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Book of Wonder

by Rich Ledoux

By Rich LedouxPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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When recalling the first 13 years of my life, there were only two things that I held as sacred; my mother’s love and my little black book. The former was taken from me suddenly at that tender age of 13. Before that, the two were my air. I clung to them with all the fervor any boy could muster.

I have always associated memories with feelings. My childhood memories begin with the feeling that it was ‘Mom and me against the world’. Sure there were plenty of family members we could rely on – Mom was one of seven kids – but I always had the sense that they were being held at bay when we needed them most. As I now look back on those formative years, through the therapeutically mended chambers of my adult brain, it is obvious as to why I pledged such an undying allegiance to the relationship with my mother. It is painfully obvious why my subconscious worked as hard as it did to preserve that relationship in its purest form for as long as it did. Mom was all that I had. I could not imagine living without her and I would constantly think about that very possibility, far more often than any child ever should. She was my everything, until one day when she wasn’t.

Piecing together my timeline, the hardest, darkest times occurred when I was both five and six years old. My biological father was already starting to fade out of my childhood picture; I never did summon the courage to call him Dad when I knew him. Yes, it was when I was five years old that Mom first changed the whole ‘Wonder Woman and her sidekick Wonder Boy take on the world’ dynamic. That is when the ill, fateful memories that had been swept away for so long begin, anyway. We were living in an ugly apartment somewhere, with an even uglier boyfriend of Mom’s. Bruce. It’s still hard to revisit that name; a name that no one has ever been able to put a different face to. I, myself, wouldn’t first put the face to the name until my early twenties.

The revelations began with the layout of that apartment, room by room. It all slowly crept back into my mind the way a dream from the previous night would. In this case a nightmare. Before I saw the hideous face, I saw his body move somewhere in my peripheral. I felt my own freeze with terror once more. Behind the trickle was the flood. Once that barrier of my mind’s defense was splintered, it didn’t take long for it to be completely infiltrated with what was also rapidly deciphered as memories of the real-life variety. The realization that these images were not a nightmare induced a deeper horror.

We began to fill the rooms. It started in the kitchen. I see my mother being dragged along a cheap ceramic floor by her hair, which is tangled in Bruce’s hand. He is standing over her whimpering body as he strikes down, over and over again. There is a bedroom. Laid out perfectly next to each other on the bed are a belt and a large wooden spoon. There’s a deep haunting voice behind a faint smirk asking me to pick which one I would rather have beat me for being such a horrible child. I then smell him. It is sour, stale, sickly. My stomach turns as I digest the olfactory memory. My mind quickly veers to a staircase. An outdoor staircase that not only leads to this apartment but another character; thankfully a much-needed character and light in the blinding chaos that is now mine. It is a kind old man who becomes a savior to a six-year-old boy. A little boy now facing the harsh realization that he is the farthest thing in the world from any kind of Wonder Boy or Superhero. A failed little boy who only wanted to protect the one thing in the world that mattered to him. A familiar rush of guilt washes over me as I remember him. I see my six-year-old self racing down that staircase with a burning alarm as I find the old man’s door and rap on it with all the strength that is allotted. There is no memory of an unanswered call. Each time the old man is on the other end with an expected look as he leads the way back up to safety. This is a reoccurring memory that projects other harrowing experiences; further examples that I will now spare, as it feels appropriate to do so. I’ll skip to the final memory of Bruce.

Bruce’s narrative ends where it seemingly began. That kitchen. It was another escalated argument, only this time Bruce’s attention is pulled away from his usual target in Mom and past her to the utensil drawer. I remember a manic search amongst cries of mercy as Bruce withdraws an extremely large knife. The final memory of this monster ends with him standing on the small deck off of the kitchen with that very knife raised above his head. I remember him plunging it into his stomach. Then all the blood. So much blood. Then the old man again. Sirens and neighborhood commotion. Fade to black.

My next memory of any kind that I have in this life was Christmas Day when I was eight years old. I’ve struggled to find even the most insignificant shred of any memory that might form some kind of bridge from that dreaded apartment to the one I now found myself in on said 25th day of December. It’s like my entire seventh year of life has been completely stolen from me. I would have been seven years old for the majority of 2nd grade and I cannot, for the life of me, remember who my teacher was, or even positively what school I was in, as we moved around a lot. I remember both my 1st and 3rd-grade teachers. That next memory of myself, though, as an eight-year-old boy on Christmas morning is a vivid one. Although I received most of the latest toys I had asked for that year, it was something that wasn’t on my list that left a lasting impression. The only gift of significance was also much less expensive. It was a simple, shiny leather-bound black book. Upon opening it I was puzzled. Mom must have read my face because it’s what she said next that finally sparked my intrigue. “Hmm, Santa must think you’ve got some creative thoughts in that head that you need to start writing down”. I remember thinking, “Santa, the most magical being in the world, thinks I’m creative”? I immediately deserted my toys and ran to my room with my new magical book that came directly from the North Pole. My regard for it only continued to grow with time after “ruining” its first page. It turns out I was too quick with my compulsive thought that day because after reading it back I determined it wasn’t nearly creative enough for the limited space my special black book provided. I scribbled out the thought and proceeded to use the next few weeks in trying to turn those scribbles into cool title page art.

I don’t think I wrote down a single thought in that book in the year that followed, but I always thought about its mystique and knew exactly where it was at all times. I began mulling over rough drafts written elsewhere instead, thoroughly proofreading and editing before any ink was to be added to the book’s enchanted pages. As the years went by, adventurous plans for my future were finally submitted, along with whimsical poems, characters and plot points for future hit movies, and lyrics to songs that would undoubtedly make me a fortune one day; anything that I thought would make Santa proud. More importantly, it would make a better life for me and Mom. It somehow felt like a special gift from the universe that would ultimately unlock a new world. I believed in my little black book as much as I believed in the love for my mother, and I held them both close to my heart. That was, until one spring day as a newly crowned teenager when all the love and hope in that heart was taken from me like my own last breath. My world, my Mom was suddenly gone.

Nothing from that day forward seemed real for quite some time. Not my grandparent’s house or the various homes of aunts and uncles I seemed to continuously bounce to and from. Not the newfound sympathy that I suddenly started getting from every cousin at every last turn. Certainly not the $20,000 that I was told Mom had left for me in a trust that I could access upon turning 18; a last gift that was supposedly going to help make everything better. Especially not that, I always thought we were poor! I remember the immediate feeling that this money was my last connection to her, and it was at this moment that I made up my mind to never spend it. The feeling still lingered when the money eventually did become mine. In the few years before the awful memories started to slither back into my brain I maybe spent $1,000 of it, only when I felt “emergencies” called for it.

Those memories changed everything, namely in the way I started to feel about my beloved mother. The longing turned to resentment more and more with each painful glimpse into my forgotten past. The next thing that changed was how I felt about that money. It was no longer inviolable. I began spending it on self-destruction at a complementary rate. When the dust settled on my twenties, I was left with nothing of value. Nothing to show but a drug addiction, failed relationships and dead-end jobs, zero money, and worse, no ideas or desire to make any. I was alone in the world again, only this time, somehow, more scared.

It is still healing to remember what saved me from my seemingly sad ending. I was in my mid-thirties when I stumbled upon the all but forgotten lost treasure that ended up changing my narrative. My aunt somehow convinced me to help clean out her garage one day. The next thing I remember was a light shining on a dusty old box as from a scene in a play. It felt like minutes before I finally obliged my role in opening it. I knew that box. I wasn’t certain how it ended up in my aunt’s garage but I knew exactly what was inside. My simple, now faded, leather-bound black book. When it was finally returned to my hands, I slowly read the words as they transfixed me again. Each one seemed to float off the page and take me on a ride; back in time when I believed in magic, a time when I held my mother in the highest loving denomination. All the good memories I had abandoned as a fractured teenager were being restored to my adult shell, which remained motionless in my aunt’s garage. A flame, rejuvenated from the ashes of my soul, continued to build inside me. It overwhelmed me, leaving me with the belief that life was about to move on, only this time with me. I cried again for the first time in almost twenty years, maybe even harder than when Mom was suddenly taken from me. My little black book did unlock some magic for me in the end. I was a boy again, free from fear. I felt it in my smile as I wiped the tears and stared out the garage door into the shining sunset. I saw the old man from so many years ago, standing there, smiling right back.

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