere to go, no money. Mother’s small apartment would not hold us all. Jade smiled as I was thinking this; I didn’t understand why. Wait, Villain?
“You have many skills you aren’t thinking of. You can take in sewing and laundry; working mothers would be happy to pay you for that. You could resume your work with children.” Jade held my hand in a supportive gesture, “Take your children away from him. Don’t wait any longer.”
“Are you saying this? Or is Parvati?”
“Does it matter?” Jade’s gaze was forceful and accusing. “You already know what you need to do. That’s why you’re here. You want validation; I’m giving it to you. You’re right. He’s evil. Take your girls and get as far away from him as you can.”
Many Americans say they don’t believe in psychics or tarot or any sort of divination. They say people only believe in it if it tells you something you want to hear or that you already think you know. Jade’s predictions were accurate, but I had to admit that, yes, she merely confirmed fears and plans already within me.
When I returned home, prepared to begin my job search, there were two policemen waiting outside our door. One of them showed us a photo of Chandra’s friend Meg. We hadn’t seen Meg in ages. The police said she was missing, and they were checking with all of her friends.
“When was the last time you saw her?” an officer in a blue uniform asked us, taking out a small note pad.
“Before she left to stay at her dad’s,” Chandra told them. “Did she go missing from there?”
“Actually, miss,” the other officer piped up, “she never made it to her father’s. She went missing sometime before.” Chandra gasped audibly.
“What do you mean?” My daughter’s raised voice was fearful, anger and confusion spilling out of her. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why am I just learning this now? You don’t know anything? Nobody knows where she—” Chandra collapsed into sobs as she had not done since she was very small. Chandra was always stoic, almost alarmingly so. Not today.
The police didn’t stay long, but the effect of their visit was devastating. Chandra sat without speaking for the rest of the day. When my husband came home, she rounded on him.
“Why were the police here asking about Meg?” she demanded. Michael looked shocked, then purposefully furious.
“What? I don’t know. Who’s Meg? What did they say? Did they ask about me? Why would they think you knew anything?” His speech was rapid and rambling. Guilt was all over him.
“I don’t know,” I interrupted them. Chandra scowled.
“What’d you tell them? Well?” he demanded. I stared at him, thinking very fast. We would leave. Tonight. We would not wait. Regaining myself, I apologized and brought my husband a drink. Then another, and another. Soon his own excesses left him passed out in our marital bed. My daughters took no convincing. We packed our essentials and fled to my mother’s apartment, believing we had left his evil behind us forever. We did not yet know how persistent evil could be.
Chapter Twelve
(Mikey)
Calling all Cars
I was thinking of that movie they show at Easter, The Ten Commandments. I love that movie. Aside from Moses and Ramses and everything, it shows how women ruin everything with their fucked-up behavior. After God and Moses led everyone through the Red Sea and saved them from Pharaoh’s men, they turned around and made a golden calf. They danced around it, naked, like they’d never known God at all. Only women could go around worshipping and seducing animals made of gold. They were the reason the Jews had to spend sixty years in the desert and why Moses died alone, without getting to go to the land of milk and bread, or whatever. If I were Moses, I would’ve beaten some sense into those women and reminded them who got them where they were. That’s the other problem with women; they act like children, but the law says you can’t punish them like children, even when they really deserve it. What’s a man supposed to do? Even God couldn’t help Moses figure out women.
I still thought about the redheaded girl. So far as I knew, no one had found her and she was still lying in the swampy grasses behind the rest stop. I wanted to go see her again, but thought that would be too gross. She probably smelled pretty bad by now, rotting and stuff, like that deer I found when I was little. It was all I could do to keep from retching as I took it apart. Even my best friend ran away from it, like a little sissy girl.
I decided to get some cheeseburgers on my way home from Dami’s new place. She only stayed at her mother’s a short time, I guess. They never told me anything. I had to find out on my own.
It took a lot of gas to get back and forth from there; it was about two towns over from where we’d all lived together. Chandra’s new high school was closer. Sh
e was a freshman now, and a looker too. I went to see her with a packet of bus tokens (they came in packs of ten), but she didn’t want them. Actually, she didn’t want to see me at all. Someone had told her to stay away from me, most likely her mother. Can you imagine that? Not wanting me to see my own child. I’d treated her like my own girl for years. How women could be so cruel is beyond me.
My new friend presented herself to me all of a sudden. I wasn’t looking for her. I didn’t expect it. I looked away from the road for a single, solitary second and there she was. With short, dark hair that bounced around when she walked, she was perky and adorable. She looked sad. Best of all, she was alone, so I could talk to her without getting nervous.
“You need a ride, miss?” I said it in my regular voice. When I tried specifically to be sexy or nonthreatening, girls didn’t like it very much. “It’s awfully cold out tonight.” It wasn’t that cold, maybe in the fifties. It might get uncomfortable if you spent a lot of time outside. This girl looked like she’d been outside for a while.
“No, thanks.” She started walking a little faster and trying hard not to look at me. Why do chicks always try not to look at me? Am I so ugly?
“I’ve got a daughter about your age, and I’d hate to think she was walking around by herself—especially in this neighborhood.” I didn’t really know much about this town; it could be a perfectly nice place to be. But fresh, young girls ought not to be walking around by themselves this time of night. “I’ll take you right on home if that’s what you want.” She mumbled something that sounded like she had no home, and I told her to get in the car and we’d figure out what to do next.
“My name’s Casey,” she said, holding out a tiny little hand with lots of rings on it. I shook it, trying not to squeeze too hard. Her hands were soft and she smelled like baby powder and flowers. It was nice just to be near her. She made me think of my own Chandra and Durga. I wondered where they were now and whether or not Chandra was going out on dates yet. I bet she was. Just like her mother.
