Jane already had plenty to drink before she showed up, but Chauncy makes it his mission to get her shitfaced. I roll my eyes at him, at the way he is looking at her, and wonder if she’ll eat him alive before the night is over.
"Come on, baby, you gotta try this shit."
"Baby?" she laughs. "Nice one. I’m good, really; that’s not quite my style."
"A fifty-dollar bottle ain’t your style?"
"Cognac ain’t my style, no matter how much it costs."
Chauncy has crazy blue eyes and a baby face framed with golden ringlets. He could convince a girl to do just about anything if he were a little more inventive, a little smoother. It takes a while, but his brute persistence eventually pays off, and he has Jane tipping back the bottle of Hennessy between games of dominoes. The first pull was just to shut him up. After that, Hennessey becomes very much her style. But if tequila makes her horny, and Jäger brings out her violent side, cognac must make her mouthy.
17
When I black out is a mystery, but I come to with Daemon’s hands around my throat. Last I remember, we were all at the table. Now I am laid out on the kitchen floor with this gangster twice my size choking me out. Julia screams for him to stop and slaps him on the back.
"Come on man, you made your point," Chauncy says.
They all sound like they are underwater.
It has been a slow descent suddenly rocketed forwards by my aunt's confession. This altered reality, which visits me more and more often as of late, colors my experience now so more than ever. Now that I know my true roots, my true beginning, this altered reality, it rewards me with something that is starting to look more and more like the impossible: invincibility—purposeful and controlled but not guaranteed. This is an idea beyond the ability to sense that which I cannot consciously perceive, that same dangerous thought process that propelled me through the forest without a flashlight. It is not as silly or as simple as thinking I cannot die, but rather that I very much could die and therefore must pay utmost attention to every detail and not allow such a thing to happen. If I am one with the universe, one with everything, then it is possible to perceive and fend off any and all attacks, be they physiological or from another sentient being. I can conquer amazing physical feats so long as I maintain psychological control over the situation. Mind over matter means I can commune with danger so that it cannot harm me.
I am drunk and fueled by fury—a fury Rose handed over like a baton—which in turn fuels the crazy. The kind of crazy that keeps me alive. The kind of crazy that helps me breathe through the choking. I breathe though no air can travel through my compressed windpipe. I breathe all in my head.
"Stop it!" Julia yells. "Let her go!"
But it does not matter. He can go on choking me as long as he likes. My lungs still draw in oxygen produced by my mind. Cool and collected like a cucumber, that is me on the linoleum floor. I do not think about how he could kill me, the possibility of his physical will trampling my psychological one.
Once he has wrung my neck to his satisfaction, Daemon stands and says, "I told you not to call me a punk bitch!"
So that is what it was all about. Convenient of him to tell me. Whatever shit came out of my mouth while I was blacked the fuck out had been a mystery, but now at least I have something to go on. I get up, mad. Daemon stares at me from under furrowed, confused brows. Why aren’t you gasping for air? Why aren’t you choking on your own breath? Like any sane person, he cannot understand how it is I can stand there inhaling and exhaling like normal, as if nothing happened, and not the least bit afraid of him.
"Go to the washroom," I demand. He stares at me, his eyes still black with rage, his rage checked by an alliance he does not understand. "I want to talk to you. GO TO THE BATHROOM."
He does not say anything, but he does as I ask even if he is still fuming at my audacity.
This is a stupid thing to do. I should be afraid, and the last thing I should do is demand that he join me in a small room away from everyone else. But the worst is over. How I know this is irrelevant; all that matters is that it is. I close and lock the door behind us. He is silent while I berate him; he stares at me with his eyes gone dark and hollow. He breathes hard, shallow, sweat on his brow. Daemon either is a sociopath or he thinks he needs to be one. In order to find out which is true, I put myself in the position for even greater physical harm, my need to know stronger than my sense of self-preservation. Because? Because I feel oddly at ease; because I know the violence is over. He is not as bad of a guy as he wants us to believe.
"I thought of you like a brother, Daemon," I yell. I make the shit up as I go, in search of something that will strike a nerve, something that will grab the human part of him—that part that isn’t broken yet—and twist. "There you are, drinking the beer I brought; I bought that shit. You’re going to drink my shit and then put your hands around my neck."
"My mama told me never let no bitch call me a bitch."
Very noble of her. Did she tell you to choke out a bitch half your size over such a minimal affront? "Then why you acting like one?"
His chest heaves. He wants to hit me, but he will not do so as long as I maintain eye contact. Daemon may have me beat when it comes to visceral strength, but in a battle of the wills, we are evenly matched.
There is a knock on the door.
It is Julia. She says she needs some toilet paper. She does not need any damn toilet paper, but I open the door anyway. Daemon and I stare at each other. We do not speak or break eye contact even as she stares at us both for explanation. Julia is in constant worry that one of her friends has something going on with her man. It has happened before, and it will happen again because she accepts it as part of the territory. She has nothing to worry about in my case, but that does not relieve her suspicion in the least, and she cannot help to wonder if this is a lovers’ quarrel. She walks between us and over to the toilet where she removes a few sheets and pretends to blow her nose. She does not take her eyes off of us or interrupt the silence. Neither Daemon nor I say a word until she is gone.
Hindsight will ask many an imperative question: What was the point of such a compromised position? Why lock myself in a tiny room with a large, violent man? Why taunt the beast? It is a matter of pride, that is a given, but is pride worth endangering oneself? Is having the last word worth a trip to the hospital? But none of this occurs to me right now. There is nothing to fear in this moment. Safety is not a thought in my head, nor is bodily injury. I survived a good choking unscathed, at least until the bruises develop tomorrow, and now I have a point to make—the point that he cannot force me to fear, that I will not be a victim. An impartial observer may call me mad, but to them I say, madness can be a virtue, a benefit, an advantage in this fucked-up world.
For all of his rage and violence, Daemon is perfectly sane. It is because of his sanity that he is speechless, motionless except for the heaving of his chest; he recognizes the madness in me and fights against it. Each of these choices he makes is based on a strict code of conduct, the rules of the street per se, and a constant calculation of the possibility of incarceration. But the mad do not live by rules that the sane can see. The mad can do anything and they will, and this makes him very uneasy. He does not want to be pushed to a life behind bars by a madwoman.
Meanwhile, I tell myself that it is all still an act. I may be running from Rose’s revelations, but I am still in control.
Later, after Daemon and Julia go to bed and Beanie leaves for home, I fuck Chauncy. A revenge fuck and nothing more, we do it on Julia’s living-room floor. I do not have anything against his girl, and actually kind of like her, but some bitch did the same to me, so why not pass the love on?
18
(Velma) The girl was precious really, an absolute gem. She was articulate and smart, always well behaved on account of her early Christian upbringing. She was the epitome of the old adage: children should be seen and not heard and speak only when spoken to.
After the accident,
there was no one to care for that sweet little girl. Neither Ron nor Tammy had any family. Rose begged the social workers and the courts to give her another chance, but they brayed at her request. So what Darla did for her, taking her in after Ron and Tammy were killed, it was honorable, a gallant move on her part. So much life to live and she gave up all of her dreams and opportunities to bring up the progeny of her sister’s whoring about. I still marvel at her selflessness.
But why she asked Rose to join them is beyond me. It isn’t like she needed her help. I cannot imagine that the girl was any trouble to raise—more of a companion than a child. Surely Rose’s presence only complicated matters.
They kept the truth a secret. Told the girl Darla was her mother; her father had passed away. She never remembered otherwise, never remembered her adoptive parents or that her aunt had given birth to her. They moved to Salem and lived like the story they made up for her was true.
It was, of course, an improved truth. The girl was better off not knowing where she really came from. Colossians 3:20 says, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord." I am still proud of Darla for stepping up to be that little girl’s mom, even if she didn’t deserve to pay for her sister’s mistakes.
19
When I am done with Chauncy, I go home to the empty cottage for some sleep. I hate staying over anywhere, and it is only a few blocks. But instead of going straight to bed, I sit in the doorway on the back porch, a glass pipe in one hand, a lighter in the other. The bowl stays green, the lighter cold. I am hollow and yet full of rage at the same time. My eyes are glued to the wall in front of me. It is the south side of my neighbor’s garage; there is a broken window, and the paint is chipping. Wheels turn in my unconscious mind. I pick and pry at my third eye. Worlds as small as synapses collide, and I am hung upside down, suspended in space, crushed by gravity, all and nothing, a new beginning and an old end.
The world has fallen down around me; unemployed and it looks like I will be homeless soon too. If Aunt Rose does not snap out of it soon, she will be headed for another stay at the state hospital, and the free rent will go with her. Except that she is not my aunt, she is my fucking mother!
Holy fucking shit!
Aunt Rose is my biological fucking mother!
It would have been nice to know. This changes so much! The past, the future, every fucking thing! My mother, the woman whose genes I carry, is a total basket case, a complete fucking loon! Now it all makes sense. This is why I act the way that I do.
And it is why the woman I thought was my mother despised me as a burden and enjoyed guiltless luxuries while I went without. No wonder she insisted that we scrape by, nothing but ramen and canned corn in the cupboards that last week of the month while her designer pocketbook bulged with receipts from upscale bistros and boutiques. She claimed the Prada in her closet were thrift shop finds and even went so far as to bring her new wares home in wrinkled old bags stamped with the Goodwill logo, the same bags she reused each time she went for a shop. Meanwhile, I never got new school clothes. No, not when she needed to save for retirement and a new pair of jeans for me meant sacrificing her own comfort in old age. In her eyes, I imagine she had already sacrificed enough just having us there. She went so far as to stuff us into a two-bedroom apartment where Rose and I shared one room and she had her own even though she was rarely ever home. To top it off, every six months or so, she left us to scrounge through food boxes made up of the same generic lima beans that had been passed from house to house by way of movie theater food drives while she jetted away to the Caribbean. In hindsight, maybe the truth should have been obvious; she never did try too hard to hide her excesses. Maybe she hoped the truth would show through her thin veneer and she could spill all of those dark dirty secrets, be done with us once and for all.
But the secret’s real burden, protecting me from the truth about my origin, fell on Rose’s shoulders. What a plight! How did she do it? How did she live with us, day after day for years, without letting on? Did it kill her a little bit each day? Did it rip her apart, piece by piece? Did it eat her up from the inside?
There is no doubt about it. It is my fault Rose is crazy. It was me; it was the evil in which I was created and all that happened as a result that drove her mad. I grew inside of her like the Devil’s spawn, a vampire feeding off of her innocent soul. With each day and week and month, her curse grew bigger. The psychological torture of this is beyond my imagination. A shudder starts in my brain and travels down to the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes. I would have back-alley-third-trimester aborted me without a second thought. But Rose tried to love me anyway; she tried to love me even though I was her destruction. I can see her in my mind’s eye, twenty-four years younger, weeping on the cold linoleum of the hospital floor. Is it any wonder her first psychiatric stint came only months later?
I cannot fathom the life that Rose has lived and maintain any expectations—any hope—that she possibly could have turned out any different than she has. Now the obvious question begs: what are the implications for my future? Perhaps I am destined to be crazy too. Or worse, evil. From evil I came, evil must I become?
This altered reality is a curious thing. It builds itself up around me, insulating me, saving me from my depressed premonitions of evil. Drugs, alcohol, ascetic practice, Pentecostal rapture—they can all get you there. And so I have arrived in this place which is more and more familiar, where time moves fast and slow simultaneously. And every time, it is a mystery as to how I got here because I have not ingested anything nor am I a spiritual person. In a way, it feels like cheating. I did not earn this state, did not take the risks or make the sacrifices. Then there is that perpetual fear, small though it is, that I will cross the line, the point of no return. And everything will be locked in, my fate sealed as the case may be, institutionalization like Darla predicted when I thought she was my mother—a bed under the bridge, a noose around my neck.
But I am not scared of myself anymore. I refuse to be. I will not fear my unpredictable nature or morose stagnation. I am who I am and all of that jazz. I know that this, this is the real reality hidden beneath it all, and my soul has been searching for it a very, very long time. This is why my soul has passed through so many tribulations; this is why I have become who I am. Without those trials, this reality and the challenges it dares to throw at my old one would be too much to handle. All is possible in this new reality. Lazy stare no longer, fully aware, all is possible with an open third eye. At the same time, something suspicious and snide inside of me questions the meaning of it all with shameful accusations of some sort of sick self-idolatry. And yet the truth of the matter is that I am aware of the world on a whole new plane—one in which I am the world, and the world is me. I exist as separately from the whole in the same sense that I do not exist at all.
Have you ever had the epiphany that you are just a speck of dust in the sands of time? No, I mean really had it? Not like you saw Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and found that Socrates dude’s rendition deep and moving in that pop-culture sort of way, but instead a real-life epiphany that you really do not matter? And then, imagine at the same time you are also awakened to your own self-importance and preservation, as though part and parcel of realizing that you are nothing is also realizing that you are everything. What a mind job. What a fucking mind job! You could be anyone really: good/evil, owner/laborer, president/prisoner—It does not matter; no one is going to remember you anyway, and yet you are the most important person in the world to yourself. In the whole scheme of things, no one cares what horrible traumas you suffer no matter how central they are in your life. It sounds depressing, but the reality is enlightenment to the simple fact that anything is possible if only because its opposite exists. The catch is that you have to believe, and believing is undoubtedly the hardest part of anything. What a conundrum, that such a simple thing can also be so difficult.
Imagine being a newborn babe all over again. The only thing that you know
is that you are God. Everything in the entire universe revolves around you. Everyone you see is there to fulfill your whims and desires. Everyone sings your praises. Hungry? Mom will drop everything to feed you. Poopy? She will change your diaper and even wipe your ass for you. There is always someone at your beck and call, eager to meet all of your possible needs; what could be more godlike than that? Now imagine that instead of being completely ignorant of your own inconsequential existence, you are very much aware of it. A god with an intimate knowledge of its own worthlessness is a dangerous thing indeed.
Somehow this path, this altered reality, has led me to become that god incarnate.
Watch out, World!
The sun starts to rise, dawning on this new world of mine, the sky stained amber while the birds worship with their early-morning melodies. My intentions are a blur as I stand and go to my closet. In pitch black, I run my palm across the top shelf. When I pull back, my hand is covered in dust, and my fingers are wrapped around a wad of cash. Angela does not know that I know about her stash, the money she is saving to get her own place. Hell, I did not even know I knew about it.
No plans or even thoughts of plans stretch before me as I hop in my car and hit the gas, tires squealing through the stop sign. An aimless drive has always done wonders for my psyche, letting me clear my thoughts, giving me the peace to process the suffering that is life. I grab a latte from a coffee hut housed in a double-decker bus parked right in front of a porn shop (is it any wonder the cream never tastes quite right?) and jump on the northbound freeway. There is no reason to hurry, but I zip across traffic to the fast lane anyway and hold it at a steady ninety until the car in front of me refuses to give way. I ride his bumper until the smallest semblance of an opening appears in the middle lane. A cowboy in a big black truck blares his horn as I slip into the space in front of him. He is on my ass even as my bumper is only inches from the little subcompact in front of me. We are all less than a brake away from calamity, but that only excites me all the more. The driver of the subcompact feels the pressure and gets over into the far right lane at first chance. This gives me just enough room to cut off my original nemesis and reclaim the fast lane. The freeway is a game of cat and mouse that keeps me thoroughly entertained all of the way through the metro area and well into Washington State.
Jane. Page 30