Chatper 11: Tribulations Part 7 - A Bittersweet Ending

I am numb inside. Seeing my mother's face for the final time quenched the fire she had lit inside of me. That day, the lights went out, and so began the dark shroud that embraced the remaining days of my life. Darkness was a cold fellow, a charming friend, though ruinous like Mephistopheles standing over my shoulder; his sadistic smile brandishing words that would twist my heart. "'Tis sad, to paint the face of maiden fair. Fallen days locked away, still thou dost care?"

...How the devil loves funerals.

Vedette's face was serene and bloodless, covered in rouge and mascara, red lipstick and tightly wound curls like some china doll. It was disgusting. She was far too beautiful to be masked so superficially. I hated whoever did this to her, even more than I hated her for being dead. But I said nothing, nothing at all, not a single word during the entire procession. I only stood, my hands curling my paperback Dostoevsky as tightly as it would wind, actually trying to force myself to tears, prying at my soul like a crowbar to a chest that had rusted for a millennia. But nothing happened, my soul was empty. I felt completely white-washed, and could not for the life of me understand why.

Everyone flung pity on me like blankets over my head, even my father. We spoke briefly at a diner after the funeral, for about an hour, but he left without even offering to take me with him. And just like that, I was alone in the world - this huge new world that swelled with infamiliarity - digging a hole inside myself to hide in. I didn't know how to function, how to survive, dropped off at the orphanage after my mother's funeral. I shared a room with nine other children ranging ages seven to sixteen. All I was allowed to bring was the clothes on my back and my copy of "Notes from the Underground", in which I inscribed a poem on the back of the last page that came to me as they covered my mother's casket with dirt.

The sound of a thousand voices
Buzzing around my head like flies
Incessant conversations that never
Cease to leave me be in silence

The vision of a thousand cherubim
Guiding me as I walk among the living
Dead man's walk that leads me on into
The darkness where I find my release

The touch of a thousand helpless souls
That plead their spirits be let go
I shall never find my place among them
In the valley of the shadow of death

The scent of a thousand candles
That linger in the air within
My tiny room where I await the answer
To the question that holds the inevitable

The taste of a thousand parched lips
That thirst for the wine of rebirth
Inside the fathomless depths of naught
An eternal bequest in shadows of sorrow

The memory of a thousand faces
Of which my weary heart was warmed
The thought to bear upon my sleeve
Of a love that was but is no more


My parents reached Willow Park in March, 1924. The exact date is unclear, but it was some time after my mother's birthday. The car my father drove was of course stolen, which made my mother anxious the entire trip. She dread being pulled over in every town they drove through. If the police found the moonshine in the backseat and realized the car was boosted, Allen and Vedette would be shipped off to prison for a very long time - my father facing his third offense (of which he was caught), and having no faith in judicial mercy - my mother, the victim through association. Notwithstanding, fortunate chance managed to keep them safe from trouble the entire stretch from California to Illinois.

The two of them planned their entire lives together during the trip, and it was decided once they crossed the California border, that they would get married as soon as they joined Allen's father in Willow Park. Allen would continue moonshining and Vedette would brush up on her English and perhaps go back to school. Neither of them discussed children, and perhaps neither of them wanted any in the beginning. My father was too wild and wreckless to settle down, and my mother was filled with fear whenever she considered the possibility of raising a daughter of her own and having to protect her from evil men like her father and Great Uncle. She imagined a rapist around every corner, perhaps paranoia, but Vedette realized she would never be able to trust a daughter with any man.

Vedette was even suspicious of Allen's father Gilbert, before she had even met him, but she trusted Allen and was willing to follow him anywhere; willing to do whatever he asked. Nevertheless, as she would discover later, her suspicions were justifiably accurate. Gilbert was an alcoholic, well to put it more accurately he was a complete lush. He was unemployed, living off his military pension as a retired Captain, and spent most of his time at neighboring bars when Allen was just a child. Most nights he was lucky enough to make it home before he passed out, and other nights he could be found sprawled out in his own stink in an alley somewhere or someone's front yard. He was also a philanderer, and though he had never dreamed of forcing himself on a woman, he had never been discreet about placing his hands where they weren't wanted. With Vedette, he didn't dare try anything while Allen was around, but once he was gone, Gilbert considered Vedette not only available but in debt to him for letting her stay rent free.

From an early age, Allen raised himself, was responsible for securing his own food, bathing and dressing himself, and providing his own entertainment. It was no surprise that he took to a life of crime at an early age. It all began with a loaf of bread, and then a pair of shoes that didn't have holes in them. By the time he was eighteen, Allen had stolen nearly two dozen cars. And then Prohibition was passed, and Gilbert was forced to suffer through his withdrawls or find other means to feed his addiction. Moonshining became a very prosperous business and once my father realized he could make money doing it, he quickly secured the necessary network of undesirables, starting as a delivery boy and eventually charming his way to part ownership. This of course made Allen the Pope in the eyes of his father, and Allen was finally happy...and wealthy. By the time he met my mother, he was wealthy enough to buy his own car, but still chose to boost them instead. He was paranoid about being tied to any particular vehicle that could be traced back to him. So, he took one after the other, used it for a few days and dumped it in some field or abandoned it in the middle of some back country road.

They dumped the car Allen boosted in California, as soon as they crossed the Illinois border, and took a bus the rest of the way. Gilbert stood anxious to greet them the moment they arrived, mainly because he knew that Allen never came to see him without bringing gifts. Once spurious greetings were dispensed, Allen reached into his bag and pulled out a large bottle of happiness and handed it to his father. "A gift for my pops!" He exclaimed, and Gilbert Tolliver grinned with a mouth full of missing teeth and ran inside to pull the cork, leaving Allen and my mother standing in his doorway.

The events that occured after their arrival have already been documented, so I will move forward to the day my father left. My mother was six months pregnant. Allen was absent much of the first few months reconfirming business connections in the area, and as my mother later found out, spending a lot of time with a new fling named Maria; who eventually coaxed him into moving with her back to Mexico.

The day he left, Allen told my mother he had to make a business trip out of town and would return in a few days. After a week, my mother started to worry, concerned he had been arrested or worse. Eventually Gilbert confessed, while he was drunk, that Allen had run off with his little seniorita. My mother believed it was an attempt to coax her into bed and placed no faith in Gilber's words. But three weeks later, a letter came in the post from my father, explaining that even though he still loved Vedette, he wasn't ready to be a father. Allen was a sucker for women, but children made him nervous. And yet, as it turned out in Mexico, he fathered three children with Maria, two with her cousin, and yet two more with another American woman who was santioned to his small town for missionary work. Maria was upset about it at first, but my father was making good money. Nevertheless, she stayed with him and he eventually settled down into fatherhood. He learned Spanish and bought a bar, giving up his moonshining business.

Three months later I was born, and my mother's unsettling psychosis began its downward spiral. Grandfather Gilbert let us stay, working occasional odd jobs as a handy man in addition to his pension. He still continued to drink heavily, spending nearly one third of his income on moonshine and homemade beer. But my mother didn't care, as long as he wasn't drunk around me, and we had food to eat and clothes to wear. His flat was rent controlled, because he had lived in it for more than twenty years, so there was little chance we would become homeless.

I studied grandfather Gilbert on numerous occasions, peeking through the keyhole in the basement door, observing his drinking habits. He was always kind to me, though superficially. I knew he tolerated me because of my mother. Still, he brought me gifts on my birthday and Christmas and carved the occasional animal or toy soldier out of wood.

But as kind as he was, I didn't like him, and not because he was a drunk, but because of how he treated my mother. He wasn't mean, though he was quick to stir a guilty conscience in her because we were living with him for free. He made a pass at her nearly every day, and my mother wrote in her journals that she always kept a kitchen knife under her pillow in case he should make more than a pass at her while she was asleep.

As the years passed, he became more diligent in his endeavors, and my mother grew to dislike him as much as I did. She never told him what happened to her in France. Maybe he would have stopped, if he had known, but it continued day and night. He always found some excuse to lay his hands on her, sometimes in inappropriate places. Once she punched him in the eye when I was twelve. His entire face turned red, and I could have sworn he meant to kill her. Instead, he called her a moocher and a tease, and accused her of other vile things I can't remember.

These situations escalated during the last six months of my mother's life. She wrote about them in detail in her journals, and fantasized about what she would do the next time he tried to touch her, but nothing ever came of it. Not until the night of October 22, 1939. It was past nine o'clock. The neighborhood was quiet. All was still. I was asleep when the argument began, and was quickly stirred awake at my mother's screams. She was laying into him viciously in French, all kinds of names I wont' dare repeat, as he pleaded with her to speak English. I peeked through the keyhole to find them in the kitchen. Her back was turned to me. I could see the knife in her hand, and grandfather Gilbert standing ignorant to the possiblity that his life could end at any moment. He stood wobbling with an empty bottle in his left hand, his right rubbing my mother's stomach. He spoke quietly to her, words I was unable to hear, trying to calm her down, but it only made her more furious.

It went on like this for several minutes, escalating to the point of exploding out of hand. My mother's entire body shook, as she stared him straight in the eyes, letting him touch her the way he did. Finally, she had had enough. She grasped his shoulder with her free hand and thrust her knee into his crotch. Grandfather Gilbert folded over in agony, holding his privates as she kicked him in the ribs and ran upstairs to her room and slammed the door.

My grandfather crawled across the floor towards the basement door, clinching his teeth and howling, "B***h! B***h!", over and over. Several minutes passed before he became quiet and still. He stood to his feet and stumbled over to the basement door. I think he knew I was watching him, because he poked his eye infront of the keyhole and smiled. "Your mother's gonna get it tonight, you little b*****d. She's gonna repay me every penny I wasted on you two. And tomorrow, you're both out on the street."

And he left, limping his way up the stairs. There was no more yelling that night. The silence was eerie after so much shouting, and I couldn't force myself back to sleep again. Grandfather Gilbert's words rang in my ears, his face burned into the backs of my eyelids when I closed my eyes; the smell of moonshine on his breath that crept through the keyhole when he slurred. I pulled the covers up over my head and cried quietly, calling out to my mother, though I knew she couldn't hear me.

Several hours ticked away. Sunrise refracted through the barred windows on the northern side of the basement. It was a new day. I entertained false hopes that Gilbert and my mother had forgiven each other and forgot about the events that happened the previous night; hoping everything would proceed just like every other day. I had settled into the daily repetitiveness, became comfortable in this life of seclusion. Of course, there was a small grain of hope, deep inside my soul, that grandfather Gilbert would stop drinking and touching my mother. Then the day would eventually come that Mama would let me out of the basement, when I was ready of course, and we could all be happy at last. Myabe we would, finally.

But the events from the previous night were not forgotten. As the sun was beginning to set, I made my way slowly up the stairs and peeked through the keyhole. The kitchen was empty. The only thing that was different was a piece of paper taped to the edge of the counter, right in my line of sight. It read in large red letters, "I'm sorry. I love you." What could it mean, I wondered, and who left it..mother or grandfather Gilbert? I pressed my forehead to the door, hoping to catch a wider view of the kitchen in order to observe further clues, but nothing else had been disturbed. Solemnly, I slowly moved my foot onto the step behind me, but it slipped and I fell forward with both hands onto the top step. My left hand grazed something small and hurled it halfway underneath the door frame, the other half wedged on my side. I retrieved what appeared to be a letter with something wrapped inside of it.

I opened it carefully and a key fell out. It was the key to the basement, but why would she be giving it to me? I read the letter carefully, not skipping a word and my heart stopped. By the time I reached the end, it would be too late to save my mother.


**** À Mon PETIT Jack, mon enfant,
Je ne peux jamais me pardonner pour les choses que je vous ai faites, je ne peux jamais m'attendre non plus à ce que vous me pardonniez. Savez s'il vous plaît, un de ces jours vous comprendrez que tout que je faisais jamais pour vous était hors de l'amour et vous protéger. Mais je ne peux pas vous protéger davantage. Vous êtes presque un homme. Je regrette que je ne puisse pas vous aider à trouver votre voie le long de cette vie cruelle et minable. Plus tard, vous saurez pourquoi je fais de telles choses étranges. Je ne peux pas m'aider, autant que j'essaie je ne peux pas m'arrêter. Je vous ai fait quelque chose de terrible, emmené votre liberté depuis quatorze ans. Je vous ai étouffés et simplement parce que j'ai voulu garantir que vous ne saviez jamais qu'il a voulu dire de sentir la douleur que je sens à l'intérieur. Mais vous êtes un fort garçon. Vous survivrez. Je sais que vous irez faire.

Jack, mon fils, c'est le temps pour moi pour dire au revoir. Je suis désolé. J'ai cherché ma vie entière pour une voie de cette folie, mais alors vous êtes arrivés et m'avez donné l'espoir. S'il vous plaît, mon Petit Jack, mon garçon, ne me pense pas moins. Ne moi détestez pas. J'ai fait quelque chose d'autre de très terrible, Jack. Pardonnez-moi s'il vous plaît. Je me sentirai perdu pour toujours, si vous me pensez peu à cause de cela. J'ai découvert ma voie et vous irez faire aussi. Allez maintenant, je vous donne votre liberté. Devenez forts, souvenez-vous de tout que je vous ai enseigné et vivant. Vivant pour moi, Jack, parce que je n'étais jamais capable de vivre pour moi. Allez, mon Petit Jack et ne retourner pas jamais . Ne moi cherchez pas. Allez à l'orphelinat trois blocs en bas la rue sur votre droiteyé. Ils vous aideront.

Je vous aime,

Adieu,

Votre tour de guet d'amour,

Maman ****


****To My LIttle Jack, my child,

I can never forgive myself for the things I have done to you, nor can I ever expect you to forgive me. Please know, someday you will understand that everything I have ever done for you was out of love, and to protect you. But I can't protect you any longer. You are nearly a man. I regret that I cannot help you find your way along this cruel and wretched life. Some day, you will know why I did such strange things. I cannot help myself, as much as I try I cannot stop. I have done something terrible to you, taken away your freedom for fourteen years. I have smothered you, and simply because I wanted to ensure that you never knew what it meant to feel the pain I feel inside. But you're a strong boy. You'll survive. I know you will.

Jack, my son, it's time for me to say goodbye. I'm sorry. I've sought my entire life for a way out of this madness, but then you came along and gave me hope. Please, my Little Jack, my boy, don't think less of me. Don't hate me. I've done something else very terrible, Jack. Please forgive me. I will be lost forever, if you think little of me because of it. I've found my way out, and you will too. Now go, I give you your freedom. Grow strong, remember everything I've taught you, and live. Live for me, Jack, because I was never able to live for myself. Go, my Little Jack, and don't ever look back. Don't look for me. Go to the orphanage three blocks down the street to your right. They will help you.

I love you,

Farewell,

Your loving watchtower,

Mama****


I opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. It was the first time I had left the basement since I was two. I wanted to obey my mother and do as she asked, but I couldn't leave without finding her first. I wanted to know why she was abandoning me just like my father. I wanted to find out what she had done that was so terrible and tell her that I didn't care, that I couldnt' forigive her, because there was nothing she could ever do in this world that would make me love her any less.

I approached the stairs, tears streaming down my face, my legs shaking and knees knocking together. I stopped to listen for some sign of movement, but there was none. Where had she gone? Where did she go? Why did she leave me? "Mama," I whispered, but there was no answer. "Mama, grandfather Gilbert." Nothing. Each step was momentous, as the stairs creaked beneath my feet. Eventually I made it to the top. The house was dusty. It was rarely ever cleaned. My mother was ill, I always understood that. She was too busy fussing over me to notice the house was a wreck, and Gilbert was too drunk.

"Mama," I whispered again. Still nothing. I peaked into each room I passed. The first was an upstairs bathroom. It appeared empty, the shower curtain pulled halfway and a quiet trickle of water dripped from the faucet. The next room was obviously Gilbert's, filled with empty bottles and dirty underwear, but he was not there. The house was eerily quiet. Where could they have gone? The next room I came to was on the opposite side of the hall. This had to be it, my mother's room. My crib was still standing in the middle of the room.

And then I stopped. Someone was laying beside it, someone that wasn't my mother. "Grandfather Gilbert," I whispered. There was no answer. I stepped into the room and knelt beside him. His face was covered in something red and sticky. Suddenly my knee felt cold, so I glanced down to find that I was kneeling in a puddle of my grandfather's blood. It had soaked through my pajamas all the way to the skin. I should have panicked, I know, but I had never seen a dead body before, and no one had ever told me how I was supposed to react. I examined the wound on his neck for almost a full minute and forgot all about Vedette. Someone had slashed my grandfather's throat. But who? I thought. But I knew who it was. There was only one person that could have done it. But where was the knife. It was not here. And then I remembered. "Mama!" I screamed and ran from the room. There was only one place she could be. I ran to the upstairs bathroom and threw the shower curtain aside. There she was, motionless, eyes glazed in melancholy. She was soaked to the bone. "Are you cold, mama?" I asked. "I'll get you some towels..." And then I noticed the blood streaming down the drain. She had slit her left wrist clean through, almost severing her hand; the knife lay glistening beside her. I never even heard her scream. How long had it been? I shook her, but she didn't move. She would never move again; not in this life.

I don't know what came over me. A sudden gust of emotions flooded my soul, the deepest of which was hatred. I hated her. Why would she do such a thing, after all she had been to me. After all she had done to protect me. Now there was no one to look after me, except myself. She abandoned me, just like my father. "I hate you! I hate you!" I shouted at her corpse, expecting no reply, and none was given.

I ran from the bathroom gnashing my teeth and screaming, "I hate you, I hate you!", all the way into the street. I pulled chunks of hair from my skull and smeared the blood from my hands all over my white pajamas. The police arrested me in front of the orphanage. I was too afraid to go inside, and everyone in the orphanage was too afraid to come out and get me. They called the police instead. I stood facing the orphanage doors, screaming "I hate you!" as loud as I could until they handcuffed me. And when I led them back to my grandfather's flat, they charged me with double homicide.