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And Then He Moved
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Camels and Salems

Beaumont Sebos


    I sat outside on the concrete bench waiting for my mother’s release from jail and pondering the only piece of advice I ever received from my father concerning relationships. When I was about 13 he told me, “Georgie, poke ‗em and run.”
    I laughed it off hysterically then, totally missing the true weight of what my father said. But now the sage words resonated and deepened the sadness I felt about how it must have been for him being married to my mother. She got pregnant and he stuck around to do the manly thing. Like most false noble causes, it all eventually came crumbling down.
    “Excuse me,” said a criminal with newfound freedom, the look of addictive longing in his eyes. “You got a cigarette, man?”
    “I don’t smoke.”
    I watched the scrawny man walk through the parking lot in the dimming Florida sun, fidgeting with an envelope that probably carried all of his earthly possessions. He scanned around in desperation until he reached the main road running in front of Orient Correctional Facility. He shrugged at nothing and then randomly staggered south along the side of the road.
    I reached into my front jean pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels.
    “Man, why you did that,” asked a sloppy fat black woman sitting on another concrete bench a little ways down from me.
    “Fuck you,” I murmured while lighting my smoke.
    “Can I hold one of those?” Her tone softened.
    With a long exhale and as clearly as I could muster, I reiterated my position. “Fuck you.”
    “Yeah, whatever asshole white boy.” She straightened and puffed herself up even bigger, no doubt trying to be intimidating. “Look where you sittin’ at. You ain’t no better than him or me.”
    She was wrong of course. I had cigarettes and they didn’t.
    I let it drop and enjoyed the smoke. I hadn’t had a cigarette in nearly three years, but decided this evening on the way to the jail to pick up a pack for my mother. I walked into the convenient store and instead of buying Salem Menthols for her, I bought Camels for myself. It cost me $250 that I didn’t have to bail her out of jail. I was done paying for her.
    I smoked my cigarette down to the butt and went inside to wait in the lobby. Hour three of waiting just faded into hour four and I decided to take a nap. The lobby was devoid of real people. Two cops stood in the information booth and one cop kept busy behind thick glass in the discharge office. They had the same look of longing to get out as I imagined their charges did.
    I stretched out on one of the lobby’s padded bench seats and closed my eyes. A girl I dated for a while clawed from the depths of my memory. I shut Pam out years ago, but here she nagged again. I supposedly ruined her life by sending her down the road. For years after I dumped her, she would call me late at night in a drunken depression. During those one-sided conversations, I began to realize that I had only narrowly escaped my father’s fate.
    Poke ‗em and run, baby.
    A great commotion aroused me from my thoughts. I assumed a jailbreak and bolted up prepared to defend myself from the advancing criminal hordes.
    Through the square window in the thick door that led to the discharge area, I could see my flailing mother. She was frantically pounding her small frame against the steel door while jerking the handle in desperation to get it open.
    “I can’t get this fucking thing open,” she screamed at me. It sounded muffled from behind the door.
    “Mom, the guy has to buzz you out,” I said indicating to the cop filing in the back of the discharge office.
    She turned her attention toward the officer and began pounding on the glass to get the guy’s attention. He walked up to the front in exaggerated casualness with my mom raving and frothing. He flipped the switch for the mike.
    “Step away from the glass, ma’am, and I’ll buzz you out,” he deadpanned.
    My mother turned from the glass and starting jerking on the door handle before the cop had a chance to do anything. I could see she had started with her shaking thing. Her body trembled in its thin frame like a skeleton hanging in the wind.
    “Ma’am, please let go of the door and take three steps back.”
    In a moment of brief lucidity, my mother complied and the cop buzzed the door. She charged at the sound like a sprinter who heard a gun go off. The door flew open, narrowly missing me. My mother whisked by without a glance and shot out of the lobby. I gathered my nerves and walked out behind her. Let the drama begin.
    She had already scurried into the middle of the parking lot and sunk to her knees when I caught up with her. Her hair was a long frazzled mess and waved wildly as she tore through the contents of her tattered purse emptied on the asphalt. I could visibly see her body twitching and hear her smoke-weary lungs gasping for air as she freaked out.
    “Mom, what the hell are you doing?” I walked around in front of her and saw that she was crying hysterically.
    “Here! Here!” She threw two bottles of prescription pills at me. “Take this shit away from me! It’s evil! It’s evil! I can’t take this. What are they trying to do? It’s awful, so awful....” She ended in a moaning cry. For a second I nearly felt sorry for her.
    “Mom, quit acting like a fucking nut and put this shit back in your purse.” I bent down to help her.
    “No! Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me!” She had stopped crying for this next part of the act. “I smell like jail! I smell like jail piss. It’s in my hair. It’s in my clothes. It’s awful. Oh God, will I ever get it off of me?”
    I stood back up and kicked the prescription bottles back over toward her. “Fine, but get your shit back in your purse and let’s get out of here. If you keep acting like a goddamn nutcase here they’ll throw your ass back in jail.”
    “No! I’ll never go back to jail! I’d rather die.” She hastily stuffed her belongings back into her purse, leaving some of the contents behind, but not forgetting the pill bottles. She stood up and followed me to my 1979 Ford Fairmont.
    The dented passenger car door popped loudly in its hinges as I opened it, a recurring gift from a distant night of drinking at the bowling alley. My mother’s wavering frame slowly settled into the car seat and I closed the door with another good pop.
    As I walked around to the driver’s side, I noticed the sloppy black woman still lumped in her spot. She was shaking her pudgy head and smiling at me. The best I could muster was to flip her off as I drove away with a choking blue smokescreen flowing from the tailpipe.
    We drove for five minutes in complete silence. She wasn’t even crying any more. She just sat there clutching her purse and an envelope similar to the one carried earlier by the cigarette bum. Intuitively she must have realized that tears wouldn’t work on me this night.
    I abruptly broke down. “Mom, what the hell were you thinking?”
    “I don’t know. I just didn’t want the pills any more. I couldn’t control myself. It was awful in there and I was so happy to be out and I...”
    “Mom!” Already, frustration bubbled under my skin. “I’m not talking about your little scene in the parking lot. I’m talking about why you shoplifted.”
    “It’s that bitch Marcy.” She spit out the words like she always did to emphasize her hate. “That fucking bitch took off when the security guards stopped us. She just left me standing there. That fucking bitch. I bet she got away, too. I’m never talking to her again...”
    “Mom!” Firmly saying “mom” like you were telling a dog “no” was the only way to shut her up when she starting blathering. “Marcy getting away has nothing to do with why you shoplifted in the first fucking place.”
    “I know, I know.” She sounded defeated.
    “Well, why?”
    “I don’t know, Georgie. I guess I’m not perfect, like you.” She was spitting out the words again.
    I let it drop. There was no winning the situation for me here. There was no excuse that she could have given me that would have sufficed anyway.
    “Um, Georgie, can you do me a favor?” She used her fake honey voice that meant she wanted something.
    “It depends, mom.”
    “Okay. Um, is there any way that we can stop at a store and pick me up a pack of cigarettes?”
    “Not a problem. You’ve got money, right?” I already knew the answer and I don’t know why I provoked her. I guess the frustrations of 24 years just couldn’t stay in any longer.
    “No. Can you buy me a pack?”
    I exploded. “Jesus fucking Christ, mom! I just paid $250 to bail you out of jail - money that we both know I’ll never get back from you - and now you want to take more from me. How much am I supposed to give? I just can’t give any more!”
    “Well, how much have I fucking had to give?” I knew I was in for a lashing now. “When do I get back? I slaved raising you kids, goddamn it. The only reason you’re here is because of me!”
    “Really? I thought the only reason I’m here is because Aunt Kim convinced you not to abort me!”
    She burst in hysterical tears and began blubbering incoherently. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything from the beginning. I should have kept my mouth shut when I first picked her up. Now she had baited me into an argument and I said things that I knew hurt her badly. I felt like shit, which I promised myself I wouldn’t do.
    “Pull over, Georgie,” she whimpered. “Let me out of the car.”
    “No, mom. Don’t be stupid.”
    She stared at me and leveled her voice into a serious tome. “I said, let me out of the car.”
    “No, mom. Relax.”
    She turned and reached for the car door. Before I could stop her she had the door cracked open. The only thing preventing it from swinging wide and her barreling from the car was the bended sheet metal that required a little more force for the door to fully open.
    I swerved over to the shoulder of the road and hit the brakes. Just in time as she had forced the door to pop open and was crawling out.
    “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled after her. “Get back in the fucking car!”
    She continued crawling away from the car on the shoulder of the road, screaming incoherently. I cursed at her and the second I decided to bail her out of jail. It would have been so much easier to let her sit there in a cell. I got out of the car and caught up to her.
    “Leave me alone,” she shot at me as I came up beside her. “Go back to your precious little life and forget all about me.”
    “Mom, come on, get back in the car,” I pleaded. “I’m sorry I said what I said. I didn’t mean it. You can’t crawl the whole way home.”
    “I’ll hitchhike.”
    “Mom, I apologized. I’m really sorry. And I have some cigarettes. Now, get back in the fucking car.” My patience was almost up. I decided that if she didn’t come back now, then she would have to hitch a ride.
    

    The mention of cigarettes must have jogged the sensible part of her brain because she abruptly stood up, turned around and stomped back to the car. I got in and threw her the pack of Camels before pulling back into traffic.
    She looked at them in disgust and said, “I can’t smoke these.”
    “It’s what I have.”
    “Well, I can’t smoke these.” She tossed the pack up on the dash. “I guess I’ll have to hang out at the Mini-Mart next to my building and beg for a pack.”
    “I guess you will.”
    We continued a little further in silence when she started digging around in her purse again. I could almost see the years of grime and mold and who knew what else sort of shit falling from her purse all over my car. Not that the car was clean, but it was clean of her.
    “Mom,” I said, almost regretting that I had to ask, “What are you looking for?”
    “I need a Xanax.”
    “Well, wait until we get home. You’re spilling your shit all over my car.”
    “Your car is dirty anyway,” she again spat. “And you don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
    “You’re in my fucking car! Goddamn it! What’s wrong with you?”
    She stopped and looked at me like I had punched her in the face. Her mouth was agape, showing all of her crummy, rotting nicotine-stained teeth. Her thin lips were covered in cold sores and her eyes sunk into her grey skin. She had once been attractive. All of my friends in high school even made sure to tell me so. That always drove me nuts because I realized her true ugliness. I bet now they wouldn’t even recognize this shadow of a woman.
    She slowly began to put her stuff back into her purse and didn’t say anything to me, but her drooping face was puffy and it seemed like she was about to cry. I knew it was part of an act, but I couldn’t help the guilt.
    “Okay, mom.” I calmed my voice. It was quivering, but calm. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Go ahead and find your Xanax.”
    She immediately started shuffling through her purse again in a flurry and I thought I could see just a hint of a smile cross her face.
    “I would’ve never spoken to my mother like that.” She mumbled under her breath.
    “Sure. I’m sorry.”
    “I don’t know what I did to you kids to make you treat me like this.” She was really on a roll now. Just having a good time with it. “I raised three boys with no help. Your father didn’t help me. Nobody did. And you were bad boys. All three of you. And what do I get? Nothing. I get screamed at because I look for something in my purse. I can’t do anything without you kids putting me down.”
    She paused to open her pills. What was amazing to me was that she was so wasted away that she could barely walk. She could barely write her own name because her hands were so shaky and unsure. But she could open the top of a pill bottle, dump out the exact number she needed and pop them into her mouth in one graceful motion. It was as simple as flipping a light switch. Years and years of practice I guess.
    “I need a drink to take this.”
    “Fine. I’ll stop right up here. What do you want?”
    I pulled into the Circle K. It was one of those that still had the old time gas pumps with rotating numbers in the middle of a bad part of town. It was full of thugs buying malt liquor, I was sure. Not that I cared, but these places always depressed me.
    “A Coke,” she said.
    “Mom, what about your diabetes?” She never failed to throw around her ailments in my face. Her diabetes was killing her, her high blood pressure was killing her, her panic attacks were killing her, her back was killing her. She was a jumble of diseases and pain and sorrow, and everybody within earshot would know about it if they gave her half a second to talk.
    “I don’t have diabetes,” she mumbled. I sat there stunned. For years I had been pestering her about controlling her diabetes and eating properly and exercising and all the other stuff you’re supposed to do when you have a chronic ailment that could kill you.
    “What do you mean you don’t have diabetes? What the fuck?”
    “I don’t know, Georgie, I don’t know anymore,” she said as she began digging in her purse again. “When I had those two mini-strokes they ran some tests and they said I was hypoglycemic or some shit. I don’t know what they are talking about. Maybe I have diabetes, I don’t know. I don’t pay attention.”
    “What do you mean you don’t pay attention? Mini-strokes? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
    “Stop screaming at me,” she yelled back. “Why do you always have to put me down? I can’t take it anymore. Just stop putting me down!”
    “I’m not putting you down, mother.” There was no hope in talking to her anymore. I knew I should never have started any sort of conversation and just let everything go. The goal was to pick her up, bring her home, drop her off and then get back to my apartment for a night of solo drinking without another thought about her. “I’ll get your Coke. Just wait here.”
    “Georgie?” It was the sweet voice again. “Since you’re going in, you think you could pick me up a pack of Salem Menthols?”
    So, it was all a plan to get me to buy her a pack of cigarettes. I only realized then that a professional pill-popper could take her meds dry. I was tired and defeated.
    Simmering, I silently got out of the car and left my mother digging in her purse. I was the only white guy in the store and the stares let me know. I casually walked over and grabbed a Coke in a plastic bottle. Just the medicine a diabetic needs. Maybe. If they are indeed a diabetic. Who knew? Not my mother.
    I grabbed her Coke and stood longingly in front of the beer case. But God, could I use a beer right now. Just one wouldn’t hurt and it sure would help me get through the rest of the ride home. I turned away to pay. No use in me going to jail.
    I asked for my mom’s smokes, paid the tired guy behind the counter, walked through a couple of gangstas standing at the door and got into the car. I checked my pocket just to make sure they didn’t lift my wallet and threw the cigarettes to my mom.
    “Thank you, Georgie,” mom gushed. “You’re such a good son.”
    As I pulled away, she lit her smoke and then began digging again in her purse, getting her debris all over the place. I could just imagine the bugs and lice jumping out of her ratty purse.
    “Christ, mom. What are you digging for now?”
    “My sleeping pills. My Tramazipan is missing.”
    “You told me you quit taking your Tramazipan.” I pulled into the apartment complex where she lived with her sister, my Aunt Kim. It was a disgusting place. My aunt was on social security, so she could live there rent-free, but it was filled with mentally deranged people and other societal fuck ups.
    “I didn’t say that. I could never quit taking my Tramazipan,” she said, ever digging and sucking on the cigarette held firmly in her scabby lips. “I need it to sleep.”
    “Mom, just last week you told me that you quit taking that stuff because some doctor told you that you didn’t need it with all the other downers you’re taking.”
    “I don’t know. I go on and off of it,” she said. “It’s not in here anywhere.”
    “Mom, you just told me you could never quit taking your Tramazipan, which is why you supposedly never said to me that you quit taking your Tramazipan.” As I was talking I knew I should shut my trap. No good could ever come from trying to uncover the levels of bullshit my mother could shovel. “But now you tell me you go on and off of it. Which is it?”
    She slammed her purse in her lap and her long ash crumbled off the cigarette. “Why do you keep putting me down!”
    “Why do you always lie to me?” My blood was boiling. I jerked the car to a stop in front of my aunt’s building. Just a few minutes in the car with her and I was already out of my mind. There was nothing left except to give in to the insanity and let it flow over. The great blackness of her misery consumed me.
    “I don’t lie! You’re calling me a liar and I don’t lie. I’m tired of you kids always calling me a liar and putting me down.” She threw open the passenger door with a loud pop and got out of the car in an overly dramatic huff. She was in the process of slamming the door shut when she caught herself and poked her head into the car.
    “Hey, hon? If you find my Tramazipan, can you bring it up here tomorrow?” Magically, the sweetness had returned.
    “Sure, mom.” I sighed in relief as she walked away from the car.
    I drove away, the lights of the Fairmont illuminating my mother briefly as she shuffled like a bag lady toward the door.
    A little way up the road, I pulled into the crappy Circle K. I walked around to the passenger side of the car and popped the door. I reached under the seat and after pulling out several Doritos bags and crushed Big Gulp cups, I grasped a pill bottle.
    I held up the bottle to the greasy lights of the gas station to read the prescription label. Tramazipan.
    I smiled to myself and headed into the store. After all, I wasn’t a professional pill-popper like my mom. I needed some sort of liquid, like perhaps a beer for the road, to get those pills down.



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