Breaker (2 page)

I awake to the sound of boys outside in the alley. I've fallen asleep on the couch again, my bedroom left untouched. It happens quite often, my body tense and riddled with electricity, trying to quiet the darkness, only to shut down and surrender to exhaustion.

I can hear the voices out the kitchen window at the back of the apartment—laughter, then voices lowering, a bottle breaking, and then a foot kicking a trash can, cursing and threats. I stand up and stretch, my fingertips just grazing the ceiling. Hungry. I reach into my sweatpants and pull out a wad of bills, wondering how many sandwiches I can get at McDonald's, the dollar menu my frequent vice. I tried working out once, sit-ups and push-ups, eating nothing but chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, and brown rice. Didn't lose a pound. So, screw it. I eat what I want now. At my height and build, with my pale skin and scars, it doesn't really matter. People are going to be scared anyway—turn the other direction and walk the other way.

Except for Natalie. And I'm not sure why.

“Let me through,” she says, the little mouse squeaking in the alley, standing up to the boys.

“Listen, Gnat, you gotta pay if you want to pass through—you know the rules.”

“Yeah, what Gino says.”

Two neighbor boys, Gino and Mikey, couple of apartment buildings over—I've seen them around. Firecrackers, lightbulbs, rocks—they're drawn to anything they can break, smash, shatter, or otherwise destroy. Ants and a magnifying glass, BB guns and random squirrels—the alley cats give them a wide berth.

“Guys, I'm not paying you anything. First, I don't have any money, and second—bite me.”

I ease up to the window and listen closer. I'm curious to hear how she handles them, what they'll do next. Better than cable.

“Mikey, you hear her? She ain't got no money. That's okay, sweetheart, there are other ways you can pay us.”

I hear bikes clatter to the ground, and grunts from all of them, her voice piercing the air.

“Stop it, you jerks. Get off me.”

For a moment there's a hand around my neck, and I can't breathe. Spittle in my face, the smell of bourbon and cheap beer, a smudge of fingerprints embedded in my flesh, cigarettes and oil, grease and rough stubble pushed up against my trembling cheek.

I lean against a potted plant that is sitting on the windowsill—purple mums that have turned to gray—and it tips over and slides off the chipped white wood, falling out the open window into the alley below. I hear it crash on the dirty pavement, curses drifting up to me. I stick my head out the window, knowing what to expect.

“Watch out, boys,” I say. “Sorry about that—must have bumped it by accident.”

I smile at the kids who stare up at me in horror, lips pulled back in snarls, the pot lying shattered on the ground next to them. Gino is still holding Natalie by her coat lapels, Mikey right beside him, squinting up into the sun.

“See, I have this problem,” I say, extending my arms out the window. Even from the second floor it feels like I can almost reach them. “I hardly fit in my own apartment. Especially at this time of the month, when the moon gets full, and I start to swell.”

They continue to stare, mouths opening in shock and wonder.

“He's right,” Natalie says, eyeballing the pair. “I've seen it. Had to pull him out the door just the other day. Got stuck in the frame.”

Gino lets go of Natalie, and the two punks pull their dark knit hats on tighter, shrug their shoulders, and start easing toward their bikes.

“When's it get full, Ray?” Natalie asks, looking up at me, smiling.

“Soon, Natalie. Soon.”

The boys pick up their bikes, zip up their coats, and tug their fingerless gloves on tighter, a bit braver now that they've stepped away.

“Whatever,” Gino says.

“Yeah, whatever,” Mikey echoes.

I turn my gaze back to the boys for a moment, a flutter of snow just dotting the air.

“You two are one building over, right? Twenty-two hundred, yeah? Your mothers, they're cleaning ladies, right? Always coming in just before dark, coats bundled up, their hair under those do-rags, smelling like Windex and Pine-Sol? Is that right?”

The boys don't say anything.

“Which one of your fathers works for the landscaping company, Jimenez Brothers or something? That you, Gino?”

The boy nods.

“Nothing wrong with working with your hands. A bit partial to using my hands as well,” I say, cracking my knuckles and massaging my tired flesh.

“Mikey, don't think I've seen your father around at all. Not lately.”

Mikey squints his eyes, opens his mouth, and then shuts it.

“Beat it, you two—winter's coming. Weatherman says we might get a few inches today. Some lake effect, maybe.”

They turn their bikes around, heading the other way, out of the alley and pointed southbound, in the direction of their apartments.

“And boys?”

They look up.

“Don't let me catch you bothering Natalie again. She's off limits. Find something else to do, somebody else to bully. Got it?”

They nod once and take off, Gino glancing back over his shoulder, squinting again, as if he isn't quite sure what happened, or what he saw.

“Thanks, Ray,” Natalie says, picking up her bike, before looking up at me in the window again.

“Be more careful, okay? Those guys are bad news.”

Natalie nods and manages a small grin, brushing off her coat and stuffing her hands back into her pockets.

“Just gotta run up to the corner for some milk,” she says.

I turn my eyes back up to the graying sky, the wind picking up as the sun slips behind the ramshackle tenements and brownstones alike. The sky is filled with dirty cotton. I wasn't lying about the storm, the snow.

“I've got an extra gallon, Natalie, why don't you come up and get it—and save yourself the trip. It's getting dark out.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I duck my head in and close the window. I light a cheap vanilla candle in the kitchen to mask any odors that linger, a pan with bacon grease congealing on the stove—and this time when she knocks, I answer.

I have a temper—it's one of my many gifts. A lifetime of abuse has left me damaged, but that fracturing of my spirit, that need for vengeance, the desire to pass it on—it pushes up from inside and slides across my flesh, eager to find a new place to land. I know right from wrong, but sometimes I just don't care. So I've found a few ways to release the pressure that builds up over the course of hours, days, weeks, and months. Today it's the Blue Line to the end of the world; more specifically, Rosemont. Then it's the 221, Wolf Road, to a warehouse tucked into an industrial park, surrounded by decrepit bungalows, skeletal oak trees, and miles of concrete void of emotion.

I stand naked in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom, studying my pale flesh—the bruises, welts, and scars traversing my skin. It's going to be cold today, so I slip on a faded pair of green long underwear, a long-sleeve shirt, and thick wool socks. Over that I put on baggy gray sweatpants and a dark blue Chicago Bears sweatshirt—just one more sign of my mental instability. A black knit hat, and then it's a beige hunting jacket, lined with red plaid, and a pair of worn-out leather gloves. I hide in this outfit, even though my head nearly touches the doorframe, dark sunglasses allowing me some privacy, my height hidden when I'm sitting down on the el train.

It's dark out now, and if I'm lucky, I can slip out of the building without attracting any unwanted attention. What I do at night, the way I return, covered in scrapes, bloody knuckles, and a swollen face, it's better if I don't have any witnesses, an audience. And that Natalie, she's always around, doesn't miss a thing. Makes me wonder what's going on in her apartment that she needs to pay me so much attention. Anything to escape, I guess, I know how it is—easier to live vicariously through others than to deal with your own mess.

I leave one light on in the kitchen and slip out the front door, keying the lock. I smell something cooking next door, classical music drifting to me from behind Natalie's apartment door, onions and garlic simmering, and it makes my stomach growl. Can't eat now—no vomiting on the canvas.

Bundled up, I head north toward the Logan Square el stop, passing one brownstone after another. In one window, there is a family sitting down to eat pizza, up a little late, laughter around the dining room table, two animated teens regaling their parents with their adventures out in the world today. A man in black stumbles out of the iron-gated home and turns toward me, head down, fists deep inside his coat pockets. For once, I give way, taking a step to my right, the figure emanating a heat, a sorrow, that causes me to take a short breath, holding it in, and then a long exhale that makes my head spin.

There are things in this world that are far worse than me—I know that. I cannot stay solidly in the shadows, nor can I take the full gaze of the sun. It is an uncomfortable existence, one that is marred by dreams that shift into nightmare—what was here, now gone; what was pure, now soiled.

Under my gloves my hands are taped up, for warmth, sure, but to protect them as well. Tonight I will stand at the edge of the fights, tucked into a corner of the concrete bunker of a warehouse, and wait to be called. If they see me, they'll never step into the ring. I am sometimes masked, and sometimes handicapped—one arm behind my back, blindfolded, or worse—all to make things even. I haven't lost yet.

The cold air fills my mouth, piercing my lungs, as the metal and greenery slides by on my left, parked cars on the right, streetlights sending globes of pale yellow reflecting off the puddles, the ice, the windows, and the darkness. Up ahead neon glows, the dull throbbing of bass emanating from bars and restaurants, laughter spilling out when a door is flung open. Red brick and iron girders, tall windows filled with fire and candlelight, glasses tilted back, hands grasping for purchase in the night, but nothing there for me. Too many times the room going quiet, too many times all eyes on me, the room full, starting to spin, nothing left for me.

What to do, how to find my own kind?

We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

That would be my mother, Rita Nelson. And so many bridges, we've crossed them all—wood splintering under rotting rope, metal gangways over raging rivers, bricks placed one after another over concrete, nudged into place, an archway spanning the slippery, amorphous forest below. Some bridges were burned, some were left behind, too far to go back, some still waiting for a gate to lift, a key to be inserted into a lock, a password to be whispered into an eager ear.

I shake my head and shrug my shoulders. Tensing up too soon, no time for this, have to stay loose. Hands out, fists into the air, punching the night, deep breaths and the el stop is looming, cars crossing back and forth, people rising up and out of the earth, heading home, the train beneath our feet vibrating, rumbling north, and I'll be on the next one. I will retreat farther and farther into myself, until there is only a shell, a skeleton wrapped in meat, two blazing eyes focused only on destruction, my heart gone dead and cold.

Predictions—the men will stand around with their notebooks and cigars, jotting down everything from the color of my piss to my weight to how shaky my hands are. Most won't see me coming, but those in the know, they'll bet heavily on me. Everyone likes Ray-Ray. Boom-Boom. Sugar Ray. When I step out of the shadows, the miscreants will cheer. They'll scramble to put more money down, and the boy, the man, whoever waits in the ring, he'll sneer, curl up his lip, lick his teeth, and feel his stomach clench. Nowhere to run, he'll ask for more cash, his trainer pushing him back inside the ropes. And for once, the women will touch me, all hands on me as I climb out of the darkness, parting the sea of soft flesh, tentative tiny hands, their sharp nails leaving marks, reaching out to touch my cold, slick, pale skin, muscles twitching, as my legs propel me forward. I'll suck in the perfume—lavender and musk, orange and vanilla, red currant and bourbon. And something sour lurks underneath it all—urine, vomit, and rotting meat. Head nod after head nod, the men with arms crossed, teeth clenched, for a moment my allies, but only for a moment.

Next door to Ray, Natalie sits in her bedroom. The room is slowly evolving from a little girl's to a young lady's. She sits alone on her bed, surrounded by pinks and purples, talking to her stuffed animal, Jackie Puma. The little black animal is somebody she confides in, when her mother is quietly drinking herself to death in the kitchen and her father is nowhere to be found. Her door has a deadbolt lock now—she put it on herself, with the $6.16 she saved up babysitting a neighborhood kid. Much like the boys in the alley, she's fifteen going on eighteen, learning to cook mac and cheese, remembering to take her vitamins, or drink a glass of orange juice in the morning, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches quick and easy, or sometimes just a slice of American cheese on white bread from Aldi. Out the door she goes, bundled up in long scarves and dirty gloves, leaving behind a silent apartment—off to school on her own, but searching the sidewalk for her neighbors and friends, eager to blend in with somebody—anybody. She never notices the white van.

She watches Ray, never Raymond, because she sees in him something that she recognizes in herself—she sees the boy he used to be, before puberty and his growth spurt, before his light brown hair lost all of its color, fading to a light blond, almost white, as if scared to death from something it had seen. She sees a boy with a vivid imagination, a bucket of Legos turned into a castle, Matchbox cars in the dirt, a world built out of twigs, and mud, and desperation.

She is not afraid of Ray. But she should be.

Her threadbare white curtains are dusty, drawn wide to let in more light, tears at the edge of the frayed fabric, snow-covered mountain ranges if you don't squint your eyes and look too close. She also frequents the local thrift stores, finding brand-name clothes for pennies on the dollar, where she's seen the angry giant looking at furniture, selecting anything dinged and torn, to match his disposition. And yet she sometimes hears him humming, singing a lyric here and there, and she can almost feel him smiling when he's like that. It's contagious. A few words are snatched out of the air—
home alone,
desire fire,
dull soul,
wet head
. She knows it by heart now, and sings along to the ballad—softly to herself. It is comforting and familiar.

She can feel his footsteps, if she concentrates, his heavy boots thudding around his living room, or out the back steps into the alley, or at his apartment door, the lock snicking shut, down and out, passing by her front door, her eye at the peephole, his gaze drifting toward her. Sometimes, when the moon is full, peeking into her bedroom, and she can't sleep, she'll head to the back of the apartment, a mirror image of Ray's apartment, past her father asleep on the couch, empty beer cans and a smoldering cigarette in an overflowing ceramic ashtray. Past her mother snoring in her bedroom, where she lies on top of the sheets as if broken from a long fall—arms and legs akimbo, short shirt riding up, her panties black and lacy. Natalie will stand in the kitchen over by the window, in her nightgown and bunny slippers, and stare—listening for his return. More often than not, he'll slink up the steps and glide by, covered in bruises, limping sometimes, muttering. Crying only once. In the morning she finds dots of red—blood coins left on the wood.

Tonight, she hears him go, but misses him at the door, only a shadow drifting by, a hint of something musky and sour, a sharp note of something sticky and sweet. He is an aging grizzly bear lost in a forest, one ear with a bite out of it, his back hunched, fur falling out in patches, mange spreading across his damaged hide. He is a dying dappled mare that is bowed in the middle, slow and dense, chomping on hay, eyes rolling back up into its head, tail swatting away the flies. He is an ancient archaeopteryx, feathers falling to the earth below, gliding over the land, its wide shadow casting darkness and cold, a guttural caw, its talons sharp, swooping down to grab its struggling prey, whooshing by her, scaring off the wolves, as they slink back out of sight, her eyes glowing and filled with tears.

She sees him, yes, she does.

And he sees her, too.