Zombie (20 page)

“You know a lot,” he says.

“I wish I didn’t,” I say.

“Right,” Zeke says. “Right. Right. Right.”

“She’ll be fine.”

“That a question? Or a fact?” He isn’t looking for an answer. He’s looking for someone to take away the pain. He’s looking for the healthy version of what Mom has become. He’s using the Code and doesn’t even know it. Avoiding eye contact. Keeping quiet, relatively speaking. Forgetting the past, or wishing like hell he could. Locked-and-loaded with God on his side. Fighting to survive. Well done, Zeke. Well done. Maybe you
are
apocalypse-ready.

“Mom says you keep your Purple Heart under your bed.”

“She told you about that?”

“I overheard it.”

“I do.”

“How did you get it?”

“I did a lot of bad things I can never be forgiven for.”

“I had my first Reconciliation today,” I say.

“Your school wastes no time,” he says.

“Father Vincent, the priest today, he said that Lazarus rising from
the dead is the oldest zombie story ever told. He said that Jesus rising from the dead is the second oldest.”

“
I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die in eternity
. Gospel of John. Jesus said that before he moved the stone from the tomb and raised Lazarus of Bethany.”

“By that logic then, Lazarus
was
a zombie.”

“Logic is not the word you mean,” he says. “The word you mean is
faith
. Faith is the foundation of everything. Without it, there is no religion. There is no Judaism or Catholicism or Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam. All religion is based in varying degrees of faith—believing in something outside the realm of belief. Lazarus is not a zombie,” he says.

“Zombies have more in common with Catholics than people care to admit.” Father Vincent’s words fall freely from my lips.

“Jesus is most certainly not a zombie. Jesus rising from the dead and ascending into Heaven is not some sci-fi, dime store, pulp novel. My belief in Jesus is just that—my belief in Jesus, not sublimation. You’re talking about the greatest history in the world, not some schlocky cinema.”

“What did you say?” I ask.

“Schlocky—it means cheap.”

“No, not that. Before that.”

“Schlocky—loathsome, repugnant.”

“Wait, stop, listen. Please. That word. What was that word?”

“Schlocky—contemptible, despicable, cut-rate.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, standing, frustrated. “Schlocky—I know what it means. The other word you said. Sublimation—why did you use that word? Why won’t you listen to me?”

Mom appears from the bathroom. “Jeremy, I’ve been thinking and I want to take your picture,” she says. “I always used to do that and I missed it this year. But we can still do it. We can do it tomorrow.”

“Fine,” I say. “Sounds fine.”

“Did I miss something?” she asks.

“I’m going to bed,” Zeke says.

“Jeremy,” she says. “What happened?”

“Jesus is a zombie,” I say.

“Zeke,” she says. “What happened?”

“Apparently, Lazarus is a zombie too,” Zeke says.

Mom sits back down at the table. “One time,” she says. “I would like to leave a room and reenter that same room and have everything be better than I left it. Just one time.”

Zeke leaves dishes in the sink and goes to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Mom and I sit at the table across from one another. Neither of us says anything. Finally, my hands slip inside of hers, cupped together.

“I love you, Mom,” I say.

“I love you too, Jeremy,” she says.

“Zeke is not my family,” I say.

“Ballentine is not mine,” she says.

“There it is,” I say.

“There it is,” she says.

I
turn the couch into a bed with a stack of itchy blankets Mom left out for me and put on
The Greatest Story Ever Told
. The smell of mothballs engulfs me.

The credits begin to roll and they just keep on rolling and rolling. Then these images of Jesus and cherubs appear, like the kind of cherubs carved into the dining room chairs, and then finally light and darkness emerge and the sky appears. It takes some time—a LOOOOOONG fucking time—but I finally get to the scene where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus says, “Come forth!” And Lazarus comes forth. And everyone goes apeshit because the bastard is alive—Lazarus. Nothing really happens. There is a lot of sky and rocks and swelling music, but nothing close up where we see the resurrection of a zombie.

Jesus, though—he’s, like, the ultimate unbeatable, holy zombie. Tortured to death and nailed to a cross. Buried for three days. Then rises and ascends to Heaven. He’s for sure a total zombie.
This is the body and blood of Jesus Christ
. Catholics eat his body and drink his blood. Either Catholics are all cannibals or the whole thing is fucking zombie.

I put away
The Greatest Story Ever Told
and find
Zombie Strippers!
in my bag. I mute the TV, press play, and keep a finger on the off button just in case. The movie begins and zombies appear and I’m alone. The movie is utterly nonsensical. No wonder Jackson had it.

Buckets of B&T.

Buckets.

Blood.

Tits.

I
t’s early morning and Mom’s already stoned. She gulps down three mugs of green tea, insisting on driving me to school, chewing up pills between promises.

Corrine Barker, the Painkiller Queen of Baltimore.

Before we leave I stop and hang back, waiting to see if she remembers. She leaves and waits for me in the van. When I get in she asks me what took so long. I say nothing and let go of the memory of us and my picture of the first day of school. She is another person now, someone I’ll never know.

She coasts through Federal Hill and the Inner Harbor, through nothing but green lights, just below the speed limit, occasionally drifting into the next lane. She takes a sharp turn onto 83 North and opens up the engine onto the highway. She nods off at the Baltimore Sun offices. Her head drops—another dope wave crashing over her. She snaps back to awareness as we pass the Baltimore City Jail. She’s mastered the white-knuckled grip of the steering wheel, post dope doze. I no longer fear riding in a car with her when she’s behind the wheel and whacked out on junk. I used to fantasize disaster apocalyptic scenarios, death and dismemberment, but she’s been high for so much of my life now that it’s almost all I’ve ever known. Almost.

Zombie Survival Code #3: Forget the past.

Mom exits off 83 North, cutting through the same suburban streets as Dad did the other day. She takes a corner a little too fast, knocking down a plastic trash can. I buckle my seatbelt. Mom approaches a double-parked car with flashing hazard lights and speeds up, passes it, swerving back into our lane.

“For better or for worse,” she says, “you need to know something.”

“Whatever it is,” I say, “I probably already know.”

“Here it is then,” she says. “I failed as a mother.”

“Is that an apology?” I ask.

“It’s a confession,” she says.

If my mother believes she has failed as a mother, what does that say about me?

“You’re father used to be a better person too,” she says.

We near Byron Hall.

Mom slows down as she white knuckles past a speed-walking woman—the same Dad honked at. The woman runs with the traffic. She looks over at me. We’re only separated by a few inches. I’m close to her, damn near close enough to touch her if I roll down the window. Touch her beautiful, full lips. Touch her perfect breasts. I don’t touch though. I just stare. She looks away and laughs. She’s obviously flattered. I tap the glass for her to look back. Finally, she does, still laughing, and says, “Your nose.”

Mom slaps my arm.

“Jesus Christ, Jeremy, your nose is bleeding,” Mom says. She digs through her purse, pill bottles rattling. She finds a pack of tissues and tosses them into my lap.

“I never get nosebleeds,” I say.

“Things change,” she says.

I zone out, staring at the identical houses and tiny lawns, each one sadly deteriorating and different only in color. Each one with the same stoop, same faded red brick, same square lawn. Men exit houses in suits and flannel shirts and ripped jeans and T-shirts, carrying bananas, newspapers, briefcases, and equipment bags. Women stand in doorways, waving goodbye, or exit houses in suits and heels, carrying children and coffee mugs. Mom slows to a stop in the middle of the street as one woman parallel parks. She’s dressed in all white—a nurse—probably getting home from the night shift at the hospital. She reminds me of Ana the Nurse in the opening to the remake of
Dawn of the Dead
.

H
ere is the story of Ana the Nurse. Ana the Nurse pulls into the driveway of her suburban house where she sees Vivian, the cute little girl next door, who has just learned to roller-skate backwards.
Aw, how sweet!

Ana moves inside and climbs into bed with her husband and they get it on, knock boots, bang it out.
Oh yeah!

The next morning, they wake to find the little shit Vivian standing in the doorway. She is in their house, in their bedroom, just staring. Vivian’s all fucked up. When the husband approaches her, she bites his ass like a rabid animal. Vivian’s the first zombie victim the audience is introduced to in the film—
bam!
—right off the bat—a child.

What I’m saying is this: I see the nurse parallel parking, and the first thing I’m looking for is a goddamn little girl on roller skates. Cute zombie neighbor kid!

And so that’s the story of Ana the Nurse.

W
e pass the empty football field. The sign out front reads:
BYRON HALL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FOR BOYS
and below it a new message has been added—
BHC FALL DRAMA – A DOLL’S HOUSE – TICKETS ON SALE NOW
. Mom stops the minivan at the top of the circle. No Christian Brothers. No Brother Lee. No douchebag blue jay. Even the faculty parking lot is vacant. Mom looks at the untied tie in my hands.

“When I met your father he was dressed in a three piece wool suit and wore the biggest darned knot you’ve ever seen.” She rests her head against the window. “It was a bar. He was sitting by himself, so I went over to him and said only a moron wears a wool suit in summertime.” Mom laughs. “He’d come from play practice. He was in a play. He was an actor. Your father.” She looks at me. “That was the play he was in. Same one.”

“My friend is the assistant director,” I say. I want to tell Mom all about Aimee, but Mom’s got frogeyes—glassy, fucked up, gone.

“Torvald. Dressed in that darned wool suit. Said it helped him feel connected to the character. I saw him again almost a year later. Same bar. Except this time he wore this full Marine get-up.”

“Uniform,” I say.

“Sword and all. I just thought he was in another play.” She nods, bobbing over dope waves. “He’d been drafted. It was Vietnam. And you know what happens next.”

I tie a full Windsor, pinching my knot at the base, tightening it up. An intoxicating honest urge consumes me and with complete satisfaction, I say, “Mom, you need to know something about me.” I say, “It’s not that you failed as mother. You’re just a fucking junkie.”

I
make it to Algebra on time today. I suffer through Natural Science and World Civilization, and survive Christian Awareness. After, I rush down the hallway, dodging plaid fuck after plaid fuck, all the way to the gymnasium, but when I get there I see a note taped to the door. It says,
Physical Education will be held at the pool today
.

Signed—Coach O’Bannon.

Fuck.

Physical Education during the day fucking sucks. Some kids have it as the last class of the day, which is awesome because they can go home right after and don’t have to change back into their sport coat and necktie monkey outfit. Others have it as the first class of the day, which totally blows. They come to school looking like the Incredible Hulk, their gym shirt and shorts on under their monkey clothes—bulky bitches. However, having it in the middle of the day is the assiest of all because I not only have to rush from class across campus to the gym, but then change into the required blue shorts and shirt and be on the bleachers in five minutes flat.

Inside the pool, the air is heavy and sharp, chock full of chemicals.

“Ladies,” O’Bannon says to a group of us walking in together, including Super Shy Kid and Dirtbag Boy from my English class. “What the Lord took so long?” Coach O’Bannon stands by the diving board, slapping a clipboard in a gray tracksuit with black stripes up the sides. He pauses, waiting for one of us to answer, I think, or just to make us squirm. “If I told you ladies that there was a harem down here giving away free BJs, you would’ve been
lightning fast. Do you know what a harem is?” He points to me. “Little girl, do you know what a harem is?”

“A group of whores, sir,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. “A group of whores. Correct. I bet if I told you that Susie Rottencrotch was down here from that diseased, sister school Prudence High, you would’ve damn near broken the speed barrier to be down here.”

“Do we have to swim?” Super Shy Kid asks, the fucking moron.

“What did you say, Artsy Fartsy?” Coach O’Bannon’s words echo. “Artsy Fartsy, do you have a question?” Super Shy Kid nods yes and Coach says, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” He makes the Sign of the Cross.

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” Super Shy Kid says.

“News flash—you ballshwanks are getting wet like a pussy in heat. No one gets out. Unless you are on your period. Are any of you on your period?”

No one answers.

“Bathing suits are in the back.” He points to the locker rooms with the clipboard. “And don’t forget to shower before you come out. I don’t want any of that gel you ladies use in your perms getting in my pool water.”