Castration Epic (Part 3)

Bald, ashamed, smelling like urine, the fingers on my right hand broken, trapped in the back seat, I stare out as we drive through a wealthy neighborhood of Los Angeles. My grandfather is pointing to different condominium properties he owns, as well as the buying price and their worth today. My mother and Shelley listen in silent awe, and Shelley has taken off her bikini top. We arrive at my grandmother’s house. I rush into the living room, where a television is blaring, then into the back porch, the kitchen, looking for the bathroom. Instead I end up in the back bedroom with blue wallpaper where my father is sitting in just a pair of stained white briefs. His head is in his hands, and a six pack of beer is beside him. He has gained over a hundred pounds. He looks up at me, tears in his eyes, a kind of crustacean forming around his mouth. – George, I’m so happy you brought the dog, he says. – What dog? I say. Immediately, Alex, my dog as a child, comes running into the room, filled with joy, barking. Charlotte, my favorite cat, slowly follows him and watches as he rolls around with my dad. Alex tries to sniff Charlotte and she viciously smacks his face. He yelps. She stands up on her back legs and runs beside a coat rack and pretends to be the coat rack, her arms out in a “Y” pattern. [She was posing as the SPIDER KITTY, a terrifying castrating demon who haunted me as a child.] Then she leaps forward and grabs Alex. – You’re being a baby! she shouts. - You must stand on your back legs and stop acting like a dog. She pulls him up and tries to teach him to play paddy-cake. My mother and the black man now enter the bedroom [yes, he returns again, as if just to remind me that my dream has no part for him] and my mother begins talking about how dogs and cats are much smarter than we give them credit for. Charlotte is now smacking Alex’s face repeatedly with her paw, repeating the paddycake rhyme. Alex is losing consciousness. Human teeth are falling out of his mouth. He is looking at me sadly, as though mourning that he is human. My dad sits back on the bed, gloomily, and drinks the last of the beers. – Alex, I’m sorry, I say, but my voice is only a murmur. I run my tongue along my gums and realize I have lost all of my teeth.