He sat on the end of his mattress on the floor with his voice filled
head in his hands. Why was he here? The hated answer was always there. Always the same from all of the voices.
Because there was no where else for him.
Wait, his sister said. She would be back to get him. His love for her almost over ran the other disclaiming voices trying to remind him that all women were evil. Hadn't he known that even before when he was alone in his head? He wasn't sure any more. The voices had started speaking when he turned thirty and as he approached forty they were a part of him, only muted when he smoked marijuana, which he could no longer afford. Could no longer keep his life together to work to get. See! the voices exclaimed. Even our sweet sister betrays us there! He shook his head in disagreement and acceptance of the fact that her help was in fact a betrayal.
"It's just to help you," she said in that reasonable pleading voice. "We just have to claim you are insane to get disability payment for you from that evil government. You know I don't really think you're crazy."
Was she lying? Just trying to placate him pretending to know as he did that the government was an evil institution? Was it all a trick? Did she, too, really believe he was schizophrenic? Would she ever really come to rescue him from her?
Mom. Bad Mommy. All her money and she hated that she had to take care of her own son. He had heard Sis telling her it was her turn, her responsibility to help until the SSI started.
He looked around his room grudgingly given in Mom's house. A mattress on the floor. A garage sale radio.
Bitch. She had kept all the money their father had left for their care and shut them all out when Sis was ten and he just thirteen. The rest of the house was filled with her treasures from Japan and grace. Like a beautiful person lived there. The voices started screaming like jungle animals and he started rocking back and forth in pain. So much pain in this world and he was born without armor.
He still loved his mother but it was just pain.
Hunger overcame any shred of pride again and he slipped out of his room passing her locked door to go to the kitchen where he found a half loaf of stale bread. He skipped the first dry piece and took the next two and, after a deep breath, he approached the locked door and knocked. Here rough voice, reserved for the children her husband had forced on her and then deserted her with, growled through the door. "What! What do you want?"
"Please," he said, with the voices clamoring at his begging tone.
"Please can I have a little peanut butter for some bread, Mommy?"
She seethed on the other side of the door. She hated him calling
her Mommy. Knew he did it at his age just to try to make her feel he was her responsibility somehow. She knew he had complained to his sister about her neglect because her daughter had dared to call and ask if she were starving him just that morning. She got the peanut butter from the pile of foods in her room and opened her door just enough for him to scoop a little out for his bread.
"Thank you, thank you!" he said fervently so she would feel guilty. Ha! She owed these grown children nothing. But her daughter's love for her brother frightened her. She had no understanding of such passion and believed it could hurt her even from a thousand miles away if she didn't feed him a little.
Herbert took his thin sandwich to his bedroom eating it slowly and
carefully trying to get it to feed his gaunt six foot body. His stomach and the voices cried out for more but that was all there would be for now.
He rummaged under his mattress and found a pack of beans he had found on his walk yesterday hoping to grow some food. It was getting cooler out as the Texas sun was setting so they all agreed it was time to go plant them. Her door was still locked tight so he dared to use the restroom. Not that she denied him the restroom but he had to leave the door open to any room. Enclosed places terrified him. He couldn't breathe let alone pee with the door closed and she hated that.
He stopped in the kitchen to dig out a beer he had hidden in the
vegetable drawer in the fridge. Foul stuff but he had bummed it from a guy in the store parking lot for emergency use if he needed the voices quieter. Her garden tools were piled by the back door and he took a shovel and went out into the twilight with his spirits lifting immediately to be out of the house.
He started digging along the side of the detached garage out back
preparing the soil for a row of beans. After turning the soil he took a break sitting on a broken chair and carefully rolled a cigarette from the tobacco of other people's butts he gathered outside of the convenience store near by and he opened the cold beer. Maybe Mom would be happy to see the beans growing. Be happy with him for the moment.
She loved to see things bloom. Blooms always reminded her of her precious cherry blossoms left back in Japan. She might smile her big dimpled smile like his own and speak in that sweet voice reserved for phone conversations with her Japanese friends and even help him pick the beans. He would cook them for her with his special talent for seasoning and they would sit back satisfied that it came from their own yard.
Whistling softly now he went back to work planting each bean with care, the voices not still but drifting around on the slight breeze lifting the curls off his forehead.
He hated the thought of going back in just yet so he opened the garage where his little car Sis had given him was parked. It was old and rusted but it still started up and the radio worked. He loved music above all things and couldn't turn his tinny radio in the bedroom up above a whisper without upsetting Mom. He folded his large frame into the small front seat with it as far back as it would go and set his warm beer between his legs and searched for a radio station playing his kind of rock and roll and then leaned back listening, going back in time to teenage years when everything still seemed to make sense. When he could still grasp hope.
When it was getting close to midnight he started the car to recharge the battery for next time, always amazed that the little motor still purred. He'd kept forgetting to tell Sis that the little car was still running. He knew she'd be surprised. But she said two months. Two more months with Mom and his SSI would come in and he could go back to live by her in Nebraska. Only two more months. He fell asleep picturing the hilly farm where he had lived with Sis before and all the fun they had there.
His mother inside was curious at the silence in the house and came out of her room to find the house empty. She looked out back and was immediately filled with black rage. The yard light was on, costing her money. They always cost her money! She opened the back door and her ears were assaulted by the noise Herbert called music coming from the garage. She saw her good shovel propped against the garage and her rage was jet black with red sparks as she saw that he had dared to dig in her yard without permission.
She approached the car in the garage and saw him sitting head back in the driver's seat. She called his name and he didn't respond. Either he couldn't hear above his rock and roll and the engine running or he was ignoring her. That thought stuck and fueled her rage even further. This was it! She was done. Not even her frightening daughter could make her put up with this!
She had to strain to reach the garage door handle and then yanked hard letting it slam to the ground. Ha! That would get his attention.
She stomped back to the house going in and locking the door behind her. Let him sleep out there with his stupid music!
And he did.
head in his hands. Why was he here? The hated answer was always there. Always the same from all of the voices.
Because there was no where else for him.
Wait, his sister said. She would be back to get him. His love for her almost over ran the other disclaiming voices trying to remind him that all women were evil. Hadn't he known that even before when he was alone in his head? He wasn't sure any more. The voices had started speaking when he turned thirty and as he approached forty they were a part of him, only muted when he smoked marijuana, which he could no longer afford. Could no longer keep his life together to work to get. See! the voices exclaimed. Even our sweet sister betrays us there! He shook his head in disagreement and acceptance of the fact that her help was in fact a betrayal.
"It's just to help you," she said in that reasonable pleading voice. "We just have to claim you are insane to get disability payment for you from that evil government. You know I don't really think you're crazy."
Was she lying? Just trying to placate him pretending to know as he did that the government was an evil institution? Was it all a trick? Did she, too, really believe he was schizophrenic? Would she ever really come to rescue him from her?
Mom. Bad Mommy. All her money and she hated that she had to take care of her own son. He had heard Sis telling her it was her turn, her responsibility to help until the SSI started.
He looked around his room grudgingly given in Mom's house. A mattress on the floor. A garage sale radio.
Bitch. She had kept all the money their father had left for their care and shut them all out when Sis was ten and he just thirteen. The rest of the house was filled with her treasures from Japan and grace. Like a beautiful person lived there. The voices started screaming like jungle animals and he started rocking back and forth in pain. So much pain in this world and he was born without armor.
He still loved his mother but it was just pain.
Hunger overcame any shred of pride again and he slipped out of his room passing her locked door to go to the kitchen where he found a half loaf of stale bread. He skipped the first dry piece and took the next two and, after a deep breath, he approached the locked door and knocked. Here rough voice, reserved for the children her husband had forced on her and then deserted her with, growled through the door. "What! What do you want?"
"Please," he said, with the voices clamoring at his begging tone.
"Please can I have a little peanut butter for some bread, Mommy?"
She seethed on the other side of the door. She hated him calling
her Mommy. Knew he did it at his age just to try to make her feel he was her responsibility somehow. She knew he had complained to his sister about her neglect because her daughter had dared to call and ask if she were starving him just that morning. She got the peanut butter from the pile of foods in her room and opened her door just enough for him to scoop a little out for his bread.
"Thank you, thank you!" he said fervently so she would feel guilty. Ha! She owed these grown children nothing. But her daughter's love for her brother frightened her. She had no understanding of such passion and believed it could hurt her even from a thousand miles away if she didn't feed him a little.
Herbert took his thin sandwich to his bedroom eating it slowly and
carefully trying to get it to feed his gaunt six foot body. His stomach and the voices cried out for more but that was all there would be for now.
He rummaged under his mattress and found a pack of beans he had found on his walk yesterday hoping to grow some food. It was getting cooler out as the Texas sun was setting so they all agreed it was time to go plant them. Her door was still locked tight so he dared to use the restroom. Not that she denied him the restroom but he had to leave the door open to any room. Enclosed places terrified him. He couldn't breathe let alone pee with the door closed and she hated that.
He stopped in the kitchen to dig out a beer he had hidden in the
vegetable drawer in the fridge. Foul stuff but he had bummed it from a guy in the store parking lot for emergency use if he needed the voices quieter. Her garden tools were piled by the back door and he took a shovel and went out into the twilight with his spirits lifting immediately to be out of the house.
He started digging along the side of the detached garage out back
preparing the soil for a row of beans. After turning the soil he took a break sitting on a broken chair and carefully rolled a cigarette from the tobacco of other people's butts he gathered outside of the convenience store near by and he opened the cold beer. Maybe Mom would be happy to see the beans growing. Be happy with him for the moment.
She loved to see things bloom. Blooms always reminded her of her precious cherry blossoms left back in Japan. She might smile her big dimpled smile like his own and speak in that sweet voice reserved for phone conversations with her Japanese friends and even help him pick the beans. He would cook them for her with his special talent for seasoning and they would sit back satisfied that it came from their own yard.
Whistling softly now he went back to work planting each bean with care, the voices not still but drifting around on the slight breeze lifting the curls off his forehead.
He hated the thought of going back in just yet so he opened the garage where his little car Sis had given him was parked. It was old and rusted but it still started up and the radio worked. He loved music above all things and couldn't turn his tinny radio in the bedroom up above a whisper without upsetting Mom. He folded his large frame into the small front seat with it as far back as it would go and set his warm beer between his legs and searched for a radio station playing his kind of rock and roll and then leaned back listening, going back in time to teenage years when everything still seemed to make sense. When he could still grasp hope.
When it was getting close to midnight he started the car to recharge the battery for next time, always amazed that the little motor still purred. He'd kept forgetting to tell Sis that the little car was still running. He knew she'd be surprised. But she said two months. Two more months with Mom and his SSI would come in and he could go back to live by her in Nebraska. Only two more months. He fell asleep picturing the hilly farm where he had lived with Sis before and all the fun they had there.
His mother inside was curious at the silence in the house and came out of her room to find the house empty. She looked out back and was immediately filled with black rage. The yard light was on, costing her money. They always cost her money! She opened the back door and her ears were assaulted by the noise Herbert called music coming from the garage. She saw her good shovel propped against the garage and her rage was jet black with red sparks as she saw that he had dared to dig in her yard without permission.
She approached the car in the garage and saw him sitting head back in the driver's seat. She called his name and he didn't respond. Either he couldn't hear above his rock and roll and the engine running or he was ignoring her. That thought stuck and fueled her rage even further. This was it! She was done. Not even her frightening daughter could make her put up with this!
She had to strain to reach the garage door handle and then yanked hard letting it slam to the ground. Ha! That would get his attention.
She stomped back to the house going in and locking the door behind her. Let him sleep out there with his stupid music!
And he did.
