Before (12 page)

He thinks of his sisters looking at the patches on his new shirt. Faith will say something good about his air force stars and stripes, he is sure of it. She is older than him, and Cindy is younger. Dexter will just keep sitting and watching television, and when Mom comes home pretty late, she and Dexter will go under the blanket in front of the television, laughing. Simon will be asleep then, so maybe his mother will see the patches tomorrow.

At home Dexter is in front of the television, as Simon knew he'd be. Dexter has a scraggly beard and small dark eyes and his boots are on the table. Simon's mother will tell him not to do that. Dexter is pretty much home all day and usually he makes macaroni and cheese for everyone for supper even though Faith has learned how to do it and Simon likes it when she does because then Dexter doesn't even come into the kitchen. Simon hears Majo, their Irish setter, barking from where she is chained to the barn. Dexter chews on a fingernail and looks at Simon just for a second and then keeps watching, and someone is saying,
I'll give you the money or you can just choose what is behind door number three. Your choice. Okay, folks, she is going for door number three!
And the audience is applauding and then the voice is saying,
And what do we have there? We have a donkey cart.
And a funny horn is blowing and the audience is groaning and applauding and laughing and Simon would like to go and see the donkey cart but he does not want to be around Dexter. When seven o'clock comes
Batman
will be on and Dexter always lets the three of them watch when he goes into the garage to work on his motorcycle. Simon runs up the hallway now. He is Batman, chasing the Riddler! He bursts into his sisters' door and Faith is folding some clothes and they scream and Cindy laughs and Faith says, Who gave you the really cool shirt? And Simon says, Oh, hm, I got it from Mrs. Dorling, we made it at her house. And Faith says with wide eyes, She gave it to you? And Simon says, Mm-hm, and Faith says, I have this friend, Mandy, and her mom does iron-on stuff with these flower patches and I'd like to learn how to do that. And Cindy says,
Iron on!
And Simon takes a towel from Faith's pile and folds it around his neck like a cape and points and says, Now, Robin, after the Riddler! And he runs down the hallway and out across the television and Dexter says, God
damn
it Simon and Simon runs back and reminds himself to just run into the kitchen instead of the living room, and back in the girls' room Cindy wants to be Batgirl but she has stubbed her toe and is crying, and that's no good to be around, Faith will make her feel better, and Simon and Robin race back down the hallway, into the kitchen, which is now Gotham City, all these buildings around, all these lights. And in the girls' room again Faith says, Did you find the Riddler? I'm Batgirl, and the Riddler's got a debt to pay and Faith's fist is in the air and they are racing down the hallway and Simon goes across the television again, feels that his sister has stopped behind him, knows what he's done just as the couch creaks, and Dexter grabs his shoulder, spins him around, steps on both his feet, Simon looking up, up at that mountain of angry Dexter, chest in red shirt and then beard and the dark eyes, looking angry but like Dexter might laugh too, and the audience beside Simon on the color television is shrieking with laughter. Dexter says, Go into another room, Simon! And Simon is unable to move because those feet are crushing his, it hurts so much, he struggles, he falls in terror onto his haunches, his two sisters watching him, wide-eyed, from the doorway.

Can't fucking move now, after fucking running everywhere? Too fucking bad, Simon.
Weird eyes of Dexter, Simon swallows hard.
Okay, boy
. The feet release and Simon falls, scrambles, gets up again and runs past his sisters, throwing himself down the hallway, already crying with the terror of it, into his mother's towel in the bathroom, burying himself in its smell, the smell of coconuts.
Wait a minute you little fuck. You fucking bother me through the whole fucking show, can't fucking sit still, going and fucking
go
ing
. Here the voice gets lost in a guttural rage and the boy tries to turn and run past that huge body, to run into the evening, down the steps, outside maybe to Mrs. Dorling's place, because he knows what is coming, but the rough hand has him by the shirt, flings him down the hallway toward the kitchen. The hand opens the door to the garage and Simon gets the bag of rice from the shelf out there and gives it to Dexter and watches while Dexter pours it onto the linoleum floor. Dexter takes a long time doing it, spreading it thin, and Simon feels in his stomach like he might throw up, he might scream. His sisters are gone now, ordered outside; he is grateful, does not want them near, to see Dexter pointing at the floor, saying,
Okay, kid, pray
.

Simon kneels, his hands clasped in front of him; he is supposed to ask for forgiveness,
because I do not think of others
. And the rice is not so bad right away—you almost believe that this time it will be different, you're used to it now, it won't hurt so bad—but then it is digging through his jeans, burning, and Dexter leaves the room and Simon lets the tears come, then tells himself Batman wouldn't be stupid and cry, but he can't help it, and he brushes the tears from his face but when he moves his arms it makes his knees feel even more like they are on pins of fire and then his back aches horribly and he weeps openly from the pain of every time he shifts to make his back better there is the new pain at the knees, and he tries to keep his hands clasped before him because if Dexter catches him not praying it will just go longer, and he weeps with his anger at Dexter. Dexter turns up the television loudly in the next room, that audience laughing and yelling out door numbers, and Simon tries to think about the laughter and about what that donkey and cart might have looked like. Faith and Cindy are thinking of him outside, he knows they are; they are maybe down at the pond near the tobacco field where the bullfrogs in the evening start making so much noise. Faith will cry, but she will keep Cindy busy.

Fifteen minutes by the kitchen clock now: Simon hears the dog barking during the quiet TV moments so maybe Faith and Cindy are throwing Majo sticks, maybe Majo is running like she does, diving from the land to the water, catching the stick before it splashes.
Oh God my knees
. Simon might run for the door—but he won't make it across the room, the way his knees are, and Dexter will hit him then, and he'll spend more time on the rice. The cookie jar by the toaster has a smiling brown face, and Simon stares at it, thinks of it alive, a cartoon with arms moving, hands waving, eyebrows raising with that smile. Simon takes a chance, drops his hands onto his thighs, then onto the floor, lifting himself a little, and that is so much better until his arms cannot hold out any longer. He takes a deep breath and puts his knees down and his hands on his hips and his knees flame up and he moves his hands so that they hold the small of his back; he grits his teeth, because the pins are so much worse now. He listens all the time for the creaking of the couch. Twenty minutes. The show ends, the host wishing everyone good luck,
hoping all your deals are happy ones,
and the TV lowers and Simon wipes his tears, fiercely, quickly, his knees flaming—you try to stop the crying when you hear the TV lower, the couch creaks, and he puts his hands before him, clasped, and there is the relief of Dexter's footsteps at the doorway.
Okay, kid, sweep it up,
Dexter says, and Simon rises painfully, gasping, brushes rice from his knees, the palms of his hands, gets the broom and scoop from the corner, near his mother and Dexter's bedroom. He can see the edge of the bed there, the window looking onto the driveway. They do that thing in there, sometimes they leave the door open. He sweeps the rice, every bit of it with Dexter watching from a kitchen chair, the television still low, the magical sounds of
Bewitched
coming on. Sweeps and scoops into a small paper bag, then goes to the garage for the shovel and takes the bag into the yard, into the trees at the edge of the field behind the house, Dexter watching from the back door. Simon buries the bag so that his mother will never find the rice. When he is finished he puts the shovel back into the cement-smelling garage and does not look at Dexter as he goes by him. He goes into the house and down the hallway quickly to his bedroom. He shuts his door, locks it, throws himself on the bed. Dexter's voice seems to vibrate through that wood.
Spew that fucking nervous energy through this house all you want, kid. We'll make sure you spend as much time on that floor. What kind of life have you had? You just do whatever the fuck you want, huh? You just run all over the fucking house, like nobody else is alive. Well you won't do that shit with me. Fuck!
The door bangs with Dexter's fist, and Simon feels it like a jump off a high place in his stomach, and his heart pounds in his ears. Then the footsteps are leaving and the television is loud again.

I wish you weren't alive,
Simon thinks to himself. He lies facedown on his bed and holds his chest and throat tightly so as not to weep: he will not let Dexter hear him weeping again. But it comes; he tries to swallow it, his stomach jerking for a long time. After a while he can hear the cicadas through the window. It is all right for them to listen; he has no secrets from them. His mother's sunflowers brush against the screen of the window.
She
and
she
and
she
and
she
they say. They are always awake; even when night comes it is like they have small fires of the sun in them. It is all right for them to listen, too.

*   *   *

His mother's punishments for his energy are different; she does only, she says, what her father did to her,
and somehow we have to get you to calm down, Simon!
When he runs feverishly through the house, forgetting himself, she will catch him and make him walk the same pattern that he has run in, sometimes one hundred evolutions, making him count. Faith is usually playing Go Fish at the kitchen table with Cindy, and she watches her brother sadly as he paces. Sometimes it really looks like Faith is going to cry. All that walking is boring, and you want to scream, because other than counting off you are not allowed to talk, but it is not so hard and crazy like Dexter's punishments. Simon keeps note of everything he passes until he can close his eyes and recite, in a whisper,
Old clock with pendulum, hallway dark brown rug, Mama in her picture with Cindy and Faith, me in the yellow baseball shirt, mirror, turn into my room, turn around, hallway, kitchen with Faith and Cindy playing cards, paper roll on wall, kitchen clock, refrigerator, phone, old clock with pendulum …
The naming of things makes it a little better. Dexter occasionally looks up from the couch, the television blaring before him. Sometimes without thinking about the rule not to talk Simon will start reciting out loud, and Dexter will tell him,
Goddamnit, Simon, say it to yourself.

Simon never mentions to his mother how Dexter forces him onto the rice. Dexter has told him and his sisters that he will just find worse ways to punish Simon if they tell, and they believe him. But one evening, when Simon's knees have broken open and bled, and Dexter has gone to work at the bar and his mother is home from her waitressing job early, Simon is in his underwear walking to the bathroom and his mother says,
Honey, what happened?
and he says,
I fell today, in the woods,
and Faith comes out of her bedroom with Cindy behind her, and Faith has her chin stuck out and she says, Tell her. And their mother's face darkens and she says, Tell me what and Cindy's eyes grow large behind Faith and Faith tells all of it, and leads their mother out to the edge of the forest with a flashlight and shovel to prove it, digging everything up, the disintegrating bags and insects and the bloody rice.

There is a holy row when Dexter returns home. From his bed, full of hope and fear, Simon hears it—Dexter's voice rising in anger,
Fucking lying kids;
his mother more angry, a thunderstorm in the house, saying twice the words Dexter does until Dexter is not talking much at all. Simon hears the door slam, and he hopes that means Dexter is leaving (maybe leaving for good!?); he only breathes better when he hears Dexter's truck slamming through gears, turning out of the driveway. Then there is the sound of the night and Simon sleeps, full of soaring joy, comforted by these sunflowers at his window screen with their sun fires in their heads. They say
she
and
she
and
she
and
she
.

The sunflowers wake him much later, scratching at the window.

She
and
she
and
she
and
she
.

The moon makes a stripe over Simon's legs. The cicadas sing outside. Simon hears laughter: his mother. He rises and goes to the kitchen. At the end of the kitchen is the bedroom door, slightly open. On the kitchen table is the blue square of paper, white traces of powder. Simon goes to the bedroom door, hears that breathing that he has heard many times before, his mother and Dexter doing the thing. He glances in, moonlight spilling across the bed, where his mother's dirty feet are across Dexter's back, the rest of her under him, and he hears her voice whispering,
Oh God that's good oh my fucking God,
and Simon turns back and for a moment he leans against the doorjamb, feeling heat in his face and having great trouble catching a breath. Outside Majo begins barking incessantly, knowing that something within their home is very, very wrong.

Ghost-Man is struck dumb here, holding on to his grocery cart, staring, warning voices going off in his head but unable to stop gawking like an idiot at Alison Tiner's hands on the pliable bag of rice, and he turns quickly to the display of instant rice himself, looks hard at the bright boxes. Alison Tiner is walking up the aisle, the rice in her cart. The benevolent huckster, Uncle Ben, suggests that everything will be all right if you just cook the right meal,
100% Naturally Seasoned, Trusted for over Fifty Years, “Perfect Every Time.”
Ghost-Man wipes the wetness from his cheeks with his hand. Down the next aisle he grasps cans of chili and Alison Tiner is just turning at the end of the taco fixings; she picks up mustard in the condiments section there and then she is gone and Ghost-Man moves his grocery cart over the smooth, brown-flecked tiles and makes the turn and here is the fruit, the palate of colors, and Ghost-Man gets near Alison Tiner and soon both of them are looking over apples, bright hard red. She does not notice him, for there are many people here; Ghost-Man smells the earth in these apples, smells Kentucky, sees beautiful Mrs. Dorling, her bare, tanned feet in grass, her slender wrists. Alison Tiner turns and pushes ahead, past the display refrigerator with its pasta and pesto and when Ghost-Man sees her again, as he pushes his cart with chili cans and Macintosh reds and a small bottle of soy milk, she is down at the salad dressings, considering.
You consider, woman: your face growing older, your personality hidden all of those years ago by the levity of youth, now the face lined when you concentrate, angry crow's-feet at the eyes. A fat-free dressing, lite ranch, for the feast! For the food that will draw your man in.