by Ian Hall
Ten Thousand Tears
By April L. Miller
“Goin’ out,” Leif announced to no one in particular as he headed for the door.
I’d never seen the man looking so civilized. He’d ditched his usual ensemble of sweat shorts and dirty T-shirt for a gray suit, complete with striped tie. He’d cleaned up and his hair looked combed. Even something about his bearing elevated my new stepfather from missing link to man of the world. He carried a duffel bag over his shoulder.
My mother chased him through the living room. She wore her pink nightdress with the mesh top that exposed her breasts, open robe billowing behind her as she ran; a pair of raggedy white slippers at her feet. Her bleach-blonde hair had been ratted and teased to a bouffant and thick purple shadow blotted the lids of her sunken blue eyes. She smelled of vanilla musk and whiskey.
“Where to?” she cried after him.
His reply sounded simple but steeped in implications, “Got some things to take care of.”
My mother caught hold of his arm. “At this hour? When are you coming back?”
Leif’s answering chuckle said it all, “What’re you so worried about? Remember what I told you. Do just like I said and there won’t be any trouble.”
He turned toward the door but stopped short. “Where’s the key, Galinda?”
Her voice felt velvet. “Why don’t you search me for it?”
Leif’s no-nonsense reply left no room for fun and games, “Give me the key.”
Without hesitation, my mother fished into her robe pocket and produced the deadbolt key. She placed it in his open palm. He unlocked the door; the bolt released like a cell door’s latch. Leif seemed about to walk out a free man – right before the warden’s eyes.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
Her head wilted to her chest, tiny whimpers from her throat. Gently, Leif lifted my mother’s chin and stared down into her face. “Baby, I’m doing you great a favor.”
To an outsider, they might have appeared two people in love. In my sight they were two losers, gambling for stakes neither could afford. I watched in disgrace as my mother placed her favorite ace-in-the-hole on the table. Clumsily, she pressed her body on his.
Her seduction held a pathetic appeal. “Can’t you stay until morning?”
He snorted his disgust, “Get off me, woman.”
Leif hadn’t so much as flinched, let alone shoved her, yet my mother flew back with such force, a mirror on the adjacent wall crashed to the floor. At the time I attributed her misstep to the forty-proof running through her veins.
He paid her one last courtesy before leaving. I watched as he retrieved something from the duffel: a zip-lock bag, filled to the halfway mark with some powdery substance. Leif shoved it into the pocket the key had been in.
“Here’s one for the road. Use it. It’ll make you feel better.”
That’s all the woman needed: another addiction to add to her resume. Resentment flooded me but I remained speechless as Leif nodded his respects.
“Been nice knowing you, Casey,” he said cordially, “do me a favor and look out for your stepbrother.”
Leif didn’t even pause to issue a formal goodbye to his son. “You be good. That’s an order,” was all he bothered.
Stepping past his wife of only six days, Leif Sparks walked out of our apartment and out of our lives. Once the door closed, I breathed a long-held breath. Already the air smelled cleaner.
I looked over at the kid sitting next to me on the sofa. Little Luck was all I knew him by. He couldn’t be more than seven by the look of him, but I couldn’t be sure. When I’d asked about his age, Leif offered to cut the kid open so I could count the rings. I let the matter drop after that.
From what Leif told, he’d inherited Lucky out of the blue. The boy’s mom OD’d and the grandmother ended up on Leif’s doorstep with the kid at her side and paternity test in hand. The old woman handed Lucky off like a baton in a relay and walked straight out of his life. Much like what Leif had just done.
Little Luck’s face looked unreadable as I looked at him now. Too much went on inside his head, I assumed. I wrapped my arm around him as some quiet assurance that I wasn’t going to be the next person to just up and leave.
A scavenger to the smell of a potential feast, my mother sensed the sympathy I gave to Little Luck and moved in to claim it as her own.
“Don’t coddle that little rat,” she demanded. “What the hell is he to us? Another mouth to feed, another ass to wipe – that’s all he is!”
I met her eyes squarely and refused her any portion of my compassion. “You can’t blame him for this.”
My mother spat her words, “Don’t tell me you’re as dumb as you are homely, girl! Look him in the face, Casey – look!”
In a rage my mother stormed across the floor, clamped her hands over my head, and jerked it to the side toward Little Luck. I locked eyes with my stepbrother. In his I saw a million questions he didn’t know how to ask, emotions he couldn’t articulate. So I kept mine soft, showing only empathy.
My mother’s tone sounded conspiratorial. “Take it all in, baby girl. Every man crawling this earth’s got the same demon inside him. This boy’s no different; he knew from the start his son-of-a-bitch father was gonna dump him on us. It’s what they wanted all along.”
For the first time in a long time, my mother spoke words of wisdom. I knew she was right. Two months ago, Leif had sought my mother out, won her over and moved in on her turf, looking for a sucker to adopt his stray.
I’m sure he must have realized early on that his mark wasn’t the mothering type. However, when Leif Sparks had found Galinda Frank he’d also found me: a brown-haired, brown-eyed non-princess with a good head on her shoulders and room in her heart for someone to care for. Everything my mother was not.
While Leif and my mother carried on, humping and raising hell, Luck and I clung to each other like two souls in a blowing hurricane. We became the family. I wondered at that moment if that’s why Leif had left him here; some magnanimous gesture to give the boy a decent chance in life. That smelly, swaggering, yellow-toothed prick hadn’t left Little Luck to my mother’s keeping; he’d left him to mine.
So, while I sat there, presumably searching Luck’s young face for traces of some monster within, I found strength instead. I would be his and he would be mine. Should I live to see my eighteenth birthday, Luck and I were gonna put this shithole at our backs swiftly, as Leif had done.
Surviving another four years under my mother’s roof seemed unlikely at best; but, I would give it a shot. For the boy if not for myself.
She jerked my head again. This time the brutal motion shot pain like hot knives through my neck. Involuntarily, I gasped but collected myself immediately. I refused to give her any more satisfaction than that.
“What do you see, Casey?” she demanded.
I kept my voice steady. “I see my brother.”
Quick as a snake’s strike, my mother’s hand caught hold of my throat. Her long, red, press-on nails sank into my flesh. Her fingers tensed, aching to squeeze that final breath right out of me.
Little Luck pulled at her arm, trying to release her hold. The back of my mother’s hand met him squarely on the chin and threw him off the sofa. I flew to his side, shielding his body with my own.
My mother howled like some farm animal under a branding iron. Strange and frightening, her cry changed to a bitter laugh as once again, Galinda Frank found herself man-less and moribund.
Her hysteria was a toxin. Sickness bled from her pores and she wanted nothing more than to infect us with it. Some time ago I had discovered the antidote. An analgesic calm came over me.
With jaundiced eyes she glowered at us. The kind of smile that reminds you of carnival clowns cut across her sallow face.
“Your brother?” she gagged out the word.
I kept my tone factual. “He’s more family to me than you’ve ever been.”
“You think so?” my mother
came around to where Little Luck and I were balled up on the floor. She knelt down and looked only at me like the boy didn’t exist at all. “Casey, we’re soul mates; you belong to me. Somehow you forgot that, but very soon, you’ll remember.”
My mother leaned up and kissed my forehead. She left us then, retreating to her room; I assumed she would finish off a bottle or six, fall into a blissful coma, and escape her second-rate life for a while.
“What’s gonna happen now?” Little Luck whispered once her bedroom door had closed.
“I’m going to look after you,” I promised, “don’t worry about it tonight. The worst is over.”
~ ~ ~
I stayed up late, finishing my homework while Little Luck fell asleep on the hide-a-bed. Issues no fourteen-year-old should be troubled by kept running through my head: what to do with the kid during the day. Knowing my mother, she’d just lock up the apartment and let the boulevard have its way with him until I got home.
Could I get him enrolled in school? Find a trustworthy enough neighbor to keep an eye on him from eight to three? Maybe I should drop out and take care of him myself? I’d skipped eighth grade; maybe I should skip the whole damned thing.
Somewhere around midnight I gave in to exhaustion, satisfied that I hadn’t heard my mother bumping around for quite some time. Just to be safe, I kept my door ajar. Spinning thoughts would allow me no rest. I still lay awake when the former runway model came stumbling into my room.
Frozen and feigning sleep, I listened intently to each movement she made. Her steps were heavy, graceless as she went to draw the shade and let in the colored lights from the boulevard.
My eyelids clenched against the sudden brightness, betraying my ruse. I heard the giggles and mumbles of a one-sided conversation as she staggered to my bedside. My mother leaned her face very close to mine.
Slurred words floated down to me on a fermented vapor. “Rise ‘n shine.”
A dog playing dead, I remained utterly still.
My mother curled a lock of my hair around her finger and tugged it, taut. “Up you come, Miss Casey.”
I buried down deep within myself, unwilling to be goaded out of hiding.
Again she yanked at my hair, this time tearing the lock from my scalp with a macabre rip. In that one, swift act of violence, my mother dragged me up from the sanctuary of my mind, into her troubled realm.
My eyes opened to a victorious smirk. She lowered herself down on the edge of my mattress. “I need to talk to you.”
I shifted from my side to my back and placed my arms across my chest. I steadied my sights at an invisible point on the ceiling.
“We have nothing to talk about,” I replied flatly.
However, I knew my words were spoken in vain. My mother would have her say; and I could predict every word. Like a tape on an endless loop, we’d lived this conversation over and over again. We’d lived this night over and over again.
Like so many times before, tonight my mother had come to me for pity. But my stockpile had been depleted. I had none left to give. For that, I would pay the price for her latest humiliation.
Tonight I would be held ransom; the price of my release non-negotiable. The currency we bartered in was tears.
“What happened to us?” she strained through gritted teeth. “We used to be so close. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember everything.”
My mother smoothed some stray hairs on my head, ignoring the significance of my reply. “Your stepfather, Casey – he’s not coming back.”
“I know that.” I allowed myself a smile. “They never do.”
“Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face!”
My cheek felt the sting of a sudden smack. I shifted my irreverent smile from my lips to my eyes, daring her to gouge them out if she had the guts.
“How can you be so ungrateful?” she demanded. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for you.”
“All the men you bring through here – they’re for my benefit?” I challenged.
My mother looked incredulous. “Of course! Don’t you think I want better than this for you? For us? Somebody to provide, somebody to look out for us. But they’re all alike, baby girl; we can’t count on them.”
I scoffed at her, “Would’ve thought you’d figure that out after the first three husbands.”
Direct hit.
My mother lifted off from my bed and began cutting a half-moon path over the floor, pacing like a caged tiger. Curses and threats I’d heard too many times before to take note of were flung at me. They flittered to the ground, weightless as feathers.
Looking to me for reaction and finding none, my mother advanced to a new tactic.
“You blame me for what they’ve done,” she scowled, “after you’ve run them off one by one? I know your secrets, little girl; how you seduced them.”
Rage boiled inside me. My skin crawled from just the memory. Leif Sparks had been about the lowest bottom-feeder in the sludge. But, at least he’d had the decency to keep his filthy hands off of me. More than could be said for the majority of the drunken perverts my mother dragged home.
She continued. Her manner felt cruel, patronizing. “Very naughty, CiCi. And very, very stupid. You thought you could steal a man from me? Men kill and die for women like Galinda Frank. Mongrels like you have to settle for scraps.”
Finally my eyes left the ceiling. I took her in, the full measure of her – the woman I’d once upon a time called mother. Galinda Frank: her effortless beauty, her magnetism and poise; that woman seemed lost now, buried beneath the rubble of a decaying shell. She stood a relic, an artifact of her former self. I wanted to pity her, but found only loathing.
She came back over to me. “So, what’d you do with Leif? Did you try to take Mommy’s husband when she wasn’t looking?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said boldly, “he came to me on his own just like the rest of them. And when we were finished, we laid in your bed and laughed at how pathetic you are.”
She lunged at me then. I retreated under my pillow; it took the brunt of the impact. Still, the force behind her blows felt violent enough to send shocks of pain through the bones of my face. Only when she exhausted herself did she stop.
My mother pulled the pillow away, expecting to find the reward for her labor streaming down my cheeks in sopping streaks. Her expression of satisfaction twisted to rage once she took in my stony gaze.
“You little bitch,” she hissed. “You smug little shit. You think you’re such a big woman now—don’t you?”
I offered no reply, though everything inside of me knew it would be better if I would cry out for mercy, beg forgiveness, and pledge my loyalty. How much sooner would it all be over if the tears my mother craved would just come? But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. The naive girl that had been my mother’s daughter, who’d once loved her and cried for her pain, was long dead.
And the stupid bitch who killed her believed she could be tortured back to life. I wondered how far my mother would go reanimate my dead emotions.
For a moment, I believed she wondered the same thing. I could smell her warped mind churning. Options were being weighed, decisions forming, strategies evolving. Alas, she made one final, dismal attempt to bust through my barricade.
False tears beaded on the tips of her false lashes. Erratic spasms of unnatural cries issued from her. She clutched her chest and hyperventilated, swaying dizzily.
Collapsing on the edge of my bed, she panted out every well-rehearsed syllable, “What do I have left if I lose you, CiCi? There’s nothing else for me to live for. Is that what you want – to see me dead?”
I kept my expression smooth as a porcelain doll. “I thought you were already dead.”
My mother halted her weeping abruptly, checking my face for any sign of compassion and finding none. Her frenzied demeanor fell away as easily as a discarded shawl. All at once she looked collected and lucid.
“I thought we could make a fresh start tonight, Cas
ey,” she told me with what sounded like genuine regret, “but, I can see you’re too far gone for that. I didn’t want to have to do this, but the situation is more drastic than I ever feared.”
From her robe pocket my mother produced two items: a spoon and Leif’s zip-lock bag. The spoon she placed on my nightstand next to my water glass. The bag she lifted high and examined with fierce interest.
By the illumination spilling in through my window I could see the white powder. It refracted light like diamond chips.
“What is that stuff?” I asked.
“You’ve been sick, Casey. This is your medicine.”
She reached for my drinking glass and drizzled the powder into it. The water turned a milky, shimmering white. Half of the powder remained in the baggie and she tossed it nonchalantly onto my night table.
As she stirred, clumps of powder whipped around like snow in a globe. With evident fondness, my mother watched it swirl. She held the glass out to me. I caught a whiff of some sickly-sweet stench like rotting fruit.
“I’m not drinking that.”
She looked smug. “You are so…one way or another”
“Why are you doing this?”
“It’s like I told you, Casey, you belong to me. I gave you your life. Now I want it back.”
I looked at her. Years ago I’d accepted the finality of my situation. Some night – very much like this one – my mother would assert her most vicious punishment. Always I had assumed it would come in the form of some brutal onslaught. My mother’s senses would give in to savage abandon, unable to resist the urge to just keep on hitting.
Never did I imagine such an elegant resolution.
Only a handful of weeks ago I might have taken the glass gratefully. It would have been a prudent surrender. Yet, now I could afford no such cowardice; not with Little Luck counting on me. I made no gesture to accept her offer of an easy death.
“Where’s all your bravado now, little girl?” my mother taunted.
“If you want to kill me,” I snarled, “you’re going to have to do it with your own hands.”
