American Ways of Life

By B. Wild

Three short stories by B. WILD / The author of the novel Fateful Encounters

Three lives in the USA

Born in the USA 'Born on December 19th'

Stranded in USA 'The Swiss who had a Child with Janis Joplin'

Suffered in the USA 'The Number'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beat Wild
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9783033077881

Book preview

WHAT MADE YOU MURDER your own flesh and blood? the judge asks.

It’s not my blood, Lucy answers.

But you murdered him, didn’t you?

Actually, I aborted him. Only much too late.

Downbrook, a small town in the Mississippi Delta, is a miserable little place where most of the inhabitants struggle for survival. The ninety-nine-year-old mayor has been in office for more than forty years, elected again and again, as nobody else wanted to rule the grayish, little town, where unemployment stays at record highs and day laboring is still widespread.

Inside number thirteen Falcon drive, pregnant Lucy and her husband Jack sit on the worn-out sofa in their living room and discuss what they should name their first-born child.

We will name him Donald, Jack says.

Please no, Lucy begs. Why don’t we name him Bernie?

Donald, I said!

No, please. We can’t do that to our child.

Donald I say! Damn it, Jack shouts. In one quick motion, he slams his beer can on the side table and slaps Lucy hard in the face.

The next day, a store clerk notices the growing bruise at the corner of Lucy’s mouth and her swollen, red cheek.

There’s a women’s shelter in town, she says.

I’m fine, Lucy answers. I just… hurt myself. I fell.

The women’s shelter could protect you and your unborn child from such ‘falls,’ suggests the clerk.

One week later, a police car stops in front of the small, dirty, white wooden house. Two policemen get out. They step on the veranda and ring the doorbell. Lucy opens the door. A look of shame flashes across her face when she sees the two policemen. She turns her head and calls, It’s for you, Jack.

Hi Jack, one of the policemen says when Jack appears at the door.

Hi, nods the other cop. Nice looking girl.

Jack shrugs and asks, What do you want?

The public prosecutor’s office sent us. Someone reported that they saw you marching with the right-wing extremists.

So what, Jack says with a bored sigh.

It’s nothing personal, one of the policemen says, but we represent the law, and we have been sent to warn you to stay away from the extremists’ activities.

From the looks of it, your wife is pregnant, the other policeman adds. Soon you won’t have the time to march about anyway, being a new father.

Jack shrugs his shoulders.

It’s an easy delivery with minimal pain. Lucy felt as if the child found his way into the world without her help. Lucy feels somehow disappointed. She is desperate for satisfaction but can’t find it. She thought that giving birth to a child would require more effort from both mother and child. She had heard other mothers say that the delivery had been a struggle, sheer agony even. She thought that it had to be like that, as if the delivery struggle would show mother and child that the life unfolding ahead of them would not be easy.

Leaving his mother’s womb, the child had immediately started to cry. Everybody in the room—the doctor, the midwife, and Lucy herself—had pricked up their ears. It was a strange, unusual crying that came from the child; it was not the crying of helplessness, as heard from other babies, somehow it was a demanding cry. As if the child already knows what it wants.

This child needs much love, the doctor said. But also a strict hand. In today’s world, anyhow.

Thank you for reminding me, Lucy said. The midwife laid the child on Lucy’s stomach. The infant’s facial features changed immediately: he relaxed. His tiny hands rested on his mother’s belly as if claiming it in possession again.

Now he’s happy, the midwife said. Lucy nodded and looked at her child with a flood of relief. The disappointment drained from her face.

Lucy sits next to Jack on the sofa with the newborn in her arms. She waits for Jack to avert his gaze from the TV and look toward the baby.

Don’t you want to meet your son? Lucy asks Jack after a while. Isn’t he a sweetheart?

Jack throws a quick glance at the baby, and then he wrinkles his nose and grumbles, What a pack of shit.

He needs much love, the doctor said, Lucy says.

What does he know, Jack sneers. A kick in the ass will do as well.

Get that siren out of here! Jack shouts when the baby starts crying on his first night home.

Lucy leaps out of bed and pushes the crib out of their bedroom into the living room. She lies down to sleep on the sofa. The next morning, when Jack wants to watch TV in the living room, Lucy moves the crib in the child’s room and stays there with the baby until Jack goes to bed or leaves the house to meet up with his friends. Jack spends more time out of the house than before, but Lucy almost prefers it when he’s gone. When he is at home, he complains about the baby disturbing him while he watches TV.

Whenever Jack feels like having sex, he orders Lucy to the bedroom. At least he now uses preservatives. But he grumbles when he puts them on. He complains that it would kill him to have another bawler in the home, and he accuses Lucy of not having preservatives around before the baby. Lucy knows it’s not worth the beating she’d receive if she reminds him that when she asked him to use one before the baby, he had refused and insisted that using a preservative would kill sex for him.

One morning, when the baby is around eleven months old, Lucy gets up and goes to the baby’s room to check on him. She gasps when she sees a hideous, plastic monster dangling above the child’s crib. Lucy thinks, Jack must have been to a fair and won the monster at a shooting gallery. Lucy takes the monster down, so it won’t frighten the baby when it awakes.

Lucy is in the kitchen preparing a meal for the child when she hears loud swearing coming from the child’s room.

Where’s that goddam monster? Jack shouts. Lucy is startled; she cannot remember Jack ever going into the child’s room in the morning. She hurries to the child’s room and asks Jack not to swear in front of the child.

Where’s that goddam monster I brought home for Donald last night? Jack shouts even louder.

I took it down, Lucy explains. He is too young for a monster like that. It would scare him to death if he woke up and saw that monster above his crib.

For the last time, Jack screams so loud his voice crackles, where is that goddam monster? Get it here, immediately!

Lucy looks at Jack with pleading eyes and stammers, But—

Jack slaps her cheek so hard her head hits the wall behind her. Donald watches with interest as his father forces his mother to hang the monster up again.

Lucy tries to hide her humiliation and smiles at the child as she rehangs the monster above his crib. She stays with the