Left-Handed Engineers From MARZ
Monologue - Zephyr's childhood, part II
"We spent less than six months in the homeless shelter, I'm pretty sure.
Then my mother hooked up with a man named Jimmy Lee Homer and we moved in
with him.
"Jimmy Lee lived in an old trailer home way out in the middle of nowhere.
I don't know how old he was... sometimes he seemed ancient, but he was a
member of the local drug scene, and at the age of 8 my perspective was skewed.
He was quirky and unstable, even paranoid. He kept all of his money in cash
form in a Monopoly box under his bed. Make of that what you will.
"Our new home had some definite advantages. For one, we lived in relative
isolation, and I really appreciated the fact that we didn't have all sorts
of neighbors breathing down our necks. There was a marsh behind the house
that just went on and on and made a wonderful (if dangerous) private playground.
Stairs into the house were minimal... I really hated stairs.
"My new school, however, was another matter. On the plus side, I suppose,
I learned that white people were not in the minority. I was too young to
comprehend racism, but until that time I was the only blond person I'd ever
seen. This newfound sameness was overshadowed by the hostile reception the
schoolchildren gave my sister and me. The tormenting started almost the minute
we first walked into the school building.
"I was once again placed in special ed, which was safer than the regular
classrooms. My intellect again made me the quiet master of my domain, although
not quite on the level I had attained at my old school. Because it was a
smaller, rural school, we 'retards' weren't nearly as separated from our peers
as at the old school. Portia had it even worse; she was mainstreamed and
discovered that her cute, badass persona wasn't at all well received. I
think she set a record for the first-grader most frequently disciplined.
She may even have been the only first-grader in the history of the town to
be suspended. I arranged to be sick that week so I could keep her company.
"Jimmy Lee 'mysteriously' passed away, leaving no will, but with the several
thousand dollars in cash he left behind, Mom somehow beat the legal system
and kept the house. I really don't know much about that. I had liked Jimmy
Lee, and the fact that Mom was a lot nicer to me when he was present, but
I didn't miss the drug parties. My mother bought Portia and me twin beds,
though, with the extra money, which made the place more like home for us.
We shared a bedroom and everything in it. For us, sharing was a survival
skill. It strengthened our alliance against our mother and the world.
"School got progressively worse until one day I snapped and smeared Marv
Watson, one of the toughest fourth graders ever to walk the earth in my
opinion, all over the sidewalk. It was sheer luck and fury on my part,
but it earned me a reputation as someone not to mess with. Portia's life
got easier as an extention of that incident. When people saw us together,
they often walked the other way. That and the circumstances of Jimmy Lee's
death were probably the origin of the infamous DeCastle bad rep. I've heard
that the rumors still fly, 25 years later.
"Another unfortunate effect of Jimmy Lee's death was that my mother started
dating again. That was the origin of 'Father Figure Du Jour,' which admittedly
was partially the fault of Portia and myself. Every time Marlone brought
home a new beau, we'd push his limits mercilessly. There were some real gems,
too. Most of them were a little uncertain about getting involved with a
single mother in the first place, and when Marlone's kids turned out to be
freakish terrors, they'd conveniently find somewhere else to be.
"Mom also found somewhere else to be more often than not. She held two
jobs, and after the bar where she waitressed closed she'd spend most nights
feeding her alcohol addiction. Sometimes she'd go home with one of her 'friends'
and get herself a hit or two of heroin, as well. Portia and I waited in terror
most nights, afraid to go to sleep until she came home and we knew she was
all right, and afraid of that moment when she'd come staggering through the
door and project her problems violently onto us. More times than I could
count, we had to go out into the yard where she'd collapsed and drag her in
before sunrise came and passers-by could spot her.
"Oh, and then there was the Christmas eve she didn't come home. I called
the emergency room, the bar, and the police station and made like it was no
big deal while I asked if they knew where she was. Portia was flipping out.
I think that was the first time in my life I thought I was going to die
of anxiety. Mom finally came home the next evening. Apparently she was
sobering up so she could drive.
"With our mother gone most of the time, the burden of maintaining the house
fell on me. I learned to cook very quickly; my specialties were scrambled
eggs and macaroni and cheese, because food stamps paid for the ingredients.
I also learned how to clean the house. The problem was, the better I got
at it, the more severely Mom would admonish me when I slipped up.
"My release was in building things. I gradually learned when I was little
that if I didn't quite fit the world, I could do certain things to make my
world fit me. My first inventions were little things designed to make my
own life easier, and contraptions that replaced the items we couldn't afford
to buy or repair. I'm especially proud of the 'doorbell' I rigged when I
was only nine. I invented a whole series of tools I could use despite my
inability to squeeze or grip. Portia assisted me whenever I needed her.
I think I instilled in her the beginnings of a work ethic, and she loved helping
her big brother. A man who owned a custom parts place in town taught me
the casting and molding technique when I was ten. I got a severe whupping
for the afternoon I spent with him, but I made so much use out of that skill
that I consider it a major turning point."
"They tried to mainstream me going into fifth grade. I think in fourth
grade I'd gotten a little sloppy about being an underachiever. I spent three
days in the regular classroom and then decided enough was enough, and went
back to the special ed room. Yeah, I've made some weird choices in my time,
but I had really good reasons at the time. After a couple of weeks of giving
me a hard time, the administration finally relented and let me back in.
"Sixth grade was the start of junior high, which in my town was attached
to the high school. I liked that. I can't say I made any actual friends
of the older kids... they were more like allies. I was a novelty to various
high school cliques throughout that year... mostly the fringe groups and outsiders,
but I wasn't picky. However, I was very distrustful, which was probably
a very good thing. Portia had a much more difficult time not getting sucked
in, a couple years later.
"I made a few strides in my favorite hobby that year, and had a few setbacks
as well. For one, I wasn't allowed to take shop. If you can believe that!
I tried to prove to the administration that I was already reasonably experienced
in the field, but they didn't want to hear it. But I didn't make a big deal
of it because I had a job that fulfilled my need to put things together.
"I worked for Mr. Johns, the town plumber. Whenever the plumbing in the
trailer burst or otherwise broke, we called him, but we couldn't afford to
pay him as often as we needed him. So I decided to hover over him while he
was working and try to learn something. I mean, if I could build a go-cart
or paint the entire house, I could replace a faucet head. It didn't take
Mr. Johns long to figure out what I was doing, and he offered to take me along
to the occasional job (after school, once it started). I ended up working
for him three afternoons a week for at least half a year, and the perks were
great - conversation, supper, and a few dollars when he could spare them.
"Oh, yes, about that go-cart... that was a story in itself, but it was a
major turning point in my life as well. I learned that I could build something
that could kill people. No, I didn't kill anyone, but it did give me a twisted
sense of power. And that, in turn, helped me cope with my mother better.
By scaring the bejeezus out of myself, I ultimately became stronger.
"Eventually I learned all I could from Mr. Johns and he encouraged me to
find someone else to bother. By that time, maintaining my low grades at
school had become routine, because my priorities lay elsewhere. I sought
another apprenticeship and finally talked Mr. Paise, the fix-it shop man,
into taking me on. He was grouchy, cynical, demanding, and he didn't pay
me a cent... but I learned so much while working for him that I can barely
begin to describe it all. For one, I learned professionalism and customer
service. People needed a really good reason to entrust their machinery and
appliances to a 13-year-old, and a DeCastle, no less. I needed to far surpass
expectations to compensate for just being me, and I did. Mr. Paise never
gave me a solitary compliment, but he kept me on for a year and a half, and
then had me working a shift every week or two until I left town at age 19.
"When Portia entered junior high, her grades were so dismal that several
of her classes were with me. I'm sure some of the teachers still insist
that was a mistake, but being a holy terror with my little sister was so
much more fulfilling than wasting all my time doing as little as physically
possible by myself. For the record, I never did anything illegal or destructive;
however, I'm not extending that claim to Portia. As time went on, she got
caught up in what little outcast subculture we had in town. A couple of
immigrants from LA livened things up a bit. By the time she was 15, Portia
was a full-fledged punk - if a rural one."
"My best friend, of course, was Portia. School was always an adventure
with Portia. Maybe as often as one out of every three days, I'd go to school
for no other reason than to hang out with her... or keep her out of trouble,
or whatever. And she was more likely to attend if I were there, so in some
ways it was reciprocal.
"Portia was, to say the least, a handful. She was also born with FAE,
but her symptoms were much more classic. I've got the bad heart, nerve
damage, maybe a few other things I can blame on it... anyway, I may have
a bat or two in my belfry, but Portia used to be a textbook case. She was
hyper in a happy, nonstop sort of way; she'd have made ADHD look fun, if
that term had been used back then. She had almost no sense of property,
a terrible memory, and had difficulty distinguishing the truth from lies.
She was always trying to make people happy, but, failing that, she'd infuriate
them. It was generally a bad idea to get annoyed at her bounciness, because,
as cute as her wrath was, she had a lot of it. However, she was loyal to
a fault, which suited me just fine. After all, I was the one she was loyal
to. She also had a certain innate wisdom that most people weren't quick
enough to catch.
"Portia had a few real friends and a neverending parade of acquaintances...
homies or whatever. Her friends didn't like me much, with the possible exception
of Salamander Cortez. He was a sweet, mild kid who was really only a punk
by association, as far as I could tell. Portia and Salamander got serious
for a while later in their relationship, but for the most part they were just
good friends. I'm glad it was him she had the long-term friendship with,
instead of some of the other characters she hung around with. But I digress.
"Then there was a kid named Benny, who always seemed to be in several of
my classes, for years and years. Benny wasn't the brightest candle on the
birthday cake, which in itself isn't unusual when you're taking special ed
classes. Benny was that certain flavor of stupid that gets old very quickly:
obnoxious, dramatically immature, the sort that inspires disdain and disapproval
no matter how hard you try to treat him with respect. He was the one who
somehow managed to sit behind me in every class and whisper at inopportune
times, "Pssst! Zephyr!" followed by a description of the mind-blowingly stupid
thing he had done the previous weekend. He expected me to have all the answers,
no matter how many times I told him I didn't know, and he was always shocked
and abhorred to learn that I hadn't studied either. Until the day we graduated,
he seemed to fully expect me to be his surrogate brain.
"When I was about, oh, 17, I met a new kid named Neil. Neil was a much
more pleasant brand of stupid. And, as luck would have it, we met before
he had been familiarized with the DeCastle reputation. When my peers saw
that somebody actually liked me, they tried everything they could to dissuade
him from being my friend, but he was too smart (or too stupid, or both) to
fall for it. At least for a while. I have to admit that I wasn't the easiest
person to be friends with, but we did all right for a while.
"Most of my friends were adults, though. Nadine Paise topped the list,
and John may have grudgingly admitted that he liked me if pressed hard enough.
Mrs. Gomez and Soledad were my tightest allies at school. In junior high
I made the acquaintances of several high school badasses and outsiders, including
Teddy and Dale Buck, who were my employers a couple of years later when I
worked at Buck's Auto Shop. Then there was Miri, the single least effeminate
girl I had ever known at that time, who probably would have adopted me as
her little brother if... er, circumstances had been different. I never did
find out what happened to her.
"I ran into Mrs. Lin, an old teacher of mine, in a department store last
year. She had always struck me as being a bit too nervous to be working with
bottom-of-the-barrel kids like us, and she confirmed that she had given up
teaching the year after I had her class. She mentioned that some of the things
I had done contributed to that decision... I'm still processing this information,
mostly because the incidents she sited had been purely defensive actions
on my part. Aside from her, I haven't seen anyone from school since I left.
With the obvious exception of Portia, who, by the way, has matured a great
deal since then."
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