I sat on the plastic seats of the bus by myself the ride home. Boys threw things, girls got their hair picked at, but I was lucky enough to be left alone. Everyone was excited about school and the promises for the year. Maybe it had some promise for me, too. Mr. Edwards was a man teacher and he seemed good enough for a full school year and made everyone feel safe. If any of the boys on the bus got close to me, I was ready to kick them again.
Ciara and Ciana’s mom was there at the bus stop to pick them up like always. She was nice and said hi to me with the same happy face she had for her own kids. The two girls held their mom’s hand and I walked next to them. I liked when they were nearby. It was like we were sisters.
We walked by their house and I wanted their mom ask me to come over. It happened last year once in a while. It didn’t today. I had a dad, and they didn’t, so I guess it’s fair that we’re all missing something. I tried my best not to say anything about their step-daddy who was in jail, because I knew that would be mean. I was real mean to them once. They told me my house smelled because my Grandma is a witch. I got so mad and said, “Grandma is a witch, and she will dig up your dead dog and put it in a pot to boil and make a potion to kill both of you.”
I hated myself for saying that, and wanted to put it back in my mouth, but it was too late. Now Ciara looks at me like she’s scared.
They walked up the driveway of their house and I was alone for six more houses. I looked down at the uneven sidewalk blocks thinking to myself, step on a crack, break your momma’s back, step on a crack, break your momma’s back.
I walked to this beat with a jump to my step, like my legs were a couple of drumsticks banging on the earth. My backpack bounced to a rhythm against my back. My empty belly sizzled. The bare lining was being digested by stomach acid, but there were just a few houses to go, and being in my own house would make me feel better inside.
But first a look at the burned down house.
I could have crossed the street before I got there, but I always felt like I had to look inside. The house was like me. Burnt up a bit with enough holes that you could see its insides.
The walls were all charred like a piece of chicken that fell into the barbeque pit. Walls were crumbled, there were holes in the roof, and the windows were broken so that they looked like eyes and a mouth, always watching me. The people came to board it up once or twice, but somebody always graffitis the boards first, and then later rips them down. Inside people do drugs in the darkness. The “man” was going to demolish it some day, is what my dad said, but the man never came.
Dad once told me my mom used to live there, but he was drunk that day. He said that Mom then went away because she was sick in her belly but then she died. I didn’t believe most of what he told me. Dad couldn’t look at me when he tried to make this stuff up and would make excuses to leave. I would ask the same exact question about mom getting sick, and Dad would change his story many times. “Her belly was hurt” or “the doctor’s messed up the operation,” or “she choked and couldn’t breathe.” His answer would switch and he’d always look at his left shoe and move it around like he had gum on it.
He will never tell me what really happened. I knew my mom didn’t really live there, but if she did, I wanted to be nearby.
There was somebody who had been living there off and on for as long as I remembered—a homeless man who seemed like a ghost haunting the place. He would go away for a long time, but always came back—sometimes days later, sometimes months.
But he was there now. I peered into the ruins and saw his shadow in the door. He was not sleeping this time, but pacing back and forth. His back was partly hunched and his arms swayed with each step. He seemed full of energy, like he was feeding off the discarded trash of the street. A shroud of dirt surrounded him and I tried to peer through the haze. He saw me looking and started pacing my way. Was he coming to me or would he turn back around? His eyes were on mine, his steps brought him closer, and I needed to do or say something
My legs were stuck. I felt my heart valve misfire and leak just like the doctors said happens. He stood before me. My eyes went big. He knows who I am. It’s like he recognizes me or just likes me because we both have weird skin. His skin was a strange shade and changed colors in different places, and his face was gruff. His eyes were like my dad’s eyes, tough eyes that men get from living on this street. His arms kept patting his pockets. I needed to do or say something.
“Good day, mister.”
He mumbled something back, looked up, turned, and paced back to the house. His boots went bang bang bang back up the porch.
I moved on across the street to my home.
*FROM THE AUTHOR – Severely mentally ill homeless men living in abandoned houses is pretty common to Detroit or any major city.
My time around such schizophrenics who have audio and visual hallucinations has always been amazing. Most schizophrenics are uniquely intelligent but are simply not built for this world. Some would say that they don’t see things that aren’t there, they actually see and hear everything that is there. Stimuli that you and I miss they pick up, and all of it makes them incapable of living. They hear the tiny thoughts inside all of us that most learn to ignore. They hear the wavelengths that aren’t in our range, and see color schemes that we dismiss.
They live in the corners of our world and in places like abandoned houses. Here is more from the gentleman who is inside of me and begging to be let out.
Chapter Five: Jervis the Squatter
That girl was real. She wore a backpack that he heard bouncing on her shoulders. She had skinny legs. She had white dotty eyes. Her skin looked veiny and blue, like something he might have made up from his thoughts. But he knew it wasn’t a hallucination. He wasn’t dreaming. He felt the heat of her eyes looking at him.
“Good day, mister,” she had said.
He rubbed a palm over his chin and felt the bristle of beard growth. The scratches made a loud noise to his ears, and he wondered if others could hear the sound. It helped him think to rub his palm over his beard hair. He put a pinky in one of his ears and twisted to scratch. Then he pulled up his yellow pants by the belt loops and paced.
Pacing back and forth stopped his thoughts from swirling away from him. He had to walk with them to keep them from spilling over. He had to move fast enough so they didn’t whirl. He controlled his brain that way, walking with enough speed to keep his roller coaster mind from doing corkscrews.
Did he have everything?
Time to check again. He patted his front pocket and felt the food stamp card. Check. He patted the other pocket for his state ID. Check.
He was safe. Living was good.
Today there would be no snow, not even close. He knew his account number to withdraw money. 3547. He had 20 dollars left but would save it and eat at the Rescue Mission soup kitchen each day. As long as Kendall don’t come by with his group. Or the police. Or some white punk-ass kids trying to pound him again. And as long as it doesn’t snow. It won’t snow. It’s hot enough to make him sweat, but he liked that. And soon he would have his social security disability money on the first of the month. How long did he have? Twelve days until the direct deposit. Friends would come by then, but for now he would walk.
And Jervis walked.
Then he did a safety check again. Patted one pocket then the other. Weather check, 3547 remembered. And twelve days left to wait, or maybe two days? But he had 20 dollars still.
The girl was real. He figured that out already. He watched her walk down the sidewalk more than once and onto her porch across the street. The house swallowed her and she disappeared. But she was real. The boy that sometimes walks around this place, he was not real.
Damn he needed to shoot some dope to stop his brain completely for a while. Addicts are always walking this street. Weak, rail skinny addicts with dope in their blood. He could nab one of them.
Milk-Blood. Not again. No. Don’t.
Maybe he needed a fifth of five-o-clock
vodka, or a couple 40 ouncers. Something to keep his head straight. Pacing was tiring, mumbling wasn’t fun.
He had his first hallucination at six years old when he saw a mouse. Like a flash out of the corner of his eyes the brown critter scurried from behind the toaster, over the stove top, and then dashed behind the cabinet. It was not a big rat, but one of those tiny mice that were often behind couches and chairs in his house. He went after it, looked in the cracks between the cabinets, but couldn’t see it anywhere. Where did it go? It couldn’t have gone far. Even though they were speedy, he’d caught some before, (and when he did, had no idea what to do with them).
The strange thing about this mouse was that it made no noise. All of the other mice made crazy fast pitter-patter noises when they ran. Sometimes at night he would hear them outside his bedroom door scurrying across the kitchen.
It’s only real if you see it and hear it, he concluded. Otherwise, it’s just your own thoughts lying to you. That’s what helps him get by when he hears the voices telling him he’s bad, and that he should cut himself and kill himself. If you can’t see what’s talking, it’s just your own thoughts lying to you.
This realization came after many suicide attempts, the first being one in high school with an X-Acto knife from art class he hoped would satisfy the voices inside. He loved that knife, and wished they hadn’t taken it away. It cut better than anything and didn’t hurt. The blood from that knife brought the best blood of all.
Soon, mental health teams came to his house for therapy. They said things like, “Jervis has an illness, it’s not his fault. It’s a family disease.”
“His dad’s in prison. He’s a monster and a junkie,” his mom would answer.
The therapy went into his brain and he waited and listened until they left. Medication bottles followed with pills that turned everything off and made him eat too much and bloat up like a fat pumpkin. He became gross, got angry at girls, then he’d stop taking the medications and try to carve himself up.
He went to a home for kids where they would do five-point take downs when the voices inside won and made him escalate. They dragged him to the “quiet rooms” where he was locked inside and made noise with such energy for hours. When he left the home for good, they gave him a paper GED and everyone clapped. More medications followed.
Then Dad died in prison, and the ashes were delivered to his mother’s house. Jervis went home too, and lived in the basement along with the ashes. Just like his father he fell in love with smack. Heroin. For Jervis, it was the best medication to stop the voices in his head. Heroin, weed, liquor, all of it armed him for the fight.
He had a pretty good run living in his mom’s basement, until he fucked up. He stole—too much. He was so full of drugs he had to. Then his mom stopped that, and the thing happened with his dad.
That thing in the basement.
Milk-Blood.
3547 is all I need to keep money so I don’t have to do it again.
After the basement thing happened his violence exploded. Jails followed in different counties. Wayne, Oakland. Macomb. Oakland again. He got haircuts before seeing judges, had psychiatric evaluations, and lawyers told him to “stand mute” before any judge he saw. Incarcerations went from jails to a prison, lithium made the time go by and stopped him from constantly having to be restrained and taken to isolation. If only they would give him a prescription for smack like they do Lithium. As it was, even out of jail, he could only get the drugs after check day. Or he’d have to whack someone outside the house and drag them inside and take their Milk-Blood.
Finding this house kept him out of jail for 12 years. It was the perfect street. The home he always needed. The first time he came here, he had just traded the Oxycontin his Medicaid paid for to get a bottle of Vodka and was looking for a safe place to squat. The house was freshly burnt, abandoned, and quiet with an overgrown lawn. It was asking him to come inside. There was a board on the front door to pull back, but after that, the house was empty and warm.
He slept one night in mostly silence, slept two, and then brought some supplies—an old rug to sleep on, a can opener, and a sack of white socks. He’d have to share his space for a moment or two with white folk coming in to smoke rocks. That wasn’t so bad, because if he wanted something they had he’d hit them with a pipe or act crazy enough to scare the shit out of them. People are scared of dirty black men.
Sometimes people were really nice to him. They’d stop by and say things like, “Good day, sir.”
The spirits of those who lived in this house before him were still there. He could feel the heat from their body or the whoosh of the air when they walked by. There was a child who died there, who sometimes made voices, and Jervis could feel his memories living inside the walls. How the glass window had shattered and flames filled the front room. The air was so thick that the boy’s lungs had filled with black and then he died.
For many days Jervis didn’t bother talking to this boy. It was like looking for the rat that was never really there. He just blocked it out. But this rat kept coming back and pitter-pattering on the floor.
“What’s your name little man?” Jervis asked softly with his lips but loudly with his mind.
“Oscar, I’m Oscar, but they calls me Oz.”
“Oz, that’s great, Oz. Are you for me or against me?”
“I’m with you is all. With you here. We’re stuck.”
Every day when the sun started to dip he would hear the shriek of the school bus bringing home the children of the street. The boy would run out to the sidewalk to play with them on their way home, but nobody even knew he was there.
I know what you feel like, Jervis thought. I was like you.
Once somebody dropped a school book and Jervis brought it back to the house for Oscar to read. James and the Giant Peach, it was called, and Jervis tried to read it out loud, but there were too many words he couldn’t make out. Inside the book, there were exactly twelve pictures that he could look at.
But Oscar loved the book, and finished it fast, and wanted other books to read. All Jervis could do was tell him stories of his own life while the boy sat and listened. They had all the time they needed, and Jervis was good to him like a father might be, but the boy wasn’t real. Jervis wanted a real child to make his own.
When bad weather hit and Jervis had no money, he would have to stay sober for a few days, and this made his brain spin faster. The outside crept in, and the world reminded him who he really was. Hordes of voices shot at him from everywhere. Radio waves from other counties. Currents from electrical lines, with birds on the wire standing watch. It was like walking into a spider web you couldn’t see and it’s too tiny and sticky to get free. The spirits learned how to trap him when he was caught unawares. They would make him do things. Oh, it hurt his head to think about it.
His skin turned red from rage boiling out. His blood burned until his veins were just filled with the ashes of his dad. Being alone and angry was terrible—he needed someone to hurt.
“This is my fucking house…leave me alone,” he howled at the boy.
As soon as he said it he wanted to cry. He felt the spirit of Oscar receding. Not leaving but going back into the nooks and crannies that only he could fit inside—back into the insides of this house, back into the rubble in the yard.
Oscar would never be the real child that Jervis wanted, but still, they both belonged in this burnt up house. His lungs were coated with the dust of this place and that would never change. Even though the furniture inside was just piles of ashes, he had a home.
It was good living until the voices became too much and his blood surged with anger. He wanted to hurt people, real people, to inject his hurt into them and make them his own. And eventually, he did hurt people—he did inject people, too many to count. And when he did, his skin wasn’t just black, but a raging red fire.
Like the woman from many years ago—it was the spirits that made him do it. They caused his rage and made him grab her and inject
her with his deepest parts. She ran off with parts of him inside of her and left behind a puddle of milk.
But then she returned. The body of his lover came back. He knew it was her before she came, same way he could see through time to the future or hear brain waves if he just listened right. She arrived in pieces and someone buried her under the land.
Dead. Now she was dead. Jervis could hear her cry through the earth. It kept him up nights. He squeezed his own temples hoping it would stop, but it just got worse and felt like a dentist drilling into the side of his skull. Finally he went to the spot she was buried. He lay there and pressed his face to the ground.
“Why are you so sad?”
“I’m dead. He killed me.”
“You’re dead but you’re not done yet.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you come up?”
“I can’t, he burned me and cut me up and buried me.”
“I can help you,” Jervis said. “You can come into me. Spirits done that in the past.”
“No, I don’t want help from the likes of you,” she answered. “There is another. I have gone into his head. I can do that. I can get in people’s skulls.”
“Whose head? Who is he?”
“Someone who will help. I will see to it.”
“You don’t need him. I can get you your daughter. I’m the one.”
“You are rotten. I feel the rotten parts of you.”
“But I can help.”
“You will bring my daughter to me?” she asked.
“Yes. I see her often.”
“What did you put inside me that day?”
“It was supposed to feel good, but bad things…I do them sometimes,” he said. “I didn’t kill you.”
“You ripped me apart and put something inside of me,” she cried.
“But now you have a daughter.”
“That girl is your girl too. You fathered her.”
“Mine?”
“Yes, your girl too. Bring her to me,” she whispered.
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