OPENING THE CAN OF WORMS (Chapter 6 of a Novel by Louise Scott)

 

Chapter 6 

There came a heavy snow with a howling wind during my wakeful night.  Early the next morning I was exhausted, feeling like a dog left squished and bloodied to die by the side of the road, but while I was brushing snow off the windshield of my truck a swarm of gray birds suddenly rose in the air. All at once they changed direction, and in that split second the black of their bellies became a dark cluster in the sky over all the whiteness of snow below.  It seemed like a positive omen.  It seemed like looking God in the eye.

Oh, please, let it go well with Sally.

 I felt nervous, as usual when Sally and I were going to be together, since almost always we are on opposite sides of an argument.  We hadn't communicated in other than a trivial manner for years, though I've tried to breach the barriers and sometimes she has, too.  Many times we have renewed what can only be seen as a bad bargain.   It’s a problem between us that I must be at least partially responsible for—-even though the mote in my eye only allows me to see her very apparent faults and none of my own.  But no doubt about it, it takes two to tango.

Sally and two of her children lived in one spacious wing of an enormous antebellum house belonging to a wealthy old woman, Mrs. Lujan, who suffered with Parkinson's disease and was barely this side of comatose most of the time.  Sally was responsible for overseeing the woman’s care and managing her affairs, scheduling the many nurses and aides who were on round-the-clock duty.

Justin, Sally’s eight-year-old fatherless son that now was in deep doo-doo, lived there permanently with her, but his older brother, Brandon, stayed with his father, Val, on weekdays and was only with Sally and Justin after school on Fridays until school Monday mornings.  Her two older children, Jock and Katie, had lived for years with their father, Murry, in Pueblo, several hours away.  So you see there were three fathers, four children.

At Mrs. Lujan’s I parked among stiff icy weeds on the narrow roadside space in front of the elegant Victorian mansion.  I couldn’t chance driving up the snow-packed sloping driveway that right now could easily double as a toboggan run. Kicking a quantity of wet fluffy snow out of the way in order to open the icicle-laced wrought iron gate, I trudged around dead-on-the-vine lilac bushes to the back of the building through the patio.  I left a deep path in the fresh snow while sloshing my way to the sliding glass kitchen doors.

Where will this morning's conversation lead?

As she came to the door the sun shone fully on her face through the wall of glass, emphasizing her marvelous bone structure with a high wide forehead, prominent cheekbones, her chin nicely rounded.  She appeared pale and haggard, especially so because she was framed by a colorful riot of purple violets and pink azaleas growing inside where the sun penetrated through the glass doors.  All was intensely bright as the morning sun reflected off the fresh snow, dazzling as it bounced in all directions.

Under stress, as she obviously was, and totally devoid of make-up, still she was an elegant woman with whom I had donated DNA that gave her dark Irish features, but I have no idea where her deep dimples came from. She was stylishly thin, but not anorexic like when she was snorting all that cocaine.  Where the sun shown in through the glass doors it looked like diamonds were sparkling on her abundant curly black hair.  She wore it dramatically pulled to one side and fastened with a plain silver barrette; it fell in a graceful cascade over her shoulder.  Her eyes, though right then red and swollen from crying, are the color of those blue crayons that as a child I always used when coloring the sky.  Sometimes I’ve seen dragonflies that same shade of blue, also the blossoms of the Forget-me-nots I’d had in my garden the summer before.

We hugged each other briefly--more a formality, an old family ritual, than a warm embrace--then with shaking hands she poured us each a cup of coffee before she sat down opposite me at the Formica kitchen table. 

We were both very tense.  After only a minute I asked, "What's going on with Justin?  What’s been going on that you say I don't know?"

She lit a cigarette, then studied it for a few seconds before she took a big drag and exhaled a huge storm cloud.

"The problem isn't just that Justin was uncontrollable at school yesterday," she told me.  I was expecting her to begin an assemblage of evasions, but after another long pause she looked directly into my eyes and rapped off, sprinting toward the end of the sentence in a shrill voice: "Mama, recently I surprised Justin and Brandon engaging in sex together."

"What? Engaging? ‘Engaging’ in sex you say?’  That’s a funny way to put it. So? What kids haven't?"

I didn't feel surprised about any kind of the boys’ sexual shenanigans, however I was concerned that Sally was obviously so very distressed.  What I was apprehensive about was what was going to happen with Justin after the recent trouble at school.

I warily asked, "What were they doing?  How did you handle it?"

"They were on the bed together in their room.  I walked in unexpectedly and they both jumped up and tried to hide it, but I had seen."  

"Well, what did you see?"

"They were partly under the covers, but I saw that their pants were down and they had their mouths on each other.  They were engaging in sex!"

"Engaging, huh? You mean they were sucking each other’s cocks?”

“Yes.”

“Well!  It's not such a big deal, Honey. Don’t you know all kids screw around? I did and I’m sure you did, too.  What did you say to them?"

"I didn’t say anything.  I was shocked, of course, and they knew it."  Her lips were clasped in a straight line as she looked daggers of displeasure at my response.

 One dimple flashed as she blew on her coffee to cool it before she spoke again.  "I didn't know how to handle it.  They knew that I saw what they were doing and that I was upset, even though I didn’t say a word about it--not one word, Mama.  I was so stunned.  There wasn’t a peep out of them, either.  They immediately got dressed, grabbed their books and left lickety-split for school.  They left the house, without breakfast, without further ado, all of us avoiding eye contact.

“After they were gone skiddle-dee-dee and I had a chance to recover from the shock, I phoned for an appointment at the Rape Crisis Center, then made sure one of Mrs. Lujan's nurses would stay here at the house while I went to get advice."

"Advice?  Rape Crisis?  Why there?  What does rape have to do with it? Why did you call them?  What advice did they give you?"

Sally's brow furrowed in anguish as she answered.  "The psychologist said it was necessary to talk to the people at the State Child Abuse Division.  They said there was case history evidence that pedophiles begin this way, that the boys could grow up to be pedophiles, that they must immediately have the seriousness impressed upon them and get intensive therapy."

"Oh, come on, Sally, that’s crap."  I felt exasperated.  Again she had the bureaucrats involved.  The authorities, psychiatry, and the Catholic Church are her staples.  "Lots of children, if not all children, experiment with sex.  You shouldn't feel too concerned about the sexual acting out, though of course it should be curbed.  Tell the boys it’s okay to masturbate if they want, but alone, it must be a private thing.  Explain incest—that’s a giant taboo, though I doubt there's a man alive who didn't experiment with siblings and other kids when he was young.  Maybe no woman alive, either.

“I remember once when you and the little neighbor boy had the door locked to the bedroom and I suspicioned you were drawing on the walls with crayons or some such deviltry, but you opened the door and told me ‘It’s just a boy/girl thing,’ so I closed the door and left.  Remember?  So what if they find most pedophiles were farting around with sex as children?   Of course it’s in their case histories.  It’s in the case history of every human being on the planet who isn’t totally brain dead."

"The psychologists wouldn't agree with you."

"Look, Sugar. I don't give a tinker's dam if these educated imbeciles agree with what I think about sex or not.  When I was a little girl, all the neighborhood kids would get together and `show' themselves,” I confessed.  “Often we made fumbling attempts at missionary position intercourse, though I recall playing with some kids when we thought intercourse was standing back to back, pulling our buttocks apart and rubbing anuses."

"Maybe that's why you're so screwed up," she lashed out immediately, without even the time it would take to blink.

"Being screwed up seems to be a universal imperative," I lashed out right back, without delay, responding with the animosity that I usually managed to repress. 

We looked at one another for a drawn out moment of reciprocal surveillance.  After a few deep breaths I made an attempt to lighten things up a bit: “I wonder if being screwed up runs in our family, like hemophilia.”

She didn’t laugh at my little joke.  We sat quietly for a few more minutes like a mute pair of bookends. Sally had the stub of her thumbnail in her mouth, gnawing at it furiously. 

Finally she spoke in a low voice, her tone even, the cadence as if she were reciting a grocery list. "The therapist told me I should talk to Brandon's father right away, so I went over to his house.  Val wasn't too upset about it at the time.  He said about the same things you're telling me.  But he phoned me back late that night after he had talked to Brandon and his other kids.”

After taking a gulp of air, she sobbed: “He found out that not only Brandon, but Val's wife's son--Brandon's older step-brother--had been molesting their younger half-brother and sister."

Sally broke into tears.  Deep sobs shook her bent-over body. I went to where she was seated and put my arms around her, sharing her pain.  For a minute it was as if again she were still my darling little girl, bruised from a fall off of her tricycle.

I tried to comfort her.  "Oh, Honey, sex play is more contagious than Chicken Pox.  It's the measles of mankind.  It's good this has come out.  These kids need more wholesome activities, more attention, more supervision, some sanity in their lives.  It's good they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar—so to speak.  Now things can get better.  It's not the end of the world.  Be glad it's come out.  This should take care of the problem, now that you and Val know and can give the kids some interesting substitutes—-cut out the many hours they spend alone with each other without supervision.  And for Christ’s sake, stop those violent video games."

Though, I must admit-- I’ve never found any substitute as interesting as sex.

"You still don't understand," Sally looked up at me with her tearful blue eyes.  Sunlight sparkled rainbows on her thick wet eyelashes.  "Now both Brandon and Justin are on probation, so with Justin acting up at school it may be out of my hands what happens next with him.  I may have nothing to say about it."

"No! What!  Both? On probation!  What happened to put them on probation?"

"That was what happened after I talked to the psychologist at Rape Crisis Center," Sally said between racking sobs.  "I thought probation was a good idea when she recommended it.  There would be free therapy provided, as well as. . .”

“Hey, Sweetie.  Dog shit is free, too.”

 “. . . as well as giving me back-up support from a probation officer.  I felt the boys would have to behave me that way--it would give me more muscle, more clout, so to speak.  But now, by making trouble at school Justin has broken probation.  Now it's in the hands of the Children's Court."

                "Oh! No! NO!"  I collapsed back in my chair.  "He and Brandon screwing around has nothing at all to do with Justin's fits of anger.  It’s with you he’s angry.  Justin is expressing the fury he feels but always suppresses. This is just too stupid.  I can't believe it."

"Believe it," Sally said flatly, blowing her nose and dabbing at her eyes.

"So you're afraid there may be no choice other than Justin being kept again in Children's Hospital?  It isn't what you think is best?  What you think should happen?"

"I think it may be for the best.  These people are professionals.  They know what to do about cases like Justin."

"No, they don't, Sally."  I took her hand in mine and looked earnestly into her still-tearing eyes.  "They haven't known what to do, or Justin wouldn't be in a psychiatric hospital right now.  Don't accept everything these people tell you as if it were engraved in the UN Charter. 

"Did you know there are cultures where they masturbate infants to relieve colic?  Cultures where children are taught lovemaking by the elders of the tribe?  Margaret Mead said the Trobriand islanders were not monogamous like geese; there were no marriage ceremonies; they grew up open and free with sex.   Clitorectomies are still performed in the world today.  I knew an African artist it had been done to.  As horrible that seems to us, she seemed happy and was productive, a loving mother with two children.  She didn’t know what she's missing, of course; it's like a neutered dog is a happy pet.  There’s a whole gamut of sexual practices. 

“Honey, we certainly must honor our society's mores and taboos, but our sexual patterns aren't written by the finger of God. An act that brings admiration in one society will get you locked up in another.”

"That's not what the Church teaches," Sally said, shaking her curls vigorously.  "What you say happens with a bunch of heathens doesn't make it right."

“Great God, Sally.  Don’t you realize the Catholic Church itself is a hot bed of sexual perversion?  Especially man-boy.  Homosexuality is rampant there, too.” 

“You think homosexuality is okay, but you have a hard-on against the Catholic Church.”

"Well, that may be true, but clothes make the man, they say.  I think many of those priests are drag queens, prancing around with their velvet capes and fancy head dresses even as they condemn homosexuality. It’s a baby step from Boy Scout uniforms to those of the Green Berets--all those dudes that go in big for patriotism and medals. Those army blokes don’t prance around in velvet robes and jeweled crowns like the priests do in their performances of their liturgy, still the army has lots of their own rituals, like the medals they pass out, like the way they salute each other in the hierarchies they create: General, Colonel, Lieutenant, Sargent, down to the lowly Private First Class.  From the name to the thing itself is but a step.  It’s ludicrous how they line up all together in a row to march and shoot their guns.   Their group initiations, ceremonial induction, flags, oaths. . .”

What in the world am I talking about.

Take a breath. 

          “Let's drop this side issue,” I said in a calmer voice. “The point is Justin should live with Stacey, not be locked up in the hospital.  I know you truly love Justin and would miss him, still realize it’s like Einstein said, ‘You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.’  Cut the kid loose.  Unleash him from the wheels of your karma.  It's you he's so pissed about.  Surely if this time you would support his living with Stacey, the authorities can be convinced.  Brandon would do well there, too, if Val would ever agree."

"No way," Sally said emphatically, jerking her hand from under mine.

I continued begging: "Justin is always so good with her.  It would be a fresh start for him living there where no one would know of all the trouble he's had.  He'd be in a new school, have new friends, a new beginning.  He’d have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card."

"Mama, you've said this so many times.  You know," she said to me just as earnestly as I had spoken to her, "there's no way I would let him live with Stacey.  I've refused before and I refuse again--especially since she's moved to Florida."

"Well, then, how about his living with me?  I can stay in Boulder if it's necessary."

"We won't even discuss it.”

What can we discuss?

(Written by Louise Pickering Scott)

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