It was during this time that I witnessed a second quickening of love between Lorraine and Trudy. And, although the idea of them together was a difficult thing for me, it was not for the cruel and loveless reasons which occurred to our working-class neighbors.
I was merely, but intensely, jealous.
NINE
I stood in the middle of Lorraine’s bed, clasping an empty milk bottle between my knees, aiming clothespins at the narrow, upturned mouth. The pins were torpedoes. The bottle, an enemy ship. Each pin that rattled in was a direct hit, and the bed would rock with a thundering explosion that sent towers of fire and smoke raging toward the ceiling. I shouted in triumph as the burning ships heaved crazily and split like melons, spewing screaming men high into the air, arms and legs flying, guts trailing behind them as their bodies crashed into the waves. Sharks boiled like maggots in the bloody waters, swirling and crunching and tearing …
Lorraine slept a few feet away, face turned toward the back of the couch, buried beneath a mound of pillows and blankets—oblivious to the realities of war.
I loved her most at these moments. I loved to play, having her so intimately near, yet unspeaking … dreaming. As if, in the space we created by the dreaming and playing, we found a place where we might abide without contention or the sting of failed expectations. I would be her flawless hero: uncompromisingly good, unflinchingly true. I would win every battle, kill all the bad men, protect her life with my own. I would buy fur coats and jewels, a giant refrigerator stocked to overflowing with steak and ham. I would dance a perfect life for her in my play, sending emotions for which there were not yet words. I would romp at the edge of her dreams, and she would listen: open-mouthed, curled inward, face emptied of our history. But, all the while she lay sleeping, Lorraine dreamt love of a different order. A love I had not the power to fulfill.
I bounced high, too near the edge of the bed, and fell to the floor. My hip struck the leg of the coffee table, and there was a great clatter of dishes and silverware. Cold coffee splashed my back. I shrieked and raised up, bumping my head under the table, sending dishes crashing together once again. Lorraine moaned and turned onto her back. She threw out an arm, grasping at empty air.
“Dammit, Teddie.” She was no longer sleeping but not yet awake. Her mouth was dry, and she worked her tongue uselessly over her lips. “C’mere.” She opened both arms.
I ran to the couch, pulling at the covers tangled beneath her. I grabbed the ends with both hands, hauling with all my strength.
“Minute,” she said. She raised her hips, wiggled, and the covers came free as I went flying into the coffee table, this time knocking dishes to the floor.
“Dammit, Teddie. Quit horsing around.” She opened her eyes to slits and motioned with one finger.
I jumped next to her on the couch, burrowing into her breasts as she put her arm around me.
Her eyes opened wide.
“What the hell’s that on your back?”
“Blood,” I said.
She grabbed the back of my T-shirt and pulled it around so she could see.
“Coffee-blood,” I said.
“Shit-bird,” she yawned. “What you been up to?”
“Nothing,” I answered.
“How’d you get your back wet?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know nothing, do you?”
“Nope.”
She shook her head. “Shit-bird.”
“Nope.”
She grunted, softly, without edges, and kissed my head.
“Teddie, what the hell’s a person suppose’ to do with you?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed. “Me neither. Get up and change that shirt before you catch your death.” She took her arm away from me and gave me a push.
“I won’t catch nothing.” I tugged at her arm, trying to put it back around me.
“Go on.” She pushed harder. “I mean it. We ain’t got no money for doctors or funerals.”
I rolled from the couch, pulling my shirt over my head. It was too small, the neck became stuck around my ears, and I let it stay there, hanging down my back, pretending it was a pirate hat. I ran to the bed and began to rummage through the dirty laundry.
“Them’s no good,” Lorraine called. “You got a clean one on the tub.”
I ran to the bathroom, skidding to a stop on the mat beside the tub. I flipped my head downward, and the soggy ends of my T-shirt flopped on the floor; I let out a yelp as I skinned it over my ears, and, whirling the shirt like a propeller, I sent it whipping across the bathroom, smacking against the wall. The shirt stuck for a moment, then dropped like a lifeless bird behind the toilet. I ran to pick it up.
Lorraine yelled from the couch.
“The hell’s going on in there?”
“Nothing!”
I whirled the shirt again and let it fly. This time it thumped against the window and dropped onto the ledge, knocking an ashtray full of bobby pins down behind the radiator. There was a loud clank as the hard glass bounced between the radiator and the wall, and an explosion of pins as they scattered across the floor. I made a loud bomb sound.
“Christ on a crutch, Teddie Durbin! You make me get up off this couch …”
“It was on a accident!”
“Accident my ass. Get your butt in here.”
I took the clean T-shirt from the side of the tub.
“It’s the little one,” I said. “I don’t like the little one. It’s too little!”
“Feel and see if it’s dry before you put it on.”
“Too scratchy! Grandma don’t make ‘em scratchy!”
“Your grandma can kiss my rosy red butt. I said is it dry?”
“Dry!” I ran to the living room.
“I swear to God, you ain’t got the sense God gave a goose. Whyn’t you go make us some coffee?”
“Goose’em up the butt.” I made a hole with my thumb and forefinger and rammed my other thumb up into it. I ran to the kitchen.
“Where the hell do you get talk like that?” Lorraine said. “Who the hell talks like that?”
I ran to the stove, pulled down the oven door, jumped up on it, and took the coffee pot from the burner.
Lorraine raised up on one elbow and looked at me over her shoulder. “I mean it. Where the hell you get that talk?”
I took a section of newspaper from the stack in the corner and spread it on the floor. I removed the stem and basket from the pot and pounded out the dry grounds.
“I don’t know.”
“You damn sure don’t get it in this house. You been messing with them kids down the alley, when I told you no?”
I ran to the bathroom faucet, rinsed the basket, and filled the pot until the mark on the side said four. When I came back to the kitchen, I pulled the can of coffee from the counter.
Lorraine flopped back on the couch and gathered a pillow under her head. “Who talks like that?”
“Jeanette.”
“Don’t give me that happy horseshit! Poor little Jeanette. She don’t talk like that. What’d you fill the water to?”
“Four.”
“Pour it down to three. We got to stretch our coffee ‘til the end of the week.”
I placed the pot on the stove, twisted the gas knob all the way to the right, and jumped back when the gas caught with a thump.
“Dammit!” Lorraine yelled. “One a these days you’re gonna blow our butts into Wednesday! You burn yourself?”
“Bombs,” I said.
“You’ll think ‘bombs’ you fry the hair off your eyeballs.”
I laughed.
“C’mere, you little shit.”
I stood on the oven door, testing the quality of Lorraine’s overture, trying to decide whether she intended to cuff me for making the stove bomb.
“C’mere, baby boy.” She said this easily, as if she were temporarily resigned to my imperfections. Throwing aside her covers, she patted the cushions next to her. “C’m
ere and hug up your poor old mom. Hug her up ‘til that coffee gets perkellated.”
I walked to the couch and stood a moment, just out of reach, marking a clear path to the door.
“Come on.” She patted the cushions again. “I ain’t going to bite you.”
I put my thumb in my mouth and climbed next to her.
“Don’t do that.” She pulled my thumb from my mouth. “Big boys don’t do that.”
I sighed, replaced my thumb, and snuggled against her.
She held me for awhile, allowing me to rub my cheek against the thin cotton stretched over one nipple. I felt the nipple harden, and she pushed me away. She tilted my face upwards with one hand.
“Who talks like that, Teddie?” She said this gently, without anger, stroking the skin of my face, running her fingers through my hair.
“Them kids down the alley, ain’t it,” she said.
“Nope.”
“I swear to God, all you know is nope. You sound like a little pig. Nope-nope!” she snorted.
I laughed. “You’re the pig!”
“Nope-nope!” she snorted.
“No sir! You’re the dirty pig!” I grasped the end of her nose between my fingers. I wrenched it upward, roughly, making it into a snout.
She knocked my hand away. “Not so hard, Teddie!”
I pushed her nose again. Harder. “Pig!”
“Okay, Okay. I’m the pig. You turn the pot on low?”
“Pigs don’t get none. Dirty pigs don’t get coffee.” I tried to push her nose, but she grabbed my wrist.
“I was just playing, Teddie. Jesus Christ. Can’t Mamma just play sometimes?”
“No,” I said, putting my thumb in my mouth.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Get up and check the pot. Make sure it’s on low.”
Lorraine sat up and surveyed the damage from the coffee table. All the dishes were plastic, so nothing was broken except a glass ashtray that had split neatly in two when it hit the floor. The little of what remained of the food had dried fast to the plates, so the largest mess was where the old coffee and the contents of the ashtray had come together next to the couch.
“Lord, Teddie. I never seen such a one-man wrecking crew.”
“It was an accident.”
“Get me a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer and that other ashtray.”
As I handed her the cigarettes and ashtray, there came a light tapping at the door. Lorraine grasped my wrist and held a finger to my lips.
“No company today,” she whispered. She made striking motions with her hands and pointed to the stove. I brought her the box of wooden matches, and we sat together on the couch, knees drawn up, listening toward the door.
There was another knock, louder, and then the sound of Trudy’s voice.
“Come on, Lorraine, might as well open up. I come over twice this week and ain’t seen hide nor hair of you. I ain’t budging ‘til I make sure you ain’t died and the hogs ate you.”
Lorraine struck a match to her cigarette. She blew a smoke ring to the ceiling and nodded.
“Might as well let her in. She’ll pester ‘til hell freezes over.”
I ran to the door and opened it.
Trudy took a step into the room, then stopped. She stood on the mat with her lunch box under one arm, spinning her hard hat in her hand. She spun the hat round and round, looking back and forth across the apartment, slowly shaking her head.
“Christ, Lorraine. Looks like a cyclone hit this place.”
“Never claimed to be Betty God Damned Crocker,” Lorraine answered. “You want scratch cake and doilies, go see Teddie’s grandma.” She pointed with a thumb in my direction. “I can’t even wash a T-shirt to please nobody around here.”
I pulled at the neck of my shirt, showing Trudy.
“Itchy.”
“Itchy,” Lorraine said.
“Too much soap,” Trudy said. “Just rinse’em out more, is all.”
“Well kiss my rosy red. Whyn’t you two gang up?”
She looked up at Trudy and pointed to the kitchen chair at the end of the bed.
“Teddie’s making coffee. Take a load off.”
Trudy looked down at the spilled coffee and cigarette butts on the floor near the couch.
“Wet me a dish rag, Teddie.”
“Ain’t got none,” I answered.
“I’ll get it later,” Lorraine said. “You worked all day. Sit your butt down.”
“I ain’t sitting next to no slop, Lorraine.” She made a face and, with a sweep of her arm, cleared a place on the coffee table. Putting down her lunch box, she strolled to the kitchen, shaking her head with amazement as she looked from one end of the counter to the other. Finally, she rolled up her sleeves, pulled the plug on the soaking dishes, and poured out the scummy water from the pots and pans.
“Lord God. What ever happened to ‘Ain’t a sin to be poor but we ain’t got to be dirty’?” She found a dish rag, wrung it out, and held it under the hot water.
“Somebody call the Health Department, they’d come burn you down and start over!”
“Ain’t a matter of dirty,” Lorraine said. “Just cluttery, is all. I could whip this place together in half an hour.”
“You and whose army?”
Trudy brought the dish rag into the living room and, squatting down over the mess on the floor, dabbed and grunted and mopped until she had gathered it up.
“I bet there ain’t a clean cup in the place.” She scowled and poked through the piles of dishes in the kitchen.
“Teddie,” Lorraine said, snapping her fingers, pointing to the coffee table.
I picked up three cups, and, hooking them onto my fingers, raised them high over my head.
“Bring’em here, Teddie,” Trudy said, holding out her hand.
Lorraine shook her head and pointed with her cigarette to the bathroom.
“His arm ain’t broke.”
I ran to the bathtub to wash the cups.
“I mean gen-u-ine clean!” Trudy called after me. “Soap and hot water!”
“Hot water and Ajax for Miss Priss,” Lorraine called from the couch. “Get them rings out of there, or Miss Priss’ll faint deader’n a doornail!” She turned to Trudy. “You know Teddie’s coffee. Strong enough to kill any damn thing in them cups. Since when you so persnickety?”
“Since I don’t want to die of the ptomaine poison. Whatever happened to Miss My-House-Is-So-Clean-You-Could-Eat-Off-My-Kitchen-Floor?”
“I been sick.”
“Sick in the head.”
“Sick over my Lucille Anne!”
“You had nigh on three months to get over that baby, Lorraine. Me and ever’body else’s just about had it with you and your wallowing.”
“My Lucille Anne, damn you, Trudy! My baby girl!”
“Don’t you curse me, Lorraine! Ain’t no call for cursing.”
“Then don’t tell me …”
“I’ll tell you true ever’ time I see it. That’s why God gives a person somebody that loves them. To tell you true when nobody else cares enough to call you on your own bull. It was bad what happened. You griefed yourself, and no blame to you. But, hell, Lorraine, it’s past time to be done with it. You the only woman on God’s green earth ever lost a baby? You got one to tend to right here in front of you, girl. You got a good job and those what love you. But you keep wallowing yourself over this …”
I ran back into the living room, waving the cups, drying them in the air.
“Don’t run with dishes!” Lorraine yelled. “I told you a hundred times!”
“Cups,” I said.
“You know damn well what I mean. I told you a hundred times, no running with …”
“Don’t do a bit a good taking it out on Teddie,” Trudy said. “Ain’t him that’s went screwy in the head.”
Lorraine jumped up from the couch and stood in front of Trudy, her fists doubled and trembling, her voice low and husky.
“Don’t you never tell me on Ted
die. Don’t some Arkansas hillbilly tell me nothing on my kid.”
“I’ll go you one better’n that, Lorraine. I’ll give you a earful. Time somebody said something to get you off your skinny butt and back to business. Wallowing around here like some mooney-cow.”
I jumped up on the couch and began bouncing. “Cow-pig! Cow-pig! Dirty old cow-pig!”
“Teddie!” Trudy said, grabbing at my arm. “Don’t never talk to your mom like that!”
“You shut up, Trudy! You don’t tell my Teddie …”
I bounced higher and faster. “Shut up, Trudy!” I said.
“That’s it, Mister!” Lorraine took a step toward me and slapped at my head.
I dodged and bounded to the other end of the couch. Running in place, I lifted my knees high, yelling each time my feet hit the cushions.
“Oink-moo! Oink-moo! Oink-moo!”
Trudy shook her head and laughed. “Who put a nickel in that kid?”
“Don’t laugh. It just eggs him on.”
I pushed my nose up like a snout and stuck out my tongue.
“Lorraine, will you look at your kid? You two been cooped up so long, ol’ Teddie’s went off his rocker.”
“Oink-moo!” I shouted. I pounded the cushions with my feet and made my best face.
Lorraine stepped back and watched me for a moment. She folded her arms across her breasts and nodded. “Cooped up too long.”
Trudy came to the couch, grabbed me by one arm, and hoisted me onto her shoulder. “Come on, Mr. Oink-Moo. That coffee’s ‘bout to boil down to grit.”
She carried me to the kitchen, cleared a space on the counter, and sat me down. “Stay put.” She turned off the gas and removed the pot from the burner.
Lorraine brought the clean cups and placed them on the stove. Trudy inspected them, then opened the icebox.
“Jesus as my Living Savior. How long you two been out of ice?”
“Couple of weeks.”
“She don’t let Chuck in,” I said.
“How’s come?” Trudy asked.
“I must of been sleeping when they knocked,” Lorraine said.
I kicked my feet, and my heels bumped against the drawers.
“No sir. She said not to.”
“Shut up, Teddie. Nobody’s talking to you.”
“She don’t got to pay nothing. Chuck says.”
The Violent Child Page 12
