I got out as fast as I could. She smiled, tired but relieved. She had small teeth. One below was out of line like a soldier out of step. She wasn't more than five three but she looked tall when she had on high heels. Her age showed most in her skin. She was forty-five. Her skin sagged some under the ears. I was glad her hair wasn't gray. I always looked for gray hairs but didn't find any. I pushed her and tickled her and she laughed and fell into the chair. Then I went to the divan and stretched out and slept awhile.
Chapter Three
MY SISTER WOKE me up when she got home. I had a headache and there was a pain like a sore muscle in my back and I knew what that was from — thinking too much about naked women. It was eleven o'clock by the clock on the radio. My sister took off her coat and started for the clothes closet. I told her to stay out of there or get killed. She smiled superciliously and carried her coat to the bedroom. I rolled over and threw my feet on the floor. I asked her where she'd been but she didn't answer. She always got my goat because she seldom paid any attention to me. I didn't hate her but sometimes I wished I did. She was a pretty kid, sixteen years old. She was a little taller than me, with black hair and eyes. Once she won a contest in high school for having the best teeth. Her rear end was like a loaf of Italian bread, round and just right. I used to see fellows looking at it and I know it got them. But she was cold and the way she walked was deceptive. She didn't like a fellow to look at her. She thought it was sinful; anyhow she said so. She said it was nasty and shameful.
When she left the bedroom door open I used to watch her, and sometimes I peeked through the keyhole or hid under the bed. She would stand with her back to the mirror and examine her bottom, running her hands over it and pulling her dress around it tightly. She wouldn't wear a dress that didn't fit her tightly around the waist and hips and she was always brushing off the chair before she sat down. Then she sat down primly but in a cold way. I tried to get her to smoke cigarettes but she wouldn't. I also tried to advise her on life and sex but she thought I was crazy. She was like my father had been, very clean and a hard worker at school and home. She bossed my mother. She was smarter than my mother, but I didn't think she could ever approach my mind for sheer brilliance. She bossed everybody but me. After my father died she tried to boss me too. I wouldn't think of it, my own sister, and so she decided I wasn't worth bossing anyhow. Once in a while I let her boss me though, but it was only to exhibit my flexible personality. She was as clean as ice. We fought like cats and dogs.
I had something she didn't like. It repulsed her. I guess she suspected the clothes-closet women. Once in a while, I teased her by patting her rear. She got insanely mad. Once I did it and she got a butcher knife and chased me out of the apartment. She didn't speak for two weeks and she told my mother she'd never speak to me again, or even eat with me at the same table. Finally she got over it, but I never did forget how mad she got. She would have butchered me that time if she had caught me.
She had the same thing my father had, but it was not in my mother or me. I mean cleanliness. Once when I was a kid I saw a rattlesnake fighting three Scotch terriers. The dogs snatched him from a rock where he was sunning himself, and they tore him to pieces. The snake fought hard, never losing his temper, he knew he was finished, and each of the dogs carried off a dripping hunk of his body. They left only the tail and three rattles, and that part of him still moved. Even after he was in pieces I thought he was a wonder. I went over to the rock, which had some blood on it. I put my finger in the blood and tasted it. I cried like a child. I never forgot him. And yet had he been alive I wouldn't have gone near him. It was something like that with my sister and my father.
I thought as long as my sister was so good-looking and bossy she would make a swell wife. But she was too cold and too religious. Whenever a man came to our house for a date with her, she wouldn't accept. She would stand in the door and not even invite him to come in. She wanted to be a nun, that was the trouble. What kept her from it was my mother. She was waiting a few more years. She said the only man she loved was the Son of Man, and the only bridegroom for her was Christ. It sounded like stuff from the nuns. Mona couldn't think things like that without outside help.
Her grade school days were spent with the nuns in San Pedro. When she graduated my father couldn't afford sending her to a Catholic high school, so she went to Wilmington High. As soon as it was over she started going back to San Pedro to visit the nuns. She stayed all day, helping them correct papers, giving kindergarten lessons and things like that. In the evenings she fooled around the Church on the Wilmington side of the harbor, decorating the altars with all kinds of flowers. She'd been doing that tonight.
She came out of the bedroom in her robe.
I said, "How's Jehovah tonight? What does He think of the quantum theory?"
She went into the kitchen and started talking to my mother about the church. They argued about flowers, which was best for the altar, red or white roses.
I said, "Yahweh. Next time you see Yahweh tell him I have a few questions to ask."
They kept on talking.
"Oh Lord Holy Jehovah, behold your sanctimonious and worshipful Mona at your feet, drooling idiotic persiflage. Oh Jesus, she's holy. Sweet jumping Jesus Christ, she's sacred."
My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."
"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the Depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"
"Arturo, stop that."
"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family." My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame." I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"
My mother came after me with the broom. She almost stumbled over it, threatening me with the straw end in my face. I pushed the broom aside and jumped down on the floor. Then I pulled off my shirt in front of her and stood naked from the waist up. I bent my neck toward her.
"Vent your intolerance," I said. "Persecute me! Put me on the rack! Express your Christianity! Let the Church Militant display its bloody soul! Gibbet me! Stick hot pokers in my eyes. Burn me at the stake, you Christian dogs!"
Mona came in with a glass of water. She took the broom away from my mother and gave her the water. My mother drank it and calmed down a bit. Then she spluttered and coughed into the glass and was ready to cry. "Mother!" Mona said. "Don't cry. He's nutty." She looked at me with a waxy, expressionless face. I turned my back and walked to the window. When I turned around she was still staring.
"Christian dogs," I said. "Bucolic rainspouts! Boobus Americanus! Jackals, weasels, polecats, and donkeys — the whole stupid lot of you. I alone of the entire family have been unmarked by the scourge of cretinism."
"You fool," she said.
They walked into the bedroom.
"Don't call me a fool," I said. "You neurosis! You frustrated, inhibited, driveling, drooling, half-nun!"
My mother said, "Did you hear that! How awful!"
They went to bed. I had the divan and they had the bedroom. When their door closed I got out the magazines and piled into bed. I was glad to be able to look at the girls under the lights of the big room. It was a lot better than that smelly closet. I talked to them about an hour, went into the mountains with Elaine, and to the South Seas with Rosa, and finally in a group meeting with all of them spread around me, I told them I played no favorites and that each in her turn would get her chance. But after a while I got awfully tired of it, for I got to feeling more and more like an idiot until I began to hate the idea that they were only pictures, flat and single-faced and so alike in color and smile. And they all smiled like whores. It all got very hateful and I thought, Look at yourself! Sitting here and talking to a lot of prostitutes. A fine superman you turned out to be! What if Nietzsche could see you now? And Schopenhauer — what would he think? And Spengler! Oh, would Spengler roar at you! You fool, you idiot, you swine, you beast, you rat, you filthy, contemptible, disgusting little swine! Suddenly I grabbed the pictures up in a batch and tore them to pieces and threw them down the bowl in the bathroom. Then I crawled back to bed and kicked the covers off. I hated myself so much that I sat up in bed thinking the worst possible things about myself. Finally I was so despicable there was nothing left to do but sleep. It was hours before I dozed off. The fog was thinning in the east and the west was black and grey. It must have been three o'clock. From the bedroom I heard my mother's soft snores. By then I was ready to commit suicide, and so thinking I fell asleep.
Chapter Four
AT SIX MY mother got up and called me. I rolled around and didn't want to get up. She took the bedclothes and tossed them back. It left me naked on the sheet because I didn't sleep wearing anything. That was all right, but it was morning and I wasn't prepared for it, and she could see it, and I didn't mind her seeing me naked but not the way a fellow will be some times in the morning. I put my hand over the place and tried to hide it, but she saw anyway. It seemed she was deliberately looking for something to embarrass me — my own mother, too. She said, "Shame on you, early in the morning."
"Shame on me?" I said. "How come?"
"Shame on you."
"Oh God, what'll you Christians think of next! Now it's shameful to even be asleep!"
"You know what I mean," she said. "Shame on you, a boy your age. Shame on you. Shame. Shame."
"Well, shame on you too, for that matter. And shame on Christianity."
She went back to bed.
"Shame on him," she said to Mona.
"What'd he do now?"
"Shame on him."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing, but shame on him anyway. Shame."
I fell asleep. After a while she called again.
"I'm not going to work this morning," I said.
"Why not?"
"I lost my job."
A dead silence. Then she and Mona sat up in bed. My job meant everything. We still had Uncle Frank, but they figured my earnings before that. I had to think of something good, because they both knew I was a liar. I could fool my mother but Mona never believed anything, not even the truth if I spoke it.
I said, "Mr. Romero's nephew just arrived from the old country. He got my job."
"I hope you don't expect us to believe that!" Mona said.
"My expectations scarcely concern imbeciles," I said.
My mother came to the bed. The story wasn't very convincing but she was willing to give me the breaks. If Mona hadn't been there it would have been a cinch. She told Mona to keep still and listened for more. Mona was messing it up by talking. I yelled at her to shut up.
My mother said, "Are you telling the truth?"
I put my hand over my heart and closed my eyes and said, "Before Almighty God and his heavenly court I solemnly swear that I am neither lying or elaborating. If I am, I hope He strikes me dead this very minute. Get the clock."
She got the clock off the radio. She believed in miracles, any kind of miracles. I closed my eyes and felt my heart pounding. I held my breath. The moments passed. After a minute I let the air out of my lungs. My mother smiled and kissed me on the forehead. But now she blamed Romero.
"He can't do this to you," she said. "I won't let him. I'm going down and give him a piece of my mind."
I jumped out of bed. I was naked but I didn't care. I said, "God Almighty! Haven't you any pride, any sense of human dignity? Why should you see him after he treated me with such levantine scurrilousness? Do you want to disgrace the family name too?"
She was dressing in the bedroom. Mona laughed and fingered her hair. I went in and pulled off my mother's stockings and tied them in knots before she could stop me. Mona shook her head and tittered. I put my fist under her nose and gave her a final warning not to butt in. My mother didn't know what to do next. I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "I am a man of deep pride," I said. "Does that strike an approving chord in your sense of judgment? Pride! My first and last utterance rises from the soul of that stratum I call Pride. Without it my life is a lusty disillusionment. In short, I am delivering you an ultimatum. If you go down to Romero's I'll kill myself."
That scared the devil out of her, but Mona rolled over and laughed and laughed. I didn't say more but went back to bed and pretty soon I fell asleep.
When I woke up it was around noon and they were gone somewhere. I got out the picture of an old girl of mine I called Marcella and we went to Egypt and made love in a slave-driven boat on the Nile. I drank wine from her sandals and milk from her breasts and then we had the slaves paddle us to the river bank and I fed her hearts of hummingbirds seasoned in sweetened pigeon milk. When it was over I felt like the devil. I felt like hitting myself in the nose, knocking myself unconscious. I wanted to cut myself, to feel my bones cracking. I tore the picture of Marcella to pieces and got rid of it and then I went to the medicine cabinet and got a razor blade, and before I knew it I slit my arm below the elbow, but not deeply so that it was only blood and no pain. I sucked the slit but there was still no pain, so I got some salt and rubbed it in and felt it bite my flesh, hurting me and making me come out of it and feel alive again, and I rubbed it until I couldn't stand it any longer. Then I bandaged my arm.
They had left a note for me on the table. It said they had gone to Uncle Frank's and that there was food in the pantry for my breakfast. I decided to eat at Jim's Place, because I still had some money. I crossed the schoolyard which was across the street from the apartment and went over to Jim's. I ordered ham and eggs. While I ate Jim talked.