* * * * * * *
Mama came home at three a.m. that night.
Brian and Brandon were long since in bed asleep by then, but Brian snapped awake when he heard her kick the front door open. Sometimes the wood swelled up a little bit from the moisture when it rained and made it stick against the jamb. All it took was a little extra coaxing, but of course Mama was too impatient for that; especially if she’d been drinking.
Brian was instantly on edge, his heart pounding, and he half sat up in bed. Brandon hadn’t stirred, and that much at least was good. The longer he stayed out of it, the better.
Brian knew better than to show his face unless he had to, so he kept quiet and listened instead of getting up.
He heard Mama talking downstairs, and then he caught the sound of someone else’s voice too; a man this time. That wasn’t good, and Brian strained his ears to see if he could figure out who it was or what they might be saying to each other, but it was too hard to hear.
He debated with himself about the wisdom of creeping to the top of the stairs and trying to figure out who the dude might be and just how drunk Mama really was. If she was already close to passing out then he didn’t have much to worry about, but if she was just now getting started then he didn’t dare go back to sleep for a while. He didn’t like not knowing. But then again, if he got caught spying the consequences could be terrible.
After a while, he decided it was worth the risk. He stealthily got up and tiptoed across the room, where he paused to put his ear up against the crack of the door. They were still downstairs; that was good.
With utmost caution, he ever-so-slowly turned the doorknob, and then opened the door just enough to slip out into the hall on his hands and knees. It was dark except for the light welling up from the stairway, and that was all to the good, too.
Brian crept close enough to the top of the stairs so that he could hear what was being said, and then got down on his stomach with his chin cupped in his hands. Mama was laughing, and so was the man. Then he heard some other woman’s voice, too. They all sounded just about medium drunk, but nowhere near ready to pass out yet. That was bad; it was the most dangerous time of all.
They seemed to be talking about politics, of all things. . . a topic which didn’t interest Brian at all. He was pretty sure he’d never met either the man or the woman before, but at least they didn’t seem like the kind of loud and dangerous drunk that you had to keep an eye on. Brian didn’t care how many people his mother dragged home as long as he didn’t have to deal with them and they didn’t get mean.
Well, maybe on some level he did care, but that was another one of those impossible pipe dreams that did him no good at all to think about.
He listened long enough to make sure there was nothing going on except drunk-talk, and then shook his head in disgust and got back up on his hands and knees to crawl back to bed. Hopefully whoever-they-were would be gone before morning. In the meantime, Brian was glad it was no worse.
He wasn’t as careful on his way back to the bedroom as he should have been, and his foot accidentally bumped against one of the little tables that held Mama’s houseplants. It teetered over and fell to the floor with a loud thud, spilling dirt and baby spider plants everywhere.
It was too much to hope for that no one down below had heard the noise, and Brian’s worst fear came true when he heard footsteps coming upstairs.
There was no chance to hide and precious little time to make up a story, but he tried. He scrambled to his feet just barely before Mama’s head appeared in the stairwell, with a furious look on her face.
“What are you doing out of bed, Brian?” she demanded, before she even made it up the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I was just on my way to the bathroom. I’ll clean it up,” he promised, trying to sound as sorry and as scared as he could, not daring to meet her eyes. Then she noticed the spilled pot for the first time.
“You clumsy little. . . Get downstairs right now and find something to clean that up with!” she bellowed, and he hurried to obey.
He didn’t quite make it past her. She caught him with a punch to the nose that made him see stars, and he stumbled against the stair banister, barely catching himself from falling. He gripped the wood tightly and took a deep breath to steady himself through the pain, and then headed downstairs.
His whole face was throbbing, and he could feel warm salty blood running down his chin and dripping onto his shirt, but he dared not stop to wipe it away.
He made it to the bottom and saw a burly man sitting at the kitchen table with a half-empty bottle of Absolut vodka in front of him, Mama’s favorite brand. Next to him was a woman with stringy gray hair who looked like she’d seen better days. Much better days, as a matter of fact. Both of them were laughing.
“Sometimes you got to teach the little hard heads a lesson, dontcha, Peg?” the man called out, and Mama laughed too.
“All the time,” she agreed, and cuffed Brian again to show him she meant it. She only caught the side of his head above his ear that time, but it hurt badly enough to make him stumble again. He grabbed the broom and the dust pan from beside the refrigerator with trembling hands, and said nothing at all while he rushed back upstairs to clean up the spilled flower pot.
He was very good about not letting himself cry in front of his tormentors, not till he got back upstairs and out of sight. But when he heard them still laughing and socializing in the kitchen just like nothing at all had ever happened, then he couldn’t hold himself back any longer.
Still, he wept quietly, as he’d learned from long experience to do. And after he’d cleaned up the mess, he went to the bathroom and washed his face and his shirt to get rid of the blood. His nose and his temple still hurt something fierce, and his eyes were still puffy and stung from crying.
“You’re really a mess, boy,” he murmured to himself, staring at his reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t all that funny, but he smiled a little. Then he winced, because the movement hurt his nose. Mama hadn’t pulled her punch, that was for sure.
He washed his face again, mostly because the cool water felt good on his hurt spots, and then he swallowed three ibuprofen tablets and went back to bed. Brandon never woke up, and for that at least he was thankful.
He told himself again that it was just the way things were, and he cursed himself for being so clumsy as to knock over the plant, and even for being stupid enough to get up in the first place and try to spy on his mother. Didn’t he know better, after all this time? If he’d had a lick of common sense he would have gone back to sleep without even thinking about trying such a foolhardy stunt as that. But he had, and so now he had to pay the price for it. Simple as that.
He found it hard to go back to sleep, partly from the pain and partly because his swollen nose made him snuffly and blocked his breath. Every now and then he heard Mama and her nameless buddies give an especially loud whoop of laughter that startled him wide awake again. They seemed to be having a merry old time down there, he thought to himself.
At that moment, Brian hated all of them with such a smoldering hatred that anyone who’d seen his face right then might have taken a step backward. But there was no one in the darkness to see, and no one to know it except Brian himself. And God, perhaps, if He was watching.
Brian was ashamed of himself for thinking such a thought, but sometimes he couldn’t help wondering why God never seemed to lift a finger to save the people who suffered and didn’t deserve it. Brian couldn’t decide whether he personally fit into that category himself, but surely Brandon did? Sometimes he didn’t know what to believe at all anymore.
“God, if you’re really there, please do something to change this. If you don’t then I guess you’re not real anyway, but I hope you are,” he whispered under his breath, and after saying this deeply bitter and disrespectful prayer, he finally slept.
The strangers were gone the next morning when Brian got up, and so was
Mama for that matter. She had to work the day shift at the diner that day, Sunday or not. She probably had a hangover again from too much vodka; Brian certainly hoped so.
He felt a little better, himself. His nose was still tender to the touch, but it didn’t look swollen anymore and the bruise on his temple was far enough back that it was hidden under his hair. That was good; he would rather have crawled through sewers than to let anybody notice his battle scars.
He told himself it could have been worse; he remembered one particularly horrible night not long after Daddy left, when she’d lost her temper and actually shot at him with the little pistol she kept in her purse. He couldn’t remember anymore what it was that she’d been so mad about, that time. Brian had never been so terrified in his life, either before or since, and the memory was seared into his brain like a white-hot branding iron. In fact, there was still a bullet hole in the wall of his bedroom to remind him.
Brandon had been barely a year old at the time, and Brian dreaded to imagine what might have happened if that bullet had passed just three feet lower, through the place where he lay sleeping that night in his bed, totally oblivious to what was going on.
There were times, after an especially painful binge, when Mama wouldn’t touch a drop of alcohol for weeks and hardly said a cross word to either of them. But as soon as Brian started to think there might be just a drop of kindness under all that hateful crust, she always fell right back into the same old rut. Brian didn’t believe she would ever really change, but at least life was a little easier when she was trying.
A hard and bitter look crept onto Brian’s face as he remembered these things, and he touched the amulet without thinking. He’d been caught off guard last night, but never, ever again would he let things get out of control like that. If Mama ever did anything to hurt him or Brandon again then he’d give her a taste of her own medicine, next time. He had the power now to deal with her in such a way as to make her wish she’d never laid a finger on either one of them. He could do that much, and he would do it, if he had to. He swore it on a stack of Bibles and on the heads of everyone he loved.
The oath left a bad taste in his mouth almost as soon as he formed the words, and he hoped it never had to come to that. Nevertheless, he meant what he said. He was no tear-stained and terrified little boy anymore; he had power that was almost invincible, and she had better watch out.