Ink for the Beloved

by R C Barnes

There were sharp voices at the front door, commanding my mother to open it. She did, and I heard feet pounding the living room floors. After weeks of screaming and yelling, I’m surprised it took the neighbors this long to call the police. But it is probably because up until this night, the screaming had only come from a single voice, a female voice. Once Luther responded back, the whole thing must have sounded more terrifying.

  A policewoman opened the bedroom door and saw Echo and I clutching each other on my bed. She motioned for us to follow her. She went through the kitchen to the back door and released the lock. Another policeman stepped in. Both officers had their weapons drawn.

  “I don’t think there is anyone else in the house,” the female officer said. “The mother says it is just these two. But there are reports more adults live here.”

  “I’ll check the other rooms,” the other officer replied. They moved out of the kitchen and headed down the hallway towards the rest of the house. I could hear footsteps up above, so there must have been an officer in Ollie’s living area, searching. The female officer led Echo and me into the living room.

  “Don’t bring those babies in here,” a deep voice moaned. “Don’t bring them in here. Take them out through the back.”

  The living room was destroyed. Furniture was knocked over. Lamps had fallen, and there were books and papers tossed on the floor. Vases and plates and picture frames had been smashed, and pieces of glassware were everywhere. Luther was on his knees, and a police officer was standing over him. Luther’s hands were handcuffed behind his back. Sweat was dripping from his brow, and it began to mingle with the tears flowing from his eyes. “Don’t bring those babies in here,” he murmured over and over. I had to look away. When I did, I saw the hole in the wall, next to the clock that read nine-fifteen. The hole was the size of a fist.

  Echo was clutching my legs and keeping her face buried into my pajamas. I had a blanket over my shoulders like a cape, and I used it to cover Echo and try to shield her from the horrific scene in front of us. I didn’t see my mother, but I could hear her. Luther was crying and shaking his head. There were bleeding scratches on his face. He looked defeated like a bull before it is slain by the matador.

  But having the police arrive had not calmed my mother’s temper or her mouth. The terrier still had her toy.

  She was on the front steps, with her hands handcuffed to the metal banister on the stoop, arguing with the officer standing over her. Her hair was electrified, and her face, a tight rush of red. Her dress was hitched up around her thighs, and her feet were barefoot and bleeding. She was in her words, “explaining the situation,” but she was all righteous anger and furious she had been handcuffed. “This is my house! This is my fucking house!” She struggled against the restraints, telling the officer he had the whole thing wrong. Luther was stealing her children. She looked like the crazy lady who screams prophecies on the corner of Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way.

  Before the female officer took Echo and me out the front door, she squatted down so she could look us both in the eye. She pointed to our mother, flaming with spitfire, on the steps, and asked: “Who is that woman there?”

  “Our mother,” I answered. I was scared and trying to keep myself from shaking. The woman looked like our mother, but now, she had been transformed into one of the hellish harpies I read about in Greek mythology that tortured Odysseus in his seafaring travels.

  The female officer pointed to Luther in the living room, and asked: “Is that your father?” She directed the question more to me since I had answered her first question, and clearly, Luther looked like he was my father. But Echo nodded her head yes. I don’t know if the officer noticed this, but our mother did. She had finally seen we had been brought out of the house and were standing outside.

  She started screaming with increased fervor. “He is NOT their father. He’s stealing my kids! He’s stealing my kids! Ask anyone. You have to stop him!”

  I looked at the officer and answered, “He’s my mother’s boyfriend.” It hurt my heart to say it like that. I immediately began to cry. The female officer looked at me again. “Did he come here tonight to take you away?”

  “No,” I answered. I wanted to add, but I wish he would. I wanted to add that, but I didn’t.

  SHE’S THE WORST

  The female officer placed Echo and me in the back of a squad car. I grasped she was planning on taking us away from the house and begged for proper shoes since both of us were wearing slippers. She came back out with socks and sneakers. She clearly wasn’t going to let us go back inside. My sister and I were both wearing pajama pants and sweatshirt tops. Our strange attire with the sneakers just seemed to add to the surreal nature of the night.

  I realized this is what being in shock is like. You don’t think; you just watch. Perhaps later, you get the opportunity to piece things together. But while it’s happening, you’re there as a witness, not a participant. The other officer who had gone through the rest of the house came out and holstered his gun. He spoke with the female officer briefly, and she gestured to the police car where Echo and I were sitting.

  “Is she taking us away?” Echo whispered to me.

  “I think so.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” I suspected both Luther and our mother were going to be questioned for a while. I didn’t know how these types of things worked. Seeing them, both handcuffed had scared me, but later I learned it was standard procedure with domestic violence calls. The police took one look at the devastation in the living room and restrained them both. They didn’t know if there was a gun in the house, and they couldn’t risk my mother bashing them on the head with the vase. The vases and picture frames were her handiwork. The hole in the wall was Luther.

  “Don’t leave me, Bess,” Echo whispered.

  “I won’t. They can’t make me.”

  Surprisingly enough, the police did try to separate Echo and me when we were taken to the station. They wanted to talk to me alone since I was fifteen, and they were worried about Echo hearing what I had to say. They had a child crisis room to hold Echo. It contained sad looking cots, faded linens, and grubby toys. I laughed rudely and pointed out they had just marched us through a living room that looked like a cyclone hit it, Echo was already aware of the violence being displayed in our household. My sister stays with me.

  I answered all the questions about our mother and about Luther. I asserted my mother’s rants were all wrong. Luther had been a part of our family for years now. The only change had occurred when Echo had been sick, and I had stayed with Luther at his apartment while my mother was tending to my ill sister. They asked me about Ollie and who he was. They asked questions about people who had come through the house but were no longer residing there. They apparently had gotten information from the neighbors because they asked about a few people who had not been around for years. There were people even I had forgotten about, and I found out the gap-toothed girl’s name was Amy Honeywell.

  Since Ollie was out of town, there was no one to retrieve us from the station. Echo and I went home with the female officer who had us sleep on the floor of her living room with two sleeping bags – one orange and one blue. She gave us hot chocolate from a mix. The marshmallows were stale, but I ate them anyway.

  The following morning, Dusty arrived, and there was a big to-do about her taking us since she wasn’t family, and our care and wellbeing was the issue at stake here. But eventually, the police relinquished us to Dusty when she showed them proof; she was legally my mother’s business partner.

  My mother was held in jail overnight since she had apparently tried to accost the officer when they went back to get Echo and me from the rear of the house. That was the other reason for the handcuffs and why they placed her outside. But it was just one night, and then they let her go.

  But the horrible thing is this – she insisted on pressing charges against Luther. Her claim was insane, but she was the terrier with the toy, and she must have realized thi
s was her dynamite. This was how she could blow Luther out of the water. She insisted Luther was a threat, and she filed a restraining order. And she made race an issue. Terry played up his size and his dark skin and the fact he worked in auto repair.

  She made it sound like all types of nefarious characters came through his shop. “Officer, I have no idea what kinds of dealings go on there. I mean, it could be anything…things my children shouldn’t see… there’s so much CASH.” This was her offensive attack because she needed to characterize the tattoo studio as a haven for artists, and free love and mutual respect. It was truly awful what she did.

  Luther had no legal leg to stand on. My mother was not only ending the relationship, she was also detonating it. The phrase “burning bridges” was coined with her in mind. My mother torched her bridges with a flame thrower. She made sure nothing could ever grow again. But Luther was slightly different than the others because Echo and I had become involved. My mother wasn’t just burning the relationship; she was shooting rocket launchers at Luther. She wanted him out of her life and away from us. It didn’t matter what we wanted. SHE decided it, and then got the law to back her up.

  She lied in the paperwork and made Luther sound like he was one-inch shy of being a gangster and someone who became too attached to other people’s children. The fact they had been dating for several years didn’t matter. Luther and Terry had not married, so we were not legally his children. We weren’t biologically his children. We couldn’t ask to live with him. He had no claim, and neither did we. My mother reduced him to “some guy”.

  It was over. Done. Finished. Kaput. Because Theresa Ann Wynters declared it so.

  Later a judge tossed out my mother’s claims Luther had tried to steal us from her. Many folks submitted depositions indicating the truth of Luther’s character and the nature of their relationship. I believe my robotics coach sent in a witness statement and one of Echo’s kindergarten teachers at Malcolm X Elementary. No one from the household or tattoo studio sent in any type of report or deposition, despite the requests from the family court. People like Ollie and Dusty remained silent. I was so angry at them, but then I learned Luther warned them to stay out of it, or they would be subject to my mother’s wrath.

  The judge dismissed anything that could lend itself to a misdemeanor or character harming, but the restraining order remained in place. The police had been called, and a woman was claiming she felt threatened. Luther was not to come in contact with my mother and her household. The only man who had ever shown interest in being a father in my life had been sent away because of my mother’s insecurities. To call the situation unfair, does not begin to address the magnitude of the injustice.

  That was when I started on the hot sauce packets. I wanted to burn the hurt inside. I was angry, but I wanted to feel more than that. I just wanted to become mean. I wanted to inflict pain. I had to protect myself and lash back.

  ***

  Luther had started humming along with the music playing over his sound system. It was still Nina Simone singing, but now she was crooning about the rock in the hiding place. I was reminded of Echo humming the spiritual the other day and thought I would test my theory.

  “Luther? “I asked.

  “Yes, Baby doll,” he answered. He was over by his workbench, cleaning off tools and sorting out bolts. His back was to me. And I could see the words “Good Job Motor Care” stenciled across the top of his work shirt.

  “When was the last time you saw Echo?”

  Luther stopped his work entirely and cocked his head to one side. He slowly turned around to face me, and his expression was one of high suspicion.

  “Why you asking me that?”

  I thought I would play my response from pure ignorance.

  “Well…because… I’m here. But I can sneak away and see you. But I don’t tell Echo about my visits, because…well…it would seem unfair…cause then, she would want to see you, and that is harder to arrange with my mother picking her up from school, and I just wondered if you snuck peaks at Echo ever. Like…you know…watch her at the schoolyard…”

  He didn’t go for it. Luther crossed his arms across his chest, held his suspicious gaze, and waited for me to continue.

  “I wanted to know if you have been able to see Echo at all. I know she would like to see you.”

  “I suspect you already have the answer to the question. And why are you phrasing it in a creepy way like I’m some type of stalker? Why are you asking?”

  “Okay, I know Echo has seen you. I just don’t know how. I know she has either been in your car or she has come to the shop.”

  “And how do you know that, Ms. Nancy Drew?”

  I released a proud smile as I was rather pleased with how I had figured this all out. I pay attention to details. “Echo has been humming “Wade in the Water” which you have on your Mavis Staples CD. You only play your CDs in the shop or on the stereo system in your apartment. So…”

  Luther gave me a mock look of exasperation. He placed his hands on his hips and shook his head. Luther appeared to not be able to decide if he should scold me or hug me. I then watched his stern expression melt away, and he broke into a wide grin, embracing me with a teddy bear hug. It felt good to have his large arms around me. It had been too long since I had received a Luther Tucker special deluxe. “Damn, nothing gets by you!” he said.

  Luther released me and leaned back, holding me at arm’s length. “This has been incredibly hard on me.” He acknowledged. “But it’s been really hurting the girl.”

  I knew what he was referring to. Echo peppered me constantly with questions about Luther. I didn’t let her know I was sneaking visits, but I tried to answer the questions the best I could. Many times, it wasn’t so much the questions, but her statements of longing and wishful thoughts. We’d be in the kitchen eating ice cream, and Echo would reminisce about some quiet evening where we were watching a television show with superheroes, and Luther was there, and we were eating ice cream. They were memories that hardly registered with me, but she would bring them up. “Member when we watched Iron Man with Luther, and we were eating peppermint ice cream… I hope Luther is still getting his peppermint ice cream…”

  Luther explained Echo had been doing this with Ollie, and it was driving the older man nuts. Ollie adores Echo. He really does. But his adoration needs to come in small dose exposures. Ollie likes to blare opera music during the day and insert himself mentally into the world of the aria. He doesn’t want people hanging out in his kitchen. He likes his space in my mother’s house. The only exception he makes is in the evening when the meal is on its way to completion, and then someone can perch on the kitchen stool in the breakfast nook and talk about their day. That person is usually me. And sometimes, Joanie.

  But Echo is another story. Echo rambles. Echo asks those kid questions that make you appreciate the existence of the Internet and Google. If Echo is in the kitchen, Ollie cannot employ his means of handling stress and escape by listening to opera music and pretending he is the lead tenor at the San Francisco Opera House. Because if Echo is in the kitchen, he must remove the chef hat and put on the responsible adult hat. And nobody in my mother’s household likes wearing the responsible adult hat. That’s why it gets tossed to me all the time.

  It seems to be the secret society they all share - an honest to God, Peter Pan Society.

  “Hi, I’m Bob.”

  “I’m Carol.”

  “Are you a member of the Peter Pan Society?”

  “Why, yes, I am.” Wink wink

  “There is this incredible house in South Berkeley. It is owned by Terry Wynters. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.”

  “I think so. Isn’t she the beautiful redhead with the blooming garden on her body?”

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  “I see her all over the place. I think she was at the Ohlone park on Tuesday, running around, catching kids on slides, and making silly faces.”

  “That’s definitely her. She has a com
munal spirit. Well, you know, Berkeley and all.”

  The person nods with utmost familiarity.

  “Terry Wynters runs a house where if you act like a kid, you get to stay.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, you are free to unleash your creative spirit.”

  ‘Wow, that sounds fantastic. What’s the catch?”

  “Haven’t found one.”

  Hahahahhahaha

  Luther was the one person who viewed membership in the Peter Pan Society as a revolving door. It was suitable for a night or two but not every night. He was on board with the ridiculous because, in its place, it could be fun. He did the mamba with my mother and wore crazy hats and feather costumes. When we did musical theatre night, he would lend his deep voice to the role of Caiaphas in Jesus Christ Superstar and sing along to the soundtrack. Whenever we watched movies, he would bring out the popcorn and yell, “Oh no, he didn’t!” at the television screen.

  But Luther was also the one who made sure Echo completed her homework and would patiently work with her on her penmanship. Luther was always telling me to put on a sweater and asking where I was going because he cared. Luther was the guy you would call if you needed a ride, needed advice, needed a hug.

  Without Luther around and with no means of allowable communication, Echo was driving Ollie nuts with endless questions about Luther’s wellbeing. She was entering Ollie’s kitchen sanctuary, sitting at the breakfast nook and pummeling Ollie with questions about Luther. Since Luther isn’t eating at the house, where is he eating? What is he eating? Is he having his favorite peach cobbler? Where is Luther sleeping? What does he do all day? Is he watching television? Is he playing games? Is he dancing the mamba? Echo was having a hard time visualizing Luther outside of the Peter Pan house he had been tossed out of.

  Ollie had figured out the same loophole I had. If Luther can’t come to us, we can go to him. So last Tuesday, he had walked Echo to the AC Transit bus stop, and the two of them boarded the bus to Luther’s apartment. Ollie chose a day when my mother had an evening appointment at Cosmic Hearts, and I would be at the downtown library with Rueben preparing for a debate club competition. They took the bus so his truck parked out front wouldn’t give him away.