Almost Home (4 page)

I told her that I wanted to live with my father, to which she coldly (and in hindsight, it seems, rather hatefully) responded, “Well, he doesn’t want you to.” I knew he had never said any such thing, but it still hurt to hear it. She was so ignorant that she couldn’t imagine the depth to which such a remark wounded me. To add insult to injury, she informed me with a spiteful gleam in her eye that she had already told my father that she would soon be getting married, and I had better start getting used to the idea.

I don’t want to paint my mother as being malicious, because I don’t believe she is. She just was not capable of feeling things very deeply, or at lest not as deeply as I did, even back then. Not anger, love, hatred, or anything else. You could insult her, tell her you hated her, and she played off the drama of the moment, but the very next day she acted as if nothing ever happened.

At any rate, the moment she said that, I felt as if there was no comfort to be found anywhere in the world. I felt so cold inside, and there was nowhere to turn.

By the look on her face, I could tell she took great pleasure in informing me of this. It wasn’t a happy or gleeful expression—it seemed more defiant than anything. It created a rift in my heart. I felt like Jekyll and Hyde—part of me still wanted to seek some sort of comfort from her, for her to tell me that everything was going to be okay. The other part wanted to say things that would go straight to her heart and hurt her the way I was hurting. I wanted to spew bile and venom that would wipe the smug expression from her face forever. My child’s mind didn’t yet possess such magick words, though. It would be many years before I learned to spit hatred with that degree of precision.

So, who was this man that would soon become my stepfather? His name was Jack Echols and he was twenty years older than my mother, though you wouldn’t guess it by looking at her. A steady diet of greasy fried food, cigarettes, no exercise, and a dead-end life had all come together to give my mother the look of years she didn’t yet own.

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After breaking up with my father she had started going to a protestant church not far from our house. I still don’t know why, as I considered the activity to be pure torture. This is where she met Jack, who had been attending services there for an eternity, or at least since Jesus, the carpenter, built the place with his very own hands.

I can still close my eyes and see the first time I noticed him. Church had just come to an end, and I rushed out into the parking lot to play a quick game of tag with all the other little heathens (That’s what my dad called me and all kids, by the way—heathens), when I looked up to see Jack walking out the front door with his arm around my mom. “What’s this?” My mind snapped to attention like a dog’s ears standing up at a strange sound. It only interested me for a moment, then I went back to what I was doing.

They never did go out on dates more than a handful of times, and it seemed that most of their conversations took place in that cursed parking lot. After church my grandmother would arrive to pick us up, being smart enough to avoid the place herself. My mother, sister, and I would all get in the car, then Jack would come dragging out at the end of the herd and cut a path straight to us. My mother would roll down her window and Jack would stand there talking to her until every other car had left the lot and our brains were cooking in our heads from the heat of the brutal summer sun. Years later when I heard the teachings on purgatory, that’s what I imagined it to be like—not quite hell, but bad enough to make you curse the bastard hanging onto the window and forcing you to grow old in this desolate place.

Perhaps you will think me prejudiced in the manner that most children would be when they see a stranger/stepparent trying to take the place of another family member. I won’t deny that such resentment existed, but I can also state that I’ve never encountered a single person in my life that had anything good to say about him. He was a hateful bastard who only grew worse with age.

When the courtship started, my mother was in her twenties, Jack was in his forties. He was bald on top, but he practiced the art of the comb-over. He had a ring of hair that grew around his ears, and he combed it over the top of his head, which was as bald as an egg. Most of his teeth were missing, and the few he had left were yellow and crooked like old tombstones. His skin had been cooked to the texture of leather by the sun, and his stomach was bloated with ulcers. I wondered what appealed to my mother about such a creature, but the answer is quite simple. Jack Echols was the very first man to pay attention to my mother after my father left, and that’s all it took. She was striving for attention, and he gave it to her.

VI

Other than being distressed by the disintegration of my family, this was a fairly interesting period in my childhood. It was when I began to develop strong likes and dislikes, and to ask questions about the world at large.

I had recently encountered the concept of nuclear war, and I thought about it constantly. Actually, I dwelled on it in outright terror. I would look at the sky and think about how at this very moment a nuclear warhead could be speeding towards me. My entire second grade school year was spent awaiting the destruction of the world. I remember getting this idea from my mother, although I can’t remember the entire context of the conversation. I do recall asking her how she knew with utmost certainty that the world would come to a fiery end through nuclear war, and she informed me that it was in the Bible.

This in turn caused me to look at the Bible as some sort of magick talisman that could be used for either good or evil, like a puritanical Magic 8-ball. I figured that if such information was in the Bible, then certainly all adults knew it. That lead me to wonder why anyone would launch these missiles if they knew it would bring about the end of the world. Surely they knew better, right? So who could be the responsible party? Only one answer made sense—it had to be the devil.

The Bible said the devil was the bad guy, so he must be the one who would launch the nuclear attack. It made sense to me.

The only thing that could soothe and calm me during this era was music.

That’s continued to be true throughout my life, only my taste in music has changed. My favorites were Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper. My mother put my sister and me to bed and turned on the radio to sing us to sleep. I grew addicted, and still have trouble falling asleep without music now.

There was something very comforting about being in a dark, cold room with the music playing quietly. I didn’t have to think about anything, the music took me away from myself, and I got lost in it. I needed it like a drug. It got so bad that I pretended to be sick at school just so I could come home and lie in bed listening to music. It was like being adrift on the ocean at night. Nothing else had the same effect.

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My best friend during this period was the next-door neighbor, Adam. He was one of the most bizarre and unique individuals I’ve ever known, always into his own thing no matter what everyone else was doing. You couldn’t take anything he said at face value, as he was the Baron von Munchausen of the elementary school. My grandmother listened with great interest as Adam told one outlandish and outrageous tale after another. He kept going for as long as you listened to him, and he was sort of like the traveling gleeman for our side of the street (we weren’t allowed to cross it yet). His insane tales ended once someone gave us money for popsicles and sent us on our way. We both carried plastic swords and we enacted some of the more adventurous tales if we could find an audience who would sit still for it.

We spent every minute that we weren’t in school together, and when his family moved away it left a huge hole in my life. I had no other friends because I had spent all my time with Adam. I became extremely lonely and didn’t know what to do with my time. I spent my evenings watching cartoons and fighting with my sister.

Eventually I became friends with another kid on the street names Joe, and we stuck together even more than Adam and I had. Every weekend for years I stayed the night at his house watching MTV and eating fast food. Those were great times. Even after he moved to the other side of town, his family came and picked me up for the weekend. When my grandmother decided we were going on a camping trip, Joe came along with us. I don’t believe we ever had a single fight.

He didn’t have the charisma of Adam, but he made up for it with his steadfast loyalty.

In our neighborhood the last months of the year were pure magick. From October through December I felt warm and content inside, never wanting it to end. I’ve spent my entire life trying to recapture that feeling, but have never succeeded. On Halloween the street witnessed roving packs of ghosts, witches, skeletons, devils, fairies, clowns, hobos and vampires. This was the heart of the southland, a Mayberry-like place the rest of the world has never understood.

Everyone on the street knew each other and no one worried about poison in the candy. The adults stopped on the sidewalk to exchange greetings while we rang doorbells and yelled “Trick or Treat!” I miss it so much it can break my heart if I think about it too long.

Halloween was nothing compared to Christmas. I could say it was our tradition to put up the Christmas tree and decorations the day after Thanksgiving, but that was the entire town’s tradition. Giant candy canes and Christmas wreaths
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were on every light pole, and banners saying “Merry Christmas” and giving the date of the annual Christmas parade were stretched across the streets.

At our house, my grandmother put her entire soul into decorating for the holidays. In addition to the tree (an artificial plastic tree that we pulled from the attic year after year), there were lights around the windows, wreaths on the doors, gar-land hanging from the ceiling, and a blow-up Santa Claus standing next to the television. There was even a small plastic tree standing on the kitchen table.

Everything was incredibly warm and welcoming, and it felt like “home.” I spent a great deal of time lying with my head beneath the Christmas tree, watching the lights flash. I listened to Christmas records my grandmother played on the stereo.

Those days are gone forever, as is my grandmother. I can no longer even separate the memory of my grandmother from that feeling of home, and I mourn the loss of both every year. Nothing was the same after my mother remarried.

VI

My mother’s wedding to Jack was nice enough as far as white trash shindigs go. I am very proud of my southern heritage, and our family has a long, strong southern history; more than one of our relatives fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. I greatly resent anyone who believes the south contains only white trash and rednecks, because I consider myself to be the product of a long line of southern gentlemen. Anyone who doubts it need only look upon the imposing figure of my paternal grandfather to view the epitome of the specimen. He was dignified and reserved, well mannered, and carried the air of aristocracy found in gentlemen of superior breeding in the Old South. Jack Echols was no southern gentleman.

The wedding ceremony was in an old church that stood next to the highway.

Our family came, Jack’s family came, and any observer could point out who belonged on each side. Jack had six kids, the oldest of which was only a year or two younger than my mother. There was no music, no flowers, and not much of a reception afterwards. My mother wore a blue gauzy dress and Jack was in his shirtsleeves. He didn’t even put on a tie. The ceremony was incredibly short, and after Jack slipped the minister ten dollars for his trouble, everyone climbed back into their cars and drove back to my grandmother’s house.

There was cake and ice cream as if we were at a birthday party in hell. A photo of my mother cutting the cake was snapped, while I stood behind her grimacing.

A friend saw that picture years later and said, “You looked just like Sid Vicious.”

I probably felt like Sid Vicious at that point.

After the cake was gone, my sister went to spend the night with one of her friends while I went with my mother and Jack back to his apartment—an ancient and rundown building that once served as a motel. The place was hideous and decrepit with green linoleum floors and doors that still locked with a skeleton key. It only had two bedrooms (really one and a half) and since three of Jack’s kids still lived there, that meant seven of us would be cramped into this tiny space. I desperately wanted to go back to my grandmother’s house.

I loved the school I had been going to for the past three years, which was called Maddox. It was less than a block from my grandmother’s house, and I 16

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walked the distance every day with my sister and Adam or Joe. This school was another of those things that felt like home to me, but now I had to leave it behind for a new school, which I detested. I was stuck in this rat-hole apartment and this horrendous school (where it seemed that all the kids had overly large heads) for almost two years before finally moving back to a better neighborhood in West Memphis. It wasn’t in the Maddox school district, but it was the next closest thing. The school was called Bragg Elementary, and its official symbol was a smiling bumblebee, which everyone proudly wore on his or her shirt.

The place we moved to almost defies description, because it was neither house nor apartment. It was the back few rooms of a church. A few months earlier Jack had forced us to start attending services at a place called “The Church of God.” It was a real freakshow where people spoke in tongues and rolled around on the floor screaming when they had the spirit. The minister was a morbidly obese man who you could hear breathing from across the room.

Twice every Sunday, once in the morning and once at night, he preached about how the end of the world was at hand. Before leaving he always got out a bottle of olive oil and asked if anyone had any infirmities they needed to be healed of. Anyone who stepped forward would have olive oil smeared on their face before the minister shoved him to the ground amidst a flurry of shouting while a horde of rabid believers waved their hands in the air and howled at the ceiling.