High Crime Area (9 page)

And so after this, all my life I will be fearful of sleeping. It is a terrible temptation to close your eyes, and sleep. But Toad-Baby's cries will wake me, long after Toad-Baby is gone into his own life. Long after Momma is gone and I will be an old woman, Toad-Baby's cries will wake me out of the dark.

Demon-child. Kicked in the womb so his poor young mother doubled over in pain. Nursing he tugged and tore at her breasts. Wailed through the night. Puked, shat. Refused to eat.
No I am loving, I am mad with love
. Of Mama. (Though fearful of Da.) Curling burrowing pushing his head into Mama's arms, against Mama's warm fleshy body. Starving for love, food. Starving for what he could not know yet to name:
God's grace, salvation.

Sign of Satan: flamey-red ugly-pimply birthmark snake-shaped. On his underjaw, coiled below his ear. Almost you can't see it. A little boy he's teased by neighbor girls, hulking big girls with titties and laughing-wet eyes.
Demon! Demon! Look it, the sign of the Demon!

Those years. Passing in a fever-dream. Or maybe never passed. Mama prayed over him, hugged and slapped. He was her baby, her Jethro. She had named him, as she had borne him. But now she could not love him. Shook him. In the wink of an eye, Mama was not young. Shook his skinny shoulders so his head rocked. Minister prayed over him.
Deliver us from evil
and he was good, he
was
delivered from evil. Except at the school his eyes misted over, couldn't see the blackboard. White chalk in the teacher's fingers striking the board hurt his ears, sharp clicking sound so he winced and wetted his pants.

Nasty and stupid the teacher called him. Not like the other children.

If not
like the other children,
then like
who? What?

Those years. How many years. As in a stalled city bus, diesel exhaust pouring out the rear. Stink of it everywhere. Da had gone away and left them, Mama sat at the kitchen table fat-thighed and her knees raddled. Same view through same flyspecked windows. Year after year the battered-tin diner, vacant lot swooning with weeds and rubble glitter of broken glass and the path worn through it slantwise where children ran shouting above the river. Broken pavement littered like confetti from a parade long past.

Or maybe it was the pledge of something vast, infinite. You could never come to the end of it. Wavering and blinding in blasts of light.
Desert
maybe.
Red desert
where demons dance, swirl in the hot winds. Never seen an actual
desert
except pictures, a name on a map. And in his head swelling to burst.

Demon-child
they whispered of him. But no, he was loving, mad with love. Too small, too short. Stunted legs. Head too big for his spindly shoulders. Strange waxy-pale moon-face, almond eyes beautiful if you took care to look, small wet mouth perpetually sucking inward. As if to keep the bad words, words of filth and damnation, safely inside.

The sign of Satan coiled on his underjaw began to fade. Like the skin eruptions of adolescence. Blood drawn gradually back into tissue, capillaries.

Not a demon-child after all but a shy anxious loving child with the Bible-name no one could pronounce—
Jeth-ro
. Betrayed by the eyes of others seeking always to laugh and to sneer. Betrayed by having been squeezed from the womb before he was ready.

Not a demon-child but for years he rode wild thunderous razor-hooved black stallions by night and by day. Furious galloping on sidewalks, in asphalt playgrounds where his classmates lay fallen, bleeding and dying. The older boys who tormented him, the older girls giggling and poking him through his pants—
Jeth'o! Jeth!
Through the school corridors trampling all in his way including teachers, adults. Among them the innocent children, casualties of war. Furious tearing hooves, froth-flecked nostrils, bared teeth, God's wrath, the black stallion rearing, whinnying.
I destroy all in my path. I was born without mercy.

Not a demon-child but he torched the school where they'd laughed at him, rows of stores, run-down wood frame houses in the neighborhood with rotting stoops to the sidewalk like his own. Many times the smelly bed where Mama and Da had hidden from him, when he'd been a baby. And no one knew of the raging flames, and continued as before in ignorance of the demon among them
born without mercy.

This January morning bright and windy and he's staring at a face floating in a mirror. Dirty mirror in a public lavatory at the Trailways bus station. The man's face appears beside his, looming above his like a moon. The face larger, stained teeth glistening in a wet sly smile. Maybe at one of the churches, he'd seen this face. Maybe it was Mama who'd introduced them. One of the ministers, to take the place of the elder. And the fingers clutching at his, that little (secret) tickle of the thumb against the palm of his hand, so he'd laughed, and shivered, and was ashamed. And now, that face has followed him here. In the mirror beside his. And the hands touching him, tickling at first, and then harder so he could not break away and he could not breathe for something tarry-black flew up to his face, covering his mouth, his mouth and his nose, he could not breathe and began to fall into the tarry blackness, and the hands gripped him, and the arms gripped him, and the mouth sucked at him, and he opened his mouth to scream but could not. And a door opened and there came a shout
Hey! What are you perverts doing! Jesus.
And the voice faded, the door was shut again in revulsion. The man-who-was-a-minister was gone. He wasn't sure, he'd thought it was a minister, and Mama had thought he was, but Mama was sometimes mistaken and when this was so, Mama would not admit her mistake and became very excited if you tried to correct her. The side of his head hurt, he opened his eyes not knowing at first where he was then seeing he was lying on a filthy floor partway inside a toilet stall. And urinals along the wall, filthy. And sink and mirror splotched with filth. And the smells, he could not breathe. Where he'd been dropped, like garbage. Dropped and kicked in the chest, with the hope that his heart would cease beating but it had not. To his shame he saw that his trousers had been opened, the front of his trousers crudely unzipped and the zipper broken and Mama would know, if the zipper was broken. He was breathing now but so shallowly he could not catch his breath. He was crying, and he was whimpering. Someone came to lift him by the underarms, in disgust.
Get out of here. Go away from here. Shame! The age you are! Never come back here, go away to Hell where you belong.
Barely he could walk, the pain between his legs was so severe. Pain in the crack of his ass, the tender skin broken, bleeding. Barely could he make his way through the bus station waiting room where every eye was fixed upon him in revulsion and mirth.

Demon-child. Look!

Crawling away to die. Where he'd hidden. One of the boarded-up buildings on the river. Crawl through a window, and inside. Dropping to the cellar floor. And there, a metallic surface in which the face awaited except now he saw how the mark of Satan was upon him, in his right eyeball a speck of dirt? dust? blood? Where at last the demon has been released. For it is the New Year. Shifting of Earth's axis. For to be away from what is familiar, like walking on a sharp-slanted floor, allows
something other
in. Or the
something other
has been inside you all along and until now you do not realize.

With a strange sick calm he knows. Knows even before he has seen: sign of Satan. In the yellowish-white of his eyeball. Not the coiled little snake but the five-sided star:
pentagram.

The ministers had warned. Five-sided star:
pentagram
.

It is there, in his right eye. He rubs at it frantically with his fist.

Runs home, two miles. He's a familiar sight here though no one knows his name. Mama knows there's been trouble, has he lied about taking his medication? Hiding the capsule under his tongue then spitting it out? Jesus yes but you can't oversee every minute with one like him. Yes he was born wrong and nobody's fault, nobody'd told any of us don't smoke don't drink that shit they tell the young mothers today nobody told us, like nobody told our mothers or their mothers, see? Yes but God must've wanted it this way. Yes but your love wears out like the lead backing of a cheap mirror corroding the glass. Yes but you have prayed and prayed and cursed the words not echoing up to God but downward into an empty smelly well.

Nineteen years old, and stunted-growth like a dwarf, or almost. And the rounded shoulders of a dwarf. Shaved-head glinting blue. Little bumps, knobs and shallows in the shaved-head, and a constellation of pale freckles. People thought he'd been sick, his hair had fallen out, he was so skinny, gangly-limbed. But luminous shining eyes women at church knew to be beautiful. And on the street, where he'd wandered miles. Strangers, smiling at him. Smiling nervously, tensely at him. Smiling as Christians are bade to do, not to judge. And in the neighborhood near his home he was known by a first name like a Bible name—
Jethro
. Weird sweet boy but excitable, couldn't look you in the eye. Twitching his shoulders like in a spasm like he's shrugging out of somebody's grip.

Fast as you can run, somebody else runs faster!

Or, pursuing you in a vehicle. Horn honking, and guys screaming out the window.
Freaky Jethro. Sick perv. Fag.

In the place they are living now, row house on Mill Street he's pressing his knuckly hands against his ears not hearing his drunk Mama shouting why is he home so early, has a job in a lumber yard five-minute walk away so why isn't he there? Pushes past the drunk fat woman and into the bathroom, shuts the door and there in the mirror Oh God it has returned: five-sided star,
pentagram
. Unmistakable sign of Satan. Embedded deep in the right eyeball below the dilated pupil.

No! No! God help.

Goes wild, rubs with both fists, pokes with fingers. He's sobbing, praying. Beats at himself, fists and nails. His sister now pounding on the door what is it? What's wrong? Jeth? And Mama's voice loud and frightened. It
has happened,
he thinks. First clear thought
Has happened, now everyone will see.
Like a stone sinking in water, so clear and so calm. Because he has always known the prayers were useless. On your knees bowing your head inviting Jesus into your heart but why should Jesus come into
your heart
that's so freaky-ugly, and the heart of a fag? Sign of the demon would return, absorbed into his blood but must one day re-emerge.

Pushes past the women and in the kitchen paws through drawers scattering cutlery that falls to the floor, there's the long carving knife, his fingers shut about it like fate. Again pushes past the women without taking notice of them, shoves aside his heavyset sister as lightly as he lifts lumber, armloads of bricks. Hasn't he prayed to Our Father to be perfect as a machine, many times? A machine does not think, and a machine does not feel. A machine does not starve for love. A machine
does.

Inside the bathroom and the door shut and locked behind him against the screaming women. Whispering to the frightened face in the mirror
Away Satan! Away Satan! Jesus help me
. Steadying his right wrist with the fingers of his left hand, in the fingers of his right hand gripping the carving knife, bringing it to the eyeball, unable to resist wincing, blinking, jerking away with a whimper—but again forcing himself to bring the tip of the knife to the eyeball, and with a boldness borne of desperation inserting and twisting the accursed eyeball.
Yes! Now! It is in
. Pain so colossal it could not be measured—like the sky. Burning cleansing roaring sensation as of utter surprise, astonishment. A blast of fire. The eyeball is not easy to dislodge, it is connected by sinewy tissue to the interior of the socket, he must pull at it with his bloody fingers, moaning, not knowing that it is he who is moaning, sawing with the sharper edge of the knife. Manages to cut the eyeball free, like Mama squeezing baby out of her belly into this pig trough of sin and filth and defilement, no turning back until Jesus calls you home.

He drops the eyeball into the stained toilet, flushes the toilet with shaky slippery-excited fingers. And the sign of the demon is
gone
.

One eye socket empty and fresh-bleeding like tears and he is on his knees praying Thank you God! Thank you Jesus! weeping with joy as angels in radiant garments with eyes of blinding brightness reach down to embrace him not mindful of his red-slippery mask of a face and not mindful that he is freaky, a perv or a fag, for he is none of these now, now he is himself an angel of God, now he will float into the sky above the Earth where, some wind-blustery January morning you will see him, or a face like his, in a furious cloud.

Please love me
my eyes beg. My need is so raw, I can't blame any of you from looking quickly away.

Not you, not you, and you—none of you can I blame.
Only just love me, can't you? Love me
...

That Sunday night, desperate not to be late, I had to change trains at Times Square, and the subway was jammed, both trains crowded, always I knew it would happen soon, my destiny would happen within the hour, except: it was required that I be at the precise position when you lift your eyes to mine (casual-seeming, by chance) as you turn to face me. I must be there, or the precious moment will pass, and then—so lonely! In the swarm of strangers departing a train, pushing into the next train, pushing to the gritty stairs, breathless and trying not to turn my ankle in my spike-heeled sandals, my hair so glossy black you'd suspect it must be dyed but
my hair is not dyed, this is my natural hair-color
, and my skin white, exquisite soft-skinned white, and I'm wearing a black suede short skirt to mid-thigh and black diamond-patterned stockings with a black satin garter belt you can catch a glimpse of when I'm seated and I cross my slender legs in just the right, practiced way; and a white lace camisole, and beneath the camisole a black satin lace bra that grips my small breasts tight lifting them in mute appeal.
Please love me, please look at me, how can you look away? Here I am, before you.
My shiny-black hair I have ratted with a steel comb to three times its natural size, my mouth that's small and hurt like a snail in its shell I have outlined in crimson, a high-gloss lipstick applied to the outside of the lips enlarging them so I'm breathless smiling making my way to the far side of the track being pushed-against, collided-with, rudely touched by—who?—sometimes I feel one of you brush against me light as a feather's touch, purely by accident, or almost-accident, sometimes it's a hurtful jolt, I could step aside if I'm alert enough but a strange lassitude overcomes me, this one isn't the one, and yet!—the shock of him colliding with me as he hurries past, scarcely aware of me, doesn't slow his pace or apologize, not even a murmured
Excuse me,
the touch is like an electric shock, half-pleasurable, though meant to hurt. As if he knows, this stranger, that he isn't the one. Not tonight.