4
I was naked with my arms stretched over my head. My dress was on the floor, covering my sneakers and socks, and the hand-held radio sang the blues on my night table. My mother’s nightgown, all shimmery pink and smooth, sank around me. And I could smell her, the persistent body odor she often had. The gown was so massive over me that for a moment I was lost underneath it -- my hands searched for the sleeve openings, my head rummaged against the silk in an effort to reach the neckline.
The headless housewife, I imagined, flapping her arms like a chicken.
When I finally poked through the collar, my hair stood on end with electrostatic. Then I scrunched the sleeves past my wrists, and tried twirling in a circle like a dervish. But the gown was too long, so I had to stop.
'You’re crazy,” I told myself, grabbing the radio. 'You’re insane.”
'That’s right, looks like any chance we had for rain has all but disappeared,” a throaty-sounding DJ said, speaking over the fade-out of a song. 'Well now, instead of thunderclaps here’s Mr. John Lee Hooker -- as requested by Jimmy in Salado-going boom boom boom for everyone on the Stillhouse Hollow Lake marina.'
With John Lee Hooker vibrating in my hand, I headed downstairs. The gown dragged at my feet, and it was a precarious trip from one squeaky step to the next. Still, I managed without trouble, envisioning myself as a graceful ghost while descending into the murky dining room. At the bottom of the stairs, the gown hem swept across the floorboards, stirring dust in my wake. But it didn’t matter much. Everything was dusty anyway -- the long dining room table, the oak sideboard, the air I inhaled.
'Aaaa-choo!” I faked a sneeze, hoping to summon my father’s attention.
To the right of the stairs was the kitchen, and to the left was the dining room and then the living room, separated by only a wood-burning stove. Because the entire downstairs lacked interior walls, it was fairly easy to gaze from room-to-room -- especially when standing at the foot of the stairs.
'Aaaa-choo!' I went again, but my father remained as before in the living room, so I about-faced and glided into the kitchen.
Leaving the radio near the stove, I dug in the grocery sack and placed the goods on the counter. Then I turned ravenous.
A saltine dabbed into the peanut butter jar, breaking the glossy surface.
More saltines followed.
John Lee Hooker had long since finished, and now bluegrass music entertained the kitchen. Wild fiddles and stomping feet kept time with my smacking.
I drank from a gallon jug, spilling water on the gown.
Then my index finger became a knife, squishing peanut butter across a slice of Wonder Bread. And I continued eating and drinking, waiting for my stomach to feel satisfied.
By the time I was full, my eyes had grown tired. There was peanut butter on the roof of my mouth, along the ridges of my gums, and I was content, half-awake and nourished, listening to 'K-V-R-P, eclectic music for eclectic minds-”
Fatigue pushed me downward.
With the gown bunched over me like a blanket, I was aware for the first time how very warm What Rocks was -- as if the entire place was holding a stifled breath. But the floor seemed cooler than anywhere else in the house. And the radio was now playing
In the ethereal moments before sleep, I imagined my father on a stage in some L.A. dive, where a beam of indigo light shone on him, glistening in the creases of his black leather pants and jacket. With his legs apart, his guitar held in front of him like a weapon, he curled his top lip, saying, 'This is for the loves of my life, my baby girl and my beautiful wife.”
An Elvis moment, he called it. Every performance needs one.
My mother bragged that the lyrics were written about her, and I never heard my father say otherwise. He wrote them while touring England during the early ‘70s. That’s where they met. My mother, a runaway from Brooklyn, was a wafer-thin eighteen-year-old, who had an Asian guru named Sanjuro. She also had The Who, or, to be exact, the drummer, Keith Moon. By then, my father was a guitar-twang icon, known for his string of instrumental hits in the 50’s, and an emotive, ferocious style of playing that had influenced a young Pete Townshend. Evidently though, when Pete saw my father perform in London, he was quite disappointed. lt was an acoustic performance of country standards, mostly Hank Williams and johnny Cash covers. Following the show, Pete went backstage long enough to shake my father’s hand, then he sulked away by himself.
'I’m sure he made a song about that night,” my father once remarked, digressing from how my mother was introduced to him. '‘The Punk Meets The Godfather’- I’m positive that one’s about me. Not a nice tribute.'
But Moon the Loon was delighted.
'I won’t say I don’t like country,' he exclaimed, 'because I do!'
He had arrived in my father’s dressing room disguised as an orthodox Jew, reeking of brandy and hyperbole.
'Musical innovation, a step forward backwards,' he cheered maniacally. 'Just like Mozart, except different! A
Gordian Knot in a shoelace!”
And as a gift, he ushered forth my mother -- 'an insane bint for your pleasure and gratuity” -- who waltzed into the dressing room costumed as Pippi Longstocking. She looked tomboyish, tall and slender, with the cheeks of her face freckled and her blue eyes shining.
'Don’t know if it was love at first sight,” my father had said on the Greyhound, 'but pretty darn close, I think. And it was good to begin with, and it stayed good for a long time because she made me feel like a kid-and I still had some money then. And she knew where to get diamorphine cheap, so I saved some dough because by the time we met I’d been buying expensive Chinese heroin. But she could get me brown and medical heroin for much less than what I’d been paying for the Number 4 type. Your mother was connected, Jeliza-Rose. Even when we moved to LA, she knew who to call and where to go. And before she got lazy and fat she could cook us up a storm. She made burritos and pizza and all kinds of greasy nice stuff. I miss that about her. I wish you’d known her then. She really was a treat.”
But he might as well have been talking about someone else. My mother slept all day and ate Crunch bars for dinner and talked to herself until dawn. And she wasn’t a treat.
I can’t say when it was exactly that I began to hate her, but I suppose it started after I turned nine. By that point, my parents were full-time junkies. My father was incapable of touring, and he had grown emaciated and weak. My mother, on the other hand, had ballooned in weight -- so much so that on the rare occasions when she managed to climb from bed, the springs creaked as if groaning relief, and the mattress continued to sag with the impression of her body.
At nine, I was given two chores -- massaging my mother’s legs, sanitizing and preparing the syringe. And while I became conscientious at both, there was only enjoyment to be had in making sure the needle was ready. Because my father believed public education bred dumb children, I was schooled at home, which amounted to little more than stolen library books (literary classics picked by my father, way beyond my reading ability), and afternoons of PBS.
Soon as I awoke in the mornings, my first class began in the kitchen -- where concentrated bleach was drawn into the syringe from a coffee cup, then squirted away in the sink. After the process was repeated, I flushed the syringe and needle through with cold water. Next, I scooped some junk from its hiding place in a sugar tin, dissolving the brown dust in a teaspoon with hot water and vitamin C powder. Then using a dining table chair for a perch, I stood at the gas stove, holding the spoon over a burner, feeling the stainless steel warm as the flame
