"You're my little man," she said. "I don't know what I would do without you."
Daniel's father disappeared when Daniel was four years old, and at first he blamed himself, but his mother explained that it was because of another woman. He hated that other woman, because she made his mother cry. He had never seen her, but he knew she was a whore because he had heard his mother call her that. Later, he was happy that the woman had taken his father away, for now he had his mother all to himself. The Minnesota winters were cold, and Daniel's mother allowed him to crawl into bed with her and snuggle under the warm blankets.
"I'm going to marry you one day," Daniel promised, and his mother laughed and stroked his hair.
Daniel was always at the head of his class in school. He wanted his mother to be proud of him.
What a brilliant little boy you have, Mrs. Cooper.
I know. No one is as clever as my little man.
When Daniel was seven years old, his mother started inviting their neighbor, a huge, hairy man, over to their house for dinner, and Daniel became ill. He was in bed for a week with a dangerously high fever, and his mother promised she would never do that again. I don't need anyone in the world but you, Daniel.
No one could have been as happy as Daniel. His mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole world. When she was out of the house, Daniel would go into her bedroom and open the drawers of her dresser. He would take out her lingerie and rub the soft material against his cheek. They smelled oh, so wonderful.
He lay back in the warm tub in the Amsterdam hotel, his eyes closed, remembering the terrible day of his mother's murder. It was on his twelfth birthday. He was sent home from school early because he had an earache. He pretended it was worse than it was, because he wanted to be home where his mother would soothe him and put him into her bed and fuss over him. Daniel walked into the house and went to his mother's bedroom, and she was lying naked in their bed, but she was not alone. She was doing unspeakable things to the man who lived next door. Daniel watched as she began to kiss the matted chest and the bloated stomach, and her kisses trailed downward toward the huge red weapon between the man's legs. Before she took it into her mouth, Daniel heard his mother moan, "Oh, I love you!"
And that was the most unspeakable thing of all. Daniel ran to his bathroom and vomited all over himself. He carefully undressed and cleaned himself up because his mother had taught him to be neat. His earache was really bad now. He heard voices from the hallway and listened.
His mother was saying, "You'd better go now, darling. I've got to bathe and get dressed. Daniel will be home from school soon. I'm giving him a birthday party. I'll see you tomorrow, sweetheart."
There was the noise of the front door closing, and then the sound of running water from his mother's bathroom. Except that she was no longer his mother She was a whore who did dirty things in bed with men, things she had never done with him.
He walked into her bathroom, naked, and she was in the tub, her whore's face smiling. She turned her head and saw him and said, "Daniel, darling! What are you - ?"
He carried a pair of heavy dressmaker's shears in his hand.
"Daniel - " Her mouth was opened into a pink-lined O, but there was no sound until he made the first stab into the breast of the stranger in the tub. He accompanied her screams with his own. "Whore! Whore! Whore!"
They sang a deadly duet together, until finally there was his voice alone. "Whore... whore..."
He was spattered all over with her blood. He stepped into her shower and scrubbed himself until his skin felt raw.
That man next door had killed his mother, and that man would have to pay.
After that, everything seemed to happen with a supernal clarity, in a curious kind of slow motion. Daniel wiped the fingerprints off the shears with a washcloth and threw them into the bathtub. They clanked dully against the enamel. He dressed and telephoned the police. Two police cars arrived, with sirens screaming, and then another car filled with detectives, and they asked Daniel questions, and he told them how he had been sent home from school early and about seeing their next-door neighbor, Fred Zimmer, leaving through the side door. When they questioned the man, he admitted being the lover of Daniel's mother, but denied killing her. It was Daniel's testimony in court that convicted Zimmer.
"When you arrived home from school, you saw your neighbor, Fred Zimmer, running out the side door?"
"Yes, sir."
"Could you see him clearly?"
"Yes, sir. There was blood all over his hands."
"What did you do then, Daniel?"
"I - I was so scared. I knew something awful had happened to my mother."
"Then did you go into the house?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what happened?"
"I called out, 'Mother!' And she didn't answer, so I went into her bathroom and - "
At this point the young boy broke into hysterical sobs and had to be led from the stand.
Fred Zimmer was executed thirteen months later.
In the meantime young Daniel had been sent to live with a distant relative in Texas, Aunt Mattie, whom he had never met. She was a stern woman, a hard-shelled Baptist filled with a vehement righteousness and the conviction that hell's fire awaited all sinners. It was a house without love or joy or pity, and Daniel grew up in that atmosphere, terrified by the secret knowledge of his guilt and the damnation that awaited him. Shortly after his mother's murder Daniel began to have trouble with his vision. The doctors called the problem psychosomatic.
"He's blocking out something he doesn't want to see," the doctors said.