by Meany, John
“I’m sorry.” I felt humiliated.
“That’s not just a little bit of pee either, that’s a huge puddle.”
“I said I was sorry.”
Still shaking her head, my mother tore the urine-stained sheet off the mattress. Then she held the wrinkled garment up to her nose and sniffed it. “Pee-yew!” she says, handing the sheet to me. “Here. Go put this putrid thing in the washing machine.”
Ashamed, I marched into the laundry room, with my head held low. After putting the foul-smelling sheet in the washing machine, my mom came in and dumped around a quarter of a cup of liquid Tide into the plastic cup that holds the detergent. Then, without wasting time, she turned the washing machine on.
“Billy, don‘t look so sullen,” she says, teasingly mussing my hair. “I’m not mad at you. I realize it was an accident.”
“It was an accident. I swear to God.”
“Please don’t swear to God. You know I don’t like it when you take the lord‘s name in vain.”
“I just meant-”
“I know what you meant.”
“So you’re not gonna punish me?” I asked, lowering my voice to a soft, humble decibel.
“Absolutely not.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you know what caused you to wet your bed?”
I nodded. “No.”
“It’s related to stress,” she explains, while surprisingly composed. “And actually, it’s to be expected, considering what that mean person Nancy Sutcliffe did to you. Whether you realize it or not, Billy, what Nancy Sutcliffe did to you in the Good Humor truck is causing you a lot of anxiety. A lot of inner turmoil. You might even be traumatized. And unfortunately, because of what she did to you, you’ll probably wet your bed again. As a matter of fact, you’ll probably wet your bed for the next few days. Maybe even for the next few weeks. Who knows? So what I was thinking of doing to combat the problem, is putting that old shower curtain that we have out in the garage, under the fitted sheet to protect your mattress.”
Well, I did not have any idea if all that was true, about the stress and the inner turmoil supposedly being the reason as to why I had wet my bed.
Then I thought back to my creepy nightmare about the clowns and decided that maybe my mom did have a reasonable point after all. Perhaps that particular nightmare about the clowns stealing my clothes had been so disturbing to my inner mind that, the same as when people are really frightened in their waking world, they sometimes pee in their pants involuntarily.
Anyway, her deciding to put the old shower curtain that we had in the garage under the fitted sheets to protect my mattress, bothered me big-time.
Why? Because at that moment, I did not know how I‘d go about doing it, but I had swore to myself that I would not urinate in my sleep again.
No way!
No how!
Although I might have been young, I knew that a ten-year old should not be peeing in his bed. Inner turmoil or no inner turmoil, it should not happen.
CHAPTER 17
After giving me that talk, my mom went into her room, where much like when she had been in the bathroom, she stayed in there for quite some time. I had no clue why.
Since I did not feel like listening to music, and had finished reading the funnies, I decided to sneak a peek at what was on TV, given that I had the living room to myself.
I lay on the large sand-colored, suede sofa. Picked up the remote control, and did some channel surfing. We only had basic cable so there wasn’t much of a selection.
Crap! There really wasn’t anything on except the Jerry Springer Show, and I didn’t dare watch that. My mom, as she had mentioned to Mr. Keller, did not like me to watch TV period, let along The Jerry Springer Show. I think she thought that too much television would decompose my brain or something.
To be safe, I clicked on a rerun of I Dream of Jeannie. Barbara Eden suddenly materialized from her magic genie bottle and as usual, Larry Hagman, up in arms about something, wanted Jeannie to go away. I laughed along with the studio audience. I tell you, it felt good to laugh.
Evidently, my mom had taken the cordless phone, from the kitchen, and had brought it into her room. I say that, because all of a sudden, I heard her talking to someone, and I could tell by her tone that she wasn‘t speaking to the bad lady.
Now I don’t want you to get the idea that I was a sneak, someone fixated on eavesdropping. However, with the ongoing drama regarding Nancy being so intense and unresolved, I couldn’t help myself; I had to know what was going on in my mom’s head.
This time, she made no secret that she had contacted Rudy at his job, at the garage. I didn’t even have to stand near her bedroom door to overhear the conversation. My mom spoke rather loud, as if she had forgotten I was home. Or maybe she just didn’t care that I could hear her.
“I know I was supposed to wait for you to call me,” I listened to her say to Rudy, almost whining. “What?”
Pause.
“What am I doing? Well, right now, I’m sitting on my bed, writing in my diary, crying my eyes out. That’s what I’m doing.”
Writing in her diary and crying her eyes out?
Why couldn’t my mom get a grip on her emotions? I was the one who had been sexually violated and I wasn’t sitting around crying.
I know. I know. You’re right. That wasn’t fair of me to say. What did I know?
Sad thing is Nancy really did have me believing that the way we had touched one another, so intimately, was what two people who cared about the other did. She just forget to mention the part about how a thirty-eight year old shouldn‘t be messing around with a kid.
“And do you know what happened now?” my mom says to Rudy. “Billy wet his bed. Yup. The sheets were soaked. I couldn’t believe it either. And it’s because of her. That whore -”
Silence.
“What? I’m trying to tell you, Rudy, is that he wet his damn bed because he’s under a lot of stress. Listen to me, a ten-year old doesn’t just pee in his bed for no reason . . . When Billy went to sleep last night the realization that he had been sexually and emotionally traumatized must have wreaked havoc on his subconscious, thus triggering him to urinate in his bed.”
Oh, perhaps I forgot to point out that my mom was exceptionally clever. She always seemed to have a book in her hand. She knew more about psychology, and all of that technical mumbo-jumbo, than anyone I ever came across. Rudy was fairly bright as well, yet in a more street smarts sort of way.
“Rudy, will you cut it out?” my mom continued to give her boyfriend an aggressive earful. “I know I’m not my normal self right now. Would you be? What the hell do you expect? Don’t give me a hard time. What? I know you’re busy. Well, excuse me. Remember, I have a situation on my hands. That’s right. Something that’s a lot more serious than tinkering with some fucking engine.”
Suddenly it got quiet again. I think my mom may have realized that she had gotten too explosively loud, and that she had better simmer down. Or maybe Rudy had said something to get her to relax.
I swear, I really hated it when my mom cursed, especially when she used the ’F’ word. I wished she had more class than that. Then again, I suppose she was like everyone else, when she got angry, her language sometimes turned vulgar. Became as foul as a truck driver, or those mechanics that Rudy worked with down at the garage, who always shot off their mouths, throwing a curse word in just about every sentence they spoke.
“No. I won’t bother you again,” my mom went on. “Yeah I did. Of course. A little while ago in the bathroom. Uh huh. But I only injected a small amount. Not my usual dose. One problem though, Billy walked in on me.”
She stopped talking again, to listen to Rudy’s response. The short intermission lasted for more or less thirty seconds. Although, as I said, my mom had been speaking relatively loud, I decided to mosey closer to her room. My curiosity to eavesdrop had intensified. I now knew when she had brought up the bathroom and how I had walked in on
her that, she was referring to how she had injected her so-called medication.
“When Billy barged in on me,” she resumed, “he caught me sitting on the toilet, with the syringe in my arm. I just got out of the shower . . . No, no. I lied and told him I was a diabetic and that I was injecting insulin. I had to, Rudy. C’mon, what else was I supposed to do, tell him that I was shooting up dope?”
There was another break in proceedings.
“Because, when he barged in on me, I was as high as a kite. Experiencing the initial rush. For God’s sake, Rudy, don’t say that. He opened the door right as I started to pull the needle out. It‘s not like I had time to think of something else to say. That I was a diabetic, to me, seemed plausible.”
Just then, I suspected that Rudy had likely warned my mom to keep her voice down, because, all of a sudden, she closed her bedroom door. Not lightly either. Rather, she slammed it. That was okay though, I had heard enough.
Again, at the time, I did not understand what all that gibberish about the syringe, insulin, diabetes, meant.
I will add one thing; however, in the years to come I would find out that Rudy also had a heroin habit. So perhaps that explained part of my mom and his attraction to one another. They were two of a kind, two junkies.
Question is, did Rudy introduce my mother to heroin, or was it the other way around, she introduced him? Who knows? I like to think in all probability they had both been junkies before they had met. Why pass blame without evidence to back it up?
CHAPTER 18
That day we had an early lunch, at roughly ten minutes before noon.
“Did you get the plastic utensils?” my mom asked, thankfully not lecturing me about Nancy Sutcliffe. I needed a break from all that.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Napkins?”
“Uh huh. I brought out a whole stack.”
“What about salt and pepper?”
“I have that too.”
“Then I guess we’re all set,” she says, sounding relatively happy. “What would you like to drink, Coke, or Mountain Dew?”
“Mountain Dew.” I needed an ice-cold soft drink bad. I was dying of thirst. The temperature there in Hampton, Ohio had already climbed to eighty-nine degrees. Sweat made my forehead slick and my light-brown bangs damp. I kept thinking about that large built-in swimming pool I wished I had. If we had one on this day, I would have already dived in, and would have probably stayed in the refreshing chlorinated water all day.
“Do you want a Styrofoam cup? Or would you rather drink the soda out of the can?”
“I’ll just drink it out of the can.”
“Okay,” she tells me. “You might as well. That‘s what I‘m gonna do.”
My mom had prepared thick, hearty roast beef sandwiches with provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, on sesame hard rolls. On the paper plates, she also served a tiny dish of coleslaw and a dill pickle. The sandwiches were great, as tasty as anything you could get at a fine neighborhood deli.
“Mom can I ask you something?” We sat in the backyard, at the red picnic table. Our yard was small, with mown green grass, a couple of shade tress, and a chain link fence that surrounded the square patch of property. Overhead, a scattered gathering of cumulous clouds, the shape of cotton swabs, had materialized in the turquoise sky. Although seldom did the clouds seem to drift over the hot sun. Near the fence, an orange butterfly fluttered aimlessly. At the house behind us, my teenage neighbor Trish Alexander lay on the deck, soaking up the rays. She had music on, presently a dance song by En Vogue echoed tolerably through the air.
“Of course. What do you want to ask?”
“It’s a pretty strange question.”
“That’s all right. Ask away.”
“Are you sure I can ask you this question, you won’t get mad?” I now sported a tank top shirt, and had my Nike sneakers on, without socks.
After taking a bite of her sandwich, my mother hesitated before chewing to evaluate my eyes. “Well I can’t guarantee that,” she says, rather serenely. “Not until I know what the question is.” She wore shades, possibly not only to shield her Gothic eyes from the sun‘s UV rays, but also because I had heard that heroin addicts were particularly sensitive to light. Think of all of the drug-addicted rocks stars who wear shades during a concert, even at night. “So what is it, what do you want to ask me?”
“Are you a witch?”
She was taken aback. “Excuse me. Am I a what?”
If she had not put on the mascara, eyeliner, and most of all that freakish white makeup, which at the moment, had started to melt in the oppressive heat, now making her look a little like the Joker from the first batman movie, I would not have posed this question.
“I know that sounds totally crazy, except yesterday, when I was over at Andrew’s house, I heard his mother say to their neighbor, Mrs. Bailey, that you were a witch.”
“Don’t listen to Mrs. Keller.” My mom shook her head, sort of chuckled. “She’s one of those meddlesome parents who likes to go around telling stories.”
“Why?”
“Because she has nothing better to do. That‘s why.”
“I guess.”
“You don’t have to guess, it’s true. Mrs. Keller doesn’t work. She lives off her husband’s salary, and sits at home all day with nothing to do except watch soap operas and swap tittle-tattle with her girlfriends. She represents everything today‘s women are against, having to rely on a man to pay her way through the years.”
“Anyway, she said you went to some kind of pagan ritual in the springtime, a ceremony, or whatever, and that that‘s when you had supposedly become a witch.”
“Knock it off, Billy!” My mom, or it may have been the bad lady (I wasn’t sure), suddenly slammed her cold Coke down on the picnic table. The force of the slam caused some of the fizzy soda to spurt from the top of the can. “I just told you not to pay any attention to what Mrs. Blabbermouth Keller says about me. She‘s one of those people that has no life. Therefore, she feels the need to make up farfetched stories about other people, to fill her time. To get her kicks.”
I looked down. Fell silent. Went back to nibbling on my lunch.
“So what else did Mrs. Blabbermouth say about me?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nope.”
“Why do I find that so difficult to believe?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed, took a bite of her crunchy dill pickle. “You didn’t tell Andrew’s mother what happened with you and Nancy Sutcliffe did you?”
“No.” Her bullying pitch made me nervous. “Why would I?”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because I don’t want you bringing that up, understand? Not to anyone. Not even to Andrew. If Mrs. Keller finds out that you were molested, she’ll blab it to everyone in town. Then, after the summer is over, when you go back to school, everyone there will know about it as well. We don‘t need that happening. You don‘t want all the kids and teachers to be staring at you funny in the hallways. Because trust me, if you tell Andrew about this, that‘s exactly what the situation will wind up being.”
I vowed to say nothing. Cub Scout’s honor.
Sheesh! First Nancy wanted me to keep what we had done hushed; now my mother wanted me to do the same. Sometimes I thought grownups were more complicated than finding the keys to unlock the mysteries of the universe.
“A witch,” she grumbles, picking up her plastic fork to daintily pick at her coleslaw. “Ha! If anyone has reprehensible ethics, it’s Nancy Sutcliffe. That woman is Satan’s spawn.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means she’s a sinner. An evildoer. Someone who disrespects the law of God.”
“Oh.” Boy was she ever dramatic.
“By the way, Billy, did you know that there are wicked witches and good witches?”
&n
bsp; “No,” I tell her. “I thought they were all wicked.”
“Now who led you to believe that, Mrs. Keller?”
“No. I just assumed all witches were evil.”
“Well, that‘s not true. Most self-proclaimed, practicing witches today are normal, upstanding people. They don’t fly around on magical broomsticks, have green faces, hairy warts on their noses, wear pointy hats, or transform into black cats. What you’re thinking about is fairy tale lore. Wizard of Oz. Stuff like that. That’s all fantasy. Make-believe. Myth. And Billy-”
“What?”
“Just so you know there are monsters that live inside each and every one of us.”
“There are?”
“That‘s correct. Monsters that are just waiting to be unleashed.”
Whoa! That was disturbing. I didn’t know why she had told me that.
PART EIGHT
NANCY’S STREET
CHAPTER 19
Later, in the afternoon, we drove across town to Nancy’s house in my mother’s blue Toyota Corolla.
I kid you not.
Originally, my mom, who had to literally force me to get in the car, had intended to take me with her down to police headquarters. She had resolved that she had wanted to press charges against Nancy after all.
However, oddly, as soon as we had pulled into the packed parking lot at the cop station, with its official American flag out front, waving limply in the humid breeze, my mother abruptly changed her mind, and simply drove away.
She mumbled: No! Forget it. I’m not going in there. This was a waste of time because the police won’t believe shit!
After hearing her mutter that grievance, I cringed, realizing right away that I was not in the vehicle with my mom. No. The bad lady sat behind the steering wheel.
What was the bad lady up to? I wondered. And why had she driven to Nancy’s house?
“Mom, why did you come here?” I asked for the second time, as she stopped the Toyota. Unbelievably, Nancy was outside, with a broom, sweeping grass clippings off the sidewalk. We saw the lawnmower near the edge of the driveway, behind Nancy’s black Jeep Cherokee.