​​​​Chapter Ten

She was afraid of Mack’s face. Not the pain of childbirth. Not the horror of having it in the bathtub with Dennis as her midwife. Not the realization that her childhood would soon be deader than an unlucky cat.

She was afraid that all she would see was Ricky.

But Mack didn’t look like Ricky. He didn’t look much like Rochelle either. He was scrunched up with a black toupee of hair that tickled his forehead. He fit perfectly in her arms and took to her breast while Dennis had to discard the placenta. The bathroom was a bloody mess, but Dennis soon made it shine.

Rochelle looked into her son’s face. There she saw her father leaving. Her mother dying at her own hand. She saw being on top of an unsteady world and then being pulled down into the wet grass. While Mack ate his breakfast, Rochelle wondered if she still had a soul. If she ever had one in the first place.

#

DENNIS WAS UNMOVED by Mack. He never asked to hold him, but it didn’t bother Rochelle. Dennis did all the cleaning and cooking. She wasn’t going to nag him to hold her baby, too.

They found a nice lady that lived at their duplex. Ms. Mulligan was seventy-two and perhaps a bit too advanced in years to look after a newborn, but she was kind and agreed to lock up her cat whenever Mack was over. She also didn’t charge anything.

Rochelle hated leaving him, but she loved it, too. She liked wearing pretty clothes and working with people she didn’t have to change or burp. For a time she worked at the photo lab pretending she couldn’t identify the people she knew on the film she developed. Sometimes, she thought bleach wouldn’t be enough to burn the images away. She went on to work at the department store where she spritzed perfume in people’s faces, and then it was the laundromat where her mother had worked and everyone noted the resemblance. She saw plenty of kids she used to go to school with, but it was never a problem. Nobody said a word to her.

And due to Ricky’s ingenious idea to steal a cop car, she never saw him again. She figured this meant he was as good as dead, and that was the story she’d always stick with.

At night, she’d tuck Mack in and lay down next to him. His body was proof that good things came from the ugliest situations. But as she’d hold him and softly cry into his hair, ugly was the only thing Rochelle ever felt.

#

“YOU NEED A GIRLFRIEND,” Rochelle said as she picked at her tiny chicken breast and mashed potatoes. Dennis rolled his eyes.

“Why do you go and say stuff like that, Ro?” He was still wearing his janitor’s uniform even though he had switched to the day shift and got off earlier than her now. They bumped his pay and promoted him to overseeing the entire cleaning staff, so sometimes they could afford meat.

“Stuff like what? A woman would be good for you.”

Dennis grunted into his plate. “Good for me. Nobody knows what’s good for me,” he said. He was thinking about cats, about the one in Ms. Mulligan’s duplex. His breathing started to slow.

“I don’t mean it like that. I just mean, you need someone other than me to boss you around.” She smiled but Dennis didn’t.  

“You don’t boss me around, Ro.”

“Oh you know what I mean. I’m always–”

“You don’t boss me around, Ro!” Dennis’s fist was rock against table. Mack started to scream.

Rochelle went and took Mack out of his bassinet and shushed him against her. She danced in a little circle hoping Dennis couldn’t see how scared she was. But Dennis wasn’t even paying attention to her. He was cerebrally mutilating everyone who had ever made him feel second hand.

“I-I’m sorry, Dennis,” Rochelle whispered. Dennis finally saw her and blinked himself back to the present. He scratched at the back of his head. He stared at her, at Mack in her arms.

“I take care of us. Right, Ro?” Rochelle pressed her lips into each other. She nodded when she realized there was no other option. 

#

MS. MULLIGAN’S CAT suddenly went missing, so Rochelle sat with her awhile one day after work. She was overwhelmed by the love that was framed on Ms. Mulligan’s walls and the piano pushed against the bay window in her living room.

“Your husband?” Rochelle asked. Ms. Mulligan was looking above the piano, out the window with a heart hoping Cheddar would soon come back.

“Oh, Louis. Yes, he is. Was. But is.” She smiled at a joke she thought she told. Rochelle smiled, too.

“I hope to find love like that one day.”

“It wasn’t all sunshine and roses.” Emotion was hitting her. Her hurt for Cheddar was replaced with that old tug that had dulled over the years. Matilda Mulligan closed her eyes. She spoke to me. “He used to gamble, and I was a horrible nag at times. But we found Christ. If it weren’t for Him, well, he would have left.” She heard the house settle and hope swirled in her chest again. “Or we would have killed each other.”

Rochelle felt uncomfortable. She felt like there was somebody in the room she couldn’t see. Her parents were church-raised and took them to Mass but neither really knew me. She had a friend, Margot, who was her science lab partner who talked to her about Jesus once, but Rochelle brushed her off. She kept looking at the door hoping Matilda would get the hint.

And Matilda did but didn’t acknowledge it. “You don’t know about Jesus, do you?”

“I know enough,” Rochelle said. Something in her redirected her focus. She started listing in her head the things she had to do when she got back to the duplex. She willed Mack to start screaming.

“Nobody can ever know enough,” Matilda said. She missed Louis, and that feeling sometimes tried to sit next to her. But whenever she’d close her eyes and talk to me, I’d fill the hole in her lonely heart. “I imagine you haven’t lived this life sinless have you?” Her eyes were soft, a rheumy blue. Rochelle could tell from the photos that Matilda was pretty once. But how quickly pretty no longer mattered.

“I’m not a horrible person, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Matilda could feel it. Cheddar wasn’t coming back. It was the same feeling when Louis went to work that morning all those years ago.

“I guess, I guess I’ve done things I shouldn’t have.” The faces flooded Rochelle. All the boys she let touch her.

“Welcome to being human, love.” Matilda smiled. She remembered everything. Even the breakfast she had served. Two eggs over easy, peppered grits, cup of strong coffee. She didn’t get to kiss Louis on the top of his head like she did every morning while he ate. She had to leave early to wash the Henderson’s whites.

“Thing is, it never goes away, your debt. You rack up a lifetime of sin, of bad deeds, crooked thoughts, poor intentions. And you tell yourself you can nag it away. You can gamble it away. But there’s not enough money in the world.” Louis had worked at the pharmacy where he did odd jobs for Mr. Jacobs. He swept and mopped the floors. Wiped down the counters. Stocked the shelves. Mr. Jacobs was always praising Louis on his work ethic, which Matilda figured was quite generous for a white man. Sometimes, names were called. But Mr. Jacobs never let those kids sit at the counter waiting for their sodas. He did the good thing, the right thing and kicked them out of the pharmacy.

Rochelle stopped looking at the door. “Okay, but then what? Positive thinking? Spiritual enlightenment? I hear Hare Krishna is still all the rage.” It came out viciously but only because Rochelle was scared. Cheddar was gone, and her brother was a lunatic. And she was a lunatic for living with him. But the deep down fear was the one Rochelle didn’t handle and didn’t weigh. Her good heart yearned for me, but her bad mind kept me away.

“He paid it all on the cross. He was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day, after defeating Satan in hell, He was resurrected. He died for you, Rochelle. Don’t you know that?” It wasn’t Matilda so much anymore. It was me, digging beneath skin and fat and into bone and through the hardened parts of Rochelle’s chest. She gasped in breath as if she could feel her sternum cracking.

“He paid it all. And now we’re free.” Matilda got home around noon where a police officer met her at the front door. Louis had been walking from the bus stop to the pharmacy. Those same kids had skipped school to jump him. He hit his head against the curb and couldn’t be revived. “Don’t you want to be free, Rochelle?” Matilda said, closing her eyes again, reminding herself that she still was.

Rochelle felt her chest and breathed in deep. She looked at Mack balled up in the carrier at her feet. Freedom sounded nice, like a foreign country she’d heard of but never been to. But the reality was that nobody was free when choices linked together like a noose. Like Dennis, she didn’t make the rules.

She grabbed the carrier and looked at Ms. Mulligan’s warm brown face, her eyes blue with truth as she turned to leave. “I’m sorry about your cat.” And Rochelle was. She was very sorry.    

#

MACK GREW OLDER AND Rochelle was at first reminded of a flower and then of a wayward weed. It was terrible to think about her son that way, but he wasn’t like the other kids. He didn’t want to learn his letters. He could barely count to ten. They were at the pediatrician once and a boy younger than him was listing all the presidents in order. Rochelle nearly burst a blood vessel.

“Why did you give me a dunce?” She viciously asked her pillow. She was ashamed a few seconds later when the only answer she got was the question echoing in her head.

“School will be great. You’re going to love school. You’re such smart boy.” Rochelle pulled herself together. It was her first day at Augustus, Norton, and Davies and Mack’s first day of kindergarten. The words were balled up in her throat. She had a hard time talking anymore. Her son was sitting at the breakfast table where she smeared too much jelly on his toast. She ignored a glob that fell on his shirt.

“It’s scary.” Mack had a hard time talking, too, but not for the same reasons.

“Scary? You’re six! What do you have to be scared about?” Rochelle said to the can of Spaghetti O’s in the cabinet. Everything made her sad, and there was a cloud of guilt where her demon swirled its sharp nail around her head.

Mack stared at the jelly on his shirt. He knew it was bad, the things Uncle Dennis did. The things Uncle Dennis showed him. But he stayed quiet. He refused to hurt his mother that way.

When he didn’t speak she whirled at him, anger now pounding in her chest. “Come on, Mack. You can put more than two words together. It’s not going to kill you,” she said, having words with the pillow in her head.

#

SHE KNEW GLENN AUGUSTUS liked her. She played carefully with that interest because if she was smart, she could fill in permanently for the last secretary who went AWOL. It wasn’t hard, catering to a man. She already instinctively knew what he wanted.

“Rochelle, you’re a genius,” he said when he tasted the fresh cup of coffee she brought him. The other partners nodded curtly at her when she came in that morning, taking a generous glance at her backside when she turned to leave, but Glenn was personable. He had no qualms about making his affections known although he was still technically married.

“Oh, it can’t be that great,” she smiled, sipping from her own cup. She left a dark red lip stain on the rim.

“Sit,” he said. And she did. She noticed he went to close the door. “I know this is your first day and all, but we have a real need for someone like you.” She got the feeling the “we” wasn’t necessary. “Eleanor, my old secretary, isn’t coming back. Her mother has dementia.” Glenn looked down at his cup, and Rochelle tried to ignore the faded white ring around his left ring finger. “I want you, Rochelle,” he said, and when he looked into her eyes, he erased her history.

“Absolutely,” she said and laughed as I watched the demon whisper in her ear.

#

EACH DAY WAS A HARDENED tumor in Rochelle’s gut. Mack was no longer the small, malleable boy she could win back over with a side hug or an off-centered kiss.

He hated her now.

And he definitely hated Glenn Augustus.

She tried to rework and rebuild her life with a menagerie of self-help books. Little animals that opened their mouths and mewled at her, waiting to be opened and petted. Some of them weren’t asinine. Some of them drew from biblical principles but none of them mentioned my name.

The blind leading the blind.

One day he came home and looked like death. He was wearing all black like usual, but his hand was bandaged, and he held it to his chest like a baby bird.

“What happened?” Her fear of him was extinguished by her motherly instinct. When he had left that morning, he had seemed normal. Relatively. But there was now a new layer of darkness that flapped at her like bird wings.

“Why do you care? Why are you even here?” Oddly enough, she took it as a good sign. He hardly ever spoke two words to her, his ears always hidden in his massive headphones.

She didn’t tell him the real reason she’d come home early from her second aerobics class. That she was going to shower and change and head out with Glenn who had locked down tickets to the opera in Dallas. She pretended she was a good mother for once, and it was like edging bare feet against glass.

“Mack, I love you. I care about you. What happened?”

He laughed at her but his eyes looked like they’d been crying. When he sat, he shoved his head down, and she studied the hair she didn’t get to see anymore. He was so much taller than her. And she knew he was at the point where she should be able to say “He’s going to be a fine man one day.” But also knew she couldn’t.

“You only care about yourself,” he said.

She quickly scanned the menagerie in her head but couldn’t find the right page to tell her what to do. I breathed at her right shoulder, and she saw Ms. Mulligan in her head, the woman dead and gone. The woman who had a heart full of joy even when waist-deep in her own pain.

“I do all of this for us...for you.” The lie is awkward, even for her. She did all of this for Glenn Augustus. Glenn who wanted her pretty and taut and didn’t mind that she had a kid as long as he never had to see him. But she wouldn’t let her mind go down that road. I do it for Mack, she thought, taking deliberate authority over her thoughts like it told her to in You Can Heal Your Life. She was doing it so her son could have a better existence which was an easy notion to get used to. Rochelle simply ignored the fact that her son already had one foot out the door.

“I’m going to my room,” he said, benevolently giving her an out. All she could think about was holding his body against hers like she did when he was a baby.

But even Rochelle, who hoarded useless knowledge like pigs in a barn, knew it was too late for something like that.