The Bad Lady (Novel) (11 page)

“Look for the ice cream truck then.” the bad lady shook her head in pure disgust. “How convenient. That pervert. Slut!”

“Mom.”

“What?” She glared at me.

“Why do you keep calling Nancy a pervert and a slut?”

“Because that’s what she is.” The bad lady stamped her foot, hard, which made a thundering noise. Surprisingly the kittens did not scatter. They must have been extremely hungry. “A no-good worthless pedophile. People like her ought to be fried in the electric chair. They serve no purpose in society.”

I did not even bother to ask her what she had meant by that. Often, I found, when the bad lady had absolute control of mother, that it was best to not pester her with too many questions.

***

Just then, a car drove past the house, quite slow, I might add.

You should have seen the expression on the bad lady’s face, all fierce and intense. The way she had stared the passing vehicle down, reminded me of a paranoid soldier in war either thinking of going ballistic with a machine gun, a flamethrower, or perhaps by tossing a hand grenade at the car. Evidently, in her disillusioned mind, she imagined that passing automobile to be the Good Humor truck.

“Mom, why are you still so mad?”

“You don’t understand, Billy. Clearly, you don’t understand anything.” She bent down and carefully scooped one of the kittens into her arms, the orange cat with the tiger stripes. Milk dripped from the kitty‘s tongue.

“Am I trouble?”

“No. Nancy Sutcliffe is in trouble.”

“Why, what’s gonna happen to her?”

Without answering, she put the timid kitty back down on the porch. Then she changed the subject.

“I’ll tell you what, Billy. I think we might have another can of tuna in the cupboard. These cats could use a solid meal. I don‘t think a bowl of milk will suffice.”

“They could use a solid meal,” I agreed. “They must be starving. Look at how thin they are.”

“I see that. And I understand you feel sorry for them.”

“I do.”

“Well,” she adds, watching the two kittens go back to drinking the cold milk. “I don’t know what these cats have been living on. Hold on.” She went into the house and returned roughly a minute later with the tuna fish on a paper plate. Pleased, the hungry kittens began to devour the seafood feast. “Now Billy, you remember what I said about staying in the yard.”

“I know. I heard you.”

“I have to go take shower. Wash this sweat off my body. I feel yucky! If the phone rings again, don’t answer it. Let the answering machine pick up.”

“All right.”

“And whatever you do, please do not bring these cats in the house. They’re not potty trained.”

“I won’t.”

Not long after she had slipped back into the cottage, I heard her enter the bathroom. Then I heard the door gently close and the shower come on. The running water, maybe because the pipes in the house were old and rusty, could be heard from just about every room, including the porch.

Stay in the yard. In fact, I don’t even want you to leave the porch!

How annoying. Why did she have to tell me that?

Even if Nancy did happen to drive by, it wasn’t as if, after seeing how pissed off my mom and the bad lady were, I would actually get in the ice cream truck and go for a ride, like I normally did, and risk being molested again.

The fact is if Nancy Sutcliffe had to work after all and came down the street, I had already made up my mind that I wouldn’t acknowledge her. I would pull a Mrs. Bailey; give her the snub treatment. Pretend I didn’t know her.

PART SIX

SMACK

CHAPTER 15

Now I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden out of nowhere, I heard a loud noise come from the bathroom.

Whaaa whack!

I deduced that either my mother had slammed the toilet seat down or it had accidentally dropped.

The unexpected clunk spooked the kittens. Unlike when my mom (or should I say the bad lady) had stomped her foot on the porch, this time the stray kittens, instead of sticking around, elected to scram. They scuttled eagerly down the cement steps and vanished behind one of our azalea bushes.

Then, in the bathroom, it got eerily quiet. So quiet you could almost hear a ghost whisper.

Curious, I went to investigate.

“Mom,” I said, while standing in front of the bathroom door.

She did not answer. I found that to be highly unusual. I realized she must have been finished taking a shower, as I could no longer hear the running water.

Knock! Knock!

“What was that loud noise, mom?”

Still no response. I knocked for a second time, more forcefully.

“Hey, are you in here?”

Nothing. To me that made no sense.

Gingerly I pushed the creaky bathroom door open and did not know what to think when I saw my mother perched on the toilet, in her pink panties and bra, with a hypodermic needle sticking in her arm. And something, like a bandanna tied tightly around her arm.

Confused, I froze where I stood, with my hand on the brass knob. I wanted to shut the door and hurry away, except I couldn’t.

Something forced me to stand there and watch whatever the hell it was that she was in there doing.

“Mom,” I said, “are you all right?” Naturally, me being so young at the time, I had no inkling whatsoever that she was in there shooting heroin. Her eyes were barely open, and as I spoke, my mother leisurely withdrew the hypodermic needle from her arm. She put the syringe on a small hand towel that lay neatly spread out on the tile, beside the toilet. A long squiggly line of blood trickled, like scarlet paint, from a vein. It seeped all the way down to her elbow. My mom, who had a mellow yet pleasurable smile on her face, plucked a few sheets of toilet paper from the nearby roll and then wiped her arm.

“I’m beautiful, Billy.”

“Beautiful? What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

I could not stop staring at her arm, at the blood. Or at the syringe that lay next to the toilet on the towel. The mist from the hot shower my mother had taken floated through the air like fog.

“Please do me a favor and close the door, will you,” she says, while clumsily standing up and then stepping over to the steamed up mirror, where she began to brush her damp hair and put on her makeup. I could not get over how squinty her eyes were- she looked Japanese.

“Mom, what was that needle for?” I inquired. I had to know. I had never seen her stick a syringe in her arm before.

“I’m a diabetic,” she replied, now using the towel to erase the vapor from the mirror so that she could see her reflection. “There was insulin in that syringe.”

“What’s insulin?”

“Huh?”

For a split second, I thought she might throw up. Her face turned deathly white; she hacked up phlegm, about the equivalent of a Dixie cup, and spit it into the sink. Then, while using an unsteady hand to mop off her gooey mouth, she regained her footing and continued to put herself together.

“I said I wanted to know what insulin is?”

What did she suddenly become deaf?

“It’s medicine.”

“Mom, I didn’t even know you were sick.”

“It’s nothing to worry about Billy. Really it isn‘t. Since being diagnosed last year, I’ve tried to administer the medicine either in my bedroom or here in the bathroom so that you wouldn’t have to see the needle, because I know it looks a little weird. But like I said, it’s no big deal. From now on though, make sure you knock on the bathroom door before you enter, okay?”

“I did knock.”

“Apparently not loud enough.”

“Whatever.” There was no sense in arguing with her.

“Anyway,” she added. “I’ll be out in a few minutes. I have to put on my lipstick and blow-dry my hair. Now close the door.”

I did. I heard her immediately lock it behind me. Ka chuck!

Years later I would learn the ugly truth, my mother never had diabetes.

That had been a complete fabrication.

She was just a stone cold junkie. Not the stereotypical heroin addict we often picture living in the projects in some big metropolitan city. Someone with no job who spends most of their time in a rundown apartment building, sharing potentially dirty hypodermic needles with other addicts, while sleeping on a skuzzy mattress, in the cockroach, rat infested room.

No.

My mom lived in the suburbs, had a good-paying entrepreneurial job, was raising a child, got along with the neighbors for the most part, yet she was still a junkie just the same.

And maybe heroin explained the bad lady, to some extent.

I say that because I don’t know.

Perhaps I’ll never know.

PART SEVEN

STRANGE MAKEUP

CHAPTER 16

At least an hour passed and she had yet to emerge from the John. I wondered why it was taking my mother so long to brush her hair and apply her makeup. Usually, it only took ten minutes for her to get dolled up.

Concerned, I shut off the Sony boom box, cutting off a ballad by Whitney Houston, that song from the movie The Bodyguard. Then I tiptoed over to the bathroom, and put my ear against the door to see if I could hear what my mom might be doing.

I thought I would at least hear the hair dryer or something. But no, I did not. In fact, I heard nothing. No sound at all.

Nevertheless, I dare not knock.

My mom still had the light on; I could see the faint golden glow radiating from the crack at the bottom of the doorway, as well as from the sides of it. I did not see any movement though, no silhouette, outline of feet, not anything.

Finally, when she did come out of there, after another fifteen minutes or so, I could not believe what I saw.

My mother had put on blue lipstick, a rarity for her, and an unusually large amount of mascara and black eye-liner, which, in my opinion, made her look like an alien, or like one of those gothic chicks. It’s difficult to describe the sudden transformation. I did an immediate double take. Her eyes seemed to have lost their normal sparkle, and now seemed to be sunk deep into her head, giving the impression that her eyes were floating in hollow pits of darkness.

My mother had also brushed her long brown hair straight back, and had twisted it into a tight ponytail. Yet probably the strangest thing of all, she had applied to her face some brand of white makeup that made her skin as pale as a phantom. It was the type of white powder that mimes in the theater wear, or maybe Michael Jackson. Take your pick. She still looked beautiful, but now in a ghoulish way that triggered me to shudder.

“Did I hear the phone?” she asks, ignoring the fact that I stood there staring at her in stark disbelief. The pleasing scent of fragrance emanated from her freshly washed body.

“No,” I tell her.

“Are you sure? I thought I heard it ring again.”

“It couldn’t have. I’ve been sitting in the living room the whole time that you were in the bathroom.”

“Oh.” She went into the kitchen and picked up the phone anyway. “That’s odd. I must be hearing things.”

“Mom.”

“Yeah.” She placed the phone back into its cradle.

“Why do you look like that?” I had to ask. I could not just ignore her (alien, gothic) appearance.

“Look like what?”

“You know, why are you wearing that weird white makeup, the blue lipstick, with your eyes painted black?”

She grinned. “I gave myself a makeover. This might be my new look. What do you think?”

“I uh . . . I don’t like it,” I confessed honestly, while shaking my head. Her new look. Was she kidding? She looked like she had just finished shooting a Marilyn Manson video. I didn’t want my mother to be seen in public looking like a freak.

“Well,” she says. “You’d better get used to the new me.”

“C’mon mom, you’re not really planning on going around looking like that, are you?”

Her grin turned into a scowl. “I might. Now will you please drop the subject. I have more important things on my mind right now, as you well know. I don’t need you getting into a tizzy just because you think the makeup I have on is a little out of the ordinary. Oh well, to each his own.”

“What’s Rudy going to think?”

“I don’t care what Rudy thinks.”

“He’s gonna laugh at you.”

“No he won’t.”

“Yes he will,” I insisted. “Unless he doesn’t even recognize you. I almost don’t recognize you.”

She bent down, and put both of her hands on my shoulders. “Billy, do you love me?” Her dark freakish eyes seemed to gaze into the depths of my soul.

“Yes.”

“Then you need to except the fact that I’m your parent and I’m the one who makes the decisions around here. And if I want to change my appearance, wear a different style of makeup, you’re just going to have to accept it.”

“But mom, you’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Billy.” She shook me. “Listen to me; I love you too, more than anything in this world. But I don’t want to hear another word about the way I look. I’m your mother and you need to show me some respect. Do you understand?”

I remained silent.

She shook me again. “I said, do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“I should show you some respect.”

“Precisely.”

She wore a short-sleeved shirt, with the logo ‘Love Potion No. 9’ on the front. Also, Bermuda shorts, and plain flat shoes. That‘s right, her clothes were normal, which made the way my mother’s face looked all the more bizarre. Imagine an attractive female vampire, wearing, instead of a black cape, everyday summer clothes, that, to me, was what she looked like.

At any rate, because she wore a short-sleeved shirt, for the first time, maybe ever, I stared at her arms close up and became startlingly aware of the track marks. There were quite a few of them, about a half of dozen, and I found myself wondering why I had never noticed those unsightly needle marks before. They reminded me of mosquito bites, tiny red dots, you know where the mosquito sticks his or her fang into your skin.