The Birth of Bane (20 page)

Of course, none
of them had been privy to her dramatic changes over the past year.
Not a single one of them had watched as she flowered anew, got
realigned with the person she’d been before she’d met Lenny. They
hadn’t seen her personality burst forth, her enthusiasm for life
return or her determination take seed and flourish.

I had seen it.
Valerie had seen it, and so had Eli.

I know, as I
gaze back and try to make heads or tails of the new and improved
nature of my mother, they would never understand – not truly. You
had to be a Favor to appreciate the enormity of the metamorphosis
of my beloved mother. To any outsider, it would seem unnatural,
against the laws of physics, something quantum, pushing the very
edge of human understanding.

I understood. I
got it. It still didn’t stop the fact I felt more than a little
defensive of her on the night I graduated.

To add insult to
injury, Roxanna was standing next to him, though she hadn’t stepped
up onto the wood-bench as he had. Rather, she was beaming, glancing
about, muttering over the beauty of the house. “It’s a great
investment,” she kept saying over and over.

I wanted to walk
up to her and pop her right in her surgically augmented nose. I
wanted to flatten the goddamned thing against her cheek. I didn’t
care if she was Lenny’s Administrative Assistant or not. To me, she
was his master and he was her slave. It was the only way I could
see them. She in a G-string, tits hanging out and him bent over
ready to… Oh! How I wished those images would leave me
be!

Instead, my
other grandmother, a strong woman with a no-nonsense attitude and
sensible shoes, who was Lenny’s step-mother to be exact, strode to
stand before him. She began to talk of how proud she was to have a
grandson who’d earned his high school diploma.

It wasn’t like
she hadn’t had other grandchildren who’d accomplished the same
thing. It was merely her way of telling Lenny to get off the bench
and shut the hell up. This was a graduation party, not an Open
House.

It
worked.

A tart look from
the corner of her eye and a wave of dismissal, and he stepped down
from the wood bench, holding out his hand so Roxanna could steady
him as he did so. He looked like some debutante coming down
off-stage. His movements were too graceful, not very manly at
all.

I remember
cringing at the sight of them. They were gross to watch, playing at
professional colleagues, while alone they did such kinky shit. What
made it worse was their roles were reversed. He was the woman and
she was the man. Back then, I wasn’t comfortable with witnessing
the varying sorts of relationships that might’ve existed in the
world beyond my own personal experience. It was as unsettling as it
was confusing for me, not to mention nauseating every time my
perverse mind rehashed his near corn-holing upon my mother’s
bed.

I looked away
and instead focused on my grandmother. She was something I could
count on. She was like my mother in that department, as solid as a
rock. Her hard, worn face had smoothed and warmed as she recanted
her joy at having yet another graduate in the fold of the
family.

The tension
broke and the party resumed as it should’ve, though I did see a
knot of auntie’s form around my mom almost immediately. My mother’s
open displeasure at her husband’s announcement had emboldened them
it appeared. I could tell from their jerking gestures and resigned
shakes of their heads, they hadn’t agreed with selling the property
any more than my mother did.

I was annoyed as
well, and it wasn’t just because the idiot had marred what
should’ve been a celebration and not some ploy to hurt my mother.
Because, when you added things up, that’s what it was. That’s why
Lenny had invited Roxanna. That’s why he’d paraded her around in
front of me friends, my cousins, my uncles and aunts, and
my grandparents
. It was his misguided way of proving how inconsequential
she was, of how little she mattered to him. Maybe he sensed some of
the change in her as well. It could’ve been he saw himself losing
that tiny portion of absolute control over her and felt it was time
to show her, her proper place.

I wouldn’t have
put it passed him. He could be so childishly vindictive when he
wanted to be. He could’ve constructed the entire scenario just to
send her a message.
Hey, Pillar,
don’t get a big head. I’m watching you and I’m still in charge.
Don’t you see? I can bring my slut-hoe wherever I want. I can show
her off to your family. Hell, I can even sell this fucking house
from right under you, and there’s not a god damned thing you can do
about it, you stupid bitch!

It didn’t matter
to him, just hours prior, I’d graduated from high school. The fact
this rite of passage was the harbinger of my embarkation upon my
life’s journey had little to no meaning to him. I should’ve known,
right? This was his stage. No matter what, this was his
performance. Everyone else’s lives were so much more insignificant
to garner any real kind of attention. The people who’d filled my
mother’s house to near capacity were there to serve as a platform
for the goings-on in his life and no one else’s. Surely, not mine.
I mean, what was I thinking? How could I be so
self-centered?

This entire
gathering was only about him trying to get back at my mom. For
what, I had no idea. She hadn’t done anything other than get most
of the house remodeled in less than a year. All she had done was
turn a “money-pit” into something of real value, something to be
admired.

And who could
disagree? The house was perfect. She’d done a magnificent job
rejuvenating the house, of bringing its’ efficiency and safety
levels up to modern standards, while maintaining the look like and
feel of a house built at the turn of the twentieth century. He
couldn’t even admit it had been her doing. What had he said? The
hired help? What a colossal dip-stick.

Now, the
dickhead, wanted to sell it.

I didn’t stay
too much longer. I wanted to. I did. I wasn’t your typical,
shut-off teenager. I love my extended family. I like spending time
with them. I like talking with my aunts and uncles. I love messing
around with my cousins. I wouldn’t give them up for
anything.

…
Except to get
away from Lenny. I was done with him. I was. He had crawled so far
up my skin I loathed being around him, especially with his Craven
Raven hanging around like some bird-of-prey hovering over its’
kill.

Actually, if
memory serves, it was she who drove me from the house. It was
Roxanna who made Myra and I leave for my friends’ party, because I
didn’t want anything to do with her.

And Myra… well,
my girlfriend wanted to kick her ass.

Sometime after
Lenny’s rude announcement, she decided it was time to stalk me.
She’d left his side with a whisper in his ear and had come to stand
where I‘d been standing, watching my mother and my aunts
gesticulate over the house.

I hadn’t noticed
her right away and was somewhat surprised when she leaned in and
said, “I hadn’t realized you were bigger than your father until
now.”

I was about to
say something flippant when I noticed it was her and the witty
retort turned to sour milk on my tongue. Of course, her statement
was rhetorical. Anyone could tell, even at a distance, I was
taller, wider and weighed more than Lenny. I’d passed him years
ago. Now, with me working out so hard for track, our difference in
size was even more exaggerated.

She half-turned
toward me, giving me a better view of her chest through the
skin-tight sweater-dress she’d worn to the party.

I forced myself
to look in her eyes, which were only an inch or so lower than mine.
Her heels made us nearly the same height.

She had pulled
her hair back in a French braid, a hairdo that had come into vogue
in the past few years. I had to admit it was an appealing look. It
accentuated her neck line, showed off her tanned skin, even made
her jaw appear regal. Her eyes had been boring into mine the entire
time.

“
I wonder if
you’re bigger elsewhere as well…” It was dramatic tailing-off of
her words, emphasizing the sexual implications, which was
unnecessary.

“
Bigger elsewhere”
, could
only mean one thing.

I was a
teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. I gazed back at her, deliberately
eyeing her ample bosom. “I don’t bat from
that
side of the
plate, Roxanna.” I didn’t even care if I’d just admitted I’d seen
what she and Teej and Lenny had been doing
that
night. I wanted
her to know I wasn’t a
freak-a-zoid
like my
one-time father.

She peered back
through her eyebrows. “Maybe not now, but…”

I clicked the
roof of my mouth. “You’re sick. Both of you are sick!”

“
You sure you
don’t wanna… I don’t know… try, at least?” She laughed from deep in
her throat.

I was so irate;
I wanted to slap her across the face.

She saw this and
purred through a smile. “Why don’t you just show me what you got
and we’ll go from there.”

I just left. I
also left her musing unanswered. It wasn’t worth the effort to put
words together and say them aloud.

I meandered
through the party, talking to as many people as possible. It was an
efficient way of saying good-bye in advance. I knew then I wasn’t
going to stay much longer.

I found Myra out
back, talking to a knot of my cousins and some of the teenage kids
of friends of my parents. I politely extricated her from the
conversation and told her what had happened.

Per her typical
response to a situation of this nature, she wanted nothing more
than to scratch out Roxanna’s eyes.

I thought this
was a little too much, so I provided her with an “out”.

“
Let’s go to
Al’s party,” I offered.

She
agreed.

We found my
mother, made some hasty good-byes and got the hell out of
there.

I could tell she
knew something was afoot, but stayed silent for my sake. My mother
had always been intuitively astute.

As I sit here
and write this, I wish I had sought out Eli just to tell him I was
leaving and that I loved him. It would’ve made me feel better, I
think.

Why do we always
scrutinize every second of a bad situation? Why do we always try to
find a way to go back in time and fix it? We know, deep in our
hearts, there’s nothing we can do? And yet, we spend hours
agonizing over this detail or that nuance as if we had the ability
to travel through time. Why do we do that?

I try not to
obsess over it too much. But, breaking it down and looking at it
for what the night would become, in the least, I wish I had told my
little brother I loved him.

How was I to
know I wouldn’t get the chance for the rest of the
summer?

Lenny and his
horny bitch of an assistant had chased me from the house. I left in
a hurry, glad to leave everything behind, relieved. Myra’s tiny
hand in mine was all I needed.

I was
wrong.

~~~~~~~<<<
ᴥ
>>>~~~~~~~

Chapter
Thirteen: Homecoming

“
Are you sure
it’s ok if you spend the night?” I asked my girlfriend for the ten
thousandth time since we’d left our friend’s party. It had only
been a fifteen minute drive.

Myra huffed.
“Jeez, Jerry, I told you already! My mom thinks I’m spending the
night at Susie’s house.”

I frowned,
unsure, my hands gripping the steering wheel too tight for comfort.
Already, my knuckles were cramping.

“
Susie has her
own phone line, ok?” She reached over to pry my hand from the
steering column after I’d parked my mother’s Chrysler LaBaron in
front of my house. “The only number my mom has is the one going
directly to Susie’s room. She’s gonna cover for us. It’ll be
fine.”

“
You’re one
hundred percent sure?” I liked Myra’s mother a lot and didn’t want
to jeopardize our relationship, or her trust, in any way. I didn’t
want to risk losing my girlfriend to one nights’
indiscretion.

“
Yes, Jer, it’ll
be fine… and, it’ll be wonderful to have you all night long,” she
cooed, her hand coming from mine, hugging herself.

I stared at her,
watched her eyes roll up into her head as she thought of all the
delicious sexual acts we’d indulge over the course of the next few
hours. We hadn’t planned on getting
any
sleep on our graduation
night. Hell, no! We were going to spend what remained of it in each
other’s arms, sharing our bodies.

It had sounded
radical when we had planned it weeks prior, but now that we were
about to break about two hundred rules, I was getting cold
feet.

Then Myra
vaulted from her side of the bench seat, squeezing her petite form
between me and the steering wheel. She hiked up her dress and I
felt her through her thin, cotton panties. She ground her pelvis
into mine, her lips descending. I was lost. I was putty in her
female clutches. I would’ve jumped off a cliff if she’d asked me.
Her head came down and I rose to meet her as much as I was able.
Our lips touched and blissful electric currents shot up and down my
spine. I felt myself enlarge, thickening against the soft folds I
felt through the fibrous fabric down below. In seconds, we were
consumed.