Quisamodo
He is stopping traffic
as he crosses the street, yet no one calls him names, or for that
matter even looks at him. The wedding guests at the Portuguese
church are departing, while the funeral attendants wait their
turn to use God's house. Quisamodo, the hunch back of Notre Dame,
is less painful to look than he, our town's most visible, mentally-disturbed
drunk. For a while you forget all about him. Those are the times,
I guess, when he's picked up by the police and put away. He has
periods when he is sober, and not so horrifying to look at. These
are the times he asks politely for money. There is no way to describe
him, other than he is about 35 and slightly built, and seems to
pull one foot after him. His face is raw and exposed like it had
been in a terrible fire, but, unlike Elephant man, he did not
conceal his disfigured looks. His lips are heavy and stretched
and lay on his chin from the weight of them. There have been times
when I have seen him drunk and out of his head from being taunted
and excluded. Froth would ooze from his mouth like a mad dog.
Today, in front of the church, he was in that condition. I cannot
help but think that he is like Rocky, he won't stay down for the
count and settle for the draw. No, he keeps coming back to the
streets to claim his space and rights with only his frightening
looks to protect him. He's not the first, most visible town drunk.
There where others who have gone before him, who's fate was to
be found dead in the river or the city's vacant lots. All had
one thing in common: a dysfunctional mother-son relationship.
Today's "Rocky" --let me call him that for I know not his real
name-- used to walk the streets with his mother. From my window,
I would see them gathering supplies out of the rubbish cans, like
one might see people picking flowers. I feel that he was born
so ugly that he knew no other love than his mother's. And her
close bonding to him was the result of her fear that he would
go through life having no friends. Did her love and protection
turn them both into this low-life in our city streets? Was his
dependency on her so great that it left him with no other outlets
but her, and never a chance to grow? Was he her excuse to just
give up, and then in later years, turn them into drinking partners?
The last time he came in to ask for money, was on a night that
I was working. '' Elizabeth... Elizabeth.....'' he slurred. Maybe
he knew my name because Elizabeth was the name on the awning outside.
''My mother is gone," he said, bobbing his head up and down like
it was on a cord. ''You have a dollar? She died........ you got
a dollar?" ''I'm sorry,'' I said, "But you know you can't come
in here." I did not give him the dollar. If I had, he'd be back
like like a child making me his new mother. Life is painful, and
sifting out what is mine and what is his at that moment was hard
for me. Like the time I had to speak crossly to his predecessor,
the town's most visible drunk back in the late 60's, who used
to hang out at our day-time A.A. meetings. The guys at the meeting
used to be afraid of Billy, that was his name. He had a reputation
of flying into a rage and getting into fights when he was outnumbered.
He was very defensive of his mother, a promiscuous drunk who was
considered to be a prostitute by·the standards of those times.
His sensitivity caused him to get into street fights where ganging
up on one person was rationalized. His once handsome face is now
gone. I knew Billy personally from coming every morning to the
meetings. We had kitchen duties together. I had no fear of him,
maybe I should have. I was a new broom back then and believed
no harm could come to me while doing God's work. Billy kept disturbing
the meeting one day, by interrupting with negative remarks. ''Billy,"
I said, trying to get a little order back in the hall, ''Why do
you come here every day if that is how you feel about us?'' ''Because
I love you.'' Oh God! I felt sad and good at the same time. Did
he come each day to see a women in a kitchen doing things he might
have seen if his mother had been sober? Not long after that day,
he was found floating face down in the Providence River. Nobody
seemed surprised or concerned. But I cared, for Billy had left
me with something. Last night a friend of mine, who is a writer,
came in to Elizabeth's. In conversation, I mentioned I was writing
a story on the town drunk. His wife who is a nurse at the R.I.Hospital
accident room remarked, ''I know him, the police bring him in.
We keep him till his alcohol count goes down.'' Today I witnessed
him, with all the determination and stamina of the alcoholic's
diseased ego, trying to make his way across the street to the
church like he was going to demand his time with the Lord, to
make his peace. I saw him staggering like Quisamodo, between that
outgoing wedding and the incoming funeral, pausing like a child,
looking from side to side; once inside those doors, his fate will
be revealed. ''He was mumbling something last time he was admitted',
said the nurse. ''We were all trying to understand what he was
saying.'' ''Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, he slurred. "Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?'' ''Do you understand those words?'' she asked
me. ''Yes I do.'' I had read it somewhere. "It's Aramaic, the
language Jesus of Nazareth used when he was dying on the cross:
"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?''
Copyright; Ruth Mahoney
16-Jul-89
