Pretending

Imagine growing up in a world where conditions were so bad, all you could do was imagine a better life to ease the pain. This is so for Bryce and Merna. They imagine so much, you wonder what's real.

                                                          

I still remember his face. It was sad. There was a mild smile though, just not with his mouth. The rest of his face smiled, which indicated to me that he was happy. We were happy. But we did not really smile because we were sad. He was leaving me to go back home. Well, to his new home. We did not speak. We just looked at each other with wet eyes and dry cheeks. He turned away and got in the car. Our grandmother asked him if he told his sister he loved her. He looked at me and put his head down. She turned to me and said that he would not say it but she knows that he does. I gave her a hug and said, “I know.”

 

As I sat in the airport staring into the limitless ceiling, my mind traveled back in time to when me and my brother, Bryce, were together in a two-bedroom apartment with my mom and her boyfriend…Bill. We would sit upside down and stare at the ceiling all day and dream...pretend.  It was the happiest most dangerous time of our life. We never wanted it to end but we knew because of conditions it could not last long (at least we hoped).  But there was one day that seemed colder than the rest, darker than the others, and made change inevitable.

 

“I’m going to the store!” my mom yelled to us in the living room as we lay upside down on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

I quickly turned from upside down to face my mom right-side up and ran to her before she could leave, “I want to go.”

She turned and looked down at me with disappointment, not at me but at herself that she didn’t get out of the door quicker, “I’ll be right back.” She said sighing.

Fear overcame me, my brother wasn’t pressed on going, he could stare at the ceiling all day. That was fine. But I did not want to be at home with just him and…Bill. Just as I was about to come up with an excuse, Bill emerged from the bedroom and went into the living room to start playing with my brother. I clinched my mom’s jacket, looked up at her with tears in my eyes to say, “PLEASE!”

 

It was a cold Detroit winter day. I was bundled up in boots, gloves, long johns, a scarf, a hat, and a long winter coat with faux fur. My mom also slapped some Vaseline across my face for skin-cracking purposes. My mom walked fast, really fast. Many theories were born from that classification: one was that she ran track in high school, and she was one of the fastest on the team, so naturally her running speed rubbed off on her walking speed, thus allowing her to walk fast. Another theory was that she didn’t have a car so she always had to walk with a purpose to get to where she needed to go. The last theory was simply that she had long legs. I liked to believe the last one. My mom was a tall woman with long appealing legs. She was dark, thin and beautiful. I liked to admire her beauty and I thought her long legs complimented her beauty perfectly. Her being a fast walker just gave me a reason to talk about it.

“Black and Mild” my mom said to the liquor store cashier.

I stayed close to her, but I still looked around with my eyes just to scope the place for snacks. There weren’t many people in the store. One sketchy guy in all black clearly not looking at chips but back and forth from the ground to the liquor store clerk stood toward the back.  Another guy toward the back on the opposite side was pacing the floor while having an intense conversation on his cell phone. The Man in all Black finally picks some chips and comes closer to us in the line. My mom and the clerk are having a conversation, and I look up at her and give her nudge her to say, “Let’s go.” As I look up, I see a superman colored gummy watch and my eyes light up.

“Mommy! Mommy…can you…”

“Shhh …now wait here, I’ll be right back.”

“But Mommy…” I nudge

“What Merna?”

I didn’t speak I just looked over and pointed at the watch.

The watch looked good on me. I sat on the floor trying it on while tearing off little pieces desiring to eat it but wanting to savor it as well. My mom and the Man in Black disappeared once she bought me the watch and told me to sit down. My watch was not real so I did not know how much time had passed by, but I was waiting long enough to know that time had passed by. I grew impatient and stood up and I started looking at the reflection of me and my watch against the bulletproof glass separating me and the cashier. He stared me down and then said, “Sit down.”

 

I started to sit down and then my mom emerged suddenly and the Man in Black ran out the back. My mom held her stomach with her right arm, grabbed me and we ran out the door as the cashier yelled loudly emerging from behind the glass with a bat.  He had a thick accent so the only thing I could make out was for us to never come back.

 

When we got back to the apartment my mom and Bill quickly went back to their room. I took off all my stuff and went and sat with Bryce. Every time her and Bill went back in their room they were there for hours. I didn’t even think about it, I had other things on my mind.

“How was the store?”

“It was cool until we ran out with the cashier yelling at us”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, right? Who cares?”

“Not me!”

“Me either!”

There was a long silence, which was usually fine, but I was anxious.

“Hey Bryce, you know what time it is?”

“Don’t know, don’t care” Bryce said

Not the answer I was expecting but I had to go through with it now. I stood up, with my back facing Bryce, slapped the little quarter of my watch I had left on my wrist, turned around in Bryce’s face and said,

“Well I do…IT’S GUMMY TIME!” I sang and danced in a circle while dangling the watch in Bryce’s face.

“Gummy time…gummy time.” GUM-MMIE TIME.” I sang it with so much conviction you would have thought it was a best selling song from a Disney movie soundtrack.  I paused from singing and dancing to start another cycle, (this time the slow version). “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s gummmmmmy ti…”

Bryce grabbed my arm and wrestled me down to the couch. I rolled over and protected the watch by cradling it in my arm with my body.  

Now, Bryce and I were both skinny. Bryce had long limbs and was lean. He was freakishly strong for an eight-year old-skinny-bigheaded boy. You could tell he would grow up and have the body shape of Kevin Durant. Now me on the other hand, I was older and taller than Bryce but not stronger. Also, my skinniness was a sham, I was only skinny by default. Everyone could tell that once I started getting the right amount of food I would shape out and take the body form of Queen Latifah. Needless to say, considering those attributes, I was fighting a losing battle against Bryce and the only way out was to persuade. I had a couple of years on Bryce so I could still outsmart him but it would be tough. Unfortunately, I didn’t think quick enough because then the inevitable, I burst out in laughter wailing my arms and legs everywhere: Bryce started to tickle me. The watch flew out of my hand and on to the couch. We both went after it but I took too long to recover. Bryce grabbed it, got on top of me, and ate it. There was only about a quarter of the watch left, but it took him five of the longest minutes in life to eat it because he tore off little pieces as he ate it in my face. After he finished the last little piece he stuck his tongue out to make sure I knew it was gone.

After that, every fifteen minutes he would look up at me with all seriousness and say, “Hey, Merna, what time is it?”

 

We did not have cable so we only had five channels. On Saturdays, if we didn’t catch the cartoons before noon there were none to catch on our five channels. So Bryce and I would lie on the floor and make up games as we went along. Sometimes we would make up elaborate stories of how the ugly spots got on the ceilings and walls. Or since we had hard wood floors we would spread dish soap and water across them and play what we called “Slip ‘n Slide”. Which basically meant we slipped and slid across the floor in our bare feet trying to knock each other out while keeping our balance.  

I’ll never forget when Momma suddenly ran from the bedroom into the living room while we were playing and slid head first into the kitchen wall. It was sad because she was clearly hurt. But later me and Bryce joked that when she hit her head and then sat back up, it literally looked like little birds were flying around her head from the impact of the hit just like in the cartoons. Her great fall led to another notable ugly spot on the wall. A lot of more imaginative stories were formed from that ugly spot even though we knew the real one.

“I’m hungry!” Bryce cried.

“I’ll go see if mom put anything out for dinner.”

As I walked in the kitchen the sun blinded me as it shadowed low into the window. I went to the window and stuck my head out, the wind was picking up and the sun was beginning to set. Looking down on the streets no more kids were out and the streetlights were becoming noticeable. I stopped looking down and noticed that the old man right across from us was staring right at me. It was time to close the blinds.

Setting my eyes on the kitchen, there were Chinese and pizza boxes from food that me and Bryce had been eating on for days. Ice cream in the freezer, and a fruit punch jug that was now full of water because we recycled. Then I remembered: cereal.

 

I jumped up a few times to see if the cereal was on top of the ‘fridge. It was. I grabbed a chair and got the Captain Crunch cereal. I yelled to Bryce asking if he wanted some Captain Crunch. There was a long pause. See, we didn’t have brand food often, so when we did, we had to savor it.

“Milk or Water?” he yelled back

“Water or Dry.” I retracted.

“Fine.”

I searched for bowls but most of them were hidden under the mountain on top of the sink. Instead of washing them I reached under the sink where Bryce and I hid paper dishes we would get from when Mom bought us Chinese or pizza. We ate out of them all the time and every time Bill came in and saw us wiping or hands with Little Caesars napkins or eating cereal out of Lucky’s Chinese bowls he would get excited and think there was food in the house. We could barely contain our laughter watching him search through every cabinet in the kitchen for our food. He was so easy to fool and so simple. We hated Bill.

 

I opened the cereal box and quickly dropped it to the floor. After I dropped the Captain Crunch box the two roaches that disgusted and scared me almost making me jump out of my skin ran out racing quickly to the other side of the room like they were in a dog race, but they were going in different directions. I quickly hopped on top of the counter.

 

Bryce ran in quickly and was way too out of breath just to be running from the living room to the kitchen, our apartment was humbly small,

“What happened?!”  he shouted.

Now, I’m afraid of bugs, to say they freak me out is a bit of an understatement. Once my friend had a little ant in her hair. I saw it and she didn’t, she asked me to get it for her, and instead of picking a mustard seed sized ant out of her hair, I took my notebook and slammed it on her head just so I could avoid touching the icky thing. So yes, I was irrationally fearful of bugs, but Bryce was worse. He was deathly fearful of bugs. Once, there was a centipede in the bathtub that we saw right before Bryce had to take a bath. Momma came in and killed it right in front of us and then wiped it up with a napkin and flushed it down the toilet. Bryce still refused to take a bath. He even refused to be in the bathroom with the door closed. The bath protest went on for two weeks! No one would sit next to him in school, which I understood. But then people stopped sitting next to me and avoiding me at lunch. I sent a note to my friend Caroline in class to ask why she was ignoring me. She bluntly wrote back, “Because your brother smells like s**t.”

 

Needles to say Bryce freaked out when he saw one of the roaches run across the floor looking confused like it was looking for its running mate. Bryce’s irrational mind made him run over to the counter and try to jump on top of me. I pushed him down and he landed on the floor. That’s when the real drama began. He got up with a twisted face and fear in his eyes looking like a lost toddler in the middle of the mall. He started feeling all over his body and twitching like he could feel bugs crawling on him. All this while turning around in circles. The sad thing was that Bryce was standing right in the middle of the kitchen, and the roaches were closer to him than ever. I was still too scared to jump off the counter and help him, but I was more aware that Bryce needed help, and I was too scared to be there for him. After wailing for a second too long Bryce didn’t appear to know what to do and burst out crying.

 

Momma emerged from her bedroom. She was holding her arm, wore a highlighter pink bonnet with super short red shorts (that appeared shorter because of her long legs) and a black tank, looking at us with a question mark on her face like we were crazy.

“What is going on?”

She was angry.

Bryce ran to her, he was still small so the top of his forehead fit right on her stomach as he wrapped his arms around her waste and cried. She looked down at him placing her hand on his head, then up at me.

“Merna, what is wrong with him?” she said sternly, expecting a completely logical answer.  

I looked down at the floor the whole time, searching for the roaches to run out and show themselves so that she could see that we needed her help. She always killed our bugs for us.  I began slowly, “There were some roaches in the cereal and…”

 

She cut me off quick, and she was loud, “That’s what all this is about, some roaches? Some little bugs that both of ya’ll are bigger than!” She pushed Bryce off her and he landed on the couch.  

That made me look up at Bryce and then at her. He looked up at her with a paralyzed look and so did I. 

“Now ya’ll need to be quiet and try not to trash the house, can ya’ll handle that?!”

Me and Bryce still just looked at her, paralyzed.

“That was a question!” she ordered.

“Mom,” I said slowly trying to manage to come off of the counter.

“What Merna?!”

I had felt my eyes watering, but I did not realize I was crying until I started talking, “Your nose is bleeding.”

I said with all fear in my voice as a cold chill overcame my body. It was not that her nose was bleeding, we had witnessed that before. It happened to me and Bryce all the time. One time he hit me with a ball of ice in a snowball fight and it landed right in the middle of my nose. It bled uncontrollably for uncomfortably long.

We noticed her nose was bleeding once she pushed Bryce away. She did not. She scratched her head at some point during her rant about bugs being bigger than us, but she carried on like she did not even notice. It was like watching someone get cut in the leg and continue walking without the slightest limp. It wasn’t even a subtle nosebleed, it was dripping onto her shirt.  

Her mouth dropped. She moved her hand slowly up to her nose and touched the blood. The silence in the room made her actions feel like slow motion. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen now, paralyzed.

Bryce turned around and hid his face on the couch. I unfroze and looked under the sink to get a couple of Little Caeser napkins. I went over to my Mom and put them in her hand. Then backed away to join Bryce on the couch. I did not hide though. I watched.  

She stood still, looking at the blood in her hand as her black tank became drenched in blood. She started to look woozy and leaned over to try and balance herself by placing her hand on the wall. There was too much blood on her hand and instead of it gripping the wall, it slipped, leaving a swiped handprint bloodstain on the wall.  She landed on the floor with a bang.

 

Bryce screamed loudly but his face was still in the couch so it was muffled sounding like it was far away. It was the scream inside everyone in the room.

The thud and scream prompted Bill. He ran out from the room. Dazed. He looked tired and three steps behind. He began yelling my mother’s name. His voice was slurred and his mouth stayed open the entire time he yelled. Even though he was standing still, he swayed back and forth while being hunched over. He knelt down over my mom and slowly touched her face, then moved his hand just to her lips, then down to her chest.  

 

Blood now filed in a circle around her head, but it had finally stopped flowing from her nose. Her eyes were open moving back and forth very quickly and her body twitched. I stared, eyes wide opened while Bryce committed to hiding. Then it all stopped. All motion stopped to my mom’s body and in the room.

Her mouth was open. When it stopped I walked over and looked at her. I thought she was looking back at me but her eyes were not moving. Just staring into the ceiling. I expected her to look scared or upset because the last thing she did was yell at us. But she looked shocked.

 

Bryce peeked his head from the couch but before he could scream I ran over and embraced him. I smashed his face into my bosom. There was no sound but tears filled the room.

Bill got up, looked over at us, eyes half-closed. Searched the room with his half eyes and slowly walked out the front door. Bryce and I stayed together as the door flung open and our mother lay on the floor.

It all happened so fast. The paramedics came and took our mother away. Bryce and I wrapped up in blankets and sat on our kitchen floor refusing to leave while police officers and detectives consumed our home. The police came and went in and out of our faces. Asking us what we remembered or to tell the story or to leave. We remained silent and distant. They finally gave in and said, “Well, can you at least tell us how the blood stain got on the wall?”

Bryce’s head remained up at the ceiling but I looked down and said, “I don’t know.”