The clothes fit like they were made for me. I look in the mirror. I look at Braddy in the khakis and Hawaiian shirt. Then I look back in the mirror.
I’ve disappeared.
Sure enough, as soon as my dad and I get to George Wallace Stadium, the heavens split and spit forth a furious wet rage, raindrops the size of manhole covers, hailstones the size of bowling balls, Zeus and Thor putting on a celestial heavymetal thunderlightshow that rocks the house.
So we turn right around and head back home, rain thrashing the roof, windshield, and hood as a black funnel gyroscopes toward us up George Wallace Drive.
I’m terribly impressed by all this weather. I’m not scared. My dad’s driving, and he knows exactly what he’s doing.
The sleet sheets down so heavy now we can’t see two feet in front of us, and the twister whirls dervishly straight at us.
But my dad never stops. All the other drivers pull their cars over to the side of the road, but not my old man. He doesn’t say anything and neither do I, but I’m awed by the squall as we crawl home through the tempest.
The next day, in the calm after the storm, when I look across the street at the house that sits up high on the hill, I see the twister has torn the roof clean off.
And my dad drove me through all of it, so I could play in a game that didn’t even happen.
A flimsy blue negligee trimmed with black fox fur and red high heels walks through the door carrying a plate of brown cookies and a white glass of milk. Slimmy hips, pale belly, good gams nicely turned. Normally a sight like this would make my mojo corkscrew, but here, now, my heart plummets like the cable snapped, and I plunge fast, knowing there’s a nasty crash coming and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. Fevered hotsweats flash all over me, but I’m trying to keep this blank smile on my face, all the while wanting to scream, ‘Are you mad, woman? Go put some clothes on and check yourself into a clinic, where you can get some state-of-the-art mental-health care!’
But I don’t.
‘My husband gave me this and I never got a chance to wear it. Do you like it?’
My mommy trick strikes what’s supposed to be a tarty pose, but she’s so out of touch with her inner tart she ends up looking more like a mental patient than a sex baby.
‘Have a cookie …’
She moves the plate of cookies toward me, and there it sits, half hidden under a cookie like an invitation to the gold miners’ ball: my envelope.
Casually, oh-so-casually, I pick up the cookie over my envelope, take a bite out of it, then palm the sweet succor of my money into the back pocket of the dead Braddy’s khakis. I’m a hundred bucks richer and I don’t give a whatever about nothing. And the cookie’s good. Moist. I like a moist cookie. I wash it down with the milk.
I’m done with the cookie,
I’m ready for the nookie.
I silently laugh at the poem in my head as I watch myself dressed in a Hawaiian shirt pretending to be the dead boy in the picture with his sexy mommy.
Envelope in hot pocket, cookie in cool belly, and devil-may-care upon my lips, I squint my eyes, and make her into the hottyhot porno star baby of my loverstudguy movie.
‘Why don’t you come over and sit on the bed with Mommy, Braddy? You don’t mind if I call you Braddy, do you?’ She smiles like Mother Mary on acid from the bed covered by the blanket with the sports guys on it.
‘No, that’s cool,’ I say.
Call me Braddy.
One Saturday afternoon when I’m ten I come home from playing ball, and the house is empty. This is unusual. My mother’s home. I don’t know how I know this, but I know it all the same. I call her name. She doesn’t answer. I have a panic. Has she gotten sick of us, sick of Hueytown, sick of America, sick of her punishing husband? Worst of all, sick of me?
I check the house, my little heart pounding. She’s gone. I know it. It never dawned on me that Mother might decide to bolt.
Breathing harder, I flopsweat into my parents’ bedroom. She’s not there. I go into the closet, where all the big pants and huge dresses live. The closet potpourri envelopes me: moth-balls, shoe polish, and fresh laundry dancing together.
When I found her in there one time crying, it had seemed so odd and horrible. But now I’m actually hoping she’s in there crying.
She’s not.
I quicksand further into fear, and the more I squirm with the thought that she’s gone, the faster I sink.
My pearly trick pats the bed next to her, the cue for Braddy to sit on the dead bed with his Crazy Mommy. Is it too late to give back the envelope and get the hell out? Yes, I believe it is. Just do what she wants and everything’ll be fine, you’ll get some ice cream, have a hang in 3-D, and see if Sunny’s got some sweet young baby for you to swing with.
When I sit on the bed, Mommy pulls me into her and starts rocking. I’m confused. Does she want me to get sexy with her? Does she want me to be her little boy? I can barely breathe, suffocated by all this Mommy, her sickly-sweet perfume pounding on my temples.
She lies back on Braddy’s bed and takes me with her. I end up embryonic, head on her chest. Then she guides my mouth to her breast, and dear dead Braddy is supposed to do the thing he’s genetically designed for: suckle Mommy.
I take a breath. See myself spinning this yarn out for Sunny, and him whooping and Et toiing. Hey, it’s just another job, just another old broad for the chicken to bang.
So I suck.
Then she guides me on top of her, between her legs, and her hips stiltingly do a spasmodic grind while she fumbles with my zipper.
I fish myself out. Fish being the operative word. As in cold and limp. We have a problem, Houston. My eyes are clamped, because I don’t want to see what’s underneath me. So I position myself where I can get maximum rubbage, and with my eyes closed, I find the loverstudguy voice in my head:
‘Oh, baby … give it to me you nasty little baby … you love it, don’t you, baby? Oh, baby, baby, baby.’
That gets the blood moving in the right direction. Next thing I know I’m inside her, swimming in that river again, and the water, as always, is good. Once you’re in the river, it doesn’t really matter how you got there, cuz the waterfall’s always right up ahead.
‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?’
She grabs my head and puts me right in her face.
God I wish she hadn’t said that. It jolts me right out of my river, and lands me smack-dab in the middle of this dead boy inside his mommy, who’s got wet eyes I didn’t even notice were crying, as she downloads her pain right into me.
I need to scream. I don’t. I can’t.
‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?’
She asks again, her voice cracking like a pane of dropped glass, wild eyes pleading with her dead son while she has sex with a boy whore.
Braddy’s supposed to tell Mommy he loves her, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth.
Until the need to please takes over.
‘I love you, Mommy’ somehow burbles out between my frozen lips.
She grabs my hips and starts pulling me into her hard, so I shut my eyes, and in the dark I manage to swim the good swim, slam the good slam, fight the good fight.
She pushes on my chest, which I suppose is a good thing, cuz she’s also making little sex sounds.
Then she lurches, and I open my eyes just in time to see her lean her head over the side of the bed and unload a stream of sick onto the floor, the wave of vomit smell breaking all over me.
She pushes me off her like a mom lifting an automobile off her child who’s trapped under the front tire. Then she bolts out of bed, and out the door.
I sit on the dead Braddy’s bed, Mommy’s secretions shining on me, and the smell of her sick cutting through me.
Frantic as only a ten-year-old boy can be, I bounce out the closet, down the hall, and through the back door. A huge acutely sloping backyard is behind the Alabama house. It could’ve been a ski jump if it ever snowed in Hueytown. Which of course it never did.
My mother’s leaning on a mammoth pine, sobbing in wet spasms. Next thing I know I’m holding her hand, and she’s looking down at me, eyes deep swimming holes of sadness. I reach up hug high, and she wraps me in her arms, transfusing me with all that primal pain and absent love.
Gradually the swelling of my mom’s sobs subsides, the tide rolls back out, and we walk hand in hand into the house, talking about thisandthat, nothing really, just easy talk.
My mom and I make cookies, the measuring, the beating, and the sifting pure succor, the smell of chocolate vanilla and butter melting me as it gets stronger and deeper, the treat of licking mixer blades, the raw dough slices of paradise, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the first warm bite to explode in my mouth, the ache buried once again beneath the silence.
Are we done? I don’t know. I get out of bed, careful not to step in the sick on the floor. I take the envelope out of the pocket of Braddy’s dead pants. I touch the hundred-dollar bill. That’s better. Normally I want my tip, and God knows I earned it, but today I feel like a diver surfacing too fast, my insides bending, and if I don’t get out of here quick, my brain’s gonna explode.
I ditch Braddy’s clothes, whip into my nuthugging elephant-bells and my too-tight Jimi Hendrix T, slip into my red hightops, and deposit my cash in my pocket. Normally pocketing my sexmoney is the highlight of any job. Not today.
I shoot like infected sperm out of Braddy’s room. But I can’t leave yet. I have to make sure she’s okay. I tiptoe down the hall and peek in the bedroom. It’s long-day’s-journey-into-night dark in there. I hear a little mumbly snuffly sound.
‘Uh … excuse me …’ I say softly.
More mumbles and snuffles.
‘Um … I was just wondering if you’re … okay.’ Louder this time, poking my head further into the room.
Mumbles. Snuffles.
‘Do you need … are you all right?’ I say so I know she’ll hear me.
Her head snaps up like a hungry turtle surprised in the middle of lunch.
‘Do you want more money? Is that what you want? There’s more money on the desk in the den, take whatever you want, but please, just go …’ Her face is all puffy red mad like Lady Macbeth at the end when she’s trying to get that damn spot out.
It’s like looking at a wounded animal bleeding in the middle of the road. You have to stop the car and get out and help. Don’t you?
‘Are you sure you don’t want—’
‘Just go! GO!’
Her shriek curdles my blood, and bolts me down the hall. But even now, I need my money. That’s how empty I am. So I jam into the den and open a fancy-looking box on the desk, where a wad of cash stares at me. Gotta be five hundred bucks there. My first impulse is to clean her out. Hey, I earned it. But I can’t. I take fifty, put the rest back, and with my C and a half I steamroll down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
Oh God.
12.
PEAS & CORNBREAD
Going down, sir!
—DROOPY DOG
I FINGER my pager. It’s become my antitalisman bad-luck charm. I’m having a lot of trouble rolling that big huge rock up that big huge mountain this morning, sitting in Existentialism, trying to focus on Sister Tiffany and the meaning of life. Her mouth is moving but, unfortunately, I can’t hear a word she’s saying. Usually I spend quality Existentialism time staring at Kristy, dreaming about the sweet little life we’re gonna have together.
Not today.
‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?’
That voice keeps ringing in the bell tower of my head. I see myself in the Hawaiian shirt and khakis looking at myself in the mirror next to the picture of Braddy in the Hawaiian shirt and khakis. Dad blowing his brains out with a shotgun, Braddy all boozed up driving head-on into a bus, Mommy washing that shirt over and over until all her dead son’s blood is gone.
‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?’
I thought about trying to call Kristy after I left the Palisades. I actually had the phone in my hand, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I felt mean. Wanted to pick a fight. So I went out and bought my day-old birthday cake and my tub of ice cream, and I ate it all up. But still I felt hungry enough to have sex with a horse. I tried to sleep, but that was a complete joke.
So I went to Sunny’s. Three-D was business as usual. The Dixie Chickens fighting and French-kissing. Cruella and Sunny doing the Temptations. People I never saw before and would never see again. Jade was not in attendance. I was sad about that. Sunny hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks N’Awlins style, and tried to cop a feel.
‘Hoo-ie, boy, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes. How’s the job tonight, baby? Uh-oh, one of them, huh? Well, lemme getcha some Jack and a Jill.’
He got me a shot of Jack Daniel’s and then introduced me to a sweety-looking girl he’d christened Buttercup. When she wandered into the restaurant that afternoon, Sunny’d sprinkled some magic fairy dust on her, and poof! Here she was in 3-D, hanging out with a smoking bong, giggling with a gaggle of freaks. She could be thirteen, could be fifteen, but she’s certainly no more than sixteen. She’s medium-size blondish cornfed gaptooth bangs and ponytail cute. She couldn’t really keep up with the lightning-fast 3-D banter, but the girl now called Buttercup was totally adorable in her little Daisy Duke cutoffs, duffel bag, and ruffly dorky mall shirt.
Sunny whispered that he wants me to break her in. She’s my perk for doing a bang-up job. So after hanging awhile I took her back to my hovel. Ironic, I’m a one-boy sex factory, but I’ve never had a woman in my carpetwalled hellhole. Then again, I don’t wanna shit where I live.
Buttercup is the essence of sweet, but there’s definitely a FOR RENT sign in her eyes. Someone has clearly stuck a monkey wrench in Buttercup’s gears. I wasn’t sure whether she’d ever had sex, but Sunny put me in charge of making a chicken out of her, and I was taking my responsibility seriously.
I don’t allow myself to consider that I might be doing a disservice to Buttercup by being her sexwork facilitator. I couldn’t. I was sure I was doing her a favor transforming her from a noskills runaway to a breadwinning chicken, getting her off the streets, where she was sure to get the shit repeatedly kicked out of her.
I laid out the whole thing, soup to nuts, for the girl now called Buttercup. Guess what the first lesson was?
GET THE MONEY UP FRONT
After I briefed her on the ins and outs of independent sex contracting, we moved to the hands-on section of the tutorial. She was an enthusiastic student, and her learning curve steep, especially in her oral exam, which she passed with flying colors. More important, she had that eager-to-please, turned-off turned-on quality that’s crucial in the making of a first-class whore. Plus, of course, she was dead broke, hungry, had no resources, no home, no family to take care of her, and nowhere in the whole world to go, which helps.
Then I was swimming in the river with the girl now called Buttercup, endorphin dolphins frolicking beside me, and when the spray of the waterfall hit my face, everything seemed right with the world.
But here, now, the day after, in Existentialism class, I can’t stop fingering my pager.
‘Does Braddy love Mommy?’
The top of my head feels like it’s about to pop off.
Finally, mercifully, class is over, and I bolt fast. I hope Kristy’s following me. I need Kristy to follow me. I decide if Kristy’s following me, the gods are on my side. As I walk down the hill overlooking Hollywood onto the immaculate lawn, the air rejuvenates and the sun revives me. It’s a clean day, cuz it’s windy, and you can see all the way to the ocean. I deepbreathe, smell the warm gr
ass, and wait for Kristy, trying to look like a normal Joe College guy enjoying his existential sun-drenched afternoon, instead of a chicken on his day off waiting for a girl like his life depends upon it.
But there’s no Kristy.
I’m used to craving the normal of her, but today the craving’s consuming me. I realize now I need to take her out to lunch, talk about nuns, drink a few beers, maybe even have some old-fashioned American apple-pie sex. I wait and wait, barely able to contain myself, ants multiplying in my pants every second.
Finally, when I’ve stood all I can stand, I go hunting for Kristy. Back in class Sister Tiffany gabs with a few stragglers. I chainsaw down to the library. Nothing. Back to the lawn. Nothing. As I walk into the cafeteria, I bump into someone. My fist has a life of its own, and it clenches without authorization from upper management. Luckily I stop it before it can rise up in anger. Then my polite British schoolboy takes over, and I’m an apologizing machine, saying sorry so often the apologizee looks at me like I escaped from Bedlam. I turn off the sorry button and scan the lunchroom. No Kristy, no Kristy, no Kristy. Jam back up the hill. Check the lawn. No Kristy. Some serious snark is clogging my pipes. I want to smash a mirror with a five-iron, crack a skull with a brick, smash my hand through a TV screen. If I don’t find this girl I can’t stand to be around for more than a night at a clip, I am seriously gonna do something very bad.
My mom and dad buy a Winnebago trailer when I’m ten, hitch it to the back of the faux-wood-paneled station wagon, and off we go to look for America.
The Grand Canyon invites us into Mother Earth. Old Faithful is a holy explosion from the blowhole of the planet, one you can set your watch by. We redwood forest and Gulf Stream water. Glacial ice creeps down a mountain slower than time. We gather driftwood like old sailors’ bones and make a bonfire where spirits of Chippewa shaman dance. We see bears, meeses, and now and then a beaver.
Chicken Page 10