Far as I know, mother never got a divorce.
Somehow I can’t imagine her doing it, even if she’d been married
to the Marquis de Sade.
It’s not that she enjoyed abuse, and certainly
not marriage-- or men much, if at all. All of her life, people said
her unwillingness to “suffer fools” would leave her lonely, would
lead to her dying alone.
Nor was it a matter of religion. Even though she
sent me to Catholic schools for as long as she could, she wasn’t a
particularly pious person. I probably spent more time in church than
she did. When I asked her to tell me what all the strange prayers
meant, she didn’t know them. She said she’d forgotten them; I’d
recite them as best I could. But I only frustrated her.
Sometimes I think if she’d been a bit older, a
bit more aware when she met the man who penetrated her loins and
disappeared before I came out, she’d’ve never been married.
Sometimes I think something like that about the woman whose name I
never knew and other women on this block, and still others I’ve met
since leaving. But not Mrs. Littington.
If selling your body teaches you anything, it’s
this: all possession is temporary. Few, if any, men learn this
lesson because, well, they don’t have to. They can live under the
illusion that once you’ve paid for something—spent money on
it—it’s yours for all time.
Which is funny, because all marriage laws,
contracts, vows and ceremonies were devised by men. And they’re
all based on that same principle: A man owns a woman (As I’ve since
found out, in a few cultures, the reverse is true.) for a period of
time: “till death do us apart” or some period that’s finite
simply because all lives are. He owns her, at least as long as he’s
paying for food, clothing, a roof over her head and those and other
needs of the children.
But since men forget that “The good men do is
of’t interred with their bones,” they believe that their dominion
continues when they’re gone. By the same token, they think that
some relationship continues, as long as they’re spending money to
maintain it, once the man decides—or the man and woman agree—to
live their lives apart from each other.
To steal a line from one of the herd that never
recognized me as one of its own, divorce is simply the continuation
of marriage by other means-- usually, his means.
Maybe mother’d seen enough of this block to know
that when a man decides he’s going to disappear, it’s best to let
him go: Initiating proceedings would simply mean making some attempt
to summon him back, however briefly, to her home, whatever or
wherever that may’ve been.
And for what? So they could create a document
saying that the previous one didn’t exist? Or that is was a
falsehood or mistake?
In other words, I think mother was smart enough to
know—though, to my knowledge, never articulated it—that a woman
can’t use a man’s way to resolve a situation he, or one of his
kind, created.
Of course, it’s brutally difficult to grow up as
a boy when no one teaches you how to fight—and I use that word in
the male sense—or to run or deny. On this block, it could’ve
been fatal, as it nearly was for Louis Torre. In fact, if mother
hadn’t kept me in the kitchen, in the presence of women, as much as
she had, I’m sure I wouldn’t’ve made it back. And I’m sure
I’d’ve never been able to come with the knowledge—not the
belief—that I could come back, and that after doing so, I wouldn’t
have to again.
Once we’ve buried mother, I won’t have to come
back. There’ll be nobody who would recognize me now, and nobody--
except for that lady whose name I never knew-- who might remember
what I was.
Actually, if any of them’d been paying
attention, they’d’ve thought I’d died years ago. The
certificate was signed; my name appeared in a newspaper column. But
they never saw the body about which the police, the coroner and a
funeral director had signed documents: more papers. According to
them, my last moment on this block—on this planet—or at least the
moment someone realized there was a dead body—was at 2:34 in the
afternoon. The 18th of June, 1992: The deceased, had he
managed to sidestep his fate another six weeks, would’ve been
twenty-five years old. No longer a boy, in the opinion of most of
the world, but not quite a man, either. But well beyond either one,
in terms of this block.
As far as anyone on this block knew, that body was
mine. Anyone, that is, except mother. Anybody who’d remembered
me, if she’d thought about it, would’ve been surprised that I was
back on this block. Perhaps some of them,--and certainly any man,
any male, if there were any left—would’ve said among themselves,
“What was he doing here anyway?”
To tell you the truth, it’s a fair question.
What would I’ve been doing in the basement of a house that’d been
abandoned, where an old woman nobody ever saw but whom everybody knew
was nearly deaf and lame, lived? Especially since, having been there
before, I'd had no wish—no reason, really—to go back.
In that basement, I wouldn’t’ve known it was
one of those cold, wet days that often follows an early heat wave but
precedes the official beginning of summer. Or that anyone’d been
waiting outside, or whether that person’d bothered to conceal his
weapon. A weapon that somehow or another’d been used, after another
weapon that may’ve been concealed. And, once inside, no one except
for the person who used the weapon and the one on whom he’d used it
would know.
Noone’d’ve found the body for days, perhaps
weeks or months, had someone not phoned and claimed he’d heard “a
disturbance” coming from the house. To this day, no one except the
caller knows who made the call, but rumor has it that if came from
another state.
So why did the police respond to it? No one’s
answered that one, but rumor also has it that the killer rang the
precinct. He—or she—has never been caught.
Here’s something even stranger: the police
talked to my mother once, only for five minutes—about as long as it
took them to conclude she’d had nothing to do with the killing.
Mother doesn’t do that sort of thing, or ask it of anybody.
No one’d asked her to ID the body or to provide
any information about my life since I left this block. There’d
been no funeral, which surprised nobody since, for as long as I can
remember, I’d told her I didn’t want one. There’s nothing I
wanted less than to be laid out in full view (or at least in front
of) gawkers and grievers. Especially when I couldn’t do anything
about it.
As I’ve heard, the cops’ve never arrested
anybody, and not long after the burial, they stopped investigating
possible suspects.
All I know for certain is that I wasn’t there
when it happened. But I could’ve given the constables enough
information to make them suspicious.
I know of one thing that’ll lure a certain kind
of man to a basement that isn’t his own. Actually, to be more
exact, I know of one kind a person who can do that: one young enough
to be a son, nephew or grandson. So while I may not know who the bait
was, I know what it was and that it was switched, yanked away
from him.
Maybe he never saw the pre-adolescent boy someone
used to entice him. I also suspect—very strongly—that
whoever led him down the stairs wasn’t his killer. He’d’ve
known better; so would’ve the killer. How else would the killer’ve
gotten the hammer and bayonet—and the man who fathered me—inside
those concrete walls?
