Breaking Brooklyn

by Scott Leopold

  When Adam saw me, paralyzed in front of them, he yelled,“Get the hell out of here!”

  I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I had seen. And my mother! I felt like I was going to throw up. Once again, she had betrayed my trust. Even worse, I felt lied to by Adam, a man who professed to adhere to God’s word. Well, God would not like what I just saw.

  Maybe there was something to BBs colliding on a football field. Every time something good happened to me, it ended in sadness. I told myself I would never, ever, trust anyone again.

  When I returned to my tent I buried myself in my sleeping bag, got out my flashlight, and began to read my comic book. With my eyes wide open I waited for my mother to come back. She didn’t, nor did I sleep at all that night. I wanted so badly to be back home with Brooke, to escape to the railroad tracks I loved so much.

  The next morning when my mother returned I couldn’t look at her. No matter how hard I tried there was no getting the pictures of what I saw out of my head. It ate me up inside, making me deeply resent her…

  While we were on our camping trip, Grandpa Bob had tumbled from the wagon of sobriety into the abyss of alcoholism.

  It all started after a long day of working on the car lot. Morris and my Grandpa Bob came back to our townhouse just behind the Peaches Record Store. They started talking politics. Jimmy Carter was president and the Iran hostage crisis was on the minds of most Americans. Grandpa Bob knew he could work out a better plan to free the hostages than the government.

  It was the middle of July which meant it was hot and sticky. The air was so thick it left a musty aftertaste in your mouth when you swallowed. Morris had a brown paper sack that contained six Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. He pulled one from the bag. The moisture from the can left its imprint on Morris’s shirt when he pulled the can to his chest. My grandfather’s mouth started to water when he saw this.

  As Morris pulled off the top tab on the can my grandfather heard the familiar “Fizzzzzz” sound. It was music to his ears. A light mist sprayed from the top of the can as a little bit of foam slowly erupted from the opening. Morris read the look on my grandfather’s face.

  “Here, have one,” he said, reaching into the brown sack.

  When my grandfather caught the beer his face wrinkled up like a Walnut shell.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. “I haven’t had a drink in six months.”

  “One beer isn’t going to hurt. You did a hard day’s work, you deserve it. Just have one and relax,” Morris explained as he sipped on his beer.

  My grandfather cracked open what he had fought so hard to give up. The familiar taste was a sweet reminder to his dry, cracked lips. This first beer that “wasn’t going to hurt” was the start of one of his biggest drinking binges. One that he would talk about many times in his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings later in life.

  When my mother and I returned from our awkward bus trip home, we spoke nothing of what happened. We simply grabbed our things from the bus and headed home. At home we found Grandpa Bob sitting in the dark with a bottle of whisky in his hand. I could smell the alcohol on him as soon as we stepped into the room.

  My mother nodded as he looked up at her in shame. Walking over she grabbed the bottle and took a pull. She then swallowed loudly as if she was trying to drown out the thoughts in her mind.

  Looking at the two of them sitting in the dark I knew things were about to get bad.

  Cindy

  Chapter Fourteen

  “There are those whose primary ability is to spin wheels of manipulation. It is their second skin, and without these spinning wheels, they simply do not know how to function. They are like toys on wheels of manipulation and control. If you remove one of the wheels, they'll never be able to feel secure, be whole.” ~ C. Joybell C

  Cindy Napier’s Diary

  August 21, 1991

  It’s been a year since I was with Adam. I’m now in Fairbanks, thirty days sober. This has been the hardest thing I have ever done. There is no escaping my past. I’m no longer able to numb myself with drugs and alcohol. The memories of all the horrible things I have done are now free to haunt me.

  After Jack walked in on me having sex with Adam I totally fell apart. I was dead inside. I didn’t care about anything. I was popping pills and drinking every day. Eventually, I was arrested for child neglect. I was so high I had no idea where my son was.

  This was the moment when I finally recognized that I need help. I was under court order to commit myself to Fairbanks, a rehabilitation center, on the east side of Indianapolis.

  It’s a co-residential rehabilitation program that only segregates men and women by rooms. Common areas and group therapy are shared space. On my first day in the center, the doctors put me on Antabuse and methadone so I could start my detoxification.

  Sobriety is a scary thing. It’s forcing me to see myself for who I am, which is the very thing I am running from. I have to look at, and accept, the destruction I left behind. Worse, I have to remember all of the people I have hurt: Sam, his parents, my mother, and most of all, my son.

  I am reliving my mistakes, lies, tricks, and deceits, over and over again as I sit alone in my room at night. I’m unable to sleep. I hate myself even more than I thought was possible. My craving for alcohol and drugs gets worse and worse every day I’m sober.

  I am looking at life from the bottom up, with no money, and no place to live. My mother has cut me off and I cannot count on my father. So, I fell back on what I know best, finding someone else to prop me up.

  I met my meal ticket during a group counseling session. Sy was older man with very little hair and a good-sized beer gut. Fraternizing with the opposite sex is prohibited, but I see Sy quite a bit in the common areas. I learned all that I could about him. He has a good paying job as a master welder at Amtrak, and he is single.

  A costly mistake on the job while intoxicated had landed him with the choice of going to rehab or being fired.

  Sy is a good ‘ol’ boy from the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee. His family migrated to a Southern part of Indianapolis when he was a young boy. They were extremely poor and uneducated. However, Sy is unusually smart. His intelligence enabled him to get high marks on his welder’s test and get a good paying job.

  Sy came from a huge family, a tree with branches growing every which way. Every single one of his siblings and cousins had children with multiple partners. Sy is the only one who hasn’t had any kids yet. I hear he is sterol from all the drinking.

  The more I get to know about him, the more I like the idea of being with him. It’s not complicated. Sy will be easy to manipulate. If I am going to get my life back on track after rehab, the fastest way to do it will be to make something happen with him.

  In our group therapy sessions, I glance his way a lot, trying to get him to notice me. I have to literally convince myself to like him. He is a large man with intimidating features that make me feel safe. He has a strong jaw, but he is balding. What hair is left grows around his head like a horseshoe. His face is pocked with burn marks from welding sparks, which make his face red and rough like and old piece of leather. When I think of making love to him, I cringe.

  Chapter fifteen

  “Some, they didn't make it. The temptation just too strong. How can darkness cloud the mind to what I know as wrong?”

  ― Kimberly Nalen

  Jack Napier - Day 29

  I have been in the hospital for almost a month now. My nightmares are getting worse. Last night I had a dream about Sy.

  DREAM:

  I hear footsteps from underneath my door. They are slow and deliberate. I feel my heart thump against my ribcage as I anticipate of the evil that’s making its way to my room. Suddenly, the door flings open and I can see the silhouette of a large man with a belt in his hand. The white light behind him is blinding. As the beast approaches me I lose my breath. I am so scared! The angry man grabs a handful of my hair and pulls me off the bed.

  Just the mem
ory of Sy paralyzes my thoughts. I didn't want to but Harleen insisted that I journal about him. She told me that I need to confront my past so I can be free in the present. Actually, writing about my life has not been as bad as I thought. It’s helping me relax.

  After my mother’s fevered dance with the “Devil” and The New Church of Christ, she went completely off the rails. She popped pills and chased after sex in her need to forget about her past. She had dug a hole so deep she gave up on the idea that she would ever get out.

  I was being neglected like never before. There was never any food in the house and I was left all alone for days at a time. In a two-week period, Grandpa Bob hadn’t seen one sober day. At this point his drinking was no longer a party, it was a sickness. He was now drinking to avoid the painful crash.

  He would wake up late in the morning and take a couple of shots of whisky to get rid of his hangover. Every day started the same: No breakfast, no hello, just booze. Eventually, he lost track of the days and was missing work on a regular basis. Morris at the used car lot couldn’t take it anymore.

  Grandpa Bob didn’t bother telling my mother that he got fired. Maybe he was embarrassed, or just so sick from his need to drink that he couldn’t. He would dress for work then sneak off to the Alley Cat in the morning. My mother, who was lost in her own depraved party, didn’t suspect a thing.

  At one point Grandpa Bob was nowhere to be found. He was late again on rent. I knew this because I had found a handwritten note on the front door that said “EVICTION WARNING NOTICE.” I knew from experience that soon our keys would no longer work. This also meant I would have to spend a few days in the same clothes looking for a place to sleep while my grandfather got his shit together. Hopefully, this wouldn’t be with one of my mom’s loser boyfriends.

  I decided I was going to find him and straighten things out sooner rather than later. So, I rode my bike down a few blocks then over several streets until I saw the Alley Cat. It was tucked behind the Broad Ripple Auto Body Shop. I parked my bike outside the entrance, then opened the heavy metal door. As soon as I walked through the door, I could smell cigarette smoke mixed with stale beer and bad breath. It was packed. All the voices sounded like one giant screeching noise.

  “What if I can’t find him?” I murmured to myself.

  Then I heard the laugh that identified my Grandpa Bob no matter where he was.

  “MMAAAAH, MMAAAAH, MMAAAAH!” he belted, throwing back a shot of Irish whisky.

  He was sitting close to a young lady with a fair complexion and dirty-blonde hair. The kind of blonde you get when you bleach your hair with peroxide. She was wearing a really tight V-neck tee shirt that showed off her boobs.

  Pointing at me, Grandpa Bob shouted, “That’s my boy! Come give me a hug knucklehead!” Then he looked over his shoulder to big tits. “Tina, show my boy your tits.” He busted out laughing “MMAAAAH, MMAAAAH!”

  Without the slightest hesitation, Tina lifted her tight T-shirt and gave me more than an eyeful. I had seen women’s breasts in the magazines I found while dumpster diving with my friends, but never in real life.

  My heart was racing like I was being chased by a pack of wild dogs. I started to sweat profusely and unwilling blinked my eyes. Finally, she put her shirt down. I just stood there frozen in place as everyone in the bar laughed.

  “What do you need kid?” Grandpa Bob asked.

  “What I have to say is private, Grandpa Bob.”

  “Oh come on, kid! You can tell me now. What is it?” he said, clearly an effort to impress his friend.

  “I don’t want to say,” I said with a “please go outside with me” expression.

  “Don’t you have friends to go play with?” he asked, now irritated with our exchange.

  “Yes. This is important, Grandpa Bob.”

  “Then say it, son!”

  Feeling I had no choice, I shouted, “We’re being evicted again!”

  My grandfather glared at me, grinding his teeth. He was angry with me for embarrassing him in front of Tina.

  “Go on, kid! That’s an adult matter. I’ll take care of it!” He glanced over at Tina. “He has no idea what’s going on. My landlord is a real asshole and never fixes anything, so I withhold my rent until the work gets done. In return, he threatens to evict us. It's just a game I have to play to get stuff done.”

  Looking back at me, he shouted, “Hey, kid, don’t look at me like I stole your candy. It’ll be fine. Now go play.”

  It was an impossible situation. I had nowhere to go and no one to look out for me.

  As I suspected we were evicted and I was on the streets of Broad Ripple. Eventually, Child Protective Services was called and took me in while they looked for my mother. When they found her she was arrested and charged with child neglect. By court order she had to check into the Fairbanks and get clean. This time grandma Daisy got involved and was able to get temporary custody of me.

  When my mother got out of Fairbanks, she married Sy and they had two kids. I would visit them over summer break and one weekend a month during the school year. My mother wasn’t happy about the situation because she felt Grandma Daisy got exactly what she wanted.

  At first my mother and Sy were able to control their drinking. But my mother, being her reckless self, got restless. The stress of having two young kids started to get to her. A casual glass of wine turned into several, which triggered her need for the pleasures of something stronger. It was straight downhill from there. Sy, trying to escape the humiliation of her actions, also started drinking heavily. They had unconsciously formed a bond that enabled each other’s addictions.

  Sy was having violent mood swings on a daily basis. His frustration would grow when we didn’t understand his delusions. When this happened Sy and my mother would screaming at each other for hours. My brother and sister would hide under the covers. My mother would storm out of the house, leaving Sy alone with my brother and sister, knowing he couldn’t leave. What Sy didn’t realize was that she planned the whole thing so she could go out and party with her new friends in Beech Grove.

  Sy started hearing rumors that my mother was cheating on him. People were even questioning whether little Mikey was even Sy’s. The rumors undid him. He was infuriated and embarrassed. The louder the gossip got, the more violent his mood swings grew. He became so paranoid that my mother stayed away from him out of fear that he would hurt her.

  Sy would hang out in the detached garage in the back of the house and develop conspiracy theories. He would write down license plate numbers on small pieces of paper and taped them all over the walls of the garage. Then he would pin lines of string between the numbers in random patterns that only he understood.

  Sy was definitely very different than anyone else in his family. Though he had only gone to grade school for two years as a child, he was remarkably intelligent. This made him stand out from the rest of his illiterate siblings. And when I say they were illiterate, I mean they couldn’t even write their names on a piece of paper.

  When Sy’s family migrated to Indianapolis he got a job at Muller Welding on the maintenance crew. His curiosities led him to learn all about welding. He soon asked the master welders to let him give it a try. When they saw how quickly he picked up the techniques, they made him an apprentice. From there he quickly became a master welder. When Amtrak got wind of his abilities they offered him a good paying job with benefits.

  I remember walked in on Sy one morning while he was in the garage. He started asking me lots of questions about the project he was working on.

  “What does this look like to you, Jack?” he asked.

  I knew from past experiences if I didn’t answer, he would become very suspicious, frustrated, and start yelling. He would even whack me in the back of the head sometimes, asking me the same question again. I quickly learned how to placate him by answering his question with a question of my own.

  For example, one day Sy asked me a question once about a problem he was working on.

 
“Jack, what do you see within these two numbers?” he said as he pointed them out on the wall.

  I quickly responded, “Um, I actually think there might be some kind of math connection. Why is there a string between them?”

  “I see. Yes. Yes. I see,” Sy repeated over and over, thinking about my answer. “I find a difference divisible by seventeen. Yes. Yes. I find by seventeen. I see. Yes. Yes.”

  While Sy was talking to himself, staring at the numbers on the wall, I slipped out of the garage. I promised myself to never go back in there.

  Despite my promise to myself, I stumbled into the garage one evening when I thought Sy wasn’t home. All I needed was a bike pump for five minutes. This time Sy was working on a funny looking metal box with the words “Commodore 64” on the front. I was afraid to ask what the metal box was for. When Sy saw me looking at it he explained it was a personal computer, and he was disassembling it to see how it worked.

  Sy was wearing a pair of magnifying glasses on his head that made him look like his eyes made up half of his face. I couldn’t help but laugh. Looking up at me with his magnified eyes, he stared for a moment, then said, “Do you want to know what I really think this is?”

  I didn’t want to know, but being nice to Sy was always advantageous.

  “What is it?”

  “This is how the government is going to spy on us in the future. See, we plug this into our televisions and then they can watch what we do. They have rooms full of mainframe computers collecting all this data. I’m finding out how it works because I can reverse engineer it. I can then possibly figure out a way to watch them! All I need to do is follow their connection, track the relays back, and learn where their control center is located.”

  At this point he was talking to the computer console. I grabbed the bike pump and got the hell out of there as fast as I could!