Milk-Blood

by Mark Matthews

  So Jervis paced, back and forth, and the roller coaster in his head got faster with higher climbs, longer falls, and many twists. He checked his pocket, felt the slight outline of his food stamp card and his ID. Recited 3547 to himself. She is my girl too?

  Still, the woman cried, all night and much of the day, like a baby who was sick. It made Jervis dream about sharp knives and sirens and ice storms. His head was glass and ready to shatter. This had to end.

  “I. Will. Get. Her. For. You.” Jervis said, mumbling one word with each step. Then he turned around and repeated himself, “I. Will Get. Her For You.” Turned. “I. Will get. Her for you.” Turned. “I will get her for you.”

  Six words and six steps and it was soothing at first, but then maddening. Energy flowed harder, his words gained power.

  “IwillGetHerforYou.”

  And he turned.

  “IwillGetHerForYou.”

  And he turned.

  “IwillGetHerForYou.”

  It rocked his insides, became a drumbeat, faster and louder. Red rage poked like goose bumps through his skin.

  He watched the girl across the street step onto her front porch and then inside the door. His girl. A small girl who got eaten up by houses. Getting her would be easy.

  Chapter Six: Lilly Home From School

  I bounced onto my porch to the smell of cigarettes and ashes. They were fresh, I could tell, because the ashes kind of stayed in the air the way they do—like tiny bits of them were still floating.

  No cars were in the driveway, so I checked the front door with a little prayer in my head and a twist of my hand and it spun. It was open. Whew…that was nice.

  The room was dark. No noise. But there was something inside that seemed different. Like I was in the wrong house. Or maybe I was the wrong person.

  I opened the door all the way and saw why. Uncle Nelson was there, sitting in my daddy’s chair in front of the TV. Next to him his new baby boy Joey was sleeping. Where was the boy’s mom?

  I kept a hand on the doorknob, ready to leave like my dad asked me to if Nelson was acting too weird. Or being too drunk. Or smoking stuff. That was the worst. He didn’t smell like that now though. He smoked things other than cigarettes sometimes and I know what that smelled like.

  “Hey kid, just waiting on your dad. Right?”

  I nodded and looked away. I didn’t want to see Nelson right now so I wouldn’t look at his eyes. I refused to, but felt his eyes on me, trying to make me look. I looked down at the baby seat. They carried Joey in that thing everywhere, and then just slipped it in their car. I could hear their car a mile down the road. I thought about lifting the baby out of the seat but didn’t want to be anywhere near his daddy, Nelson.

  “Okay,” I said, giving Uncle Nelson an answer to make him happy, and went to the kitchen to get some bread. There was half a loaf that had started to mold, but I flipped deep down into the thin bag and found one that was the best. I toasted the bread because I heard that makes it less stale and kills the bad stuff. The peanut butter melted onto the hot bread and spread easy with the knife. The first bite burnt my tongue but tasted so good and creamy.

  Cigarette smoke drifted in from the other room. I licked the peanut butter off the knife and my tongue rubbed a bit on the sharp side, but the knife was too dull to really hurt. My mouth watered and my stomach made acid ready to digest and burn the sandwich up. The bread would soak in the flames.

  “Your dad. When’s he gonna be in?”

  He yelled from the other room and his words hurt my ears. He wasn’t going to pretend I wasn’t there like I hoped. I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted the TV to myself.

  “Well when’s he gonna be in? I need to see him.”

  Dad was probably at the doctors with Grandma, but I wasn’t going to tell him anything.

  “He doesn’t like it when you’re here,” I said real loud, and then hurried over to see if this made him mad. His face wasn’t mad but was silent and staring, making me wait for his response. And he knew I was waiting for his reaction, too. I took another bite of my sandwich, and made the mistake of looking in his eyes.

  His eyes were grey, and looking at them turned my skin a colder shade of blue. They swirled like a fingerprint, round and deep into a blackness that sucked me in. I could feel it in my chest. They reminded me what a dead persons eyes must look like. Black flashlight beams.

  His body slacked in the chair, and his skin was a strange kind of yellow. He had so many moles on him it was hard to tell what was mole color and what was skin color.

  “This time is different. I don’t need nothing, I got to talk to him.”

  Whatever it was, he seemed happy with it. He took a puff of his cigarette and leaned back into my dad’s chair.

  “Sick of waiting. Too Sick. Too sick.” He mumbled to himself but also seemed happy to have an audience.

  He stretched out his leg to put a hand in his pocket, and pulled out a vial of his medicine. He held it in front of his eyes, like he wanted me to see it too, and thwacked it with a finger. He poured the tiniest bit out on the table while I chewed the last of my sandwich.

  I knew what he was going to do. I’d seen him do it once through our cracked bathroom door before. “I’m shaving Lilly,” he told me, then shut the door the whole way. He tried to hide it and pretend I couldn’t see, but I knew, and I know he goes into our basement for it sometimes too. The spoons, the syringes, a lighter, I seen it before and didn’t want to watch it again. But if I didn’t sit there and stay with him, I feared something worse was waiting for me, so I remained. Plus, I wanted to watch over Joey in case he woke up.

  Nelson looked like an old, dirty nurse as he made up his potion. I waited for any sound of my dad—a car door slamming, the creak of the doorknob, or his voice yelling at me to put my shoes away. But there was nothing. Nobody was coming.

  Finally, he held up the needle to his eyeball and I knew he was ready. My nurses always do the same when I get blood taken, right before they tell me it won’t hurt too bad. I never believed them. What I really wanted to know is if it hurt them to poke me—if they imagined it when they punctured my skin again and again, or if they forget what it’s like. Some can still feel it, I can tell, but most don’t remember anymore and stop feeling anything.

  “Where’s Joey’s momma?” I asked. I really wanted to know.

  “She’ll be here. She had to see her worker. That’s why I’m here. Need to ask your dad something. Right…she’ll be back.”

  He was looking at me again. I should have been quiet. I felt his eyes on my feet and go up my legs. I smashed my knees and shoes together. My white uniform shirt was untucked, and I slowly crossed my arms over my chest to protect my defective heart beating beneath.

  Still he stared while his cigarette smoke was seeping into my lungs. I could taste it. The smoke irritated my insides, like tiny ashes were floating down my throat, and I wanted to cough but held it back. It seemed important I stay still and not flinch. Stay strong.

  Grey eyes swirled round and round faster into me, but then he stopped and went back to fixing up his medicine. It was like I had passed a test, for now.

  “You don’t tell your dad I’m doing this right now, right?”

  I shook my head no. I don’t tell my dad most things.

  “Good. But damn, you still all blue and veiny, right? Wish I had those veins right now.”

  He started slapping his arms. Smack, smack. Then he tied something around his muscle and his saggy skin got trapped. He flipped the arm over to its underside, made a fist, released, made a fist, released. He held the needle and paused, and it seemed like that moment right before a magician works his magic. The waiting ended, I took a breath, and his eyes bugged out of his head and he stuck the needle in his arm.

  I flinched when it hit, like I was the one being poked, and I even felt a rush through my body and expected to feel it hurt. But it didn’t hurt him. I watched how he pulled out some blood, then pushed in, and heard him exhale
. He exhaled so deep I could smell his insides come out. Something seemed to lift right out of him, like a ghost coming up out of his body, rising through the ceiling, and it was gone.

  “There…there…there…now. Where’s your dad. Oh, man. Sorry little Lil’. I been so uptight. I don’t feel right without my medicine. When’s your dad gonna take care of you? You seeing doctors?”

  “Yes, I might have to get another operation.”

  He rolled his eyes and his body sunk into the chair. He put the vials back into his pocket.

  “What does your medicine do,” I asked. The words were sticking in my mouth. I needed something to drink. The peanut butter made me feel all sticky inside.

  “It takes away the pain, makes me feel like I’m supposed to. Stops my back from hurting, stops me from wanting to puke. Makes me happy. It takes away the rotten parts of this life that we are living.”

  His eyes circled the room as he said this, and then they landed right on me.

  “You got pain,” he said, and then got up and started pacing. He scratched his back, and sniffed snots in his nose.

  “We all got pain,” he told me. “It’s this fuckin life. Cursed life we live, not worth the trouble to have to live it in pain. It’s unnatural. You’re proof of that. You don’t want to live forever like you are, do you? This medicine is just a reminder from the Lord.”

  “A reminder of what?” I asked, but was afraid to look up and see his eyes, so I looked down. I shuffled my feet, pointed my shoes towards each other and tapped them, tap tap.

  “A reminder of what we should feel like instead of how we do in this sick world. Until you have medicine to make you see the beauty and make you warm, life is a sickness I have—a fucking curse. I don’t feel well. Ever. But what the fuck do you know? You’re a child.”

  “I feel like that sometimes.”

  “That’s because you’ve been sick since you been born. You shouldn’t be alive some say. You’re a miracle. That person you call Dad…well, there’s more to that story.”

  “What more to that story?” I asked, and looked down at Joey sleeping who seemed plenty happy and didn’t need any medicine.

  “What more?” I asked again. I really wanted to know what Uncle Nelson meant. I could feel him breathing and getting ready to talk. His skin seemed looser on his body, his muscles moved fluid like water, and he was soft where before he was hard. There was even some kindness to his eyes.

  “There is no story, really. You don’t want to know. You’re ten now, right? Ten. That’s cool. We can do something else to show you. But just a little. You want some of my medicine? I can tell you want some. Lemme fix you up.”

  My heart thumped and sent shock waves through the rest of my body. Joey flailed his legs on the ground, and then settled back in without waking.

  “Yeah, I did it first at twelve. You can do it now. You’re not a regular kid, you know that.”

  I didn’t object, and it seemed liked the decision was made. I watched him sit back down and go through his procedure, like a doctor ready to operate. He turned off the TV like I was supposed to hear something. The silence hurt my ears and made the moments tick.

  “Your dad doesn’t like me here because I know everything. I know what happened. I knew your momma. Yep, I knew your momma. You tell that person you call daddy that we did this, and you will have more trouble from me and from him. But you know that, right?”

  He stopped and stared, and I shook my head yes.

  “Now you ready to feel good?”

  I shook my head yes again. Of course I was ready to feel good.

  “Well this is the best you will feel until you die. This defective heart shit you got, whatever it is, it ain’t going away. The doctors are going to cut into you until you die. If I was you, I would go get the person who did all of this. Get back at them. That will take your hurt away as much as this fucking dope.”

  When he punctured the needle into me, I felt part of my insides escape from me forever, and the empty space was being filed with something new, something thick, and something alive. Right away my body felt so warm. Not on-fire warm, but warm like a blanket just out of the dryer that you put up to your cheek. Everything loosened. Cells that were tight, relaxed and began to float. My uncle became the perfect nurse who understood me more than my doctors did, and filled me with medicine that was from my own home, not the world of hospitals with white walls, but from my street where I woke up to everyday.

  “You got it? Good. I’m gonna do a big huge blast o’fucking crack rock. Big fuckin blast o’rock for some homemade speedball. I never shoot this shit, why waste a fucking vein… don’t watch this part.”

  Was he talking to me or not talking to me, I wasn’t sure, because I started to feel as sweet as a baby, like Joey lying on the ground. It was Beautiful. But I couldn’t call it beautiful because everything was beautiful so how could one thing be called beautiful if everything was the same. The baby knew this, that’s why he slept, and now I was being invited into his perfect world.

  Nelson told me not to watch him, but I did anyway. He was waving the flame of his lighter over a tiny glass pipe and started sucking so hard to keep everything in until he exploded in a huff. I saw a look on his face like he was taking a poop, everything strained so tight and his grey eyes whirled like crazy while smoke flew out of his mouth. His body was jerky, like random pieces of invisible strings were yanking him from the ceiling. I could feel his nerves twitch, and after he blew out another puff of smoke he started pacing to the windows, peeping out the broken shades, saying, “They been watching us…they’re coming. They know what we do.”

  They aren’t watching, they’re beautiful too. All of them, I wanted to say. I didn’t care he was paranoid. I wasn’t leaving here ever.

  With his second puff of smoke my dream started. I was Joey’s twin, his better part, and could feel each of his breaths in my own chest. I was a baby again and healthy as could be. I wasn’t defective. Why did I ever believe otherwise? Tiny spots of me bubbled with happiness until the bubbles were everywhere. With one finger I traced the underside of my arm and looked at the tiny puncture wound from the needle. I had found a tiny hole in me to put God inside. God and teachers don’t come on my street, but they were inside of me now.

  When my dad got home, I was holding the baby. Joey’s flesh on mine was the most amazing thing. I had been sitting there feeling his smooth skin and tracing his arms down to his little fingers. The tiny wrinkles in his fingers and the tiny little nails were amazing. I imagined I was Mary and he was Jesus and I just had a baby. That was how good I felt. This must be how regular people feel always, everyday.

  My dad barely gave me a glance when he got home but set Grandma in her spot and talked to Nelson in the other room.

  When I lay in bed that night, with the door cracked, I could hear Dad and Nelson with some friends. I didn’t care when I smelled the metallic smoke coming from the living room and the sound of men in the hallway. Nothing scared me now.

  When the morning came, I wasn’t sure if I had slept all night or just dreamed, but the good feelings had left me. Burning bile started to eat away at my warm spot, my stomach ached with need for food, and my spine hurt the worst.

  I was going to need more medicine.

  Chapter Seven: Lilly Back at School

  It was recess. My belly had a bowl of cheerios and a Pop-Tart in it so far. It was a frosted Pop-Tart. Plus I had half a banana, but not the whole thing since it had brown spots and those parts made me sick.

  Yesterday, I had lunch with the counselor lady who asked me all sorts of questions. She said the world wasn’t a fair place but that I probably knew that, but when it tips far enough out of balance that someone should come and help. She had a license that made her contact people who would visit my house—from the state. They watched over things. I listened, but knew not to say too much. I didn’t speak on things like what’s in the fridge and the roaches under the fridge and my dad’s friends who come over someti
mes. I definitely wasn’t going to tell them about the medicine that Uncle Nelson gave me.

  And I know it’s not medicine. It’s heroin. Or H. Or dope. Or smack. But I like to say medicine.

  Lunch with the counselor for one day was all it was, not all week like she promised, so at recess I went back to my place sitting with my back to the wall. Sitting there twice was enough to claim it as mine.

  The same three boys came to me again. One still had his shirt untucked, like he had to fix it each day to make it that way. The others were tucked in like the school policy said it had to be, but I saw on their faces something different, something schools don’t reach or get to control, like that space behind your fridge. They saw it in me too.

  “Are you going to show us your heart or not?”

  “It’s fixed.”

  “How did it get fixed?”

  “They injected me right here, and now it’s fixed.”

  I showed them the tiny little mark like a chicken pock on my underarm. I knew my heart wasn’t really fixed, but it just felt like that. If I could feel like a normal person for just a bit, then maybe I belonged. I wasn’t so strange, wasn’t so different from the boys next to me. The boy traced the big blue vein of mine up and down my underarm with his finger. It felt good.

  “But they still have to cut me open again.”

  They left me alone, and didn’t want to see my heart anymore. The day dragged on just the same.

  Later on, two girls got into a fight, and lots of boys laughed and screamed to root them on. The teacher had to leave us alone, and our classroom was empty when the bell rang. We didn’t get our homework assigned before the day ended, and I smiled right away thinking about home and the day before. Maybe I’d get some medicine again.

  I felt older all of sudden, but also like I was just born.

  The school bus bounced over holes in the street and shook my insides. When they got to my stop and the door opened, cool air got sucked into the bus and brushed against my skin. Colder days were coming.