My Sister, My Love (35 page)
Did I hurt Bliss, Mummy? was it me
No! not you Skyler not ever you
“Excuse
me.
”
On the walk a few feet in front of me the young light-skinned black woman stood, agitated. Out of nowhere she’d emerged. And the baby fretting in the stroller, and the dark-eyed little girl sucking at her forefinger, half-hiding behind her mother’s sturdy legs.
“You been followin’ us? Why so?”
“I—have? I haven’t.”
Somehow, I’d returned the way I’d come. Just ahead was a small bleak playground of swings, teeter-totter, littered sandbox and children’s wading pool in which snow lay in mysterious clumps and patches in mimicry of child-swimmers long since departed. Falling snow was melting on the pavement and on the heated skin of my face. Without knowing what I’d been doing I seemed to have doubled back on myself once, twice?—three times?
The woman spoke loudly. Her young face was sharp-boned as the edge of a shovel, her eyes bulged and glared with a kind of savage thrilled mer
riment. “My daughter is asking, ‘Why’s that man looking at me?’—she’s scared, mister. And I don’t like it.”
Quickly I apologized. I hadn’t meant to scare anyone.
“You don’t stop following us, mister, know what?—I’m gonna summon the police.”
There was logic here. I wasn’t going to contest it. Hunched in my hooded jacket, I backed off.
Limping away using the tree limb as a cane, Skyler fled.
*
*
Suspicious reader! By now you’ve been wondering how the hell Skyler Rampike, unemployed/unemployable nineteen-year-old high school dropout, can afford to live even in the squalid rented room on Pitts Street, New Brunswick. Right? Fact is, Skyler has been the beneficiary of a trust fund established by his grandmother Edna Louise Rampike at the time of her death in March 2003 after a lengthy illness exacerbated by C.A.E.M. (“Chronic Acute Elderly Melancholia”) which first struck the seemingly indomitable old woman in the late winter of 1997 in the whirlpool-aftermath of her granddaughter’s (yet unsolved, luridly publicized) murder. Poor Grandma Rampike! Not just the loss of her prized grandchild but the ceaseless “sullying”—“trampling”—of the proud Rampike name seemed to have destroyed Edna Louise utterly. Yet she took time to set aside, in her will, a small trust in her grandson Skyler’s name, “as partial recompense for the pain and anguish this boy has endured” which paid out to Skyler, by way of checks made out to him by Edna Louise Rampike’s executor G. Gordon Swidell, a modest sum of $500 a month. Not much, you’re thinking, and you are right, but on such a sum Skyler could “scrape by.” Usually.
*
In fact, it was far worse than this. What I’d hoped to evoke in “Black Dirigible”—keen-eyed readers will note the subtle poetic trope!—was Skyler’s poignant epiphany of death-in-life/life-in-death and his (courageous, quixotic?) decision to return to the writing of this exhausting manuscript; what actually happened was less poignant than brutally comic, or maybe just brutal, for as Skyler limped away from the angry young mother he was suddenly set upon by the boys who’d been playing basketball nearby, punched, pummelled, knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly. For these were indignant black boys, who could blame them? Grungy jacket and trousers torn, pockets turned inside out, loose bills and change taken, as much as twenty-five dollars, plus the new purchases from the 7-Eleven, and a final kick in the face, there Skyler lay wheezing, whimpering, bleeding (nose, mouth), writhing like a giant worm on the cold, very hard and ungiving pavement of some urban park he had no idea where, why he’d come here, what had happened to him, or would happen when he dared to open his swollen eyes.
…LOVED MUMMY DESPERATELY BEFORE EVEN THERE WAS DESPERATION IN
our lives…
*
SKYLER WHAT DID YOU DO HONEY WILL YOU TELL MUMMY
A very poor quality tape. Grainy, murky as if the scene is underwater. The recording device—an old camcorder, apparently—is handheld and the hand is shaky and whoever the hand belongs to, the viewer will not see.
The tape is but a fragment. All that remains is seventy-two seconds long.
The off-camera voice is muffled, distraught, unmistakably female
Skyler tell where sister did you
The child! Seems to be a boy though his facial features are not very “masculine.” Blurred and wavy as if in fact he’s underwater. Or one of those elusive figures who drift through our dreams, sometimes even relatives of ours, who, so perversely, lack fleshed-out faces. What the viewer can see of this child’s face is that his skin is unnaturally pale as if drained of blood, and appears to be sweaty; small, and triangular in shape, like a cobra-face (or do I mean “cobra-head”—do cobras have “faces”
persay
?) and the deep-set eyes are droopy-lidded (exhaustion? evasion? guilt?) and
eerily glassy (like marbles?). The child’s light-colored hair is disheveled as if he’s been wakened from sleep. His flannel pajama-top hangs oddly on his narrow chest as if already at his young age (you’d never guess more than seven) he has learned the protective strategy of hunching/scrunching himself to appear smaller than he is, younger than he is, more helpless/innocent than he is.
In theory, the tape is in color. In fact its color is so faded it resembles an old black-and-white film of the kind seen almost exclusively on late-night TV.
Skyler? tell me what did you do
Where have sister please? Mummy is
The handheld camera approaches the fearful child who seems to be murmuring a response. Whatever the child says, his words are so muffled you can’t hear. To make matters worse, he wipes at his nose, and mouth, with both hands.
Skyler? Please tell me in this house? have looked and looked playing one of your games? hide-and-seek? tell Mummy neither of you will be punished Mummy promises
The child stares blankly as if he hasn’t heard or, having heard, doesn’t know what the words mean. His lips part but no sound emerges.
Wipes at his leaky nose, begins to cry.
*
What the
National Enquirer
would pay for this lost video! Tabloid TV! Network TV! Leaked to the magisterial
New York Times,
the skeletal transcript would be replicated verbatim and the shadowy figure of nine-year-old Skyler Rampike would be emblazoned on the very front page of the paper, if but below the fold. For this video, which Skyler can only vaguely recall having seen in the tense and suspenseful interlude before his father was summoned to come home, and his sister’s body was found in the furnace room of the house, would seem to have been viewed by only Daddy and Skyler and Mummy, who recorded it. Soon afterward, it disappeared. No Fair Hills police officers nor even the Rampikes’ zealous attorneys Kruk and Crampf and eventually Rosenblatt would glimpse it. What happened to this incriminating tape, do you think? My feeling is that quick-acting/decisive Daddy destroyed it before any outsiders were summoned to the house.
HASTENED SKYLER INTO HER BATHROOM. REMOVED THE DAZED CHILD’S DAMP
pajamas and her own silky nightgown. Pulled him into the shower with her murmuring
Skyler it will be all right Mummy loves you and Jesus loves you never lose faith we will protect you.
Shampooed his hair, and her own. Soaped and scrubbed at his skinny little body on baby-giraffe legs near to collapsing. Soaped and scrubbed at her fleshy Mummy-body that was flushed and heated from the steaming-hot shower. When he slipped, seized his skinny shoulders to bear him upright. And afterward, he was conscious of her gripping his hands, left and then right, with her metal nail file cleaning beneath his fingernails and toenails and roughly then with the fond impatience of a mother bear toweling him dry, and dressed him in clean clothes and dressed herself and by this time it was 7:48
A.M.
Now she would call Daddy.
*
Indicates an additional lost block of time. Might’ve been two days, or three. After the preceding chapters. Wiped out.
SKYLER YOU MUST NEVER NEVER TELL NOT EVER
Not even Jesus, Skyler He will forgive you anyway
This is a fact: I’d intended to end the chapter “Black Dirigible” with Skyler bravely opening the mysterious letter and reading it; but, as Skyler stumbled through his unexpected misadventure in the park, and crept on home in defeat, it became evident that the poor kid couldn’t cope with the letter at that time, both his eyes swollen, leaking blood from numerous orifices and cuts, nerves so jangled he felt like something shaken in a tin can. And so hauling himself up the stairs by the railing, wincing and whimpering to himself, once inside his room he collapsed on his bed and so for days
*
the mailbox in the vestibule went unopened until at last it was so stuffed with junk mail that the irate mailman had to jam advertising flyers into the cracks of the mailbox door and at last someone (fellow tenant? building superintendent?) climbed the stairs to the third floor to strike his fist on the door of 3C loudly inquiring if anybody was inside? alive or dead? and so finally, roused from my stupor, I replied that yes, I was still alive; and shortly afterward made my way downstairs, with shaky hands unlocking the mailbox, having no other choice, removed the letter and stared at it trying to think coherently, must’ve been Swidell’s secretary who had for
warded this letter to SKYLER RAMPIKE at this address though I had asked Swidell not to forward any mail to me, not ever. Yet, here it was.
Knowing at once who the letter was from and knowing that I would read it though I had vowed several years before not to read any further letters from my mother Betsey Rampike whom I feared as you would fear the cobra’s mother and there was the return address on the envelope:
HEAVEN SCENT, INC.
9 Magnolia Terrace
Spring Hollow, New York 10590
And inside, on a single sheet of sweetly perfumed pale-apricot stationery, in lavender ink, in the familiar handwriting like a stealthy caress—
*
In fact, Skyler stumbled out of his room during this groggy interlude to check himself into the Livingstone Community Medical Center ER to have his deeper wounds, that wouldn’t stop bleeding, cleaned and stitched up: left eyelid, upper lip and skin-flap beneath his left nostril. What gratitude Skyler feels for the Medical Center where even indigent Caucasian junkies were not turned away for lack of medical insurance! Maybe the stitches were crudely executed and maybe my face is scarred for life, yet, who’s complaining?
Dear Mr Rampik
We have takn your dagher & will releese here to you if you obey our instrucions. But if you do not you will not see your beatiful daghter again & it will be your blame.
We are awar of your transgresions in this family blessed by God, now we are Gods wrath to punish for transgresions of the Father of this house. You have not lived a decent life but drifted into Sin. We have taken your daghter for her own good. This is not an idle theat but God has theatened you in the name of His Only Begoten Son. Your daghter will be returned safe to you when your heart is deserving. We do not crave $.
Where is your daghter Mr Rampik, you are asking. The answer is, not in this house polluted by Sin. Your daghter is a precious gem to be kept in a Safe House approx. 20 miles away. DO NOT CALL POLICE. DO NOT CALL F.B.I. You may summon your pastor. He will serve for you, in this time of trial. You have not lived a good decent family life as Christ has bid us, Mr Rampik this is the price of evill spilling into the world. Your daghter is in danger of Hell. Yet we will return her to you if you repent. If you return to your Martial Vows to have & to hold until death part. DO NOT CALL HELP. DO NOT THROW ON LIGHTS THROU THE HOUSE. DO NOT DIAL 911 this is a Death Sentence to your daghter. Mr Rampik we are watching you
We will contact you by phone this A.M. We will conssent to speak with your Pastor solely. WE ARE SERIOUS IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER. Here is your daghter to “sign” to you that she is with us & she is praying for you.
DO NOT CONTACT POLICE MR RAMPIK YOUR BEATIFUL DAGHTER WILL REJOIN THE BOSOM OF JESUS IN HEAVEN, TO ESCAPE THE EVILL OF THIS HOUSHOLD. YOU WILL NEVER SEE HERE AGAIN.
THE EYE THAT “SEES”
*
*
This curious—notorious—document! The key to who killed my sister, and why, would seem to be in this alleged “ransom note”—unless maybe it isn’t.