Everything Matters!

by Ron Currie Jr.

  And while you deprive yourself of sleep morning after morning, waiting for him to come home, straining to catch just one distinct word, we should mention that most experts in the field of pediatrics recommend children your age get at least fourteen hours of sleep every day. This, we understand, may seem an unreasonable demand, especially since adults like your father apparently require almost no sleep at all. But you should keep in mind that, first, your father is not representative of the adult population as a whole, and second, your nervous system is still fully engaged in the heavy industry of development, burning around the clock at high temperature and velocity, vacuuming up stimuli and laying synapses, and needs all the rest it can manage.

  Still, you persist, refusing the sweet potatoes and rice cereal your mother offers in the evening before bed so that you’ll be wakeful with hunger when your father comes home. This effort is aided by the near-constant pain of teething, which makes it impossible for you to sleep for more than an hour or so at a time anyhow, but which also, it turns out, spurs in you near-constant urges to scream, to spray drool and nonsense baby vitriol in every direction. These urges grow increasingly difficult to deny (due in part to your fatigue, for which, we should add, you have no one to blame but yourself), and several times, unable to keep silent any longer, you yield and cry out and your mother comes to you with the teething ring and your father, instead of speaking, merely sleeps. Your crankiness and refusal to eat has the predictable result of worrying her, and for several consecutive nights, when your father comes in from work, he is silent as she monopolizes the precious few minutes of conversation time, saying “I don’t understand it, his appetite is just fine during the day, but for some reason after the sun goes down he won’t take anything, he pushes the food away and fusses, tonight he flipped the bowl over and I ended up wearing strained peas, I think maybe I should bring him to Doctor Rengell,” etc. For more than a week your father says nothing, only listens to your mother’s concerns, his nightly routine of uttering a few precious if unintelligible words disrupted, and you’re beginning to think that perhaps you’ve made a mistake, perhaps your strategy was horribly miscalculated and now that the routine has been broken it will not be reestablished, he will never speak again and you will grow up, grow old, and die never having understood a thing from or about him. Of course you don’t yet possess the language to articulate this loss in such a way; all you have is the emotion, the impression of loss, which is its only authentic interpretation anyhow. Like a proper child you direct your anger over this loss at your mother and her unreasonable worry, until, one night, listening to her, your father sighs and, with an edge of irritation in his voice that renders his words just clear enough to be decipherable, says: “Take him to Rengell, then.”

  Your mother, after brightening briefly, saying “Yes, I think I should,” begins immediately to express concern over how they will afford this unanticipated and, really, she admits, kind of unnecessary trip to the doctor; meanwhile, your father rolls on his side to sleep, and you lie triumphant and joyful in your crib, suddenly if temporarily free of the ache in your mouth, having not only heard your father’s words, but understood them, in your way, to be about you.

  This triumph is short-lived, because the very next afternoon you realize something horrifying about your father. He comes home from the bakery and lifts you to his shoulder, and you notice for the first time that, unlike everyone else you know, he does not have five fingers on each hand, ten total. On his right hand the pinkie and ring finger are gone, severed just above the first knuckle and long since healed over with thick, gnarled, waxy skin. You are horrified, feeling the stumps pressed against your bare leg and knowing them to be wrong, and you cry and squirm, pushing with your little arms against his chest. Midway through his shave, when it becomes clear you mean to keep screaming and struggling, your father brings you back into the living room and puts you down on the floor with a grimace, then returns to the bathroom. Your mother, having heard the commotion, swoops in to determine what’s wrong, and though you try to tell her you manage only to soak her shirt with spit and tears, and it doesn’t matter anyway because you realize, young as you are, that she can do nothing about your father’s monstrous deformity, except rub cream on the stumps to keep them from cracking, and help him with any tasks that require two complete hands.

  Your mother believes your father lost his fingers to shrapnel from a fragmentary grenade. That was the official story from the Marine captain who filed the paperwork. But this is what actually happened: Your father was on leave in Bac My An, a military R&R base in central Vietnam known to servicemen as China Beach, when he lost his fingers. On a sweltering November evening, on the second floor of a whore-house, in the room of a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl, with his wedding band on, while her infant son slept on a mat on the floor, your father committed his first and only act of adultery, and then, drunk on Pabst Blue Ribbon and tequila shooters, promptly passed out. The Vietnamese girl had no Communist sympathies, had in fact no political convictions at all, but she did have a heroin habit and a dead mother and a son whose prospects were even poorer than her own, owing to prevailing attitudes among the Vietnamese regarding children of mixed stock. And though she was losing money while your father slept, she nonetheless let him stay, even nestled close to him despite the heat, lying on her side with her legs curled and her head resting in the crook between his biceps and shoulder. Because this girl, whose name was Tran Ly, had no solace other than fantasy, she allowed herself to imagine that your father was the father of her son, and that tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, they would be married, and soon after she and her baby would be on their way to America. She imagined clean, waterproof buildings that didn’t explode without warning. She imagined her son growing tall and strong, with good teeth and perfect English. She imagined dying of old age. And then, just as she was settling into this fantasy, allowing it to distill her down through the thin mattress and into a drowsy reverie, your father flailed in his sleep, striking her in the face and breaking her nose. Tran Ly jumped from the bed, screeching in pain and confusion, and when she pulled her hands away from her face and saw the blood she was reminded of her baby’s real father. Her cries turned angry. “Cockadau! Cockadau!” she said, meaning: I will kill you! She stooped and reached between the bed and the wall, grabbing the cleaver she kept there, a cleaver her mother had used, years ago, to kill and dismember chickens. By now Tran Ly’s screams had brought your father around somewhat. He opened his eyes in time to see the blade over him, glinting an evil red in the light from the window. He rolled out of the way, but let his right hand trail behind, and when it and the cleaver met, his fingers leapt, twirled, fell.

  In the hospital your father pleaded for, and received, discretion from the captain filing paperwork on the incident. Tran Ly was not so fortunate. Not knowing what to do with her, U.S. military police turned her over to the South Vietnamese army, who treated her as Viet Cong and shot her twice—once in the head, once in the chest—with an M-16 rifle that had been manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut. And Tran Ly’s baby . . . well, it’s probably best that you not know what became of him.

  Rodney

  So it’s been a while since the baby came home and still Ma doesn’t notice when I’m gone for a long time and so I go down to the trees by the ball field with Pete on our bikes and we’re building a fort underground. How I know that you can build a fort underground is from Dad’s books about Vietnam. The Vietnamese built all their forts underground and lived down there all the time. They even had hospitals in the ground. You have to dig around trees because the roots hold the ground together so it doesn’t cave in. I learned that from the book, too.

  We’ve been doing it a long time, like two weeks, and all we have really is this hole that’s not very deep and it’s a lot of work already to have nothing but this little hole. Pete says why don’t we forget it and go to your house and play table hockey. Pete always wants to play table hockey because he doesn’t have h
is own game. But I don’t want to go home because I don’t like the baby and Ma doesn’t watch me close anymore so I can be gone all day. Once school’s out I get to do pretty much whatever I want and it wouldn’t be that way if we didn’t have the baby. So I guess it’s okay. I wouldn’t have a table hockey game except that I got it from my uncle, his name is Rodney too and he’s got money to buy things where Ma and Dad don’t. I like Uncle Rodney but he’s different from my parents. He’s always eating weird stuff like goat’s milk and this peanut butter that they make in the grinder at the natural food store. The peanut butter tastes weird. Uncle Rodney says that’s because they don’t put in refined sugar and salt and other things that are bad for you, it’s just peanuts. I don’t like it. But I like being at Uncle Rodney’s. People come over all the time to party. Sometimes they stay and drink beer and play music and when they drink too much they walk crooked and laugh a lot and tell me jokes that I’m not supposed to repeat to anyone. Sometimes when people come over they just stay for a minute to get something from Uncle Rodney then they leave. Sometimes if I stay the night in the morning Uncle Rodney or his girlfriend Rachel will get out of bed and be naked. He says it’s okay to see the human body naked and there’s no shame in it. He’s not weird or anything, he’ll just like walk into the kitchen and pour a glass of carrot juice or blend his shake that he drinks and say hey what’s up kiddo standing there naked.

  Uncle Rodney is my godfather and so he has to buy me things.

  Ma used to not want me staying at Uncle Rodney’s too much. She would say she didn’t want me around the sort of people Uncle Rodney hangs out with. But now with the baby I can pretty much go there whenever I want.

  At Uncle Rodney’s the people come over to party. That’s what they say. Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out. Uncle Rodney explained this to me. It’s a band and a city and when I’m older he’ll take me to Chicago to see Chicago play, he says. A lot of times when they’re partying Uncle Rodney has me run the record player. A record will end and someone will say put on that Carpenters album. Then they’ll laugh and say hey just joking kid play some Peter Tosh, and because they’re laughing I’ll laugh too and look for the Peter Tosh record in the milk crates near the stereo and find it and slide it out of the sleeve touching only the edges so I don’t leave fingerprints and put it on the turntable. I’ve been doing it a while and so I can drop the needle real careful right on the first song without making that scratching noise. Uncle Rodney’s friends, they’d drop the needle on the middle of the record and scratch it all up and so now I run the record player, because I’m not compromised by the ravages of adult recreation, is how Uncle Rodney says it. By that he means I don’t party. Once and a while I ask him for a beer and he says no way Christ your mother would kill me not to mention that beast of a father. He says if you want something to drink there’s Apple and Eve in the fridge, now go play Atari and don’t forget to take your vitamin C wafers. Just don’t eat too many or your piss will turn nuclear yellow.

  The people at Uncle Rodney’s drink and smoke weed and for a while I thought that was partying but then not too long ago I learned something else. Sometimes two or three people will disappear for a while together and then come back one at a time. At first I didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t really think anything about it but then one day I was outside in the grass behind the house looking for cigarette butts to smoke and it was hot and the bathroom window was open and I could hear people talking and so I went up underneath the window and listened. It was Uncle Rodney and Karen and Frank, Karen’s boyfriend who Uncle Rodney plays softball with. They were talking and laughing and making a sound like blowing their noses. I peeked up and saw they weren’t blowing their noses. They were taking turns sucking through their noses with this thing that was like a straw except it was made of glass.

  Frank scrunched up his nose and his eyes were tearing up. It’s good, he said.

  Of course it’s good, Uncle Rodney said. How much do you want?

  How much do you have? Frank said. They all laughed.

  Wow this shit is killing me, Frank said. My chest is all tight. I’m out, I need a drink.

  We’ll talk it over, Uncle Rodney said. Just let me know.

  Frank left and closed the bathroom door. Uncle Rodney and Karen were still in the bathroom together. Uncle Rodney turned toward the window so I ducked down and couldn’t see them anymore. They stopped talking for a while but I could hear them moving around, making sucking sounds through their noses and laughing some more. Then they got quiet for a minute and then Karen said hey what the hell are you doing like she was mad except she was giggling.

  You know I still love you, Uncle Rodney said.

  Don’t start with that, Rod, Karen said.

  Why not? It’s true, Uncle Rodney said.

  No, Karen said. You love yourself, and you love your coke, and you love your mom and that’s about it. Besides, you have a fiancée. And I’ve got Frank. Frank, the guy who was just in here? You remember him.

  I’d leave Rachel now, Uncle Rodney said. Right this minute. If you’d take me back.

  Get the fuck off it, Rod, Karen said. This isn’t funny.

  That’s because I’m not joking.

  Karen laughed at him. Oh crissake you’re not really crying are you? You must be drunker than I thought. You actually believe the shit that’s coming out of your mouth?

  You don’t have to be a bitch about it, Uncle Rodney said.

  Oh yes I do, Karen said.

  Jesus, Uncle Rodney said. Forget it.

  Uh-uh. You can forget it. Let me ask you something. Do you give Rachel all the same old lines you fed me, or have you updated your material?

  Uncle Rodney didn’t say anything back. I heard him open the bathroom door and walk back into the kitchen.

  Fucker, Karen said. I peeked up again and watched her rub her nose and fix her hair in the mirror. Then she went out.

  I knew I’d heard something I wasn’t suppose to. I knew Uncle Rodney would be in big-time trouble with Rachel if she heard what he was saying to Karen. I like Rachel but I wasn’t going to tell her anything.

  This is how I found out that cocaine is partying too, but the kind of partying you do in other rooms with just a couple people or else by yourself. It wasn’t too long until I found out where Uncle Rodney keeps his cocaine. He’s got so much of it he doesn’t notice if I take a little bit once and a while.

  The first time I tried it I didn’t like it. My nose burned and there was a funny taste in the back of my throat that made me keep swallowing real fast like right before you puke. Plus the back of my throat was numb, and I didn’t like that either. But then a few seconds later something happened and I got high. This is what they call it. Uncle Rodney’s friends, when they’re partying. Let’s get high, they say. Who wants to get high?

  So today me and Pete are digging the underground fort and I’m going to ask Pete if he wants to get high with me. I’m nervous because even though I’ve been doing it a while and I don’t get nervous doing it myself anymore I’m worried because I’d be in trouble if someone found out. Uncle Rodney would be mad. Ma probably wouldn’t care with the baby but Dad would be plenty mad. But Pete’s my best friend and even if he didn’t want to try it I don’t think he’d say anything.

  So I take the cocaine and the straw out of my pocket and put them on a big rock next to the pile of dirt we dug out of the hole. The cocaine is in a piece of foil from an empty cigarette pack. I saw Uncle Rodney do it once—you put the foil out flat, put the cocaine in the middle, then fold the foil over and twist up the open end so it doesn’t fall out. It only works with a little bit of cocaine, but like I says I only take a little bit here and there.

  Pete doesn’t see me take out the cocaine and open the foil. He’s looking down toward the river where a groundhog has just gone running across the floodplains where all the dead trees have fallen in t
he mud. He only notices when I start moving the cocaine into lines.

  What are you doing? Pete says.

  Cutting some bumps, I say.

  Pete climbs up out of the hole and stands next to me. What’s that?

  Try some.

  What is it?

  Cocaine. You want to try it?

  Pete looks around all nervous like he thinks someone might be watching. Where did you get it?

  I pick up the straw and show it to him. See how I cut it? I say. You cut the end like that so it goes right up the straw.

  I can tell Pete’s impressed by everything.

  You want to try it or not? I ask him.

  I don’t think so.

  I think he’s expecting me to razz him, say things like c’mon don’t be such a pussy, but I don’t. I just say okay fine and put the straw in my nose and lean down until the straw is almost touching the foil and then breathe in through my nose as I move the straw up and the bump disappears. I stand up and cough a little and squint my eyes and I can see Pete’s even more impressed than before. He’s staring at me like he can’t believe what he saw.

  That’s not real, he says.

  It is too, I say.

  There’s that gross taste at the back of my throat. I’m used to it now but it still makes me a little pukey. I swallow a couple times.

  Listen Rod I gotta get going, Pete says. Our bikes are on their side in the grass and he starts to walk toward them.

  Then I get high. That’s how it happens, real fast.

  Where are you going? I ask Pete.

  Home, Pete says.

  We’ve got a lot of work to do still, I say.

  Pete watches as I fold up the foil and put it back in my pocket. He’s got his bike and is standing beside it with his hands on the handlebars. I’ll have to come back later and help, he says.

  Pete, come on, I say, and now I’m a little scared because I’ve never seen him like this before and I thought he would be cool but he’s not and now I’m worried he’s going to say something. Let’s go back to my house then. We’ll play table hockey.