Castles (16 page)

"Please stop," I whispered. I didn't mean for him to hear my plea, and I don't know why I didn't keep my mouth shut. I was a woman—meant to clean the house and bear the kids, not question the actions of the man who supported me.

That's what I thought at the time, anyway.

"
Shut up, bitch!
" Steve screamed. His voice echoed in the trailer and seemed to shake the foundation. He turned toward me and in one horrifying second I saw the glint in his eye I had seen in Mr. Pulman as he stood in the same spot with Mama's blood on the knife in his hand. I shivered and quaked and reflexively pushed my back into the couch as if it were the wall in my bedroom and Mama was bearing down on me with her wooden spoon.

What had I done?

"You just sit there and do nothing," he said, his voice quieter but filled with venom. "You ruined my night's sleep. You didn't even clean all the dust off the floor, and I come home to find you sprawled out on the couch in your Grandma's shit clothes, wasting away. You think you're a princess? You think I owe you something?"

He took a step toward me.

"I don't owe you anything, Maggie." He pointed at his chest. "You owe
me
."

I didn't know what to say or whether I should say anything at all. I'd seen that glazed look of burnt umber in a man's eyes before. I'd heard words of poison spray from their mouths. I'd imagined I could fight back, take a stand like I did when I was nine, but this wasn't a game of find the body in the Bus—it was real life and I was vulnerable to the words and the actions of a man more so than I'd ever been before. Grandma wasn't there and even if Mama would have raised a finger—which I sometimes think she might have in her last days—she was dead, too.

I was defenseless.

I was alone with my own mess to clean up.

Steve took another step toward me and licked his lips. It was then that I saw it. The tongue. I watched it split in two and slither out between his lips like a snake. It curled in on itself, rubbery yet dripping wet with malevolence.

"
Cut it out!
" I heard Grandma cry.

"
Cut it out!
" I heard the dust eels scream.

I jumped up from the couch, meaning to head for the back of the trailer, but my clumsiness pushed my body against an end table, knocked over a lamp and forced me to the floor.

Without having the chance to raise my arms in defense, Steve was on top of me. He hit me with greasy fists, pummeled my face, my shoulders, my neck, my ribs. He screamed a litany of curses and regrets and threats, all jumbled together in a hateful distortion of words that dribbled from his forked tongue like burning saliva.

As I tried to cover my face, I saw in the corner of the room a glass shard I had missed. It glinted in the light of the lamp I'd knocked over.

I don't know why I saw it at that moment—perhaps fate or just plain coincidence—but that image was forever etched into my memory.

I see it now.

In a week I was out of bed, able to hold down a glass of water and a few crackers. My right eye was no longer swollen shut and I could, with effort, do menial housework. The pain in my chest from the broken rib was less a stabbing reminder of that night, but it still throbbed when I slept on my side or tried to sit down. It wasn't a handicap, though, and a glass or two of whiskey would make me forget.

A few days after my eye no longer looked like a blue golf ball, Steve came home with a dozen roses.

I brought home my first book of anatomy on the same day Steve brought home three of his drunk friends to play poker. He was never one to skip out on a social event, especially one that didn't include me. Normally, however, he always left the house to go someplace else and the fact he didn't bring anyone over to our trailer didn't really cause much consternation. Maybe he just didn't like how it looked or felt it wasn't comfortable.

Nevertheless, they came. Three boys all about Steve's age, which is to say not quite at the legal drinking age but old enough to vote. As I looked them over, I sensed they were not the political type, however.

I sat on the couch with my book of guts and gore and pictures of nerve clusters and muscles and bones. I was fascinated. I'd never considered the orderly neatness of the human body; my only experience with anatomy before had been with the dust eels chewing away flesh and bone. The differences were astounding, like that not-so-subtle difference between a clean skyscraper and the dirty hovel next to it that was slated to be demolished to make way for a parking garage.

I didn't pay much attention to the boys as I sat with my legs crossed, the book in my lap and a glass of water in one hand. It never crossed my mind that these boys might be the bullies who accosted me right before Dusty was murdered. Aside from Steve, I couldn't remember any of their names, let alone their faces. Memories are like that, I suppose: they leave snippets of fact and blur out the rest.

The night wore on as I turned each page of my book gingerly and studied the hidden wonders of the detailed human body. The boys played cards and laughed and drank and made obscene gestures to each other like all boys do. None of them—Steve included—paid me any attention. It was almost as if I wasn't there, and, in a way, I wasn't. At least, I don't think my thoughts were there.

My thoughts had drifted out into the desert, to the Bus, where I saw the eels feasting on each body part that was artfully drawn in the book in front of me. The longer I stared at organs inked in vibrant reds and browns and fatty greens and yellows, the more I envisioned the eels taking a bite, slobbering like ravenous dogs thrown a piece of meat from the backdoor of a restaurant.

I hadn't considered the smile on my face.

"What are you smiling about?" one of the boys asked. I looked up and let my thoughts run back to the present. The boy was disgustingly lanky, almost anorexic if such a thing could be possible in a boy who sucked on bottle of beer like a thirsty giraffe at a waterhole. Red spots marked his face—so many constellations of red dwarf suns hanging in a pale space. He smiled crookedly and let yellow and brown stains smile back at me.

"Nothing," I said. I realized I had just spat the word out in disgust at the pimpled giraffe-face in front of me. It was rather rude, but then again, I'd been interrupted.

The boy's smile turned to a leer and I watched his tongue come out of his mouth like a moray eel poking its head out of a coral reef. He held it out for me to see in that childish gesture of distaste and revulsion. I was suddenly elated when he turned and resumed playing with the other boys.

I continued my study of anatomy by quickly turning to a page that displayed a fattened tongue, clinging to the mouth with that very thin oral mucosa underlain by a plexus of veins. I forced my thoughts back to the Bus, picked up an imaginary dust eel and affixed it to that tongue. Then I stuck the tongue back in the giraffe boy's mouth and listened to his imaginary screams echo through my mind.

It was pleasantly satisfying, and yet a memory crept in to replace that image. It was a dream I'd had when I was fourteen, where I'd stood over Steve, his body strapped to the kitchen table with duct tape.

The dream image was faint at first, but like a clearing picture of static on a television set, it slowly materialized. There was that glass on the kitchen floor, the scissors I took from the kitchen, the pliers I held the tongue with, the blood pooled in his mouth, the eyes that opened with fright. And then there was the man's whimper, his gurgle, his faint cry as he struggled to swallow all the blood that poured from his wound. Finally, I remembered the feeling of stimulation and how my juices flowed and lips trembled with excitement and ecstasy.

I closed my eyes in the trailer that night as the boys continued to play poker and ignore me. I tried to focus on the dream images more and more, willing them back into vibrant colors and sharp contrasts. Was that dream I'd had so long ago a premonition or was it just a collection of random thoughts?

I focused on the man on the table, on his eyes . . . and I found myself focused on Steve.

I opened my eyes just as the glass in my hand was about to drop to the floor. Steve was at the table, drunk and slurring his words with his fat tongue, with his forked tongue, with his devilishly wonderfully and exciting tongue. He reared back at some joke another boy had told and laughed.

I wanted to kill him right then. I wanted to clean up my mess, to give the dust eels what they wanted. I wanted to build my castle in the sky, brick by brick, tongue by tongue.

My eyes darted from Steve to the giraffe boy to the two others around the table.

They were all bricks.

They all needed to die.

The second time Steve invited the boys over for poker, they brought more alcohol than the four could possibly consume in a given night. Even if I helped—which I wasn't averse to doing—there would still be copious amounts left over. Vodka bottles, whiskey bottles, bottles of gin and a bottle of Hennessy littered the center of the kitchen table and nearly took over the open spaces on the kitchen counter. Within an hour, they had all been opened, mixed with each other and the boys were noticeably both drunk and vile.

I didn't participate in any of the festivities, but I did have a few drinks. I remember it being a humid night, more so than the last few, and the subtle increase in moisture in the air was a sure harbinger of storms to come. I sat on the couch again, this time dressed in Grandma's nightgown. I found its openness very liberating, pulling the moisture from my skin and cooling me off with the gentle breeze that blew through the open door.

Steve was in a fouler mood than before. He'd lost about twenty dollars the first night and was already down an additional forty. I didn't mention it to him, but the fear inside of me grew every time I heard him curse at a poor hand, another loss. There were bills to pay, there was food to buy, and who knows how much those bottles of liquor cost—or if they were paid for at all.

"
Fuck!
" Steve screamed. He threw down his cards on the table and pushed back. "That's three in a row!"

I watched from the sidelines, the anatomy book on my lap and a glass of vodka and cranberry juice by my side. My head was a little fuzzy after the first drink and the second drink was quickly working its way into my system.

"I guess you're just not lucky tonight," said one of the boys with a toothy grin. He wasn't as lanky as the giraffe boy, but he was spotted with acne and pock marks. In fact, all of them were with the exception of Steve. The features of the boy's blonde hair, cut like a silly Mohawk, and the almost orange complexion to his skin made him look more hyena-like than anything else. His laugh just made the comparison more solid.

"I hope your Mama rots in Hell," Steve mumbled. He walked to kitchen counter with a slight stagger, poured a drink of something mixed with something else and returned to the table. His eyes flicked at me.

"What are you looking, Mags?"

The hyena boy turned to me as well. "You're looking mighty hot in that moo-moo." He chuckled to himself. Did all drunks think their jokes or their sarcastic remarks were funny?

"Deal," said the giraffe boy to the fourth member of the party, a gluttonous slob of a beast who had to put down a bowl of chips and wipe his fingers on his shirt to do anything dexterous.

I watched them for a few moments longer, amused and disgusted with the whole thing. My drink was empty and I was thirsty, but I hesitated to get up and make another. To do so would mean passing by the maligned zoo of freaks and coming within an arm's reach. I really didn't want to be any nearer to them than I was.

Steve ruined it all by asking me to bring him some chips. I guess I hesitated on the couch a little too long. "What the hell, woman? Get up and get me some damn chips!" He glared at me forcefully as if trying to resurrect the look he had when he beat me a few weeks prior. The alcoholic haze in his eyes didn't let him.

"Fine." I sighed and stood up. Maybe I could sneak around them without being groped.

The giraffe boy was the first to lift up my nightgown. He tried to be as sly as possible, but in his drunken state, sly meant practically scratching my thigh and tearing the fabric as I pulled away. The other boys laughed and I noticed Steve was among them. Somehow I felt they had designs to make me a play thing that night, and I wasn't going to have it.

"In your dreams," was all I could say. I passed the table without further incident, dropped a bag of chips in Steve's lap and returned to the couch. Any further interruption of my study of anatomy and how best to cut the boys would not be appreciated.

The rest of the night I overhead crude jokes—about how Steve wasn't going to get lucky and how each of the boys, in turn, would be lucky with me. Steve refusal to defend these statements bothered me, not for his nonchalance but for his goading.

I felt like a piece of meat.

I can say now, with certainty, that the poker nights fueled my anger more than anything else. The four of them were repulsive and even when they weren't there, I found myself ruminating over their deaths. Steve was always at the forefront of my mind, stretched out on the table with duct tape and drowning in the blood that would eventually pour from his mouth when I cut out his tongue. I settled into a routine of nightly flipping through my anatomy book then tracing cut lines on Steve's body with my finger as we lay in bed naked.

Despite Steve's faults—and there were many—he did grow on me through the years. From adolescent bickering to young adult sex, there was a connection between us that I couldn't deny. But it was tense and not altogether normal, like the connection you make between the blade in your hand and the chicken breast on the counter: you want to cut, to feel the meat slip away under your direction. You can't help but notice the veins if they appear, the grain of the muscle, the slimy feel on your skin as you shape the breast into something tasty.