The Heart is Deceitful above All Things (15 page)

‘She left you; too much for her to take, I believe.' She wipes her sweaty brow with her arm. ‘If you stop giving in to the devil, well, she'll want you again, I believe.'

‘Like last time?' I ask, wiping my face on my bare shoulder.

‘She came and got you, didn't she?'

I swallow some snot. ‘But I messed up again.'

‘Well, you just have to be hard on yourself, Jeremiah, and not give in to the devil so easy.' I nod eagerly.

‘You can even be an example to her. She needs help, too, I believe.'

‘I want to, ma'am.'

She wipes her brow again. ‘Good, that's good Jeremiah. You have to want Jesus' goodness and love to fill you, and he will, he will . . . now let's get you in here.'

She places me closer to the tub and pats the wooden stepping stool next to it, for me to climb on. I do and look down into the tub, seeing the water, like a mirror with steam rising off it. I inhale the chlorine too deeply, expecting comfort, but it only stings my nose, throat, and eyes.

I turn and look up at her. Her hand pats gently on my shoulder, reassuring me.

‘Hold my arm.' She reaches it out to me like a steel bar on the seat of a roller coaster.

I lean over, smelling her kitchen grandmother scent of nutmeg, lemons, and allspice under the heavy bleach fumes.

‘I can't, ma'am, it's too far,' I whisper, hoping she'll
lift me in her arms and put me into the tub like she did when I was last here a year ago.

‘Yes, you can, Jeremiah.' She steps away and holds her arm out to me. ‘You're big now.'

‘Please?'

‘Do I need to call him up here?'

I grab her arm and stretch my left leg up and over the porcelain lip of the tub and pull myself up until I sit on the edge, my foot curled up tightly above the water like I'm dangling over the edge of the world.

‘Go ahead.' She nudges me. I dip my foot in and pull it out immediately.

‘It's too hot.' Some snot falls from my nose and splashes into the tub.

‘Jeremiah, I'm going to call him up here if you're not in this tub by the count of three . . .'

‘OK, OK!'

‘One.' I put my foot in, steam crawling up my leg. The water has a heavy silky feel to it.

‘Two.' It lands on the tub bottom. I swing my other leg over and stand in the water up to my thighs.

‘It's too hot!' My tears are back, and I jump up and down, trying to escape the water.

‘Not as hot as hellfire! You want to go there? You want to feel hellfire for eternity?'

‘Please!' I reach my arms out to her.

‘Reverend!' she hollers out.

‘Please . . . ma'am . . . please!' I cry so hard I can hardly speak.

‘Reverend!' She puts her hands on my head and presses down, keeping me from jumping out. Still, I keep moving as much as I can.

We hear his heavy footsteps marching up the carpeted stairs. As he comes closer she releases my head, and I slow my bouncing.

He opens the door and a blast of cool air hits us. I don't move. She says nothing to him or me, just turns and leaves, closing the door behind her.

His eyes are as clear and burning as the bleach water I'm standing in.

‘Sit,' he says loudly, the ‘t' spitting out, echoing off the white porcelain tiles of the bathroom.

I quickly lower myself down until I'm submerged up to my neck in the water.

He leans over me.

‘Hands,' he says sternly.

I reach my arms up to him and he ties a cord hanging over a brass towel rack on the wall behind me to one of my wrists, then the other.

He pulls the cord tight so my arms are stretched up and can commit no sin.

‘I am right down the hall. I so much as hear a sound from you, Jeremiah, you will regret the day you were born.' He turns around and walks out, closing the door halfway.

I've turned it all off. The welts and sores on my back, ass, and thighs burn like a fire someplace behind me. The hot water turns my skin bright red, but I've already left.

I'm with my momma in Vegas, winning lots of money. She's so happy, she's hugging me and she keeps telling me how good we are, how clean.

I press my hands into the bleached water and rub lightly on the bloodstain. And like invisible ink, it starts to fade.

‘Kill you!' my mother screams, still muffled.

‘Son, I can't hold her much longer, you best git now.' I wish the sink were big enough for me to climb inside of.

‘You hear me?' he shouts.

I lift the underwear, the white ones with a ruffled back that he bought especially for her from Victoria's Secret, spin around, and display the panties.

‘Look, it's OK! It's out! It's OK!'

Water flows from the sopping wet underwear onto my feet and down to the chair, ending in a big puddle.

We all just stand there staring, the water making ticking noises as it splats onto the floor.

I hold the underwear out to them, up toward the fluorescent light, and there, clearly, is the faded outline of rust-tinged blood. My blood.

My mother screams again, kicks backward in her bare feet at Jackson's shins, and struggles free.

I stand frozen, her panties spread out between my outstretched hands like an old lady's knitting, as she barrels toward me.

‘You're always trying to steal what's mine!' she
screams, and grabs a small lamp off the table and hurls it at me.

I watch it flying toward my face in slow motion, and somehow I jump off the chair so the lamp sails straight into the mirror above the sink. Glass shatters and water sprays everywhere.

I crouch on the floor where I landed, like a frog. I look up into my mother's face, covered in red splotches. Jackson's hands cover her mouth again, and her blue eyes roll wildly like spinning marbles.

‘Bleach don't always work,' I say quietly.

‘Go on,' he says, holding my mother, who's rocking back and forth and moaning.

I rise quickly and go past the divider to their bed.

I pull off the white baby doll that he'd bought for her.

I lay it as neatly as I can on the bed, the sleeves crossed in front like a burial gown for a child that has disintegrated away.

I go to my side of the room and pull on jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers, but no socks and grab my jacket from the hook that's my height that Jackson had put up especially for me.

I walk past them. She's turned toward him now; he's still holding her arms, but her head is against his chest, bobbing up and down with her sobs and moans. They don't say a word.

Jackson motions to the door with his head.

I step over a chunk of mirror and I see a face, red
and splotched, with black raccoon eyes, lipstick smeared across it like a clown, just like hers.

But it's me. It is me. And I have to go.

‘Bye,' I whisper, and leave.

It's not too cold out, but it feels it. It's still dark. The only light is from our trailer; we're very far away from other trailers. I can see the black dinosaur shapes of the woods of the Blue Ridge mountains rising around me and hear the night sounds of crickets and rustling animals. I turn back to our trailer and catch glimpses of movement behind the closed shades. I check to make sure the trailer's still on cinder blocks, not wheels. It is.

In my head I turn daylight on to drive away any wolves or vampires. It's so sunny I have to squint to see, but I know where I'm going. I walk quickly, cautiously, keeping my sneakers from crunching too much on the loosely packed dirt, so nothing knows I'm here.

Some empty lots down there's an old doghouse that someone had built and left. It's wooden, with a red, peeling roof and ‘DOG' glued on in tarnished gold letters.

I go there a lot. To keep the raccoons out I've put wood from a crate in front of the entrance, like a boarded-up, abandoned building. Inside I keep a pillow, blanket, an overdue library book, and a small flashlight that I stole from a trip with Jackson to Malcom's Auto Supply shop. I slid the thin silver light up my jacket sleeve and prayed to Jesus that no had seen me. No one had.

Once inside the doghouse I wrap the blanket around
my shoulders, with the pillow on the wooden floor, under me. I turn the piece of crate sideways so it still blocks the door but I can see out some. I turn my flashlight on, but I'm careful not to shine it around too much, just enough to see that all the walls are still there and didn't open to another dimension like a wardrobe in a book I read did.

I'm relieved, and disappointed, that it didn't. I don't inspect the pointy roof because I know what's up there and I don't need to see their shiny webs and dusty strings. I like to think of them as taking me in as one of their own, ready to swing down, like Tarzan, and attack whatever tries to hurt me. We, the flesh-eating predators of the house of DOG, protect our own.

I breathe in the mustiness of my blankets, mixed with old dog smell and the faint smell of urine I cleaned up as best as I could from the last time I had an accident. It's so comforting, I decide never to leave; I will wait until a wall finally dissolves away and I escape into another dimension.

I lie on my pillow and shine my flashlight on the faded picture on the wood of the crate. I stare at the smiling, freckled, red-haired boy in a large sombrero climbing a ladder leaning against a tree dripping with plump peaches. He's waving with one hand and reaching for a peach with the other. If I jiggle the flashlight, his hand moves, waving to me to join him. I lie on my stomach as I always do, resting on the pillow, with my flashlight under my chest pointing like a spotlight.

I start to rock up and down.

‘Come have a peach with me,' he always tells me. ‘We'll go into my treehouse and eat peaches, just you and me, and we'll never come back.'

My hands under me start to reach for my thing.

‘You can wear my sombrero,' he promises, and stretches his arm out to me.

I open my fly and grope around because it's not there sticking up like a miniscrewdriver handle against my lower stomach. I feel panicky and excited all at once. God finally cured me, the bleach worked! I pat my hands on the flat skin of my crotch, terrified to go any lower.

I feel something there, between my legs, but I'm not sure what it is. I sit up fast, the blanket wrapped around me, and lean against a wall. Holding my breath, I lift my hips and slide my jeans to my knees and shine my flashlight down. I think I know what I'll see, just more hard, smooth, white skin, like on a Barbie doll.

I open my eyes and my flashlight shines on my thing, yellowish pink, Krazy-Glued backward between my legs. And suddenly I feel pressure on my bladder and I need to piss. I move my shaking hand and pull on my thing; it stretches out slightly like gum stuck on a sidewalk but snaps right back.

I yank again, hard, but it only makes my eyes tear. And then I find a string stuck on the side of my thing and I follow it back with my fingers. It disappears inside of me. I tug hard and it feels like my
bowels are being pressed. I moan from the ache of it.

‘Oh, Lord's mercy,' I say again and again, the words sounding too big and empty inside the wooden box to have any effect.

I lie on my back on the pillow and close my eyes.

I turn off the flashlight and reach under my legs to the string. It's definitely attached to something in my asshole and I can't remember how it got there. I pull again, and it's like trying to rip off a thick scab. I tug again, but it barely moves, and the tears roll down the sides of my face. I reach again for my thing, but it's stuck backward.

‘It's stuck,' I cry into the spider-filled roof.

My mouth jerks open in a convulsion of sadness and fear. A high-pitched squeal comes out, like a dump dog shot with a BB gun. The sound frightens me even more, and I roll over onto my stomach and curl up around my pillow. My body shakes and quivers as if in battle with a high fever. I have to pee badly, and I think I still can, but I don't want to go outside.

It just drains out of me, spraying backward, between my legs. I hear it hitting the wood wall behind me and bouncing off it. It soaks some of my blanket, but the warm relief only makes me sob harder, my breath moving too quickly, out of control.

Jackson's breath is like a mosquito buzzing violently in my ear.

‘You're my pretty baby doll, pretty baby girl,' he says between gasps and pants in my ear.

His hands run up and down under the white baby doll quickly, like a dog digging in the dirt. He covers my face in hard, hungry kisses, coating me in the film of his beer-fogged mouth. He lifts me off his lap, my arms encircling his neck. He carries me past the divider to their side, to their bed.

‘Sexy baby, Daddy's hot little girl.'

‘Am I pretty?' I ask.

‘Mmmm-hmmm,' Jackson says, lying next to me, pulling the silver zipper down the middle of his orange jumpsuit like he's ripping himself in half. My arms are still wrapped tightly around him. I feel his hands working in the dark, and I hear the snap of his underwear.

‘Do you love me?' I ask.

‘Ready for Daddy?' He takes hold of my arms and pulls them off his neck.

‘Nooo . . .' I reach back, but he pushes them down.

‘You're chokin' me, baby doll . . .'

I put my arms out again. He slides on top of me, pinning me down.

‘Ready for Daddy?' He reaches over to the nightstand, and I hear the fart noises of a squeezed container.

‘I'm your pretty baby girl,' I say.

‘Uh-huh, OK, baby, jus' relax, I'm gonna lube you some.'

I feel him searching, down there, his wet and sticky
finger inside the white ruffled panties he bought especially for her.

‘What's this?' He presses on my glued-backward thing, ignores it, and moves past.

‘Am I good?'

‘Okay, baby.' His wet finger slides inside of me.

‘Am I good?'

‘Oh yeah, nice and wet.' Another one slides in.