by Liz Murray
Leonard Mohn was a flamboyant, bone-thin man who resembled Munch’s painting The Scream. He had small tufts of hair on either side of his bald head and his eyes bulged from his sockets as though he were being strangled. He was jittery and impatient, and suffered from a mental illness, not unlike Ma’s, which he treated with all sorts of colorful pills. He and Ma met and became good friends in the bar one night when they discovered they had the same taste in men. Together, Leonard Mohn and Ma took over our kitchen and transformed it into something between a grievance group meeting, a smoking lounge, and what addicts like to call a shooting gallery; a place, usually deserted, where people go to mainline.
Their routine together was consistent with each cycle of government checks: Daddy was the gofer; he ran to cop the drugs, while Ma and Leonard sat in the kitchen moping about life, guzzling large bottles of Budweiser, setting up the works, and waiting for Daddy to return so they could get high. This sequence was repeated for two nearly sleepless weeks (the time it took to run through both Ma’s and Leonard’s checks combined), until dark rings surfaced under their eyes and between them, there wasn’t a single dollar left to spend. Leonard could be expected back when the checks came in again, either his own or Ma’s. He didn’t stick around much for the mid-month grubbing from bars. In his absence, Ma slept for days.
Daddy, Ma, Lisa, and me all made fun of Leonard behind his back. I don’t think any of us liked him, not even Ma really. With his shrill voice, obsessive self-concern, and obvious disgust for children (despite the fact that he was a substitute schoolteacher), he wasn’t exactly likable. But Ma and Daddy did not make decisions based on what they liked or didn’t like, just as they didn’t make decisions based on what was good or bad for our family. Instead, Ma and Daddy made decisions based on drugs, and Leonard was a resource, if nothing else. The more he was around, the greater the check money and the more they could get high. So on the nights when I took long walks with Daddy, tagging along for his drug runs, he’d make me laugh hard by imitating Leonard’s over-the-top effeminate voice and his incessant whining, while simultaneously teaching me how to press the bright beeping letters of a Chase ATM, while we typed in Leonard’s PIN, “WATERS,” to get out cash for their next round of coke. I could always make Daddy laugh when I did my imitation of Leonard, bulging out my eyes big and doing my best version of his voice whining to Ma in our kitchen: “Ooooh, Jeanie! Oh, life’s so hard, oooohhhh.”
Daddy would smack his knee and crack up laughing in the empty ATM carrel, receipts and trash strewn about our feet, as we were totally alone in those predawn hours. Then he’d ask me to do it again and again for our whole walk to the drug spot and home. When we’d get back to our apartment, you could already hear Leonard’s shrieking voice all the way from out in the hallway, before we even put our key in to open the front door.
“If not for the kids, Jeanie, my job would be great. Oh, the little beasts,” he’d say. “I just wish I could give them a good wallop when they get out of hand, the monsters!”
Leonard was as strongly disapproving of the idea of having children as he was pessimistic and dramatic. And he wasn’t at all reserved about saying so. Throughout his visits, I could hear him complain to Ma, using a stage whisper from the very next room with the door open.
“Jean, they’re such little ingrates. I don’t know how you do it.” He always sucked on his cigarettes audibly, making a small kissing noise when he pulled them back. “I can’t even take them at work. God help you with them here in your home.”
“Oh, Leonard, stop it,” she said, weakly.
This was the single response Ma came up with. I’d like to think it was Leonard’s check money that kept Ma quiet, but I’ll never be sure why she sat there complacently, sipping her beer, oblivious to his verbal attacks on us.
If it had been only this nasty attitude of his that I had to deal with, I probably could have tolerated Leonard Mohn. But what escalated him from irritatingly difficult to impossible to deal with was this one recurring conversation he shared with Ma, regarding their shared status as HIV positive. That conversation was too painful to overhear. It made me need to escape him, to escape her.
The subject always came up just as their coke was wearing off, in that stage when the high had lost its thrust and reality came flooding back in a wave of melancholy.
“Jeanie, my heart is racing. Jeanie, hold my hand.” Even if she hadn’t held mine in years, even though the last real hug she gave me was on that night she told me of her diagnosis, she’d sit there and clasp Leonard’s hand, crossing their fingers through each other’s.
“Jeanie, I just don’t want to get sick,” he’d say. “Well, we’re going to get sick, but at least we won’t ever have to be old. No, we’ll never have to have that happen, thank God. Aren’t you grateful for that, Jean?”
Most times when they talked like this, I was no more than ten feet away, lying on the couch, well within earshot. Close enough so I could smell the sour beer, see the fog of cigarette smoke streaming out of the doorway, and hear every distressed word of his, spoken so blatantly, distorted by his tears.
“Oh, Jeanie, in a way it could be a blessing. The good years are all gone before forty anyway.”
“I know, Leonard. That’s one good thing,” she’d agree. “We’ll never be old.”
Any delusion I had that Ma’s and Daddy’s drug habit was somehow harmless vanished with her diagnosis and the intrusion of Leonard. I eventually outgrew my tolerance for being witness to all of this: my parents’ naked arms under our flickering fluorescent light; the very moment a needle punctured their flesh, thin and vulnerable as grape skin; their blood drawn up the syringe in a red cloud, and then shot back in again, causing that electric rush to overtake their faces. Then, blood all over—blood speckling the walls, across their shirts, onto our newest pack of Wonder bread, on the sugar jar. Maybe worst of all was watching them overuse one spot on their bodies, the way it swelled and began to darken, to shine, and even to smell. The way Ma searched desperately for a clean spot on her feet or between her toes. Far more than the gore aspect was their desperation that grew more obvious to me over time. That’s what the whole thing was—an ongoing movie of their desperation playing out in front of me, as though I were seated alone in a dark cinema, watching an eerie slow-motion black-and-white film of their lives crashing and burning. It wore on me, and where I had once tried so hard to be involved, I now grew tired and longed to go anywhere else in order to escape it.
When Ma and Daddy went on their late-night binges, I stopped coming with Daddy and I never explained to him why. Instead, I was compelled by a distinct feeling of resistance that sent me slipping out the front door quietly to take aimless walks along Fordham Road, up and down the deserted shopping strip, by myself. Some nights I searched through plastic trash bags along the sidewalk for defective store clothing, a trick Daddy had taught me. I filled my backpack with damaged or inaccurately stitched clothing while my parents made their runs, occasionally staying out until the sun began to rise. One night while I was foraging for clothing, I actually saw Daddy walking briskly down Fordham Road and I said nothing to him. I did not call out his name but instead just stood in front of the trash bags watching him walk at top speed toward Grand Avenue. Calling out his name would have made me sad for some reason; not calling it out made me sad, too.
Some days, children at school made jokes about my messed-up clothing, the pocket sewn onto the back of a shirt or a short pants leg on my too-large jeans. Most days, I avoided school and walked a different route entirely, arriving early in the morning at Met Food, so I could stand alongside the cashiers to watch the manager unlock and raise his gate for the start of business.
It’s not that I never went to school, but more like I passed through it the way a net passes through water, passively snagging whatever happens to drift inside. Any formal education I received came from the few days I spent in attendance, mixed with knowledge I absorbed from random readings of my or Daddy’s ev
er-growing supply of unreturned library books. And as long as I still showed up steadily the last few weeks of classes to take the standardized tests, I kept squeaking by from grade to grade.
Cutting school, I walked or rode the subway, traveling all over the Bronx and Manhattan just for the feel of sitting among crowds, to hear the sound of conversations, arguments, panhandlers singing, and my favorite sound of all, laughter. I could disappear in the crowds of people—who would notice a short skinny girl in need of a shower, with knotty, filthy hair, if I slung a hood over my head and walked with my eyes downcast, invisible? Even though I worried about getting picked up by truancy officers, it was worth the risk. I just needed to have life around me—the pulse and vibration of people out in the world doing things. I traded school for this. I traded my home for this. Soon, I accumulated two steady absences: one from school and the other from our apartment.
Sometimes, I had company. Rick and Danny abandoned class to ride the number 4 train with me, back and forth on its Lexington Avenue line, for hours. This was a different kind of cutting school; not peaceful like my solitary trips, but marked by adventure. Together on the train, we swung on straps and kicked open empty conductor’s booths to use the PA system, announcing that sandwiches and drinks were being served in the last car. We broke stink bombs—little glass tubes containing the foulest-smelling liquid—onto the floors of crowded cars, delighting in people curling their faces in disgust.
Bowling Green was the only station where we ever deboarded (unless we were being chased by the conductor). Here, we hopped on the Staten Island Ferry; if we rode on the bottom deck, forward bound, the sea breeze drizzled on our cheeks and the ocean split and foamed beneath us. Return trips to Manhattan cost two quarters, a fee easily averted by hiding in the men’s room (I was outvoted by the boys two to one), sneakers jammed against the stalls to support our weight while the ferry staff made their rounds in search of fare beaters.
The ride home always snapped me back to reality. Surrounded by hordes of commuting schoolchildren, dressed in crisp uniforms or the latest fashion, I always felt lonely. I worried the whole hour-long ride home about what might have gone on in school, what I’d missed.
A surprise visit from a caseworker could come on any day, like the day I returned from the ferry to find Ms. Cole in our home. It was her second visit to our apartment that month. Ma had let her in half an hour before I returned. They were in mid-conversation when I walked through the door, clutching my book bag like a prop. Before I passed through the doorway into the living room, I’d already smelled the lilac aroma of Ms. Cole’s perfume, distinct from the musky smell emanating from the rest of the house.
She was the first to speak, establishing her dominance over Ma and me. “Nice to see you, Elizabeth,” she said with a raised chin, her gaze fixed on me. Her legs were crossed, her hands resting flat on her knee. Daddy’s fan had been hauled out from the bedroom. It looked unfamiliar propped in the living room window, aimed at Ms. Cole. It stirred the ends of her feathery weave as she spoke.
“Elizabeth, I’m here today because even though you promised to go to school, I got another call. Mrs. Peebles hasn’t seen you in almost a week. Now I want to hear what you have to say for yourself. Why haven’t you been going to school, Elizabeth?”
Her question struck me in its directness and in its airtight logic. In one way, it made sense for her to ask it, but in another way it made no sense at all, given the chaos we lived in. Because if logic were enough to change things, I suppose she could just as easily turn to Ma and ask, Why are you on drugs, ma’am? Why is the fridge empty? Why did you let yourself contract HIV when you have two daughters and a whole life ahead of you? Ms. Cole could have asked any one of these questions, too. Instead, she chose this one question, out of all the possible question marks we lived in as a family, and she directed it at me.
I looked to Ma, who sat hunched in her chair, eyes half-open. “I can’t do anything, Lizzy. You just need to go to school. You have to.” She addressed the last part of her statement to the wall. Ms. Cole patted the coffee table, clicking her gold ring against the glass.
“Have a seat, Elizabeth,” she said. I hated her for calling me Elizabeth, for coming into our home and bossing us around. Obediently, I sat on the edge of the table. She gave me a look that implied she was getting down to business. If I hadn’t seen the same expression so many times before, I probably would have taken her more seriously.
“You need to get to school, Elizabeth. If you don’t go, I’m going to take you; it’s as simple as that. Your mother told me she sends you to school and you don’t go. Well, that needs to change. And you and your sister need to help your mother out and clean up this mess. Tell Lisa that. I mean it. This house is disgusting, an absolute pigsty.”
I could tell from the way she used the word disgusting, dragging it out, smiling, that it made her feel powerful to say so. Ms. Cole liked her power trips.
“I don’t know how you even live here. You’re old enough now to do something about it.” She raised her voice momentarily, but then said with an unsettling calm, “There are places for girls like you.”
This part of the lecture was hardest to hear. She was just the type of person Rick and I would chuck a water balloon at from the roof, I thought. I imagined her reaction: the shriek she would let loose on impact, how it would flatten her cheap hairdo. I’d do it myself, I thought, and I’d fall down laughing.
“You won’t like the homes I can put you in. And let me tell you, if you won’t clean here, you will clean there. They’ll have you scrubbing toilets. And the girls there are violent.” I saw myself doubled over toilets dirtier than my own at home, blackened along the edges, slimy and slippery. Large, evil-looking girls dressed in rags stood behind me to supervise. “But I’ll take you out of here if that’s what you want. All you gotta do is not attend school and you will go.” Here came her favorite part; you could tell by the half smile on her face, like she worked all day just to be able to deliver this one line. “It’s shape up or ship out, Elizabeth; pick one,” she said.
Her face twisted into something between revulsion and exasperation. “Don’t you want to get your life together, young lady? You ever think about that?” She enjoyed this; I could sense it coming off her, like heat. There wasn’t a trace of good intention in any of it, I knew in my gut. Like so many social workers who disciplined me, Ms. Cole enjoyed being angry; she savored the performance.
Where was the caring that would have made her words effective? “Get your life together.” People said things like that all the time, but who could explain, nuts and bolts, what they meant? Who was trying to show me why I should care about school and keeping an apartment clean? Didn’t adults see the size of those words, the way they were bigger than my understanding, and how the gaps between were wide enough for me to fall deep inside them? What was the connection between what I woke up to every day and the vague goals she expected of me? What was she talking about? If an education and a job were so important, then why didn’t my parents have either? “Get your life together.” What did that even look like? Was I supposed to make sense of that myself? If not, how could I decipher it from Ms. Cole’s lectures? Especially when she explained things to me with such angry self-righteousness.
I was furious, but I did my best to appear calm, especially as Ms. Cole delivered the punch line when I walked her to the front door, briefcase in hand, her long, curly nail wagging at me.
“You know, Elizabeth, if I really wanted to, I could take you today. Actually, I could come in here and take you any day I want to. Remember that. I’m just being nice.”
If this was her being nice, I couldn’t imagine Ms. Cole’s idea of antagonistic.
Back inside, Ma was already lying down, pillow drawn over her head. The clock said it was just before three; Lisa would be home soon. I was shutting my bedroom door when Ma spoke, muddled from under the pillow.
“Lizzy, did you pack groceries today? I mean do you have any cash? I
could really use five bucks.”
“No, I’m broke today, Ma.”
She turned over and made a noise, half moan, half grunt. There was a penny stuck to her butt cheek. A tremble ran up my body, then quickly subsided. I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to be upset at her, or if she just made me sad. I went to my room and sprawled across my bed, realizing that I felt only numb. Ma began crying into her pillow, loudly. I stared up at the ceiling and felt absolutely nothing inside.
That night, Leonard Mohn came by with a paycheck. He, Ma, and Daddy binged for hours. In my bedroom, I could hear them make their rounds, beer bottles clanking, footsteps, the front door opening and slamming continuously. At one point, I came out and called Rick and Danny’s house. I cupped my shirt over my nose to filter the cloud of cigarette smoke and made plans with the guys, to hang out until the sun came up. We might sneak into the movies or just walk and see what we could find to do.
As I pulled my sweater over my head to get ready, something in Ma and Leonard’s conversation caught my attention. They were whispering about something, about someone. Leonard’s neurotic foot-tapping drowned out some words. I stood perfectly still and listened.
They were discussing a man Ma knew from the bar. From what I could tell, someone she had known for a while, and had recently begun to connect with. His name, or the nickname that everyone knew him by, was Brick.
“I don’t know, Leonard. He listens to me, ya know. I like that. I’ve missed being with a man who listens. We have a good time together, ya know?”