Infestation
August, 1981.
Mom shows up at three one morning with a black man. He is short, muscled, and has a gold tooth that glitters scratched and dented in the porch light.
“Oh, baby, I didn’t know you were here,” she tells me. “I thought we would’ve had Ma’s place to ourselves. Then I saw your car in the driveway and I knew. I said to Ronnie, damn, my daughter’s here with her family. Then I thought, maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it’ll be better for us. We can make a visit out of this.”
I remind her of Boston, the planned visit, call her on her B.S., explain that I took her for dead these past months.
“It would have been just as well. Just as well,” she says. “Bet you would have loved that, huh? Get the old lady out of the way.”
Ronnie speaks. “We just need a place to stay for a few days so the wife don’t find us.”
Malthus is leaping at the door, paws frantic, up on hind legs, alternating between whines and growls. He’s usually such a sweetie pie with strangers, but the dog is racist against black folks—I can’t explain. I snap for Malthus to get down, but he snarls. All I want is to know what Ronnie means.
The hysterics kick in. “Oh, baby!” Mom wails, her hands on my shoulders. “It was awful. The old witch chased us of out the house with a gun. She’s been trailing us but she doesn’t know about this place. We lost her back by Worcester and now we’ve got to lay low.”
Heather cries in the background. Andy appears at the door in his bare feet and shirtless, pulling Malthus back though he’s ready to spit himself. “Absolutely not, Mom. Look, you’ve disturbed the baby. And guns? Absolutely not. Come on, babe.” He pushes the screen door, the moths stirring in the bulb-light, pulls me to come in. The dog leaps for Ronnie but Andy’s fingers collar him from mid-flight.
Something about Andy makes me say it. “No, let her in.” I hold the aluminum door open and usher Mom and Ronnie into the dark kitchen, telling Malthus what a bad boy he is and ordering Andy to see to the girl.
Mom cries the next morning when she sees the yard for the first time. No garden, no towering New England summer lush.
“They said on the news that they never eat the pine needles. They were supposed to leave the pine needles alone. But even the evergreens are going. Oh, I never imagined that it was this bad.” She remarks on the strange noise as she tells me how she got here. (“A sound like that could drive person crazy! It’s just like that Chinese water torture—all those drops add up.” I tell her to put some cotton in her ears if it bothers her so much.)
Mom met Ronnie at a nuclear protest. Well, not exactly a protest. He was at a bar when she went in to use the toilet. They’ve been seeing each other all summer. She didn’t know he was married, and then it didn’t matter. They’re practically brother and sister, Ronnie and his wife. He drives a truck. Has some business down in Miami. Takes the imports all the way up 95 to Boston three, four times a month. If things get really bad with his wife, they know a place down South where they can hide out. But the truck’s up here. It should all blow over soon. As long as they can lay low.
“Not here,” I warn, though I make no move to kick them out.
Ronnie’s not so bad, really. He drinks a bit much, but he’s respectful of me and the baby. He dandles her and tells me about his five kids and his grandkids—eighteen in all now. Heather’s eyes try to take in his broad face, fascinated by the gold in his smile. He makes sure Mom takes her cigarettes outside, away from the baby. Even when I catch Ronnie slapping Mom in the face, it doesn’t really matter. I might do the same if I were him.
I hear Andy stomping around in his office, upset that Mom can’t keep her voice down. I imagine that Ronnie’s bass trembles through the closed door. It feels like revenge. Andy and Malthus both are scared of black men. Andy in his manly lumberjack shirts.
Out in the backyard, Ronnie takes a lighter to a can of WD-40 and aims for the trees. The flames whoosh, celestial. The caterpillars crackle and pop into ash. I swear I can hear them screaming, tiny bursts of agony magnified by the sheer number of caterpillar souls.
“If I had a couple of gallons of this stuff two months ago, y’all would’ve had a summer,” Ronnie says. Mom beams, liking men who can get things done. But the trees are streaked with black scars and raised bubbles of ash like the drips at the bottom of an oven. Limbs fall off.