| Sammy came home on the bus every day around 11:30 and was careful to take off his shoes before he went anywhere near the carpt. He knew his mother would be furious if his shoes touched the pristing floors. Sometimes lunch was ready for him. Usually it was not. Sammy got good at making his own lunch and could whip up a mean cream cheese and jelly sandwich. He sat alone waiting for his older brother to come home and he passed the time building precise towers nad castles out of blocks. "Alright, where IS she?" Gordon said through clenched teeth and se burst into the room. "I don't know-- do you want to play?" said Sammy as he put the red block on top of the blue one. "What do you mean you don't know?! And no, I do NOT want to play. You ask me every day, Sammy. How many times do i have to tell you that I am just too busy?" Gordon let out an exasperated sigh and hurled his shoes onto the couch, "I have places to BE!" "You sound like mommy when you say that,"said Sammy. Every single day, Gordon was too busy. He said he had "appointments" and "important business matters to attend to." He even scrawled this appointments in a planner that his mother bought him-- it matched hers. He reminded Sammy of their mother. Sammy thought it seemed more like Gordon was just playing with his friends and doing homework whenhe was taking care of his "business matters," but Gordon was in third grade and Sammy was just in Kindergarten, so maybe he was too young to understand yet. "Well, I think maybe she goed to the store. She said store, but she was wearing her going-to-work shoes so she might be at work." "To work? But she said she'd be home today! I have a soccer game! What am I supposed to do? WALK? Sammy, we must have the least dependable mother in the universe," said Gordon as he stormed off to the kitchen. Sammy put an orange block on top of the red one. "Mom called," he said in the direction Gordon went. Gordon came galloping back inot the living room. "She-acutally-called-this-time?-When?-Why-didn't-you-tell-me?-What-did-she-say?" "I don't know" "AUGH! What is WRONG with you?" Sammy looked up for a moment and met Gordon's flashing eyes with his own, then he looked back at his blocks and switched the orange block he had just placed with a blue block. "Sammy," said Gordon as he knelt down on the floor beside his brother, "I need to get to my soccer game so I need to find mom. Now can you tell me what she said." Sammy picked up the orange block again and placed it on the blue one. He looked at Gordon. "I didn't answer the phone." Gordon bit his lip and took a deep breath before he spoke again. "Why didn't you answer the phone?" he paused slightly between each word, his voice beginning to quake with frustration. "Because mommy never says goodbye before she hangs up. That isn't nice. And she talks too fast for me to answer her questions. Kind of like you," he emphasized the "ou" part of "you." "So you didn't even pick up?" "Nope." "Did she leave a message on the machine?" Gordon's voice was getting louder. "Mm-hmm," Sammy replied as he squinted at his block tower and picked up a green block. Gordon went to the shelf that held the phone and the answering machine. "I can't reach the machine to check the message, Sammy. Mom put it up too high." "She puts everything up high 'cause she doesn't want us to break it or get it dirty." "I KNOW, Sammy. Do you remember what the message said at least? Could you hear it from there?" "Um...." |
| This story was called "Soccer Mom." I wrote it in March 2001 for Creative Writing |