My son Dodo
I want to tell you about my son Dodo. He was the most absentminded of all my children. Or maybe I should say stupid. Or maybe I should say mentally challenged. I don’t know. Let’s just say he wasn’t playing with a full deck. His mother was Mabamama, a woman I met while I was in the mental hospital. Mabamama was a nurse. She changed my bed pans with a smile. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Whenever I took a dump, I would call her and wait for her opinion.
“That’s a good one,” she would say. “It’s bigger and more brown than yesterday’s shit.” Sometimes she would make fun of me when I pulled my hair out. “Are you giving yourself a crew cut?” she would ask. I used to put up with her jokes, but sometimes to get even, I would call her a redneck because I knew she hated the word. Her whole family were rednecks except for her. They were trailor trash. Working at the mental hospital was her way of getting away from them. Actually, she was in limbo. She was waiting to see if she would be accepted into medical school. She wanted to be a doctor.
One day, when she seemed like she had a zillion things on her mind, I got up the guts to tell her the way I really felt about her.
“I hope you don’t think I’m crossing the line,” I said. “But you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I know I’m crazy, but I think I love you, honey.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “It’s inevitable. I’m an M woman. I read your file. I don’t want to marry you, but I know it’s my destiny as an M woman to have your child. Is a one night stand OK?”
“That sounds OK to me,” I said. Mabamama took off her clothes.
“Take your time,” she said. “My shift doesn’t get over until 8am.” I took my time. At 8am, Mabamama got dressed. She gave me one last kiss and said, “That’s that. In nine months I’ll give you your baby. Try to treat him better than your other children and if you don’t mind, if it’s a son I’d like you to name him after my father. He died three years ago.
“Sure,” I said. “What was his name?”
“Dodo,” she said. “Now take your pills and go to sleep.”
Nine months later I was out of the mental hospital. They thought I was cured. I was living in a mobile home in Arkansas, making a living delivering newspapers. It was an ugly life. I had really hit bottom. But most of the time I was either too stoned or shitfaced to care. My neighbors in the trailer park pretty much left me alone. They had their own problems. The only one who would ever talk to me was a drag hooker named Millato. He was a lonely woman, imprisoned in a man’s body with a passion for stamp collecting. Sometimes he would come over and we would talk about stamps. One day, when Millato and I were sitting on my porch, and he was showing me a rare German stamp that had set him back 800 dollars, Mabamama showed up with Dodo.
“Here’s your baby,” she said.
“So how have you been lately?” I asked. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing much. Here’s your baby good luck and goodbye.” She gave me Dodo, got into her car and left. I never saw her again. But I heard that two years later she died while playing chicken with a truck.
So I brought Dodo up by myself. He was a good kid. He wasn’t stuck up or a dickhead or anything. He was just stupid. He was always asking me stupid questions. One time, when he was eight years old, he pointed at his dick and said, “Father, what’s this?”
“That’s called a penis,” I said. Chinese people call it a bird.”
“What’s it used for? Does it fly?” asked Dodo.
