Applause of the Maniacs
We escape into the horrors of my mother’s car
I had just arrived at the airport. My mother is fighting with security to let her through the boarding area to meet me. A group of onlookers notice that I am the one she is talking about.
I was shunned from the group.
The man I previously shared a moment with, looked down on me with disappointment in his eyes.
I wanted to plead with the passengers — beg them to hear my case.
Don’t give me that look. I was once like you.
My outfit did little to help.
My mother had bought me a matching shirt and hat from a Foot Locker at The Fountains — a shopping mall near the trailer park.
The black and white striped Chicago White Sox shirt was stiff. The matching hat was flimsy and hung loosely around my skull — soft and bendable — like a train conductor’s hat.
She insisted we get it, never looking at the $100.00 price tag.
My mother had no concept of money.
She would pay for goods as if she were a tourist that hadn’t grasped the local currency— handing the clerk a wad of crumpled bills and staring back at him, hoping the amount was enough.
This time the salesperson had to shout for us to come back for her change.
“Ma’am! You forgot your change!”
My mother darted over to him, giggling under her breath.
“I’m so dumb, hehe.”
She then crumpled several twenties in her hand and stuffed them into her front jeans pocket, with no regard for the amount.
(The child support check had arrived.)
I looked like a prisoner from a comic strip.
The shirt was too big.
Too ridiculous.
Not to mention, strange.
I had never been to Chicago. None of us had.
I wore it to make her happy.
She loved seeing people using the gifts she gave them, often making them try the items out immediately.
My uncle had taken a stand and refused to indulge her on one of his birthdays.
“I’m not trying underwear on right now Terry.”
“Call the police!”, someone in the crowd hollered.
The sudden shout drew everyone’s attention away from the wrestling match my mother was engaged in.
All of that attention fell on me.
The boy who was dressed like a backup dancer — gripping a burgundy suitcase, desperately wishing to trade lives with someone.
It left my mother with a window of time to escape as she freed her head from under the security guard’s forearm.
She ran to me and grabbed my hand, never slowing down.
“Come on, let’s the get the hell out of this crazy place!”
It was as if nothing had just happened.
I hurried and crawled in through the passenger side of my mother’s El Camino (which had no door handles), after we found our spot in the parking structure.
I was slapped with the heavy hand of Florida humidity as I took in gulps of saturated air.
My eyeballs were beginning to sweat when I was startled by the explosion of our engine’s ignition — like an angry shotgun round.
The view of shocked airport commuters, some staring, some lifting themselves out of defensive positions, would have been embarrassing enough, had I actually been able to see out of the passenger side window.
Glass is not supposed to vibrate and hum with the wind, I thought.
Before I could come to the obvious conclusion, I realized that the window had been wrapped in layer upon layer of clear saran wrap — creating the blurry resemblance of a window.
It was like staring through Vaseline.
My mother noticed me looking at the nightmare of a window the had constructed.
She started to adjust the knobs of the air conditioner before addressing it.
“Oh, the window didn’t roll down anymore, so I knocked the glass out with a rock.”
I knew the air conditioner was broken. I didn’t even have to check the vents with my hand.
I was correct.
The air conditioner was as broken in this car as it had been in the dozens of cars my mother had purchased from neighbors.
(This was done before they had the chance to donate the keys to charity.)
My mother was proud of her ingenuity. She looked at me through her grin.
“Now, I can lift the bottom of this crap up and get some air.”
As she reached for the bag, the hot stickiness of the window glued itself to her hand.
She screamed and began tearing at her skin.
“Son of a bitch! I hate this thing!”
She swerved away from the small aluminum gray sedan parked ahead of us.
We squealed through the lot.
Two commuters pulled themselves apart from a loving — turned survival — embrace, and leapt for the curb.
My mother inhaled and mumbled to herself.
“They come out of nowhere. Like that stupid cat.”
I perked up and questioned her.
“What cat?”
She paid me no mind as she squinted through the bright sunshine and looked for the exit ramp from the airport.
She started to sing.
“Miami International Airporrrrrrt….where the big jet engines roar…”
Her voice was unpleasant. She could hit an octave that invoked a physical, almost guttural anger in the listener.
I was starting to lose it. Plus, I was sure the humidity was inflicting permanent brain damage.
I sat trapped in the air-tight sarcophagus.
By the time we reached the rusty automobile’s maximum speed of sixty miles per hour, my mother was well into a manic conversation with me, or herself.
It would have been unsettling enough going this slow on the freeway, had my mother not been driving like she was on an amphetamine high, weaving between lanes to avoid the much faster cars.
Somehow, I began to drift in and out of sleep — or perhaps lose consciousness from heat exhaustion — as the wrinkled windows clapped throughout the car like applauding maniacs.
Meanwhile, her hair whipped across the air, slapping my cheeks and occasionally sucking itself vertically to the ceiling as she looked at me with a wild smile.
Her faint murmurs turned into shouts.
I peered over and watched her screaming (the veins in her neck were raised) but couldn’t make out what she was saying due to the blaring slaps of the window.
She stared over at me and yelled, “I said, I think your brother is gay.”
I rested my sweaty forehead on the dashboard — the cracks in the aged leather jabbing into my skin.
I was uncomfortable but the position offered protection from the wind tunnel within the jimmy-rigged car.
My mother rubbed my back and spoke in a gentle tone.
“Gregory? Gregory?”
“What,” I asked without lifting my head.”
She was silent for a moment, then asked.
“You would tell me if your dad ever touched your private parts right?”
I closed my eyes and sighed.
I had flown home into a circus.
NEXT UP…A CAR TRIES TO ESCAPE…
Part 1 of this story:
Feel free to start at the beginning of the RACE!
CHASING CRAZY
