Russell Banks: Lost Memory of Skin

How long have you owned him?

Eleven-twelve years maybe. Since I was a kid. But I don’t exactly own him. I mean it’s not like he’s my slave or something.

He’s your friend.

Yeah. You could say that. You know, if you’re the guy named Lawrence Somerset I’m thinking of you’re kind of a freak. Even down here.

Don’t believe everything you read.

I don’t. But be careful of Iggy. He doesn’t like freaks.

On the flat a short ways behind the Kid’s tent a shirtless yellow-skinned man named Paco lies on his back on a homemade weight bench pumping iron. Paco is a surly Dominican with muscles in his arms like tattooed bowling balls and a stomach like corrugated iron. He drops the barbell onto the rack with a loud clank. He sits up straight and calls over to the Kid, Just blow him off, man! The dude’s a fuckin’ baby-banger.

That true, Larry? You a baby-banger?

God, no!

If you are then you must not be the dude I’m thinking of. He was into little girls.

Everyone down here is the same, I thought. Everyone’s here for the same reasons, right?

Fuck no. Baby-bangers, man, those guys are the worst. The lowest of the low.

What, some of us are worse than others? C’mon. I don’t buy it.

Buy it, man. Guys here for rape or what they call sexual contact with teenaged girls, they’re on top. Like ol’ Paco there. He claims to be a rapist. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Then come guys convicted of sexual contact with young boys. And below them are guys who did time for sexual contact with young girls. And way way below them are the baby-bangers. There’s other categories too. Like fags and straights. Straights are ranked higher than fags.

Well, I’m certainly straight. And I’m no baby-banger. Jesus! That’s disgusting.

You’re disgusted, eh? I told you there was a kind of ranking.

What about you, Kid? Where are you in the offender hierarchy?

The Kid turns his back and ducks into his tent. Figure it out for yourself, man. I gotta feed my pit bull.

IGGY HAS BEEN THE KID’S MAIN FRIEND FOR all these years and sometimes his only friend but their relationship did not get off to a good start. The Kid’s mom arrived home from her trip to Mexico in a cab and lugged her suitcase up the crumbling cement walk to the porch and when she couldn’t find her key she banged impatiently on the screened door. The Kid was alone in his bedroom at the back of the house, a small dark room that was once a toolshed made of plywood located under a mango tree at the far end of the backyard until Kyle who was one of his mother’s boyfriends and wanted a little more privacy shoved the shed on two-by-four skids up to the back of the house where he bolted the shed to the exterior wall with metal straps and cut a door into the cinder block wall where a window off the kitchen had been. Until then it had been a single-bedroom house and the one bedroom had belonged to his mom and whoever was sleeping with her and the Kid slept on the couch in the living room which wasn’t too bad since he got to watch a lot of what he wanted on TV. At first when thanks to Kyle he got his own room he missed having all-night access to the TV and being able to keep track of the men who passed back and forth through the living room on their way to the kitchen from his mother’s bedroom but when his mother finally bought him a laptop computer which was required that year for every middle school student in the state he was glad to spend all his time in the new little dark room in back and lost track both of what was on TV and who was sleeping with his mother. Although now and then he took a peek at both. More than now and then actually. Especially the TV. When she was out at night he watched porn on pay-per-view until finally the monthly bills from the cable company got so high she checked the specific charges and ordered the parental control option. No more watching porn on my dime, mister!

She banged on his bedroom window which was opposite his computer screen and could have given her a view of what he was watching there so he clicked away to a different website and then looked over at his mother. Her face was red and sweating from the summer heat.

For God’s sake open the damn door and let me in! Didn’t you hear me knock?

He got up and slid open the window and smiled in the way he knew calmed people when they were excited or angry.

I had the air conditioner on high, Mom. I couldn’t hear you. Welcome home, Mom.

I can’t find my keys. Come and open the door and help me with my suitcase. I’ve got a present for you. The house better not be a mess.

It’s not, Mom. Don’t worry.

And it wasn’t. He was a neat boy, more orderly and in fact a better housekeeper than his mother and whenever she left him alone at home and came back the house was cleaner than when she left. He actually enjoyed the chance to live in the house alone for a few days and nights and put everything right — squaring the pillows on the couch and mopping the tile floors and scrubbing the kitchen counters and restacking the dishes according to size and use and lining up the cups and glasses in military rows. When he could busy himself cleaning and rationally organizing the house he was less lonely and almost didn’t notice his mother’s absence and sometimes even forgot to remember when she was returning.

He opened the door and grabbed onto her suitcase and dragged it into the living room and she followed. She kissed him on the cheek and chucked him under the chin with her thumb and forefinger as was her habit. Her smell was a vinegary mix of sweat and cologne and her thick red hair was damp and tangled and her mascara was smeared from the heat. She wore a pale blue nylon tracksuit for comfort and bright yellow high-top sneakers as a fashion statement. She looked tired and not especially happy to be home from Mexico.

I thought you wasn’t coming back till tomorrow or the next day.

I brought you a present you’re gonna just love. Wait’ll you see it.

She lifted the suitcase onto the sofa and flipped the latches, opened it, and took out a shoe box — size carton with a thin blue ribbon around it. She handed him the carton and hugged him.

It’s for your birthday! Happy birthday, little buddy.

My birthday’s not till September.

So? It’s a problem I’m a little early?

Two months early.

Better than two months late, ingrate. Go ahead, open it!

He slowly untied the ribbon and lifted the top off the box and there in a pile of straw lay the pepper green baby iguana, eyes closed, its body shaped like a carving knife unmoving as if sleeping or maybe dead, he couldn’t be sure which. Or maybe neither sleeping nor dead but instead carved out of jade. It was a beautiful thing. It looked like an ancient piece of Mayan jewelry on a fine gold chain that a brocaded priest dressed in robes for a religious ceremony hangs from his neck.

The Kid reached into the cardboard box and picked up the iguana and suddenly it came to life and twisted its body around as if it were a snake and bit the Kid on the meat of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, clamping onto it like pliers and refusing to let go even when the Kid as if he’d been scalded shook his hand in the air trying to get rid of it. He yowled in pain and kept flipping his hand to shake off the lizard but it clung by its dry-boned mouth to the soft lump of skin and muscle, not chewing or biting hard enough to break through the flesh but clipped precisely to it by rows of small inward-slanting serrated teeth so that it could not be removed without tearing the flesh.