It was May of 2002 and I was unpacking my life and putting it hither and yon in the storied and antique digs grandma had just willed me and my brother Mark. I was employed at Norwalk Metropolitan State Hospital accruing hours towards licensure—salaried indentured civil servitude. New gig, new digs. I was sober 8 years and had just left a rewarding job quite by fate, where I worked with the so-called developmentally disabled. Now I was on a locked psychiatric ward of floridly psychotic, hand flapping, tongue-chewing, drooling, shitters, spitters and hitters. This was my dream job; I had arrived. The pinnacle of adulthood. This was the career I wanted and deserved. Because you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world, to not know why you’re here. Oh, but man I knew from the first hit. Things like that are encoded, inescapable, imprinted.
Mark would be dead in a in less than 9 months and I would be the one to tell my mother—without ever really saying anything. For some things, there aren’t words, you know? And a mother knows. But I didn’t know all of that at the time. It wasn’t part of “God’s Plan.” They leave that part out when you’re new and struggling to find your ass from a hole in the wall—a state of mind those more versed in long term double and triple digit recovery refer to as “Early Sobriety.” And they do so while nodding with closed eyes.
First, they sell you on an idea. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Work the steps–and then the cash and prizes. The Promises and such after a couple sponsorial 1:1’s and candle light men’s stag follow ups. Then, perhaps, the real freedom: from release, care, boredom and worry. From loss. From betrayal. From your screaming mother as you approach her mumbling your brother’s name through snot and a curtain of saltwater in the horrific drama that is now a chapter in your life on your now dead brother’s 37th birthday. They don’t tell you about that Other Shoe, the one that drops because drop that motherfucker will. That’s when the pink cloud mushrooms into a roman fucking candle. Life says, “Oh. you thought you had things to drink, snort, eat, puke and slam about before? Welcome, welcome to reality. Rubber, meet the motherfuckin’ road. Here’s the newsflash FatBoy: The first 10 years are free. Now the real work starts. Where have you been all your life? Shit’s just getting real. Grab a shovel. We have work to do, fucktard.” Oh, believe you me– they leave that part out.
So, on said day, while sifting through a shoebox of personal effects, I found a deck of funeral cards that I’d amassed over the years. You know the kind they hand out or have near the Registry Book of the Dead at the wake. There’s usually the name of the dearly departed along with DOB, DOD and an inspirational quote or Bile passage—The Lord is My Shepherd, I Shall Not to Have Wanted to Die All Intubated and Wrinkly Full of Shit and Piss in That House of Horrors Convalescent Home You Had Me Locked Up in During My Final Days, But Hey What’s Family For? –that kind of thing. I sifted through the stack uttering names and recalling faces. Scents and memories both fond and frightening would emerge. Those are people who died. Then I found one that was curiously blank on the front. An ethereal rendering of a dove and heavenly beams of light; no names. I opened it and that’s when a slow-motion tarantula crawl started at the base of my skull and emanated to all the nerve endings making them electric the way a good rail of pink meth or Peruvian snow feels going into the central switching station via the Nostril Expressway. I was having one of those MOMENTS OF CLARITY I’d heard about in nicotine saturated rooms full of torn polyurethane chairs, and folding tables permanently stained with rings of nasty ass Folgers, Sanka and MJB coffee. It was a familiar tsunami of neurochemical energy– wave upon wave of terrifying crystalline epiphany that came bum rushing back; a radio dial turned just so to the left and the white noise became an interstellar beacon clear as unmuddied waters:
Her name was Mrs. November. She taught The Math at San Gabriel Mission Grammar School. My memory of her was decidedly more favorable than the nuns (nones) and priests at said parochial institution of elementary instruction. She was characteristically stoic…but this was a Catholic school, where being sullen and reptilian were prerequisites. She wasn’t a NONE and that made her intriguing; Mrs. November with her button nose, pale skin and blue eyes was a layperson, a regular, not a woman of the cloth.
And she was Jewish.
The subtext and dichotomy were a perfect storm for us grade schoolers: She wasn’t a none and held very different convictions than her stone faced, turkey necked, finger wagging, eerily veiled counterparts. She wasn’t celibate; hadn’t TAKEN HER VOWS. Such was the chatter of young boys under the relentless and confusing dichotomy of hormones and Catholicism.
The custom was once we advanced a grade, we would change classrooms and teachers. The student grapevine and observation informed us of the status and whereabouts of past, present and future teachers. Mrs. Bell nee November, with her sleepy blue eyes, curly hair and impassive lineface became a fixture on the playground during recess and lunch–a previous (or future) teacher, depending what grad you were in. Hearkening back, she was the prettiest teacher I’d ever had. There were other teachers not cut from the penguin cloth, as it were, but they may as well have been Nuns, so feckless, unbecoming and asexual were they. For example, there was Mrs. Lowe, a motherly, gigantic breasted woman who could become as stern and dictatorial as a None if your behavior warranted it. Her son died in some horrific motorcycle accident and we heard about it. Apparently, he WENT UNDER AN 18- WHEELER TRUCK AND HAD HIS CHEST CAVED IN SO THERE COULDN’T BE AN OPEN CASKET AT THE FUNERAL. Before her, there was Mrs. Villalobos, this bespectacled Filipina tyrant with troll-like features who had a penchant for hurling those elongated brick-shaped chamois erasers at those not paying unflinchingly military attention to the grammar lessons being provided in her broken English. MRS. HOUSE OF THE WOLVES had a nasty habit of SPRAYING IT, NOT SAYING it. You didn’t know whether she was on the verge of an apoplexy or a kind word. Such were the subtle abusive nuances of the maze we were all thrown in to fend for ourselves—Childhood.
“First comes love, then comes marriage…. then comes the baby carriage.” One day, it was determined through the usual channels that Mrs. Bells was PREGGERS. Anything taboo and verboten invited intense study; books and religion didn’t get our attention as readily as sex and breaking the rules did. The crew I wandered with wanted the good stuff. There was nothing exciting about loaves and fishes or even kicking ass on the capitalist swine at the temple. No—we wanted the seven headed beast, the Whore of Babylon, the begats and begettings. We wanted Mary Magdalene. We wanted controversy, blood, hellfire, dichotomy and hypocrisy. And the Bile has plenty of that to go around.
We took Mrs. Bell’s pregnancy in stride. Which is to say, we chortled, guffawed and hypothesized in secret pre-pubescent congress about it. We marveled at her ankle-length Amish skirts and unsexy corduroy pantsuits, amazed that a small-scale sexual revolution had unfurled on the holier- than- thou grounds of Mission Grammar School: Mrs. Bell had SEXUAL RELATIONS and was PREGNANT. Since none of this was actually explained to us, we entertained ourselves during recess and in class via crude stick figure and exaggerated phallic and vaginal drawings. And so the courtship, consummation and conception of Mrs. Bell nee November was interpreted through a fog of hormones and misguided impulses. Young Lust: encyclopedic tome without end, Amen. But that’s how it is with children: you encourage an act by forbidding it. We wanted to know what we weren’t supposed to and anything off limits became attractive. That’s the way it’s always been. Even in adulthood, when you think about it.
Time marched on and we watched in awe as the second virgin birth metastasized before our very eyes: from baby bump to a dodgeball sized behemoth. She would stand on the yard during Recess Patrol, one arm supporting her lower back the way expecting angels do. I never forgot that stance. Perhaps to this day all pregnant women remind me of Mrs. Bell. Eventually, like most novel targets of ridicule and discussion, we grew bored with it and then Mrs. Bell went on what we now call maternity leave. I don’t believe any of us ever saw that baby, a little girl i think they named Megan.
When she returned from maternity leave, she looked …. satisfied yet preoccupied. That’s the best way to put it. Mrs. Bell was still committed to instilling the importance of knowing the difference between obtuse and right angles and so on, but now she seemed distracted–like a part of her was running around the world outside of her and that’s where some of her attention went too. Which, when you think about the biological implications of such a dynamic, is true: She was no longer holding the life inside of her, it was outside of her and she parted with it every day. Life in Junior High continued: to be confused and miserable with this great appetite to read things that no one wanted you to read. I used to read the papers. TIME LIFE encyclopedias about war, monsters, disasters and the like. The daily crime blotter stuff. I read Pearl S. Buck, the tragedy of Pinocchio and other pieces of subversive literature. I had a lot of questions about what motivated people to do the things I saw on evening news, and there weren’t any answers forthcoming at the school where we witnessed the miracle of Zombie Jesus at least once a month.
One day they called grades 1-8 into an assembly. Having an impromptu ASSEMBLY terrified most kids. The way to gain compliance is to sow the seeds of discord: would today be an execution, public shaming or would we be praised on high for some good deed or academic achievement. You never knew until you got to assembly. But this gathering was the only one of its kind in my 8 years there. We filed into the auditorium, as a prescient scene from Alan Parker’s “Pink Floyd, The Wall” (sans the conveyor belt and metaphor meat grinder.) The Principal— it was sister Carolyn Anne Marie—told us all Mrs. Bell had “passed away.” I remember little, else, but years later, in my career as a psychiatric social worker, I became privy to police nomenclature and shorthand. When providing information on the radio for patrol officers, there are a variety of abbreviations, so you know “what you have or “what kind of call it is.” To wit, an “ADW (assault with a deadly weapon) suspect there now; 390 (drunk) man/woman in a vehicle; 415 (agitated/violent) man; attack (rape) suspect there now.” And for very few there was no need for explanation. The old One Eight Seven. And there was “NFI”–an augury for me and my need to know things about those in my immediate environment. NO FURTHER INFORMATION. Means you don’t get anything after the last sentence. Nothing more is known.
That assembly went like this: “MRS BELL IS DEAD. NFI. NOW LET US ALL PRAY TO THE FATHER SON AND HOLY CRUCIFIED ZOMBIE GHOST ABOVE FOR HER SOUL SO WE CAN RETURN TO CLASS AND THEN TO THE RESPECTIVE WARZONES AND CIRCUSES WE CALL HOME, WHICH OUR LORD, SAVIOR, ALMIGHTY, AND OMNISCIENT JESUS HAS PROVIDED US.” We did pray, though. And despite the fact that she was a different religion and my internal dialogue of, “But will our prayers matter? What if her god doesn’t hear us? What if it’s a different language? The kind with symbols—Eastern glyphs that don’t transliterate? What about all the religions that kill in the name of?” Such was the meandering of my idle young mind–one the nones insisted was most certainly fodder for the devil’s handiwork.
Eventually, I discovered how Mrs. Bell died. I cannot enthrall you with the eidetic prowess of an expert memoirist’s recall; the truth is, I don’t know. I may have read it in the paper. Or maybe saw a news clip. It wasn’t a front-page affair; it was crime blotter stuff. The newspapers used to leave your fingers black then: alluding to the darkness contained therein and most certainly without. But here’s what i do remember about Mrs. Bell and baby’s death. It’s how I learned the word BLUDGEON. Mrs. Bell and her innocent, angelic newborn baby were BLUDGEONED to death in their home. And for many years after that it was NFI.
Until our lord’s year 2002 when I was unpacking my life and found that funeral card. It all came bum rushing back. There was a memorial service at The New Church (thusly named to distinguish it from the visibly damaged and cracked Old Church, where the bodies of priests and Indians alike were interred). Again, the religious discrepancy. It wasn’t a funeral per se; there were no REMAINS IN CASKETS. There might have been the obligatory giant soft light angelic portrait on an easel near the altar, but I can’t be sure. I doubt any photos of the baby existed yet, as this was back when photographic instant gratification was a wonder of science fiction. But I do remember some of that solemn, sad ceremony. The place was packed. There was a mass or some kind of prayer service in the new church—you know, that old stand by after the slaughter of innocents: thoughts and prayers. The Nones and Fathers were there, of course. Likely on standby to console any boys and girls who required debriefing; or if they needed to absolve themselves for being disrespectful to the dearly departed; or to have some one on one prayer to help not explain how stuff like this happened in God’s perfect world.
In the back of the church, to the side of the pews was Mr. Bell. He had a signature 1970’s Christian-longish hair style—neck length neat and parted in the middle. I could not discern his emotions. His head was down and eyes cast to the speckled marble floor. There was sauch a weight to this scene. I mean, I could almost empathize for this grief stricken victim whose precious wife and baby were murdered in their happy home. His whole life erased. To meet the love of his life, take vows in Holy Matrimony, consummate the marriage with the beauty of a child—only to have it erased with a madman’s cudgel, hammer or similar blunt force object. That’s when it got me, when it sunk in. I was 10-12 years old if I was a day and sudden traumatic loss was an event was something to which I could relate—despite the impossibility. Such is the re-wiring of brains by a craftsman old as the hills known as trauma.
I’m guilty of remembering a lot and most of what I remember is both a blessing and bane. Can I recall a first kiss, the joy of my mother’s arms as I passed some milestone or accomplishment not related to marriage or babies? Yes. Do I remember my first love at age 48 and the eternal tickle that ensconced me as we lie in her moonlit room listening to the rare Southern California rain make everything clean again? I do. But not as vividly as I do that the first kiss at age 15 was during a sloppily drunken game of Spin the Bottle with Mark, his 25- year old friend Chuck (a former Marine, no less and god only fucking knows whether he was honorably discharged) and two female age cohorts: one named Ana aka The Wet Spot and the other nick-named “The Heifer.” Underage alcoholism–a cruel mirror that. We took turns spinning the bottle and French kissing. The kind of kisses reserved for my first kiss and love. Deep down I was horrified. This was not what I’d planned and dreamed to be my first kiss. And the Bacardi 151 rum and malt liquor were not enough to quell the dissonance. I escaped after slipping away to take a piss (a tactic of avoidance which dogs me to this day) when someone suggested removing articles of clothing after each spin in lieu of a sloppy teasing kiss; not as loudly I remember my mother’s screams in my ear 18 years later as I held her after telling her Mark was dead; not as prominently as that rain-swept night the love of my pathetic lifetime told me she would never let me go or get away–only to slink inexplicably back Home, where familiarity and comfort will always trump logic, stability and unconditional love. I remember Mrs. Bell and her baby were murdered and it wasn’t a priest or none who told me. I learned from the papers, the TV,and the nightly news.
Sometime later, a suspect was identified and as they moved in to make an arrest, he took a dry dive off a rooftop. And that was that. Said suspect was her husband. The baby’s father. Her Prince Charming. The man she wedded under the watchful, loving eye of Yahweh, the moon, stars and gods of all time. Her love of a lifetime. But they never mentioned that at school. The last in memory’s line was the memorial service where there was no closure, casket or last caress. It was God’s will. Like my dead brother, my first love as I plummeted towards fifty and the surreal, fascist circus that is Amerika now. We were, after all, under the Care and Love of the Son—who had the whole fucking world in His hands. We were but puppets and pawns in his wonderful, perfect Creation. There were no mistakes and everything happens for a reason. Such was the folly and farce of parochial grammar school, of childhood and of a naturally instilled insistence to believe in magic and fairy tales.
So–decades later at grandma’s house. I was having another one of those moments of clarity. I had come full circle and remained pretty blind to how it was all connected: the chubby little boy who staved off loneliness by reading horror and crime novels in the supermarket while stuffing his face with stolen candy; the lonely one who scanned the newspapers stem to stern for tragedies and horrors contrived and random, before delivering them to the homes where things like that were more likely to occur; the man nee boy who eventually went on to work at his dream job at a state psychiatric facility; who had amassed a library of man’s inhumanity before college; the social working dipshit who rode alongside law enforcement around the filthy under belly of Lost Angeles exposed to the constant ROVER radio chatter of deeds heinous and humdrum; who had been a fly on the wall of the most famous and storied police force in the world—The L.A.P.D.; who had haunted the ER’s, psychiatric hospital waiting rooms, street corners, rooftops and bridges, balconies and porches; the fledgling threat assessment professional who could still hear the baby screaming as daddy bludgeoned her; the cloistered lonely, introverted, awkward rock who could not be molded so many years later was trying to silence his own lambs by bludgeoning them with prevention and prediction.
He’d been trying to predict and prevent those stories from ever reaching print. He was in the business of almost. Despite the fact that Mrs. November volunteered for that man and played a part in her own murder, his original misperception was that a happy union had been shattered by forces beyond human control, when they were just the result of humans doing what they do.
And for every dead mother and baby, he had no idea what was prevented, what almost happened: “The shooting almost happened, but someone called the SMART Team they got there in time, the weapons were confiscated, the guy was arrested/hospitalized. They almost galloped off into eternity together, but some Thing reared its ugly scythe head and decimated the bond between them.”
A history of violence as old as David and Goliath, Samson and Delilah, Cain and Abel—and Adam and Eve.
It was a moment of prescient psychological trajectory; the augury archetype was planted in grade school and he had no idea. From whence we all came; where we all shall return.
The awareness. The horror….
[2018. What this was: An excerpt of a larger work. What this was not: finished, edited or annotated.– M.A.B.]
Difficult To Cure 
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