The Heart is Deceitful above All Things Page 2

  I’ll let them cover me in kisses. I’ll let them hug me long and hard. I’ll let them give me hot cocoa and cookies because I’m such a brave boy.

  I’ll let them, if only their house were down there instead of the tight rows and rows of peeling, rotting bungalows.

  At that ledge, overlooking the worn and ruined houses, I understand the world has suddenly become as frightening, violent, and make-believe as the cartoons I wasn’t supposed to watch.

  When Sarah walks into the brick police station I scream so loud, everything goes silent except her high heels clicking toward me.

  I cling to the officer who found me, showed me how to use his radio, bought me a chocolate ice cream, and let me wear his cap after I let a nurse clean my cuts.

  ‘Your mommy’s here.’ He leans down and tries to push me toward her. They speak above me, and I can smell the strong perfume on her, not like my mom’s clean laundry scent.

  I hold tighter and bury my face in the soft dark blue weave of his pants.

  ‘I thought you wanted to go home to your mommy,’ he says, looking down at me. I shake my head no.

  ‘He’s just confused,’ she says. She crouches and whispers into my ear, ‘If you come with me now, I’ll take you back to your momma.’ I turn to face her. She smiles, winks at me, and puts out her hand, tan and thin with long red nails.

  I slowly let go of the policeman’s leg and give her my hand, wrapped in a bandage and stained with chocolate ice cream that looks like blood.

  ‘Good boy.’ The officer pats my head. I let my mother lead me through the brightly lit fluorescent station, but my head is turned back to the policeman, watching him wave, and smile good-bye, as if I know I will never see the police in that magic, protective light ever again.

  She only nods her head while blowing smoke out of the window as we drive from the police station.

  ‘Take me home,’ I repeat again and again. She stares straight ahead. She slides her palm up to her forehead in a heavy, slow movement, like ironing.

  Soon the road looks familiar, the cracked two-lane tar and the big, metal factory, its pipes connecting to itself like silver luggage handles. Panic lurches in my chest, and I turn toward her in my seat.

  ‘You said you’d take me home!’ Her lips suck in as she chews them.

  I pound on the window. ‘Lemme out, lemme out, lemme out!’ The car veers suddenly off the road, opposite the gated factory. The ripping sound of the emergency brake reminds me of my daddy pulling up to our house, and I sob. She holds her cigarette up and blows on its red, dusty tip till it glows like a night lamp.

  ‘It’s bad to smoke,’ I tell her between gasps. ‘My momma, my momma says so.’

  She looks over at me. ‘Is that what they say?’ she says, real singsong-like. I nod, spit I can’t swallow dribbling from my mouth.

  ‘Well, I’ll have to make myself a note to thank them very, very much.’ She sucks hard on the cigarette, then pulls out the ashtray, crumbles it into it, and blows a stream of white smoke into my face.

  ‘Does that meet your spec-i-fications?’ She smiles, closemouthed.

  The tears are bubbling in my eyes, hazing everything like a cotton film.

  ‘OK, OK. Now before you start wailing, let’s you and I have us a little chat.’ She turns to me, a leg bent on the bench-type seat between us. I blink at my tears, and the picture clears some, but more are coming too fast.

  ‘Let’s get this straight. I’m your mother. I had you. You came right from here.’ She pulls up her denim skirt and pats the flat dark under her pantyhose, between her legs. I look away, out the window, toward the blurry factory.

  ‘No, you pay me mind.’ She reaches out and turns my face toward her. Before I can scream she says quickly, ‘Your momma and daddy want you to hear me. If you want to go home to them, you listen.’ I swallow my scream and nod.

  ‘You gonna listen?’

  ‘I go home!’

  ‘You gonna listen?’ She reaches under my chin, raising my face to hers. I nod and then shake my head free of her hand. I hiccup hard, and chocolate ice cream runs down my mouth and shirt.

  ‘Jesus . . .’ She grabs an end of my shirt and wipes at my face, hard, not the soft dabs my momma does, even as I wriggle my face away from her. I don’t try to pull away, though.

  As she rubs my face, pressing my lips into my teeth, she says, ‘I had you when I was just fourteen years old, can’t say I wanted you; can’t say I didn’t do rabbits’ tricks to try and get rid of you.’ She spits on my chin and wipes hard, ignoring my band-aid.

  ‘If my father’d let me, you’d long been flushed down some toilet. You understand?’ I nod, even though I don’t. I sob quietly, my lips sucking in.

  ‘They took you from me . . . goddamn social worker cunts.’ She lets my face go and looks past me to the factory. ‘Now I’m eighteen now . . .’ She looks at me, nods. ‘I got you back.’ She pats my head. ‘See, you’re mine.’

  ‘Take me home,’ I whisper.

  ‘Do you hear what I’m saying to you?’ she yells. She reaches down into her denim bag and pulls out another cigarette. I turn toward my window.

  ‘Take me home,’ I say louder.

  ‘They don’t want you.’ She flicks her lighter.

  ‘Take me home!’ I yell, and hit the glass.

  ‘You goddamn, spoilt brat . . .’ She grabs my hand and twists me toward her. ‘Don’t make me whoop you!’

  I gasp hard, and a little more chocolate ice cream dribbles out. She jerks my arms above my head, puffs on her cigarette, and exhales, her head shaking the smoke out like a released balloon.

  ‘They said they got rid of you ’cause you’re bad . . . you understand?’

  I try to pull my arms down, my face red and swollen. She leans closer, into my ear. ‘Your foster par . . . your momma and daddy . . .’ She grabs my cheeks with her other hand and turns my face to her, the cigarette hanging from her lips.

  ‘They . . . shit!’ The cigarette drops. ‘Shit!’ She lets go of me. ‘See what you made me do?’ She leans down to retrieve the lit cigarette, and I jump over to the door, pushing and pulling at the handle.

  ‘Momma and Daddy never showed you how to unlock a goddamn car door?’ She laughs behind me. ‘You wanna go home? . . . Fine, I’ll take you, I’ll take you back.’

  The keys jingle in the ignition, and the brake rips again. The car rumbles beneath us. I let go of the door handle.

  ‘Go––go home,’ I sputter.

  ‘Yeah, go fucking home!’ She rolls down her window and flicks her cigarette out.

  She pulls back out onto the tarmac, drives past the factory and the dirty, broken houses, one of which is hers.

  I sit back in my seat, heaving, wiping chocolate drool off my mouth.

  ‘I was just trying to help you,’ she says quietly.

  I look out at the abandoned shacks overrun with grass and vines, like a museum exhibit of another world.

  ‘My guess is they’ll just call the police when I bring you back.’

  We pass children with sooty faces playing in a turned-sideways refrigerator.

  ‘The reason you’re with me, you know, is because they don’t want you no more.’ I turn in my seat, a little toward her. ‘They told me, ’member when they called last night?’ She adjusts the rearview mirror. ‘They said you’re a bad boy, and that’s why they gave you away. If they loved you so goddamn much, well then, why’d they get rid of you? Answer me that.’

  I sniffle and swallow a snot glob.

  ‘They found out how evil you are, those police . . . they were ready to do you in. If I hadn’t’ve begged them, those cops would’ve taken out their guns and shot you through.’ She adjusts her mirror again, then runs her finger under her eyes, wiping off the black smears.

  ‘I got ice cream,’ I whisper.

  ‘Just because I convinced them not to kill you.’ She looks over at me. ‘If I hadn’t taken you from your foster, your momma and daddy, where you think you’d be?’<
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  I choke on a hiccup. She pats my back a little too hard.

  ‘They didn’t try to stop the social worker from taking you away, now, did they?’ she asks me softly. I look out at the mountains rising and falling into each other, little gray wood shacks lodged between them like food caught between teeth. They hadn’t tried to stop the social worker from taking me. They’d even turned away fast from the car once I was in it. As I screamed and banged on the back windshield for them, I saw my daddy hug my momma with both arms, her head on his chest, and they walked back toward the house, they didn’t turn around.

  ‘How many times did you go cryin’ and throwing tantrums like a spoilt baby if you didn’t get your way, huh?’

  I look up at the clouds, too gray and weighted to be floating over the mountain peaks. ‘Be a good boy and don’t cry for Momma,’ she had said lots of times. I usually ended up crying, though.

  ‘Why do you think the police got you when you ran away, not your foster, not your momma and daddy, huh?’

  I watch a yellow dog chasing what looks like a long-tail fox through the burnt orange bushes near the road.

  ‘I begged the cop not to take long sharp knives and stick them in your eyes so they pop like grapes.’ She reaches down to her bag, pulls out and lights another cigarette. ‘I had to pay them, too.’ She pulls up her bag. ‘See my wallet in there . . . go on.’ She pats my shoulder, a cigarette ash falling down my shirt. I reach into her bag. ‘The wallet with the red heart on it, open it.’ I pull the Velcro lips apart; she reaches over and pulls the money out from inside. ‘You know what a hundred-dollar bill looks like?’ She glances at me. I nod, my Daddy had shown me, Ben Franklin and kites. She blows a plume of smoke straight up.

  ‘See any one-oh-ohs in there, kid?’ she says, the cigarette dangling in her mouth.

  I shake my head and swallow a hiccup.

  ‘Ain’t in there, right? . . . Huh? . . . Answer me, darlin’, I ain’t gettin’ any younger.’

  ‘No,’ I mumble. Her red-nailed hand scrunches them up back into the wallet. ‘Well, you said it, kid, no one-oh-ohs, you got your proof. You know who got the one-oh-oh? Huh?’ She turns from the road and looks at me while sealing up the pink heart-covered wallet. I breathe in deeply to try to smell the musty, leathery smell of my daddy’s wallet. I put my hand on her wallet, but it’s not the smooth, worn skin warmed from his back pocket.

  ‘Get offa!’ Her hand knocks mine. ‘Little thief, trying to get everything. You better not have taken none.’

  I blink at her, too disoriented to cry. She drops the wallet into her bag at her feet.

  ‘So you saw for your own self ? No goddamn one-oh-oh. So guess who got it?’ She jabs me with her elbow. I look out my window.

  ‘The cops, the policeman, he has it, I had to give him all that, one-oh-oh, to not . . .’ She pushes me lightly. ‘You listenin’? I had to pay them not to strap you down and put you in the electric chair.’

  I’ve seen the electric chair on one of those cartoons I’m not supposed to watch. A cat got tricked into one, strapped down, and the switch pulled. His skeleton glowed, his eyes bulged out, and after, he was just a pile of ashes.

  ‘I’ve done you a favor taking you . . . so it’s up to you . . . we can go to the police and turn you in. If I take you to your fosters, they’re only going to call the police and get you arrested.’

  My stomach is cramped. Everything looks strangely lit and too shiny under the greenish, mold-colored sky. The clouds aren’t even trying to clear the mountains anymore, they’re too loaded down with dark, smashing into the treeless peaks.

  ‘If I didn’t take you when I did, you’d be hung up on a cross. They teach you about Jesus?’

  I nod a small yes. When I’d stayed at my baby-sitter Cathy’s house, I saw a picture of Him. He was almost naked, with nails in him, on a cross, and if I moved my head back and forth, his blood flowed, his head tilted more, and his eyes closed, then popped open, looking out in an accusing stare.

  ‘The police will nail you up on the cross, if they don’t give you the chair.’ She spits on her cigarette, tucks it behind her ear, and reaches out, takes my hand, and opens it in her lap. I watch her press a long red fingernail into my bandaged palm.

  ‘They drive the nail in here.’ She presses harder. My hand curls up around her finger, but I don’t try to move it.

  ‘Your momma and daddy will hammer another nail in right here . . .’ She drops my hand, lifts my T-shirt, and presses her long nail below my ribs. She twists her finger in.

  ‘And they’ll stick one here . . .’ She slides her nail under my shirt to my chest, under my throat, and digs it in.

  My head is shaking, racing all His blood out, draining him, till it crashes like waves and surrounds the big white house with my parents inside and carries them all away forever.

  ‘I want to stay with you,’ I whisper.

  ‘Well, we’re not that far from the police station . . . they’ll be real glad to get their hands on you again.’

  I swallow loudly, feeling her hand resting on my throat, pressing.

  ‘I want to stay with you,’ I whisper again.

  ‘What did you say?’ Her nail flicks against my skin.

  When I asked Cathy why He was like that, she told me it was because He loved me and because I was a sinner. Jesus died like that, suffering for me.

  ‘No policeman.’

  ‘You don’t want me to take you to your foster parents?’

  I shake my head a small no.

  ‘You better learn some manners, kid . . . if I’m not going to turn you in.’ Her nail slides up my throat to under my chin, lifting my head toward her.

  ‘Ma’am, you say. Understand? You say ma’am, you say sir, you say thank you, you say please . . . you were rude with your fosters and they got rid of you. You’re rude to me and we go right to the police, you hear?’

  I avoid her eyes, looking past her to the dark clouds tumbling ahead.

  ‘Ma’am,’ I repeat just like the coffee-colored maid would call my momma.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, please let me stay with you, thank you. Is that what you mean to be saying?’

  A dry swallow squeezes down my stretched-up neck like a snake digesting a rat.

  ‘Ma’am . . .’ My voice cracks. ‘Thank you, please, no policeman . . .’

  She pulls her nail away, and my head drops some.

  ‘So, if you ever cry about your fosters again, we go straight to the police. You hear?’

  I nod, staring vaguely at trees starting to bend and shake in the wind. Her hand flies up quickly and slaps the top of my head, bouncing it back against the seat. ‘If I take the time and energy to waste my breath speaking to you, you damn well better afford me the courtesy of replyin’.’

  I don’t understand her, so I nod again, sucking on my lips to still them from shaking, and I taste the salty ooze running from my nose.

  Her fist bangs down on my shoulder, knocking me sideways to the seat.

  ‘You answer when I talk to you,’ she says loudly but calmly above me.

  I stay down on the seat, my stomach releasing a horrible trembling that spreads throughout me. A loud sob fills the car.

  ‘Don’t you dare cry!’ Her hand searches in my hair. ‘I’ve had about enough of you crying to last me a lifetime.’ She yanks my head up by my hair and then pulls my face back to look up into hers. Her eyes gleam like glazed blue enamel, her mouth turned into a red semismile.

  ‘If you cry any more, not only will I give you something to be really cryin’ for . . .’ She shakes my head. ‘I will drive you straight to your foster parents and watch while they and the cops nail you up, set you on fire, and chop you up, while everyone cheers and laughs and spits at you. Understand?’

  A car horn blares at us; she lets go of my hair and swerves back to her side of the road. The other car is still honking as we pass.

  ‘Jesus!’ She grabs the cigarette behind her ear.

  The click of her lighter
sounds bizarre in the sudden silence inside the car.

  There are many times I’ve cried when I didn’t have to, when I’d only bumped myself lightly or something, but I’d wail anyway, nice and loud to let them know I’d been injured and to punish them for letting me get hurt in the first place.

  They’re not here to come running, and if they were, they wouldn’t just walk in the opposite direction while they sent me away again. This time they’d laugh and spit and do to me what I did to Jesus. They’d tell me I was a bad boy, and I’d watch them rip down, off my chart, all my stars.

  I feel my tears cut off, stopped up somewhere below my throat. I swallow hard and flush them away.

  ‘So should I turn around, kid?’ She puffs a few times. I start to nod but stop myself.

  ‘Yes, please, ma’am. Thank you,’ I say clearly.

  ‘Very good!’ She pats my head hard. ‘We’ll turn you into a good boy yet . . . now all we gotta do is make sure the cops or nobody don’t get you before that time.’

  She rolls up her window as the first few heavy drops of rain splat inside her door. The car fills with her smoke, and she pats my leg softly.

  ‘You know, we only have each other from now on, you see. I fought for you. You’ll have to fight for me. I’m all you got.’ She smiles.

  And I watch the big yard with the white house with the room with dinosaur-covered walls and a racing car bed, and shelves of toys and charts with stars and a smiling momma and daddy, I watch it fold up neat like a gas station map, and I bury and hide it like a treasure map.

  The car slows some, the tires screeching as she turns around on the black road top.

  I watch the storm sky, a bruised blue black, following right behind us.

  We have to leave, have to pack up right away and go. The digital clock on the Formica counter says 3:47 A.M. I stand in front of her, rubbing my eyes. She hangs up the phone; it was them again, my fosters. They’ve called almost every night for the last week since I first got here. I don’t cry and reach for the phone anymore. Last night I didn’t even jump out of bed when the phone rang, I only got out of bed because she called me to the phone. I stood and waited, my thumb anchored in my mouth, Bugs Bunny pressed to my chest, while she nodded and shook her head as she listened to and repeated all the bad things I’d done and how they wanted me to go to jail. I didn’t ask to speak to them. I waited until she hung up, waited to see what she would decide.