Chap. 2: Deceptions (Joe)

I was late coming home from work on a Friday night when Aunt Beatrice dropped a bomb on me.

She has a way of doing that.

Sometimes I think she spends all day in that chair just staring out that window and thinking of ways to shake us apart. She does it without saying a word or moving a muscle. It’s like she wants something. Like she’s pushing us toward something just by being here.

Ma and NoNo had been asleep for hours. The house was pitch dark. I could hear snoring from upstairs: NoNo suffocating in her neck rolls.

Ma had left a plate of dinner covered in plastic wrap for me in the fridge but there was no way I could eat it. Too tired. I grabbed a Coke from the door of the fridge instead.

Aunty was sitting up in her chair, as usual. When I walked in to the living room she didn’t turn her head to look at me. More and more these days she looked at a point somewhere in the backyard and her focus seemed to get farther and farther away every day.

At first, this behavior freaked me out. I’m Aunt B’s favorite, outside of Chiara—I’d say it’s about even between us—so I’m used to getting her attention when I walk into the room. But she first started ignoring me when I was 12. It wasn’t a big deal. It just took her an extra minute to notice me and wave me over to sit at her feet.

That was her place of focus before: the patch of carpet just in front of her feet. It was like she hadn’t noticed that my legs had gotten long and my feet too big to sit cross-legged comfortably on the floor anymore. It felt like my feet were going to snap off at the ankles, but I liked Aunt B and didn’t want to upset her. She always seemed to be interested in me so I kept up the routine from my baby days.

It wasn’t until I turned 15 that I really noticed her change toward me. I’d sit on the floor for 10, 15 minutes before she’d pull her gaze from the arbor in the backyard and focus on my face.

And then she’d smile. It was a forgetful and vacant smile, her pupils still large and black from whatever faraway place she’d just been. When she finally recognized my face in front of her, her eyes sharpened up and she’d give a little embarrassed smile.

Joey. How was your day?

She’d started to say my name not so much to call out to me but as if she was naming an object in front of her, identifying it before she could deal with it. It made me shiver. At 15, I couldn’t put all this into words. I was only exhausted from being in school all day with people I hated (who listened to shit music I couldn’t stand) and teachers who knew just a little more than we did. By the time I got home to Aunt B, I’d just stretch out on the floor in front of her and let my mind go. I gave her complete access to my thoughts.

Are you still running, Joe Joe?

She’d see me coming down the stairs on my way out to school with my running shoes knotted together and thrown over my shoulder. Ma didn’t know that I wasn’t really on the track team at school—but Aunt B did. I ran by myself after school, on my way to work. My counselor said I needed to work on anger management and that was my way to do it. Pounding pavement was better than pounding faces. Or walls.

Aunt B’s drifting away from me came at the worst possible time. School got in the way of my mind. I constantly heard music playing inside me (In my head? In my body?), like I was a transistor for my own personal round-the-clock radio station. The chatter of the outside world felt like white noise screwing up my reception of something crucial.

Back then, I had just figured out that the daylong soundtrack in my head depended on what was going on in my life. It changed with how I felt, or with what crazy shit Chiara was up to at the moment, or what mood NoNo was in by the time I got home. It changed with Ma’s tiredness—which changed from one season to the next.

Most days started off with something whiney—that annoying crap that Matty loved to listen to. I knew the day would be shitty if Morissey was the first thing streaming through my body. Worse if it was Marianne’s Rick Astley album or some other pop horror.

If I could get to Black Flag or The Bad Brains by the time I got to school, I’d be feeling pretty good. The problem? When the hardcore stuff turned on during, say, Algebra.

Matty knew about my problem and was sympathetic. Matty would be. He was the first to understand what was going on. When I didn’t answer his questions right away—there’s always some lag time when talking to me—Matty knew I was listening to him through another frequency. He always cut me some slack.

But NoNo didn’t deal in hesitation. She snapped her fingers in my face. Or slapped. The right side of my face was permanently pink from her trying to snap me out of my disrespectful silence.

“Why don’t you listen?” she would say.

* * * * * * *

When Aunty finally noticed me that late Friday night, I had already arranged myself on the floor in front of her feet and was beginning to doze on the carpet. I woke to her stare. Her eyes were wide and barely focusing on what was in front of her.

Joe.

What’s up, Aunt B? I asked.

I was frightened by the look on her face. Her shadowy brow seemed to wrinkle up above her eyebrows. I’d never seen her look anxious before. But it was also something else. She looked pained, like she had just done something she wasn’t proud of.

Aunt B. Look at me.

And then she opened her mouth to speak.

She’d never done that in my life.

No words came out. She’d forgotten for a second how things worked in this world. She’d forgotten the rules.

And then she reached behind the pillow and pulled out something white. It was so white, it glowed in the darkness.

It was a letter.