Adam: A Broken Home

A young boy struggles with his trailer park life as he tries to escape the elicit demand of work and home. He battles between school and family, and even has bouts with religion and death.

“Get your a*s in here, Adam!” My mother yelled from across the dusty old shack of a house. There wasn't much in my room. Mainly garbage from coke cans and candy wrappers. I had a dresser, but only one drawer. “Damnit Adam, hurry up!” I rolled my eyes as I stood up to do the queens bidding. I hated it in this place. Swearing and smoking were the only real senses that you could experience: bitter taste, rancid smell, and loud, painful noise. I stumbled out of my bed, light headed as was the usual around this time of day. With no AC in the middle of this god forsaken desert, I was often left in a state of heat exhaustion in my little room. Stepping into the hallway, I saw Alise on the ground playing with a switch-blade.

“What the- mom! Why does she have that?! Are you trying to kill her?” I ran at my little sister and ripped the blade from her hands, tossing it onto the table, glaring at my mother. Wretched woman.

“Oh, shove off. Who the hell cares?! She isn’t smart enough to figure out how to kill herself.” I shot my mom a look, clenching my fist. “Oh please, you’d never hit me. Take out the damn trash... And while you leave, take the garbage with you.” I could feel the spite in her words. She always had hated children, and now that she was too old and too dried up to work, she used us as her slaves more than anything. A pathetic scrap of a woman was all the really remained inside her. I picked up the hole-filled bag, stomping out of the house on my way to the store. After throwing the bag of old food scraps and empty beer cans out, I grabbed my bike and headed off. I always got a certain sense of relaxation on that bike. It was almost like it was a dream; it was a piece of me that wasn't really there.

I pulled up to the little store. It took 20 minutes to ride out to the other hell I lived in. 20 blissful minutes of no responsibilities and no remorse. 20 minutes where I could hear the breeze and feel the semi-cold movement of air on my skin. 20 short, endless minutes where my thoughts could wander and I could wonder where I could wander; 40 minutes in all by the end of the day. In this time, my mind made it to countless places. I met with God when nobody else gave me the chance. I met with my father, though I had never really met with him, his angelic figure flying next to my rickety, beautiful bike, completely silent, but proud of me. Most of all, I met with death himself drifting into my head. Not my death ever, no. I was happy with who I was. Rather, death would visit as anger for my mother and her wretched behavior welled inside of me. Each day as I contemplated getting rid of her, Death of all people would come and say nay. He would talk to me in the silent desert air about all the things she can do for my sister and I. I could never remember all the things Death told me, but I imagine they were similar to those words of God if he ever spoke. I would laugh with god sometimes on this 20 minute bike ride. Laugh about nothing and everything with no words exchanged, God and I had a mutual understanding. We both saw that the world was a broken place. We both saw that even with all the faith people had and how hard they tried, in the end people weren’t sane and weren’t able to make it on their own. Yes, the great God and all of his knowledge understood that it was utterly useless to have. Just as the spider solely lives to catch the fly, God only really exists to watch, not to act. I took this idea with a grain of salt, because even with this understanding, I could never shake the feeling that maybe God did act. I always had the idea that maybe the reason he never spoke and only laughed is because he was too busy to respond; too busy with other people to pay attention to someone as simple and poor as me. In this 20 minutes I had to think about these things, I would also notice the trees and the sky. This great blue vast ocean of majesty sat above us, looming over us, just waiting for the time to fall down. Heaven knows that my own world was falling down, and now I was limited to 40 minutes a day to take it all in. As the 20 minutes drew their way to the end, I could see the store just ahead.

I pulled up to the little store. It had been 3 days since the switchblade incident. Since then, my mother had been passed out. She had found a new narcotic to buy with the little money I brought home each week. It had also been 3 days since I had eaten, and I could feel the hunger start to weigh me down. With no real money, there was no way to keep myself fed when my sister needed it so much more. “Come on Adam, just a few more hours and you can go scrounge a bit.” The thought came out unplanned, and several customers began peering my way. I sat the rest the day in silence, ringing people up one at a time, nodding to show them on there way as I contemplated the world a bit more. It was not the same ecstasy filled experience I had been through in those 40 minutes. It was scattered and unorganized, distracted by the buzz of unimportant people just like me asking unimportant questions about unimportant things. Nothing in this store was really important. With new people every day, there was no order to things. Things were moved around by other teens who didn’t understand what it meant to work, constantly harassing the store clerks and myself. There was always a sense of resentment towards them. Rarely from me, but the others never did enjoy the cumbersome task of cleaning up after them. My boss sat in the corner, smoking a pipe - why does everyone in this world smoke? - and he would often blow rings at customers he assumed were buying less than they should. Sometimes, he’d catch someone stealing, and he’d grab them by the shoulder. All he’d have to do is give them a look and they’d drop the stolen item. I guess the reality of the situation was that a 6’ 7” 200 pound man isn’t exactly the epitome of a softened man. He truly was beautiful and terrifying. He treated me like a son in a sense. Just like with God, we never really spoke, but he would give me a harder-than-normal pat on the back at the end of the day. I suppose that was fatherly enough for anyone.

20 more minutes of ecstasy. 20 more minutes of happiness before I was stuck again in a little hole in the desert. I had managed to find some dinner, but only enough for Alise, so I kept it in my pocket on the way home. I had to tear my work pants into shorts at the end of the day because as May was approaching, I could feel the weather really start to stiffen and warm up. The breeze felt good on my legs, but the sharp grains of sand left them raw during the haboobs and microbursts of later June. So much going on around us that nobody ever considers to notice. It’s a shame, really. I admit, even I only see a dirty dustbowl town full of bad people and bad attitudes. The house approaches quickly. My 20 minutes felt like 5.

I climb in through the shattered window of my bedroom, shocked to see my mother and a younger man in my bed, asleep in the covers. I knew it wasn’t unusual for new men to come by, but in my room? I brushed it off, went back through the front door, and gave Alise the little hamburger I had managed to trade a homeless man for a water bottle. That’s how the world of the poor man goes: No right, no wrong, it’s all the same. We just do what we have to to keep ourselves alive, but mostly our families. I took on the real responsibility of my younger sister when she was born. From changing her diapers to feeding her what few things I could manage to steal, I had been her lifeline from a young age. The nights all blur into one, but I think it was 13. 5 years ago she came into this world, and she is so ignorant and blissful that I almost wish she was smart enough. Everything is going to crash down on her soon. I at least got the chance to go to school, where she will never see another kid. This is the fate of a broken home. Some people never get the chance, where others just throw it away.

“Alise?” I choked back tears as I looked at her pretty, pale skin and shining blue eyes. She looked just like Mom did as a girl.

“Yeah?” She perched her lips in an “o” shape and cocked her head to the side, curious as to what I had to say.

Resisting breaking down and crying at her, I took a deep breath and looked just past her, avoiding eye contact. “You know Mommy’s sick, right? And that sometimes she has trouble keeping her head straight? You know she doesn’t mean it?” I knew this was only partly true, however it felt right to reassure myself that maybe she really didn’t mean it.

“I know, Adam! Mommy loves us and she takes care of us and she lets us stay alive. Mommy doesn’t do anything to hurt us, she told me so! She said that she protects us and likes to help us just like Super Why! Oh, you should see her smile when you go to school, Adam! I can’t wait to go to school.” She let out a giggle of excitement and went in a little ball as if she was being tickled “Mommy said I can start school next year with YOU! Are you excited, Adam? Are you?” Tears filled my eyes as I realized that my mother was slowly brainwashing the one person in this world I could trust. “Adam? Adam, are you okay? Mommy said you would cry... Why are you upset, Adam? Don’t you wanna take me to school, Adam?” I couldn’t help but to break down, pick up Alise, and coddle her against my chest, petting her straight, blonde hair. I was sobbing into her, and she hadn’t the slightest idea as to why. She still hugged me and kisses my cheeks causing them to flush in redness.

“Alise, listen, I don’t ever want you to listen to Mommy. Please?” I was sobbing heavily, hardly controlling my breathing. “She’s poison, you hear me? She’s hurting us, and we can’t listen to her anymore. I’ll take you to school. I will. I promise. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.” My breathing slowed as I fell asleep repeating myself “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over into her poor, unknowing ears.

When I woke up the next morning, I could hear the slow, mind numbing ring of the broken alarm clock. I scrambled out of the recliner chair and slowly found myself down the hall into my sorry excuse for a room. Some day I would get out of this town. I would escape, and Alise would come with me.

My mother sat there in the bed, alone, as she usually did the night after and all I could do was turn off the clock and grab my things. "Bye." I barely allowed myself to say it as I stumbled haphazardly out of the rotting doorway. Waking up Alise as I scampered through the kitchen, I stumbled across some old crackers.

"You hungry, sweety?" I motioned the crackers towards her and she took them reluctantly

"But aren't you going to eat, brother?" She had a sad look in her eyes and held the cracker with no intentions of eating it.

"Okay" I took the cracker and broke a piece off and stuck it in my mouth, slowly tasting the bitter staleness with the little salt that managed to cling to the skin. "Thank you"

Author's Note

Should I add more? Does there need to be anything more for character development.