Chicken (10 page)

He doesn't answer her. He gets in the car, I get in with him, and he starts driving me to my game.

Boy!

Screams the room my pearly trick leads me into: pennants, trophies, posters of ballplayers, old caramel-colored baseball mitt with scuffed ball sitting in it, pictures of a brown-haired dimply boy growing up cute: grade school, Little League team, camp friends, high-school-tuxed, and posing with a pretty young polyester-plaid baby.

The room soothes me like a binkie.

But the longer I stand there, the more wigged I get. We definitely have something in the woodshed here. This isn't a boy's room anymore. It's a museum of a boy's room. This room is dead.

‘This is Braddy's room. His real name was Bradley, but he could only say Braddy when he was a baby, and I guess it just stuck. He wanted to go to UCLA; that was his dream. And he was a very good athlete. Golf, tennis, baseball. Are you an athlete?' she asks with great expectations.

Doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out the answer to that one.

‘Yes, I am.'

‘It was his friend Aaron … I never liked that boy; he was a very bad influence. I tried to tell Braddy, but he was stubborn, just like his dad. There was no alcohol found in Braddy. Or very little alcohol … very little alcohol …'

I want to get out of this dead boy's room.

I want to get paid.

I want.

‘Would you … do me a favor?' She's filled with hesitation.

I still don't think she fully understands the nature of our transaction. That's what I'm here for. She gives me money. I do her favors.

‘Sure,' I say.

‘Uh … would you mind … uh … putting these on?'

Pearly mommy pulls a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts from the closet. I see Braddy behind her on the wall in a blown-up framed picture, dressed in the same Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts.

I'm betting it was his favorite outfit.

‘This was his favorite outfit. We used to kid him that it was his uniform. I washed it and washed it afterward to get all … you know … the stains out. It wasn't easy, believe you me, but I've always said if you want something bad enough and you're willing to work at it, you can accomplish anything. Don't you think?'

‘Definitely …' I say.

‘Would you mind?' She hands me the clothes.

‘Sure, no problem, that's cool …'

Calm on the outside, losing my shit on the inside.

‘“Cool”? Isn't that sweet? That was Braddy's favorite word. He had a wonderful vocabulary, but every other word out of his mouth was “cool.” I'm just gonna go freshen up while you change. Would you like some cookies and milk?' she asks, like Oedipus' mother in pearls.

‘Cookies and milk? Cool.' I'm laying it on thick, but trying not to milk the cookies too hard.

She giggles like a crazy forty-year-old schoolgirl and leaves me alone in her dead son's room.

A Civil War rages in my head. The North says put on the outfit, then get the money. The South says get the money, then put on the outfit. After several bloody skirmishes the South relents, and I put on the outfit. But if she doesn't come back in with my money, that's it, I don't give a damn, I am going going gone.

The clothes fit like they were made for me. I look in the mirror. I look at Braddy in the khakis and Hawaiian shirt. Then I look back in the mirror.

I've disappeared.

Sure enough, as soon as my dad and I get to George Wallace Stadium, the heavens split and spit forth a furious wet rage, raindrops the size of manhole covers, hailstones the size of bowling balls, Zeus and Thor putting on a celestial heavymetal thunderlightshow that rocks the house.

So we turn right around and head back home, rain thrashing the roof, windshield, and hood as a black funnel gyroscopes toward us up George Wallace Drive.

I'm terribly impressed by all this weather. I'm not scared. My dad's driving, and he knows exactly what he's doing.

The sleet sheets down so heavy now we can't see two feet in front of us, and the twister whirls dervishly straight at us.

But my dad never stops. All the other drivers pull their cars
over to the side of the road, but not my old man. He doesn't say anything and neither do I, but I'm awed by the squall as we crawl home through the tempest.

The next day, in the calm after the storm, when I look across the street at the house that sits up high on the hill, I see the twister has torn the roof clean off.

And my dad drove me through all of it, so I could play in a game that didn't even happen.

A flimsy blue negligee trimmed with black fox fur and red high heels walks through the door carrying a plate of brown cookies and a white glass of milk. Slimmy hips, pale belly, good gams nicely turned. Normally a sight like this would make my mojo corkscrew, but here, now, my heart plummets like the cable snapped, and I plunge fast, knowing there's a nasty crash coming and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. Fevered hotsweats flash all over me, but I'm trying to keep this blank smile on my face, all the while wanting to scream, ‘Are you mad, woman? Go put some clothes on and check yourself into a clinic, where you can get some state-of-the-art mental-health care!'

But I don't.

‘My husband gave me this and I never got a chance to wear it. Do you like it?'

My mommy trick strikes what's supposed to be a tarty pose, but she's so out of touch with her inner tart she ends up looking more like a mental patient than a sex baby.

‘Have a cookie …'

She moves the plate of cookies toward me, and there it sits, half hidden under a cookie like an invitation to the gold miners' ball: my envelope.

Casually, oh-so-casually, I pick up the cookie over my envelope, take a bite out of it, then palm the sweet succor of my money into the back pocket of the dead Braddy's khakis. I'm a hundred bucks richer and I don't give a whatever about nothing. And the
cookie's good. Moist. I like a moist cookie. I wash it down with the milk.

I silently laugh at the poem in my head as I watch myself dressed in a Hawaiian shirt pretending to be the dead boy in the picture with his sexy mommy.

Envelope in hot pocket, cookie in cool belly, and devil-may-care upon my lips, I squint my eyes, and make her into the hottyhot porno star baby of my loverstudguy movie.

‘Why don't you come over and sit on the bed with Mommy, Braddy? You don't mind if I call you Braddy, do you?' She smiles like Mother Mary on acid from the bed covered by the blanket with the sports guys on it.

‘No, that's cool,' I say.

Call me Braddy.

One Saturday afternoon when I'm ten I come home from playing ball, and the house is empty. This is unusual. My mother's home. I don't know how I know this, but I know it all the same. I call her name. She doesn't answer. I have a panic. Has she gotten sick of us, sick of Hueytown, sick of America, sick of her punishing husband? Worst of all, sick of me?

I check the house, my little heart pounding. She's gone. I know it. It never dawned on me that Mother might decide to bolt.

Breathing harder, I flopsweat into my parents' bedroom. She's not there. I go into the closet, where all the big pants and huge dresses live. The closet potpourri envelopes me: moth-balls, shoe polish, and fresh laundry dancing together.

When I found her in there one time crying, it had seemed so odd and horrible. But now I'm actually hoping she's in there crying.

She's not.

I quicksand further into fear, and the more I squirm with the thought that she's gone, the faster I sink.

My pearly trick pats the bed next to her, the cue for Braddy to sit on the dead bed with his Crazy Mommy. Is it too late to give back the envelope and get the hell out? Yes, I believe it is. Just do what she wants and everything'll be fine, you'll get some ice cream, have a hang in 3-D, and see if Sunny's got some sweet young baby for you to swing with.

When I sit on the bed, Mommy pulls me into her and starts rocking. I'm confused. Does she want me to get sexy with her? Does she want me to be her little boy? I can barely breathe, suffocated by all this Mommy, her sickly-sweet perfume pounding on my temples.

She lies back on Braddy's bed and takes me with her. I end up embryonic, head on her chest. Then she guides my mouth to her breast, and dear dead Braddy is supposed to do the thing he's genetically designed for: suckle Mommy.

I take a breath. See myself spinning this yarn out for Sunny, and him whooping and
Et toi
ing. Hey, it's just another job, just another old broad for the chicken to bang.

So I suck.

Then she guides me on top of her, between her legs, and her hips stiltingly do a spasmodic grind while she fumbles with my zipper.

I fish myself out. Fish being the operative word. As in cold and limp. We have a problem, Houston. My eyes are clamped, because I don't want to see what's underneath me. So I position myself where I can get maximum rubbage, and with my eyes closed, I find the loverstudguy voice in my head:

‘Oh, baby … give it to me you nasty little baby … you love it, don't you, baby? Oh, baby, baby, baby.'

That gets the blood moving in the right direction. Next thing I know I'm inside her, swimming in that river again, and the water,
as always, is good. Once you're in the river, it doesn't really matter how you got there, cuz the waterfall's always right up ahead.

‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?'

She grabs my head and puts me right in her face.

God I wish she hadn't said that. It jolts me right out of my river, and lands me smack-dab in the middle of this dead boy inside his mommy, who's got wet eyes I didn't even notice were crying, as she downloads her pain right into me.

I need to scream. I don't. I can't.

‘Do you love Mommy, Braddy?'

She asks again, her voice cracking like a pane of dropped glass, wild eyes pleading with her dead son while she has sex with a boy whore.

Braddy's supposed to tell Mommy he loves her, but I can't get the words out of my mouth.

Until the need to please takes over.

‘I love you, Mommy' somehow burbles out between my frozen lips.

She grabs my hips and starts pulling me into her hard, so I shut my eyes, and in the dark I manage to swim the good swim, slam the good slam, fight the good fight.

She pushes on my chest, which I suppose is a good thing, cuz she's also making little sex sounds.

Then she lurches, and I open my eyes just in time to see her lean her head over the side of the bed and unload a stream of sick onto the floor, the wave of vomit smell breaking all over me.

She pushes me off her like a mom lifting an automobile off her child who's trapped under the front tire. Then she bolts out of bed, and out the door.

I sit on the dead Braddy's bed, Mommy's secretions shining on me, and the smell of her sick cutting through me.

Frantic as only a ten-year-old boy can be, I bounce out the closet, down the hall, and through the back door. A huge acutely sloping
backyard is behind the Alabama house. It could've been a ski jump if it ever snowed in Hueytown. Which of course it never did.

I glide the sliding-glass door open and run into the backyard. It's hot outside. You never realize in Alabama how cool the airconditioning is inside until you step out into the inferno. Just walking out of the house I sweat, my blood pounding. I stand stock-still. Listen. I hear her. Crying. I can't see her yet, but I can hear her, and I'm comforted by the company of her misery.

My mother's leaning on a mammoth pine, sobbing in wet spasms. Next thing I know I'm holding her hand, and she's looking down at me, eyes deep swimming holes of sadness. I reach up hug high, and she wraps me in her arms, transfusing me with all that primal pain and absent love.

Gradually the swelling of my mom's sobs subsides, the tide rolls back out, and we walk hand in hand into the house, talking about thisandthat, nothing really, just easy talk.

My mom and I make cookies, the measuring, the beating, and the sifting pure succor, the smell of chocolate vanilla and butter melting me as it gets stronger and deeper, the treat of licking mixer blades, the raw dough slices of paradise, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the first warm bite to explode in my mouth, the ache buried once again beneath the silence.

Are we done? I don't know. I get out of bed, careful not to step in the sick on the floor. I take the envelope out of the pocket of Braddy's dead pants. I touch the hundred-dollar bill. That's better. Normally I want my tip, and God knows I earned it, but today I feel like a diver surfacing too fast, my insides bending, and if I don't get out of here quick, my brain's gonna explode.

I ditch Braddy's clothes, whip into my nuthugging elephant-bells and my too-tight Jimi Hendrix T, slip into my red hightops, and deposit my cash in my pocket. Normally pocketing my sexmoney is the highlight of any job. Not today.

I shoot like infected sperm out of Braddy's room. But I can't
leave yet. I have to make sure she's okay. I tiptoe down the hall and peek in the bedroom. It's long-day's-journey-into-night dark in there. I hear a little mumbly snuffly sound.

‘Uh … excuse me …' I say softly.

More mumbles and snuffles.

‘Um … I was just wondering if you're … okay.' Louder this time, poking my head further into the room.

Mumbles. Snuffles.

‘Do you need … are you all right?' I say so I know she'll hear me.

Her head snaps up like a hungry turtle surprised in the middle of lunch.

‘Do you want more money? Is that what you want? There's more money on the desk in the den, take whatever you want, but please, just go …' Her face is all puffy red mad like Lady Macbeth at the end when she's trying to get that damn spot out.