Part 7 (1/2)

I said, ”Huh?”

”You are an adult,” Mama said, but in a tone of voice that meant Like h.e.l.l You Are. ”You have a child. It is time you took responsibility. Out of respect for your father's feelings, I tolerated you under our roof. But your father was a more generous Christian than you had a right to expect, and he's gone now, G.o.d bless him. You can go to work and take care of yourself. You and your things and your boy had better not be in the house when I get back.”

As she walked for the bus, I hurried after her, still carrying Oliver, who was fidgeting. ”Just let us stay until he starts first grade in the fall,” I said. ”How could I get a job before then? What would we live on?”

I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have crawled to her. She is my mama and somewhere in my chest full of hate I must still love her a little, but I should never have crawled to her.

She looked back at me and said, ”I don't know, but if you think you'll use some of your father'sinsurance money, you can forget it. It all comes to me, and I might give a few thousand to Mikey if he needs it, but never to you. Not after what you did.”

Mama got on the bus and went away. She should be in Des Moines by now. She's probably giving Mikey and the relatives all of the smiles and hugs she's been h.o.a.rding since we came to Topeka.

Oliver is asleep as I write. He doesn't look like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Just before I put him to bed, he hugged me around the legs and said, ”Happy burfday, Muvver.” He can talk better than that, but not when he's sleepy.

Absolutely, I thought. Happy G.o.dd.a.m.n birthday.

How am I going to be able to alterthisreality? If I deny Mama's existence, will she be unable to come back and throw us out?

I had thought that it would be nice for me and Oliver to have the house to ourselves for a while, but I was wrong. I can smell Daddy's cigarettes and beer even though he is dead and buried. I expect to see Mama frown at me when I get a gla.s.s of milk even though she has gone to Des Moines. Even when they aren't here, they're here.

Time for us to go, Oliver. Where to, though, beats the h.e.l.l out of me.

I wish we could go to England. That's where all the rock 'n' roll is these days. All you need is a rubber soul, baby, and I surely do have that.

I was a ball and chain bolted to Mother's ankle. If it hadn't been for me, she would have gone to London. She would have found a way.

As it was, she had to pick me up from kindergarten every day and then take me along as she searched for a job. That alone ensured that she was rejected by several employers who might not have rejected her otherwise. Amazingly, though, she found something a few days before Grandmother was to return. A small pop radio station happened to need someone to handle paperwork at just the time that Mother happened to be looking, and thus she became the lone secretary at KKAP, ”The Hop of the Heartland.”

The management and disc jockeys were stuck in 1959, but that was okay because Mother was too.

(Not quite fair. At this point in her life, Mother was as progressive as it was possible to be in Topeka. It was at her suggestion, in fact, that KKAP finally decided to take a bold step forward and start playing the Beatles.) That solved one problem. Mother had a job, and she was scheduled to start with a training day on Friday, May 28, the day after Grandmother was to return. That left only two other problems: where to live, and what to do with yours truly.

Neither was solved by the time Grandmother showed up. She came home from the bus station in a cab on the evening of May 27, and Mother began to tell her about the job.

”And I suppose you want me to baby-sit your brat while you're off making your fortune,” Grandmother said.

”Well, no,” Mother said, looking at me anxiously. She still didn't completely trust Grandmother alonewith me, and I felt the same way. ”But tomorrow's his last morning of kindergarten, so maybe you could just have him tomorrow afternoon. That would give me the weekend to find a regular sitter.”

I wanted to scream,No! Not even one afternoon! but I knew that wouldn't help matters. Either that, or I was just too scared of Grandmother.

”You're forgetting one important thing, Mich.e.l.le,” Grandmother said grimly. ”You and Oliver don't live here anymore. You not only don't have a free baby-sitter, but you've lost your free housekeeper as well.”

Then she went back into our bedroom, pulled the drawers from the dresser and bureau, and began flinging our clothes into the hallway.

Some crying and screaming followed, but the next thing I remember clearly is that Mother and I ended up standing on the front walk while she struggled to hold four grocery sacks full of clothes.

I was bawling. When I could, I sobbed, ”Grandmother doesn't mean it, does she?”

”No, she doesn't,” Mother said. Her voice sounded firmer than I had ever heard it before. ”She thinks she'll let us stand out here for a few hours or maybe overnight, where the neighbors will see us. She thinks I've never been properly repentant, so she wants us to feel humiliated and learn our lesson. Then she'll let us back in and expect us to be grateful and humble.”

Mother paused. I looked up and saw her glaring at Grandmother's house. Her eyes flashed with wet heat.

”Well,f.u.c.k that,” she said.

She strode off down the sidewalk, and I toddled along with her, wondering what she had meant. She dropped one of the grocery sacks, so I picked it up and carried it with both arms, hugging it as if it were a stuffed animal.

We took a city bus, and the driver and pa.s.sengers stared at us. Mother stared back, and they stopped.

We went to the radio station, a small brick building north of the Kaw River. By the time we arrived, only three people were still there. The two-to-six disc jockey was just coming off the air, and the six-to-ten man was just going on. The engineer was dozing in the control room, letting the deejays fend for themselves.

The two-to-six man was a skinny, stooped guy with pale skin. His name, Mother told me, was Jeff. We met him as he came out of the booth.

”Hey, that front door's supposed to be locked after five,” Jeff said.

”It wasn't,” Mother replied. ”I'm the new secretary. I start tomorrow. This is my son Oliver.”

Jeff looked at us. ”So you're bringing in sacks of clothes?”

”We need a place to stay,” Mother said.

”Well, you sure can't stay here,” Jeff said. ”Better call in some favors from friends.” ”I've been too busy raising my son to make friends,” Mother said.

”That's me!” I said brightly. I had surmised that this occasion called for cuteness.

”Isn't he something?” Mother asked, tousling my hair. She dropped one of her sacks in midtousle, and it spilled onto the floor. It was her underwear.

We spent the next sixteen nights on the couch in Jeff's apartment. He even saw to it that I made it to my last day of kindergarten (which I could have done without) and took me to the radio station that afternoon, where I spent four boring hours in a corner of the lobby.

Beginning the next Monday, Mother went to work every morning at eight, and Jeff stayed with me until ten. Then he went to work too, and his sister, whose name I've forgotten, came in and baby-sat until Mother returned at about five-thirty. Jeff's sister was a high-school junior on summer break, and she charged fifty cents an hour to watch soap operas on her brother's black-and-white Motorola.

That Motorola changed my life.

My grandparents had never owned a television, so the s.p.a.ce program had never been more than words to me. But on Thursday, June 3, 1965, I saw Gemini 4 lift off amid black-and-white smoke and flame.

Then, a few days later, I saw Edward White floating above the Earth, holding his propulsion unit before him like a crucifix against the void.

Okay. At age five and a half I couldn't have come up with anything as pompous and meaningless as ”a crucifix against the void.” What I did come up with, though, was the feeling that I would give anything to trade places with Edward White, to float in nothingness far from Topeka, Kansas. Far from anything.

If anything besides rock 'n' roll could confer immortality, leaving the Earth would be it.

Meanwhile, according to Volume II, Grandmother was calling Mother at KKAP twice a day and asking her to come back home. Mother refused.

Mother found an apartment for us through a friend of a friend of the KKAP station manager, and we moved out of Jeff's place as soon as she received her first two-week paycheck. Rent, food, a used TV set, and a down payment on the money we owed Jeff and his sister, and that was it until the next check.

Jeff's sister agreed to continue baby-sitting on an I.O.U. basis-for longer hours now that Jeff wasn't with me mornings-provided that she got a raise to sixty-five cents an hour. Mother, having no choice, agreed.