NIH’GIH’DOUDDA’DERE

“I went out walking through the streets paved with gold,

Lifted some stones, saw the skin and bones

Of a city without a soul,

I went out walking under an atomic sky,

Where the ground won’t turn and the rain it burns

Like the tears when I said goodbye,

Yeah, I went with nothing,

Nothing but the thought of you,

I went wandering…”¹

…Returning from the city, Pessi and I headed towards the front of the bus as it came to a stop. We were pushing each other all the way down the rubbery, ribbed aisle. For some reason, several cocksuckers thought it was their duty to mutter rude comments about how immature we were. The blubbery, bibbed bus driver yelled out, ‘Stop horsin’ around or else yinzer gonna get banned for the rest of the year!’ But after making it out the door and onto the pavement, I tried holding Pessi in place on the last step—the steep step. The bus driver had his right arm stretched out, with his hand resting on the lever for the accordion door. Pessi started juggernauting downward with his shoulder. Suppressing the laughter fluctuating in my gut, I was pushing upward with both hands as hard as I could. We battled and barged til reaching a deadlock—then reluctantly let our hands fall. Pessi remained on the edge of the steep step, bent over and winded, but the bus driver still refused to fold him in with the accordion door! From his elevated seat, he stared at me with eyes that said, 'Scram, you little prick.' I thought about flipping him off but instead turned away. When I heard Pessi’s shoe scuff the road, I swiftly turned back around and congratulated him on escaping the accordion of death by giving him a precise kidney-shot. Flexing courage to my thoughts, I flipped the bus driver off as a reminder to think twice about passing up another chance to fold Pessi in with the accordion door. In return, he flipped me off then levered the door shut. The growling bus pulled away, leaving behind a malodorous mist.

The stop was two blocks away from my house, Pessi’s house one block in the other direction. Staying silent and looking around bashfully as if he didn’t know me after nearly seventeen years, Pessi started rubbing his hand back and forth over his head. The friction against his short brown bristles was making a rough sandpaper sound. Then he squinted his hazel eyes as he surveyed our blighted neighborhood. The severe humidity was making everything look fumy. With mischievous intentions still brewing in the air, we remained on the bank of the road.

‘Man, you gadda beedda stupidest faggot alive.’

‘‘N’ why’s ‘at?’

‘Why?’ I repeated for effect. ‘‘Cause ya spell “cat” with a “k” ‘n’ penetrate male orifices: ‘at’s why. Now run home ‘fore I beat dat stupid look off yir face.’

As usual, Pessi smirked at my ruthless sarcasm. His ruggedly handsome face had tanned to a silvery-fawn color, as it tended to do during the peak of summer, while all year round it retained a solemn glare like James Dean. (A mid-face spitting-image of the guy.) But whenever I could find a way to break his chiseled cast and bring out “the smirk”—that reluctant but approving smirk—I was content…for a moment.

‘Don’t make me fuckin’ do it.’

‘Keep wishin’, V.’

‘Ehh, wishin’s for hippies; I make my shit happen, you cum-guzzlin' hussy…’ As I carried on with my mock machismo, I was doing everything in my power to get Pessi fired up again—but I couldn’t make it happen. So I leaned in closer, a bit over his shoulder, and in a serious-like manner said, ‘Well look: if you wanna do some yey² tanight, caw me after supper.’

‘Mmm, we’ll see, but prahblee not. Think I’m done hangin’ out with midgets.’

That was my cue to uppercut his tough gut then push him back at the shoulder. Seeing that he didn’t plan to punch or push back, I said, ‘Fine ‘en; I’ll do it all myself—you fuckin’ faggot.’

Pessi turned around indifferently, and with hands shoved in pocket, walked away like a rebel without a cause.

In the other direction, I headed down Bullitt Avenue, kicking along a golfball-sized rock. The sun was fully unmasked, burning with pernicious intentions; all the clouds were in hiding or gone to ashes. The weather had been the same for two weeks: the last time Mrs. Rain had visited; even Dr. Overcast was currently on vacation. In a matter of a few steps, my plain black t-shirt was drawing in extra waves of heat from which an ominous twinge began pricking a small spot in my chest. From that, I quit kicking along the rock; it was enough to keep having to wipe the sweat from my face. To my left, three little black girls dressed in all-white were enduring the heat much better as they took turns running underneath the umbrella spray of a sprinkler; they were singing a joyful song about “a silly fish,” and the sound of the spray was giving the song a smooth and consistent melody. Next to them, the Hughes had a new sign posted in their front yard, almost right on the road. I took a closer look…a tax sign letting us neighbors know that if the Hughes didn’t pay up soon we could buy their house at a state auction. Since I was good friends with Mr. and Mrs. Hughes’ son, Eddie, I thought maybe I should buy their house then give it to Eddie for his birthday; I could even put an oversized bowtie on the roof. Next block down—my block—a shirtless Mr. Klugman (like a hero in the heat) was cutting his small front lawn with a push-mower. Laboriously, he managed to wave, and I waved back.

When I came upon my house—the jaundiced one-story box in the middle of the block—Aunt Stella was rolling Uncle Alfonse out the front door. Hunched over in his wheelchair, Uncle Alfonse’s mottled face was drooping down towards his lap; there didn’t seem to be a set of legs wrapped up inside the floppy gray rayon. Up above, I noticed his umber liver spots were beginning to populate his jowls and dance up his bald head like a corybantic breakout. Wheeling around seventy-six years, Uncle Alfonse was my paternal great uncle and a second-generation Abruzzese.³ I figured they must’ve been visiting Ma because Aunt Stella, like many others, didn’t like my father. But no one really liked her either.

For whatever reason, Uncle Alfonse was yelling and complaining, mostly in English but also throwing in some Nonsense. Aunt Stella, a decade younger, was trying to appease him by slapping him friendly on the shoulder every time he swore. Moaning, he was swatting her and her synthetic-blond beehive away with that irascibility unique to disgruntled ol’ gimps. No one really knew what was wrong with him. I think Aunt Stella had pressed the doctors to diagnose him with something juicy so she could legally dispose of him. But the doctors said most likely the early stages of natural amnesia—at worst, senile dementia. Based on the things he would blurt out, I assumed Tourette’s. Perhaps even faking it as a last resort to express his discontent.

When he looked up at me, still some distance away on the sidewalk, he suddenly grabbed the left wheel with both hands and tried rocking himself out of the chair.

‘Stop ‘at, Alfonse!’ yelled Aunt Stella, prying his hands from the wheel.

Struggling to turn around in his geri-generic wheelchair, he said, ‘Stop inna name of love, woman!’ (She ignored him.) Then he looked straight at me. ‘Who’s ‘at?’ he said with an eructal cough that sounded like a colonel’s command: Hump that! ‘Who’s ‘at?!’

‘Whaddaya mean who’s ‘at? It’s Vincent!’

Aunt Stella knew that I hated being called Vincent; therefore, just like every other time she struck a chord, I sung out her misnomer. ‘Salutamu,⁴ Aunt Fella. (Uncle A.) Yinz headin’ da the morgue today?’

‘No, smartass. We’re goin’ home ‘cause yir faaahder—’ She flashed an exasperated rosy face; from the jerk of her flabby neck, I could taste the shaken mist of hairspray and cheap perfume. ‘You know him! Bein’ a drunk idiot like always!’

‘Awesome,’ I whispered to myself. I began surveying our small sere yard. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I didn’t really like her, and he was too much to deal with in the heat, so I sidestepped them and headed towards the door.

‘Who’s ‘at?’ Uncle Alfonse asked again. ‘Who’s ‘at?!’ She rolled him down to the car as they continued quibbling over who I am or might be.

Then I walked inside, deep into the trenches…

‘Taaay-yaaahh! Hello-oohh!’

He was marching around the dead room, drunk. Pungent vapors of bourbon were beating against the still musty air whenever he breathed, talked, and moved: Mess-olini on another wasted prowl. I quickly shifted passed him and turned right into the hallway between the kitchen and dead room.

‘EH!’

I froze halfway down the hallway. Don’t retreat…never retreat.

‘Tell ‘er da gih’doudda the fuckin’ baffroom ‘n’ make some supper!’

Irritated, I squared up to the left and knocked on the bathroom door. ‘Ma, ya gonna make some supper?…’ After she failed to respond, I knocked again. ‘Ma, chi fu? T’arripigghiasti?…’⁵ Again: no response. I put my ear closer to the door and heard sniffling and objects being knocked around in the cabinet. ‘Well, I dunno; I’ll be in my room if ya need any help.’ Still facing the door, something struck the corner of my eye. I glanced left—down the hallway—and saw his shadow cross into the kitchen. I closed my eyes for a moment…saw a thick teal sea billowing towards me…and when I opened my eyes it seemed darker than before. (With no windows near the hallway, and the bedroom doors usually shut, the hall was fated to be of a darker nature.) After taking a few steps forward, I opened my bedroom door on the right. A distinct mustiness—different from the rest of the house—shot forward: stifling and melancholic, causing the familiar malady in my gut to awake from dormancy. I closed the door behind me. Sat down on my double-mattress of a bed. Fixated my eyes on my moppy caramel carpet. Then listened to the swirling sounds of darkness and mustiness pervading the thin wall.

‘Tèa!—Eh Tèa!!!…’ (A moment of silence transpired as the three of us remained attentive in our separated spaces.) ‘Can’t do ‘iss; can’t do ‘at,’ he resumed in a mumble. But returning to the frustrated, desperate tone, he screamed, ‘For’ah’lass fuckin’ time: I’m fuckin’ starvin’! Nih’gih’doudda’dere!’

Mumbling commenced in the kitchen. I was trying to decipher the words, but the syllables sounded like slop being splattered inside a trough. Suddenly something fell to the floor and shattered; I felt the pieces spread across the linoleum as if tiny lyrate-shaped crystals were tearing through my veins. Then heavy movements in the hall. My door swung open. Sitting on the bed with my elbows resting on my thighs and my hands clasped together, I looked up. He latched onto the doorknob to keep his balance, leaning his hulking body against the door. His thinning black hair was sliding along the wood as he wavered. His eyes were dark and wet: the glaze from the booze. Underneath, dark and dry as stone: the incineration from the bitterness—the lifelong bitterness, the repose into ethos, the submission to soul-inertia…left so withered inside…all sensibilities now so weathered inside this shell of a man…which is why, while observing this shell, my senses told me that its deceptively rheumy eyes—so teary those mad eyes!—were searching for something not there, for it was only me before them: a something that was a nothing: a pile of ashes only needing the slightest blow to disappear. Sooooo…blow, father, blow!

And when finally he blew, his words blasted me in the face like a sciroccu⁶: ‘Thought I tolja da redd up ‘iss room! Huh?!’

‘I did!’

‘Den why dem books ‘n’ ‘at all over da floor?’

‘Umm—‘cause I’m gettin’ my shit together?’

‘For wha’?’

I refused to answer. I rose from my bed—the two single mattresses stacked atop each other without a frame—and with my back to him, began sifting through some papers on the dresser: a stack of poems I didn’t want to leave behind when the time came.

‘Where you think yir goin’?’ he slurred. I thought he was about to fully enter, but like a doctored lunatic falling into relapse he punched at the door with a hammer-fist—then again, and again, and again: rhythmic thuds of frustration. ‘Ya know, I fuckin’ hate di’shit!’ he bellowed. ‘No one knows howda cook! No one knows howda clean! No one knows where der goin’! No one knows NUH’N’!…’ While he continued complaining to my battered door, I saw Ma sneaking past (having came from her bedroom, not the bathroom), edging against the wall with tremulous steps. But it was a botched effort, for her foot hit the basing. At the sound, he turned around with a new target in sight.

‘Look who could finely join us!’ he declared, raising his hands up high; they fell abrupt and heavily like instant death. A gentle sway followed in which his tarpaulin eyelids, so close together, seemed to be his saving anchor…but then his eyes sprang open, so wide, as if he suddenly remembered what he’d been doing or been struck with the greatest idea ever. The entire time, Ma (frozen in place) had been looking down at the ground, her long black hair snaking down the front of her nightgown, the buttercup-yellow one that she’d worn to the tatters.

‘Tell me, Tèa,’ he said belittlingly, ‘whaddaya been doin’ all day ditcha can’t have supper riddy by da time I git home from work? I mean, is ‘at too much da ask for? Hmm?—EH! I can’t hear ya wichir face dahn!’ He staggered a step towards her.

I stood up and maneuvered back behind his broad martial shoulder: I wasn’t going to let him hit her. But Ma overstood the situation: she kept her mouth shut and dragged herself to the kitchen. He turned around to face me: a twisted grin demonstrating a job well done. Then he kinda nodded but without recognition for his eyes were opening and shutting intermittently. His thick hairy neck was bobbing around, twitching a little, as if some proxy force inside him was trying to keep him conscious.

I slipped between him and the door frame, walked down the hallway, then froze on the golden fool’s strip that divided the tan linoleum of the kitchen from the brown shag of the dead room. He followed but trailed off into the dead room, mumbling. In the kitchen, Ma was picking up the pieces of a white coffee mug; I still felt it shattering in my veins. Once giving the floor a quick sweep with a mini-broom, she pulled out two skillets from the cupboard above the stove, setting one on the back burner and one diagonally on the front. Without turning around, she called out several vegetables for me to retrieve from the refrigerator. It was for la caponata ri mulinciani, a side dish to go along with chicken cooked and seasoned in the healthy way. She was placing the raw chicken in the skillet strip by strip, telling me how much celery to slice, when she got startled and jerked her head to the right.

‘Wha’ inna fuck is ‘iss shit?!’ he moaned; that’s when Ma got startled and jerked her head to the right. ‘Where’s ‘at fuckin’ thing ‘at…’ He was stomping around the dead room, flipping up cushions, overturning magazines, looking for the remote. Then he stopped and pointed at the screen, I believe addressing me when he looked over at us and said, ‘Dis is wha’ she does while I’m at work.’ He looked back at the screen as if in disbelief that a television was even there. ‘Watches ‘iss fuckin’ Nazi coon ah-day.’

After finding the remote, he plumped down in his wooden recliner, which placed his back towards us. I watched him turn off what Ma couldn’t have been watching, seeing as the program had just started. Alwaysthemore, the power to banish a Nazi coon from his television pacified him. The bottle harmoniously tilted back with the recliner.

As my line of vision drew back to the kitchen, I looked at Ma cooking: a little sweat meandering down her temple…sneaking around her nervous mouth…the modest curve of her body weighed down, especially the slouch in her small rounded shoulders…her copper skin starting to look a bit yellowish…yet her hair still as full, thick, and black as mine, as if going gray, when the time came, would all happen in the course of one night. Whenever I used to look at her in years past, in prepubescent times, I would wonder what she was like as a picciridda⁷ in Catania⁸: I’d wanted to draw comparisons between us at the same age to see if I was “normal.” With each passing year, my thoughts became more complex and polished but always retained the name nucleus with regard to her life in Catania: Did she sing? Did she dance? Did her skin used to shine darker? U so accentu cchiù duci iera?!⁹ Did she, as a little Sicilian girl, ever think about America, or being in America? Well, I guess it didn’t really matter anymore, because, almost a man now, I overstood the futility of taking delight in little boy wonderings about little girl mommy, overstood how minds and eyes don’t share the same canvases. Yet ever since the genesis of the pubescent being I hadn’t stopped wanting to know what she looked like nude, and then once I could, explain to her why an artist, specifically a Greek-minded poet, gauging the cogitations and sensibilities both inside and outside the realm of sexuality would ever think of such a thing.

Outside, Razzle started barking: a nearby train was tooting its horn. Choo-chooooo! Standing at the sink, I looked out the smudgy kitchen window where I could see in our backyard our little grey dog standing on all fours, foaming at the mouth, digging his front paws down into the circle of dirt around his oak tree. Looked like something of a bull ready to charge into the bricks and buck us all.

After slicing all the celery and onion needed, I asked Ma if we had any dog food. Focused on the chicken food, she shook her head no and whispered a suggestion of bread and water. Bread ‘n’ wudder? What, is my dog a fuckin’ inmate? My widdle Razzle prahblee starvin’ out there! ‘N’ ‘at stupid chain around his neck! Ahhh! To be sure, I wanted to feed Razzle, even more, free Razzle, but for now I was more concerned with pacifying Razzle just so Rick (who now had his head drawn back on the recliner, breathing stertorously like a worn horse) would remain pacified.

I walked outside, back into the severe heat, with a gallon of tap water and two pieces of bread. Rapidly shaking his curled tail, Razzle tugged his chain towards me. The little gray terrier then spread down on his belly and stuck his white-whisker schnozzle down between his filthy paws. Although old, his eyes were young and tender, but his whimpering quashed any chance for his eyes to evoke delicate feelings in me. The more I observed what seemed a state of inconsolable misery, the more it felt like a loaf of bread was being worked up and down my throat like a saw. I squatted down—took a deep breath—and in a cartoonish voice, said, ‘‘Ere ya go, widdle buddy.’ Petting his head with one hand, I used the other to nudge a piece of bread towards him…til it was sitting atop his paws. Uninterested, he used his schnoz to flip it off to the side; an army of black ants were quick to invade the crust. I stood up and dumped the gallon of water into his large metal bowl by the tree. But he wouldn’t drink either. He rolled over on his back, panting, wanting me to scratch the scaling areas of his belly. As soon as I started to, reverberations from inside the house blasted through the bricks and glass. Razzle jumped up and, tugging his chain towards the house, started barking again. The train was gone by now.

After being provoked out of his repose, I could hear Rick saying something about not wanting that to eat. Through the rectangular kitchen window, it looked like he was puffing himself up and moving around frantically like a criminal trying to get their ransom at the last desperate moment. And poor Ma, she was trying to make everything all right (so to speak, pay the ransom) by making the food all right. But she didn’t know that what is sweet to one may be sour to another.

I gave Razzle one last scratch behind his pointy ear before walking back inside, deeper into the trenches than I should’ve gone…

…No surprise that when I swung in the backdoor Ma had disappeared from the kitchen, most likely having gone to bed, despite having a meal in-progress; wouldn’t have been the first time. I think in one of my blindspots—when I was heading towards the house and couldn’t see them through the window—he’d steamrolled her to the ground. So knowing the drill, I washed my hands and transferred the celery from the tawny countertop into the skillet where two eggplants were simmering in olive oil. The sound of the food was soothing me with its sizzle…stststststs…til it was overpowered by the sizzle of my father in the dead room; once a “living” room til the reign of King Richard—(just a puerile name I called him in my head, substituted with Musso)—swept over the diminutive land and it became the dead room for a million and two reasons.

‘Eh! I ‘on’t wan’ dat shit she’z makin’!’ he projected backwards from the recliner.

‘Whadever,’ I mumbled. Fanning the steam, I was about to turn off the stove and let it at that but he shot up and came wobbling into the kitchen, slurring what he wanted me to cook. Knowing more about stratagems than cooking, I wanted to leave the kitchen: get away without being blindsided by an attack or duped into playing one of his non-zero-sum games, namely, a lose-lose. Yet after some circling, twisting, and turning, while a fierce tussle was going on between my head and gut, I found myself stuck in the middle, in the fray between colliding worlds.

‘Gidda ‘nother job yet?’ he asked crossly as he crossed the threshold.

He forget? or can’t he comprehend da fact dittum leavin’ soon?

‘I know whachir tryin’ah do,’ he hiccupped. ‘Think yir gonna sit arounda house all day now ahcha ain’t in school no more. Wanna suck my blood dry like ‘em Klugman kids dahn’ah street. “Mommy, Daddy, gimmie! gimmie! gimmie!” HA!’

HA! I silently laughed back at his silliness. Besides having a basement, the Klugman kids didn’t have anything special. And suck his blood dry? Not unless I wanted alcohol poisoning!

Scratching at his mean box-jaw where grizzled sprouts poorly hid the draconian monster lurking behind, my father walked passed, squaring up with the window, quietly musing as if sober. Behind Razzle’s oak tree sat a line of twiggy bushes, followed by out-of-commission railroad tracks, followed by a glass factory that had gone under in the mid-80s. Good chance he was thinking about job-security since the factories and mills that once sustained Greater Pittsburgh were now drowning in the soup piecemeal. When he turned around, he surprisingly turned the stove off. Unsurprisingly he pushed the vegetable skillet back, causing a few pieces to fly out. Then he burped long and absurdly. Sick of it all, I skipped over the golden fool’s strip (so as not to get stuck in the fray) and started walking towards my bedroom.

‘Eh, come back ‘ere.’

I kept walking deaf. Don’t retreat…never retreat.

‘I sa’cahmir!’ he shouted in a voice stentorian enough to make the walls tremble.

Turning around, I saw that he’d nearly fallen forward with his words. His body—impressive in his military pictures before he gave up on physical patriotism—was starting to give into the natural slack of middle age. Even so, he was still as strong as Atlas. Fairly compact besides his gut; he’d grown one of those rubber bellies suggestive of a once-athletic young man: not solid muscle but certainly not fat either: a belly you think you could take a swing at and knock the wind out of him but you would only hurt your wrist. Despite his rapid aging and his modicum of territory to rule over, he was still general of the house. He always made sure I knew that. In a sense too prolix for copper, he made sure I knew everything.¹⁰

‘Fahder Carr tol’ me boucher mouff in class,’ he spat, launching spit missiles down the hall. ‘Says you been givin’ ‘im some lip. “Da congregation’s gonna be castigated by God.” Is ‘at whachu said? Huh?’

Once close enough, he started poking at my chest. Then he slapped the back of my head, sternly gripped the back of my neck, and guided me back into the fray between the kitchen and the dead room.

‘Why ya gadda say shit like ‘at in chirch? Huh?’

Facing him, I closed my eyes and raised my pointy black eyebrows towards the rust-flecked ceiling, shaking my head as if I knew nothing of the church situation. And I didn’t!…at least not til I browsed through my gospel recollections and realized that he was referring to something from when I was fourteen: approximately twelve hundred days ago! I mean, is it seriously possible to be that far out-of-touch?! Had Uncle Alfonse been wheeling him around?! Guess it’s time to change things up a bit. Gotta go to my bedroom and put on my Fourteen-Year-Old Vinny costume………Okay, I’m back! Look at me now! I’m fourteen again! Go on Daddy Dear! Blow on!

‘He tol’ me ‘atchu’er mockin’ ‘im ‘n’ pretenin’ like yuzza preacher, sayin’, “Whadda beaudiful castigation iddle be, my brudders ‘n’ sissers! Whadda beaudiful castigation iddle be!”…’ Hallelujah! For once Father Vallano was spot-on with his mockery! He was even doing a little befuddled dance to boost his thespian virtuosity! While continuing to act out the comical scene, he slung his boots off by kicking each leg up in the air. The boots—those filthy clodhoppers!—flew across the dead room one after another…towards the door…smacking off the wall with a thud. THUD!—THUD!

Meanwhile, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face! And apparently he thought I still had pride in mocking Father Carr twelve hundred days ago because after he finished the scene, he froze and violently glared down at me. With help from the light above, his eyes looked so silver and rheumy, his body so drunk but clinched so tightly in defense of all that held him together down to the cell of his heart.

‘Oh, is ‘iss funny da ya? Huh? Well lemme tell ya sum’n, kid—’ He stopped to catch his balance by grabbing the sink counter. He tottered sideways over to our algae-green fridge and swung the freezer door open. He pulled out an ice tray, preparing to make a formal drink. ‘One:’ he decreed sharply as he smacked the tray off the counter to break the ice, ‘you don’t even know wha’ castigate even means—’

‘Don’t cast the gate open?’

He turned around and twisted up his face, about to condemn me, but I interjected:

‘Look, yir so wasted right now dit—’

‘Nah’m not! Yir, umm—uhh…’ He began stammering because he started dropping ice cubes into a rocks glass, with care, as if heeding to a recipe. But in a spasm of impetuosity he dumped the whiskey in, splashing some on the counter. He turned around and held the glass outward as if I was about to receive a toast. ‘Ya know, yir fuckin’ worthless. Yir juss out da make e’eryone’s life a livin’ hell. Know who you are?’ He paused to shoot the whiskey down—then slung the glass behind him in the sink, the ice ringing around the metal: more broken glass. ‘Da devil in the flesh. I know. You know. She knows!’ he projected viciously towards the back of the house. As it echoed, air slowly evacuated his nose. Then he groaned, ‘Uhh-rrm…Juss git da fuck oudda my face ‘n’ godda yir room.’ Since my only movement was a smirk, he zigzagged over to me…til coming toe-to-toe, towering six inches above me. His bourbon breath was stirring near my eyes, the acridity making them a bit watery…

…And that, ladies and gentlemen of the literate world, was it: he won: he’d found a way to dupe me into playing one of his lose-lose games where nobody wins. Not only had I dismorphed from a seventeen-year-old into a fourteen-year-old, but he also made sure I played the role of Mephistopheles, since I was “da devil in the flesh.” (Yes, Da Devil does take many forms.) Alwaysthemore, his mouth had finally fired me up again. Sparked my tongue again. So, hell, I fired back again: ‘Why dohnchu gih da fuck oudda my face ‘n’ godda yir room?’ He didn’t; he only backed up a step and waited for my elaboration. ‘I mean, fuck, if only I could be as articulate as you ‘n’ Father Carr. Such experts in language ‘n’ elocution. Yir like M-L-K—’

‘Dohnchu ever caw me a nigger,’ he interjected with slow, sneering words.

‘Oh I wouldn’t dare in ‘iss cabin, Uncle Tommy.’ Waggling my little tongue in check, I could feel the friction mounting, ready to show him who’s King of Wordplay. But before I could show him he suddenly folded over—a temporary collapse?—banging his knee hard off the linoleum. I laughed. ‘‘Ere ya go. Wanna ‘nother drink, Uncle T? Or how bout Mr. T? Ya piddy dat fool, G?’

‘Fuck you,’ he mumbled down on bended knee.

I took a step closer, clinching my teeth together but unable to bite down on my little fiery tongue. A gigantic breath of air! (Huuuuuuuuuh!) ‘No: fuck – you.’ The acerbity of the words, together with the steady measure of the expulsion, sounded like I was trying to cut through glass, as I pointed my finger down at him as if to keep him fastened to the ground. Face to the floor, he was breathing hard, looking and sounding like a wounded bear. Roar? No—no roarjoinder to be heard. So declaring myself the victorious dark hero, I stepped around him, anxious to change my clothes and leap forward three years to the true me, the one who was no longer a little devil. But before taking those critical steps, I still felt the need to add the finishing tongue to the matter. To his back, a step away, I said, ‘I searcly can’t wait til yir dead.’

As always, I immediately (as if by instinct) felt so horrible and full of sin. But I was just trying to feel something other than the anger burning inside by spouting out—well, anger. Seemed to make sense: if you don’t like what’s inside you, then you get it out any way you can, and at any cost. But alas, here comes the check:

‘Come ‘ere.’ He quickly rose up from the floor, reaching out for my leg with desperate strength, sizzling, overloading, his body gnarling, his face wincing, his white shirt coming at my face in a great big blur, his calloused hands thrown into my black shirt, jerking me off-balance, jerking! jerking! jerking! His face flared up into a red ball. The greasy black comb-over on his head seemed to stiffen. His gut sucked inward but with little avail. He had a firm grip on my black shirt, pushing and pinning me back against the wall, keeping me cornered with his weight. He was wheezing, coughing, spitting, sweating, reeking of booze, odor, smoke, grease. I held my breath—wished him a heart attack or more strength for me. But it was too late. Everything happened so fast that I only had enough time to close my eyes and clinch my jaws together as one fell swoop rocked across my face, knocking my imaginary costumes straight to the floor…

…Ya know, hard work hardly overcomes hard luck. But luckily, after having that hard dose of discipline shot into my jaw, I retreated to my room and overcame my conscience by convincing myself that leaving and never looking back is the right thing to do. I even expounded my reasoning in my essay On Filial Liberation. The essay: a past forte of mine when my mind was feeble and desperate for any method of expression, when my whymeness hung all over me like cobwebs needing swabbed.

After writing for a bit, I turned up my stereo as loud as I could without enticing him, and it didn’t take much with Punk Rock: what my father called “that satanic crap”; what I called “the music of the rugged angels.” Then I sat down on my mattresses and hung my head like a Whooping crane. My mother’s sullen face appeared before my internal eyes, and from that, the solemn face of The Blessed Virgin Mary, and from that, I began mentally bullet-listing my blessings. When finished, I pretended that I went through and rearranged them in a ranked order, and the blessing at the top (bold and underscored) was that I’d grown up with a father who worked lots of overtime, which meant the blessing was that, in a more unfortunate scheme of things, those extra hours at work could’ve been spent at home.

Since and before I was born, my father worked at a steel mill ten miles southeast of Pittsburgh, one of the three remaining mills. But I was only concerned with when he worked: The shift and a half Monday thru Thursday, when he came home around 7 p.m., making his presence immediately known by getting drunk. After the half-shift on Friday, he usually went down the block to the dives, returning home in the same ol’ condition. Whenever he worked Saturdays it was another half-shift; afterward, he usually visited family by himself—(his parents, two brothers, and sister)—or he went fishing/hunting with friends from work. And on Sunday, “family day,” we went to church: the only thing we ever did together. Before we would leave, he would comb over what was left of his hair, shave his face clean, and put on the same ol’ black suit and red tie: must’ve been twenty-years-old but the best he had. At church, we always sat in the same pew, three from the back wall. Whenever the time came, Ma would croon the hymns and responses; Rick would hold the Psalms out in his palms but either keep his lips sealed or murmur with a scowl of discomfort; and I would observe, on both sides, up above the tall arcaded bays of the clerestory, the hallowed panes of glass, thinking about God knows what. After the collection of voices sobered, it was time for the Eucharist, followed by saying our last prayers and rites, at which point Father Carr—a carapacean sedevacantist,¹¹ attired in a mint-green cope thown over an alb-and-amice kit whiter than his hair—would impart his blessings, even on Rick. (Thanks be to God, Father Carr remained unaware that Rick made Tartuffe look like Turibius.¹²) Then Father Carr would do a brief but heartfelt obeisance to an icon of the Lord nailed in the high sanctuary, held within a calculated shade, golden architecture glimmering all around. Finally, the organ would strike up the grand finale and Father Carr would slowly disappear into the hind recesses of the church: the cue for we, the congregation, to orderly exit the polished pews…file down the Romanesque nave…creep through the dimmed narthex…then burst out two ultra-thick doors upon which hundreds of silhouetted angels swirled in congested circles. Then we, the Vallanos, would quietly drive home where, reigning in the dead room, my father, presently absolved, would finish off the blood of Christ. Amen.

Eh men. Eh women. Listen up: sum’n’s rotten like a state of mold in the hidden mark of a den. Heaven will direct us. But for now, go rest up. We got a long road ahead of us if we’re to survive…

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