Harvey Alters

Chapter One:

I was always quite aware of the way others responded when I told them I was orphaned at birth, and consequently raised by my maternal grandmother. Often, it was the same few gestures, over and over, for as long as I can remember. Teachers, the parents of childhood friends, girlfriends; the reactions were the same. Usually the story came out when I was invited over for supper for the first time, and always invited back again and again, as if by the very act of having the little orphan boy at the dinner table made the family of so and so feel they were doing their good deed for the week. The Father was usually the instigator. Over a mouthful of mashed potatoes, he would say something along the lines of, ‘so Harvey, what do your parents do?’ (This is in the early years, when I still went by Harvey and I was always invited back to supper.) When I was Harvey, I would respond, with a quiet voice, “Well, sir…my parents died when I was born. They was murdered. My Mamaw took me in.” Lame. The family would then begin the gesturing and mewling; “Oh! Oh Harvey, you poor, poor boy.” Lips puckered in the shape of an O, and pity filled the eyes of whoever had brought the subject up to begin with, the terrible reminder. (Like I needed a reminder. Like I didn’t remember every day of my stinkin’, young life.) The head shake, side to side, was very popular. I have seen, on one occasion, a table full of adults do the head shake in almost perfect synchronicity; that was a peculiar site. My least favorite of the pity gestures; the cluck! Cluck, cluck, cluck, goes the tongue, along with the head shake, side to side. ’Unbelievable!’ And of course, last but never least, the nod. The damn nod. Up and down, as if saying, “Yes, I understand. I knew it all along. You’re an orphan! (shake-nod-cluck) And didn’t I tell you Tom? Something was terrible-sad about that boy! Didn’t I say it? But look how BRAVE and STRONG you are Harvey!’

That one always bugged me the most. As if I were doing something great by not crying about it. Never mind that I never knew my parents; who could grieve for something you never had? . I hadn’t much of an idea what they even looked like. Mamaw had a few old photos, mostly of my mother. My father, she often said, was a piece of **** sperm donor who got my mother killed in the first place. Yea, I know. Harsh. Specially for a boy of seven. But that was Mamaw, the old crow. She didn’t mince words. Her explanations of everything in life were as strong as her coffee, as bold as her homemade chili. She was quite the lady. She disinfected wounds and cuts with kitchen findings and old remedies she kept stored in her memory (which usually meant I was screaming and hurting more after the doctoring’ up). She could cook pretty much anything out of nothing and could swat my behind with the longest, meanest, most tenacious whip in the yard. All that aside, her explanations of life’s more delicate subjects, things that might have required a bit of finesse or word-mincing, if you will, lacked that human compassion found often in little old-lady Grandmas. She was no verbal tap dancer.

We always had WORK TO DO. God be damned, I worked my tail off as a kid. It’s a wonder I ever had a day of fun in my whole stinkin’ life with that woman around. 

Later, when I was maybe eight, I took up the conversation again. The supper table was bare, but for me, Mamaw and two bowls of stew and two glasses of lemonade. I hated her stew. She put something in it that tasted like soft kitchen sponges, all chopped up.

“Mamaw? Tell me how?” I needn’t have said more, and I didn’t. She knew what I was asking.

Here was her chance. Her chance to soften the blow to the little boy who knew only his Mamaw, never the love of a Mother. The boy who had never played with a cousin or held a siblings hand or lie on his mother’s tummy when his own belly hurt from too many sweets before bed. Her hammer came down with a thunderous BANG!

“Harvey, yer Momma and Daddy was murdered. They was shot dead by a crazy ole’ man in a bar. Hmmf! Yer Momma was a good girl, once, (she said ‘once’ as if it were a spat of tobacco she couldn’t rid her mouth of) but she couldn’t keep her pregnant **** at home! She just had to tag around yo’ daddy and make sure he wassant up to trouble. She met yer sperm donor at tha Hilltop hanger that night, and she watched him gamble away all his paycheck, which wassant ever much anyhow, in a poker game.” Mamaw said all of this very matter-of-fact, while spooning her stew in circles. “This big ole’ crazy man got pissered off-there was talk that maybe yer fool of a father actually won a hand or something’, though I don’t believe a word o’ that, my guess is he was cheatin’ some folks pretty good. This ole’ guy just hauled out a pistol and shot ‘em down. Yer Momma, God rest her soul, was stupid as a donkey and jumped his back. He turned on her and shot her just like he did yer daddy. You was born minutes after that; pushed right OUT cho’ momma’s belly. You was born on the filthy floor of that damn bar. Someone helped birth ya right out, but yer momma was already gone. “

I stared at her, mouth agape.

“You mighta been born stupid or dead but they gotcha to the hospital down in Gurney right quick.”

Silence.  I couldn’t bear another word. My mouth still hung open like a barn door and hers, sure enough, opened right back up, like the gates of Hell.

“Your name wassant even gonna be Harvey! Yer momma had you all picked out to be Elija, or some such nonsense. I didn’t like that name…Elija. Sounded pertty uppity for these parts. ‘Sides, I couldn’t remember how to spell it. So, I named you after my Harvey, yer Grandpappy, God rest his soul. My Harvey had hair just like you. Curly and wild and black as night.”

And that was the end of the conversation. She lifted her spoon and sucked her stew down her horrid gullet like she’d just given me my nightly prayers, not a bat of an eyelash, not a hint of remorse.

That was what I knew, and all I knew for years to come. Piece by piece, I wormed details out of Mamaw-the-machine-gun-mouth. The shooting part, the deaths and the birth on the bar floor didn’t so much interest me. Later I would question all of this. It was the name that threw me into a tailspin, one that I would not come out of for years to come. I wasn’t Harvey Alters, no middle name thank you very much, after all. I was intended to be Elija Alters. Now that was a name that rang true! I had always felt as though I were a stranger to my own self, living a lie, spinning in someone else story like a character that no one would remember when THE END came. And here, all along, I had been answering to the wrong name. Now, I was eight mind you, and this might’ve been cute to some. To me, this was serious business. I told everyone I knew, everyone I met, from that day forward, that my name was Elija Harvey Alters, my Mamaw calls me Harvey, you may call me Elija. Hot Damn! The name was commanding wasn’t it? I strapped on confidence like a leather biker’s jacket. Elija was dry as a sun-baked dog bone. Elija was as cool as frozen lemonade popsicles. Elija could NOT BE BOUNCED, BY GOD! This was my mantra for years, something I hollered in my own head daily. As if I needed to be reminded of the difference between Harvey The Orphan and Elija The Mysterious.

Harvey was a good boy. Elija was apt to say the wildest and meanest things that came to his mind.

Sometimes at night, I (Harvey, not Elija) giggled into my pillow until tears flowed from my eyes and my belly ached just thinking about all the things Elija had said and done that day. Sometimes I wondered why those tears stung so bad when I was crying with laughter.