When I'm alone and the blackness of night envelops me, I think of her wild, fearful eyes, and the blurry smudge of mascara dripping down her cheeks, soaking into the cloth gag between her lips. I don't want to think of it; in fact, I've tried to suppress it for nearly twenty years, but it reminds me of who I am. It reminds me of where I came from. I've tried to forget about her hair matted with sweat, and stiff with dried blood. I've tried to forget the binds on her wrists and ankles, her torn nightgown exposing her dark brown ass and the curly dark hair between her legs. I've tried in vain to forget.
It's funny how selective memory can be. I don't remember how old I was when I began to shave, or the first time I masturbated, but I still recall that night as if it were yesterday. I remember the shaft of light from the hallway that fell across Mario's back as I pushed open the door, wiping the sleepy innocence from my eyes. I still feel his burning gaze penetrate my four-year-old frame as he turned to find me in the doorway, clutching a scruffy stuffed bear by one stringy paw. As his hard, black face filled with anger and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, my mother squirmed on the bed, chomping on her bit trying and failing to speak, scream, or cry. If I close my eyes, I can still hear her attempt to call my name, the syllables a jumble in the folds of her restraint.
"Get your ass outta here, you little black bastard!" Mario's fist swung wildly out of the darkness and connected with my head sending me, and the bear, sprawling backward into the hall. I was stunned, more by his words than his fist, which had connected with a drunken awkwardness and merely knocked me off balance.
The bear flopped at Mario's feet like a twisted rag. From the floor I studied my mother, intrigued and repelled by her naked lower half and humiliating posture. Her nightgown was a tattered mess, her arms were scraped and bruised and her left eye was beginning to swell. She looked weak and pathetic and I was suddenly ashamed and scared. A flood of tears bubbled behind my eyes and exploded like a hydrant. Mario punted the bear and it sailed into my lap like a paper football.
"Go on back to bed," he snarled behind the closing bedroom door. "Your mama an' I got some adult things to discuss."
As the door slammed shut, I picked myself off the floor and ran down the hall to my bedroom. I was running full-force, and never stopped, even when I crashed onto the bed and wiggled beneath the covers. I've been running ever since. My legs have grown tired, my body twitches with exhaustion, but still I am running.
Mario moved out of our apartment two weeks later, but his presence has haunted me throughout my life. I don't understand exactly what I saw that night, but somehow I know that I was meant to see it. I needed to see it. It was necessary for me to see the fear and weakness in my mother's eyes as she huddled on the bed like a frightened animal, submitting to the will of the more dominant male. In his own misguided and inadvertent way, Uncle Mario taught me a lesson about women and how to handle them. When I look into a woman's eyes, I see mascara flowing along her face like an angry, black river. When I take off her pants, I see my mother's fat, hairy pussy staring back at me, laughing like a lunatic under the moon.
I left home at eighteen with no prospects, goals or skills, just a burning desire to get away. I was a drug addict and an alcoholic; I turned to crime and prostitution to support my habits, food had become subsequent to crack and Jack Daniels. The first time I found myself doubled over the front seat of a well-to-do businessman's BMW, his gangly, white organ inches from my lips, I thought I'd vomit. Remembering the thirty dollars folded neatly on the dashboard, I swallowed hard, closed my eyes and prepared for the worst. I felt like my mother, weak and pathetic, as he began to swell between my lips. Later that night, at the hostel, I rinsed the taste of his prick from my mouth with a swig of Jack and fell asleep on the floor next to the bottle.
I met Anitra on a Wednesday while trying to score some rocks from Leon, my connection. It was a three-hour wait, but when the product finally arrived, so did the strawberries. She led the pack as they staggered into the room, supporting each other like bums, their cigarettes glowing in the dim apartment like fireflies. One of the new boys introduced me to Anitra and her friends as Leon divided the rocks.
She was a tall, bony bitch with wide hips and coarse hair like dirty, black straw. The skin on her flat nose was cracked and swollen; acne dotted her cheeks like potholes. Her eyes were two black spots floating in a red river of alcohol. Sometimes, when all else fails, I think about those swollen, watery eyes and the fat, hairy mushroom cloud of my youth dissipates like a fart in the wind.
I gathered my score from Leon and was on my way, assuring him I'd be back in a week. The afternoon sun felt good on my face as I lumbered along the sidewalk, the rocks in my pocket ground together with each step.
I hadn't gotten far, before a thin, skeletal arm wrapped itself around my waist like a snake and squeezed. It was Anitra; she had followed me from Leon's. When she smiled up at me, her gray, rotted teeth reminded me of tombstones.
