Posted by nigel1 on June 11, 2002 at 09:28:25:
While Jean's son jacked off in the bathroom, using his left hand, his hand of choice, the words of a popular song ran through his head. He had no idea whether it was usual or not, for people to hear songs in their heads while they jacked off. Such things as compulsive rhythms did exist, but they were all based on the common time built into the limbic system, the ancient reptilian brain. It was the basis of copulatory rhythm, and one found it in nearly every popular song, based as they were on the patterns of primordial tribal dances.
Oh, mah ol' Mammy, she connected up!
She got de tube up de butt,
She got de tube up de mutt.
Mah ol' Mammy, she wallars an' flops
an' oinks in de bed. She got dem slops
fo' tuh feed, chops up de slops
like a pig momma, Oh, jes like a pig momma!
Mah ol' Mammy, she jes like uh pig.
It was tribal, it was bluesy. His mother, deep in the terminal phases of her womanhood, never stirred anymore from her bed. She had a colored lady in to wait on her, to fine tune the television on which she seemed to watch an endless procession of soap operas. Arthulia also did the cooking and the washing, and the ironing, which was anachronistic for the times, and generally held the odd little household together. All of her husband's wealth had descended on Jean. However the sexual acts he had perpetrated on her destroyed her. In fact, she had lost her soul. Persons who would ordinarily have been damned for presumptive prayer could, would, and sometimes did escape by becoming so debased that any degree of Divine Cruelty would be wasted on them, no matter how exotic or inhuman. The Divine Mind does not comtemplate torments for oysters, for example. A person who has lost the soul is less than an oyster or snail in the Eyes of God. And when the soul goes it is as though the intellect has lost a vital nutrient. The mind whithers, or withers-- who knew? The brain itself turns dry and flaky, compacted and brittle. Ultimately, little is left but the limbic system, which then does little more than move the pelvis in the most ancient of all rhythms. And that was the state of Lentil's mother. She wallowed in her bed like a pig in its sty, naked, and by some miracle she managed limited speech, a combination of noises, oral and anal. These combined with a few hideous facial contortions, ripples of yellowing lard,a few suggestive moves of the hands and legs, pelvic thrusts-- even the labia moved, like true lips. Her navel managed to join the chorus, by pulsing in and out, in and out. It was a shame her husband wasn't alive to see that! He would have reached his apotheisis. But it seemed that her entire body called out to her son, and that was not good. She had a cord by her bed, and when she pulled it, she rang a bell, and the bell summoned Arthulia. She'd shuffle sleepily in, wearing house slippers, red and white striped stockings fallen around her ankles, and Jean would "speak" to her from the bed, heaving her belly, parting her legs, sweating, mouthing with every orifice: Luh-luh-luh-Lentil! Lentil! (Yes, she had named her son Lentil, because his father, oddly enough had turned out to be Jewish! Also, when Jean had been only a little girl she had befriended some Jewish people who lived down the block, and she played with their little girl, quite happily. The household was so orderly! So peaceful! So clean! The little girl had not made Jean smell of garlic or pickled herring as Jean's mother had warned. She introduced Jean to books and music, in fact. And Jean reciprocated by teaching her playmate how to do the things she'd learned from her other little gentile friends, like french kiss and perform fellatio, and appreaciate cunnilingus, and stroke a boy off-- useful things in their own right. Oh well. She recalled through the fog of anesthesia, post-partum, the lovely friendly and comforting smells of the interminble lentil soups the Jewish family consumed. So, instead of naming her child Merle, or Billy Bob, or Travis, she'd named him Lentil.) Luh-luh-LENTIL! She exuded rivulets of of yellowish sweat and vaginal secretions made a mess of the bedclothes, again, much to Arthulia's disgust. The odor became overpowering. Good thing the windows were closed, or they'd have that dog pack hanging around the house again. She squeezed her huge breasts and battered her heels on the soggy bedding in a frustrated display of lustful frenzy. It was almost as though something drove her to complete a circle, to make the serpent bite its tale. From behind the sequined frames of her enormous harlequin glasses, her eyes locked onto Arthulia's, mutely pleading for her son, to be brought to her bed. And Arthulia would speak in the contemptable dialect, without which she would find no employment anywhere in the state of Texas: Heah, now, what yo' want dat Lentil fo'? Huh! I nebba! Fuckin' dat chile like dat! In her heart, Arthulia thought, God spare me from any more of this Rich White Trash. But, at least she wasn't trying to make a living in Dallas or Houston. She shuddered at the thought of it. Truth was, Lentil visited his mother's room as infrequently as he could. The smell was horrible, and what she wanted embarrassed him. Although, in his favorite jack-off fantasy, he entered her room naked and drove a butcher's knife into Jean's fat belly. But that was a secret.
(Arthulia dreamed that she visited her father's grave. She felt bad because it was so neglected, but worst of all, she found some teeth, old and yellow, lying on top of it. She knew they were his, and she remembered, in the dream how sad it made her feel-- just overwhelmed with sadness. When she woke up, she was still crying.)
It was just barely possible that Lentil's mother's soul had survived in the form of a few scraps, and that it was Lentil himself who had finished it off, by being at first a bright and attractive child, courteous and gentle, eliciting from his mother her entire resources of love, in a vast unselfish and ultimately debilitating flow, and then changing, becoming sullen, furtive, and hostile. It had been a sudden change, with foreshadowing that could only be recognized in hindsight. Children have peculiarities that defy explanation. Her beautiful child, Jean's little Lentil, had, for instance, mistreated animals. He'd loved to tell lies, charming at first, then pathological. He'd begun to collect bones, sometimes stealing them from neighborhood dogs, sometimes secreting the corpse of a cat or dog he'd killed in a corner of the garden fence, in the hope of recovering the skeletons. He'd had a bad habit of scratching at his eyes. He asked a great many embarrassing questions about sexual matters at a time when he was far too young to be thinking of such things. Did babies come out of the rearend, like a turd? Where did he get such ideas? If so, how big were they, and did it hurt? He'd punched his mother's flabby fat boobs and wanted to know what they were for. Jean loved him so much, she let him suck on them, long after he was eating with a knife and fork at table. It gave them both so much comfort! Besides, giving in prevented a fit of temper. He was perfectly capable of grabbing a knife and backing Jean into a corner with it, threating to stick it into her belly. He did that once, and she felt the weirdest and most frightening warmth, a thrill and tingling in her lower abdomen, where, apparently, the fires still burned. And so, she began to take him to bed with her. It was innocent at first, to comfort and quiet the nightmares that woke him screaming and jabbering about the naked ladies getting shot, and falling down together, and getting covered with dirt, and soldiers sticking bayonets in still living bodies. It was all quite disturbing. And by the time he reached puberty, with his mother broken by time and hard use, begging for the love she'd unconsciously groomed him to give, the differences blossomed like a Marigold zapped with gamma rays-- a strange bloom indeed, with odd behaviour and odd abilities emerging like a sudden flurry of cockroaches scrambling out from behind a scrap of ancient, peeling wallpaper.