D.S.Hale

Chapter One

 

 

          I pretended Denise, my dad’s girlfriend, was the smallest of the three aliens on the TV screen. Aiming my Atom Displacer squarely at her chest, I mashed the Nintendo’s red button. Spider webbing spewed from the end of the Displacer. The web fell miserably short of its goal and disintegrated in the animated rubble.

          The Denise-alien pecked the screen with one of her tentacles. Go ahead, make my day. She seemed to mock.

          Buzz-ut-huh. Buzz-ut-huh. The three aliens stood knee deep in the rubble of their destroyed city, laughing at me. They looked like salt-shriveled slugs with octopus arms and two tentacle eyes. The Denise-alien pulled her own Atom Displacer from behind her back. It was three times her size, three times her weight, and three times as much weapon needed to rearrange my life.

          “You better do something,” Chris said. He nudged me hard with his shoulder.  “She’s going to kill you.”  Chris had been my best friend since first grade.

          “I know, I know!” I yelled. I wasn’t born yesterday. I played this game a million times and every time that stupid little alien ruined my life. Before I could smash the red button, webbing flew at me from her Atom Displacer.

          “You’re dead,” Chris said.

          Buzz-ut-huh mocked Denise.

          I sighed and pushed back in the kitchen chair that I dragged into my room. I tossed the game controller over my shoulder. The Nintendo 64 cord trailed between my legs. Pecos, Chris’s yellow Labrador, lifted his head off his feet and looked between us. He let out a big dog sigh and lay his head back down.

           I reached into the cowhide Daniel Boone pouch slung around my neck, grabbed a jawbreaker and popped it in my mouth. I threw my head back and rubbed my eyes. What am I going to do about my lousy, miserable life?

          Two weeks ago, Mom sat me down at the table and told me in no-nonsense-terms I wasn’t a kid anymore. She said the judge deciding her and Dad’s divorce expected me to choose whom I wanted to live with.

           Mom looked all out of sorts that morning. I felt all out of sorts ever since. Nothing about life made sense.

          I’m twelve years old. I’m not a kid anymore. I crunched the hard candy, remembering the way her words made me feel, and the way I felt ever since. Her words became my words, a mantra in my head. I’m not a kid anymore.

          What am I then? A grown up? A man? I didn’t think so. I was a kid with a head full of anger and hate and sadness, and a heart as heavy as a rock.

           I hated Denise. She did this to our family. To me. A voodoo doll couldn’t have as many pins sticking in its chest and head as I did. According to the deadline Mom gave me, I only had this weekend to make up my mind. Come Monday morning at eleven o’clock, I’d be sitting in the judge’s chamber and like a man, I’d have to tell him who I wanted to live with.

           What if I couldn’t make up my mind? What if I didn’t know what to say when the time came? What if I didn’t have the courage to say anything? What kind of judge expected a twelve year old to make that kind of decision? How could he expect me to choose?

           Mom needed someone (namely me now that Dad had moved out) to fix the chronically leaking shower, change burned out bulbs, mow the grass, and baby-sitwhile she ran errands. I was the man of the house now. If I decided to live with Mom (because she needed me), what would I tell Dad when he asked why I didn’t choose to live with him? Dad and I used to be close until she double-crossed our lives. Dad and I used to fish old man Lyon’s pond and spend weekends tinkering on Dad’s ’65 Mustang. This summer we planned a camping trip to the Grand Canyon. Because ofher that trip was out and so was every other future trip we might’ve planned. I crunched the jawbreaker again.

          “Jessup, you ready in there?” Mom called from the kitchen. She sounded like a worn out speaker in a radio. It made me mad the way Dad didn’t care about her anymore. Since Dad left she didn’t smile, or laugh at my jokes, or make my favorite meatloaf. She wasn’t happy. And neither was I.

           “Yeah, I’m ready,” I hollered back.

           Dad’s girlfriend, Denise, used to be Mom’s best friend. When she came over, I liked listening to the twang in her voice and watching the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed. She used to be cool and funny back then. I used to think her son, Raymond, was a neat kid until I started spending every other weekend at his house. Then I found out was stingy, obnoxious, book smart to the point of being dumb, and not only that, he had white-capped-acne-volcanoes growing on the side of his nose that really grossed me out.

          I’m not even going to mention the worsest, grossest thing Raymond does everyday, all day long. I always wondered why kids kept their distance at school. Not until the divorce came about did I figure out why. Now I wished I didn’t know. It’s too gross to think about, even for a boy that likes farting on girls’ hands.

           “Did you pack underwear? Clean underwear?” Mom yelled from the kitchen. “Geez, Mom!” I rolled my eyes. Chris snickered.

           I hated the split family thing. I hated divorce. I hated Mom. I hated Dad, but most of all I hated Denise. Mom and Preacher Adams said hate was a strong word and it was not to be spoken aloud or even thought about, not even in our situation, not ever. But what else was I supposed to call the ball of emotion ping-ponging around inside my chest?

          My Sunday school teacher told me it was wrong to hate. Teachers at school said it was wrong to hate. Mom swatted me hard with a flyswatter and made me stick my nose in the corner if I said I hated anyone. God was love, not hate everyone said. God didn’t hate anyone so I wasn’t supposed to hate anyone. So what was I supposed to do with the hate I was feeling? How was I supposed to get rid of it? No one ever told me how to get rid of it. I was just told I wasn’t supposed to feel it in the first place.

           If Denise hadn’t wiggled her nose at Dad and laughed that stupid laugh, or flattened the wrinkles in Dad’s shirt with her hands, or given him shoulder massages at the kitchen table none of this would’ve happened. If Mom had smacked Denise with the flyswatter a few times like she smacked me when I did something wrong, things could’ve been different.

           I wanted Dad back home where he belonged and for weeks I tried to make it happen. Last weekend, I spilled red Kool-Aid on Denise’s best tablecloth. Denise almost cried then, I saw it in her eyes and it made my heart clutch real funny, kinda like a car not quite in gear and trying to climb a mountain. Denise sopped up the liquid with a white towel that would never be white again, and neither would her tablecloth. She said it belonged her great grandmother. Big deal, I thought. Dad used to belong to my mom.

          The weekend before, I stomped a pair of Dad’s underwear in a pile of wet dog poop in the backyard, then with a stick stuffed it into the back of the daybed. Denise found it when she unfolded the bed that night. Talk about stink! She cleaned it up with a clothespin on her nose and with pink rubber gloves that reached her elbows.

          Sabrina and Joseph, my little sister and brother, tattled to Mom about the time I put a dozen eggs in Denise’s microwave. Mom sat at the kitchen table and listened with shiny eyes. I saw some satisfaction in her tight smile when she listened to Sabrina tell how Denise scrubbed the inside of the microwave to get the egg off; but Mom grounded me anyway. She said I was mean, but when her hand had rested on my shoulder, I felt something pass between us. I knew she was glad I was mean to Denise and knowing that squeezed my lungs so much it was hard to breathe.

          This weekend I had to pull the stunt of all stunts to separate Dad and Denise for good. Mom depended on me. She wanted Dad back. I saw the look on her face while she sat alone at the kitchen table, a pile of bills spread out before her. I had to bring Mom and Dad back together before Monday morning, before I sat before the judge and he finalized the divorce with my stupid, grown up decision. Was it too much to want Mom and Dad together?

          Preacher Adams told me to pray about the situation. That would make it all better he said. Like prayer was a band-aid or something. I mean really, get a life! If God cared about me, or our family, He never would’ve allowed Dad to leave Mom in the first place.

          I used to like going to church and praying, and learning about God, but lately I couldn’t give a hoot about God and His laws. Why should I? It’s not like obeying them and being faithful to Jesus changed anything. As a matter of fact, I had  been obeying and having faith up to the point of Dad leaving. Had it prevented their separation? No, so how could it somehow bring them back together?

          Mom appeared at the doorway and rested her hip against the doorjamb, one arm draped across her stomach. Her hair had turned gray above her ears and lines wrinkled her mouth. She gained twenty pounds and ten years in the past three months.

          “Jessup, I’m going out for a while. Don’t lock the house when you leave like you did last time.” She looked around the room. “I wish you’d act more responsibly and less like your dad.”

          I ground my teeth. I hated it when she said I acted like Dad. It was bad enough everyone said I looked like him. I was tall and lanky with a strong nose and chin, but it was my deep, ‘wise’ blue eyes and sandy blond hair that people inevitably compared to my dad. I didn’t want to look like him and I sure didn’t want to act like him.

          “Where are you going?” I asked. I knew where she was going; I just wanted to make her mad for what she said to me.

           Her blue eyes flashed. “Don’t give me that,” she snapped. “You’re turning into your dad more and more every day.” She stomped down the hallway.

          Chris looked at me. He had a way of making his eyes get as big as pepperonis.

          “What was that all about?” When his eyes bugged out like that it looked like they could pop out of their sockets.

          I shook my head, suddenly regretting what I said. She didn’t need me making her feel worse. “The weekends when Dad picks us up,” I said, “she buys a quart of Edy’s ice cream and sits on the bench in front of the store and eats the entire thing. Chocolate chip, butter pecan, whatever flavor of the week it is; then she crawls in bed and stays there until Sunday night when we come home.”

          “Wow,” Chris said. “She’s got it bad.”

          “It’s all Denise’s fault. Sabrina cries for Mommy when we’re at Dad’s house and Joseph cries for Dad when we’re here. It’s a no-win situation. I’ve got to get ‘em back together.”

          “It’s part of growing up,” Chris said with a shrug. He raised his right shoulder and scratched his peanut butter colored hair. “Besides, it can be fun. If you and your mom get into a fight you can spend the night with a friend. You could spend every night of the week with someone else. If your dad still lived at home, you couldn’t do that. I know a lot of kids that do it. It ain’t so bad.”

           Chris turned back to the twelve inch TV and pushed the red button. Webs zinged across the screen. The aliens taunted him with their buzz-ut-huhs.

          The TV made an unusual popping sound. The screen suddenly wriggled, making the aliens dance like worms, then the screen returned to normal.

          “I’ll get Denise out of the picture,” I said determinedly. “Then Dad’ll come back.”

          “How’re you gonna do that?” Chris asked.

           The TV went szhnpzhz. Pecos lifted his head, and Chris absently patted him.

           “I thought I’d tell Dad that Mom had a date with this weight lifting guy she works with. You know, try and make him jealous.”

          “Yeah? Well, I once knew this Mexican kid in El Paso. His mom lived across the border and his dad was a migrant worker. The kid called the government hotline and said his dad was an illegal alien working without a green card, and his dad was booted across the border. As far as I know they’re still living with his mom.”

          “Great, Chris, but do I look Mexican? Not to mention, we’re located between Tennessee and Indiana. And none of us are illegal aliens,” I pointed out. Sometimes Chris said the strangest things that didn’t make sense.

          The TV screen turned blue and started humming. Pecos whined.

          Chris banged the side of it. “If your dad’s determined to be with Denise, you gotta do something major to change his mind. None of that little league stuff.”

           Szhnapzhz

           “What’s wrong with your TV?” Chris finally asked. He slumped back in the chair, staring at the blue screen.

            “Mom bought it at the pawn shop in Carrollton. It’s a piece of junk.”

Everybody in my class had flat screens, Wiis, and Ipods. I had a 12-inch-hunk-of-junk. Mom bought it, thinking it’d make me feel better about Dad leaving. It was the same reason she bought the Bugle Boy jeans (whoever heard of Bugle Boy?), the refurbished video games and Nintendo 64, the Goodwill-special-skateboard, the new-to-you bike, and an outdated, neon green CD player with chunk headphones. Sabrina and Joseph had been showered with the same kind of gifts. They were blindly appeased. I hated her for thinking she could buy me off.

          Suddenly, the TV screen bulged like a partially inflated balloon as a hand reached out of the blue ether.