Mother's Milk

Barrett Strong was throwing out the bath towel drenched in his mother's blood, into a large black trash bag. How he was to dispose of the body had not yet been ironed out in him mind, yet there was a calmness he felt deep down inside the deed was finally over and that he could go on with his life without the constant interference of Maddy the bitch of all bitches. Barrett closed the double doors that led to the living room where Maddy was sprawled out on the floor in front of the fire place, an ember of fire still burning. She didn't look as if she were dead he thought, but knew that wasn't true becaused he had stabbed her over twenty times in the chest area. Closing the doors he walked past the gold framed pictures of he and Ben, his deceased father and Maddy. Maddy standing out prominently in the photo, looking as queenesque as any African queen could look. Barry and his father mere shadows. He walked down the hallway and into the kitchen, sat at the small breakfast table in the corner, leaned back, crossed his arms full of self satisfaction. He'd done it, he had really done it, and it felt good. He picked through the fruit from a brass fruit bowl and decided on one of the bright red apples. Biting aggressively into it, making a violent crunching sound Barrett thought back to the times when his family was looked to as the pillar of Hyde Falls, an exclusive black enclave in New Jersey. Ben Strong was the founder and president of a cleaning service with over a hundred franchises in the corporation. Maddy Strong came from a prominent family in Virginia, old money. Lincoln Foust, Maddy's father owned three hundred acres of fertile farm land and had practically built the small town of Buford Virginia. After both Ben and Maddy graduated from New York University in the early seventies, they crossed paths at a Holloween party given by Ben's fraternity Phi Mi Tau. Ben dressed as a fireman, and Maddy came as an angel. After a two year courtship they married and Barrett an only child was born in August of 1974. When Barrett was ten yeays old he saw his mother pour urine into his father's coffee one morning. Barrett had been standing behind the door leading down into the basement, Maddy didn't see him. Over the span of years Ben and Maddy grew to loath each other, but because of the comfortable life they had created for themselves and Barrett, they decided that they would stay together for financial reasons. Barrett undestood early in his life that his parents did not love each other, which meant that there was constant tension in the house. After Ben and Maddy finally separated in 1996, Barrett and his mother into an exclusive townhouse development in South Orange New Jersey. Ben moved to Atlanta Georgia, and by decree of the divorce settlement had to pay Maddy a hefty alimony. So Barrett and his mother did not want for anything. But Barrett did not like how his mother treated his father, and more so did not like how she treated him, always saying that he was just like his father, no good and selfish. Ben came to visit Barrett in the summer of 1988, he brought along with him a mini bike that Barrett had always wanted, it was fire engine red, with a high lean foward seat that made it seem that you were about to fall on your face, racing down the road.