Ghost Not Forgotten

II: Then

* banner by crimsonangel21 (livejournal)

Bennet is three months older than me and my mama was his mama's midwife. That's where our big bad connection was made: with my mama up to her elbows in birth goop and his mama screaming for the pain to end. Romantic as it gets, I say. 

Thanks to a school assignment, his mama was reading Pride and Prejudice while she was pregnant and that's how he got a name like Bennet. I teased him for years when I found out the Bennet in the story was actually Elizabeth Bennet, a girl.

Since he teased me more than he breathed, it gave me something to fight back with.

Bennet's mama wanted to be my mama's midwife when I was born but, for certain reasons - one of them being she was a high schooler - she wasn't allowed. Instead she sat back in our old rocking chair, breast-feeding Bennet and watching my mama have me. Della was the midwife presiding and she has to remind me of it almost every day.

Anyway, Bennet's teenage mama took a liking to my nearly middle-aged mama, a real strong one, and though my mama didn't feel it as strongly, she liked his mama just fine. Since my daddy was gone the second he heard I was coming, my mama didn't mind the company. Bennet's mama would come over almost every day, toting that beautiful kid and wanting to spend as much time with my mama as she was willing.

Now my mama had her faults, and she wasn't the warmest person in the world (at least to me), but she did have patience and lots of it. And boy did she need it. Putting up with Bennet's mama day after day was more of a handful than a screaming newborn.

To put it kindly, Mrs. Malene had a few wires loose in the head. She tended to say off things, fall into dazes, and forgot things a lot. Sometimes she talked about people we were pretty sure didn't exist. I always wondered if she heard voices in her head, but my mama always told me to "be kind" whenever I asked her about it.

The town doctor (and both Bennet's and my godfather) Stanley Pike reckoned it was some form of schizophrenia, but Mrs. Malene never went to another doctor to prove it. She stuck with Stanley, like all of us did. Small town way of life, you know.

The townsfolk were very careful with Bennet's mama; treating her like paper-thin glass: afraid too much pushing would cause her to crack and break. But when Bennet came into the picture, a few people – Della, Stanley, and my mama mostly – tended to stay by Mrs. Malene's side, making sure she didn't hurt herself or others, which I never understood. Mrs. Malene wasn't violent, she was "docile" as Della would say, calm and dreamy. But, again, forgetful, which isn't good when you have a kid to worry about.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and Keplar's Grove was no exception when it came to Bennet Malene. Even as a baby they rallied around him, and they had to, because it wasn't as if his daddy was going to.

Bennet's daddy was number one: a violent alcoholic and number two: a trucker. Bad combination if you ask me, but it wasn't as if Bennet's mama was a choosy woman. Some people in town say Malene married Bennet's mama out of guilt – since he got her pregnant when she was only seventeen (he was forty) – but I don't reckon the man carried that emotion or any of a real loving sort. He was never around (what trucker is?) and I wouldn't put it past him to have five other wives and families scattered over the country.

During the sixteen years I knew Bennet, I saw Malene maybe three or four times and hated every second I was near him. Being around him was like having a bunch of dirty hands groping you, so I was glad he was never around, as was Bennet. It's hard to miss or want your daddy around when you know he's a grade-A son-of-a-bitch.

When we were fourteen, Sheriff Black found Bennet's mama facedown in the crick out by Hellman's road. If there were voices in her head, it looked like they had finally gotten to her. Despite the grief that smothered the town, I think a lot of us, deep down, had an itching feeling something like this was bound to happen to Mrs. Malene.

After his mama died, my mama took Bennet in and, from then on, he lived at our house. He had his own room in the basement, had his own chores, all of that.

And he and I only grew closer.

When Malene was home, Bennet had to stay at their house. I think every night of those arrangements he would come sneaking back to my house or sleep in Shellman's field, wanting to be as far away from the man as possible. One time Malene, drunk as hell, caught Bennet sneaking out to go to my place and he beat him so bad Bennet looked like he had been hit by a car.

It didn't stop Bennet though, spite only fueled him. He was never going to back down in the shadow of Malene, he had promised himself, and me, that. Despite his grins and charm, he was strong. So strong. I never doubted he could live through or accomplish anything, because he was a survivor. He knew how to live.

A few years after Bennet disappeared, we got word that Malene had died from liver failure – surprise, surprise. I remember it was Stanley who came into Della's that day and told us. Everybody lowered their head for a second, in respect of the fact he was a human being lost, but they wouldn't give him anymore. It was asking too much to shed a tear over a beast like Tim Malene.

Della was the only one who cried, but for a much different reason.

"With the missus and mister dead," she said, wiping her dripping eyes, "and Bennet missin' or . . . or . . ." She couldn't say the word, but we all knew what it was.

"With him gone," Della said, nearing a wail, "the Malene family's wiped out. They all spirits now."

That day, I spent the rest of my shift in the back of the diner's kitchen, avoiding people. The idea of Bennet being a spirit was not something I wanted to deal with. I was still bleeding at that point, my ruined heart still carrying on in pain. I hated myself for still being all torn up when it had been years, but hearing his name just ripped open the stitches. And all because his bastard daddy drank himself dead.

Even in death Tim Malene was a rotten son-of-a-bitch.