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3 A.M. Magazine


NIGHT MARES

by

Kismet

Copyright © 1999
All Rights Reserved

   



WHAT PEOPLE REMEMBERED ABOUT Marty McEnrae was her laugh. She had a laugh like you wouldn’t believe, that made you know it was her coming around the corner or leaning out the window or sitting at the back of the bus. Some people loved her laugh. They said it sounded like the ripple of water or the rain dripping down the pipes, a kind of gurgle. Her mother thought it reminded her of a bird. Figures, Marty’s real name was Marten Savannah McEnrae. Then there were others who just plain couldn’t stand it. Like Toby, her mother’s squeeze of five years. It just plain drove him crazy.

The thing about Marty McEnrae was that she disappeared. Now, this is a neighborhood where many kids disappear all the time, into the gangs or the gutters or to the pimps and the crazy, the angry, the dangerous. To me, perhaps it might have been noteworthy because I had not grown up and lived in a slum all my life; I was there to observe and to write about what I observed. Writers on observation missions are not supposed to feel. They are there to see and record unbiased information, but Marty McEnrae….well, she was different.

Life being what it was, I can’t say that she had a lot to laugh about.

I moved into the building six months ago. It was spring then, but the slum seemed to be able to swallow spring itself till it was lost in the maze of concrete, steel and peeling paint. The building was six storeys, battleship grey and graffiti outside and puke-green and what was supposed to be cream inside. Just one stairs to make space for the ten apartments per floor. Against regulations, of course, but this was not the real world. This was a crummier version of the seedier slopes of Hell.

I met Marty two weeks later. I’d seen her a lot, on the steps outside, mostly. Small thing, thin with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Fifteen to sixteen maybe. The thing that made me stop and speak to her that day was my curiosity.

"Hi." I smiled down at her.

She flicked a glance up at me from the pages of her book. "You’re the writer." Not a question. She went back to reading, turning a page.

A bit off-putting, but I’d had worse in my time. "What are you reading ?" Reading, mind you. Kids her age here were already hoodlums, stealing car tyres and screeching and hooting at each other from battered cars and bikes at night, or walking the streets for some pimp or other.

She wore a blue sweater, a bit too large for her, blue jeans and running shoes. Hair in a braid down her back, and she was reading. She was always reading.

"Tolkien." Matter-of-fact. "Today, that is. Mostly old stuff, though. Milton, Wilde, Austen….."

"You’ve read them ?" Surprise surprise.

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "I’ve got you down to pat, mister. You’re an upper city type and I can’t understand why you’ve come down here with us, but you’ve got that picture in your head of what people like us are supposed to be. I guess if I was to suit your picture I’d get up and plunk my hands on my hips and ask you if you’ve got seventy five before taking you upstairs, or back into the alley there. There’s a library here, you know ? Some of us read."

There was no resentment there.

"Then I guess you’re good in school too?"

"School is overrated. So is Shakespeare."

I stared down at her. She looked frail and quiet, but she had a fighting spirit in her.

"You’re right." A pause as she turned another page. "What reason do you give when you skive school?"

"I don’t need a reason, mostly. Teachers can’t care less."

"You’re lucky then. I used to play hooky to go fishing. Tried everything from painting red spots on my face with poster colours to putting the thermometer to a light-bulb and ending up with a temperature like a well-done hamburger."

It was the first time I heard her laugh. There was nothing like it, that sound, like something that gurgled up from inside her chest and flooded from her mouth. I kind of liked the sound, I guess.

The funny thing was that she was really quiet, except for that laugh. She laughed all the time. Mr. Balcharan who ran the nearby grocery store told me that they’d found her old granny dead in bed one day. As they took her away under a black plastic sheet Marty had just rolled against the wall of the stairwell outside, laughing and laughing like she would never stop. Her mother had cried. Gloria McEnrae worked as a waitress in a club where girls danced on tables and tips went into brassieres. Toby didn’t like that, but they needed the money.

He was a big man. I’d seen him a few times on the stairs, or coming in or out of his door marked number 15. Blond hair brush cut, blue eyes. Lopsided smile. He worked as a builder, or so I heard from Mr. Balcharan, Mrs. Ramirez and Old Lucy. Did odd jobs as well, sometimes for the money. Drugs ? No, he didn’t do them. Didn’t smoke either. His failing was the bottle. Everyone here had at least one failing.

I lived one floor up from Marty McEnrae’s, and some nights I could hear the screams and shouts and crashing plates that meant that Gloria had come home late and met a drunk Toby. Their arguments were mainly about money and how Gloria earned it. Toby was the jealous type, I suppose, but I don’t think he ever hit her. Gloria was not the kind of woman who would be the victim of a man. She kept a switchblade up her panty-hose. Everyone knew it, just one of those things. Yet she was a victim, all right, a victim of Life when there is no hope and no way out of the day-to-day except one. No way she could take care of Marty, who was kind of sensitive, and definitely strange. Marty hated Toby and vice versa.


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