authors note. the word nigger, used in this chapter is meant to be derogatory. my mother was a huge racist.
Chapter 5.
I slowly walk off the bus and gaze up at the Victorian style house in complete awe. I love this house. It's so much better I even stop and look at it for a split second.. For one thing, it has painted walls that actually look nice. It doesn't have chipped paint like so many of our other houses have. I walk up the elegant driveway lined with potted plants on each side, all different kinds, and walk in the marbal doorway into a widely stylishly floored hallway. The walls are a clean white as well as the floor. The high ceiling is arched slightly with unique star like patterns showing themselves here and there. When I take a step into the spacious living room with classy red couches, my nose smells cookies baking. I walk in the brightly it kitchen and look at the polished glossy furniture. smells still waft into my nose. I smell chocolate and bread. The bread has some kind of sweet seasoning on it. I look at my mom, newly thin and built, and I smile softly to myself. I want to say hi to her.
“hi Barbra!”
“oh. Hi there, How was school today Robert?”
“it was great! You remember that test I took last week in math? Look! I got an 87%.” I give the paper to her, and Barbra beams with happiness before giving me a tight hug.
“I'm so proud of you! In fact, I'm going to bake you cookies. What kind would you like? After all, you deserve it!” as she hugs me, the sweet smell of peaches invades my nose. I always look forward to that smell every single day when I come home from school. After Barbra kisses me on my head, I decide to go into the living room and watch some TV. I sit down and sink deep into the soft plush chair. It's warm and comfortable and seems to invite me into it's velvet cushioning. I love just sitting here enjoying how warm it actually is. The whole house is warm, and brightly lit. I want to walk to my room so I slowly get up and start down the long white hallway. The bright lights cast shadows as I walk along the spacious walkway. On both sides of me are pictures of Barbra and I, laughing and hugging together after my graduation. In many of the pictures, we are arm and arm, and hugging and smiling like there is no tomorrow. My favorite one is where she is behind me, her thin body almost hidden behind my thin body, and she's smiling over my head as arms are rapped around me. I finally reach the white door to my bedroom and open it. The room is washed in light coming from an open window overlooking a vast area of green grass and trees in the distance. It's a blue cloudless day outside. The sun casts pin points of light around random parts of my room as if highlighting certain sections. The sun washes my aqua blanket resting on a huge king sised bed complete with dluffed pillows. To the left of the bed, which is facing the window, is the bookshelf with billions upon billions of books resting on bright mahogany wood. The books, mostly large print, sit aligned orderly and neatly in their respective genres. In front of the bed, and nearest to the window is a desk with a computer resting there. To the right of the room is an area with a rack, and TV, and a rocking chair set close to the right side of a 34 inch TV set. On the top of the TV is an Xbox. I don’t want to do anything at the moment so I lay down on my warm soft mattress. I sink deep into the pillows with a huge grin on my face. The smell is so pleasant that I take multiple sniffs of the crisp clean air.
“ah! This is a good day.” I say out loud to the empty room. “I got an A on an English test, Barbra is having people over for dinner, we’re going to go see a movie later, this is perfect!” after about an hour laying there, I slowly sit up as my mom calls softly, “Robert?”
“yes?” I call back. My voice floats out of my mouth.
“your chocolate chip cookies are done! Come on now before they get cold.” I get up and walk to the kitchen, and take a bite of the hot cookie. Warm chocolate splashes the inside of my mouth and warmth comes flooding through me like some tidal wave. I'm in pure bliss, and I love it!
I, shockingly, have completely forgotten that it's my birthday today. My mom baked a cake for me. as she sang the happy birthday song to me at the table, giving me a huge hug, she sets a huge box rapped in chic style rapping paper. It's a checkered blue and red with a pretty green ribbon. I beam with happiness as I start to open it. For some reason though my mother starts knocking on the table, and the sound gets ouder and louder, and the world around me becomes hazy and distorted. I know what's happening, so I try and open the oresent before it happens. Why does it always have to be now… why? Why couldn't it happen sooner! The room spins and the knocking is so loud I have to cover my ears. Shutting my eyes, I do just that. Before it can happen completely though, I look up at my mom, with a twisted blurred smile on her face. I want to hear her say it this time. that's the only reason I want to stay. I want to hear her say it. When see opens her mouth to speak however, the world is quickly fading away…
“Robert…” she says, and then…
My head snapped forward on the toilet seat. I started to get up and heave something at the bathroom door. I didn't make it very far because the banging was so loud it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
“Robert! What the hell are you doing in there?” I quickly look up and at the the door. She's getting even madder now and she's even slamming her fist on the door.
“I have to pee. Get out of there Now!” I did so. She pushed past me knocking me to the ground and slamming the door behind her.
“you going some place?” I yelled at the door.
“yeah. I am. Your mom’s going to have fun tonight with J C and beer. You shouldn’t worry about What the fuck I do.”
“and just what are we going to eat for dinner?” I called.
“you'll get lunch tomorrow. Besides I can't stay hoe and take care of you all anyway. I have a life too you know? So I have to live it.”
“I'm sure you do. You have to let your pussy live, not you” I thought in my own head.
“tell your damn brother and sister to stay home when they get here, and I don’t want to see your sister with that nigger again!” my sister, by this point was never home, and she had and made black friends and boyfriends just to spite her. I just outsmarted her in anyway I could, and my brother would use fights and bullying as his outlet. We were not a family. We were our own battle grounds.
“I like James. He's nice.”
“he's a nigger. I grew up hating them. They don’t do shit except steal and they can't even form a god damn sentence.”
“but why do you hate them so much?”
“why do I hate them so much? Because they don’t do anything!” I was sure this wasn’t the complete reason so I had to ask yet again. She flushed the toilet drowning out my words and came dashing out of the bathroom.
“remember, if they come home, detain them. Okay? Jeep them here. I don’t want to have them out after dark.”
“okay. See you tomorrow.”
“what does that mean? I'm coming back tonight.” She would indeed be coming back tonight, but she would be to drunk to even walk, so that wasn’t her. The one I was talking to now, even though she reminded me so much of a teenager, with no goals and ambitions.
“I mean you'll be drunk tonight Barbra. You have responsabilities you need to be thinking about.” I was being serious. She had to pay rent tomorrow or we will be evicted yet again.
“your check will be in tomorrow. Don’t worry. We'll be fine.” She looked at me and then started packing her purse.
“but Barbra, what if I miss the bus tomorrow? And don’t you have to pay other bills? Don’t you have to clean the house?”
“why don’t you do it?” she snapped so fearcely it felt like I was talking to a raved dog.
“okay, your right… I'm sorry.”
“good. I don't know how you can live like you do. Don’t you ever want to take care of your things? Al your stuff is crammed in one pace, your books are on your bed, and your stuff smells like shit.”
“but I don't know how to wash clothes.” I protested.
“well, to bad for you then! I'm going to go party and there isn't anything you can do to stop me.”
:but Barbra, I'm not trying to.”
“but Robert,” she mimicked me. “shut up and just go away. I'm pissed at you anyway. You think your so much better than me because you speak properly?” I didn't listen. I just went into my room and plopped on my messy bed. I didn't have a bed. What I had done was pile mattresses on top of each other. She came in and just looked at me on my bed with my tape player beside me. she snickord.
“I wonder what your going to do as a job?” she pretended to think it over as she tapped her foot in the doorway. :lay and listen to books? Yeah. The world has a hard lesson for you just wait.” She then turned and marched out of the room. I laid back and started to daydream yet again. I then reflected on my new house. It was small compared to the other houses. It was a one story with only 2 bedrooms. My brother and I shared a smelly dirty room while my mom and sister shared the other. The house wasn’t kept clean, it wasn’t painted, and cock roaches would often live wherever we were at. They were our all the time houseguests. My room was very small. I didn't have a desk, or even drawers all I had was a bed and whatever I had on it and the small night stand to the right. My mom didn't have lights because she could, of course, never pay the bills on time. I, of course, was still living with my mom when I reached the ninth grade. Nothing changed at all in our household. In fact, things only slowly but steadily got worse. Despite this, I couldn't wait for school. I was excited. I was going to go to a completely new building with new teachers and work requirements. I was looking forward to the change. When I got in, I quickly realized I would have a challenge ahead of me. Homework loads would keep being dumped on us like heavy blankets. Because I couldn't do much of it anyway, I had to do the homework that I cared about the most or wanted to get a good grade on so that I could pursue my career. I knew I wanted to do something with books, so I concentrated on English the most. I, for some reason, didn't even have to study the vocabulary terms, the books Mrs. Fonda assigned us, or any other thing in English. I got it all within seconds of the short black haired kind teacher telling us. It was my best class and I loved being in the class almost as much as the library at my school. I even got it, sometimes, before she even covered it in class. I would often lose millions of books and papers because of the massive amounts of moving. This caused me to get low marks for the day but my grade never sank below an 80.
When we had moved for the billionth time in my first year my mom quit working and resorted to being away all day and sometimes even the evening. We had the house to ourselves, which was a bad thing. In short, the house never looked clean. Something would be on the floor or on the table. With our mom gone all the time, we didn’t have anyone telling us what to do, which gave my brother and sister plenty of time to just go off and leave me home alone. Every day after school, I would come home, do homework until the sun went down, and then go to bed if I could. This one day I remember being done with my English homework, and just Christmas treeing, or guessing the last few answers on the paper because I couldn't see it well enough, and the sun was going to go to sleep soon. The next day Mrs. Fonda, didn’t even notice. In fact, I had gotten the answers correct. I didn’t have a light in my room, so I had to do work right after I got home from school. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to see where to put my name.
Many times, I didn’t bother doing homework if the sun was halfway down. Sometimes when I would have enough light to do my work by, the noise was something I had to deal with all the time. My mom would call so many drinking friends over that the house soon turned into a frat house for drunks. One day while I was doing homework in the living room, someone hobbled over and sat down next to me. He stunk so badly, I held my breath. He didn’t notice.
“What you doing?” he slurred.
“English homework.”
“Oh!” he says, as if I had just said, “I'm doing brain surgery! God this is so hard!” “I dropped out of school. Never was good at all that reading and writing business.”
That doesn’t shock me, I thought nastily. He then tried to set his glass down, but he spilled it all over the work sheet I was doing.
“Damn it!” I screamed at him. “That was a study guide!” Mrs. Fonda would kill me, and I wouldn't pass the test tomorrow. I was mad as hell. “Why don’t you go drink over there?”
“Hey, I don’t want to hear that!” my mom yelled at me. Unlike others, she didn’t slur her words when she was drunk. She just got loud, as she was doing now. “I don’t want to hear that come out of your god damn mouth. Do you hear me?” I just stared at her in utter awe.
“Yeah,” I said, with an attitude.
She was starting to yell at me. “You just wait, you’re going to need me some day, you ungrateful bastard. Go read a book,”
“Go get high off a damn pipe!” I shot back at her. She then took two huge steps towards me. It was so fast I didn’t register that she had taken a step before she was on me, her voice inches from my nose. I felt every fleck of spit hit me in the face.
“Don’t you back-sass me, or I will knock out all your teeth,” Her breath stank so bad that I held my breath as her sword of words kept slicing right through every inch of my body. “You think you’re so much better than I am? You think you can just prance through life and everyone will give you whatever you want? Everyone's going to wipe your face in their dirt. You’re stuck up!” Tears stung my eyes, but I stared her down. “Get the hell away from me.” She shoved me into the table, where my wet English paper fell to the floor right in a puddle of spilled beer. I picked it up, not even recognizing it any more. It had a dull yellow color, and it stunk. What good was it even trying to turn it in now? My mom advanced towards me yet again.
“did you hear me? I said get the hell away from me. go away!” the hand I began to know like a sign of impending doom slammed it's way onto my cheek continually. I backed away, crying and cowering. Mad as hecll, I caught her hand and tried to dig my nails in her Pam. She creamed, but she hit me yet again, so hard I dropped my ruined paper. Only when I didn't move did she leave me alone. I picked myself up. Defeated and hating my mom even more, I took it into my room and just shoved it under my bed where past homework papers lay. Tests also lay there, almost all of them with 100’s or big fat red A’s on them. I could feel the blood on my cheek, and it also stung as well. I always had a high pain tolerance so to me, it was no big deal. At least she didn't slam my head into the wall again.
“My kids are bastards!” my mom was screaming out in the living room. Sighing, I turned over to the wall and daydreamed. I loved to do that. I loved to make my own world, one where I could, and would remain until time’s end. People who don’t always live in the real world were sad, scared, or unhappy. I was all of the above. I pictured one day returning home to find my mom dead, and me moving in with a kind woman who would hug me each day as I came through the front door. I pictured her and me sitting on the couch watching something sad on TV, and the two of us crying and sharing this wonderful yet sad moment. I even pictured, many times, me waking up on my birthday, and the kind woman smiling as I come out of my bedroom and exclaiming “happy birthday!” My vision continued to me actually having cake, and a party with hats and everything. Even though I was 17 at the time, that's how I saw it in books, with hats, and strip strings on the roof in bright pretty colors. That was how I remembered it with my grandmother and grandfather. Here, now, whenever my birthday would peek around the corner I almost forgot about it. I’d often wake up, and my mom would be gone. The only way I even knew it was my birthday was because kids at school would tell me, and wish me happy birthday! When I came home, I didn’t have a cake, but then again, this was normal right? So why was I reading about all these parties that people in books talked about? When you get to be 16, you’re not supposed to acknowledge your birthday, right. I even gave people looks when they’d say
“Are you coming to my party? My birthday party?”
“But your 15,” I‘d say.
“So?”
It got to the point where I daydreamed what opening gifts was going to be like. My hands would shake as I opened up a new package, only to discover that it was a book! I would be so happy, and my dream mom would smile, laugh, and hug me, as tears rolled down her face.
Coming out of my fantasies, however, I grew angry at myself. Why did I dream about things that were never in the whole world going to come true? If I knew events weren’t going to listen to my pleas and cries, why did I still dream? Weren’t you only supposed to dream when you knew it was going to happen? Was it wrong to have made up a completely different world inside of my head? My dream mom shook her head and said, with a voice that would put a deaf man to sleep, “its okay.” It was? Was it truly okay to be happy in a different world if I hated my own? I didn’t care if it was or was not okay. I was going to do it anyway. I was already like a mute in school, except for when I would speak up in English class, or help someone. One time when I did that, some kid asked me “How old are you?”
“16.”
“You talk like your 45 or something.”
Since my social skills stunk, why did I even have to try to live in the real world? Why couldn't my dream mom and I live happily ever after, like some blissful fairy tale? I knew why. Tomorrow was going to want to have a chat with me one of these days, and no matter how much I dreaded him, he always came around the corner to meet me head on. I wished that tomorrow would never come, that I could stay with my dream mom until time’s end, but that was not the case and it never would be. No matter how much I hated the tomorrows of this life, I couldn't make them go away.
The next day in English class Mrs. Fonda asked for her homework. What could I say this time? I had to think of a good lie, and I couldn't use the one I used last time, so what could I say? She loomed over me with a stern posture. “Where is yours?” She wasn’t a mean teacher, but she didn’t play. I liked her voice though. It was young, and it had a kind of tone that was pleasant on the ear. Listening to her talk was like listening to someone who plays an instrument well. Not great or perfect, but good. She didn’t look very bad either. She was skinny with short black hair and a round kind face and smile. I don’t actually know what she looked like, but that was the general outline I gathered.
“Well…” I said, trying to think of a lie. “I threw it in the trash because I didn’t want to do it.” That hit her dead in the face. She looked at me for the longest time, and then she said in a tight voice.
“Okay… I didn’t want to do this, but I have to. Detention, Robert. I'm sorry, but I just can't let this slide.”
“I know.” She had given me tons of warnings before, because she had some kind of soft spot for me that I didn’t even know about until after my sophomore year. She, ironically, was my favorite teacher out of the whole school. She was kind, and she proposed interesting classes. Her work was so entertaining I thought it was a privilege to be in her class.
“I mean, I didn’t think you of all people would do something like this,” she said, sounding very disappointed in me. “Your detention will be held after school-“
“No!” I screamed. Kids turned and looked at me, shocked. “Um, I can't. My mom’s working! She has a job at a plant place,” I lied again. She stood there staring at me. Did she suspect something? My mom would be too drunk to come and get me anyway, and she would be sitting at home with her drinking friends, laughing about Jerry Springer. I knew exactly what she would be doing but I didn’t want to have to tell anyone. I didn’t want to be on the streets, helpless because of my mouth and actions.
“Okay. Fine. Lunch detention.” she said, and I think she actually wanted to feel my forehead to see if I had a fever. She was always nagging at me to do better on tests, when she knew “I could.”
“Why didn’t you study?” she would ask, concerned about me. “You got a B, Robert. Why didn’t you study?”
“I forgot,” I would often lie. It's hard to study when your mom has the stereo blasting so high your head vibrates, and people are bothering you all the time. “What you doing? I like pie. Do you? Your mom has a nice ass, doesn’t she?” One time they even used one of my papers as a bong, and pot soon filled the house. Back in the class, I didn’t feel anything as she walked away from me muttering “such a wasted mind.”
That day I had to eat lunch in one room by myself. Kids saw on the announcement sheet that I had detention, and the whole place was asking me why.
“What? Robert Kingett got a detention? No way! How the hell did that happen?” To which I would just walk past and ignore everything that was being asked of me. I didn’t want to lie any more than I had to. I did tell my closest friends the half-truth, which was technically a whole lie, but I didn’t care. I was so used to doing it I couldn't stop. I was a master at it even. Later on in that class, Mrs. Fonda talked about something that poked my interest.
“Why do you think people read?” she asked. “One of the kids in here loves to read, but why do most people like to read?” It was an interesting question, and I had the perfect answer.
“Yes?” she asked when someone else raised her hand.
“To relieve stress.”
“To be happy.”
“To do something.”
“That’s not all,” she interrupted. “Maybe people do it because they find other things boring, or because they don’t like people, or their life is bad or something like that. People read for many different reasons. That sparks creativity at times,” she said, looking directly at me. I smiled my hand still high in the air.
“Yes Robert?”
“You forgot one thing. Sometimes people will read to gain even a little bit of happiness in their lives and in the world. Sometimes maybe they seek happiness, and that's where they can get it when otherwise it can't be reached.” She stopped pacing and thought hard about that
“Very precocious…” she was looking at me oddly, and I knew I might have screwed up. I didn’t like to show that side of me, because it would get people curious, and thinking, and I didn’t want that. Anyone could tell Child Services that they suspect something. Then I would be on the streets. I couldn't trust anyone.
My detention went well, actually. I sat alone in a room and ate. Soundproof walls were all around me, like some hard blanket. I didn’t mind solitude. I lived in it so much these days, it was I. And it was what I knew and had wanted to experience ever since I could remember.
The next weekend, I went to a black kid named En-vogue’s house. I thought that all moms were like mine. I was wrong. She was a very nice coal-colored woman with a happy smile and loving arms, as she greeted me off the bus.
“You must be Robert!” she said with a beam that even I could see.
“Yes.” I didn’t have any manners, but I didn’t cuss either. I was never taught table manners or people manners, as I called them.
“Okay! Splendid! You’re the one who helped En-vogue with his English grade?”
“Yes. That was me.”
“Aw! You’re so sweet!” That weekend I got a sense of what something I had forgotten was like. It was love. She loved me to death.
“Can I keep you?” she asked jokingly before I got on the bus on Monday. “You’re just the best!”
“Thanks.” I had grown to love her, even though I would never see her again.
“No problem! En-vogue never has company, and it's great to have someone to talk to about anything! And thanks to you, En-vogue’s not failing the tenth grade!”
“Thanks very much. I had a blast!” she then placed something in my hand. It was a bag. I got on the bus and looked inside. It was two homemade chocolate chip cookies. Slowly eating one so the bus people wouldn't see me, I started to cry. People say that you can't buy happiness. I know what that means, but I also think you can. But not with cash. If you give someone a hug, you just bought their happiness with a kind and warm gesture that we all should share and think about doing every day. My mom didn’t ever want to buy my happiness and love, it seemed. She just wanted to buy something out of a bottle.
That detention I got was because I didn’t turn in my paper. I knew I shouldn’t have left it there anyway, but wasn’t it my mom’s fault as well? She was more interested in her drinking friends than my homework or how well I would do on a test. She wouldn’t even look when I brought something home with a big fat 100 on it. It would usually end up going in the trash, or under my bed, where it would be covered with roaches the next day. That didn’t buy my happiness, and I wanted so badly for happiness to always be within my arms’ reach, where I would know I didn’t have to look far to find it. I wanted love. As the bus pulled away, I waved goodbye to En-vogue’s mom. Waving at her, I said what was dear and true in my heart. “I love you.” Even though she didn’t hear me, I still felt I had to say it. She had bought my love, and I would keep it in my memory and heart forever.
