Little boy . . . ! Little boy . . . !
. . . But he couldn’t describe it, even to himself, because he had no actual memory of the moment when it happened. All he recalled after her insults and taunting was the unendurable intimacy of her mouth—and then standing by the door, hugging his wet towelful of bath things, watching an insane, wildly bloodied woman send a tableful of junk crashing to the floor.
What would she do—phone the police? But he’d heard she was in trouble a lot; they were forever dragging her in; so maybe she’d just call a doctor. Or go to emergency at one of the city hospitals.
Whatever happened, he knew he didn’t much care. He felt ashamed that he’d used his teeth; he should have clouted her with a fist; but shame wasn’t remorse. Who the fuck did that grimy whore think she was?—her flippers out for a boy his age! What a freak! What a painted-up fart! “You know how it is—when you’re bored—and lonely!” A pillow on her ass! That white shit plastered all over her face! “My . . . name . . . is . . . El-len.”
Fuck you, Ellen Nobody. Fuck you.
He dried the tears from his cheeks, and the wetness from under his nose, and opened the door to 404.
His mother is waiting, as always when he’s home: a ghostly sentry by the door. He can never leave, even for a minute, to go to the bathroom or, as it now happens, take a shower or change his clothes, but that she’s there, watching, waiting, peering out into the blackness of the hall, trying to make sure he won’t leave for another week or more.
His little brother Orlando is there too, hanging behind his mother’s skirt, but he instantly disappears, being sick with a morbid shyness that never allows him to show his face. Oh, he’ll talk to you if you corner him and don’t mind talking to the back of his head or fingers spread over his eyes. If you want actually to see him, maybe comb a few knots from his hair or wipe the dirt from his face, you’ll have to sneak in when he’s asleep, and even then you might have to pull his hands away.
Mrs. Santana, the ghost by the door—always in white, fragile, thin, her face a web of premature wrinkles so dense and fine they’re invisible until you’re inches away—has a sickness of another kind: she talks compulsively, not loud or abrasive, but a steady, fretful drone, a monologue of doom, an inventory of disasters: frequently concerning her husband’s death, or that of her two beloved sisters, one of whom was beheaded in an auto crash, but also of the deaths of other relatives, friends, even strangers, the details of which she has accumulated from newspapers.
And if not death, her obsessive nature extends into other morbid areas: a particular preoccupation is food, and the dread that she and her children must ultimately and inevitably one day starve to death—a fear not without some slight justification, since she must feed and house herself and four children, including a baby, Christina who is two, on a widow’s pension and a welfare check—all of it well gone before the end of each month.
Come the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, they are hungry, borrowing shamefully from neighbors, subsisting on junk, feeding Orlando and Christina a paste made from flour and sugar, with a drop of vanilla if they have it. After two days on this, Christina usually begins to throw up.
Jamie is good, and sometimes helps out—if he stays around long enough and can find an odd job or two. David is hopeless. He’d rather take from you than give. Twice now he’d emptied the house of anything he could possibly pawn: basic things, like the two living-room chairs—for which he got five dollars apiece.
Along with the monologue, whatever the subject—today it is definitely David—goes the demand for attention. She must touch you constantly—your knee, your arm, your shoulder, tap, tap, particularly your cheek or chin, turning your head, bringing it back to face hers, never permitting you to look away. And with this goes the rest of the ritual touching, ostensibly the varied expressions of her love and concern: she must stroke you, pet you, hug you, kiss you.
It starts now, the moment Jamie enters, all of it—the whole depressing drama-fraught, one-woman show.
“It’s too late; he’s gone; just now. You must have missed him in the hall. He said he’d be back, but that means nothing. You know how he lies. Jamie—” His wet towel and bath things distract her—“Put that down. Look at me—” touching him now. “Why were you so long? You said— a few minutes, a quick shower you said—
“Jamie, Jamie!”—pressing and squeezing his hand between hers. “It’s here. He came in just to get it; I’m sure of that, and you could have stopped him and talked. You promised you would. I don’t know where he hides it. I can’t imagine; that room is so small. I’ve looked everywhere. Jamie—” kissing his fingertips “—even the floorboards!—one of them was loose so I pried it up. —Nothing. A dollar in change, and two of those nasty things he must use for sex. And a few cigarettes, you know the kind, twisted at the ends. But none of the other.”
“Mama—”
“He’s got it somewhere. He brings it in all the time. I know when he does. I’ve watched him. I listen. I hear him at night. If he has none, he’s scratching and digging at the wall. . . .”
“Mama—”
“He’s dug a hole in the plaster a yard long and half an inch wide; down to the wood underneath. And he moans all night; I hear that too, even if he puts something in his mouth or his head under a pillow. I don’t know what to do. It’s gone too far. I should report him to the police, or one of those centers. But I’m afraid. Can you imagine? My own son? I was counting on you. But you’re never home. Where do you go? Why? For days at a time”—pawing him, kissing him, hugging and stroking. “How can you do that when you know how I need you? You see how it is. . . .”
“Mama—please!”
“Where do you sleep? In the park, like a tramp, on one of the benches?—in a tunnel, on newspapers, when it rains? Or do you ride the subways all night?”
“Please, Mama. Stop!”
Hearing him finally—“What am I doing?” But she knows very well, and her hands leave him briefly to worry each other. “Oh I’m sorry. I forget. But it’s such a small thing really. And you know why I do it”—she’s at him again, more intimate than ever; justified—“because I love you. I love all my children, but Jamie the best! Your skin is so damp. And your hair is still wet. Did you have a nice shower? You do look fresh. But what are those scratches?”
She requires no answer, and goes on without pause. “I tried to keep him. I told him you wanted to talk. You still do, yes, Jamie? You love your brother. No two boys could have been closer, growing up. What’s the matter? You look pale.”
Suffocating—“It’s so hot. Mama, please. I don’t feel well.”
“Are you hungry? Haven’t you eaten today? I have nothing. Only plain tea, and a sandwich— the last of the bread. I wrapped it in paper and kept it damp for two days. I saved it for you. The check comes tomorrow. Orlando left the table hungry. He was crying. Christina had the last of the milk, so I filled him with sugar and water. I warmed it, it wasn’t bad, with cinnamon on top.”
Her voice has tightened and risen in pitch, so Jamie knows what is coming.
“Everything else is gone, even the flour. It was bad this month.”
Her hands leave him finally to cover her mouth as she bends half to the ground. No tears. No sound. Only dry, heaving sobs that last a few moments before she straightens up.
“Come now. Come to the kitchen”—handing him a clean T-shirt. “You’ll eat what is yours.”
“I don’t think I want it. Mama, have it yourself; or give it to Orlando.”
“To Orlando, no”—curiously stern. “Not to Orlando. He’s a bad boy. He’ll eat everything in sight; take it right out of his sister’s mouth; yes, steal it. . . .”
She turns swiftly, looking for the boy. “Steal it?! Orlando—!”
But it is much too late. In the kitchen, Orlando is crouched in a corner, his face to the wall, stuffing as much of the food into his small mouth as it will hold in the first immense bite.
Mrs. Santana
’s behavior is now almost ludicrous, so far in excess of anything normal that one could easily imagine her insane.
“You steal! You dare steal!”—overturning a chair in her passion to reach him. “That’s Jamie’s! Give it back; do you hear!?”—seizing the child’s hair.
Jamie—“Mama, I don’t want it.”
“You do; you must; it’s yours”—twisting, spinning the kicking boy.
And Orlando: smothered, gulping—“No; no; it’s mine!”—while his mother bangs on his head to keep him from swallowing it all.
Determined to have it, Orlando now pushes so much of the damp, mangled bread into his mouth that he begins to choke. In a moment, he has gagged and is vomiting it up: part dough, part sugar water, spewing it out in a strangled gush all over himself and his mother, both struggling on the floor.
Jamie is in the hall, the door slammed shut behind him, half out of his head, almost gagging himself with the nausea that crowds his throat. He pulls the shirt over his shoulders and staggers the length of the hall, leaning against the bathroom door to let the sickness that’s in him, both stomach and heart, subside.
Hearing the sound of him outside—“Go away,” says a voice; clearly his brother’s. “This is occupied; go to another floor.”
Whispering—“It’s Jamie. David, it’s Jamie.”
A long wait; then the sound of the latch lifted from inside the door.
God has been melted and warmed to a liquid and waits clear and gleaming in the curve of a spoon. David sits on the edge of the bathtub, his arm twisted up in a tie, the peppered flesh rosy, a fork of dark veins inside the elbow swollen to a knot.
He is impatient and fevered—“Well?! Shut the door you dumb fuck. Move! Fast!”
Jamie does so, then stands in awe, watching the quick shaking needle steady itself and penetrate.
Many still, breath-held moments go by, until finally David breathes out, sweet and long. “Wow! Oh wow! Is that ever it; is that it!”
Dreamy eyes tremble open as he looks up, all mixed angel and orgasm, smiling unlimited love.
“I wanted you in here because I’m going to give you a fix. How about that! The first goddamn fix for my sweet virgin brother. And do you know why this blessed event is occurring? Because for the first time, the first time in the whole of my fucked-up life, I’ve gotten enough—and more where this comes from. So I’m feeling generous—oh, how generous I feel. . . ! Come, love—”
Jamie gives a quick, nervous shake of his head.
“Ah now”—reproval; mock disappointment, all the while stretching, luxurious and slow, beginning to smile the wide, gorgeous smile that is David’s alone: all sex and seduction. “A first fix?—what’s the big deal?” He shrugs. “You don’t like it—so you never have another. But you gotta try; everybody’s gotta try. Why the fuck not? Come, love—” relighting the stub of the candle he’s stuck on top of the toilet tank. “You asked for it once—remember? You were begging to try. Only I didn’t have it then”—taking Jamie’s hand, turning it palm-upward. “Now I do. More than enough. I’ll tell you a secret. I get it from a very rich lady—because I do her a small service now and then. Sometimes all I need do is sit in front of her and smile; she’s hooked on my smile, and my teeth—can you beat that shit? But of course—” his eyes sly and insinuating, teasing Jamie “—other times . . . there are other things . . . I must do.”
Now he leans forward, lifts the boy’s arm. “Right there, right there, sweet brother”—kissing a vein gently, stroking it lightly with his tongue, while Jamie grows gooseflesh and feels feathers in his groin.
“You won’t even feel it, until—” a soft explosion of David’s breath “—wow!—God’s roller coaster” —laughing at his own absurdity, enjoying the metaphor “—that big ol’ roller coaster up in the sky. Come on, love. The first ride’s free. God gave me an extra ticket. I swear. He said—‘Here: for you and your brother . . . that sweet ol’ little love-baby brother of yours. . . .’ ”
David’s words, his seductive manner, his mouth and tongue, and gentle fingers, the closeted secrecy of the bathroom where they’d once had so much sex, David showing him all the love-aching, heart-pounding things they could do—all of it is literally hypnotic. Jamie’s eyes are half up in his head, his body filled with sawdust, his limbs wired and useless. . . .
Little boy . . . ! Little boy . . . !
He can barely see and watch David’s adroit, practiced hands about their business: the glassine envelope, the spoon, the candle, the syringe. . . . Even a small bottle of alcohol and a bit of cotton.
Little boy . . . !
David is humming softly, perhaps unconsciously, of all things!—“Mine eyes have seen the glory . . . of the coming of the Lord. . . .”
It is too funny. Jamie laughs silently while the terror in his chest expands, pushing into his lungs and heart.
“. . . He is trampling out the vintage. . . .”
He feels cornered, trapped—as if that crazy whore still stood in his way. His teeth begin to chatter; the muscles of the upper lip tighten, pulling back the flesh.
“. . . Where the grapes of wrath are stored . . .”
“Come, love—” The wet cotton is a touch of ice.
It was not the attack of a killer, but that of a taunted beast frenzied to escape.
Jamie felled his brother with what was nothing short of a great leap upward and down, the mouth hideous and gaping, snarling and snapping with small vicious bites, the raging teeth seeking and sinking into anything it could find.
On the floor, amid the scattered, broken paraphernalia of his fix, his face and throat bloodied, the shirt torn in shreds from his body, David lay stunned, aghast, half paralyzed with shock, his amazement absolute, staring up at the black patch of the window where, with the marvelous agility of a cat, or an ape, he had seen his brother disappear.
KATHY
KATHY’S FATHER, Milagros Orestes Santos, leaned from the second-story window, took careful aim at his daughter in the semidarkness below, and let the empty whisky bottle fly.
It missed by inches, shattering at her feet.
She heard a spasm of stifled laughter and looked up just in time to see him duck.
He was drunk as usual and would try it again, so she moved back under the overhanging arch of the doorway.
Moments later a woman came up the steps, dressed in a tight leather miniskirt and a blouse opened to the waist, several inches of thin metal bracelets jangling on her wrists. Her eyelids were sequined and the scent enveloping her so pervasive and penetrating that had it been tear gas it would have felled a bull a good four yards away.
Fragments of glass crackled beneath her feet and with a muttered “Shit!” she began kicking them from the stoop until, startled, she saw the shadowed figure in the doorway.
“Kathy? Jesus, you scared me! How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you up pretty late? It must be almost two. Is something wrong?”
“Not really.” Peering up—“You’d better stand clear. He’s throwing bottles again.”
“So I see”—with a last kick at the glass. “Well— You can’t sleep at my place. My sister’s there.”
“I know. She came in a little while ago.”
“—Unless you can do with a chair. We could put two together—”
“No. But thanks, Trina. I’ll think of something.”
“Not the park! Really— You’ll get yourself killed; or raped.”
With a laugh—“I hear they do both; for the price of one.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. After dark—FFT; meaning—there’s a fucked-up freak behind every tree. You know what I’m doing now—?”
“What?”
Trina’s hand slipped into her shoulder bag and removed what appeared to be a plastic pouch full of ocher-colored sand.
“Mace. Any of those mother-fuckers come within four feet of me he gets it in the eyes. And while he’s digging it out, I Kung Fu him with this—”
She raised an ample knee. “But if I’m feelin’ mean, and the fucker looks real dangerous—” a thin, six-inch steel blade glittered in the street light “—off comes his meat; I slice up the bologna.” She laughed, pleased at her own joke. “So—! That’s the way things are—in Fun City—on this lovely summer’s night. Besides being shit-hot. I drank so many Dr. Peppers today I was peeing green.”
They didn’t speak after that, with nothing more to say, the heat and the night becoming oppressive in the silence.
Trina’s bracelets jangled as she smoothed the damp hair from her forehead, her eyes lifting to peer at an abandoned car at the corner the scavengers had picked clean; two dark figures had just crept inside—to make out in one way or another. Her eyes came back, following the curbline of overflowing trash cans, the fantastic disorder of the littered street.
“Wotta life!”
She moved indoors, pausing to smile and nod goodnight before closing the hall door. “And if that fucker up there starts pawing you again, you know where I die.” She shook her head quickly, pretending to have made a mistake. “I mean—where I live.”
She was gone just a moment when another bottle came crashing down. And a third.
“Will you stop it, Papa? Stop it!”
His voice, all innocence and surprise—“Stop what, baby? It ain’t me. It’s that one-legged bastard upstairs. He’s been trying to get me all night. Every time I stick my head out.”
Maybe he was right; the last bottle anyway. She could see a shining carpet of fine green glass scattered half across the street, so it must have been thrown from higher up.
“Kathy—?”
He repeated it six times, before she moved out cautiously, finding the blur of his handsome dark head against the faint light of the window.
“You goin’ t’ stay there all night? It’s almost three.”
No reply.
“Your Ma’s been askin’ for you; callin’ all day.”
Dracula's Children Page 7