Freedom's Child by Jax Miller Page A

buried her face in Richie’s hair and remembered the softness of her own son’s from twenty years ago. The smell of his kid’s shampoo filled her heart with lead. She looked down at the boy from above his head, which rested on her chest, and swore it was Ethan. She placed her hand on his heart, feeling his chest rise. Mattley wondered what she was doing, caressing the top of her hand with his fingertips. He realized that in his son’s hair, Freedom was crying.
    “What’s wrong, Freedom?” His touch moved up her arm.
    She lifted her head, the lights of children’s blinking toys reflecting off her flooded eyes. “I’m sorry, I can’t—I just can’t.” Freedom cautiously handed a sleeping Richie to his father before running off to her home, where she proceeded to drink by herself until she could no longer function.

My name is Freedom and my womb is empty. I am reminded of this insult from God every time I’m on the rag. What a bitch Eve was. It’s ten in the morning and I am alone at the Whammy Bar. I stretch out on top of one of the pool tables. The day’s as gray as the cigarette smoke from a whore in Times Square on a frigid January morning, like most days are in this godforsaken state. Carrie did a swell ol’ job of cleaning last night and so I use the next hour to stall. With my forearms at the end of each side of the table, my hands hang off the sides. I hold the cue ball in one hand and the eight ball in the other and try to discern a difference in weight between the two. I’m bored out of my fucking skull. But I feel the voices start to come. I use the remote to turn the bar’s surround sound as loud as it can: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. “I Hear Voices” comes on.
    I inhale a menthol cigarette through my nostrils to smoke the suicidal thoughts out of my head. It’s the hangovers that make me this way, nothing more, nothing less. Lots of bad thoughts, lots of terrible voices. I don’t know what they say; they’re hard to hear over Sir Jay Hawkins’s blues, one of the first shock-rockers who ever lived. I can’t tell where my voices begin and where his drunken gurgling and grunts of his tunes begin. With the filter to my nose, I think of the voodoo bones Hawkins wore in his nose. Right, as if I reallythink snorting through the filter of a menthol Pall Mall will actually work. I bring the billiard balls to each temple and massage my head by swirling them, but nothing works. I’ll ignore them, as always. I see a faint strip of light on the ceiling above the front door, but I don’t move. Whoever it is tries to come in unnoticed and so I’ll play along. Could be Carrie. Could be Cal. Could be worse.
    “Whoever that is.” I hold up the billiard balls. “I have balls that can prove fatal if I put enough force behind the blow into your frontal lobe.”
    “If that’s the case, I’ll never look at you the same way again.” Mattley.
    “I knew it was you.”
    “Oh, really? And how is that?” He walks closer to me.
    “Bacon, donuts, you all smell the same.” I rise up as best as I can, given the hangover. “How’s the boy?” Not that I especially care.
    “Getting at that age.” Mattley removes his hat. “Any day he’ll be bringing home the ladies.” There’s that smile I love. It aches to sit up. I think I might actually still be drunk from last night. “Listen, Freedom, I want to talk to you about something.” He looks down and scrapes the toe of his shoe over a spot on the floor. “About your kids.”
    “What are you talking about?” I straighten my arms to my sides on the pool table. “I never had kids.”
    “I know that’s what you say when you’re dry.” He plays with his Stetson hat. “But you do talk a lot when you’re drunk.”
    “I get, um, creative when I’m drunk.” I stare off. “Have I told you about the time the pope and I bungee-jumped off the Eiffel Tower?”
    Mattley sighs with his chin to his chest. He taps the side of the table where the palms of his