49. Jenny Crack Whore and I Don’t Care

Digging in her purse, Mother produced a candy box, “Sugar Baby?”

“No, and put those away. This is not the Sunday Cowboy movie matinee of your faraway youth.”

“Fine,” she sniffed, popping open the box and digging in. “More candy for me, then.” 

Mother and I had just gotten our seats at a Friday night performance of The Secret Garden in the University Theater. I loved going to the theater, and would go whenever I could find someone to go with, as long as it was not Thad. Last summer, after a disastrously long Henry IV, Part II that I had drug him to, he had vehemently announced that he would never be attending the theater with me again unless I bribed him with something quite large. I had not bothered, as even when he had gone previously he just huffed and puffed his way through them, making me miserable for forcing such on him. So Mother and I had become theater buddies, which suited her and made me feel like a good gay son.

But at times she could work my nerves just as much as Thad any day of the week.    

“Have you talked to Becky?” She asked with a mouthful of Sugar Babies.

“No. Why?” I said adjusting my legs in the nice wide aisle seat.

“Oh, then she hasn’t told you?” Mother looked away conspiratorially, wiping at her nose with a tissue.

“No. What?”

“About whom she’s been talking to?”

“Oh, for God’s sake Mother, just tell me.” I whispered a bit too loudly. The bluehaired ladies in front of us craned around to stare boredly.  

“Really, we’re in public” Mother whispered, straightening her blouse with an indiscreet roll of her eyes and a polite nod to the bluehaireds. After a second she whispered, “Ray. But don’t tell her I told you.”

“Becky finally got a hold of him? How long has it been since they've spoken?”

“He texted her in January, about that ol’ belt buckle of his, but before that she hadn’t talked to him on the phone since October, I think, and before that I don’t think she has seen him since last August.”  

“Wow.” Poor Becky, I thought.

A nice looking Dallas couple approached our aisle, a large man and his pretty wife with tall hair. I rose and they moved by us to sit one seat away from Mother. I sat back down and checked my watch: it was almost show time. The theater was really starting to fill up. 

Mother leaned back to me, her breath sticky sweet, “She wants Ray to meet Pablo.”

“But Ray doesn’t even speak Spanish, does he?” I said wryly.

Mother looked at me and I smiled and she flummoxed-up up her face and let out a little, “Oh, you!” and then chortled, “You know Pablo is starting to really speak pretty good English. He asked me for a cookie the other day. He said, ‘Granny, can I cookie?’ and I said, ‘Yes, you can have a cookie little Pablo.’ It was just so precious!” She cooed like an enormous dove. 

The house lights went down and the audience fell silent. The curtain rose and poor little Mary walked out on stage and began to wonder around India, complaining. Mother sighed happily when a servant showed off a peacock fan and then Mother emitted a joyous gasp when two Indian woman spun in their saffron saris. It was nice to take Mom out, as Smith so seldom did. And it was comforting sitting next to her, what with her smell of fresh power and chocolates and childhood.  

From behind us there was a ruckus. I turned to see an usher leading in what appeared to be teen prostitute in short-shorts and a dirty tank top. The usher had a flashlight and was holding a ticket, apparently looking for the woman’s seat. In the silence the woman’s cell phone went off –TWEET AH TWEET AH TWEET!-and she cried, “Dammit! Sorry!” and dug around her short shorts pocket to retrieve it and flip it off. As they walked down closer to us, the bottom fell out of my stomach as I realized he was heading her toward the empty seat between Mother and the nice Dallas couple.  

I turned away and thought if I could just concentrated hard enough I could make the skank go away; make her just dissipate. That thought lasted until I heard the usher say, “Here it is. Right there.” I looked up and the heathen woman was smiling a picket fence smile right down at me. She was in her early 20’s, with blond patchy hair, possibly with mange, and her skin was pot-marked with dime-sized open sores.

Against my will, but as decorum dictated, I smiled and rose as the girl shoved her way through. She caught on Mother’s chubby cankles, tripped somewhat and almost fell, but then caught herself with a “Well, God-damn!” and righted herself with a stumble to sit down between Mom and the big Dallas man, as Mother whispered apologizes to her profusely.

Trying to refocus on the play, all I could think was how I hated the poor. And what was one of them even doing here? The tickets weren’t much, but did cost real money. Had there been a raffle and one, and only one homeless person was given a golden ticket to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s masterpiece of creepy children’s Victoriana? Did the bread kitchen now offer summer stock tickets? Back at the Big House was she able to barter some cigarettes and toilet wine for a ticket?

I fumed for a few more minutes before calming down and getting back into the flow of the play. Mary ran from room to room looking for her parents, and Mother issued a tiny moan and pulled her tissue back out, holding it at the ready.  

And then inexplicably, the girl next to Mother began to giggle. It was a weird low giggle like that of a toad or other dirt-dwelling swamp creature. And although almost imperceptive, you could hear it when the actors stopped to take a breath, so it was there, but not there.

Mother looked at me out of the corner of her eyes, and I saw fear there: her cheeks had reddened, her mouth was tense, and she had ceased eating her Sugar Babies.

I craned my head passed her to stare at the strumpet and watched her giggle to herself, wound up in her chair like a baby, head pressed to her knees. And it wasn’t even a funny part of the play: the cholera had just overtaken Mary’s parents.

And as I watched the girl began laughing and rocking back and forth like a crazy person, and I couldn’t look away. And then when I thought it couldn’t get more macabre, the tart  stretched out one bone-thin, sore-covered leg and shook off her dainty flip-flop, to begin running her toes up and down the backside of the seat in front of her, up-and-down, and up-and-down, and up-and-down. The giggles began coming almost in unison with the up-and-down sound her toenails made against the seat velvet.

Mother turned to me in stark fear and mouthed, “Oh my…”

I mouthed back and signed, “Do you want exchange seats?”

She shook her head, ‘No,’ like a polite Baptist woman and turned back to the play pitifully.

For the next ten minutes I tried to pay attention to the plight of poor Mary, but just could not quit watching the sore dotted legs going up and down the chair back, up-and-down, going higher and higher, until the little piggy toes were almost resting on the old bluehaired neck in from of her. It was like something out of Poe: The Tale of the Tell-Tale Toes.

And then in a split second the old bluehaired in the chair ahead snapped around and wheezed, “Please stop that right now, young lady!”

With a gasp, the girl pulled her leg back and rewrapped herself up in an armadillo ball in her chair, completely ashamed.

Mother turned to me and we both smiled triumphant faces of conquest, like we both assumed the skank would now stop so we could enjoy the play.

But then, less than five minutes later, just as a train whistle blew on stage, the girl began laughing again, but this time louder, and rocking again, but this time more violently. Mother leaned close to me, away from the horrible woman, fear again on her face.  

I was mortified, livid, and beginning to get seriously creeped out. I looked around for an usher, but there was none to be seen. I looked back at Mother and said, “Do you want to go?”

“No,” she mouthed with a sad frown.

And I felt just terrible for her. She had been looking forward to this event since I got us the tickets three weeks ago. She was even wearing a special blouse and her new favorite earrings. It was suppose to be the highlight of her week. And now it was being ruined.

But then the girl stopped rocking and was silent, and everyone around us froze, terrified of what she would do next.

A second later, as the play went quiet, the crazy skank let out a louder guffaw and before it had completed exited her throat, the big Dallas man leaned over to her and said, in his big Dallas man voice, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, if you’re drunk or whatever, but our son is in this play and you gotta go.” 
          Leaning over Mother, even though I was shaking myself, I said in my deepest professorial voice, “And I completely agree.”

The girls looked at us for a second before she waved her hands in the air and giggled, “Hey! I can laugh! It’s funny!” She looked about madly, folded her sore-covered arms together, and planted her shoeless, pot-marked feet firmly on the ground.

And went silent.

And after a minute everyone around let out a silent exhale, hoping it was all over, that we could just go back to trying to enjoy the play we paid to see, but so far had not.   

The play continued, but the tension in the air was thick, and not just on stage:  Now in England, Mr. Craven clearly did not like poor Mary.

And just as my pulse had begun to lessen and my breathing had come back down, the distant inane giggling began again, as if from a hollow or a low well, small and weak, but there. I looked back over Mother and the girl had curled herself back up in ball in her chair and was once again rocking back and forth, like something horrible from The Ring.  She had to be on drugs of some kind, as this level of behavior wasn’t even anywhere near drunk, and I knew drunk.  

And in a flash the Dallas man was up on his feet and screaming, “I told you to go!” And his big-haired, pretty Dallas wife was up, holding him back, “Oh, Rick. Not again! Now just leave her be…” and the skank girl stood and screamed something unintelligible that sounded like “Poopcorn!” and the bluehairs were turned completely around in their seats looking appalled, as was everyone else in the theater, and Mother cowered into me, and the ushers had appeared and were running over and even the actors on stage stopped to stare for a split second.
In this crystalline moment of terror you could tell everyone around us was convinced that that big bear of man was about to beat the shit out of that crazy little girl, and we were all going to enjoy it and root him on. And that conjoined crowd bloodlust of ours terrified us all more than anything.

I grabbed Mom’s hand and rose, bellowing, “Come on!” and pulled her up and out of the seat like I was an action hero, before she was drug into deadly fisticuffs. We ran up the aisle and out of the dark theater and into the bright lobby as quick an Mother’s little stout legs could carry her. As we left the theater, I looked back to see the ushers running up to the skanky crazy woman and the big bear of a man, and Mary on stage trying to maintain her ennui as she talked to a fake bird hanging from a string, outside the garden gate.   

 Once out of the building, Mother, huffing and puffing, exclaimed, “And, what was all of that?”

“Oh, that was just horrible! Horrible” I said, “That’s what it was! Let’s just get out of here…” And I led her away from the theater as fast as she could walk, we both thunderstruck and mortified, she holding on to me with a small, quivering hand.  

As we neared the car, Mother stopped to take a breath and gasp, ‘That was a very bad woman. A very bad woman.”

“Yes, yes, she was.” I said. “A very, very bad woman indeed.”