His Family Slain, A Boy’s Life of Rage Emerges

“Here comes the brigade,” said Mr. Wallace from his stoop. He lifted a mug of steaming coffee to his lips and paused before tipping it back.

The mother came down the street pushing a stroller carrying one-year old Germaine with Melanie and Janice following close behind. The girls played a muffled game of speed walking, wrestling each other with one arm to get the advantage. Still, neither of them could keep up with the mother who had to drop off the children at school, the baby at daycare, and make it in time to punch in at 8:15am to begin a double shift.

CJ, the oldest of the children, strolled several paces behind. At fourteen, he had the mother’s long legs and arched feet. He kept an eye on his sisters, warning them not to jump from the sidewalk into the street when the mother could not be vigilant enough to scold them. CJ waved to Mr. Wallace, who in his stained wife-beater and pajama pants looked wayward enough to be his father.

When CJ’s father left it had been as easy as his coming. He came and left as he pleased, his longest stint no more than four months. After the birth of Germaine, CJ’s father disappeared completely without a “goodbye” or a “be good to your mother.”

Second hand items littered their apartment and the only thing originally belonging to them—a chubby black doll, dressed in the colors of the Jamaican flag. The father left it behind, perhaps unintentionally since he’d never offered it to any of the girls.

Melanie and Janice rushed off to the fifth and seventh grades, respectively. The mother gave them each a hurried kiss on the forehead before they departed. Then she dashed away to take Germaine to daycare. CJ did not feel slighted at his mother’s tendency to forget him. They had an unspoken bond and reliance upon each other. CJ was as much a father to his siblings as he could have ever wished for himself. Knowing this, the mother often treated him as an adult.

One night he crept to the mother’s bedside with a note.

The mother sat up, “Wa dis?”

CJ tipped his head to the note and raised it before his mother’s face. She took the note, unfolded it, and read each line carefully using her finger as a guide. There were some words CJ could spell that she couldn’t. At his age, the mother was already pregnant with him, living with her mother and missing out on school.

“Mistah Granger se dis? Im gon’ pay yu da moch?”

CJ nodded.

The mother thought for a moment. She furrowed her eyebrows and tugged at the skin of her youthful face.

“Mi need yu at ‘ome wid di gurls.”

“What about putting them in the after-school program?”

The mother shook her head. “Don’ yu nuo da cos more den yu be makin. It don’ make no sense, CJ.”

CJ wanted to correct his mother’s way of speaking. She used double negatives, and it bothered him. He had always been good with words, checking out books at the public library every two weeks. But feeling defeated he simply shuffled off to bed and dreamt of what seventy-two dollars a week could do. He could buy milk every so often so that it would always be fresh for morning cereal, and he could save up and purchase new glasses that didn’t sit so low on the bridge of his nose.

His right eye hid in its socket from an accident in Jamaica, leaving him partially blind. His memories of the island were warm. Emigrating from the island to the U.S. at age six transformed his innocence. The mother came “for the opportunities” but soon discovered the rapid pace of life she’d have to maintain just to keep up with bills—always working harder, but never getting ahead. Jamaica felt like paradise compared to the U.S., yet now it only offered nostalgia and sadness.

“Where is daddy?” asked Melanie a few years ago when she was only five.

“ ‘Ome,” said the mother, without expression.

“This is home,” said Melanie.

“ Iz ‘ome.”

“His home?”

“Ya, iz ‘ome.”

Melanie stood in silence for a moment, wondering if the mother was playing coy.

“Where is his home, mommy?”

“Di island, Jamaica.”

The morning after, CJ awoke with his dream of employment still unfolding. He rolled out of bed and shook Janice awake. Janice shook Melanie awake. The mother got up on her own and fed Germaine. CJ, Melanie, and Janice brushed their teeth before the bathroom mirror. They took turns spitting into the sink. Melanie laughed. She had several missing teeth and was proud. Janice had one loose tooth and was expectant.

They ate breakfast. The milk was warm and a bit sour. CJ poured more cereal in his bowl to balance the taste. Melanie ate all of her Cherrios but left a whole bowl of milk. CJ poured it down the sink drain when the mother had her back turned. Germaine’s milk was always fresh.

They walked to school with the mother leading the way and always when they’d reached the corner of De Reimer and Almud Avenue, Mr. Wallace greeted them, “Here comes the brigade.”

The mother kept walking undisturbed while CJ offered a gesture of salutation to Mr. Wallace.

--

CJ struggled in school.

“I can’t see the board.”

So the teacher moved his desk to the front of the class. CJ had a habit of squinting his bad right eye—almost how sailors do in cartoons. The children noticed this and made fun of him, squinting their right eyes mockingly while whining, “Teacher, teacher, I can’t see.”

Once CJ got into a fight with a boy who gained popularity for his impressions. The two boys scuffled in the bathroom. CJ broke the boy’s nose with his elbow and forced his head down a toilet bowl.

“He’s crazy,” the boy exclaimed while holding an ice pack to his nose in the principal’s office.

During the fight CJ stepped on his own glasses, crushing them to the point of disuse. He replaced the broken glasses with an older pair that sat low on the bridge of his nose and tickled his ears, making concentrating in class much more difficult.

The taunting continued. Now that his squinted eye no longer served as sufficient amusement, the children made fun of his clothes.

“Hey CJ, you getting dressed up!” said one kid. All of the children burst out laughing. CJ never got dressed up, he only had two sets of clothing, both received from the Salvation Army. The mother wouldn’t even take her children to church because they lacked proper clothes. She felt too embarrassed before the community and even more so before God.

Still, the mother never complained. She kept her worries to herself. She had no friends to complain too anyway, just children to take care of and Ms. Jones, her sister in Virginia, who visited a few times a year.

“Why does he live on the island?” Melanie continued. She was still in the phase of childhood consisting of endless questioning.

The mother spoke plainly, “Life iz too ‘ard ‘ere. Yuur fada likes di island betta.”

“Better than he likes us?”

The mother swallowed heavily. How can a child know? She thought. So young and yet she feels the absence. The mother tried to be two parents but the harder she tried the more she and the children felt the father’s absence.

The mother braided hair on the weekend for side money. Women and teenage girls came to her stoop to have their hair braided and styled and of course to gossip. The mother, however, did not talk much. Conversation eluded her with its lilts and trivialness. Still her costumers talked endlessly, appreciative of the mother’s will to listen. They like that about her and often said so.

“You know I can tell you just about anything,” they often said. They paid her with an added tip and came back a week later with their daughter or girlfriend who had heard great things about the mother. The money paid for Germaine’s daycare and part of it went towards a fund for a trip—to the island.

In September the mother enrolled in Cosmetology school while still working full time. She wanted her first degree badly. She wanted to get ahead.

--

CJ had terrible, dark moods. “Not your fault,” said the psychiatrist.

She gave him medication and after one bottle finished he never got it refilled. The mood swings returned. The mother knew of her son’s strange mood swings. He could be CJ one moment, a warm and quiet child, and a madman the next.

CJ learned of ways to keep his mood swings from disrupting his life. He set small fires in the backwoods of his town whenever a bout of misery gripped him. The destructiveness of fire fascinated him. During the week he collected items to burn.

On the weekends he slipped away to the backwoods and set them ablaze. He made a list of things that burned poorly: spiral notebooks, pencils, crayons. Once he put his hand to a flame and felt the sharp lick of fire against his skin. It brought a smile to his face. It hurt so good.

When the mood passed he forgot all about fire and even denied owning matches.

“Den wa dis?” asked the mother, lifting a box of cigar matches before CJ’s face.

“I don’t know.”

The mother put the matches away in a secret place. Later CJ would find the matches during a bad spell and burn more things—empty cereal boxes, shoelaces soaked in bleach, hole ridden socks.

Christmas came and went. The mother purchased a used one-speed bicycle for the children to share. CJ, as the oldest, rode the bike first. He chased the mother up and down the street while his sisters stood on their toes laughing. The mother enjoyed the chase. She could run very fast, but CJ could pedal faster and sooner or later tagged her.

“My turn,” said Melanie.

Christmas was the last peaceful time before the eviction notices began to appear. The mother scrambled to draw money from anywhere to pay the rent. She worked harder, braided hair four times a week instead of two and stopped buying milk all together. The children ate their cereal dry.

A neighbor, who had heard about the family’s financial woes, offered the mother a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The mother divided the sandwich into four equal pieces and gave it to the children.

The mother was thankful for charity, though she never requested it.

The landlord started eviction procedures against the mother. She was a courteous woman who operated from a distance, never arguing with the mother in front of the children. She called and she left notes, and when situations became dire she talked to the mother in private, but soon things became bitter and when CJ answered her calls she’d say, “Give the phone to your bloody mother! She knows why I’m calling!”

CJ’s grades fell dramatically in the third trimester. His moods darkened and lasted longer, often an entire day. As he slipped further into misery his fear of fire vanished. He could put his finger to a flame and hold it there for two seconds before recoiling in pain—a pain he enjoyed. His relationship with fire grew so reckless he accidentally burned holes into his jeans. The mother patched them up the best she could.

The school principal discovered CJ’s love of fire and confiscated several books of matches from his backpack. The boy was scolded and the school called the mother. The mother apologized profusely but did nothing. CJ was now the father and would have to change on his own, for his sisters’ sake, for Germaine too.

The mother worked endlessly and with each month she drew closer to paying off her debts.

On report card day, CJ came home in a dark mood. While his sisters sat at the kitchen table plugging away at their homework he tore out a piece of notebook paper and wrote a note in his careful hand. At night he stuck the note on the refrigerator with masking tape. While the house slept he struck a match against the grain of the book. The flame flickered uncontested in the darkened apartment.

He steadied his eyes upon the flame, his right eye squinted slightly against the light, and he wondered what else could burn. What would burn better than bleach soaked shoelaces and empty cereal boxes?

The flame took the apartment. CJ heard the mother wake up first and rush to her bedroom door, which was barricaded shut with a tilted chair tucked beneath the doorknob. Soon after the smoke grew thick Melanie and Janice woke, moaning for the mother, eager for her protection. CJ lay across the floor, dizzy from the smoke but calm. He was ready for the fire to consume him, to take him back to the island.