Pain
It took almost four weeks for Retta to go back to work at the salon. The childbirth was easy, much easier than Buddy had been in 1966. She was given this form of anesthesia called an epidural, where they basically knocked out the bottom half of her body for the entire birth. The only pain she had was when the labor started, but once they were settled at the hospital, the doctor came in and gave her the epidural. Retta couldn’t believe how she didn’t feel anything at all.
Then she started to push, the baby came out, and there were all kinds of quick but hushed moving and shuffling around the room. No one would let her see the baby, despite hearing a nurse say, “It’s a boy.” She knew something was wrong, but no one would say anything concrete to her. They just sewed the tear near her vagina, cleaned her up and one of the nurses would say every few minutes, “The doctor will be back soon, hon.”
Retta laid there, legs numb, head fuzzy and stomach clenched. She wasn’t supposed to feel her stomach, but for some reason, she could. Maybe if they had cut her open, she wouldn’t have felt that, but the pit of fear and anxiety overwhelmed her gut and there was no dulling that with any fancy schmancy anesthesia.
Eventually, the doctor came back into the room. He was an older gentleman with dark hair, graying at the temples. It was slicked back, covering a stubborn bald spot on the top. He had deep set eyes with black horn rimmed glasses, the kind that Kenny called “birth control glasses.” When Retta had once asked him why he called them that, he told her that they were issued in the Army. “Those things make you so ugly that no girl wants to have sex with you,” he explained.
The doctor’s white coat hung low, and his sleeve touched Retta’s arm as he pulled up a chair next to her. And then, when Retta peered into his face, she knew. She knew her baby was dead.
The doctor couldn’t mask his sadness. She realized that he had probably been through this very scenario several times over the years with lots of young mothers just like her. But she could also tell that he was the kind of man who wore each dead baby he delivered on the many harsh creases that cut along his face.
He told Retta that her baby boy had been born already gone, that he never had a chance, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck had strangled the life out of him before he was ever able to take a breath on his own. He was on the wrong side of the birth canal, and by the time he came out, it was too late.
“Ma’am, I know it’s important for a mother to hold her baby. But I also understand that it might be too much for you to do. I will bring him back in here so you can hold him once, so you can see your baby’s face,” he whispered.
The birth room was quiet. Retta’s body remained still, a suspension of numbing disbelief and the harsh beginnings of grief stood in the air around her like a gaseous cloud of toxins. Retta nodded.
The doctor left again and soon put a small white bundle into her arms. She held her son against her chest. His skin was cold, his face was a faint purple, and his eyes were permanently closed shut by the unrelenting brutality of that thing called “God’s Will.”
As she memorized the shape of his face so she could burn it into a permanent photograph within her heart, Retta started to weep. Losing Danny to some far away war was bad enough. But she didn’t have to hold him and see his purple face. This baby boy was a different kind of loss. He was now an eternal unfulfilled promise, the ripened bond between she and her new husband…who now had no name or future.
It didn’t happen all at once, but a couple months later, Kenny started hitting her. The first night that he had almost choked her to death, just a couple of weeks after their dead baby boy came out from her, several more weeks went by before he was violent again. The choking was while he was in a dream, “A night terror,” per her mother’s definition. Retta knew that. She knew that he didn’t mean to hurt her and that he was not really himself in that scary moment.
Kenny cried on the floor after it happened and grabbed her like he couldn’t believe what had just occurred. He apologized a million times, swearing that he had no idea what he was doing, that he thought he was somewhere in Vietnam. Retta felt horrible about it all, wondering if it was her fault somehow.
Another four weeks went by. Kenny, after coming home from Del’s Bar down near the warehouse, slapped her in the face. But he was drunk and stunk of cheap whiskey. Retta knew the cheap whiskey smell from growing up in a tavern. She knew Kenny didn’t mean it, that she shouldn’t have been so nasty with how she asked him where he had been for so long. She should’ve asked nicely. He was working so hard and doing so much overtime lately and deserved to throw back with his friends after work. She had been so down and out since the hospital anyway. Poor Kenny just needed to unwind.
So, when he apologized to her the next morning and promised that he would never do it again, she hugged him tight, they kissed a nice kiss, and all was well.
Another few weeks went by, and Retta had already mastered the art of applying makeup in just the right way and in just the right amount over the bruises that would develop on her arms and face. She was especially skilled at covering the small cuts that would open from time to time on her cheek or under her eyes during a particularly bad evening.
One night, when Kenny started screaming obscenities at her and came after her with a fork, Retta locked herself into the bathroom with Kenny outside, jamming the fork into the wood of the door. After about an hour, Retta could hear him sitting next to the door crying…sobbing, really. When she decided to open the door to find out what her husband was doing, she found him rocking back and forth, his head buried in his knees. All he said was, “Retta, I don’t know what is wrong with me. What’s happening?” She crawled out of the bathroom on her knees and held him there on the floor as he rocked and cried.
At some point, Retta looked up and saw Buddy’s little white face watching them through a crack in his bedroom door in the darkness.
Cheerios
No Name Baby Brother would have turned one-year-old today. That thought pinged into Buddy’s head as he slept and forced himself to open his eyes, facing the small framed photo he had on his nightstand of his real father holding him when he was a baby. While his brother had no official name, Buddy called him Joey in his heart. He thought that was a nice name for a baby brother.
The early morning sunlight lasered through his room’s sole window. He peered over at the way the rays hit into the floor, like if he dug a hole into the wooden slats, the light would continue in full strength underneath the house.
The hollering from the night before was finally over, and Buddy wasn’t sure if it was okay to get up now and have a bowl of cereal in the kitchen or if he should mind his mother and, “Stay in there and don’t you come out of there ‘til I tell you it’s alright.” Because the house seemed to be quiet, he figured it would be fine to tip-toe out. He hoped that he wouldn’t see anything broken on the floor, like the last time he crept out after a night of loud noises and voices and slapping sounds.
Buddy pulled his Snoopy sheets off his thin frame, revealing his new Superman Underoos. They were a gift from his grandmother up in some place called New Jersey. He had never met her, but he had seen her in pictures and talked with her on the telephone a couple of times. His mother didn’t like him walking around the house in just the Underoos, so he pulled on his blue robe. It matched his stepfather’s blue robe.
Creeping out of his room, Buddy made his way into the kitchen. Nothing was broken, as far as he could see. There were some empty smashed beer cans on the kitchen table and an empty brown bottle of something. Buddy smelled it and scrunched his nose. It didn’t smell very good.
He looked in the living room and was able to make out the silhouette of his stepfather on the couch, a blue and red afghan covering his body. As he opened the refrigerator to get down the gallon of milk, his mother came out of her bedroom. She wore a pair of blue jeans and a striped shirt. Her long curly hair was back in
to a clip. She hadn’t yet put on her makeup because Buddy could see the fresh cut on her left cheek. Part of her bottom lip was a little swollen too. Buddy had no idea how she would cover that over with makeup, and he could feel the rage inside of him start to build up. His mother should never have to cover up cuts and bruises. Why did she let Kenny hurt her?
“Buddy, I’m going to your brother’s grave site today. Do you want to come with me?” she asked.
Buddy thought about that. The last time he went, it was Easter. Lots of people came on Easter to visit their loved ones, Buddy had noticed. There were fresh flowers everywhere. They brought a small basket of flowers with them and set it at the foot of the grave stone. Buddy wasn’t reading well enough yet, but his mother read the words for him: “Beloved Baby Boy Bellinger, Born and Died May 10th, 1972, Watch Over Us.” It was a tiny spot in a large field full of dead people, most of whom got to live a lot longer than “never” or “not at all” and all of whom had names.
At the gravesite, he had wondered aloud why his brother had no name, like everyone else’s brother. His mother replied, “Because Kenny didn’t want to name him. He figured it’d be easier that way.” Then she bit her bottom lip, her eyes held low, and whispered under her breath, “Nothin’s easier about this.”
As he looked into his Cheerios, Buddy asked his mother, “Is Kenny coming too?”
“Don’t know, son. That’s up to him.”
Buddy watched his mother wash a few dishes still sitting in the sink. She looked down, like she was studying something inside of the foamy water and moved slowly. He rarely said anything to her about all the fighting that went on between her and Kenny. The one time he did, she replied, “There is something wrong with him. He needs to see a doctor for his nightmares.”
But Buddy didn’t understand how nightmares had anything to do with sitting around and talking funny with droopy eyes or hollering at his mother who never did anything mean to anyone, or getting mad about things, silly things, and throwing bottles and plates around the house. Buddy had nightmares before and never punched his mother in the face or grabbed her arms so tight that he left bruises on them for weeks. He had bad dreams before, but he never had an urge to shove his mother across a room or pull her hair so hard that a bunch of it came out in a big clump.
As he poured himself some Cheerios and piled sugar on top, his mother peeked into the living room, where Kenny slept.
“Are you gonna wake him?” Buddy asked.
“He should be fine, now. He’s slept it off.”
His mother walked quietly into the room, the floor creaking, and put her small feet onto the green shag carpet. The couch was green as well, and Kenny was too tall to fit his whole body on it, so his legs went just past the end. Buddy could see his bare feet poking out past the end of the cushion. There was a brown chair next to the couch, where Kenny usually sat to watch TV. The TV was sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, and his mother had a nice bookcase with some books and these strange little statues of people that she called “Hummels.”
She got on her knees next to him and rubbed his back gently. She leaned her face onto the side of his cheek, and Buddy watched her whispering to him. But he couldn’t hear what she said. Kenny stirred. Then she got up and quietly walked back into the kitchen.
“Son, we’re gonna go visit your brother by ourselves. Kenny doesn’t feel so good.” Then she walked back over to her bedroom, leaving Buddy alone in the kitchen.
He continued shoveling his cereal into his mouth, observing his pile of sugar slowly melt into the milk. As he chewed, he watched Kenny on the couch, who did not move. He ate the remaining little Cheerios that looked like the letter O in the alphabet, which also happened to be the letter of the week in Kindergarten. There was one left. He poked at it with his finger, as it bobbed in the milk.
Buddy hated when there was one O left because he always struggled to get it onto the spoon all by itself. Eventually he’d give up and drink the sugary tasting milk with the one O feeling like an errant chunk.
As Buddy put the bowl up to his mouth, he slurped the milk, bit by bit, enjoying the sweetness of his favorite morning taste. When he finally finished, he put the bowl down and looked up to find Kenny standing right in front him, the afghan hanging loosely off his body. His eyes were wild, almost like he was a frightened animal at the zoo.
“Boy,” he said sharply.
Buddy was full of anxiety, afraid of what was about to happen. Kenny had never looked at him like that before.
“I am tryin’ to sleep. Can you not see that? Did you not see me asleep there on the couch?”
Buddy nodded. “I saw you,” he said sheepishly.
“Well if you saw me, then why in the hell are you makin’ so much racket over here?”
Kenny had light brown eyes and shaggy brown hair that he had let grow out after he wooed his mother and stopped going into her salon for Army style haircuts. He was tall and big like a lumberjack, the kind that Buddy saw in pictures inside the books that Mrs. Holloway, his teacher, read to the class during Carpet Time. Like the lumberjack, Kenny’s face was unshaven with lots of stubble and he stunk of sweat or beer or something bad, like a dead rat.
“I’m sorry, Kenny. I didn’t know I was loud.” Buddy was terrified.
Kenny grunted and sneered at him in a way that seemed almost other worldly.
“You go get ready to visit your dead brother,” he snapped, spittle forming around the edge of his lips where some curious white stuff had collected.
“Are you coming with us?” Buddy asked.
Kenny didn’t answer. He walked back toward the bedroom that he shared with his mother, went inside and shut the door behind him.
Chapter 6
October 1996 – July 1997
Bo
A long time ago, Buddy’s mother informed him that getting a dog would make him immediately attractive to women and would always serve as a natural icebreaker toward further conversation.
“You are a very good looking young man, son. And those eyelashes are God’s blessed gift to you. There is no need for you to be so afraid of women. They don’t bite. Well, not until they know you better,” his mother explained.
Buddy always figured his biggest problem was just that he could never think of anything to talk about with women. He had a lot of thoughts in his head, a lot of useless knowledge – like batting averages for the Braves and how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll inside of a Tootsie Roll Pop and the names of every song, in alphabetical order, on every album put out by Boston – but he could never understand women or the nauseatingly boring topics that he’d overhear at the courthouse and when he was in the law library at Carolina.
Most of the time, he sat there wondering why the hell anyone would care about covering their faces with just the right “tint of beige” or have baby names written on a list for babies who did not exist yet – and wouldn’t – for years, or what some stupid celebrity was doing for her “fabulous birthday week in Maui” with some other stupid celebrity. A birthday is just one day. He never understood why people celebrated them longer.
His mother never celebrated his birthday after their disappearing act all those years ago. It was strange being the only boy at a birthday party in North Carolina who would never have one of his own to invite his new friends. When Joe asked his mother when her birthday was, early on, she replied, “I don’t have birthdays anymore.” Joe probably thought she was just being a typical woman.
Buddy always guessed that his mother wanted to forget that they ever had another set of roots somewhere else, roots still sitting there in the hard earth of Killeen, Texas, now a long ago stunted and infertile bush. Did their bush ever bloom again after their absence became permanent? He always wondered but knew better than to bring it up.
It took a long time for the crippling fears of seeing Kenny Bellinger walk up t
o them on the downtown streets of Welby, North Carolina to go away for good. Buddy reckoned that for a battered woman – like his mother – those fears never left entirely. He hoped Kenny was either dead or had been taken away into a mental hospital and has been sitting in there all these years in a white straight jacket – talking to no one in particular – about fancy cars and fishing and how his wife probably left him on the floor to die.
One day almost three years ago, Buddy walked by a pet store on his way to a take-out Chinese restaurant. There was a cute girl, probably in her early twenties, standing there in a page boy hat and holding a big golden mess of a dog on a long brown leather leash. There was a small wire fence in a circle next to her with another dog, some kind of Beagle mix. She had a folding table nearby with a sign on it that read Adoption Day.
As Buddy looked at the tip of her hat, which was Army green and hiding a crop of sharply cut brown hair sitting just above her shoulders and pushed neatly behind her ears, she grinned at him, her cheeks full and round, and said, “Hey.”
Buddy stopped and peered down at the dog, sitting butt end on the cement sidewalk, and looking up at him with big brown eyes and his tongue hanging out in a mild pant. He reached down and pet him. “Hi boy, how are you today?” he asked the dog, whose eyes shut when Buddy’s hand touched his head. The dog licked his hand, his tongue thick, wet and just on the verge of slobbering.
“He likes you,” the cute girl said, trying to look Buddy in his eyes. Knowing how to manage his shyness, Buddy kept his gaze downward at the dog or on the tip of the fraying brim of her hat.
“How do you know?” Buddy asked, accepting the dog kisses and lowering himself down to the dog’s eye level.
Good Buddy Page 9
