The People in Rossford

“Mom you need a rest. You need to sit down.”

“That’s right, Mother Barbara. We’ll take care of all this,” Tina said, taking the casserole dish from Barb’s hands.

“I think, Barbie,” her sister said, “what you really need is prayer. I’ve been looking at the way you look, and I know you’re resistant to the chaplet. But this could be the time when the Lord has softened you up, enough to receive the graces of his Divine Mother.”

“You mean weakened me up enough to listen to your bullshit?” Barb said.

“Barbie!”

“Damnit, don’t you call me Barbie! I haven’t been Barbie in fifty years. Hell, I was never Barbie. And you,” she looked at Tina and Bill, Milo’s uncle, “tell me I need to rest? I need to be left alone. I need you to get a damn hotel, and get from under my feet.”

“Mother Barbara, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”

“Tina,” Barbara demanded in a tight voice, “how many times have I told you not to call me Mother Barbara? I’m not your mother. I’m not a nun. Knock it off.”

“She’s just trying to be helpful,” Bill said.

She cocked her head at her son, and said, “How can she take care of my casserole when she can’t even raise her own kid?”

And then Barbara turned around and headed for the stairs.

“And by the way, unless it’s Fenn, or Dan Malloy, or Keith McDonald who come calling don’t, I repeat DO NOT, tap on my damn door.”

And then, stomping up all twenty stairs and into her room, Barb Affren was gone.

A little while later there was a tapping on her door and Barb, who was sitting in Bob’s old easy chair, smelling of his cigarettes and cigars, rose up and came to the door saying, “I didn’t hear a knock at the door, so I’m guessing whoever’s on the other side of it is someone I said I don’t feel like seeing. Now,” she put her hand on the doorknob, “if you halfway value your life, you’ll go.”

“Mother Barb—” Tina began, on the other side of the door while Barb winced. “Barbara… I need to speak with you. It’s important.”

Barbara gave a loud sigh with gritted teeth in it, and opened the door, ushering her least favorite daughter-in-law in.

“Barbara, I wanted to tell you,” Tina said, “about what you said today… About us not raising Milo…”

Barbara was tempted to apologize for the remark, but given Milo’s history, and how Milo had changed since coming here, she didn’t think an apology would be honest.

“Well,” Tina went on nervously. “We think you’re right. In fact, I always thought you were right and the thing is… we’ve decided it’s time to take Milo back.”

Barbara’s eyes snapped wide open. The blood left her face.

“You can’t…” she said in a whisper. “You can’t just… take Milo.”

“Well, now Papa Bob’s gone, you can’t just care for him by yourself. And, he is our son.”

Barbara drew herself to full height, which was taller than Tina, and she put on the meanest old lady face she could summon, the one her mother had worn in those last days in the nursing home when the nurse brought her a tepid tumbler of water and she had glared at the girl, picked up the heavy glass tumbler and then, with perfect accuracy, hurled it at her head.

“Tina,” she said, calmly, “I have a gun. Right on the table. And if you don’t get out right now, I’m going to shoot you.”

“Mother… Barb…”

“Shoot you,” Barbara repeated. “Dead.”

Shutting up immediately, Tina backed away from the door, and Barb closed it.

She could hear Tina’s feet reaching the stair, and suddenly she got up, opened the door, and bawled down the hallway:

“You fake little bitch! We always hated you! Bob hated you calling him PAPA BOB. You bitch!”

And then she slammed the door.

“The only good thing they ever did,” Barb repeated, trembling, “and they want to take him away from me.”

“They said,” Fenn said, with skepticism in his voice, “that they don’t want you to be burdened?”

“They didn’t even say that,” Barb said. “They said without Bob, how could I take care of Milo.”

“I think you need Milo to take care of you,” Fenn said.

“I don’t,” Barb protested.

“No,” Fenn was firm on this. “He’s a man now. You’ve done right by him. He can support you a little. But they don’t want him to. They’re selfish,” Fenn said, shaking his head. “And ungrateful.”

“I bet they’ll try to put me in a home now.”

“None of that,” Keith McDonald said firmly. “None of that,” he repeated. “You’re putting the cart in front of the horse, and giving up the fight before it starts. And, heck, just about every other metaphor I can think of you’re doing.”

Barb smiled a little at this, but Keith said, “Listen to me. Milo is seventeen years old. Almost eighteen and in the middle of his senior year. They can’t take him if he doesn’t want to go.”

“No?” Barb looked at him.

“No,” Keith said. “They would have to go to court, and by the time the case came up he would be eighteen, and it would be void. Anyway, he could declare emancipation from them if it came to that. And I doubt it will.”

Barbara smiled a little and she said, “I just can’t imagine… not having that boy around. And Dena, and Will. And those kids. They make the house so alive. Without it I really am just Mother Barbara.”

Then she was quiet.

“What?” Keith said, solicitously.

“Thinking about him being taken away…” Barb said. “What if he doesn’t want to be with me? What if he wants them?”

When Danasia showed up at the apartment, Noah and Naomi were there, but not Paul, who was staying with Kirk.

“Everyone’s so sad,” she told them. “This man died, and I don’t even know him. I wish I knew something.” She shook her head and took off her glasses.

“I try to act like I don’t care about how I feel, but sometimes I feel like I’m completely out of place.”

“So you came here.” It was Naomi who spoke swirling around her can of beer while a train of cigarette smoke came from her Bensen and Hedges.

“Where none of us fits,” Noah gave an almost delighted grin.

When it was late Danasia asked Noah: “Tell me a story. Tell me the truest story you can.”

“Why?”

“Cause we’re friends, and I want to know.”

“But that…” Noah shook his head.

“If,” Naomi began, lifting a finger, “You don’t want to tell it cause you don’t think I can handle it… I’ll leave the room.”

Noah, clasping his wide apart knees, said: “If you can handle it, Mama, you can stay.”

“Would you rather I stayed?”

Noah nodded.

“Then I’ll stay.”

When he was five Naomi went out for cigarettes and beer. Like many things it seems a thousand years ago and just yesterday, all at the same time. When he sits back and counts he realizes it was seventeen years ago.

She was with Biff at the time. Biff was no different from any of the other men who came later. Biff looked at him and said, “Get here. Come over here.”

Noah couldn’t do anything but obey. There was always a man in the house and in his mother’s bed, and though the name changed he was always the same. He paid the rent, he brought home to food. She was the kind of woman who couldn’t really function without a man, you know? He stood before Biff and Biff played with his zipper, and then out it came.

He brought Noah to him, and then it was in his mouth, heavy and turgid, fleshy and pressed further and further, stretching out the muscles of his lips, blocking his breathing, the only presence he knew, his head, pressed harder, his face in the belly, and then his head being taken back and forth while Biff muttered:

“No teeth now, young’un, no teeth. Ah…”

And then he groaned and came and Noah coughed before the salty fluid was in his mouth, down his throat, filling his mouth. His mouth was his own again, salty as the sea, musty as the basements he would experiment with other little boys in, and Biff was going to the bathroom; water was running. His mouth was empty, still stretched out with the memory of what had been in it when Biff came out, patting him on the top of this head.

“That’s a man secret,” Biff’s voice was in his ears. “You don’t have to tell Naomi about that. Naomi couldn’t handle that.”

“Is that it?” Naomi turned to him. “Is that how you got gay?”

“No,” Noah said. “That’s how I got fucked up.”

Biff did not remain long after that. Noah stayed out of the house as much as possible. He didn’t know how to frame it when he was five, but he felt different from every other child he knew. He always had, but now he knew that no one else had ever had done to them what Biff had done to him. When he was in the house, his large eyes followed Biff around reminding him of what he had done, and the only way Biff responded was to hit him in the face, to hit Naomi in her pretty face, and then at last to leave.

One day, after school, when Noah came in with Jimmy Bartlett, his mother had been in the kitchen face down, sobbing, the trail of cigarette smoke coming up from the ashtray.

“It’s your fault, Noah,” she said. “You’re the reason he’s gone. Biff was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now he’s gone.”

Noah hated his mother for that, and he never really stopped. But he wasn’t afraid of her, which meant there was nothing in this house to dread when he came home now.

Once, years later, in LA, a salt and pepper haired man in a beat up grey suit had offered him money for the simple gift of his cock and Noah, by then long adept at the skill of pushing his mind out of his body, stood in the bathroom stall looking at the fluorescent lights while the son of a bitch sucked him off. Somewhere around this time, around these people, he learned about the Hydra, the many headed monster who grew a new head every time you chopped one off. He didn’t know who had taught him this word, some salt and pepper man, probably. Only that it had made sense to him and reminded him of the men. How when one Biff went away and took the fear away with him, his mother picked up another monster and he was terrified again. There were monsters in his house until the day he left for California, so when he got to the streets, the cold, the dark, the homeless drug addicts, the old, skulking johns… they were all nothing.

I hated you for so long. No, you need to hear this. I wanted you to protect me, and you just kept on bringing in all of these guys who made me afraid.

But they paid the bills, they supported us. Their money kept you in clothes, me in clothes baby. We needed them. I thought we needed them. I didn’t know how not to.

I wanted you to be able to support us. I wanted you to be strong enough. I hated you for so long. It burned in me so bad.

Do you hate me now?

It’s killing me to keep it up. I can’t. And it doesn’t just stay with you. Sometimes it touches everything. It’s like a fire. I don’t know how to get rid of it.

I tried to protect you. I thought they would protect us.

But, Mama, they were the ones who beat us, abused us, gave you a black eye, me a bruised arm… What were they protecting us from?

A woman and a child need to be protected.

What were they protecting us from? What do a woman and a kid need to be protected from?

… other Men.

To depend on a man to protect you from men…. It’s like hiring a wolf to keep you safe in the woods.

Noah…

Yes?

Noah?

What?

Do you…. Hate men?

Jimmy Bartlett followed Noah around wherever he went. He was his only friend, but that didn’t seem like friendship. It was annoyance. There were other boys he wanted to know, and they didn’t want to know him. At five there was no sex, only boy hunger.

But he did not long for Jimmy Bartlett. Jimmy with the wide eyes behind the thick glasses and the stupid look on his face, always following him. In the basement he speaks to him.

“Do you know what Biff did to me?”

Jimmy shakes his head.

“Get on the floor.”

“It’s cold,” Jimmy says. “And it smells funny.”

He is on his back, he says, “Noah… what are you doing, Noah?”

Noah unzips his pants.

And then Jimmy’s body paralyzes with the violation while Noah does it to him.

Three months later Jimmy’s family moves away. Now and again that memory resurfaces in his head, but only now, remembering the past does Noah remember it clearly.

He was five, like me. Can he remember like me? Or did God let him forget what I did to him that day?

Do you hate men?”

When I was afraid I did. When they were hurting me I did, and I wanted to hurt them back. And when all the boys were friends and together and acting like they knew something I didn’t, like they were part of something I couldn’t be part of, yes, I did. I hated them. I didn’t understand them.

Are you still afraid?

No. And I don’t hate them. Not anymore. Not very often.

But I still don’t understand.

I used to think…. I used to think your daddy might come back and rescue us.

That’s your problem, though. You always want to be rescued.

I know. I know.

The cigarette makes a tendriling trail up from the little silver ashtray.

But didn’t you ever wonder? Didn’t you ever wish for your daddy?

No. Biff was like Jim, Jim was like Jeff, Jeff was like Bob. Why would my father be any different? He must have been just like them. The only difference is they paid the light bill. Sometimes. And all he did was give you a baby, and me a last name.

They were all talking outside of the schoolwhen Layla pointed out the car that had just swung by, and Milo, turning, realized:

“It’s my mother.”

Before he could say anything, Tina leaned out of the car and said, “Milo, I came to get you.”

Milo pointed across the street in the general direction of his car, coming toward Tina, followed by Dena.

“Mom, I drove here. This is Dena.”

“Hello, charmed,” Tina said. “Milo. I thought I could take you out.”

“Mom,” Milo said, his voice firmer, “this is Dena.”

“I know,” she said.

“My girlfriend.”

“Her name rhymes with mine,” Tina said.

Dena frowned at her.

“Honey, we need to talk.”

“We can talk at the house,” Milo said.

“No we can’t. Your grandmother… she’s listening to everything. It’s really… about your grandmother.”

“Whaddo you mean?”

“Can we discuss this,” Tina said, pointing at Dena, “in private?”

“I don’t like you,” Dena said, suddenly.

Tina opened her mouth, but Milo said, “Most people don’t. Mom, get to the point.”

“The point is…” Tina took a long, dramatic breath, “I think that now that your grandmother is…. Alone. I think it’s time for you to come back with us.”

“Are you nuts!” Dena snapped.

“Excuse me, young lady—”

“You drop your kid off when it’s not convenient for you to take care of him, and then when you hear he has a life, a girlfriend—hell—friends, in the middle of his senior year you just want to take him away?”

“Dena,” Milo began.

“And Barb needs him!” Dena said. “We all need him.”

Layla and Will had arrived now and Brendan was approaching. He touched Dena’s shoulder.

“Denie, c’mon.”

Dena nodded, turned Tina Affren a foul face, and then walked away, pulling a hand through her long, dark hair.

“I can’t imagine,” Tina said, pushing her driving shades into her blond hair, “what you see in a girl like that. She is completely lacking in manners.”

“Yes,” Milo said. “Yes, she is. But she’s never wrong.” Then Milo modified. “She’s rarely wrong.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean when she said there was no way in hell I was leaving grandma to go back with you and Dad, she was totally right.”