7MAY2010
I hurried to catch the train, had about twenty minutes to spare because it was late. I'm in another town two hours from home but when I look out the window of the station toward the tracks I see my parents. At first I was stunned.
Both of them seemed happy, seemed normal, except for him: weirdly stylish shoes at the bottom of a Dilbert cartoon body. It's new for his beard to be gray. The back of hair was cut too aesthetically. There was always something weird about him, always. I remember when we were growing up, thinking to myself how strange it was: it was like there was four children in the house, A__, H__, me, and R__.
I immediately popped sixteen pills as I finished making the Gatorade bottle full of merlot in the privacy of a bathroom stall. It was a quick, methodical operation: the rest of the Gatorade down the toilet, a window sill in a bathroom stall full of wine, carefully opened and dispensed. I didn't feel comfortable mixing the two bottles, because they were two different brands of merlot. Was that sacrilegious? In the end I had a huge Gatorade bottle full of purple liquid that was actually merlot.
It was clear that R__ was just dropping her off. He walked away finally, drove away. I thought to myself: there's no escaping this, and there's no point in being afraid; I've randomly crossed paths with her before.
Good thing I took my OK-pills. If there's anything I've learned in life, in deployment, etc, it's that you have to get everything absolutely right the first time, no exceptions, and if that means you have to supplement, then that's just what it means.
_Hi, Mom._ I said, walking up to her as the crowd formed around the entrance to the train.
_Oh, I thought that might be you,_ she said. I had stepped out once already to take care of checking my bag. She looked right at me and didn't recognize me. I wasn't surprised, she never does.
We walked the entire length of the inside of the train, looking for an open seat so we could sit together; seemed like the thing to do. She walked in front of me. I hadn't realized how much of H__ was in her. I had always seen so much of A__ instead. Dealing with her was like dealing with H__ and A__ combined. Instead of dealing with two young, burgeoning monsters I was dealing with a self-realized one, experienced, comfortable in her ways.
In each set of seats there was always at least one person, usually spread out. I spoke to one, basically announcing that she was my mom and I had just got back from deployment. He agreed to move.
Afterward, the people around us heard us talking and must have thought it a strange dialogue between mother and son: _How long have you been back?_ she asked concerning the deployment. _10 weeks._
She told me about great grandpa, the railroad worker. When she described him she described me. Supposedly he saved his money so that when he died in a railroad accident it was invested wisely and grew. So many generations later it's still being passed down. Me and my sisters were next. I told her I was royally good on money, I'd just gotten back from deployment. She made a face as if it seemed to bother her when I said it. I forgot how she used my poverty to hold me down. How she malnourished me, despite having plenty in the bank.
She tried to take credit for me being like her great grandfather, the only decent relative on her side of the family, the only one she had liked as a child. The reason I read so many books is because he was raping me and the Real world was gone to numbness and spaces of memory loss, not because she had encouraged it.
I changed the subject. I can do that now, I'm not a little boy anymore, and it was funny to me how she had no power over me. I opened my laptop and showed her pictures of the deployment. Showed her pictures of my house and the land, etc. It was easy being the one running the conversation. I forgot we had done this before, crossed paths randomly, I was getting good at it.
Strange crossing paths with your Mother on a train, each of you acting like old acquaintances but not friends, not family. We've crossed paths before, acted this way before, just not on a train on Mother's Day weekend.
_Well, now that H__ is marr-_ she said, as if she had made a mistake to almost say it, but I knew she did it on purpose. Playing games as usual. I told her I was divorced. A quick marriage. A year. It was a blast, like something out of a movie. She cut me short, though.
The word divorce. It had a sharp sound to it, I know she heard it as final and deciding as the word 'raped' or the word 'gay.' To her it was a failure so final it was worth disowning someone because they now had no value left.
Her definitions were all wrong. It's funny, and frightening, how her definitions for certain things were also the definitions for me, including myself. What it must have been like for her, to realize she had that power. I hadn't realized how completely contrasting we were. Our two perceptions irreconcilable.
_Do you sing?_ she asked me at some point. _You have such a deep, low voice._
I remembered the night before; I didn't want to tell her something so personal about me. _Well, I mean, everyone sings._
Finally polite conversation came to a lull. So I opened up a new, empty word document on my laptop:
_Mom, can you see this?_ I typed.
She vocally said, _Yes,_ I typed: You have to type or we’ll be overheard.
_When I came back from deployment,_ I typed, _I went to the police concerning R__. I told them. A__ and H___ have always joked about how little I could remember. The deployment’s violence was jarring and caused me many flashbacks, etc., until finally it was like a wave of memory to the point where I remembered everything, even down to the last detail. R__ was raping me. He took me out of the bed and took me to your room and he would insert himself into me. He did the same with A___. This train trip isn’t appropriate, I know, but I didn’t expect you to be here. Either way, the police would have been coming by your house to ask questions within the next few months, so maybe it’s better this way. It began when I was a baby in the trailer, he used me like a rubber vagina, it was very violent. In the House I saw him do it to A___. I don’t care about R__, but he can’t have access to children. That’s the point of going to the police. You didn’t protect me and A__ then and I can’t expect you to protect future children. H__ seems to be completely ignorant of what was going on back then. It did start before she was born. You have to type, not talk._
_I honestly didn’t know,_ she typed.
_You’ll kindly respect the reality that maybe in-the-moment I don’t all-the-way believe you._ I typed.
_Ok._
_A__ is in trouble. It’s not her fault. R__ might have done stuff to H__, which means she’ll attract bad men, have a bad marriage, etc. It is not right. I know more about what Men are capable of then you do. You’re a woman. I don’t blame you. I do remember you being around. I know you have had dealings with sexual abuse yourself. Grandma told me a story about a neighbor. This is serious business. H___ is not the strong one. I am. H___ wasn’t even involved. I protected her and incidentally A__ did too, but it didn’t work, she still acts flirty with me instead of like a sister. I know what’s going on. And I ‘m going to stop it. Tell me if I can trust you to keep him away from children. Does he go to a church with children running around? I bet he does. I know exactly what he does with the sorry excuse for junk he’s got between his legs. I know my name is a sexual abuse joke about a clock in England. I remember R__ joking about it with someone else. I remember it from before I knew English good._
_I cannot handle this period much less in public. Do what you feel you need to do. I won’t tell R__ what you said. I cannot discuss it any more. I am very sorry if this does turn out to be the truth._
_These are your daughter’s lives you’ve had hanging in the balance. You’re a woman you know what I’m talking about._
_As I said. I am very sorry if this turns out to be the truth. I have issues with you lying about me in the past. I feel pushed right now this is a lot to put on a person. I need to rest. Do what you feel you need to do. I’ll keep quiet re: R_
_The problem is how will you support yourself ?_
[at this point the caps lock wouldn’t unlock and everything had to be in capital letters, it was embarrassing.].
_a__ and h___ and I will have to have a financial conversation concerning you._
_Goodluck w/ that. I have some money saved up. This is enough. I’m done._
__________
_If it turns out to be true,_ she had typed .. Her holding in reserves the possibility I could lie like that. She held it in reserves just to insult me. She always did that. She thought that by disputing any ideas of her having been abusive, she naturally made it so - she automatically made what I was saying a lie.
She really thought she was that powerful. She was Mother. Therefore, her lawful and spiritual ownership of me was simply assumed.
A bad habit of hers, her not noticing the tiger cub was growing, growing the whole time. She didn't know I had remembered way more than I had let on. That I remembered her starting the sexual abuse, I remember her naming me Biiiig! Ben.
What exactly did you expect, B? Motherly Love?
I did notice that as I intermittently dozed off she stared out the window the whole time, not looking at the land rolling by, just staring ahead, as if lost in thought. I wished I could've taken a picture of her like that. She looked older, but it seemed an obvious trick, I still saw the young woman I'd known as Mom.
In the end she was so full of lies all you could do was see her for crazy and let her casually walk off the train. I didn't know I was that guy: randomly crossing paths with my mother on a train, fresh off deployment, and to randomly separate again, the casualness of it, as if it were normal, reasonable, with no regrets. Me adjusting in my seat as she said it was her stop, me saying okay and then going back to sleep.
The train ride ended at Penn Station. I arrived in the dead of night with mostly poor and working class people. Not much glamour in these sharp shadows on dreary, vandalized concrete.
__________
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