Rebel Without a Cause (24 page)

L: ‘Who would be most likely to have cut them off?’

Why, the father or the mother or the doctor, or whoever helped the mother to give birth to the child. I don’t know; maybe I was scared

when I was young of something like that. I don’t remember just now if anybody threatened me. I know there was a young kid who was ruptured, and once my father and mother were talking in Polish about him. He told her about the belt he wore and he motioned about his body to show her. I saw it, and when he told her I understood a few words, and he motioned to show her how the belt was going around him to hold his penis up.

I don’t know but I think that’s what most of the kids tried to see when we were in school in the class room where they were all trying to get under the teacher’s desk. The older kids used to say that it was a fur cap or a teddy bear she was hiding there. Most of the kids tried to see it.

I don’t think I ever saw my mother completely naked. I always tried to get out of washing her back. Sometimes when she swung at me I’d see her breasts. I only saw her genitals a couple of times.

I never saw my father completely naked.

When I got older I got some respect for my sisters. I never did anything like that to my younger sister. Even now I treat her as a baby. When she was a couple of months old I didn’t like to look at her when she didn’t have her diapers or panties on or something. When she was covered she was like any baby, cute and sweet.

I have a cousin named Rose who was about eight when I moved from B—— Street to S—— Street. She was living with my uncle on F—— Street and she used to come over and play with my sister. We had a back porch and between the back porch and the ground there was a foundation that held it up. It was blocked off and we had a clubhouse there, me and some of the fellows. We used to hide there and collect bottles and junk like that and we had a carpet in there. I took her in there and had intercourse with her once. That was the only time. She was a nice little girl but I never liked her after that. Then I played a lot with the girl that lived upstairs. Her name was Peg. She was about twelve, older than me at the time. I’d take her down the cellar and I liked her a lot. To me she always seemed a nice girl, pretty and everything like that. The cellar was dark and dreary and damp. I never played with her much outside, in the light. It’s only in the dark when I touch women. I guess when I got to be a little older I knew what
women are for. I don’t know how I learned. I guess I learned from my cousins. I learned everything else from them.

L: ‘Which cousins do you mean?’

I mean my two cousins Tony and Riggs. The oldest cousin was doing time for highjacking a truck when I came in here. He’s the oldest and has a wife and child. Then there is Emma, she’s married. Tony got married before I came here and Riggs, he’ll be married soon. I dislike both of them.

L: ‘Why do you think you dislike them?’

I’m not sure. I remember one day Riggs wanted some little girl to suck his peter and when she hollered he told his mother I was the one. I don’t know how it worked out but I know I got a beating for it.

L: ‘But you disliked him before that?’

I might have. It’s all jumbled up. He tried to catch up in school with me: I was two grades ahead of him and he went to summer school and things like that. He failed several times. I am only a year older than him. Tony is a year and half older and he was only one grade ahead of me. I don’t know if that’s the time I started hating Riggs. I know I disliked him because he called me Squint. I only went with him because I had no one else to go with. I remember we used to steal things from a store across the street, apples, any kind of food that was laying around. When I quit the Boy Scouts I started hanging around the gang that he and Tony were in. I played hookey a lot with Tony when I was at St. A——’s and we’d hang around the railroad yards. Then I started with Riggs. We played hookey in High. He used to gamble a lot and most always win. I never caught him cheating but I knew he cheated. I’d see him winning all the time, and I’d take my gun out and lay it on the table next to me and he’d look at me and at the gun and a little while later he’d start losing. Then when I got what I wanted I’d quit. I didn’t want him to cheat me. Some times when he wanted a little money to get in a card game or crap game I gave it to him, and when he’d win we’d buy cigarettes and spend the afternoon in a show. That way I got along with him.

One time we were thinking of holding up a bank. He wanted some money and I was out for the same thing. There were a lot of bank hold-ups going on then around our town and we thought we’d plan
one too. I told him I could get an automatic rifle and we’d buy some shotguns and saw the barrels off. But I was always afraid that he’d squeal or something. I would never trust him even though I would go with him. I was always watching and waiting for something to happen. I came here before we could pull that job. We were figuring on a lot of things then. We were going to try and hold up some armored-car guards when they walked in places to collect money. We couldn’t get the cars so we were going to get the guards. If we had a couple sawed-off shotguns we figured they’d be afraid. But I didn’t trust Riggs very far. I knew he’d let me down: he’s done it time and time again. He’s more the burglary type.…

As far back as I can remember I didn’t like my father. I would never speak to him other than when it was necessary. For some reason I disliked him and I couldn’t talk to him. I would tell my mother and sister to say things to him; I’d tell them and they’d tell him. My sister always got along with him. I got along best with my uncle. He and I were going to South America together when he received his bonus. He had a wife but he hadn’t lived with her for eight years. He didn’t get along very well with my father either. I guess it was because my father was quick-tempered and would argue with everybody. I know my father worked hard and didn’t get much pay. He would always complain about something hurting him, his back or his head, and my mother babied him a lot.

When I was around twelve I got into trouble by breaking into a store with several other fellows and I went to the Juvenile Court and they sent me to the Home for three weeks. When I came back my father didn’t say anything to me. He knew because my mother told him, and yet he didn’t say anything about it. I figured he must be a pretty swell man if he didn’t say anything to his son after he spent three weeks in a reform school. When I was older, around seventeen, he always wanted me to get a job. Whenever he’d see me he’d ask if I was looking for work. Usually I would lie to him and say yes, but he knew I was lying so he would turn around and call me a liar. That’s why I would always try to be away from home when he came from work. I’d hear my father and mother arguing about
me many times. When I was around seventeen I didn’t have any job, no money, fed up with everything, so I figured I’d get money as easy and as quick as possible.

L: ‘You were saying that your mother babied your father. Were you jealous of the attentions she showered on him?’

When he had a sore back or something I didn’t like the way she was so sorry for him.

L: ‘Did you resent your mother’s attentions to your father?’

I always thought it was useless.

L: ‘Did you ever have any distinct resentment against your father about that?’

I think the only reason she was attentive to him was so he shouldn’t be angry and start arguing with her. He always argued with her, that’s the reason.

My father used to have two cars. He used one to go to work with; what the other car was bought for was because he wanted to get my sister interested in learning to drive and taking out a license. So one day she said to him in front of me, “What’s the matter with him?” He said that he bought it for her, not for me. I guess I disliked him more after that. I guess he dislikes me too.

L: ‘Why do you think he dislikes you?’

I guess he couldn’t hear very well so when he said something to me and I would answer him so he couldn’t hear it he would think I’d given him a sarcastic answer.

L: ‘Have you always disliked him or was there a time when you felt differently towards him?’

I’ve always disliked him. He would always argue with somebody about something: he’d pick on me and my sister or my mother. Jesus! He’d even argue with my grandmother. I disliked him even more for that. Why should he argue with an old woman? But maybe there was a time when I liked him. I never talked to him because I felt he couldn’t understand me. There are loads of reasons. One time I called him in to supper when he was fixing his car. He had a hammer in his hand and he said he would hit me in the head with it. I was about thirteen then. I didn’t say anything, just let things go by. He told my mother about it and she argued with him. I could hear them.

When we lived on S—— Street we had four rooms; a kitchen,
two bedrooms and a parlor. There was a door from one of the bedrooms to the parlor. I slept in the parlor sometimes and they slept in the next bedroom. My sister slept in the other bedroom. I—I—Sometimes I used to. I was sleeping in the bedroom next to their bedroom and I used to hear them moving over and—preparing for intercourse. Sometimes I heard my father tell my mother to—move—over and—and put her—legs up and … I hated to hear it. I would put the cover over my head and try not to listen. An action like that, it isn’t nice for a son to hear. Many times I heard my father say to my mother, “What the hell do you think I married you for?” I’m not sure if I actually saw them doing anything like that.

L: ‘How do you suppose you would have felt if you had seen anything like that?’

It’s pretty hard to explain. I guess I hated to see him do anything like that in front of everybody. Sometimes when my sister used to get beatings from my father or mother—when she was younger she used to get hit sometimes for not listening to them—she would sit in the room crying, and I would go away by myself. I didn’t like to see her get hit. My sister is a good girl. She works. She gives all her money to her mother. She doesn’t play around with boys. My younger sister gets beaten a lot though. My mother beats her because she talks back. My mother is a timid woman; she cries right away. I guess I feel sorry for her, so I wanted to get away from everything and everybody and I’d leave home. I left home a lot of times; I can’t remember how often but it was plenty.

L: ‘If you had seen your parents during any intimacy, Harold, how do you suppose it would have appeared to you?’

Well, it appeared that my father was hurting my mother. I guess it might have a lot of different meanings. Maybe I did see my father and mother do that. I can’t recall. It must have been way back before I can remember. It might seem vulgar, brutal, filthy, dirty, or what not.

L: ‘Is that the way a child would think?’

Well, whenever we had to take a leak when we were little kids we would consider the penis dirty, nasty. My mother might have said that. She taught us that the genitals were dirty: she said that the penis was dirty.

I don’t remember ever seeing my father naked. He strikes me as being the poor illiterate and ignorant European peasant type that come over to America to get something. They leave over there because there is nothing for them. He’s a good mechanic but he doesn’t know how to read or write. He has a big chest and a neck like a bull. He has a kind of pugilistic appearance. If I had ever seen anything like that it would make me feel as if he was hurting my mother, that he was choking her, killing her. But sometimes I know, when he was home and I was old enough to realize some things, I saw my father put his hands on my mother’s buttocks. It didn’t exactly appeal to me. I didn’t think it was right. I guess I did feel a little resentment against my father for touching my mother.

L: ‘You felt he shouldn’t do it?’

I disliked it when he did it in front of everybody. My mother would always tell him to look out for the children but he didn’t care.

L: ‘And you resented the fact that he handled your mother that way?’

I certainly did.

L: ‘You felt he had no right to?’

Yes. But when I got older I saw it in a different light. I guess I know right from wrong.

L: ‘You were jealous of him?’

I must have thought that my father could at least be decent enough not to do anything like that in front of everybody.

L: ‘You thought of your father’s relationship with your mother as distasteful?’

When I’d hear them in bed, hear them talk and him coaxing my mother I hated to listen to it. I’d put the covers over my head and try to shut out everything: sometimes I’d recite nursery rhymes to myself, just to forget, just to forget. I still sleep with the covers over my head. I hated to listen to it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be around. I wanted to be away from there. I’d pull the covers over my head.

I don’t remember much about my father and mother before that time. I got one severe beating from him for ruining his razor. He really beat me up: he lifted me from the ground and let me drop on the floor.

My mother told me that when they were first married he’d hit her. I hated him for that. I guess my mother was married to him about a week when she says she left him. They were living in B—— then and she came running back to my grandmother’s; and my grandmother chased her back. My mother was about sixteen when they got married. Sometimes I wish my grandmother hadn’t made her go back; she’s had a very unhappy life with him.

Maybe he really is not as bad as I say he is. Maybe he treated my mother o.k. He always argued with my mother about me; why didn’t I get a job, and this and that. When we lived on S—— Street, when I was about eleven, my mother would close the door between the parlor and the bedroom where I slept. She’d come in the room and just sit, read a book or look out the window. I didn’t hear anything when she closed the door, but sometimes when it was warm the door would be opened and I’d have to sleep underneath the covers. Sometimes when my father came home from driving a truck he would have some kind of joke he would be aching to tell my mother, and I knew it must be a dirty joke of some kind. He would tell my mother to remind him to tell her and my mother would say, “If that’s the kind of a joke I think it is I don’t want to hear it.” I knew it was a dirty joke when he would say anything like that and I disliked it; he shouldn’t say anything like that to her. I guess I hated him. I remember when I was about eight or nine I was learning to ride a bicycle and there was a fellow that wanted to sell his for three dollars, so I asked my mother to buy it for me and she told me to ask my father. I didn’t have guts enough to ask him; so finally I mentioned it at the table and he said, “What do you want to do, get killed?” So I never asked him for anything again. I have often wondered why I didn’t want to ask him for anything. Now I think that’s the reason.