by Harvey Smith
Satisfied, my mother returned the channel locks to the tray and rotated to look into the kitchen. Seeing me, she stood up straight, as if struck. “Oh,” she said.
I wasn't sure what to say. Had she really forgotten that I was there? I exhaled deeply, trying to ignore the nasty smell in the air. There were three full trash bags sitting on the kitchen floor nearby. An apple core and an empty can of deviled meat had fallen out of one of the bags.
“Mom, come sit down. Please. I came to see you.”
“What?” she asked. She stood in front of the television slightly stooped.
“I came to see you,” I said louder. “To visit…”
“Oh.”
I started to speak again, louder, but she shambled into the room.
My mother was fifteen when I was born, which meant she was now forty-seven. In Sunnyvale, I routinely saw fifty-year-olds jogging on the hike and bike trails or emerging from yoga classes, bouncing down the gym steps as they migrated toward their teardrop SUVs or convertibles. By way of contrast, Ramona had the body of a woman in her sixties.
She reached the table and collected her cigarettes and lighter from where they rested near a pile of cassette tapes labeled in oversized fonts. Settling into one of the chairs with a creak, she lit up a cigarette and took a long pull. Her eyes squinted into crow's feet. She exhaled a gout of smoke and coughed a few times. She tried to spit a small piece of tobacco off the tip of her liver-colored tongue.
There was a tiny pricking sensation against the inside of my wrist. Looking down, I saw a flea. The dark, aerodynamic body stood out against my skin. I reached over and took it between my thumb and forefinger, rolling it until it was crushed into debris. My mother didn't own a pet.
I stared at the window, trying to block out the sound from the television, trying to calm myself against the onslaught of this environment. Delicate lace curtains bordered the window frame, stained from years of smoke. The glass in every window of the apartment was completely covered in aluminum foil. Tiny points of light shone through tears in the foil. I never understood why old people in the area did this. Apparently it made sense to my mother.
“Mom, I came to talk to you about Dad. About Big Jack.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, nodding. “Yeah.” She looked up at me with a sudden intensity that surprised me. She held my gaze and said, “It's so turr'ble about your daddy.”
I felt my chest go slack and I sagged forward, resting my forehead in my hand. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”
She went back to smoking and a few minutes passed.
I looked at the floor for a long time. “Who told you about it?”
“What?” My mother looked at me as she held the cigarette up to her mouth, her fingers crabbed around the filter. “Oh…your step-momma told me.” She nodded, bobbing her chin a few times. “Yeah, she did. She told me… He never was happy, was he?”
“No, Mom. I don't think so.”
“Yeah. He was a hard man to live with…a hard man.”
More than anything, I wanted to be out of the apartment. I wanted to jump to my feet, push my mother's chair backward, and crash through the aluminum-foil-covered window.
I saw her flipped over in the chair, still smoking calmly, with her red-gray seaweed hair spilling across the tiled kitchen floor around her head.
Instead, I asked, “Do you have a ride to the funeral? I wanted to make sure.”
Ramona nodded. “Yeah…your brother is gonna come get me.”
“Okay, good.” I stood up. “That's good. I'm going to see him later today.”
“I'm glad,” she said. “He's your brother. He's become a fine man. And handsome too.” She smiled and I saw that her teeth had mostly crumbled away. They looked like raisins hanging from her pale gums.
I willed myself to go numb and tried to smile. “I've got to take off.”
“Okay,” she said. Her tone was flat. “Okay…let me get up.” She rose weakly and I wondered if she was faking. She spent so many years trying to appear sick or beaten down, first in order to fool Big Jack then the county welfare agents. I had no idea what her physical health was actually like. Maybe what was originally an act was now real, after living like this for so long.
She followed me across the living room, taking several drags on her cigarette along the way. At the door, I turned the handle and gave her another awkward hug, which felt like hugging a dirty floor mop in a dress.
The door caught on the chain and I nearly yanked it off the hinges in aggravation. I wanted to yell, What the fuck are you afraid of? Instead I looked at her, still very close. “Okay, Mom. I'll see you soon. At the funeral.” The words made my tongue feel heavy.
“Alrighty then,” she said quietly. The smell of cigarette smoke was strong around her, clinging to her like an atmosphere. She craned her neck a little and looked up at me more directly, her eyes larval and glistening. Her voice fell to a whisper, as if ashamed. “How do you think they're gonna do it?”
I swallowed. What the fuck now? When I waited, she didn't follow up. “How will they do what, Mom?”
She peered at me with new life in her face, more lucid. “You know…lay him out. How do you think they're gonna do it?” She peered up at me, rodent-like, seeming even older.
I waited, soaking in her words, trying to comprehend her meaning.
“How are they gonna cover up his head?” she asked.
“Ah...” My tongue roved slowly across the enamel of my teeth. “I'm sure they've got something, Mom. I'm sure they deal with this all the time.”
“Will they use a bag over his head?” There was a childlike quality to her question and she pressed closer. She struggled with the concept, fixated.
“Yes. Or a veil.” I stepped backward through the door, stumbling. My foot settled reassuringly onto the concrete porch as I stepped farther away from her. “They'll probably use a veil. That's what I've heard.”
My mother looked down into space roughly at my midriff. Her face lost the odd intensity and went slack again. “Oh.”
“I'm going,” I said. “I'll see you at the funeral.”
“Okay, then…bye.” Her voice rose in pitch on the last word as she tried to muster her emotions for the farewell.
“Bye, Mom. Love you.” I backed away another few feet then turned for the parking lot.
Chapter 7
1975
The snow cone vendor leaned down from the window of his van to hand Jack a coconut snow cone. As he smiled, the man's lips peeled back and revealed a nest of greasy, blackened teeth. Measured from the floor of the van, he stood about five feet in height and was nearly as wide. Jack reached up to take the snow cone, but his eyes were locked on the man's swampy mouth. Desire for the sweetened ice fought with disgust. Carnival music played from speakers mounted to the top of the van. The music had a slurred, metallic quality because the same song played all day long, several days a week. Whenever Jack heard the song, sometimes from blocks away, snow cones and rotten teeth came to mind.
Jack's mother carried his little brother Brodie on her hip like a sack of potatoes, shifting him to the opposite side so she could move her cigarette to the other hand. She waited as Jack finished at the snow cone van. When he turned back toward her, she said, “Come on,” and walked away.
He bit into the ice and trailed along in her cigarette smoke, following her closely. The van pulled away and Jack listened to the music fade behind them. It was Friday, just after school, and Jack was happy to be with his mother.
Halfway across the street, someone yelled, “Hey! Ramona!”
Jack's mother turned around, shifting Brodie again. Twenty-two, she was slim and pale, wearing a flowered blouse and a pair of shorts. She was barefoot.
Mr. Bornado was coming across his front yard. He was over forty, but glowed with unnatural health. His hair was cut very short, making his neck look bullish. His skin was so deeply burned from working out in the sun that it was the color of an old football. He wore only a
pair of frayed cut-offs, hanging under his beer gut like tribal rags. A fleshy splash of scar ran up his chest and over his shoulder like melted wax. All the kids on the block said it was from machine-gun fire, dating back to Korea. Mr. Bornado smiled at Jack's mother, revealing a wide gap between his front teeth. She stood in place in the street, waiting for him to close the distance. Though he was stocky, his body rippled with muscle just beneath a layer of fat.
“Hey, how are you doin'?”
“Fine,” she said.
“You got your boys out gettin' snow cones.”
“Yeah.” She smiled at him and took a drag.
They all stood in the middle of the street under the sun, surrounded by a naked sky. As a station wagon approached, Mr. Bornado pulled Ramona over to his side of the street, drawing her along gently by her elbow. She allowed herself to be led as if the gesture was an act of chivalry. They continued to make small talk on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Bornado's house. At times they spoke softly in their gossip voices, which caused Jack to perk up his ears without appearing to pay attention.
Ramona put Brodie down on the cement after a while. “Take your little brother back to the house,” she said.
Jack was still working on the last of the snow cone. His mouth was stained blue. Taking Brodie by the hand, he waited for a truck to pass then led him across the street. Negotiating a path around a pile of dog shit, the boys looked back across the street at their mother. She and Mr. Bornado were laughing. Jack stepped up onto the brick stair and forced his way into the house, struggling with the weight of the front door. Brodie followed.
A blanket of chilled air engulfed them. The air conditioner ran nearly twenty-four hours a day during the summer, keeping the house uncomfortably cool. Jack turned to close the front door, but his father's voice came from somewhere in the darkness of the living room.
“Hey, boy.”
Startled, Jack turned to face the room. He blinked a few times.
“What's your momma and Mr. Bornado talking about?”
Jack's eyes began to adjust. “I don't know.” He could see his father in the corner of the room, behind a tan recliner that was patched liberally with duct tape. The tape was so worn that it curled at the edges. Big Jack forced an opening in the Venetian blinds and watched through the small gap. He was wearing a t-shirt and a decaying pair of underwear. There were white socks on his tiny feet and Jack could see the entire heel of his father's right foot through a huge hole in one of the socks. Veins climbed up his father's Achilles tendon like vines and the heel was covered in calluses.
His father cut his head over and tilted it, bird-like. “You don't know?”
Jack didn't understand why, but something about the intonation, the inflection, implied that he should feel ashamed for not knowing. “No, sir,” he said softly. He made his voice more like his younger brother's. Standing next to Jack by the front door, Brodie ignored the conversation. He began scratching and probing his butt with his little fingers, chasing some itch deep in his crack.
“Come here.”
Jack walked over and stood a few feet away.
“Come here.”
When he was a foot away, his father leaned down very close, still standing in the corner behind the recliner.
“What the fuck was they saying?” asked Big Jack. “Are you deaf?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what?!”
“I don't remember.” Jack looked at the carpet. He tried to withdraw without moving, to cease to exist.
“Goddamn it.” Big Jack turned his attention back to the window.
When it seemed safe, Jack backed across the living room floor in silence, moving toward his room.
“Shut the goddamn door, boy. AC's gettin' out.” Big Jack continued to watch the street through the blinds, mumbling. “I ain't payin' to keep the whole fucking block in cold air.”
Jack went over and shouldered the door closed. He sensed that his father was fully distracted, his voice no longer carrying any menace. The boy drifted through the room and into the hallway beyond, sinking his toes into the thick carpet. Sucking the last of the snow cone juice from his fingers, he relished the hint of coconut and sugar.
Jack sat on his bed with a pile of Hot Wheels cars situated out in front of him. All his games involved intricate stories; each car represented a driver with a distinct personality. He acted out the conversations between the drivers, pushing the cars across the crazy terrain created by the undulations of the blanket on his bed. In his hands, each car was capable of amazing, Speed Racer-style jumps. Each car crashed and exploded a hundred times a month, only to be reborn again from the flames.
He heard his mother screaming at his father in another part of the house. For the fourth or fifth time, a pan crashed as she hurled it across the kitchen in impotent fury. She stood at the stove while Big Jack sat at the table, interrogating her. Occasionally Ramona threw a plastic bowl or spatula, but she was always absolutely careful to avoid hitting her husband.
Jack played with his cars and tuned the noise out. Brodie was lying on the floor, manipulating a Speak-N-Spell, with its ironic name in yellow letters. The phone rang and their parents got quiet; the phone always cowed them. The entire house went silent except for the phone. Someone picked it up on the third ring. Jack heard his mother's voice, which didn't surprise him. Big Jack never answered the phone if he could help it.
“This is Ramona Hickman. Yeah, uh-huh…that's right.”
Seconds later, Jack forgot about the call altogether. He shuffled backward on the bed, putting his back to the wall and continued with the cars, speaking for each driver with a special voice, mimicked from cartoons and TV shows. After a time, his mother called from the kitchen. “Boys…time to eat.”
Jack and Brodie made a crazed run for the kitchen, which was part of their dinnertime ritual. They both jumped up at once and scrambled like a pack of wild pigs, knocking each other around as they raced out of the room, over various pieces of furniture and through the house. Jack beat his younger brother to the doorframe and shouldered him aside. They tore across the carpet of the living room and slid into the kitchen, gliding across the linoleum in their socks.
Big Jack brought the game to an end. “Go wash your hands and quit being cute. I'm not in any goddamn mood for this shit.” His voice carried an edge. Both kids stopped dead and retreated to the bathroom to wash up, heads down.
Back in the kitchen, Jack sat down against one wall with the window to his left. His father sat at the head of the small table, facing the window, and Brodie sat in front of the window, opposite his father. Jack's mother placed all the food on the table and sat down across from him at her husband's right hand, with her back to the kitchen. Big Jack bowed his head once everyone was seated. The entire family sat in silence. No one ever actually prayed, but when Big Jack thought enough time had passed, he opened his eyes and reached for the nearest platter of food. This was the signal that told everyone else it was okay to move again.
Jack was always ravenous and the food smelled good. Eight fried pork chops were piled on a plate at the center of the table. Beneath them, a stack of folded paper towels soaked up grease. Loaded with butter and salt, an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes sat next to the meat. Closest to Jack, there was a Tupperware bowl filled with dark gravy. A straw basket containing a mound of hot biscuits was shrouded by a dishtowel. Lastly, a small bowl of Del Monte canned spinach sat near one end of the table near Brodie. The kids both dipped out a small helping of spinach at their mother's insistence and heaped their plates with the other foods.
Just as Jack was about to take his first bite, his father interrupted. Chewing, he said the words slowly. “Well, boy…your teacher just called and talked to your momma for a while. She says you've been up there at the school acting like a little son of a bitch.”
Jack felt his guts go cold. He lifted his fork, but let it fall. He gazed down at his food.
“Not now,” Ramona said softly.
�
��Why not? He don't give a fuck…look at him.” When Jack closed his eyes, his father shouted at him, “Look at me!”
Jack looked up sharply, unsure of how to act. To make eye contact with his father usually invited further hostility, but he could not ignore the command.
“I don't know why you can't go down there, sit in your fucking chair and keep your goddamn mouth shut instead of cutting up and acting fucking cute all the time.”
Jack looked down at his food again. “Yes, sir,” he said. Brodie ate quietly, studying him with glassy blue eyes.
“After dinner,” Big Jack said, “I want you to go into my closet and get down a belt.”
A long thin whimper escaped from Jack's mouth. “Noooo.” The boy said it so quietly that the words could barely be heard.
“Don't fucking whine!” His father fixed him with a hard glare, scrutinizing Jack with one eye cocked open wider than the other. “Do not fucking cry at my table. Eat your goddamn dinner.” Big Jack was done talking and dug into another pork chop, cutting off a quarter of it with his fork then stuffing the meat into his mouth.
Jack ate slowly, picking at his food. His skin was cold and his stomach was sick. He felt like curling into a ball, but continued to eat, forcing the food down.
Without warning, his mother hissed at him, “Eat some spinach.” He flinched as he looked up at her.
Big Jack didn't mess around. He sliced up the remainder of his pork chops into double-sized bites and poured some ketchup out onto his plate. He went through six biscuits, a cup of gravy, three pork chops and three helpings of mashed potatoes. Several times, he covered the entire meal with blizzards of salt, re-applying more gravy and salt once he'd eaten away the top layer. He used his fork like a weapon, spearing a couple of triangular wedges of pork chop at once, dunking the meat into the thick pool of ketchup then angling the entire mass into his wide-open mouth, rotating it until it fit.
When his food was gone, Jack stood up. Everyone else watched him in silence. His father and mother smoked. His stomach cramped as he walked to their bedroom. In the closet, he took down a belt with the word JACK etched into the leather. Crying softly, he draped the belt over the foot of the bed and bent over the ratty, queen-sized mattress. He buried his face in the cigarette-burned blanket. Fumbling with his hands underneath him, he worked his pants and underwear down to his knees and waited.
