December, 1989
The people down the hall had a new baby. It was screeching at the top of it’s lungs, and had been for the past four hours. Taylor covered his ears. It was useless trying to sleep in this place.
The people in the apartment above theirs were having a knock-down, drag out screaming fight. The old lady who lived next-door was playing a Spanish soap opera on her radio at top volume. The streetlight outside was flickering on and off, bathing the room in light one minute and plunging it into darkness the next. Taylor closed his eyes, too. Why couldn’t people be quiet at night?
Next to Taylor, Zac struggled to find a comfortable position on a mattress that sagged in the middle. No matter which way he turned, he ended up sliding towards the center. He sighed, kicking at the covers. It might be easier to sleep on the floor.
On the other side of Taylor, Isaac tried to stop coughing long enough to catch his breath. He covered his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He’d had this cold for two weeks already, and he was sick of it.
“Did Mom get back yet?” Zac asked.
“No, I don’t think she’ll be back tonight,” Isaac told him.
“If she came back, she’d have a boyfriend with her,” Taylor pointed out.
Zac shuddered. “I hate it when her boyfriends are with her.”
For the first few months after Kathleen had completed the rehabilitation programs, things had been a lot better. She’d held down a job, while she still didn’t make enough money to get herself off of welfare. She hadn’t left anymore; she’d remembered to pay the bills. She didn’t have any boyfriends at all. She’d even remembered Taylor’s birthday.
At first, Isaac felt optimistic about his mother’s newfound responsibility. Suddenly, he could count on her to be home in the evenings. Suddenly, he didn’t have to remind her to pay the bills, and he didn’t have to take money from the welfare check each month so she wouldn’t spend it on drugs. It was a relief to know his mother had a job, that she went off to work each day and did something concrete. Maybe, Isaac had begun to think, she really is better. He’d passed second grade with higher marks than he’d expected from himself, even though they weren’t great marks, and had actually started looking forward to second grade, a little. School might not be so bad this year.
Then had come the day in mid-August that Isaac had walked in the door and found his mother sitting at the table, an open bottle of Southern Comfort in front of her. She was staggering drunk, the first time she’d had anything to drink since she’d started substance abuse counseling.
“I got laid off,” Kathleen had slurred. “They were doing cutbacks.”
Isaac felt his heart skip a beat. Things were going to be straight downhill from here.
He’d been right. Kathleen had regressed until she’d become just as bad as she’d always been, worse, even. The boyfriends had started again. The drugs had started again. The abuse had started again. The housing project where they were living, the same one they’d been living in before, was only a few blocks away from the hospital where Nora worked, and Isaac, Taylor and Zac had sometimes walked up there every once in awhile, calling first to be sure she’d be on break. They hadn’t done that in months, worried she’d notice the bruises.
Sometimes Isaac wondered if he was hurting Dan and Nora’s feelings. Occasionally they’d call and invite the boys over or just ask how things were going. Since September, Isaac had been making excuses not to see them. He couldn’t face them. He was worried he’d start crying and tell them the whole story, or that Taylor and Zac would. Again, Isaac had become accustomed to the familiar feeling of never knowing what was going to happen next. He knew that if he told anyone about the way his mother was acting, they’d never let them stay with her. They might even split him and his brothers up. The thought was terrifying. It was better to avoid people, Isaac thought, and not tell anybody anything.
Still, there had been times when he’d doubted his decision. Like when parents’ day had rolled around this year. There was no way Kathleen was going to go, but Taylor had suggested inviting Dan or Nora. “We could say they were our aunt and uncle or something.” Taylor had suggested. “We could even pretend, maybe, that Dan was our daddy. Because we don’t have one.”
For a moment, Isaac had paused, wishing with all his heart that he could do that. His hand went to the crumpled piece of paper he kept in one of his pockets at all times, the crumpled scrap of looseleaf upon which Nora had written her phone number, and her pager number. He’d memorized them long ago, but liked to keep them with him at all times, just in case he ever forgot.
“No,” Isaac said, finally. “That would be lying?”
Taylor had blinked back tears. “Everybody has someone coming except me. Everyone in my class.”
“No they don’t,” Isaac had argued. “Every year, a bunch of kids parents don’t come. Like that have work or something.”
“Uh uh.” Taylor shook his head. “Everybody but me.”
He was right. Unusually, every first grader that year had a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle or family friend coming to parents’ day that year. Everybody but Taylor, that was, and it seemed that every time he turned around, someone was talking about how excited they were, how much fun they were going to have, or how much they wanted to show their parents the picture they’d drawn or the spelling test they’d aced.
“Parent’s day is stupid,” Isaac had protested. “Who wants to go to parents’ day?”
“I want to,” Taylor had quavered.
“I’ll go with you, Tay,” Zac had volunteered.
Taylor’s lower lip trembled. “You can’t be my parent. You’re only in preschool. You aren’t even four years old yet!”
“I could stand on my tiptoes,” Zac suggested.
Isaac had taken a deep breath, looking Taylor directly in the eyes. “Tay, I’m going to tell you a secret. You can’t tell anybody else this, okay?”
“Okay,” Taylor had nodded, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeve.
“Parents’ Day is a great big lie,” Isaac informed him. “It’s not really for having fun. It’s for the teachers to tell the parents about kids they don’t like.”
“What do you mean?” Taylor asked.
“Well, they watch you all the time to see if you do anything mean,” Isaac went on. “And if you do, they send a letter home to your parents asking them to come to parents day. And then they tell your parents what you did that was bad, so you can be punished.”
Taylor shook his head. “You’re lying.”
“I never lie!” Isaac protested.
“Then why do they say that parent’s day is supposed to be fun?” Taylor asked, uncertainly.
“Because they don’t want the kids to fake sick so they can stay home on parent’s day and keep their parents from going,” Isaac invented.
“But not all of the kids in my class do bad things. . .” Taylor had begun, uncertainly.
“All of them must have done something,” Isaac assured him. “Except you.”
“Whoa,” Taylor breathed. “I sure am glad I’m not them.”
“You’d better be glad,” Isaac agreed. “You know what Mom would do to you if she heard anything bad about you on parent’s day.”
Taylor swallowed hard. He did know.
Maybe, Isaac thought, he’d try to keep himself and his brothers out of his mother’s way for a couple of days and then stop by the hospital to see Nora again. If he could, that was. Kathleen was flying off the handle a hundred times a day lately. Thank God Zac was in all day preschool, Isaac thought. He didn’t want to think about his brother being home alone with his mother.
He didn’t want to think of Zac being home alone with some of her boyfriends, either. Some of them were just as likely to haul off and hit a kid as she was, and most of them could hit a lot harder. There were a few boyfriends who were even worse than that, Isaac thought, but he didn’t want to think about those ones. He wouldn’t think about those ones.
“I think I’m getting another ear perfection,” Zac remarked, quietly. Every time Zac got a cold, he got an ear infection, and sometimes he‘d get an ear infection when he didn‘t even have a cold. Isaac didn’t know why. It bothered him that he didn’t know what to do.
“Zac. . .” he groaned. “Are you?”
“It hurts,” Zac sighed, resignedly. He tried not to talk about his ear infections, but sometimes he couldn’t help it.
“Just go to sleep,” Taylor suggested.
“I can’t sleep.” Zac set his teeth together tightly. “All of the people in this apartment building are making way too much noise.”
“That’s true,” Isaac agreed. He sighed. “Do you think we should bang on the ceiling?”
“We’re too short to reach the ceiling,” Taylor pointed out.
“We could throw something at the ceiling,” Isaac suggested.
“What if the people come down here?” Zac asked.
For a moment, they were all silent, contemplating this.
“We could throw something at them,” Isaac suggested. “We could throw something really heavy.”
All three of them snickered. “And then they’d be scared and run away,” Taylor giggled.
“And then we could beat them up!” Zac added.
“Yeah,” Isaac agreed, coughing. “They’d be really scared of us.”
“Because we’d beat them up and push them out the window!” Taylor exclaimed.
“And then they’d hit the ground. . . kersplat!” Zac finished. He stiffened. The front door had just creaked open.
“Mom’s home,” Isaac whispered.
“We’d better pretend to be asleep,” Taylor suggested.
“Don’t even move,” Zac agreed.
“Good night!” Taylor whispered.
“Shhhhh!” Isaac hissed. “Do you want her in here?”
Taylor shook his head. Zac hid under the covers.
I wish she wouldn’t come home, Isaac thought.