It wasn’t long after we’d moved to San Diego that Mama split up with Ken, and went out and got a new boyfriend. His name was Posey. He was shorter than most men I’d seen, and thin, and wore his blonde hair cut close to his head, so he looked almost bald. He usually came over to see Mama for a couple of days here and there after being gone four, maybe five months. He was a sailor, though when I’d called him that, seeing him in his navy blue sailor outfit and his white Dixie-cup hat, he’d said, no, he wasn’t really a sailor at all, but a submariner. He’d go to sea on a submarine, and he’d stay underwater for weeks, sometimes months at a time. I told him I used to watch The Silent Service on TV, and he grinned and flashed me a thumbs-up and nodded at me approvingly. His boat was named USS Caiman. Once he showed Karen and me a polished chrome cigarette lighter with a drawing of an alligator-looking reptile on it, holding a torpedo. “This,” he said, “is a caiman.”
Mama met Posey one night in late summer when she was having drinks with our next-door neighbor Carol Joy. They were at the Red Garter in downtown Ocean Beach. I was asleep when Mama brought Posey home with her. I didn’t even know there was a man in the house until Karen and Debbie and I got up the next morning and were eating our Rice Krispies in the kitchen. Mama stumbled out of her bedroom and went straight to the bathroom, leaving her bedroom door open enough that we could see in. There was a strange man walking around, picking things up from the floor. He pulled a white sailor shirt over his head then ran a hairbrush across his scalp in front of Mama’s mirror. I could smell stale cigarette smoke and beer and other strange things I didn’t want to know about, leaking like poison gas from Mama’s room. Mama came back out of the bathroom with the sound of the toilet flushing behind her and went back into her bedroom, closing the door without saying anything to us. Karen and Debbie looked into their bowls or read from the side of the cereal box, acting as if they hadn’t seen anything. A few minutes later Mama and the man came out of the bedroom, whispering and giggling as if they’d just shared a joke. “Oh,” Mama said then, waving toward us, “and these are my kids. That’s Billy, he’s the oldest, and this is Debbie—the deaf one—and the littlest over there is Karen.” The man smiled a little nervously and nodded at each of us. “Kids,” said Mama, “this is Posey.”
Karen and I waved a little and said hi. Debbie kept eating her Rice Krispies. Posey bobbed his head some more and said hi, then put his hat on, way down on his forehead, almost to his nose. “I really have to go,” he said to Mama.
After that, we’d see Posey pretty much whenever his boat pulled into San Diego, if only for a few minutes each time: he’d simply be there in Mama’s bedroom when we woke up. He’d take Mama out a lot and spend the next couple of nights with her, then disappear, back out to sea. We didn’t really object to him being there: Mama seemed to smile a lot more when he was around, and the house was a little cleaner.
He came over one Saturday night in late November to take Mama to dinner and a movie. It was just before Thanksgiving vacation, and the weather was cold. Debbie was still up in Riverside at the School for the Deaf, and would be until the next Wednesday, so it was just Karen and me.
“You two be good,” Mama said. “Carol’s going to look in on you, so you’d better behave. And I want you in bed at eight-thirty. “
“But Mama,” I said, “it’s Saturday.”
“You heard me. Eight-thirty.”
“But can’t we stay up to watch Saturday Night At The Movies? It’s Run Silent, Run Deep tonight!”
“Oh, c’mon Barbara,” Posey said. “Let the kids stay up. It’s a great movie. Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable. And submarines!”
“Yeah, Mama,” I said. “It’s really a great movie!”
Mama looked at Posey and sighed. “Well,” she said. “Just this once, I guess.” She looked back at me. “But you’d better be in bed and fast asleep when I get home! And no fighting with your sister!”
I looked at Karen, who was sticking her tongue out at me from behind Mama. “I promise,” I said.
Posey was right, it was a great movie. I cheered when the American sub caught up to Bongo Pete and sank it. It was one of those movies you hated to see end. Karen fell asleep halfway through, and I had to wake her up to get her to go to the bedroom and get into bed.
A few minutes later, after I’d brushed my teeth and got into bed myself, I heard the front door open and Carol’s voice yell out, “You kids in bed?” After she was satisfied that we hadn’t been kidnapped or run off, she closed the door after locking it behind her.
I was awakened by a sharp thump! through the wall which separated Mama’s room from ours. Hard, metal-sounding things fell to the wood floor. Then I heard Mama’s high-pitched giggle, mixed intermittently with Posey’s chuckling, low growl. Then Mama’s bed started to squeak and bump against the wall, like a weird drumming, and immediately with it, Mama’s voice making a familiar groaning, animal sound, which grew louder and louder. I knew then that she and Posey were fucking. A sharp pain popped suddenly into my chest, and I cursed the fact that I was awake, that I had to hear this—again.
I couldn’t understand why the noise didn’t wake Karen. Her head hadn’t moved on her pillow since I turned out the light. I clapped my hands over my ears and sang to myself to drown the noises out. I counted to a thousand to occupy my time. I thought of dark-haired Alma Days in my fourth grade class at school, and what it would be like to marry her, though she was so much taller than me, I was sure she wouldn’t want anything to do with me. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Fuck me! Fuck me! Yes!” Mama’s hoarse cries forced their way into the room, into my head, and I tried to push the pictures from my mind, my mother doing things with this man that made me want to scream.
At last the pounding ended, and, outside of the distinctive chink! of Posey’s Zippo lighter being snapped closed, and the low murmur of voices and some occasional hushed laughter, it was quiet. Finally the voices faded and stopped. I counted to a thousand again, making sure I hadn’t forgotten any numbers. Then I got up and went to the bathroom, even though I didn’t have to pee, and dribbled a little out into the toilet to let anyone listening know I really did have to go. I flushed the toilet and put the seat down (Mama was always yelling at me to put the goddamn seat down) and snapped off the light. Then I opened the bathroom door as quietly as I could and stepped into the dark hallway outside Mama’s door. And listened.
The only thing I heard from behind the door was regular breathing; once in awhile there was the low growl of someone—Posey, I was guessing again—snoring. My heartbeat quickened. I reached through the dark and turned the doorknob, then slowly opened the door a few inches, and listened some more. The stench of cigarette smoke and other disgusting smells nearly took my own breath away. But there was no mistaking they were both asleep.
I pushed the door open just enough for me to slip in. Mama had an electric blanket, and the glow from the control next to her bed gave me enough light that I could see pretty much everything in the room. Mama’s and Posey’s dark forms lay in a tangle in her bed. I saw what looked like clothes draped on Mama’s chair, and as I stepped closer I could just make out the thin white stripes and stars embroidered against the navy blue of Posey’s sailor outfit. His pants were folded neatly on the seat of the chair, and on top of them lay the prize I was looking for: a wallet and a pile of change. Seconds later, I’d pulled a few of the bills from the wallet and replaced it on top of the pants exactly the way it had been. Then I grabbed at least half of the change (I didn’t want to arouse suspicion by taking everything), and tiptoed from the room, trying to control my runaway breathing, turning the doorknob and pulling the door shut gingerly, so there wasn’t a sound at all.
When I got into my own bed again, my heart seemed nearly about to burst. I put the small pile of money under my pillow, and lay there with my head on top of it, imagining myself now with candy bars and model airplanes—maybe even a Duncan Imperial Yo-yo!—and a ton of other things I was going to buy with my newly acquired fortune.
The next morning, however, I discovered it wasn’t so vast a fortune after all: three single dollars and seventy-eight cents in change. Still, it was more than I’d had in a long time. But I didn’t want to waste it, there being so much less than I had expected. Later that morning I took a little of the change and bought myself a fruit pie and some chocolate, but left the rest. How to spend this much smaller fortune would take some thought, some planning. In the meantime, I kept it under my pillow for safekeeping. Mama never made our beds. The money would be safer there, probably, than anywhere else while I was in school.
Mama was waiting for me on the couch when I get home that Monday afternoon, and she had that look on her face as soon as I walked in the door that said I was in big trouble for something. Posey had left Sunday night, and Karen was nowhere to be seen. I figured she must be next door, playing. The TV wasn’t even on.
“Hi, Mama,” I said, trying not to sound nervous.
“Come here,” she said, and I could hear the anger in her voice.
“What, Mama? What’s wrong?” I went to the couch and stood in front of her. She pointed then behind me to a spot on the coffee table, on top of which was a small pile of money: three dollar bills and a handful of coins. I knew instantly what I was looking at. Just as instantly, I felt something fall from the bottom of my stomach, and the familiar ice water running down the back of my neck.
“What?” I said, trying not to sound surprised or scared, though I was obviously both.
“I found that under your pillow this afternoon,” Mama said. Her voice sounded as if she were almost smiling while she spoke.
“My pillow?” I said to her. I figured it was okay to look surprised now, so I tried to make my face look as genuinely shocked as possible. I looked back at Mama, and I could tell immediately that she wasn’t buying any of my expressions.
“Your pillow,” she said. Then she closed her eyes a little and breathed out a heavy sigh, as if she was dreading being here even more than I was. But when she opened her eyes, I could see a sharp anger growing in them. “Where did it come from?” she said, taking hold of my shirt and drawing me closer to her.
“Where did what come from?” I said.
She evidently expected me to say exactly that, for her instant response was to take her other hand and—lightning-quick—slap me with it across the mouth, hard. But she held tight to my shirt, so I couldn’t run away from her, couldn’t even fall over. “I said,” she hissed, “where did this money come from?” Already her face was growing red and she’d started breathing hard.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to whine.
Smack! Another backhand to the mouth. So hard I could feel her knuckles against my cheekbone. The stinging made me wonder if she’d cut into my skin, if I was bleeding. “I’ve got all night,” she said, sighing again. “If that’s what it takes. Now: where did that money come from?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice a high squeal, wincing as her hand shot out at my mouth again like a striking rattlesnake, and this time I felt my teeth cut into my lower lip, and I tasted blood. The force of the blow seemed to have pulled the plug on my eyes, too: tears suddenly streamed from them in rivulets that were starting to collect in huge drops on my chin.
Mama stood up so she could get better leverage into her swings. “Where did the money come from?” she said, patiently, as if she’d resigned herself to being there, as she’d said, all night. Already her hand was raised in the air, poised to strike, again like a rattlesnake, waiting for its chance. One false move…
“I don’t know,” I cried, spewing tears and snot and blood at her.
Smack!
In the long minutes that followed, I finally got to the place where her blows weren’t doing much more than knocking my head from side to side: the skin on my face was numb, and I was dazed enough that there weren’t a lot of useful thoughts in my head. All I could think to say was I don’t know, I don’t know. Mama huffed and puffed from her efforts to hold me up as well as hit me. A thin line of drool dripped from the corner of her mouth. “TELL. ME. GOD. DAMMIT!” she screamed, her blows timed to her words, until, finally, it seemed to dawn on her that I would not tell her, no matter what she did.
And when she finally dropped me from her grasp, and I gathered myself from the floor and staggered to my room to lie down and continue my crying in private, I held for a long while in my mind’s eye a strange image of my mother: she’d been transformed somehow into a huge red balloon—her scowling face drawn on it with a marker pen—which someone had filled with helium but then had released without tying it off. Mama ricocheted like a bullet off the walls of our house before crashing through the window and jetting upward, ever upward, her dying hiss the last thing I heard.