Bittersweet Nightshade, Chapter One:
I felt the draft rush through my bedroom window. Every few seconds, like clockwork, like an exhale. On tiptoe, I peeked around the room divider at my mother's bed. It was empty. The air outside swirled with the odour of bittersweet nightshade. My mother sat too still on the condo roof. Her red hair was a candle-flame, being tossed about in the new autumn breeze, but never extinguished.
"The wind is changing, Kurt" she breathed. "Can't you smell the nightshade?" I bit my lip, afraid for her. Afraid of her.
"Come on, Mom. Let's go back to sleep" I urged, my hand a whisper on her shoulder. She shook her head, pushed me away. I sat down, reluctantly; I didn't want to give in to whatever this was. What was she thinking.
My mother, in jade green silk against the polluted urban sky. She was beauty in my eyes, all I ever knew. I relaxed my thin frame into hers. I could smell it. Hypnotic, dangerous beauty, like those deadly blooms.
"We are more than this" she gestured to the city before us. "So much more, my Kurt". I knew what she meant. Dayton, Ohio, nothing special. "We are magic. Fire."
"Fire" I echoed. I was my mother's echo, the confirmation of her words. She was all I had.
"Never fear anything, Kurt" she told me. "Fear is for the weak-minded. Fear only losing your mind, your words, your fire. Remember..."
I knew what that meant, too. Remember her. "Always." I vowed.
A police car whirred by below us, the siren startling me. Goosebumps rose on my bare arms as they savored the sudden iciness of the wind. My mother lifted her face skyward. "This moon" she sighed. "So full. Full of promise."
I shivered. Promise you won't.
Caressing my hair, she smiled. "This moon defends the wronged."
I couldn't have fathomed this torment. This delirium presented itself as a triviality, some months before. When the name Ken Tanaka was unknown to us.
Ken materialized before us, invisible. Nothing my mother would give a second thought. It was the opening of Vercingetorix, her latest play. Naked women covered in mud, screaming foreign battle cries, a bloody execution scene. My mother in her deepest of greens, watching in peaceful rapture as I cringed beside her. I hated blood. My mind wandered into a grand orchestra, the cry of the brass, the pound of the percussion. She detested classical music; it reminded her of her day job, at Orpheus magazine.
People clamored for her to sign their programs afterward. She looked down her nose at them, barely-twenty artist types in asymmetrical haircuts, glassless frames. My mother's beauty didn't need pretention, modification, it just was. There was only one who piqued her interest. I could find the needle in this haystack, after twelve years as Lena's son. He was a shy blonde who she couldn't wait to enchant.
He accosted her, a stout man who looked to be partially Asian. "Ken Tanaka. Great show." She signed his program without as much as a raised eyebrow at his inelegance. "What're you doin' later?"
"Got a date." My mother smiled tightly at him, not meeting his eyes.
"How 'bout after that?" he implored. I suppressed a snort. Self-assured, yes, but sadly not her type. She brought the shy blonde home that night.
Lavender incense and soft voices wafted out from behind the privacy partition. The sky outside my window a plush blanket of sleep.
I glanced around the corner after hearing him leave. My mother was stretched out in her jade green robe, notebook in front of her. "Never let a man stay the night" she warned.
She knew before I did, that I was gay. Sometimes I wonder if she decided I would be…when I was in the womb, when she found herself pregnant, when she met my father, when she was young. When. If anyone had the power to decide such things, it was Lena Wagener. She could only have a slight, pale, elfin son who wanted beautiful male lovers just like her. Nothing to disturb her artistic flow. Regardless, she knew, she simply treated it as fact, that I would follow in her footsteps of otherworldly beauty and charm.
There was a single sprig of nightshade in a vase on our table. Someday, my lovers would inspire me to write.
I came with her to work that entire summer. The idea of me doing anything else was never mentioned, by either of us. Maybe I wanted to go to camp or something, sure, but I couldn't bother her with such demands. My only desire was to be freed from seventh grade, with its cliques and homophobic, accusing stares. I see what you are. All I wanted was to be next to her again.
At Orpheus, I leafed through books of sheet music, let it flow through the headphones into my spirit. Around me, the adults gossiped and giggled as they pasted together the latest news in Dayton's classical music scene. My mother delighted them with her razor-sharp wit.
They were all chortling at something she'd said, when Rob, the publisher, entered the room. No one paid him any mind, but I sunk lower in my seat, in case he noticed I was there. He didn't, of course. Went straight for my mother. He leaned too close behind her, his hand on her knee. She grimaced and let her X-acto knife slip, cutting his hand. I watched the scene unfold to Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, the final scene. She acted as though it was an accident, and he dashed away, clutching his bleeding hand.
We ate from the same container of yogurt, outside, under a tree. My mother played Shakespeare on tape, Titus Andronicus. He doth me wrong to feed me with delays. I'll dive into the burning lake below, And pull her out of Acheron by the heels. Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we-
She stopped the tape. "What's the next line?"
I glowed under her blue-green gaze. "No big-boned men framed of the Cyclops' size..."
My mother didn't often pay such distinct attention to me. She was the artist who had created me from canvas and oils, and my heart sang when she added another stroke, when she gave me definition.
That day, she nodded stiffly. "Memorize these words, Kurt. Most people don't even recognize their meaning anymore." We are so much more than this; we are better than them.
I was above the masses, a symphony to their Top 40. My mother was the composer, writing in the notes on my blank slate. My one longing was not to be left unfinished.
Later that day, heavy footsteps interrupted my mother's focus on her work. I peered up at the doorway. It was the editor, Kate, an obese woman with puffy blonde hair who dragged her monstrous feet far too slowly. As usual, the scene was set to my classical soundtrack, my mother regarding her with explicit distaste. Beethoven stared menacingly from Kate's T-shirt, his face warped by her protruding belly. My mother loathed her job; she was only tangled in this minimum-wage forest for my benefit. Shame burned my skin.
She went out alone that night. I took the opportunity to practice singing, not too loud, but trying to imitate "Die Vogel". The birds. My voice, high and seemingly correct, but untrained. It couldn't fly high enough yet. After an hour, I ate a honey sandwich. The last slice of bread. My mother wouldn't notice. I wandered downstairs to our neighbour Bryan's. His door opened to the sound of "My Shining Hour". "C'mon, Kurt!" he grabbed my hand, lead me inside. "It's 'The Sky's the Limit'. Fred Astaire." Bryan was my mother's age, lonely, drank a little, but who else loved music as I did? I plopped onto his couch, amid piles of clothes and music books. His apartment was always so untidy, not at all like our bare floors.
Fred whirled about on the screen, Joan Leslie in a glittering dark gown. Classic beauty, like my mother. That was where she belonged, dancing with handsome men in ornate ballrooms, wearing such fine garments. I kicked off my flip-flops that'd grown too small. My mother didn't need to know that. Why should I emphasize the mundane misfortunes of her single parenthood? She shouldn't be dragged down any further than she already was.
I munched on sunflower seeds as Bryan sang along with Fred, his voice rich. We're drinking my friend, to the end of a brief episode. So make it one for my baby and one more for the road. No one had ever heard me sing, not even him. I'm feeling so bad, I wish you'd make the music dreamy and sad. Could tell you a lot, but that's not In a gentleman's code.
At two in the morning, she arrived. No admirers trailed her that night. I observed as she abandoned her dress and heels, quietly slipping them onto my own feet. We were the same shoe size now. She let me brush her hair, sitting on her bed, watching us both in the mirror.
"I saw that pig-man again."
"Who?" He hadn't left an impression on me either, I learned well.
"From opening night. That porcine brute, his sweaty brow, his curly tail." Her voice held a sliver of a German accent. She grinned conspirationally. "He would not stop staring at me. Ken Tanaka, a sports writer, it appears. With some local weather girl. Can you imagine? Why him? She could've had anyone." Her lips pursed. How dare someone beautiful deign to associate with someone who wasn't. Those people, not really ugly, just nonexistent, the background, the furniture.
My mother saw the pig-man everywhere. Every bar, every party. It was confirmed for my eyes at an Orpheus gathering. He was following her. I stuffed my pockets with hors d'ouevres; our fridge had been empty for days. She sipped white wine and gossiped with her co-workers.
Ken snuck up on her. "I've been lookin' for you, Lena" he declared. She glowered at his ill-fitting polo and shorts, his piggish nose. He didn't seem to grasp the distaste in her eyes.
"Been thinkin' about you. A lot."
"Please don't" she countered.
"You'll change your mind, honey" Ken asserted with an obscene wink. "Just you wait." He ambled off into the crowd of guests, left my mother seething inside. Only I could feel the fire.
He showed up at her work one day. I regarded them, practicing my mother's haughty expression as Vivaldi poured through the headphones. He handed her an envelope, they exchanged few words, and he left with a smirk on his pig face.
They were tickets to an art show, for the both of us. I wasn't invisible enough, I supposed. She didn't wait for Ken outside, she hadn't even changed after work. He found her studying one of the Jackson Pollack-esque paintings. "Thought you'd like somethin' like this, Lena". His voice cracked through the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the gallery.
Trailing us around the rooms, commenting on the paintings he couldn't begin to understand. He offered to take us to dinner afterward, and my mouth watered at the thought. My mother declined, we weren't hungry. I ignored the protests of my stomach and followed her home.