Days Like This

The following is a short story I wrote for this week’s Flash Fiction Friday. Enjoy.

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Mama said I was gonna be somethin’ one day. It was just a bullshit deathbed guilt trip, but she said it. She was layin’ there in the bed, starin’ off into space, lookin’ for her man Jesus to show up and take her away or somethin’. When he didn’t come, she grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me in close. Mama’s always been wicked strong like that, and her in the middle of dyin’ and everything didn’t seem to have no effect on that at all. No, sir. She just pulled me in by my elbow, looked me straight in the eyes and said it, but I don’t think she really believed it.

Mama and I been through some tough times together. There’s no doubt about that. We survived my daddy’s fits when he used to come home after drinkin’ and started smashin’ stuff up. He’d smash mama and I up too if we let him. Sometimes it happened and there weren’t nothin’ you could do about it. Sometimes you got lucky and he’d pass out before he ever got up a good head of steam. Didn’t matter to me if I got hit. I always could take a good beatin’. I wouldn’t never hit my daddy though. Mama said there was somethin’ in the Bible against that.

You’d think that with all mama and I been through together that we might get along okay, but we never really hit it off too much. I mean, I’d just expect that there’d be some kinda bond between a mama and the little tiny baby she carried inside of her belly through the heat of a Georgia summer. I guess not. Whenever I was trouble, which was pretty often, she would always remind me about having to sweat her ass off the summer she was swell up with me. Them’s mama’s words, not mine.

In the end, I suppose mama did get to see her man Jesus after all. After she let go of my elbow, which was bruised up pretty good on account of her still bein’ strong as an ox, she looked off into the corner of the room and said, “Jesus, I need a drink.” I guess her man Jesus was bringing her one of them big soup spoons filled with heavenly water, or maybe that grape juice like you get in church on Sundays. After she said that, she just stopped breathin’ and all. Her hands just dropped off to her sides and her chest stopped makin’ that god-awful sound she’d been makin’ with every breath for the last five or so years. I cried once I knew mama was gone, but it weren’t out of sadness or nothin’. Mama always said she’d be better off in the sweet by and by, whatever that means. Nah, I’d been holdin’ in them tears since mama grabbed my elbow. I didn’t want her to see how she’d hurt me or she might’ve called me weak or a sissy and those would be some pretty sorry last words to say on your dyin’ bed.

Mama used to quote some pretty words from the Holy Bible, stuff like Hell having no fury like a woman scorned. I’m not sure exactly what that means, or which part of the Bible it came out of, but she liked to say it when she was mad, and it seemed like mama was usually pretty ticked off about somethin’ or other. One of the other Bible words mama used to like to say was somethin’ about there bein’ a time that’s right for everything under the sun, like livin’ and dyin’ and everything else. After mama got done with the time for her dyin’ and I didn’t have to take care of her no more, I got busy with the time for my livin’. The last three years been tough sometimes without mama. I don’t always know which socks I’m supposed to wear together or nothin’ like that. Mama used to lay everything out for me and I’d just put it on. My uncle Nicky says that I need to learn that stuff at my age. I think he just gets mad that it takes such a long time for me to get ready when he picks me up to go to the store and such. Uncle Nicky is my mama’s brother and he’s got a metal claw in place of his right hand. I asked him once where he got it and he told me he got it from a guy named Charlie in some place called ‘Nam. Uncle Nicky’s nice enough, but I don’t think he’s right in the head anymore. Anyway, he drives me down to the store twice a week, so I can’t complain much about him.

After Uncle Nicky drops me off and I put my store stuff away, I mostly take a few pieces of bread and walk down to the park to feed the birds and watch the crazy people. A few weeks ago, one guy called me crazy after he walked right into me. Since he was the one who walked into me and not the other way around, I believe he was the crazy one. Last month, I met a girl named Julie down at the park. She was cryin’ real hard and tryin’ to walk down the sidewalk at the same time and that didn’t go so well ’cause she fell down and skinned up her knee. I thought she must’ve hit her head on the ground too, but she said all them bruises came from Greg. I didn’t know who Greg was, but I helped her over to the bench where I was sittin’ and she let me use my handkerchief to clean up the scrape on her knee. Good thing I still had a clean handkerchief that day or I believe I’d have run away and never come back if one of my big ol’ snot goobers had fallen out onto her pretty leg.

Julie was awful nice to talk to and if she thought I was big and stupid like most people do, she kept it to herself. She came back down to the park the next day, but she didn’t fall down this time, even though she was cryin’ again. Matter of fact, most times Julie came to the park she was cryin’ at least a little bit. She told me a lot about this Greg who was givin’ her those bruises. She said she loved him, no matter what he did to her. I know how you can love somebody no matter how much they hurt you, ’cause I loved mama even though we didn’t like each other very well.

Last week Julie came to the park with her arm in one of those cloth things that hangs from your neck. She called it a sling. She was cryin’ pretty hard that day, but I made out that she took some kinda test that told her she was pregnant. I asked her if that meant she was gonna swell up in the belly and she said yeah, it did. I figured she was cryin’ about havin’ to carry that baby around in her stomach when it got hot outside, but she said she’d be blessed to carry around a baby in her belly, no matter how hot it was. I wish my mama would’ve felt that way. Julie told me that she was sad because Greg wanted her to get a ‘bortion. I asked her what that meant and she told me that some doctor would kill the little baby inside her belly and then take his little tiny body out of there. I was thinkin’ it was a good thing my mama didn’t get no ‘bortion with me and that made me mad as snot at this Greg that I ain’t never met.

Turns out it I got to meet him pretty fast because he showed up down at the park and grabbed Julie by the elbow and made her go away with him. I knew it hurt her because he looked a lot stronger than my mama and Julie was a lot smaller than me. As he was draggin’ her away, he was yellin’ at her the whole time about her having some retard’s baby up inside her. I thought he was pretty ignorant callin’ himself a retard like that, but when I tried to tell him so, he shoved me back onto the bench so hard it broke. He kept yellin’ stuff as he dragged her away, but my butt was sore, so I didn’t pay attention to what he was sayin’ too much.

After they was gone, I saw that Julie’s purse was layin’ on the ground next to me, so I grabbed it and took it home with me. I was gonna give it back to her at the park the next day, but she didn’t show up at the park that day or the day after that. I don’t like to go diggin’ through people’s personal belongings or nothin’ but I figured I should see if I could find out where she lived and bring it to her, so I finally opened it up and found her driver’s license with her address on it right next to a picture of her. Uncle Nicky says that driver’s license cameras are rigged to take the worst possible pictures of people, but Julie still looked pretty in hers. Maybe her camera wasn’t rigged.

Yesterday after Uncle Nicky brought me back from the store, I grabbed Julie’s purse and walked over to the address on her license. It was a big ol’ apartment place with lots of buildings everywhere, so I had to look around to find the right one, and even then I had to stop and ask an old lady if I had the right building. That lady shook her head and told me I had the right building, which seemed kinda odd, but I don’t know why. She told me she’d hold on to the purse since Julie was in the hospital. I asked her if the doctor was killing the baby inside her stomach. I’m not sure why, but she slapped me across the face when I asked that. I didn’t mean no disrespect to nobody when I asked it, I just wanted to know. The old lady said that the doctor didn’t need to do no such thing anymore ’cause the fall down the stairs had done it for him. I know I seen Julie fall when she was walkin’ that day in the park, so I knew she was a little on the clumsy side, but I didn’t think she was clumsy enough to just fall down a flight of stairs. Stairs are a lot harder to not notice than an uneven patch of sidewalk.

I didn’t wanna leave the purse with no stranger, but she said it’d be best, so I gave it to her. I got the feeling that she thought that Greg fellow had somehow caused Julie to fall down the stairs, which I didn’t doubt if he was pushin’ and pullin’ on her like he was at the park. I knew he’d given her all those bruises and that hurt arm just as sure as Charlie gave my Uncle Nicky a claw hand. Before I left, that old lady told me somethin’ I ain’t never gonna forget. She said that one day, somebody was gonna finally give that Greg what he deserved.

This mornin’ wasn’t a store day, so I ate my cereal, got dressed, and went right over to Julie’s apartment. Well, I suppose that ain’t quite right, ’cause I did pick up a good hefty steak knife on my way out the door. My mama said I was gonna be somethin’ one day and even if she didn’t believe it, I figured that today was the time for it.