Anthony Jones

Motherland

       It took Grace Silverstein three tries to dial the phone number of her younger sister; a number that she had had memorized for the last ten years. That’s how bad her hand was shaking. When it finally started ringing on the other end, she pressed the telephone close against her face and cowered down into the sofa so that she could just see over the leather cushion into the mouth of the hallway. From the strained, nervous expression on her face there seemed to be something lurking in the shadows there–a deformed presence that disturbed her deep down in her guts.
        “Jeanine,” Grace whimpered into the phone.
        “Yes. Who is this?”
        “Jeanine. It’s Grace.”
        There was a slight pause on the other end. “What is it, Grace?”
        “Gabriel’s just stabbed me.”
        “Speak up, dear. I can’t hear you.”
        “I said, Gabe just stabbed me with a butter knife from the kitchen.”
        Jeanine sighed. It was a tired, bored sigh. It seemed that this pleading, whimpering, wounded state of her sister was nothing new to her.
        “Where did he get you?” she said finally.
        “In the arm. Right below my elbow.”
        “Do you need to go to the emergency room?”
        “I don’t think so,” Grace said. “I’ve got a handkerchief wrapped around it. I think that stopped the bleeding.”
        “Which handkerchief?”
        The question caught Grace a little off guard. “What does it matter?” she said.
        “Just please tell me you didn’t use one from mom’s old set.”
        Grace glanced at the red handkerchief she had bandaged herself with. There was a pattern of small white flowers with yellow centers and off to the side a blackish mess where the blood had seeped into fabric.
        “Oh God,” Jeanine said. “You used one, didn’t you?” I bet you took the baby blue–”
        “For chrissake Jean, I’ve just been stabbed. I don’t give a shit about any handkerchief. Why would you even think to ask me that right now?”
        “Well it’s not like a disaster involving Gabriel is anything new.”
        Grace cringed after she heard that. Her entire face scrunched up and tears began to well in the corners of her eyes.
        “Look,” Jeanine said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
        “Oh sure, Jean. I know that. You were just making a cute little joke, weren’t you?” Grace said. Her voice was quavering.
        “Relax, Grace. Forget I said anything.”
        Grace snuffled and dabbed the corner of her eye with her shirtsleeve. “Well why do you have to go there in the first place? You know how I get after Gabriel has one of these fits.”
        “Well sweetie, I’m sorry. But you didn’t exactly catch me at the best time.”
        Grace snuffled again. Mr. Wigglesworth–her cocker spaniel–who had been sitting on her lap, climbed up on her shoulders with his forepaws and began licking the tears on her cheeks.
        “Why?” she said finally. “What’s wrong?”
        “Oh, me and Bill got into it this afternoon.”
        “What was it this time?”
        “His problem. What else?”
        “Did you give him that herbal tea I was telling you about? A friend of mine’s husband drank it every day for fifty seven–”
        “Sweetie, Bill’s tried everything. We even saw a specialist in organic medicine together.”
        “Did it help?”
        “Of course not. What the hell is chewing up a bunch of Chinese grass going to do? Honey, he’s got an inferiority complex the size of Rhode Island. All the plants in the Amazon isn’t going to fix that.” Jeanine laughed. It was a short, derisive laugh. “And of course he still refuses to take prescription drugs.”
        “Was it a bad fight?”
        “No worse than usual,” Jeanine said. She yawned. “Listen. Enough about Bill. Did you want me to come over or what?”
        Grace twisted the phone cord around her index and middle finger. “I don’t know. Gabe’s calmed down quite a bit. If you came over, it might set him off again.”
        “Where is he now?”
        “In his room.”
        “What’s he doing?”
        Grace glanced briefly over her shoulder into the arched entrance of the hallway. “I’m not sure,” she said. “He’s locked in though.”
        “Oh God,” Jeanine said. “You shouldn’t lock him up like that. It’s not healthy. He’s going to develop the mentality of an inmate before he even starts kindergarten.”
        “Well what am I supposed to do? Should I let him charge back in here and stab me to death?”
        There was a pause on the other end. For the first time in the conversation, Jeanine seemed a little surprised. “Grace,” she said finally. “Please don’t tell me that Gabe still has that knife.”
        “Of course he still has it.”
        “You locked him inside his room with a knife?”
        “I didn’t have any other choice.”
        “Oh yes you did,” Jeanine said. “You could have chosen not to leave Gabe alone in his room with nothing but a weapon to play with.”
        “Well I’m sorry Jean but I didn’t exactly have enough time to take it away from him. I was too busy bleeding.”
        Jeanine scoffed. “That’s no excuse. Jesus Christ, Grace. He could be cutting himself with that thing.”
        Grace pursed her lips and then shook her head many times, as if to convince herself that this was the single most absurd suggestion she had ever heard.
        “No,” she said finally. “He wouldn’t do that.”
        “What on earth makes you think he’s not doing it right now?”
        “Because I know my son, Jean. He wouldn’t do something like that.”
        Jeanine paused to gather herself. “Grace,” she said as calmly as possible. “Sweetie, I really don’t think you do know him. I don’t think anybody does.”
        Grace’s entire face tensed. She squinted and looked very suspicious all of a sudden. “You mean because he’s adopted,” she said.
        “That’s part of it.”
        “Well why don’t you just come out and say it then?”
        “Say what?”
        “You don’t think I’m fit to be a mother.”
        “That’s not what I meant at all.”
        “Yes it is. You’ve said that for years.”
        Jeanine sighed again. The tired, weary tone slipped back into her voice. “No Grace,” she said. “I haven’t. I questioned your decision to become a single mother, but I never–”
        “What was I supposed to do?” Grace said. The corner of her upper lip twitched while she spoke. “Go out to Flynn’s, bang the first guy that bought me a drink, and then hope that it did the trick?”
        “Please Grace,” Jeanine said. She sounded like she had just been afflicted by a sudden and piercing migraine. “I don’t want to have this argument again.”
        “Well neither do I.”
        “Good. Will you do me a favor then?”
        “What?”
        “Will you please go check on Gabriel and make sure he hasn’t done anything to himself with that knife.”
        “But I can’t let him out, Jean.”
        “I’m not asking you to let him out. Just check on him somehow. Go outside and peep through his window. I don’t know–something.”
        Grace stood up off the couch and turned toward the hallway. Mr. Wigglesworth leapt down and snuffed her bare feet. When he started licking her toes, she nudged him away with her foot.
        “I guess I could look through that old key hole,” she said.
        “Good. Do that.”
        “Okay, but don’t hang up. I’m just going to set the phone down.” Grace put the receiver on the glass coffee table next to the couch and then, suddenly, picked it back up.
        “You don’t really think he’s hurt himself, do you?”
        “I don’t know,” Jeanine said. “But I think that a four year old child who attacks his mother with a kitchen knife is capable of just about anything.”

. . .

        Grace Silverstein had lived in the same house since birth and although she was the only one from the original family living there now, and had been for the last seven years, not much had changed. There was her collection of porcelain dolls that she kept in the living room however, which was something that she had started not long after her mother had died and–just then–on her way to the hall, Grace noticed that one of those dolls had been mutilated.
        It was a doll that stood closer to the back row, next to the fireplace, and Grace had named her Sandra Mayerson. Sandra was one of her least favorite dolls. Grace had grown to dislike the style of her small dress; there were nothing but frills and it looked too old fashioned. Still, the sight of her staring forward with an eye gouged was disturbing. Grace searched around the other dolls’ feet to see if she could find that green glass eye, but it was gone. If it had somehow fallen, and not been pried out, then she was certain that Mr. Wigglesworth had eaten it a long time ago.
        Grace continued on into the hallway and tiptoed toward Gabriel’s bedroom door. It was dark and cool on that side of the house. She knelt down very quietly and squinted through the old fashioned key hole that opened just above the door knob. She could barely see inside. There were some of the clothes that he had thrown all over the floor and, at the edge, Gabriel sat on the ground against his bed’s box spring. He was staring at the wall, almost comatose, except that he was chewing very hard on one of his fingernails. Suddenly, he yanked his finger out of his mouth and cried out in pain. There was blood oozing out from the top of his bitten down fingernail and Gabriel looked at the blood with fascination for a few moments. After, he wiped it off near a stegosaurus on his dinosaur print bed sheet and then began chewing on another one of his fingernails with the same amount of intensity that he had used on the first. Grace didn’t see the knife anywhere, although it might have been in Gabriel’s pocket or even on his lap.
        She heard Mr. Wigglesworth’s nails pattering across the hardwood floor behind her and she eased herself up and crept back toward the living room. Before she left the hall though, she glanced back and made sure that the small hook was still latched at the corner of Gabe’s bedroom door.

        When Grace picked up the telephone off the glass coffee table she started to speak, but stopped suddenly when she heard her sister talking to someone on the other end.
        “Bill,” Jeanine said. “It’s been going on for over a year.”
        “I’m aware of that. Did you expect it change overnight?”
        “It could change in about fifteen minutes if you wanted it to.”
        Bill laughed. It was loud, exasperated laughter. “Here we go,” he said. “Over and over and over. Did you even glance at the report that Dr. Radke gave me about corporate–”
        “Dr. Radke doesn’t know shit.”
        “Oh really, Jean? He happens to have a Ph. D. from Boston College, and he’s a published author on the subject of organic alternatives to modern medicine, so I’d say that he’s actually quite well informed on the subject.”
        Jeanine sighed. “I need to go back to the phone. Grace is probably on the other end by now.”
        “Sure. The minute the conversation turns on you.”
        “Well Bill,” she said. “I don’t think any amount of conversation is going to change the fact that your dick is permanently limp, so I don’t really see a point in continuing the argument.”
        There was complete silence for a moment.
        “How could you do that?” Bill said finally. His voice had become very meek. “Grace probably heard everything you just said.”
        “She already knows. She was the one that told me about the herbal tea.” Jeanine began to talk into the phone. “Are you there Grace?”
        “I just got back,” Grace said.
        “Good. Did you–Bill. For chrissake Bill. Where are you going?”
        Bill didn’t say a word.
        “Honestly, Bill. Is this necessary? Are we in for another one of your performances? Are you–Jesus Christ Bill, are you crying?”
        Grace heard their front door slam. Jeanine picked up the phone.
        “Oh my God, Grace,” Jeanine said. “I think he was crying.” Her tone was stunned yet with limited emotional interest, as if she were commenting on a slightly abnormal event in nature–a shooting star, for instance–that surprised her insomuch as she had not expected to witness it before it actually happened.
        “Really?” Grace said. “Did he walk out?”
        “Oh yeah. Didn’t you hear the door slam?”
        “Do you think he’ll come back?”
        Jeanine yawned. Her normal, slightly bored manner had returned. “Oh, he’ll probably just go into the garage and kill himself with one of this power tools. So what happened with Gabe?”
        “He seemed alright,” Grace said.
        “He didn’t cut himself or anything, did he?”
        “No, I don’t think so. I didn’t even see the knife.”
        “Good,” Jeanine said. “God. I used to know a girl in high school that would pry the razor blades out of those old plastic disposables–she was not well. Listen,” she said suddenly. “How did all this happen?”
        “What do you mean?”
        “With Gabe.”
        “I don’t know. This whole year he’s–”
        “No,” Jeanine said. “I mean today. Why did he come at you with a knife?”
        Grace sat down on the leather sofa. She was staring wide eyed at the television in front of her and she could she her reflection on the blank screen. She thought silently for a moment before she answered her sister’s question.
        “Well,” she said finally. “I guess it started when I told him that we were going to have chicken and broccoli tonight. He said he wanted McDonald’s. He’s eaten at McDonald’s the last four days.”
        “That’s awful Grace. The food there is garbage.”
        “It’s the only thing he wants to eat.”
        “You’ve got to tell him no.”
        “Well I did,” Grace said. “And then he threw a tantrum.”
        “What did he do?”
        “For starts, he yanked all the clothes out of his dresser and then kicked them around his room. Oh, he tore his San Francisco Giants poster off the wall too. Ripped it right in half.” Grace’s voice began to get louder. “And of course he’s telling me the entire time how much he hates me and that he’s going to run away and find his real parents–I wish to God that I hadn’t told him he was adopted.”
        “You should have waited until he was older.”
        “I’m aware of that, Jean.”
        “What happened after he said he was running away?”
        Grace closed her eyes and bit down on the corner of her bottom lip. She was hesitant to answer.
        “Grace,” Jeanine said. “What did you do?”
        “I told him good luck because his real parents didn’t want him and that’s why he was with me.”
        “Oh my God,” Jeanine said. “You can’t say that to a four year old child!”
        “I know,” Grace said. Her voice had become very small.
        “If you know, then why did you do it?”
        “Because it’s different when you’re in the heat of the moment. It’s hard to listen to someone screaming about how much they hate your guts over and over and then just smile about it.”
        “That’s why you’re the adult, Grace. You don’t behave like a child with a child.”
        “What makes you the expert, Jean?” she said. “How many children have you raised?”
        “It’s common sense. Besides, I studied adolescent behavior in school.”
        Grace scoffed. “Oh please. You took a few psychology classes in junior college. I’d hardly say that qualifies you as an expert.”
        “I never said I was an expert.”
        “Well then stop taking that superior tone with me,” Grace said. She was shaking all over. “You know who you sound like? You sound like Dad!”
        “Alright,” Jeannine said. “I’ll stop, but did Gabe attack you after you said that?”
        “No. He just stared at me for a really long time. He didn’t even blink. All he did was that jerking thing with his ears I was telling you about–he just kept doing that and staring at me without blinking once.”
        Grace took a deep breath. “Finally,” she said. “I walked over to him and started to apologize but when I put my hand on his shoulder, he yanked himself away and ran over to his desk. His back was to me so I couldn’t see what he was digging for in the drawer. I grabbed his wrist and that’s when he spun around and stuck the knife into my arm. After that, I ran.”
        Both women were silent for a long time.
        “Listen,” Jeanine said finally. “You need to take Gabe to a psychiatrist.”
        Grace frowned. “I know,” she said hesitantly.
        “Really, I don’t know why you haven’t done it yet.”
        “This is the first time he’s ever attacked me.”
        “What about the time with the ball point pen?”
        “That was different.”
        “How was that different?”
        “Because I slapped him first,” Grace said–and then added quickly, “That’s the only time I’ve ever done anything like that.”
        “Look,” Jeanine said. “If Gabe is coming after you–his mother–with knives, what do you think he’s going to do to other kids when he starts school next year?”
        Grace was silent. She hadn’t thought about that.
        “Look,” Jeanine said. “Do you remember when you were a kid, and you used to bring home all those stray dogs. You’d be crazy about them for about a month and then they’d do something–piss on your bed or you’d just get tired of them and then Dad would have to take them to the pound.”
        Grace glanced down at Mr. Wigglesworth, seemingly worried that he might have heard her sister’s last comment.
        “What’s your point?” she said finally.
        “My point,” Jeanine said. “Is that you can’t ever take Gabe back to the adoption agency. He’s your responsibility–no matter what–for the rest of your life.”
        There was a thunderous crash of Jeanine’s side of the phone line just then. The sound of metal smashing into metal exploded into Grace’s ear and she had to wait for the reverberations of the impact to settle before she could speak.
        “What on earth was that,” Grace said once everything had quieted down.
        “I don’t know,” Jeanine said. She sounded very worried. “I think something just hit the house.”
        A door opened and then slammed shut on Jeanine’s end of the line.
        “Well,” Grace heard Bill say in the background. “I just wrecked the car. Backed her straight through the fucking garage!”
        “Oh my God,” Jeanine said. “Grace, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
        And with that the phone clicked dead.

. . .

        Grace spent the evening trying not to think about what her sister had said. The thought of taking Gabriel back to the adoption agency the same way someone would carry a stray dog to the pound left a pit in her stomach that made her feel hollow and sick. Although she told herself over and over that she would never do anything like that, the thought lingered as a sort of twisted fantasy that she allowed herself to indulge during days like these.
        When full dark came, she flicked on the light in the hallway and stood for a moment outside Gabriel’s door. His bedroom light was off and there was absolute silence.
        “Gabe,” Grace said timidly, tapping on his door.
        There was no response. She tried knocking louder. Still, she heard nothing from within. She waited a little longer and then, finally, unlatched the small hook that held the door shut. It was a small, flimsy lock and in another two years Gabe would be able to unhinge it from the wall with a few shoulder thrusts.
        Grace opened the door very tentatively. It creaked open, carrying with it the orange light from the hall. Part of her expected Gabe to be positioned at the opening, ready to pounce on her with the knife–but when the door finally opened all the way, she saw Gabriel sprawled out on the brown carpet below his bed. He was asleep.
        When Grace saw her son lying there, all fear and anger left her. It was replaced by the desperate, almost hysterical love that had flooded her body the first she had seen him as an infant–an emotion that had continued to rush through and overwhelm her entire psyche at seemingly illogical intervals and for reasons unknown other than the fact that, for three and a half years, she had called him son.
        “Gabe,” she said quickly. “Wake up Gabe.”
        Gabriel stirred a little and Grace put her hand on his forehead and smoothed his hair. He moaned and struggled to open his eyes. When he finally did and saw his mother there smiling down at him, he cringed. He looked away from her and then propped himself up on his knees. His black hair shot out in a few different directions, and his eyes were worn down looking and red from all the crying that he’d done earlier in the day.
        “Are you hungry, babe?” Grace said. “Do you want some soup or something?”
        Gabe nodded, and without saying a word or even looking at his mother, he skulked out of his room in the direction of the kitchen.

        Grace heated a can of tomato soup on the stove until it was good and hot and then sprinkled it with parmesan cheese. Gabriel ate the hot soup, sitting hunched over the kitchen counter. He did not look up from the bowl and he did not say a word. Even though Mr. Wigglesworth had smelled the steam rising off the soup, he did not come anywhere near the boy. Instead, the small dog chose to hide in the shadows of the living room. The only light on in the kitchen was the small bulb over the stove and Grace stood near the edge of it, next to the sink.
        She watched her son eat. His hair had about seven cowlicks all swirling in different directions and she was thinking about scheduling a haircut for him tomorrow. Everything was very calm in the kitchen at that moment. It was warm and smelled like tomato soup. Grace did not want to think about what had happened earlier in the day, and she did not want to ask her son about the knife.
        Just then, Gabriel put down his spoon for a moment. He was still staring into the bowl of soup.
        “The blue man’s head didn’t come out today,” he said. “He wasn’t in the closet.”
        “What?” Grace said. Her brow was furrowed and she was very confused by what her son had just said.
        Gabe didn’t answer. He began to eat his soup again. Grace walked over to her son so that she could see his face. She began to say something, but he interrupted her.
        “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Gabriel said in a subdued, ashamed tone.
        “Of course,” Grace said. She put her hands on Gabe’s shoulders and he tensed very suddenly.
        “Listen to me Gabriel,” she said. She was shaking him a little while she spoke. “I love you. No matter what. I’ll always love you.”
        Gabe nodded. Still, he could not look at his mother. Grace kissed his cheek anyway and felt very sure of what she had just said, but it was not until later that night–lying in bed next to him–when she saw the first teeth grinding nightmares seize his face, that she began to perceive the depth of that statement and what it might actually mean.

Author Bio

Anthony Jones teaches high school English in the South Bronx. He was the 2008 recipient of the Ruth Brill scholarship, awarded to the most outstanding fiction writer at UCLA.