The Heart is Deceitful above All Things

by J. T. LeRoy

‘Whatcha got there, Buddy?’ I would ask, not turning from the cartoon.

  ‘Me? Don’t got nothin’.’ He would shake his huge head back and forth.

  ‘Nothin’, huh?’ Without looking at him, I would reach sideways and tap the raised rectangle of his stomach.

  ‘Knock-knock,’ I’d say, smiling, still watching the TV.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Fiddle.’

  ‘Fiddle? Fiddle who?’ he’d squeal like a little piggy. And I’d jump up quickly in front of him, grab his shirt, and pull it up, exposing the colorful box of caramel corn stuck to his folded-over stomach.

  ‘Fiddle Faddle all mine!’ I’d shout, and grab it off his belly and start to run. He’d always grab a belt loop on my jeans and hold me still while I’d try to escape.

  ‘You look like Road Runner running in the air, not goin’ nowheres,’ he’d say, laughing.

  ‘I’m gonna eat it all,’ I’d taunt, and laugh, ripping the box and foil inside and plowing handfuls of Fiddle Faddle into my mouth, as he’d lightly pull me back and I’d push forward. This would go on till Chester or someone’d tell us to shut up and for Buddy to get his slow ass downstairs, or we’d just get distracted by the cartoon, the Smurfs getting in danger, and slowly he’d let go. I’d sit down more or less in his lap, and we’d silently watch the TV, stuffing the sugary, sticky corn into our mouths.

  I can tell by the backfires it’s Buddy on his beat-up, loud-as-hell cycle, and I wish I were an Indian so I could put my ear to the ground and tell by the sound if he’s got someone on the backseat. Another loud bang echoes down the stairwell. My body moves automatically, and I toss handfuls of coal on the pile, but it only seems to cause more to roll down. Now the coal is getting its revenge on me. I can hear their throaty, dusky chuckling. I squat down to throw as many off the floor and onto my T-shirt as I can. The roar of the bike surrounds the house, and I scramble under a table, gathering up the coal, trying to escape.

  ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,’ I tell them as I chuck them onto my shirt. But suddenly I realize past my panting, the silence has closed in again, no engine rev, no nothing. On my hands and knees I quiet my breath. Maybe it wasn’t Buddy, just a joyrider going to ride out the ramps and bridges past the house.

  I strain to listen. I turn my head back to the stairwell, just dusted lights and particles twisting and turning as if in a slow-moving blender. I look back at the coal scattered beneath me, and there, staring up at me, is the mother, crushed and bloody.

  The footstep on the porch is heavy and almost sounds like the foot broke straight through to the ground. Then there’s more up to the front door, and the rusted screen door screeching open makes me twist my head back to the stairs like a rabbit, hypnotized and paralyzed by the sound of its stalker creeping up.

  I can feel the loud boot in my chest stomping into the house. I can’t tell if there’s a lighter step beneath it. I look up to the cellar ceiling and can see the indents on the wood boards as Buddy walks into the living room toward my TV.

  ‘Hey, where are you?’ Buddy calls. I watch the depression move around the living room above my head.

  ‘You hiding?’ I see only his steps, no one else’s. I slowly stand up.

  ‘You by your lonesome, Buddy?’ I call up, my voice wobbly.

  ‘Where you at? Quit hidin’.’ He stomps to the kitchen, closer to the cellar door.

  I gather up the coal in my T-shirt, make it into a bundle, and carry it over to the stairs.

  ‘I’m down here, Buddy.’

  ‘Where at?’ But his voice is louder, and his steps head toward me. I step into the light shaft and squint at the brightness of it. At the top of the stairs his huge outline appears, blocking the sun like a gigantic redwood.

  ‘Down here, Buddy,’ I say softly. I hear his lumbering thud as he climbs down the groaning steps. He stops and ducks through the doorway and stares at me, his large pink lips hanging open.

  ‘You ain’t supposed to be down here, I don’t think.’ He swallows loud, and his mouth flaps open again.

  ‘I needed coal, Buddy, I was out.’ I squint up at him to see his face.

  ‘Chester’s gonna be mad at you.’

  ‘He’s not with you, right?’ I lean against the stairwell.

  ‘Nope, coming, though. You really ain’t supposed to be down here. You break in?’

  ‘The door was left open, Buddy. I don’t got no superpowers.’ His stomach heaves a big sigh. The rectangular box stuck under his shirt rattles its contents with every breath.

  ‘He’s gonna whoop you bad.’ He shakes his head, making the dust whirl around him like a cyclone.

  ‘We don’t have to tell, Buddy, we can just watch our cartoons and not say nothin’. If you tell, he’ll take my TV and we can’t watch no more.’ Buddy stares at me a while, then rolls his giant eyes side to side and grunts.

  ‘Chester’ll find out.’

  ‘Please, Buddy, he won’t. I swear, Buddy, I didn’t do nothin’, just got coal. I was gonna do us Jiffy Pop.’

  ‘You don’t got that!’ His head shakes hard.

  ‘Look in the refrigerator down here.’ I point to it behind me. ‘I swear, Buddy, I was gonna, but I got no coal and I wanted to surprise you, so it’s your fault I’m down here!’

  He rubs his face. ‘For real?’ He shifts his weight.

  ‘Check and see and nail me up as a liar if it ain’t, Buddy.’ I wave him down, and he follows into the cellar to the fridge, his head hitting the hanging light bulbs.

  ‘Why’s the coal all over?’

  ‘Just fell out when I taked some.’ I bend over and pick up a few. ‘Buddy, Chester coming now?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice calm.

  ‘Said he’d meet up here with me.’ He opens the fridge door and leans inside. He spins around. ‘Jiffy Pop’s in here!’ he half shouts.

  ‘See, I told ya!’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘Ain’t no liar to ya, Buddy.’

  ‘No, no, you ain’t that at all.’ He smiles widely.

  ‘But if I get whipped, we won’t get to pop it, Buddy.’

  ‘Won’t we?’ His smile fades.

  ‘No, Buddy, no cartoons either.’ I shake my head and listen in the silence for Chester’s car.

  He stomps his foot on the concrete. ‘I wanna watch TV with ya.’

  ‘Well, Buddy, you can fix it for me.’

  ‘The Jiffy Pop?’ He turns to open the fridge to get it.

  ‘No, no, Buddy!’ I take hold of the fridge door and close it. ‘If you can clean up the coal, say you were down here . . .’

  ‘I don’t got the key.’ He shrugs, and his shadow looks like giant mountains collapsing.

  ‘Tell Chester it was open, he won’t whip you, Buddy.’

  ‘That’s lyin’, though.’ He shakes his head.

  ‘Buddy, it’s not lying ’cause you’re down here now. Right?’ He nods. ‘And I came down here to pop our corn just for you, right?’ He nods again. ‘So all you have to do is leave out the part of me bein’ down here, too, and there ain’t no part of any lie.’

  Buddy stands there thinking for a minute and laughs out loud.

  ‘You’re a smart one,’ he says, and pats my back with his oversize hand.

  ‘So are you, Buddy.’ I smile up at him, and I knock at the box still under his shirt. ‘When you are all about done we’ll eat this right down, okay?’

  ‘OK.’ He nods fast.

  ‘So I never was down here no matter what Chester or my mom says.’

  ‘OK, that’s right.’ He nods even faster.

  ‘OK, I better get upstairs, just put the coal back.’ I point to the pile. ‘I’ll take this so we never run out.’ I point to my T-shirt bundle. ‘Bye, Buddy.’ I lift it against my naked chest and start up the stairs.

  ‘See you soon.’

  I look over my shoulder and watch him picking up coal one at a time and placing it gently on the pile. I sprint up the stairs with my bundle and run out and hide it
under the house just as my mom and Chester drive up.

  I turn on my TV but keep the sound off to hear Chester yell, ‘Why was Buddy down there?’ and my mom screaming about the coal spilled all over. Finally Chester shouts at my mom to shut up about the coal, which only makes her yell louder. Buddy comes creeping out finally and sits next to me to watch TV with the sound turned down. Silently he pulls out the Fiddle Faddle, opens it, and hands the box to me. It’s wet from his stomach sweat. I dig in quietly and eat and listen to my mom let out a horrific scream.

  ‘The coal’s bleeding! It’s bleeding!’

  I reach out for the sound knob and drown my mother out.

  The retching returns with an unbelievable force, like a facial tick that just won’t stop. My whole body gathers up and jousts forward as if every limb and organ were trying to collapse itself and be born again up through my stomach, throat, and mouth. There is nothing coming out but watery spit. I picture myself a swimmer only allowed brief turns to come up for air, and I try to take breaths between heaves, but my racing panic and the cold make it impossible.

  I sit in the driver’s seat clutching the wheel, throwing up on my chest and down between my legs. I lift my head between gags, and I see her entering Burger King. My mother’s dyed black hair is swept over her face, reflecting almost a rainbow in the morning light. The black metallic raincoat is clutched too tightly around her, and her rubber boots covering her bare feet instead of shoes almost fall off with each step.

  It’s her. I push the car door open and run, my stomach rising into my throat. I pull open the glass Burger King doors and run in half-speed, past the children in cardboard crowns staring with their parents, as I run toward the woman in black at the counter. I hear her order two French Toast Sticks.

  ‘It’s poison! It’s poison!’ I gasp between retches. I grab her coat, somehow no longer black in the fluorescent light, and I fall down onto the tile floor as her coat comes off her shoulders into my hand.

  A face I don’t recognize clouds what should be my mother’s face leaning above me, calling for help. She kneels down and puts the jacket under my head. I raise my hand and hit her again and again, like hitting a TV to make the picture stop jumping, to stop her face from changing like it was doing. Someone grabs my hand and holds it still. Faces spin above me, and I fall into the comfort of nothingness.

  Chester never did find out I got into the cellar; Buddy told him he’d gotten the coal for me and that’s why it’d fallen all over the floor.

  My mom never felt easy about having the big pile down there to begin with. It had come with the house. As long as the pile was covered and stayed in its place, well, she could ignore it; but it had moved and even bled. No one could explain that one. Chester said she was seeing things, trick of the light, but my mom knew. She’d seen a piece come apart and bleed from its evil red heart.

  She knows and I know. There will be revenge. Even though Chester and everyone, even Buddy, got rid of the coal from the basement, the black stain memory of it is there on the gray concrete. Even scrubbing it with bleach, which my mom made Chester do, couldn’t remove it.

  My mom hardly goes down to the basement anymore. She paces and smokes, moving in jerky fast movements like a marionette, talking quickly to herself. Chester often gives her special vitamins to ease her mind and calm her down.

  She has Chester remove the stove. I feel relieved and keep meaning to get rid of my small pile under the house. It hangs over my head, the coal waiting for me, plotting how to burn me up alive. I keep the baby coal whose mother I had destroyed; I keep him with me at all times in my back pocket as a hostage.

  I jump when the big explosion comes downstairs, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Me and my mother have been waiting and expecting something. And it happens like we knew it would without knowing we did. She is standing in the kitchen on one side of the cellar stairs, I’m walking toward the kitchen to help her open a beer can, her hands are too shaky.

  ‘It’s the crystal,’ she says, and laughs too loudly. I ask her why would ashtrays do that, but she only says, ‘Huh?’

  In a way I feel happy it has finally come. Lately I’d catch her watching me under a haze of sour smoke, staring at me while she paced; I’d turn the sound on the TV lower, but she never said anything, just watched me, hardly blinking. She’d ask me to do things like to bring her the wine bottle from the cabinet as she sat outside on the car tire porch swing. When I’d do something wrong like drop the wine bottle, smashing it all over the floor, she said nothing, did nothing, didn’t even tell Chester. I took a piece of the glass from the shattered green bottle and ran it lightly across my stomach till I bled, just to keep everything in balance.

  When she screamed and hit, it was Chester that got it, not me. She’d take off her shoes and throw them at him and call him ‘stupid fucking cunt’ because he didn’t get enough for their crystal. He would cover his head and slink down to the basement. She didn’t threaten to leave, though. She never said, ‘Fuck you, that’s it.’ And she left to go to town less and less. She stayed at home upstairs with me, pacing or rocking in the tire, figuring things out aloud I couldn’t understand, and waited.

  And I, like she, started eating only Pringles, drinking only Canada Dry ginger ale. When Buddy would bring out the boxes from under his shirt, I’d shake my head no, until he stopped bringing them. My mom and I watched Chester and the others take their cheeseburgers downstairs, trying to hide the bags past my mother’s wide-eyed glare. ‘Poison,’ she’d hiss.

  We stand almost facing each other, ten feet on either side of the cellar stairs as the basement explodes. The floor below us jumps and bangs and roars like a river-flooded waterfall. It’s followed by synchronized popping like a fireworks display. And it’s Buddy that comes out first, fire running up and down his clothes like some fire-eater’s trick. Then some other guy I didn’t even know, on fire like Buddy, screaming, followed Buddy out the door, out of the house.

  I look at my mom slowly and deliberately smiling, and I understand. She stares back at me as more glass and miniexplosions break from down below us. A big tongue of flame leaps out of the basement toward us. I follow my mother out the door.

  The man I don’t know is rolling in the yellow dirt, screaming for help. I don’t see Buddy. My mom walks to the car that had been our car and then became Chester’s. He’d fixed up the broken-down Toyota Tercel a used-car salesman had given my mom, turned it into a ‘souped-up, super-JAP bitch, ready to outrun any sheriff’s cruiser’. He’d even painted it demon red, his favorite color.

  She gets in and opens the passenger’s side for me. As I climb in, another man comes stumbling out. I slam and lock my door. He runs in circles, patches of fire sprouting like grass on his arms, back, and legs. My mother starts the car. Another small blast that makes the car shake breaks the upstairs windows; little red orange flames dance inside.

  The man beats wildly at himself as if a swarm of bees is attacking him. My mother backs up the car and the man suddenly turns and lunges toward us, his skin a rusty, puckered brown, flaking off him like autumn leaves. His blue eyes stare out too wide from his blackened face; his lids seem to have melted away.

  He waves his pink-and-black arms, chasing us as she accelerates backward. The wheels spin in the dirt and the car lurches forward, almost hitting him as we pull out of the driveway and ride past him. I turn and watch him try to run after the car. I don’t need to tell him it isn’t his and my mother’s car anymore. It is my mom’s and mine again, the way it is supposed to be. I swivel more in my seat and watch Chester give up chasing our demon red Toyota and just stand still, howling.

  At first I thought it was my mother’s voice floating in the air around me.

  ‘He’s finally coming to.’ I force my eyes open to try to find her, but the bright lights only make a blurry halo of the woman standing at the foot of my bed. I open my mouth to speak, but my throat is swollen and sore.

  ‘Just you lay still,’ she says, sounding half li
ke my mom and half not. ‘You go drinking down poison, now you want to go jumping out of bed.’ Her tongue makes clucking noises. A different woman with a soothing voice leans over me.

  ‘You’re in the hospital,’ she tells me. ‘There’s an IV in your arm and a little tube in your nose to help you breathe. Just relax and let them be.’ Her hand rests on my forehead. ‘OK, sweetie?’ I nod, my head stiff and ill fitting on my neck.

  ‘Your grandma’s here,’ she says, petting my head softly.

  ‘Momma?’ I whisper in a croak.

  ‘In a hospital, same as you. Fitting, isn’t it? Gone from us not six months.’ I strain my head to see my grandmother turn to the nurse. The nurse takes her hand from my head and turns toward my grandmother. ‘Not six months and he ends up half-dead here, and she half-crazed in the mental ward.’

  I drop my head back down and run my tongue over my parched, cracked lips. I suddenly feel very thirsty.

  ‘They hauled her off middle of the Memorial intersection, stark raving naked, preaching the doomsday.’ I hear the nurse make ‘mmm, mmm, mmm’ sounds.

  ‘Well, she didn’t learn that false preaching from her father, that’s for sure!’

  ‘You never can tell,’ the nurse says, and I drift under the hum of machines buzzing like prayers.

  We drive on in silence, saying nothing, as if nothing happened––it felt as if nothing ever had. We had passed Buddy running halfway to town, not on fire anymore and not black like Chester, but sooty and red, his hair on his head seeming about gone. We hadn’t even slowed.

  We drive, stopping once for gas, my mom paying from a small bill roll tucked inside her bra under her T-shirt.

  We drive till we get to some bigger town I don’t recognize. I’d fallen asleep with no dreams. I wake up as she stops the car outside a Salvation Army usedclothing store.

  ‘Wait here,’ she says flatly. And as she gets out, ‘Keep the windows shut and your thoughts pure.’ Then she disappears into the paper-mirrored doors of the Salvation Army.

  The mothball smell of the clothes fills the car when she returns. I look in the bag, all the clothes are black.