Freedom's Child (11 page)

My name is Freedom and my womb is empty. I am reminded of this insult from God every time I’m on the rag. What a bitch Eve was. It’s ten in the morning and I am alone at the Whammy Bar. I stretch out on top of one of the pool tables. The day’s as gray as the cigarette smoke from a whore in Times Square on a frigid January morning, like most days are in this godforsaken state. Carrie did a swell ol’ job of cleaning last night and so I use the next hour to stall. With my forearms at the end of each side of the table, my hands hang off the sides. I hold the cue ball in one hand and the eight ball in the other and try to discern a difference in weight between the two. I’m bored out of my fucking skull. But I feel the voices start to come. I use the remote to turn the bar’s surround sound as loud as it can: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. “I Hear Voices” comes on.

I inhale a menthol cigarette through my nostrils to smoke the suicidal thoughts out of my head. It’s the hangovers that make me this way, nothing more, nothing less. Lots of bad thoughts, lots of terrible voices. I don’t know what they say; they’re hard to hear over Sir Jay Hawkins’s blues, one of the first shock-rockers who ever lived. I can’t tell where my voices begin and where his drunken gurgling and grunts of his tunes begin. With the filter to my nose, I think of the voodoo bones Hawkins wore in his nose. Right, as if I really
think snorting through the filter of a menthol Pall Mall will actually work. I bring the billiard balls to each temple and massage my head by swirling them, but nothing works. I’ll ignore them, as always. I see a faint strip of light on the ceiling above the front door, but I don’t move. Whoever it is tries to come in unnoticed and so I’ll play along. Could be Carrie. Could be Cal. Could be worse.

“Whoever that is.” I hold up the billiard balls. “I have balls that can prove fatal if I put enough force behind the blow into your frontal lobe.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll never look at you the same way again.” Mattley.

“I knew it was you.”

“Oh, really? And how is that?” He walks closer to me.

“Bacon, donuts, you all smell the same.” I rise up as best as I can, given the hangover. “How’s the boy?” Not that I especially care.

“Getting at that age.” Mattley removes his hat. “Any day he’ll be bringing home the ladies.” There’s that smile I love. It aches to sit up. I think I might actually still be drunk from last night. “Listen, Freedom, I want to talk to you about something.” He looks down and scrapes the toe of his shoe over a spot on the floor. “About your kids.”

“What are you talking about?” I straighten my arms to my sides on the pool table. “I never had kids.”

“I know that’s what you say when you’re dry.” He plays with his Stetson hat. “But you do talk a lot when you’re drunk.”

“I get, um, creative when I’m drunk.” I stare off. “Have I told you about the time the pope and I bungee-jumped off the Eiffel Tower?”

Mattley sighs with his chin to his chest. He taps the side of the table where the palms of his hands rest. “You don’t have to fool me. I’m not asking for the truth, Freedom. But what I am asking is that you consider talking to someone.”

“I’m already talking to someone.” My anger makes its way to my voice.

“OK.” He clears his throat. “That was suggestion number one.” I
roll my eyes. “Just a suggestion, is all.” He smiles.
God, I love his smile
. “Have you considered getting help in other areas of your life? Like with the drinking?”

Only inches separate our faces from touching, and right now it takes all of what little decency I have left to stop me from throwing myself on him. He cares. He’s the only one who cares and I hate it more than anything. I don’t deserve it. But I want to tell him my feelings for him are strong, that I wished all the time that something terrible and freakish would happen to him so that I could go to his rescue and comfort him in the night. But I say nothing about it. “That’s my business.” I break away from him. “Now fuck off and leave me alone.”

It’s better this way, to nip it in the bud before anything might have a chance to flourish. He has a kid, a nice home. Can’t let myself get anything near normal. Me and normal are like gunpowder and fire. The two things should never mix.

Back in the office
before the regulars can ride in, I go back to the Internet. Still nothing on Rebekah’s Facebook page. Nothing new from Louisa Horn. On Mason’s page, a few random congratulations on his wall about some legal victory this morning and one from last night, a post he was tagged in from Violet about a trip to Turks and Caicos.

I don’t know what makes me do it, but I do a quick Google search of their names. The legal case that Mason won this morning pops up first. Already knew about that. Then I type in Rebekah’s name.

The room spins. The music outside fades further and further from my ears. I grab the nearest garbage can and dry-heave. I think I’m having a heart attack. I stand to go for the phone, to call for help. But my knees buckle. I panic. I fall. The lights fade to nothing, not anything that the name of a color can describe. Like I’m in slow motion, the floor comes closer and closer to my face. And that’s the last thing I can remember.

Peter feels the gusts of people rushing by. Loudspeakers announce inaudible messages about departure times and platform numbers. He zips his electric wheelchair through Penn Station in Manhattan; his coat hanging on the back to hide the lewd stickers his brothers have stuck on there over the years. Below him in the chair’s compartment are the essentials: underwear, soap, a toothbrush, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, deodorant, the rest of Matthew’s welcome-home cake in Tupperware, his laptop with its accessories, and a cell phone he lifted from his mother while she slept, her head practically inside a bucket of chicken bones. She was in a foul mood after this month’s disability check from social welfare was late. Of course the government does this to her on purpose, and only her, those spiteful bastards. One big giant fucking conspiracy from the White House against Lynn Delaney. But Peter didn’t mind, as long as he was able to lift what money she had from the drawer next to her underwear and sex toys. He’ll do his best to forget he ever saw them. And as long as she forgot to put the lock on the refrigerator.

“I n-n-need uh Amtrak ticket to Loo-Loo-Louisville, Kent-t-tucky.” Peter can barely see over the window; his cheekbones twitch and eyes squint with every consonant that doesn’t want to come out.

“I’m gonna need a driver’s license for ID.”

“Does it luh-look like I can fucking jer-jer-drive?” He reaches in his pocket and slides his New York state-issued ID through the window.

An hour later, when the train just finishes boarding, Peter reaches for his mother’s cell.
She must have been high as a kite if she forgot to lock the refrigerator and left the phone out of her reach
. He takes a few minutes, struggling to keep his hands still enough to scroll through the contacts. He scrolls to Matthew’s number and sends him a text, phrasing it the way his mother would:

Matty, do me a favor and give me that cunt’s phone number
.

Minutes later, the phone buzzes and the number comes through. Peter calls her right away.

“Yeah? Yellow? Hello? It was the wrong number. Those good-for-nothing salesmen or something.”
Peter hears one other voice:
“Your face says otherwise, Free-free.”
Peter hears her sneak off.
“I gotta shower. Please be gone by the time I’m out.”

Lynn Delaney chews on her last Xanax
, drinks the all-purpose wine right from the box, and wipes the cabernet from her chin onto the blouse closest within her reach. She glides down the hall on her scooter and kisses her hand and slaps Mark’s photo as habit would have it. She finds this rage toward Peter within her that helps her, for the first time in several years, stand on her own two feet, but not without much difficulty. How could Peter do this to her? After all the years she’s taken care of him? She has to lean on the counter to slam the refrigerator door that was left open before she grabs the nearest kitchen knife. The TV blares a Chia Pet commercial, ceramic Obamas and poodles with sprouts for hair. With a shriek that makes the pit bulls bark out back, she stabs the TV.
Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia
. The jingle makes her eardrums want to shatter. The blade of the knife
breaks in half, no damage to the television. She pulls the TV from the entertainment center in hopes that the screen will smash into a million pieces, a swift pull fueled by grade-A adrenaline. Instead, the cords hooked up to the wall keep it inches from the ground. It’s like her heart pumps gravel as she falls to the ground when her weight can’t find some harmonious balance. She wails, and now the neighbors’ dogs yap at the sounds. She doesn’t know how she’ll get up and starts to scream for help from her neighbors as the tears trickle down to her temples.
My babies, my boys, my Peter. How could you do this to me? After Mark, after my daughters, after the grandson I haven’t seen in years and the granddaughter I’ve never met, how could you do this to me? You’re a fucking monster, Peter. A fucking monster!

From the floor, she chews her fingernails off and spits each one to her side. The Xanax shuts her tear ducts down and the sobs are reduced to childlike whimpers. The blood comes back to her, slow currents that feel good to her nerves.

Her laughter ricochets against the halls and doors, her abdomen contracts with the cackles. Above her is a photo of Peter, back when she sent him to that camp for retarded kids when he was eight. Lynn talks out loud to the picture: “It should have been you instead of Mark.” Her eyelids become heavy with the pills, her laughs still present but subdued. “I should have aborted you when I had the chance.”