The Birth of Bane (25 page)

During this
time, Valerie and Jose became a serious item, which culminated one
afternoon with her knocking on my bedroom door and asking if she
could speak with Myra in private. I was aghast at first, but my
girlfriend calmed me down and escorted me from my own sanctum. Her
and my sister proceeded to talk for nearly an hour.

When they were
finished, Myra came and found me in the backyard talking with Bruce
and swiftly extricated me from the conversation. It was then she
told me, in confidence, that my sister was contemplating sex. I was
surprised, but then again, I wasn’t. She was sixteen, beautiful and
was dating a very respectful, doting young man, who worshipped
every step she took. What more could a brother ask for?

I’d never been
the over-protective type to begin with. Some of that was rooted in
the fact Valerie was so darned independent. Even when we were kids
she preferred to do things on her own, swooshing away help most of
the time it was offered. “I wanna doooo it, Jewie. I wanna doooo
it.” I can hear it like it was yesterday. She’d been twenty-six
months old the first time she’d said that to me.

Myra informed me
she was going to help my sister in whatever she wanted to do and
asked my politely to not intervene.

I wanted to
protest, but she shut me up by saying Valerie was
only
contemplating the act and hadn’t decided what to do. My sister
wasn’t entirely ready “to go there” with her boyfriend, but she
wanted to be sure she was of a sound mind when she did.

I knew then it
was an exploratory conversation and let it go.

Although, Myra
did promise me she would make certain Valerie was cared for and she
guaranteed my sister wouldn’t get pregnant, if, somewhere down the
road, she actually decided to have sex with Jose.

I nodded and
moved on. Life was too short to waste it horrified over one’s
sister’s sex life.

The only other
major alteration turned out to be more saddening than any of us
expected and it proved to be the furthest from our collective
minds. After the explosive fight upon the deck, the poltergeist,
the spectral vestige of Mrs. Gates, disappeared.

I noticed it one
day, five weeks or so after the big blow-out, while I was sitting
in the dining room eating lunch. Valerie had been in her room
listening to
Duran Duran
on her Walkman. I glanced up, peered
about, realizing I hadn’t heard or felt anything strange in the
house for quite some time. I recall sitting there, ears straining
when it hit me. She was gone. I couldn’t remember precisely the
last time I’d heard a rhythmic creak or felt a gentle waft of air
touching the nape of my neck. There were no footfalls, nothing
missing or out of place. The house wasn’t the same.

I frowned,
finished my sandwich and went to ask Valerie about it.

She looked at me
like I was crazy. For the first time in a year she actually felt
safe. She said she felt like she was finally
home.

I told her she
was a weirdo and left.

But, the house
was indeed different. Now that I’d realized there’d been something
missing, I began to see there were other changes as well. They had
been so subtle, gradual, I hadn’t noticed them before. They were
the type of thing one didn’t notice until the change became drastic
enough to register on the human psyche, and even then you’d have to
be searching.

It was strange,
but I was certain the shadows were longer, capable to pushing aside
the light, gathering in corners and thickening. Sometimes it felt
as though they were following me, from one room to the next,
building upon one another, oppressive, about ready to take form.
Instead of the cool presence of Mrs. Gates, there were shockingly
cold, abrupt changes in temperature that made me start, jump
away.

There were loud
“pops” and “snaps” coming at odd times in the day and night. Anyone
not living there would’ve said it was just the house settling. But,
I lived there, I knew. Wooden houses typically settled at dawn or
at dusk when the ambient temperature outside shifted the most
dramatically, which causes the beams to contract or expand –
breathe
, my mom used to say.

This was nothing
like that. These were like tantrums, wild lashings of a frustrated
child, loud and random. There was nothing playful or amusing about
them. They didn’t make you smile or shake your head and
think
what a
trip
. No, I shied from these. It
was instinctual. It was basic. Whatever this was, it was hardcoded
into my brain to avoid.

It probably
would’ve driven me crazy, if Lenny hadn’t started a whole new
barrage of pain-in-the-ass tactics meant to unnerve my mother. At
times, I was so aggravated by him, I could think of nothing else,
but rearranging his plastic face for all times sake. (We all said
his face was plastic now, because he’d had so much work done to it
after I had pulp’ed his nose.)

It had all
started with a man, a different man, but one who showed interest in
my mother.

His name was
Scott Brubaker. He was an investment broker who worked near the
doctor’s office where my mom worked. Apparently, he’d seen her more
than a few times during the lunch hour and had gone out of his way
to “meet” her. My mother had been stand-offish at first. Years of
conditioning herself against the wiles of intrigued men had
kicked-in before she knew what she was doing.

Funny thing was,
she probably would’ve continued to rebuff Scott’s advances (they
were harmless, nothing obscene), if Lenny hadn’t had “eyes” on her
and reacted in typical Lenny-fashion. He began to harass
her.

It was near the
end of August when the phone calls began. Those annoying rings that
would interrupt us at the most inopportune times, put our teeth on
edge only to have the caller hang up the moment we’d say “hello”.
After the fifth or sixth one, we realized it was Lenny.

About a week
later, Valerie saw his car parked at the top of Lincoln Drive. Her
and I raced upstairs, got my pair of binoculars and ran to the
guest bedroom and trained the large glasses on the vehicle. Sure
enough, he was there, sitting in the driver’s seat, smoking one of
his dark cigarettes, his eyes blood-shot from too much booze, his
nose running form too much blow.

We didn’t tell
my mom at first, because she seemed happy. Though her days were
long and intense, she appeared genuinely happy and we didn’t want
to mess that up. In the end, though, it was a safety issue. She had
to know she was being stalked just in case he tried to do something
stupid.

Her reaction was
swift and decisive. She had
all
the locks changes, new
ones put on the all the windows and had a security system
installed. When he began calling her at work and leaving messages
on our answering machine, she went out and bought a gun and spent
the next four weekends at the gun range learning how to use it
properly.

My mother wasn’t
a pushover anymore. My mother wasn’t afraid. She was determined to
get on with her life and she was going to do it on her terms,
regardless of Lenny and his bullying tactics.

By the middle of
September, she went on her first date with Mr. Brubaker and did
something that shocked both Valerie and I. She stayed out the
entire night.

Valerie and I
were at the dining table eating cereal when she walked in a little
sheepish, though she was smiling from ear to ear. It was like I was
seeing a teenage girl in the flower of her sexuality. It was so
unlike the woman I knew as my mother.

I will never
forget Valerie’s expression or the tone of her voice. Every time I
think about it, it makes me smile and then, I’m
laughing.

“
Mom,” she implored when my m
om had closed the door behind her. Then my sister saw the look
on my mother’s face. “
Mom!
” she exclaimed. Two
words, the same one repeated, were all she said, but it was like
she’d spoken a thousand.

My mother
busted-up with loud guffaws and I was beside myself with
mirth.

Valerie’s head
swiveled back and forth between the two of us, robotic, her eyes
wide with outrage. I guess my sister hadn’t thought of our mother
as a sexual being like the rest of us on the planet. The truth had
apparently shocked her senseless.

I remember my
m
om and me laughing until our
sides hurt, while Valerie, clearly affronted, stared at us as
though we were mad.

In the end, my
mother told us she and Scott were an item, and that we’d being
seeing a bit more of him in the near future. Not a whole lot, but
moreso than in the past.

I was pleased to
see my m
om more than a little
giddy over a man. It was all so new, it was like going to
Disneyland for the first time. Everything about her sparkled and
sang. It took eighteen years, but I saw it all the same. My mother
was finally her own person.

On a Thursday,
during the fourth week of September of that year, Eli woke-up. It
had been in the late morning when the phone rang. I was the only
one home at the time. During my first semester of college, I had
somehow managed to have no classes on Thursday, which was
fortuitous, because we might’ve missed the initial call. Valerie
was at school, having just started her junior year and my mom was
at work.

I took the call
in the kitchen and felt the whole world brighten. My little
brother, after three months, was back. He was in the world of the
living. I was so ecstatic, I called my mother at work. She was
bellowing with joy and fear, and probably a thousand other emotions
as she rushed to tell me she was on the way.

“
Be curbside, kid, because I’m only slowing to
five
. So, be ready to jump in the car when I come by the house!”
she’d warned and hung up on me before I could say anything
else.

How she got
there from LA’s metro area and managed to pick up Valerie at school
in less than twenty minutes I will never know. I imagine she’d been
driving on two wheels part of the way. And she hadn’t been lying
about me jumping in the car. She paused for no more than a
millisecond before she floored the gas pedal and we went careening
down Lincoln Drive like a drag-racers.

At the hospital,
we were amazed by Elijah, but then again when weren’t we amazed by
the youngest of our family? He had always been an incredible
person. He was sitting up, eating chocolate pudding of all things,
though he was still pale from lack of sun and appeared gaunt. His
slumber had taken a toll on him or so his doctor told us. Atrophy
had already begun to take root in his limbs and though he’d been
turned every eight hours, he had still developed nasty rashes and
sores from lying down for an extended period of time.

But, his spirits
were good and his bubbling curiosity was peaked almost from the
moment he opened his eyes. He asked the obvious questions, which we
answered vaguely that first day, but with ever-growing detail as
the days progressed. We told him about Lenny, about the divorce
and, of course, about our mother’s new boyfriend, who stayed away
purposely, graciously allowing our family unit to reunite and
finish with the last of the healing necessary to allow us to move
forward.

He was in the
hospital for another month rehabilitating, getting stronger, while
we began to rearrange our schedules to allow for his care once he
was released and was back home with us. Between us, Myra and the
extended family we were able to figure out who would be taking care
of Eli until he was ready to reenter school in the spring. We
rationalized he’d be ready to “hit the hallways” of Garvanza
Elementary School after two and a half more months of being home,
regaining much needed strength. By mid-January, we knew he’d be
ready to be a kid again and not a victim of child abuse. We were
all confident that he’d pull through with flying colors.

And, for the
most part, he did. We were all so relieved.

Around
Halloween, though, he came into my room, walking much steadier than
he had even the week before. His face was downtrodden and wistful.
I was immediately afraid. With everything that had happened to him,
none of wanted him to feel or experience anything negative, no
matter how ridiculous it may sound to the rest of the world. How
could one keep “The World” away from a child? I know it seems like
an impossibility, but we were determined to keep him
happy.

“
What’s up,
little man?” I asked at once, wanting to extinguish whatever bad
thoughts were coursing through his powerful, young mind.

“
She’s gone,
huh?” His voice was plaintive, forlorn.

I knew what he
meant at once. “Yeah.”

“
How
long?”

“
Since
that
night, I think,” I began. “I haven’t
felt her in the house at all.”

Then he said
something that put me on edge. When I think back, trying to find
the correct starting point, I am evermore certain his statement was
the origin of this bothersome sense of doom that began to settle
upon my shoulders for the remainder of the 1987. It was small at
first, but it grew precipitously as the fall waned and the winter
began. I cannot tell you why I felt it or the specificity of what
made me feel that way to begin with. I can only tell you when I
began to
feel
it and it started with
Elijah.