Rosehue

Mrs. Rosehue awakened to heavy, blaring music coming from her son’s room. Even with her bedroom door closed, the music rumbled in her head. The moon’s white light cast strange shadows in her room, making her nightstand look as if it were a tombstone; her wrinkles more like scars.

“At least I know he’s home,” she said to no one in particular as she rolled a tiny white chip of tooth out onto the tip of her tongue. Mrs. Rosehue had shortened all her teeth considerably within the past two years, though not of her own accord. She turned the white pebble over between her forefinger and thumb, thinking she could have made a little ivory-looking pill box if she’d kept all the pieces of teeth her jaw had ground away.

When Mrs. Rosehue opened her bedroom door, the music made a twinge in her head, as if she were biting down on a piece of tin foil. She steeled herself for the final jolt of noise as she entered her son’s room. Opening the door, she winced not only from the music, but from the glare of the fluorescent Sundown Suites hotel sign, which flashed directly in through his window. The garish orange and yellow flames of the half-sun seemed to wave at Mrs. Rosehue or perhaps they were pretending they could claw her eyes out.

He lay spread out, the bulk of his lanky six and a half foot frame centered on his twin-sized bed as if he were an arrangement of flowers placed atop a casket. His hands and feet hung over the edge of the mattress like nearly wilted petals. The flash of obscene light from the sun sign blinked on and off on her son’s face, making him look old one second and young the next. Mrs. Rosehue thought how shocking it was that he could look thinner within a day and every day, as if his body were trying to eat itself from the inside out.

She turned off his radio, which, she thought, was amazingly loud for a little alarm clock receiver. There was no interruption from her son as she stood, remembering the stereo system that had disappeared piece by piece from the now bare wall opposite his bed. Then she shut his blinds, which only made the flashing light from the sun sign spray through the cracks as if the blinds were a dam that would break any minute. “Lord help him,” she said, closing his door from the outside, “Please bless his heart and give him strength.” She shut herself back in her own room and hunched into her bed. Her tiny frame felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son blinked his eyes open in the dingy closed-in light of his room to the drip, drip of the boxy air conditioner in his window. He thought how he didn’t remember closing his blinds when he came home and went to his window to open them. The son opened his window, sticking his face into the daylight as if he were rinsing it in a stream of water. He inhaled deeply, but coughed out the nasty fumes that passed for air in the city. He and his mother had moved to their apartment two and a half years earlier, after the death of his father. He had been immediately stricken with headaches when they arrived in the city—due to the smells, he was sure. His mother said they would adapt and he felt that was exactly what he’d done.

As Mrs. Rosehue’s son sat on the edge of his bed and lit a cigarette, he noticed a flapping sound at his window where a pigeon was now perched.

“Where’d you come from,” he said. His cigarette sticking between his lips.

The bird tilted his head from side to side as if it wondered the same of the son. As the boy examined the pigeon he saw that it was naturally gray, only someone had painted colorful stripes down its sides and tail. The son thought the bird could look like a peacock if it could only lift its hind feathers.

“Looks like somebody got a holt of you.” He laughed.

The bird straightened its head and shot a beady-eyed stare at the boy as if to say he was right.

The boy looked back at the pigeon just as hard, thinking the streaks made it look as if it were constantly in motion, like a comet, and decided to name it accordingly. Mrs. Rosehue’s son dressed in the same long-sleeved shirt and jeans he’d worn the day before despite the fact that he’d spent the previous day sweating in the summer heat. The boy examined his room, scanning the bare walls. He thought of his color television, his video games, his stereo system, and suddenly felt a heavy boredom spread over him. Even his closet seemed darker without the red name-brand winter coat and bulky hiking boots that once resided there. The boy heard again the drip, drip of his air conditioner. The pigeon sat on top of the box judging him, he was sure.

“What the hell you know?”

The bird only stared back, silent, as the boy moved forward and unplugged the contraption.

“Git, git.” He shooed the bird, which flapped its feathers and shot off into the day. The son felt as if he had slow-motion vision and he was watching a bullet break through the air, every streak of its movement clear to the boy’s eyes.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son fumbled to deposit his change for the bus with one hand while he balanced the air conditioner in his other arm. He made his way to a seat in the middle of the bus. The boy sat staring straight ahead with the air conditioner on his lap. He cursed the water from the unit draining down his pant leg, stifling the urge to kick the seat in front of him and throw the contraption into the aisle. A round face topped with a big pink bow popped up from behind the seatback in front of the son. A little ball of a girl stared at him with pigeon eyes and a tilted head, reminding him of Comet.

“What’s that,” she asked with her chin on the seatback.

The boy just looked over her head as if he hadn’t heard.

“Whatcha gonna do with it?”

“Sell it,” he said with his teeth clenched.

“Is it broke? ‘Cause if it is my Diddy cain fix jist about anything on this whole earth and he …”

“No, it ain’t broke. It’s just fine and I'm sellin’ it.” The words shot out of his mouth as if they would kill her and stop her talking forever.

“Well, if it was broke, my Diddy …”

The son stood and moved forward before the bus came to a complete stop, leaving the girl to her “Diddy” tales. Always be polite to the ladies. You’ll need one someday, he heard his mother say.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son turned down the same dank alleyway he did every day. Something about the place made him feel cleaner and better than the skeletons people called bums or burnouts that lined the walls to create a barely-living baseboard. He made his way to a sturdy wooden door at the end of the alley. It was the only thing that seemed to stay new there as if it were constantly replaced, though he didn't know when the man behind it would have the time to do so.

The son knocked hard on the wood and a small square of the material disappeared just below his eye level to show a mouth with dark, sharp teeth. Mrs. Rosehue’s son called this frog-voiced man The Mouth, since that was all he had ever seen of him. He never said it out loud in the alley though. He’d made that decision after he saw some young, well-dressed kid, the college type, trying to buy from The Mouth. Mrs. Rosehue’s son couldn’t tell what their disagreement was about, but The Mouth’s spiky teeth were replaced in the tiny opening with the barrel of a pistol. The son could see it even from the far end of the alley. The Mouth shot the college kid right in the foot and dared him to tell someone where he’d been and what he’d been doing.

The college kid limped toward the light of the street, flailing his arms out at his sides as if he were going to try and fly out of there. The son was disgusted at this kid’s display. All that crying and arm flapping. He wouldn’t have handled it that way at all.

“Whatcha want,” The Mouth said.

“I got no cash, but I got this here air conditioner,” the boy said, lifting the heavy box slightly.

“My ass in a fruit jar.” The Mouth spit the words and slammed shut the tiny door.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son kicked the bottom of the larger wooden door and The Mouth appeared were the smaller square of wood had been.

“What?”

“This thing works. I swear. And I’m only asking for fifty bucks worth … ” The smaller door shut again.

Now the boy kicked the door once as hard as he could, yelling, “Come on!” But he suddenly felt the need to take a step back and whimpered, “Please.”

When The Mouth reappeared the boy asked how much he could get for the unit.

“Ten.”

“My ass in a fruit jar now!” The boy’s face was feeling cold and hot all at once.

“Ten or I close this again and don’t open it back up.”

The boy hung his head and agreed and The Mouth told him to leave the box by the door and handed him a small packet of tin foil. As the boy turned to leave he heard The Mouth from behind him.

“Hey … it better work or I’ll get you when you come back tomorrow and your cut up little ass really will be in a fruit jar.” And The Mouth slammed the smaller door shut.

The boy felt sick as if his stomach had bounced down to his feet and was now coming up to his mouth to escape. He’d never realized that anyone had noticed him or would recognize him here. He suddenly felt like the wet walls of the alley were moving away from him, leaving him exposed in a large, open space to all of the sun’s light. It all comes back to you in the end. The Lord makes sure of that. His mother was whispering in his ear again.

The boy had been unable to find any change on the street, so he started the long walk back to his apartment. He hated this walk not for its length but for the simple reason that he had to walk by the church his mother attended to get home. When they first moved to the city he had gone with her to church as a way to keep her from lecturing him on the Lord's will every other day of the week. Now he always seemed to pass the church just as someone who recognized him stepped out the heavy black doors. No one spoke to him, but he could feel their stares. He felt as if they melted the clothes right off his body and left him walking naked down the street. Today he saw the priest too late to run across the street. The priest moved down the front steps of the church with his black robe barely brushing the concrete as if he were floating an inch above the ground. He nodded as the boy approached.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son held his head as high as its funny weight would allow, looking straight ahead.

“All you have to do is ask.”

The message was more like something the wind blew past his ear, but the boy turned to the priest and asked what he’d said.

“All you have to do is ask,” the priest repeated.

“Well, all I have to ask is what the hell you’re talking about!” The boy felt as though he was standing there naked.

“When you’re ready just ask,” the priest said. “And He’ll accept you if you do.”

“Ask for what?” The boy tensed at the break in his own voice. Then he ran.

“He forgives …” The priest’s voice followed the boy. It blew inside the boy’s head, soaking into the walls of his skull.

Mrs. Rosehue’s son shut the door to his bedroom and hit the power button on his radio. He could taste the metal of the music in his mouth. He stripped to his thin white boxer shorts, feeling suffocated in the heat of his room. A streak in the window caught his eye and he turned to see the pigeon in its place. Only it was now perched on the sill where the air conditioner had been.

“You been waitin’ on me all day, Comet?”

The bird only tilted its head.

“I thought y’all pigeons were chatty ones,” the boy said, lighting a cigarette.

But the bird sat there looking like a speeding piece of space rock. The boy shrugged his shoulders and dug the tiny packet of foil from the pocket of his wadded jeans, pulling the belt from the loops of the pants. He sat on his bed, his back to the wall and his legs folded like a child playing Indian. The boy opened a box on the side table and brought out a syringe. He turned one arm to show himself the once-white underside. The no-longer-soft place in the crease was now dense and purple. He tapped the spot, then took a spoon from the box on the side table and emptied the beige powder from the foil into the bowl of his instrument. He thought about cereal and how long it had been since he’d had any.

The boy held his lighter under the spoon until the powder turned to a caramel-colored bubbly consistency that reminded him of the way his mother used to melt sugar as she made candied apples. He drew the caramel into his needle and placed the syringe between his teeth, while he looped his belt around the stringy mass that was once a bicep. The boy tapped the spot in the crease of his arm, then sank the needle into his flesh.

He let the syringe and belt fall to the bed, waiting for his insides to sink down into his feet. Talk to me, bird, he thought he said out loud. His insides began to move down, but different than other times. Now they didn’t feel as though they were folding into his feet, but as if he were seeping slowly out of his own navel. He wanted to sit up, but his heavy head prevented it.

“Coo.” The pigeon flapped his wings. “Coo.”

You’re a comet. I’m a comet. The boy could not say it. He heard the priest’s voice telling him to ask. He heard his mother begging him to come to service on Sunday. He heard Comet coo.

Mrs. Rosehue set her groceries on the kitchen counter and made her way to her son’s room. She could feel the tin foil in her mouth again as she opened the door to the blaring music. He was sitting up in his bed, leaning back against the wall, his legs folded beneath him, his mouth open like a child in the choir. The weight of her tiny frame pushed her to her knees in front of her son’s bed as if he were an offering on a pulpit to which she would pray. She placed her hands on his stony, gray legs. The glare of the Sundown Suites sun sign flashed past a painted bird in the window sill and on to her boy, making him yellow, then gray, then yellow and gray again. She watched his face flash from living to stone, and back and forth. Mrs. Rosehue brushed the bristled skin of her son’s bloated cheek, thinking he resembled a stone cherub and that he would make a precious ornament atop his own gravestone.