Mama

This is an idea I am toying with.  It came out of something else written in third person, written as a sister piece to another I wrote this past spring.  I can't decide whether or not it is believable.  I will leave it minimally public to embarass myself into editing it into something better.  Comments are welcome.  Criticism also welcome. 

Keep in mind I have never been a little boy, so if it's not realistic, PLEASE SAY SO.  Hmm.

Mama said he would be coming home soon but I don’t see why she keeps saying that, he’s never been here before. This is my home and her home. We picked out the new sofa when the old one busted and rearranged all the furniture in the living room. Well, she moved it, but I came up with the idea of where to put everything. All the food in the fridge in my favorite and Mama’s favorite. I don’t even know if Papa likes baloney. I hope he doesn’t, cause I don’t want to have to share it with him. I asked Mama how’m I supposed to know him? I’ve seen pictures, but they are all older than me, so what if he looks different? I sure look different from back then 1) because I’ve been born since then, 2) because I’m not a baby anymore. She’s shown me pictures of Papa and all, she’s told me loads of times that I have his eyes, but I don’t know about that. She says he’s going to love me to pieces, but I don’t get how she can know that seeing as I’ve never met him before. I remember having to sit still for my birthday pictures every year and never getting to see if I was making such a squirmy face as she said I always did from when I was a baby seeing as she sent the pictures off across the ocean to Papa. One time when we were at the library she showed me on the globe where Vietnam is, where Papa’s been since just after he and Mama bought our house. It’s all the way across the world! No wonder it’s taken him so long to get back!

Mama’s always read the letters we’ve gotten from him at bedtime except for the letter that came a couple weeks ago that said he’d got his leg hurt and he would be coming back to little old, boring Iowa just as soon as he could. Mama didn’t even bother to hide in the bathroom to cry that afternoon. She thinks I don’t know, but I can tell that she’s been crying cause her eyes get all puffy like mine when those rotten kids down the street trip me and call me bastard, which Mama won’t tell me what it means, which I guess means it’s pretty mean. But all the crying from scratching my knees makes my eyes all red a puffy, which is how I can tell Mama cries in the bathroom. That and the soup tastes too salty like there are tears in it.

She says it’s going to be great to have him back, that it will mean all the ladies on our street will stop looking at me funny, but I don’t think they look at me funny. They are always really nice when I’m playing in the front yard and sometimes give me chocolate doughnuts if I happen to kick my ball into their yard and have to go get it on Saturdays after they get their grocery deliveries. Accidentally kick my ball into their yard. It’s the kids at school that I don’t like. Mama didn’t want me to start going, but I told her that I wanted to go. She cried that day too. Maybe she just doesn’t like the house empty and that’s why she wants Papa to come. I like the teachers at school. Miss Wattley has been really nice to me since that time I got put in time out and she came back to tell me I could come back to the rest of the class and found me reading the books from the corner bookshelves. She thought I was just looking at the pictures, but I showed her I could read and not just look at the pictures. Since then she’s had me stay in from recess two days a week to work on reading other books she thinks I might like. She showed me these books about two brothers that solve dangerous mysteries. I don’t know a lot of the words, so I read some of it and she reads the rest of it aloud to me while I look on. Then she makes me read some of what she just read back again to see if I caught any more new words. If she just read aloud the whole time it wouldn’t be so boring sometimes, which is why she says we only do it two days a week now. I got too squirrelly when I stayed in from recess everyday that one time. Plus some of the bigger kids started making fun of me saying I was bad and had detention all the time so now Miss Wattley keeps other kids in on the other days. Emily and Sarah stay in on Mondays and Wednesdays to work on math and Friday is actual detention day for any one who teased me or Emily or Sarah during the week. When Bobby, Gary, Neil, Jimmy, and Katie all had to stay in with their heads down on their desks two Fridays in a row, the teasing stopped and I stopped minding staying in to read sometimes.

Mama says the boys at school teased me because they were jealous they weren’t as good of readers, if they could even read at all, she said. But they never said anything about reading. It was either about detention, which, like I said already, wasn’t why I was staying in, or about Papa and asking me where he was. All of their Papas were at home or working so they didn’t get it when I said he was in Vietnam. They asked where that was and I said farther away than you’ve ever heard of and they told me I was acting smart wasn’t I and I said yea, cause I’m not stupid. Then they punched me and said my Papa wasn’t ever coming back, if he even was my Papa cause how can someone be your Papa when you’ve never met them before? That’s what they said. I didn’t tell Mama they had said that because I had asked Mama the same question before and she just gave me this hard look that was so cold it was made out of icicles and made my eyes dry up and my back go shivery. I didn’t like what she said after that, she’d never sounded so stretched out and broken before when she told me I was never to ask her that question ever again because that was the question that no one ever spoke to her with words but with their eyes. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that, but if words could have come out of Mama’s eyes at that moment, I’m sure they would have been scarier than when Mama forgets to turn my nightlight on and I’m all alone in the sticky darkness of nighttime in summer. Her eyes when she told me not to ask that question again had a sharp shininess like the time the blue glass fell off the counter and sparkled on the floor in a hundred shimmery, wet pieces. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve never seen her so dark and alone and sharp and broken like all those things I already said. I didn’t like her looking like that so that’s why I never told her about what the boys at school said. I didn’t want to see her like that, all broken and angrysad again.

My Mama has always been really good to me. She doesn’t always get me the newest toys, she says it’s because we don’t have a bunch of money but she does her best. I don’t mind not having all the toys like the neighbors do, it means I can come home covered in mud and smiling and she doesn’t yell at my like my friend Tommy’s Mama sometimes does when he comes home dirty. Mama says that the whole backyard and the woods down the road are my playground and natural toys, which kind of sounds stupid, but when you think about it, it means that all my toys, all the trees and grass and deer and bunnies are bigger than all the other boys toys. So what they have a shiny red fire truck to run around their floor all day? I can go to the woods and look and all the foot prints that the deer make and watch the little ones look at me curiously. I bet I look just as strange to them in these stupid shorts and overalls. Mama says it’s the only way to keep my pants from falling off cause I’m so skinny none of the pants fit me right, but sometimes before she can stitch them up to fit better I have to wear them and I look like a big corduroy balloon. Those are the days I go to the woods instead of Tommy’s house. Tommy’s a good friend, but when I look stupid he lets me know it. I don’t mind it so much from him, but I’d rather watch the funny deer instead of being told I look funny myself.