Chapter 16

When I came home there was two people in the living room besides Mom.

            The first was an older women with deep set wrinkles and leather colored skin. Her hair was thin, but well groomed. Make- up caked her face to the point it hurt the eyes to look at the color contrast of the eye shadow and lip stick against her skin. Her long fingers were swollen and were decorated with green fake fingernails. Her clothes hung lose from her body.

            The second women looked as sleep deprived as Mom. Her pale skin showed large bags. She also seemed frail. Like the older women she was gaudy. She had on blue eye shadow, brown lipstick and her hair was dyed a blonde color. She wore a tank top and a pair of shorts that bagged from her. The shorts were too short and the top was spotted. In her lap was a small boy, which she nursed impatiently.

“Will?” Mom said. “Aren’t you going to say hi to your aunt and you’re your grandmother?”

I hadn’t realized I had been starring at them. I just wasn’t sure that this was the same people I saw a few years ago. “Hello.” I mumbled feebly.

Grandma turned her face towards me and it twisted in disgust. “Nora how in God’s name could you let this child out in only black clothes, and that color hair?”

“Well I let my kids have a choice, Mom.” She quickly responded.

Aunt Sophie eyed me before gabbing a bottle in her son’s mouth. His eye’s widened and then he started eating.

“There’s sure a thing as too many choices. If she wants to ruin her self like that I would tell her to move out, that’s what I would have done with you.”

Mom chewed on her lip all the while giving her mom a dirty look. I could tell that this visit was anything but joyful. Grandma tapped her fingers onto the coffee table. “I’ve lost weight.”

“I can tell.” Mom said dully. “Which did is it this time?”

“Oh Weight Watchers. It works, I would tell you to do it but,…”

Mom’s eyes showed the hurt. She quickly wrapped up her self in a blanket. She looked like a wounded animal for sure.

“How’ve been Grandma… Aunt Sophie?” I asked kindly.

“I’ve been aching, and been sore all over, even more so in my hands. That happens when you get old.”

“Aunt Sophie?”

“This Tatter Tot has been getting me up all night long to feed him.” She had the deep and husky voice of a smoker. I figured that ‘Tatter Tot’ was his nick-name. 

I could feel Grandma’s eyes giving me a look over. When she would come to something she didn’t like she would curl her lip. A few too many time her lip was curled and I wondered what might have disgusted her about me.

Of course it could have been everything.

Grandma didn’t like the idea of Mom adopting an interracial child who had AIDS. So when Wade and I were adopted she didn’t really think highly of us either because we had came out of the foster care. She had always told Mom that 10 year old children are set in their ways and have been already shaped into the person they would be. She said that we could be any kind of trash. Thankfully I never told her I was an atheist.

“Will can you get the wine? And the pizza bites?” Mom asked.

“Wine?” Grandma asked. “Since when did you drink?”

“Well I don’t.” She said smoothly. “I just buy a bottle when you come in town.”

“I bet it doesn’t taste that good. Wine from a town like this has to be belittling.”

“Actually I found it in a Café downtown. I was imported from Italy. It’s as old as the twins.”

“And how old are they?” Aunt Sophie asked. No one realized that she was even around, she had the air of a spy.

“Fourteen.” Mom said.

“Both of them?” She said stupidly.

My eyes went wide in shock, but Mom’s and Grandma’s never changed. Mom had once said that Aunt Sophie had cobwebs for brains and since this was the first time I was meeting her, I believed it.   

I quickly turned around to pour the wine so I could hide my laughter. I came running into the living room balancing three glass of wine and another glass of grape juice.

Grandma took the glass of wine and sniffed it before taking a sip. She huffed lowly under her breath. “You must have paid a pretty penny for this, but you didn’t give me a present for my birthday last week.” 

“Mom, I was busy.” Mom quickly said in defense. Her voice had raise a tone.

“You most have really been because you never even told me that Kiya died.”

“I’m grieving Mom, some times you forget.”

“My birthday? Oh but you sure didn’t forget that wine puts me to sleep. That’s why I don’t want any more wine.”

Aunt Sophie looked between Mom and Grandma.

“I’m sorry.” Mom simply said.

I, on the other hand, had to bite my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything. If I was to say anything that would be the end of me. 

“Nora you was always a good kid, and then you messed up.”

“How?” She snapped.
            “You forgot how important your parents are. Your father would be very upset with you right now.”

“He only knew Kiya for a few years. Dad’s been dead for seven years now, I think you can let up on the guilt trip of what Dad would have said or thought.”

“I’m not talking about Kiya! You never call, you never send e- mails, but I bet you, your husband, and those both just can’t wait for my gifts. I put you threw Med School. I took care of you when you was anorexic, and this is how you repay me? By not talking to me once in a while?”

“I’m busy, really I am.” She said tears spotting her eyes.

Grandma didn’t stop there. “Now you call me a long time after Kiya dies and you want to tell me all about your problems, but you won’t listen when I tell you about my day?”

            Mom was successful at hiding her tears. To her advantage, her glasses were on.

            “What happen to your head?” Aunt Sophie finally said. Her voice seemed odd and out of place in the intense, emotional moment.

            “There’s nothing wrong with my head.” Mom said.

            “No, not you, Will. What’s wrong?”

            “Oh a bike accident.” I said not looking at Mom.

            Mom looked worried as she brushed back my bangs to find a huge scab. She swallowed a lump in her throat when she realized that she never noticed it. Her eye’s showed anger and remorse.

            “Wear a helmet, or you’ll get hurt again.” She said.

            “I ran over a speed bump.” I told her patting my bangs down.

            “A speed bump’s there so you don’t go fast.” Grandma said and then whispered, “So wreck less.”

            “So you two.” Mom said quickly changing the topic. “I set up sleeping bags in the guest bedroom. The bed in there had to be removed because it was falling apart.”

            “Well get a new one then.” Aunt Sophie said her voice showing arrogance. She had made it look like Mom was the stupid one here.

            “I will some day.” Mom sighed. 
            Grandma got up and walked to the kitchen. “What kind of food do you have?”

“Need to go to the store.” Mom said timidly. “C’mon Will you’re coming with me.”

I grabbed my shoes and meet her outside.

As soon as she got in the car I could tell she was angry. At first we didn’t say anything, but finally I said, “Wow Grandma is really had on you.”

A hard pause.

“Mom?”

“How come you never told me that you had a accident?”

“All I needed was a band- aid.”

“Will!” Mom yelled, her face becoming red. “You must have had hit your head. Sometimes when a person gets hit on the head their brain swells in no time. If that would have had happened then you be dead.”

“But I’m fine.”

“Yes, but things can go either way sometimes.”

I huffed while starring out of the window.

“I want your bike.” She said.

“Why?” I yelled.

“Will if your going to be so wreck less then you don’t even need a bike. For now on if you need to be any where I’ll take you there or your dad can.”

“It was just an accident.”

“Will,” She said angrily “You just don’t know how bad things can go. Work my job for a little while and your learn big time.”

We didn’t talk for the rest of the trip. When we got home I ran upstairs and took a nap before getting back up to take a shower.

It must have been midnight because everyone was asleep and the lights were out.

Quietly I walked threw the hallway rubbing the towel against my hair. The whole house was dark, so I turned on lights as I went.

In the living room the playpen was set up with a monitor beside it.

“That women can be stupid sometimes.” I said looking into the playpen.

The young boy squirmed and his lips moved as if he was talking, or feeding. He looked peaceful and calm. His soft baby skin shinned in the light of the lamp I had on.

“Hello Tatter Tot” .I said when I realized that Aunt Sophie hadn’t said the kids name.

Something about the baby started to bring back a memory. I sat back on the couch, fetal position.

My older foster sister’s name was Violet. She had beautiful black curls that framed her long  face. She was a little bit on the large side, but she never seemed to mind.

Violet told me that she was put in foster care after her Mom left and her Dad picked up coke. She said that she would go for days without eating and when she would come home there wouldn’t be anybody waiting for her. She was all a lone.

People called her trouble, and she soon considered it a good thing. She knew how to steal, hot wire a car, and most of all be a friend.

When I first moved there when I was nine she didn’t seem like someone you would want to know. She only wore black and had a ‘I don’t give a crap’ outlook on life. I never realized that Violet would be such an influence on my life.

Within time she took me under her wing. I thought it was cool that she was sixteen, but still she really liked me.

Soon all her beliefs and passions were given to me. She taught me how to paint and helped me become a vegetarian.

“There can’t be a god with the world as it is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked messing on the computer.

“Well why would a god, any god let people suffer? Anyways if I don’t see it, I don’t believe it. Mostly the second one is why I’m an atheist. Bad things will happen no matter what.”

“Oh.” I said simply. I had only been to church a few times in my life so it seemed logical to me.

Violet was finally taken way to Juvy, but she was pregnant when she was arrested so she was able to go to another jail.

I haven’t seen her since then.

“Mostly the second one?” I whispered. It didn’t make sense. So if Violet would have seen a god she would have forgotten her beliefs and pick up that religion? Some how I added the fact that I didn’t belong to push my atheist beliefs forward some.

What about me? What if I found reason to believe?

I finally got up and went back to bed where I dreamed nightmare after nightmare.