PIECES: Chapter 3

Acceptance, Philips the orderly knew, was a funny thing. It had nothing to do with truth or falsehood, good or bad, being real or fake. Acceptance, as far as Philips the orderly was concerned, was like any other point of contention: it boiled down to a single question. The question when dealing with matters of acceptance was (like all the other questions) quick, direct and to the point: Could you look yourself in the mirror?

Philips the orderly could accept the fact that he would never grow another inch. He could accept the fact that his mother would always be the most beautiful woman he’d ever know. But gay marriage?

Gay marriage, Philips the orderly had decided as he mopped floors in the psychiatric ward, was something he just couldn’t accept. It was cra-zy. Not just crazy, but the kind of crazy that made Philips’s skin crawl, even after tending to a senile grandmother who repeatedly called him “Niggerboy” and assured him of its political correctness because she was his relation, his “sister”, of the same flesh and blood because the colors of their skin were within two shades of one another on a Maybelline cosmetic counter.

Philips knew well the feeling that grew in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of gay people. It was the same kind of feeling summoned by dark, stormy nights, a Roman Polanski movie called Rosemary’s Baby, and the wail of Philips’s mother’s newborn during certain scenes of that movie. This feeling was further perpetuated by the fact that Philips’s mother’s four-year old had a knack for appearing in blackened doorways during the dead of night, his rather misshapen features all the more skewed by the putrid green light cast by Incredible Hulk night lights that had been purchased in bulk and distributed around the house, his very presence a reminder that life has a way of making unexpected twists and turns.

Everything about the appearance of little Andy in the dark scared the bejesus out of Philips. He reckoned the thing that scared him about Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, Children of the Corn - other than the fact that he was easily scared by any kind of self expression that depicted a less than pleasant reality - was the very idea that Evil (with a capital E, of course) was born, and not made.

Philips the orderly subscribed to the idea that nothing truly evil could be born into the world. He was a well-meaning, churchgoing bachelor who never had the balls to ask a beautiful girl out on a date. He exercised because studies conducted by individuals who were paid to know more than most people know suggested that regular exercise was good for him. Likewise, Philips believed in God because, from the time he was in diapers, his mother, the reformed Lutheran turned Muslim who became a born-again Christian in her late thirties (and consequently joined a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses only to grow tired of door-to-door soliciting and become a vegetarian Jew), had told him that God was a righteous and good entity, to whom Philips was to dutifully thrust the entirety of his trust.


During their breaks, and in between performing appropriated tasks, orderlies, janitors and (occasionally) LPNs crowded in the men’s locker room and rolled dice. Now and again, responsibilities were put on the line in lieu of money; men would scream out their chores, call out the usual, “yous gots to do it if I win”, and roll the dice enthusiastically. It was in this way that janitors were made to dispose of human waste from bedpans, and orderlies were made to scrub mildewed bathroom floors. Now and again, an LPN would be sentenced a similar fate. And, very often, Philips found himself fulfilling his duties as an orderly while balancing those of a janitor. He did this even though, the good, law-abiding citizen that he was, he never gambled.

“Is that Mama’s Boy?”, a ruddy, dark voice laughed as Philips entered the locker room.

“Sure is,” another answered.

“Hey, Mama’s Boy!”, the ruddy, dark voice called out. “Come over here, I wanna ask you something.” Several others chuckled, the general hardness of their tones mingling so that they formed one large, strange and moist voice as all eyes followed the rolling dice.

“Why you gonna call him over here for?”, a short, stocky man wearing a soiled T-shirt snickered. “Ain’t like he got no money or nothin’.”

Philips appeared at the edge of the lockers, his eyes glued to the floor.

“You got any money on you, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky, a heavily-set, middle-aged ex-boxer, taunted.

Philips met the man’s gaze, then turned his attention back to the floor. “Nah,” he managed to say in response. “I ain’t got no money.”

“Talk good when you talk to me, boy,” Stinky growled.

The young man swept all signs of sarcasm from his face. “No, sir,” he properly enunciated, his steady voice pure and sweet as fresh honey as he looked the man in the eye. “I don’t have any money.”

The three men behind the ex-boxer chuckled as a half dozen or so other men proceeded to roll the dice again.

“Your paycheck still go straight to your bank account, Mama’s Boy?”, Stinky asked amidst the bustle of hustling going on.

“Yes, sir,” Philips said with a nod. “It does.”

“That’s the way yo’ mama like it, ain’t it?”, Stinky laughed, his gold-capped teeth gleaming at his carefully-chosen words.

Philips, unable to meet the man’s gaze any longer, looked down at the floor again. “Yes,” he mumbled in response. “That’s the way she likes it.”

“I’m sure it is,” Stinky said in a low voice, a twinkle in his eye. “Now go on and git. I hear yo’ mama’s throwin’ a barbecue tonight. I bet she wants you to pick up some cabbage for ’slaw or somethin’, right? Somethin’ like that from the store?”

Philips nodded, then walked away. The man to the left of Stinky, whose skin was the color of butter pecan ice cream, laughed as Philips walked out of the locker room. “How you know what his mama want, Stinky?”

The ex-boxer smiled knowingly. “I know a lot about his mama,” he said.

***

Working the night shift afforded Philips many privileges. He was able to see his mother and her children every day. He was also able to lounge about his mother’s house, wearing only boxers and a T-shirt, and do, basically, nothing. As far as he and his mother were concerned, his only responsibilities were to earn money for their family, to love their family, and to love God. Since Philips did a good job of maintaining these responsibilities, he never felt the need to feel badly about himself.

But others? Of course Philips felt badly about other people!

Other people, to a man like Philips the orderly, were strange creatures. The way Philips understood it, if there was one thing that he had learned throughout all of his years at the psychiatric ward, it was the difference between sanity and insanity, and desiring a mountain of attention was simply uncalled for, unnecessary, abnormal, insane. Likewise, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes before the legal age, doing any kind of illicit drugs, performing any kind of defunct act like listening to disco - all of that categorized an individual as insane. See, it boiled down to one thing and one thing only when you dealt with Philips the orderly: a question. And, in this case, the question was, “Could it be helped?”

Stinky, the janitor with gold caps and a bad attitude, could not help but be a jackass - and Philips hated him. He hated the way Stinky patronized him, humiliated him, shamed him time and time again. He hated the way Stinky picked on . Most of all, he hated the way Stinky blackmailed him. After all, young man that Philips was, it wasn’t his fault that he had allowed his raging libido to get the most of him on that warm, Spring day two years previously. And it was certainly not his fault that Stinky had happened to walk to the back of the locker room on that same day, only to catch Philips in the act of relieving himself of his raging libido. Most of all, it was definitely not Philips’s fault that the picture from his wallet had provided the necessary visual aide to achieving climax, and that Stinky had taken it upon himself to collect that picture as evidence. . .

Naturally, if it had all been avoided, there would be no reason for blackmail, no way that Philips would have become Stinky’s lackey - but that was all beside the point.

Could any of it have been helped? Certainly not, according to Philips’s rationale. Although many passages of the Bible warned that masturbation was a sin, Philips’s mother (who was the supreme judge of all things religious) had said to the contrary. And the fact that Philips had had to relieve himself right then and there? It was all God’s doing. God - or so Philips believed - had willed it so. And who was he to question the authority of God? Wasn’t Job deprived of his wealth and affluence? His family and his farm? And didn’t he dutifully trust God? Surely, Philips could trust God in the matter of a spied masturbation!

For a moment, as Philips walked down the refrigerated vegetable aisle of the local grocery store, he compared himself to the psychiatric patients that he tended every day. Doing so felt like an intrinsic extension of his thinking, since he was, after all, submitting himself to the whims of a janitor for the purpose of having his masturbating habits kept secret. This was indeed enough reason for anyone to think him worthy of institutionalization.

As soon as these thoughts registered in his mind, they were discarded with a violent physical flourish, so that Philips looked like he was swatting at invisible killer bees. He quickened his pace until a display of freshly cut flowers caught his eye. Then a pair of familiar faces obstructed his view.

“I thought that was you!”, greeted an elderly man whose skin looked like shaved milk chocolate. “Gloria and I were just talking about your mom’s barbecue! We’re already looking forward to her famous coleslaw!”

Philips greeted the elderly couple warmly.

“Are those flowers for your mom?”, the elderly woman asked, her short, gray curls swinging behind her as she spoke. “I know she loves lilacs!”

“Yes,” Philips answered with a smile. “They’re for my mom.” An awkward pause followed, then a quick, deliberate blinking of his eyes. “How are you, Mr. Perkins? I heard your knees’ve been giving you trouble lately?”

“Oh, I’m okay, I’m okay,” the old man chuckled, a warm thought putting a smile on his face. “Our granddaughter - the doctor? She’s in town, so she’s checking up on me every chance she gets.”

“Say,” his wife said, a glimmer of mischief in her old eyes, “why don’t we ask her to come along tonight? You two can meet, maybe exchange telephone numbers. . .”

“That’s a great idea!”, her husband exclaimed. “Josephine would love to meet Malcolm!” He saw the boy cringe at the mentioning of his given name, then added, “Surely you didn’t expect us to call you by your last name, like we were your friends from around the neighborhood!”

“Yes, Malcolm Xavier Philips,” Mrs. Perkins said, mockingly, “we’ve known you since you were in diapers, know practically everything about you and your mom.” She laughed, then added, “We’ve known her since she was in diapers, too.”

Her husband joined in laughing heartily. “I just wish we could see your brothers more often.”

Philips nodded his head earnestly. “They’re getting big,” he said of his mother’s two other children. “Andy’s gonna be in kindergarten next Fall, and Julius is five months old now.”

“Five months old,” Gloria Perkins echoed with a shudder. “I can’t believe five months have passed already!”

“Neither can I,” Philips replied, wearily. Before the couple could make any other inquiries, Philips politely took his leave of them. He could almost hear the gears of Gloria Perkins’s mind turning, the rusty cogs threatening to come to a conclusion about the identity of the boys’ father. After he was out of earshot, the elderly couple’s conversation turned to all things concerning the neighborhood: the soaring real estate values, the strange family that had moved in down the street, gossip about the identity of Anita Philips’s lover. They laughed at the thought that the forty-five year old woman had been able to keep her lover’s identity a secret for so long, and then Gloria Perkins’s face became altogether thoughtful as she considered the young man whom they had seen.

“Malcolm is certainly a good boy,” she said as she inspected an avocado. “We should definitely call Josephine and ask her if she’d like to come along tonight.”

“I don’t know,” her husband said, shaking his ashen, shaved-chocolate face. “He didn’t look too pleased at the idea of meeting anyone.” He stopped abruptly, then implored aloud, “I wonder, maybe he has his own secret lover?”

The elderly woman laughed at the suggestion. “Like mother, like son, you mean?”, she asked, her gaze slanted to convey her disbelief.

“You never know.”

“Maybe,” the wife said, thoughtfully, as she put an avocado in her shopping cart. “But could you just imagine? Our Josephine with Malcolm? What a wonderful couple they would make! He’s such a good young man! Always thinking about his mother, and you know what they say about the way a man treats his mother and the way he treats his wife!”

“Certainly,” said the husband, as he recalled the proverb. “Malcolm is excellent husband material - so sturdy and reliable! And wholesome, too!” He took a moment to study a display of prunes as he stewed in his words, then said, off-handedly, “Did you know, the only picture he keeps in his wallet is one of his mother?”