Watching Soap Operas with the Repo Men;
When they kidnapped me the third time I remembered the coins in their mouths. The shape of a quarter pressed out against their cheeks. I like the way her hair smells, one of them said. Another smacked the man hard and said, we’re here to do a job not sample the merchandise. Back then we all used Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo, you know, the one that promisedno more tears and we laughed because we were nothing if not mournful. Our home was a bank and sadness filled the vaults — but that’s not important now. What you need to know is that four men stood over my bed and apologized for what they were about to do. These were the kind of men who walked through your front door without masks because they already had a set of your keys. Consider us repo men, they said the first time, and you’re what we like to call collateral.
One of them, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Tom Selleck in his Magnum P.I. days, held a rope and a bandage in his hands. We’ve got to tie you up and cover your eyes — don’t take it personal. Again? The rope makes my wrists itch, I said. What does she mean again, Tom Selleck said. The other men, who were busy packing my books and some of my warm clothes, sighed and said, we’ve been here before. Don’t you remember the baby blue Caddy parked out front? Her dad’s the Russian with the gambling problem. He’s not my dad, I protested. He’s some asshole my mother married. I recognized Bruno from the second nabbing and he rolled his eyes and said,fine, her stepfather’s the asshole with the gambling problem. Bruno led me out the front door and into the night.
The kid doesn’t need to be tied up. She knows the drill.
Outside, the snow made the repo men’s car invisible. It was the coldest night of the year, the kind of cold where the wind felt like razor blades nicking at your skin. Only a few hours ago I sat in front of the TV eating boxed macaroni and cheese while my mother and the Russian took a taxi to Atlantic City, their faces hot with desperation. I fell asleep in my mother’s rabbit coat — I did this a lot lately, trying to remember what it felt like to be safe before the Russian brought home snow on the coffee table and chips at the casino. Bruno fiddled with the radio and settled on 1010 WINS.
Do I get to watch cartoons this time? I said. You wouldn’t know it by looking at them, but the repo men lived for their soap operas. They huddled around re-runs of General Hospital and Days of Our Lives, and sometimes I’d mess with them by giving away parts of the plot. When Bruno dropped me off after the second kidnapping, he took my mother aside and said, I know it isn’t my business and you’re all paid up with Eddie, but you’re damaging that kid of yours with all the crap you let her watch. What ten-year-old child has seen The Shining five times? Who goes around saying Luke raped Laura? In response, my mother said, Luke did rape Laura. It’s better she knows this now. Then my mother laughed as she closed the door. It’s not the TV that will do her in, she said. Now, in the car, I begged for Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones — I wasn’t picky. Give me something, anything, other than the story of a girl who gets hauled away from her house in the dead of night because her parents kept forgetting what happens when you don’t keep up with the 50% interest payments on all-cash loans.
We were on the beach in Coney Island when my mother decided to pick a fight with the sand. She kicked at it, threw empty Colt 45s at it, screeching on volume 10 that no one owned her. This was two years before the Russian and I’d started to feel as if the world was no longer safe. I was eight and I’d already begun to navigate my mother’s moods. One day we’d be feasting on Gino’s Pizza on Seventh Avenue and the next I’d have to drag her body out from the dryer where she’d cried and fallen asleep on damp sheets. When I’d rouse her she’d cry out that I was just another person pulling the needle off the record. I’m not like you, she said. I don’t want to live with the volume turned down. I want to hear the music, all of it, as loud as I can. There was no music in the laundromat, only sorrow, and I’d bear the weight of her all the way home. A few months later, the Russian moved in as a boarder, at first, then he became her lover, and I moved from the changing the sheets in the room she and I shared, to sleeping on top of them, in my room, alone. The only time I heard him speak Russian was when he was fucking my mother. I’d hear her head bang against the wall and in those seemingly intimate moments she cried out for a translation he wouldn’t give her. I understood then that his language was his retreat — a way in which he could remain forever, blissfully, alone.
Was his Cyrillic her written music?
We watched Barney Miller, Three’s Company, and Welcome Back, Carter. I wondered aloud about my cartoons and puppets in technicolor. We don’t have those channels, Tom Selleck said. He left me with a plate of cold fish sticks and Idaho mashed potatoes. If you asked me now why I hate fish I would hand you a box of frozen sticks in response. I’d been here for three days, the longest I’d been, and all I wanted was Big Bird and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They’re acting like we’re running a fucking day care center, Bruno said when I asked what took my parents so long to collect me. The repo men held conference in the corner of the small room in the house in which they kept me, and Tom Selleck came over and asked me if I wanted to be an actress. All you’d need to do is act scared, kid. Just like on TV. I shook my head, confused, and Bruno said, play like you’re Danny Torrence in Room 237. He pressed the blade of his knife to my bottom lip. My body went cold and numb. Tom Selleck crouched down in front of me, the lens of video camera in my face. Hold that, kid, Bruno said. Show me terror; show me fear.
The repo men reported to Charlie. He was a reasonable man who had kids and grandkids of his own. After a week in the room he pulled up a chair and said, you’ve got one fucked up family. This was the year everyone watchedThe Thorn Birds, and the repo men considered this the Hail Mary of soap operas. You’d need a crowbar or Charlie to wrench them away from the TV. I could’ve made a break for it, crawled out the window, and run down the street. I could’ve screamed, but I didn’t. This was the first time in a while I’d felt safe. What happens if they don’t come? I said, eating my way through a carton of Fig Newtons. Charlie shook his head and said, honestly, kid, I didn’t think it’d come to this. Who up and leaves for Florida when their kid is holed up with a loan shark? Who does this? All I could think about was the day when my mother went crazy on the beach and nearly drowned because no lifeguard was going to tell her how far out she could go. Later, she told me that breathing underwater was like blowing the biggest balloons.
I asked Charlie if he was going to kill me. Jesus, he said. I’m a businessman, not an animal. A few days later, Bruno and Tom Selleck dropped me off in front of my apartment building and they handed me a wad of twenties and a copy of my house keys. Get yourself some food, Bruno said. What about my parents? Can’t I stay with you until they get back? Tom Selleck looked at me like I was crazy for suggesting that I stay with the men who took me from my home in the middle of the night. Bruno nodded; he understood. Charlie’s not running a bed and breakfast. We got other jobs, other kids. All I can say is that your mom will be fine — she’ll be home by the end of the week — but I can’t say the same for your pop. He booked a one-way ticket to Florida. Let’s leave it at that.
No one wanted to watch cartoons with me.
It was three in the afternoon and General Hospital was on. Maybe they pitied me or perhaps they wanted to watch TV, but Bruno and Tom Selleck followed me up the stairs, into my apartment, and we sat on the couch watching the sad, sordid stories into the evening.
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