Callused
Now, I didn’t always live with my Mom. Well, I did but then I didn’t. What I mean is that I did when I was little until I was about seven and then I lived with my Dad. My Mom drank a lot. So did my Dad, but Social Services said my Mom was no good for me or something. I lived with my Dad, like I said, but you see, my little brother didn’t. He has a different dad and Social Services couldn’t find him. Still can’t. So he stayed with our Ma. I didn’t like that.
My Dad drank too but they didn’t catch him cos he did it more secretly. My Mom though, she would get brought home by the police. One time they found her asleep at a bus stop and no one could wake her up. She woke up right in the back of the ambulance and started kicking and fighting with people to try to get out. The cops had to come hold her down for the ambulance people. That’s when they took me away.
It took about a year for them to find out that my Dad was a drunk and then it took a while before they took me from him too.
Then I went to a Foster home. They made me get up for school and make my bed, all that kind of stuff. I was bad for them, like I didn’t behave or anything. They had a nice house in a place where all the houses were nice and the lawns were perfect. I didn’t like it. That’s why I was bad.
When I was twelve they gave me back to my Mom. She was living with her boyfriend on a farm. We had a trailer and it was pretty good. It was right next to this big barn on this farm. He worked for the farm. He got up at four every morning and milked cows then worked around the farm fixing things all day, then milked the cows again at night. I helped at night some times. Their utters were soft and I liked putting the sucker things on them. He had me shovel cow shit after school sometimes if I was bad. He said it was so I would get some work ethic and respect. I didn’t like him.
We stayed almost four years. Then one day, when me and my little brother got dropped off by the school bus, my Mom had a taxi waiting with all our stuff in it and we left, not with her boyfriend though.
We drove to a small town a ways away that had a river that ran through it. When we got off the highway we drove through the town. I liked all the little houses. There was a big grocery store and we went by a really big stone church that had a tall tower. Me and my little brother thought there was a bell up there, but I found out later that there was just speakers.
We went over two bridges, one right after the other because the river was split into a wye. One side had a lock for boats and stuff and the other a long low dam across the river. It was really rocky right after the dam for a ways and the water was shallow and moved fast.
This is where we live now. We’re in an apartment above a liquor store in the center of the town. We’re living with this woman that’s a lot older than my Mom, or at least she looks it. She says they’re old friends but I’ve never seen her before.
My Mom has been better since we moved here. She’d been getting us up for school and making sure we leave. I think she goes back to bed. She’s usually at a bar or drinking with some friends when we get out of school. She got us up for school though.
At school the other kids all have nice clothes and a lot of them. I only have two pairs of jeans and like five shirts. I have other shirts but I don’t like ’em. Those ones I wear around the apartment on weekends and stuff. But these other kids have all kinds of nice clothes. I asked my Mom for some nice clothes and she brought me to Walmart. I know the other kids don’t get clothes at Walmart but Mom said we can’t afford the mall stores.
I get mad that my Mom doesn’t work sometimes, but I don’t say nothing to her. I know it won’t do any good cos she’s lazy. Plus she drinks too much. You can’t go to work drunk.
Anyway, The kids at school dress nice and I don’t get to talk to them. I think they don’t like me because my clothes, but then I see Cameron, this other kid that doesn’t have nice clothes neither, and he talks and jokes with them. He can make them laugh cos he’s funny. I’m just mostly quiet at school. I figure I got me and that’s all I need.
The teachers don’t bother me none. I hear other kids complain about this teacher or that teacher but they don’t bother me. I’m just quiet and sit in the back of class. I don’t do homework and I don’t do good on tests. But all the kids in my classes do that. They all make problems though. Thats why the teachers bother them.
Another thing is my clothes get stains in them. And my Mom doesn’t do laundry much. I save up the money she gives me for lunch, so I can go clean my clothes at the laundromat down the street. She gives me fifty cents a day cos we have reduced lunch and it takes the money from all week to wash and dry one load.
I do it Friday nights. My Mom is always out and sometimes my little brother follows along and tries to get me to wash some of his clothes too. He lets his clothes get real dirty sometimes and he’s too young to care. I let him most times but this week he broke my lamp. He was bouncing a lacrosse ball off the floor in our bedroom. He found the ball when we were cutting across one of the sports fields at school on our way home. Anyway, he bounced it and it went flying and smashed my lamp.
“Come on, just let me throw a couple things in with yours!”
He was yelling at me, but I just kept getting my laundry all ready to go. I had it piled in a laundry basket. I was looking for the box of powder laundry soap when he whipped the lacrosse ball at me and hit me in the ribs. It hurt bad. Those things are hard and heavy. So, I turned around and pulled my fist back. He got all scared and was begging me not to hit him. I’m a lot bigger and every once in a while I hit him. Just so he knows I’m still bigger and stronger even though I don’t yell back at him.
Most of the time I don’t hit him though and he knows it. After a couple seconds of him whining I put my fist down and turn away. Then he said I was just being a baby anyway, so I turned around quick and hit him right in the center of the chest. He fell back into the wall hard and started crying.
After a little bit of looking I found the soap in a cabinet between a box of spaghetti and one of those ramen soup things in the styrofoam cup. Going back to our room I walk past my brother. He was still sitting on the floor in the hall crying a little. When I came back through with the basket I decide to talk to him again.
“You wanna come with me?” I asked him cos I felt bad.
“Fuck off!” He was yelling again.
“Fine, I’m going.”
I left carrying the laundry basket and walked out of our building. It was starting to get dark and I almost tripped over a drunk guy sitting leaned against the wall along the side of the liquor store. He was asleep. I thought about taking the booze bottle out of his hand, but I didn’t.
I always feel weird walking in town carrying my dirty laundry. I didn’t see other people doing that. Most people could drive everywhere they needed to go. The only time the people in this town walk or run is when they don’t have anywhere to go. It must be nice, but I gotta walk.
I was walking the same way I do when I go to school. I walked past this bakery that always has doughnuts and other dessert stuff in the window. I’ve wanted to try something from there ever since we moved here, but I’ve never been able to. It didn’t smell now but usually it smelled real good.
This cute girl that I recognized from school came out of the bakery with a couple loafs of bread in her arms. She looked at me and smiled. I put my head down and blushed walking by her quick. She got into a car that was waiting for her out front. It felt good that she smiled at me, but I was embarrassed for her to see me with my dirty laundry.
Thats kinda how I feel most of the time. Like I’m always embarrassed around other kids at school. I didn’t feel that way at other schools, but here I do.
When I got to the laundromat there was only one other person there. She was older and was wearing a dark blue Mini Mouse sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. Her hair was greasy and was in a ponytail with a dingy pink scrunchy. She said hi and I nodded back at her. I went to the same washer I always use. The one on the far right in the back. You can see it while sitting in the chairs along the big windows in the front. As I was putting all my clothes into the washer I heard the little bell on the door. My brother ran up to me all out of breath.
“Mom came home and passed out on the floor and then puked!” He was worried.
“She on her side?”
“Yeah” he was panting out of breath.
“Then she’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” One of his eyebrows went up.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Alright, it’s your fault if she dies.”
“Okay.”
I finished filling the washer and turned to look at my brother. He had a smudge of dirt on his face and his t-shirt was filthy.
“You at least want that shirt washed?” I was feeling bad for him.
“I guess so” he peeled off the shirt and handed it to me.
I started the washer. I stuck my hand under the water pouring in and cleaned his face with my wet hand. Then we went and sat in the chairs. My brother complained that the chair was cold on his back. I told him to stop being such a baby. He shut up after that.
We sat quietly listening to the hum of the machines for a while. My brother was good and didn’t fidget too much. Eventually, the lady came over and asked if she could borrow some soap cos she ran out. I gave her the box and she thanked me. When she brought it back I could tell she had taken a lot. I figured she put it in her empty box.
When the laundry was dry I made my brother help me fold it. I always did our towels for us, so I figured he should help.
When we walked back the drunk was gone, but my mom was still on the floor upstairs. The side of her face on the ground was covered in throw up and there was a big puddle around her head. She must have moved into it after she threw up. I took a clean towel and wiped up the floor around her head. I didn’t clean her face though.
In the middle of the night a loud crash woke me and my brother up. My brother sat up and whispered across the room. I told him that it was probably Mom tripping over stuff. He laid back down and some mumbling came from outside the door. I heard him sigh and I told him to not worry.
We woke up early the next morning to catch crawfish in a creek that ran into the river. We sell them for bait to the people that fish off the bridges three dollars for ten. We don’t sell a lot, but its a few extra bucks. My brother would lift the big stones and I had to grab’em. He was a baby about getting pinched.
It’s funny how people are. There’s one side of the bridge that the black people fish off and the other for white people. It’s not a rule or nothing and no one makes you move if you go to the other side, they just do it. They mostly catch carp, perch, pumpkin seed, bluegill or catfish here. It’s a lot of fun to watch them reel in a big carp. They fight hard and sometimes they’re giant. One day we watched this one old black guy fight with one that was huge. He fought with it for a long time and then realized he couldn’t reel it right up to the bridge. It would’ve broke the line flopping in the air, so he walked with the pole off the bridge and climbed down to the edge of the river.
Me and my brother followed him yelling and laughing excited. The dark water swirled around from the fish’s tail and almost pulled the old man in but he caught himself on a big stone.
When he finally pulled it on shore we couldn’t believe how big it was. The old black guy had one of those yellow disposable cameras and he made my brother lay down next to the thing to show how big it was in the picture. We thought he was gonna throw it back, cos that’s what most people do with carp, but he took it. I asked him what he thought he was gonna do with it and he said eat it. Both my brother and I looked at him like he was crazy and we told him that it was gross. He told us we were stuck up white folk and left. My brother gave him the finger to his back.
Then my Mom and her older friend starting hanging out with this younger girl. She wasn’t a whole lot older than me, maybe twenty. She dressed real skimpy but she wasn’t pretty. At least I didn’t think so.
They started partying a whole lot then. They would be drinking and smoking real late into the night. They were always loud. Sometimes they played music and danced, sometimes they would play cards talking and laughing, and sometimes they’d get too drunk and there would be all this arguing. The arguing was always the worst.
This is when Mom stopped getting up to make sure we were getting ready and leaving for school. I always did it myself but now I had to make sure my little brother was getting up. He was always real grumpy when he first wakes up and would swear at me. Some days, if I didn’t feel like dealing with it, I would just leave him and go to school on my own.
But that night it started out good. Just them playing cards and making jokes. My brother and I even hung out with them for a little while. They were being real funny and they didn’t mind us hanging around because we would go and get beers or more packs of cigarettes from the kitchen when they asked. At midnight Mom told us to go to bed cos we had school the next day. We fell asleep to the sounds of laughing and beers clinking on the coffee table, and cards shuffling.
A few hours later I woke up to my brother standing in the doorway with a real scared look on his face.
“There’s something wrong with them.”
“They’re probably just real drunk. They were drinking a lot.”
“No, they don’t look like they’re drunk.”
“Well, what do they look like.”
“It’s real bad. You gotta come see.”
“Okay, fine. I’m coming.”
He made me nervous. I walked down the hallway slow with him behind me. First I saw through the doorway into the living room where my Mom’s older friend was sitting in the recliner at the far end of the living room. She looked a weird color white. Like wax. Her eyes were shut and her head was sagging over in a way that looked real uncomfortable. I looked at her for a while and she didn’t move at all, like even breathing move.
I took another step and saw my Mom and the young girl slumped over on the couch. My Mom looked like her older friend. The young girl though, her face was a purplish blue and she was doing gasps that kinda sounded like a snore. My brother was right about them not being drunk. Our only phone was my Mom’s cell phone, so I had to go in there and find it. I checked the coffee table first but it was in her front pocket. She didn’t move at all when I went into her pocket. She peed her pants and it was cold. I was worried the phone wouldn’t work cos it was wet but it did.
I called 911 and tried to explain what was happening as best I could. They kept asking questions and they wanted me to do CPR but I told the lady that I didn’t know how to do it.
I saw on the coffee table in front of the young girl this box open that I had seen before in her purse. It was black with a golden elephant and gold flower designs on it. I just thought it was for her makeup or something. But it had a spoon, some small baggies, and a needle. A needle like at the doctors, not like one for sewing.
The police came in first but then behind them were a bunch of people from the ambulance. The policeman was asking me all kinds of questions almost like he was trying to distract me. One of the ambulance people picked up the coffee table and moved it into the kitchen. He had these funny thick pants on like snow pants. They were pulling open their eyes looking at something with a little flash light. But then they pulled everybody down to the ground. They were pushing on my Mom’s chest and also on her older friend’s too. The younger one they put something up to her nose. And then it got real busy with a bunch more people showing up.
The cop took me and my brother to go sit in his police car with him. The last time I saw my Mom’s face, she was on a stretcher being wheeled out to the ambulance. They were still pushing on her chest and She had a tube going into her mouth and someone was squeezing this thing that kinda looked like a kid’s football but clear like see through. She had puke running all down her face.
