The Evening News Read Free

kitchen reading the
Sun-Times.
Alfie in the backyard barks and barks. My mother goes outside to quiet her. I turn the page, reading of rape or robbery, something distant. Then I hear the dog growl, then again bark. I go outside.
    My mother is returning to the house, her face red, angry. Son of a B, she says. I just caught some punk standing outside the alley gate teasing Alfie. She points. He was daring her to jump at him, and the damn kid was holding one of the garbage can lids over his head, just waiting to hit her. My mother demonstrates with her hands.
    I run to the alley, ready to fight, to defend. But there is no one in the alley.
    My mother stands there on the narrow strip of sidewalk, her hands now at her sides. She looks tired. Behind her in the yard is an old table covered with potted plants. Coleus, philodendron, wandering Jew. One of the planters, a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Another, Mary with her white ceramic hands folded in prayer. Mother’s Day presents of years ago. Standing in the bright morning sun.
    And when I came out, my mother continues, the punk just looked at me, real snotty-like, like he was
daring
me, and then he said come on and hit me, lady, you just come right on and hit me. I’ll show you, lady, come on. And then he used the
F
word. She shakes her head and looks at me.
    Later, inside, as she irons one of my father’s shirts, she tells me another story. It happened last week, at night. The ten o’clock news was on. Time to walk Alfie. She’d been feeling lousy all day so Jim took the dog out front instead.
    So he was standing out there waiting for Alfie to finish up her business when all of a sudden he hears this engine and he looks up, and you know what it was, Tony? Can you guess, of all things? It was this car, this
car,
driving right down alongthe sidewalk with its lights out. Jim said he dove straight for the curb, pulling poor Alfie in the middle of number two right with him. And when they went past him they swore at him and threw an empty beer can at him. She laughs and looks at me, then stops ironing and sips her coffee. Her laughter is from fear. Well, you should have heard your little brother when he came back in. Boy was he steaming! They could have killed him they were driving so fast. The cops caught the kids up at Tastee-Freeze corner. We saw the squad car lights from the front windows. It was a good thing Jim took the dog out that night instead of me. She sprinkles the shirt with water from a Pepsi bottle. Can you picture your old mother diving then for the curb?
    She makes a tugging gesture with her hands. Pulling the leash. Saving herself and Alfie. Again she laughs. She tells the story again when Jim comes home.
    At first the doctors thought she had disseminated lupus erythematosus. Lupus means wolf. It is primarily a disease of the skin. As lupus advances, the victim’s face becomes ulcerated by what are called butterfly eruptions. The face comes to resemble a wolf’s. Disseminated lupus attacks the joints as well as the internal organs. There isn’t a known cure.
    And at first they made her hang. My mother. They made her buy a sling into which she placed her head, five times each day. Pulling her head from the other side was a heavy water bag. My father put the equipment up on the door of my bedroom. For years when I went to sleep I stared at that water bag. She had to hang for two-and-a-half hours each day. Those were the years that she read every book she could get her hands on.
    And those were the years that she received the weekly shots, the cortisone, the steroids, that made her puff up, made her put on the weight the doctors are now telling her to get rid of.
    Then one of the doctors died, and then she had to find newdoctors, and then again she had to undergo their battery of tests. These new doctors told her that she probably didn’t have lupus, that instead they thought she had severe rheumatoid arthritis, that the ten