Cake
on childhood
The little boy and I were at his house. It was just after his birthday party (it was just him and me) and we were standing on the picnic table because we were about to stomp around on his cake because we thought it would be fun. His mama came out screaming, “What’re you two doin’?
We jumped down off that picnic table and he ran one way and I ran the other.
She had a stick in her hand and she was swinging it. It was a small branch, she called it a switch and I could see why cuz when she waved it, I heard it say, “Switch, switch.”
She was screaming and saying things I couldn’t understand. That little boy and I ran and ran and ran.
Then my mama came over the fence. I had never in my short life seen her do anything like that. My mama was big with comfy arms for resting your head on and she grunted whenever she stood, but she was over that fence.
She went at that little boy’s mama like my dog went after a squirrel.
That boy’s mama went down and limp like that squirrel. That fast. And she was like a sock on the ground.
My mama sat down on the bench. She sat and looked at the moon over the trees – a sliver in the midday sky. She sat like that breathing and breathing, like me when I play real hard, until she was normal again.
She talked quiet and calm the way she can when she wants to and the little boy and I went to her. I sat on her lap and the boy leaned on her leg with his head against that comfy arm.
She went to touching that little boy’s bruises and cuts. He had bruises everywhere. I had never once touched those bruises.
She talked slow like a river of honey to that little boy, “I used to talk to your mama. I thought we were the same about children, raising them up right with manners. With discipline.”
The little boy backed away from her then. Fear made his shoulders rise and his face go hard and sad.
Mama looked at him like she was the angel who picks people up when they die and takes them to heaven – sad for them cuz living is good.
She said, “But I didn’t mean that the way she did.”
“She means spankins’,” the boy said.
The boy and my mama kept looking at each other with a silence of understanding like birds and small things when they all know their places.
“I didn’t know your mama had the devil whispering in her ear to put you in your place – he puts people in hell and that’s what your demon mama did.”
That little boy and I said, “Puuaa,” with our breath and then mama remembered to say, “God rest her soul.”
She picked me up off her lap and knelt down at the boy’s feet and I don’t know how, but it looked like she was gonna pray to him.
“Will she hurt me when she wakes up?”
“She’ll never wake up again,” mama said with her eyebrows thick and fallen down tree branchy.
That little boy smiled. He whooped and hollered like a little boy again.
My mama grunted and stood. “Now, it’s time for you two to go inside for awhile.”
She turned to the little boy and said, “I want you to call your daddy.”
The daddy came home and the little boy and I watched while he dug a big hole.
I never did see that little boy again.
Somebody else moved into the house.
The boy grew up, as we all did. He sent my mama letters. Photos. No return address.
“We don’t want any connections, you know.” That’s what mama said about that.
On his birthday, every year till I was grown, my mama made a big cake and we danced in it in our bare feet.
______
Writer’s Block and The Imaginary Phone Call
on the theme of Love
I say, “I’m writing a book about you and mom and I.”
“Uh-huh.”
My brother isn’t one to talk to fill the air. Well, yea, he is, what’m I saying. He totally is.
So he fills the air with his words. His rage. His…well, I’ll let him tell you.
Not that it matters, but you’re almost always wrong. And you went to college and got your head messed with – liberalized. You haven’t ever been to war so you don’t know anything about life and death. You’ve never pulled the trigger. You’ve killed, but abortion’s not the same and you know it. The wife already hates you and if you say anything bad about her, we’ll sue you. And I’d be careful cuz some of her relatives are mean as the day is long (and I mean that in a good way) and they’ll find you. Or your daughter. You should think of Emma. What’s she gonna think of what you have to say about yourself. You can’t tell her about abortion cuz then she’ll have one. You can’t tell her about your boyfriend in high school cuz then she’ll have sex. And my kids. What’ll happen to them if people find out they’re related to you – could cost them. We don’t live in a place where it’s ok to talk like you do, telling people shameful things and being ashamed of your ancestors and telling history wrong. We just can’t say things like that. And you know about our cousin, but you don’t know how he’s hurt our uncle – how he went to Vietnam and then had to raise a gay son – do you know what that was like. No, of course you don’t and you don’t spank. Your kid’s gonna grow up cussing and acting like she can do anything she wants and how’s that gonna work out for her. You know she’s a girl, right? And how’s your husband John gonna feel when he knows what you did and what you were like and he’s gonna feel so cheated.
And you never had a son either while we’re talking.
You don’t have anything to write about anyway. I don’t know why anyone should listen to you.
If you write anything about me, I will sue you.
Yea, so…
Give Emma my love. Tell John hello.
Author Biography
Jenny Forrester was the 2011 winner of the Richard Hugo House New Works Competition contest and the runner up in Indiana Review’s 1/2K prize. Find out more about her writing at Trailer Trash Writing on Facebook.