Milk-Blood

by Mark Matthews

  “Lilly.”

  It was a woman. I turned my head at the sound of the voice. Yes, it was a woman, but she was older, and her voice was harsh, like someone who smoked too many cigarettes.

  “Lilly, that’s what he calls you. It is a nice name. A flower of death and new beginnings.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am your mother.”

  Poison blood bubbled in my heart. My lungs couldn’t get enough air and I gasped for breath. My skin turned a paler shade of blue.

  “No, you left me. Why are you here?”

  “I did leave. I’m sorry. I was afraid you were evil.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  This wasn’t my mom. This was the sick part of me that needed medicine. I could feel the atoms of my body tingling, separating from one another, and then all of them began to fight. It started a war with fiery explosions in my gut. Lava climbed up my throat.

  “Where are you?” I asked, but not ready to trust the answer.

  “Close by. Where you were today. I have always been here. Do you want to come to me?”

  “Yes, I think so, but dad said you were far.”

  “No, I am not. He put me close to you.”

  “He put you somewhere?”

  “Ask him when you can. Where he buried me.”

  Dad was in the bath with his own mother, cleaning her, keeping her safe. He took care of the women in his life. That’s all he does. He would take care of my mom, too. Something wasn’t right.

  “If you are my mom for real, then can I see you?”

  “Yes, I will try to get you. To bring you to me. I hope it works so I don’t have to kill you.”

  “Why would you kill me?”

  “So they will bury you with me. Somehow we will be together again. Me inside you, or you next to me.”

  “Just stay here if you are really my mom. I am sick and need someone.”

  She said nothing to that. I curled up in a ball and spread my fingers across my stomach trying to calm down the fire inside that was brewing. It didn’t work. Acid was burning up my insides, and the fire sent gross stuff up my esophagus like it was a dirty chimney. Muscles cramped, and my brain was confused.

  “I have to go,” She said.

  “Don’t go.”

  “It’s okay. Someone will come to you soon. I have arranged it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Your dad killed me, so I will kill his mom.”

  Chapter Twelve: Zach the Caretaker

  “The bathroom is a most dangerous place. People slip and fall and shatter their hips. Or they grab sharp objects and cut themselves. Or they drown in water that is too hot and scolds their skin or is too cold and gives hyperthermia. Or they overdose on medications with labels too tiny to read. The bathroom is a slaughterhouse. You need to be careful there.”

  The home health care nurse had said this to Zachary more than once. She spoke it with rhythm, as if she were a poet in a poetry slam, and made sure Zach felt it and wouldn’t forget. She said he had his hands full trying to take care of a young girl and an elderly woman at the same time. He called her a dumb fuck in response. She didn’t come back after that.

  It was too much for him, she was right, but fuck her and fuck protective service. He messed that up today too and he knew it. They said the same damn thing in a different way. “There is caregiver burnout,” they had said, “which dulls the senses, makes you lose your empathy. You may unwillingly let those you love go uncared for. This can lead to tragedy we know you don’t want. Adult protective service will also be contacted to see how they can help.”

  More people are coming, is what they really were telling him. He swore at them with drunken breath, and then emptied the 100 proof vodka bottle when they left. He had another bottle waiting. They left him with an “action plan.” This wasn’t for his protection—this was their way of swearing back at him with orders and threats. What they hell do they know?

  His mom was safe and strong, but possibly delirious. Who knew what she would say when they talk to her. Zach had his own action plan, though, and he would see it through. Tomorrow was the first day of the month. He’d get his mom’s disability check and new food stamp money. If he acted fast enough, he could get groceries, clean the house, and be ready for their next visit.

  He took a drink straight from the freezer-chilled vodka bottle, and listened to the humming noise his mom made in the bath. He knew the warm water soothed her. She would sway her arms to and fro and make tiny splashes that echoed in the shallow “impossible-to-drown-in” bath water. He was just steps away putting Lilly to sleep. Lilly might be spending her last night here if he didn’t do things right. Protective services was setting him up to make taking her away easy, but he wouldn’t let that happen.

  “If I had a mommy, I would take care of her forever, like you do,” Lilly had said, and later asked that same question she has been asking for years; “When will we be with mommy again? Is that still never?”

  It was never, he had told her that long ago, but didn’t want to repeat it. Lilly could never find out that if her mother had her way, she wouldn’t even be alive but would have died at one month old. But somehow it was Zach who was the one not fit to be a full time caregiver. That’s what the people with suits and badges said. That he should only be allowed to take care of Lilly if a fulltime nurse was there to take care of her grandmother. Well, who’s going to pay for that?

  He wished he could give Lilly answers when she asked about her mom. He wished he could say something like, your mommy will always be your mommy and you can have your mommy forever. You and me are like that. We both love our mommies. But she needed to know she could live without a mother. Without him even. She wasn’t like a regular kid. She was blue, and he loved that about her, loved that her insides came out, but she wasn’t built for this world. At least not this street. He needed to give her a strong suit of armor that would protect her forever.

  So he lied and said “some day” and figured she’d learn to live with hopes unfulfilled and dreams being dashed. Do the best you can with what you got. That was what mattered.

  He kissed her on the forehead and both cheeks, like a priest giving the sign of the cross. Her bedroom was dark, and he could see how it was both peaceful and terrifying. Soft stuffed animals lined the walls like a pink friendly posse, but in the dark they seemed to come alive.

  Doors opened just a crack in this house. That’s how he survived, and the bathroom door was the same. The warm octave of splashing sounds bounced off the bathroom walls. Time to check in on her.

  “Get out of here. I’m naked. Get out.”

  “Ma, it’s me, your son.”

  “Jeffrey? Jeffrey!”

  She was bathing in hot water and talking out of dementia, and now he knew it would be that way until morning. He didn’t deny being Jeffrey. He let her believe that he was her deceased husband—especially at times like this, when she was exposed.

  Her body in the bath seemed more like a carcass and ceased being a body long ago. The shell she was in had melted, like it was wax, and drip, drip, dripped into something that seemed embalmed already, but her spirit was way too strong to leave it. At times he almost admired the leathery resolve of her body and the lines that had become so rich over the years. He could see his own childhood inside the crevices of her skin.

  How many times had he taken a lickin for Momma? Got in Dad’s face, or pissed him off on purpose? A few. His brother took more, though, before he finally whipped Dad’s ass, but now he was in the penitentiary for home invasion. They shipped him to Indiana, too far to travel to, so now they just delivered a Christmas present and sent a few bucks for the commissary. Another brother was dead at the age of 14. Shot by a policeman. Three brothers, two gone, and just him and Nelson now. But memories of days when they were all together lived on with this ancient woman in the tub. Playing baseball, sneaking into concerts, smoking weed and sharing headphones. They were tight before things fell apart.
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br />   He touched the bath water expecting it to feel warm, but instead it was cold as pond water. It was time to get her out.

  “Ma, let’s pull the drain.”

  She lay there on her back with her head flat on the drain and her eyes staring upwards. The bath water was soapy but he could see she had urinated by the milky yellow clouds.

  “Mom, let’s get you out of there now.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, and took a swing at his hand but missed.

  “Can you pull yourself up then?”

  “No, damn it, it’s sucking me down.”

  “What?”

  “The bathtub is eating me, Jeffrey. It started to eat me.”

  He felt the back of her head, and some of her hair was indeed down the drain. He pulled on the hair gently, expecting it to give, but nothing. His fingers slipped along the wet strands that were stuck.

  “My son, Zachary. He did this. He left me in the cold water. He left me in here and killed his baby’s momma and buried her body. He’s no good and now I’m dead.”

  “I’ll take care of this, Ma. Don’t worry. Don’t say that.”

  Why they hell would she say that? Zach wondered. She heard the detectives asking me questions. Must be.

  No, she is a witch and knows all.

  “It’s ripping me, Jeffrey. Pulling my hair.”

  “It’s your son’s fault. He’s not fit to be a god-damned caregiver,” Zach said, hoping it would make her stop screaming. His mom had no memory of her husband Jeffrey dying. How his esophageal varices exploded from alcoholism and he bled out on the carpet. Zach rolled up and threw away the carpet that the dead body lay on.

  “It’s got me. It’s got me. I’m cold. I’m naked. Jeffrey, help me and stop being so rotten.”

  The drain was probably backed up again. He may have to go downstairs and undo an elbow and snake it. Damn thing was always backing up from Lilly’s hair and leaking into the basement. Crazy black gook inside the pipe had to be poked through with a clothes hanger.

  Zach took a huge slug of the vodka, felt it tug at his throat, but his body needed something else. He needed more to get through this night.

  “I can get it, Ma. Just please stay still.”

  “Don’t touch me. I’m naked Jeffrey. It’s ripping my hair out of my head.”

  He put a hand under her neck, grasped the wet, slimy hair, and pulled up.

  Nothing. It wouldn’t budge. Should have gotten her a haircut. It was wet and thin. His hands tried to grasp around the tiny spine of her neck and pull, but it felt like it would snap if he tried. He could feel her life flowing through the vertebrate.

  “I’m freezing cold. My hair is being ripped. It’s getting inside my head and ripping at my brain.”

  He imagined how shriveled her body would get if she were in the water any longer, like it was being soaked in formaldehyde. He kept poking and prying with his fingers trying to feel where her hair was stuck. With his pinky he could feel the drain sucking like a vacuum cleaner, and her hair was being trapped with the gook.

  “Stop killing me.”

  This had to end soon.

  Then he heard a new voice.

  “Daddy, you’re being loud. I’m scared.”

  It was Lilly. He turned to see her standing there, holding on to her red teddy, with her eyes squinting from the bathtub light. She was half asleep, but the stuffed animal was looking much more awake and perky. He wanted to yell at her to get back to bed, but then stopped. We have to get through these next few days exactly right. Child protective services. Adult protective services. They were swarming this house soon, and this moment would come up during interviews.

  “This man is killing me,” his mom’s voice echoed from the bathtub.

  “Lilly, she’s just having some problems in the tub. Lay in bed and count to 50 and I should be there.”

  “I’ll be dead,” said his mom.

  “Maybe count twice, Lilly. I’m sorry. We can sleep in tomorrow and I’ll take you to breakfast and drive you to school and you can even be late.”

  She shuffled back into her room without a word, and he looked back down at his mom’s skeletal body. Tiny drops of water dripped in pairs of two from the bathtub faucet. Drip-drop, drip-drop. If she were here for a year or more, it would fill up and she’d drown.

  But he’d have her out in a few minutes. He would just cut some of her hair. Three snips and it would be over. Both his mom and child would be sleeping peaceful and clean. Both of them.

  He grabbed some tiny scissors out of the medicine cabinet. The metal on the scissors were dark yellow and rusty but would do. He put his fingers in the scissor loops and turned ready to cut her out, but when he did, she screamed. She howled. It was so loud he thought something in the tub had bitten into her, but no, it was himself that she was afraid of.

  “I’m just going to cut one or two hairs to get you out, Ma.”

  More screams. Her body shook and spasmed like he had thrown a toaster into the tub, but only her head was partly stuck and couldn’t move much. He waited to see if she’d rip herself out, but she didn’t. More thrashing.

  “You’re gonna hurt yourself, Ma. Just stop it.”

  She wasn’t able to hear. He thought of slapping her. He thought of leaving and coming back when she calmed down. He thought of pouring vodka in her throat. Instead, he put the scissors on the counter and flipped back thru the medicine cabinet: Advil. Tylenol PM. Tums. Toothpaste tube with no cap and a ball of hardened toothpaste at the top. Prescriptions bottles. That was the real gold. Especially the Xanax.

  But how many? She rarely took it, he was the only one who gobbled them as needed. The label was faded, but it was Xanax he was quite sure. The white 2 mg bars that he knew so well felt familiar in his fingers. He popped three pills into his own mouth just to make sure. He needed them tonight. They will mellow him down before he blew up.

  But I’ve been drinking. Last time I mixed alcohol and Xanax, I went completely crazy. A boy died.

  Just don’t leave the house tonight, he told himself, just finish this and be done.

  He popped another Xanax in his mouth, and then grabbed three more pills between his fingers. In one fluid motion he reached down and slipped them through the crack of his mother’s lips, gently using his thumbs to slide them deep into her throat. Her tongue felt like a slug. Her mouth tried to reject the pills but couldn’t. Gags and screeches echoed off the bathroom tile and ricocheted back and forth. He had made her sound like a witch. All these years and he had done that to her.

  But he had too, right? He was just glad his thumb down her throat didn’t make her puke. He cupped some water from the faucet, placed it on her tongue, and waited. She lapped a bit, then coughed, but it brought up nothing. All of the Xanax went down. Both of them would be calm soon and figure this out.

  “Get me up. It’s pulling on me, pulling on me, it’s ripping my brain out.”

  Every word was getting sharper. The high pitch shrieks started to stab into his stomach. It wasn’t really ripping her brain out, he knew that. Mom had exaggerated everything since he was a little boy. She used to tell him to be ready for her funeral. That she was sick and dying. That she had a disease from all the hurt inside. He got used to acting like he believed her. And still today people in his life are always saying they were going to die, always saying they needed a doctor or a hospital. He knew what death looked like better than the doctors did. He’d had as many people die at his hands as the damn doctors. Mom wasn’t dying in this tub. She was still trying to be a puppet master and control people, but not anymore. Latrice was a puppet master, too. Oh, God could she get in people’s heads, until he put her down.

  He left his mom alone but kept the door open a crack. Her murmurs faded and lightly echoed like they were far away. He peeked into Lilly’s room. She was awake. Muttering things, but okay and in bed. His life was full of cracked doors. He needed a shot. He cracked open his second bottle of chilled, 100 proof vodka. First shot out of a
bottle is always the strongest, and it burned like gasoline in his throat.

  He went downstairs to the basement and the smell of sewage and mold hit him. The air was humid, and scents stuck to his skin. Dirty laundry was piled in one corner, and the furnace seemed to ignite as a greeting. It rattled like a drunk man in armor.

  He stepped over the piles and stood below the bathtub. A bucket remained on the ground from times before when he had to unscrew the pipes, scrape away at the hair, and unclog the drain from the hairy gook. It still leaked. He looked up at the bathtub pipes, and was surprised he couldn’t hear his mom. At least not her words. She was splashing about in the water but the screaming had stopped.

  She would be mellow soon. The Xanax wasn’t for lightweights. He’d done as much himself, and it froze his brain and all the nerves in his body. Except if you drink on it, you stay awake and lose control. You black out and firebomb houses and little kids die.

  Get this done, then lie in bed, he told himself. He wasn’t going to fuck this up. He had to do things perfect this week.

  At least it was quiet down here, underneath the earth. Up above they waited for him to take care of things. His two girls, one who was family, and the other who he agreed to father ever since he put her mother down. He’d signed up that day to do everything for her, but now they said it wasn’t enough.

  Fuck it. He should just stay here in the quiet underworld. This is where his brother Nelson came to escape sometimes and fix up with his dope. Used syringes in shoeboxes were left behind like animal tracks.

  But he acted, like he always did, and reached up to unscrew the elbow that lead to the bathtub drain and always leaked.

  The elbow was an old, plastic-to-galvanized-steel connector. He had to stand on a block of wood and stretch up as high as he could to reach it. He felt his arms ache. They were aging arms, like this damn pipe. Everything was getting older and the rust was showing.

  He twisted it open and got ready for a splash of water to drip into the bucket, but none came. The drain was still closed. Clogged. A bunch of hair and dirt and soapy grime was now filling the pipe. He grabbed a metal clothes hanger, straightened out the tip, and poked upward.