Prologue
They say the key to writing a good story is a catchy title and great opening line. I suck at both, so I guess I'll never become Herman Melville. This may be a true story, it may not. Maybe some of it is true and some isn't. It's a story I have to tell, I can't wait anymore. Ultimately, it's the story itself that's important. I'll say this much- the names have been changed to protect the guilty.
I was born just at the end of the Great War...the one that was supposed to end all wars. Not the first one that was to end all wars; the second one. I don't remember being born, but I must have been there, they say it's traumatic. I've watched kids being born and I'd say it's more traumatic for the mother than the child. Most of the people that talk about the trauma of birth are a bunch of New Age fuck-ups. Anyway, I may not remember the trauma of birth, but I remember well the trauma of what came after: My name's Ray Cusumano and this is my story.
I can't say I remember my father, he came around three or four times and didn't stay that long, maybe a week or a month at a time- I wasn't timing him. The only thing I really remember is that when I was around three, he brought me a set of Compton's Encyclopedia. It was how I learned how to read and later it became a vehicle for escaping what was to become my childhood. He didn't come around much after that.
My mother, I don't remember that well either. Mostly she sat in the front room and watched for my father to come back. She would just sit there and cry. It gave me a lot of freedom I guess, she didn't pay much attention to me which left me free to run around the streets of Boston's North End. For anybody that doesn't know, the North End was the Italian slum at that time. It was for years the safest place in Boston, kids played in the streets. Old people sat on their stoops at night playing Scopa or Briscola and talking. The cops seldom came around, we didn't need them. If the Sun went down and you didn't belong there, they found you a couple of days later floating down by the locks.
She died when I was five, I don't know from what. All I remember is something about the bathroom, I don't know what. Some people took me, Aunt Pearl and Uncle Eddie. I never saw them before. All I remember about them is Uncle Eddie had a stack of dirty books behind his chair, with naked ladies and I liked them very much. I wasn't there long, maybe a week, maybe two. Then things got bad.
I spent about the five years getting passed around a bunch of queers that liked little kids. I know this isn't politically correct, but I got to tell the story the way I remember it. Sometimes they would have parties and guys would get drunk and do stuff and take pictures of me. There was one guy, Willie, for some reason I kept winding up back with him. He was cruel. Sometimes he would light a cigarette and tell me if I didn't do something by the time he was finished, he would kill me. I believed him, he was mean. Sometimes he would hurt me just for nothing.
Some of them weren't that bad. After a while they couldn't hurt me anymore. I was already dead inside, but I didn't know it. Kids just don't think about things in those terms. There was one guy, Bill, he was married and he didn't hurt me. There was something almost sad about him, in his eyes. His wife was sad too, even when she smiled. One day she was sitting in her chair and I went over and put my hand on her shoulder and she just started crying, for no reason. She was pretty nice, she bought me books and taught me arithmetic. I still had my encyclopedia, they went everywhere with me. They were pretty much all I had. When I read them I could go anywhere and be anything I wanted to be. But, somehow I always wound up back with Willie. I don't know if a little kid can make a vow or not, but I promised myself that one day I would look down on him dead.
One night when I was about ten, I was sitting reading. The guy that had me lived in Mattapan, I think, or somewhere around there, maybe Hyde Park, I don't remember. Anyway, I was reading when there was a loud crash and the front door came off the hinges. I looked out and there was the biggest man I ever saw. I could just barely see light past him in the hall, he took up the whole door frame. The queer came out of his room and the big guy picked him up like a sack of flour and threw him off one of the doorways in the house. He laid there and wasn't moving. The guy came to me and I was scared shitless, I thought he was going to kill me.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
I just fuckin looked at him. I thought I was gonna piss my pants.
"I'm your Uncle Arthur, your mother's brother and I been looking for you for a long time."
I don't know if any of you have ever felt relief like this or not, it was physical. I could feel it all through my body. We got my encyclopedia, my books and what clothes I had and left. The queer still wasn't moving.
Next: Uncle Arthur