Castles by Benjamin X Wretlind Page A

had given me. I felt I needed to say something—talk about Alfie, about Michael, tell her that I'd seen Daddy—but the comfort of the moment was too perfect to mar with words.
    For the first time in my life, I fell asleep in my mother's arms on the couch.

3
     
    Mama never talked about my relationship with Michael, the night I told her I was pregnant or what happened with Alfie. I think she assumed it was all her fault. To some extent, I believe that. After all, had she not kicked me out of the house I wouldn't have seen Michael ripped apart, and I wouldn't have lost my child to the violence of a person Mama should never have brought home in the first place.
    It wasn't all her fault, however, I knew that. I was the one who wanted Michael inside of me; I don't think he would have pushed the issue. I was the one who turned away Alfie when he first advanced; had I given in, he wouldn't have been so angry. I was the one who didn't realize at the time that I needed to clean up my messes rather than wait for God to send His divine broom.
    It was mostly my fault.
    We took our time bonding through the rest of the year. The winter months brought with it an over abundance of rain and on more than one occasion, the roof leaked. Rather than get someone else to help, however, Mama and I did the work. We patched holes when we found them, fixed up the trailer as much as we could and took turns cooking dinner for each other. I don't think Mama had a boyfriend at the time, and in retrospect, I don't think she wanted one.
    There were many times I could have asked Mama about my dream, about meeting my father outside the carousel of singing men. Since Michael was in that mix, I imagined the carousel represented the ghosts of those who had gone before, perhaps devoured by the wind and the eels. Grandma did say storms were a way for God to clean up the messes left by other people, and I'd so far seen two bodies in the Bus. I slowly believed the men in the carousel were people Mama knew. How they got there, however, I couldn't say. It wasn't like Mama had talked to me much before.
    As the winter months turned toward the spring, I decided to ask Mama about my father. Maybe she could shed some light on the matter. For years, I had lived under the assumption that I had no father; I was a divine pregnancy. I knew that couldn't be the case and curiosity had planted itself inside.
    "He's dead." Mama was blunt, but in her eyes I could see she wanted to say more.
    "When did he die?" I wondered at that moment how far I should press the issue.
    "Before you were born." Mama stood up from the dinner table and took her plate to the sink. "Finish your homework before you go to bed, Maggie."
    That was it? I had trained myself to expect the worst—a fight maybe, or just some stern lecture on how I should stay out of her business. I didn't expect to be brushed off like that.
    "Mama?"
    She leaned over the sink and sighed. "We all have skeletons in our closet, Maggie. Your grandmother did just as much as me. Live with them and don't let them out."
    She turned from the sink and walked to her bedroom. For the rest of the night, I didn't see or hear from her. I was left alone with my thoughts and curled up on the couch later that night, wondering what skeletons Mama hid.
    The dreams that came in the night were unlike the others. There were no dust eels, no strange men singing songs in languages I didn't know. Daddy didn't come to talk to me and the Bus was noticeably absent. I never saw the castle in the sky that Grandma promised, either. The dreams that came that night were nothing, if not horrific.
    I stood over someone I didn't know, his body strapped to the kitchen table with duct tape. He was asleep and for some reason, it made me angry. Glass littered the kitchen floor, and I had to walk around it all to get to the drawers. I think I needed a pair of scissors and although the glass would have worked just as well, I probably would have cut myself.
    The man slept