The Life of John Smith Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 1 Life with Mother

I was at the office when my cell phone rang. I checked the caller ID and it was my sister Ella. I had not heard from her in some time…not since her husband died a little over a year ago. As I answered, I wondered what catastrophe happened now. “Hello sis.”

“John, dad died this morning,” she greeted me.

“Oh,” I said. I wanted to say good riddance, but I was able to hold my tongue.

“I know you and he did not get along, but you are coming to the funeral…” as usual she left the question unfinished. I did not answer immediately so she continued, “Mother is expecting you.”

“I’ll drive down tomorrow,” I said.

“Why can’t you come today?”

“I can’t just walk off the job any time I want. The boss won’t be too happy about my not being here for the next three days,” I explained.

“Can’t you come after work? It is only a three-hour drive,” she persisted.

“Okay, I will be there about nine. Where am I staying?” I asked.

“You can stay in my spare bedroom,” she offered.

“Just so I don’t have to stay with mom,” I commented. Then I added, “She won’t be at your place.”

“No, no, just me. See you by nine or I’ll start worrying,” she said, sounding like our mother.

The rest of the day I concentrated on my work but once I got in the car and headed down the freeway, I started thinking about how my father was never there. When I was young, it was his business that occupied his time. Then the summer I turned 12 and my sister turned 16 is the summer our father lost his business and could not seem to find work. My mother, who had no experience, went job hunting and the very first day landed a job as a receptionist for a real estate firm making good money.

My sister explained to me that one of the reasons she got that job was that the firm wanted an attractive woman like mother as a receptionist. I think that remark caused me to enter my teen years a year early because I began comparing women to our mother and all girls to my sister who was on her way to being just as beautiful as our mother.

Our parents were always, if I remember correctly, on the edge of an argument but with mother working and father unable to find work they began to argue over everything, even bringing up old unresolved disagreements. These arguments always seemed to turn into shouting matches after my sister and I were sent to bed. With my bedroom next to our parents I could not get to sleep because of the shouting that seemed to be never-ending. One night I crept, in the dark, out of my room and across the hall to my sister’s room. I closed the door behind me. It was pitch black in her room, so I whispered, “Ella…sis, are you awake?”

A bedside lamp turned on, blinding me, and my sister asked, “What is it?”

“Mom and dad…they are yelling again,” I replied.

“I know, sweetheart.” She always called me sweetheart when I hurt myself and this time it also seemed appropriate. My eyes became accustom to the light as she said, “Come here and get in bed with me.” That is just what I was about to ask if I could do. I ran to her bed as she flipped the blanket back. I jumped into her arms. She covered us and turned out the light.

I did not realize until that moment, I was shivering. It was not from being cold but from hearing our parent’s angry words. Ella held me tight and covered my ears with her hands. Soon I was no longer shivering. It was not long before I went to sleep. This happened every night for a week. But then since neither parent ever did more than to yell at us when it was bedtime, I started going to her room right after I dressed for bed. I sometimes entered her room before she was in her night gown. Truthfully, I did notice her nudity, but it did not seem like anything special, interesting but not special. At that point I don’t think I had started thinking about her other than as a protector or shield from the angry voices coming from our parent’s room.

Soon after school started that year, I noted that our father was not anywhere to be seen. When mom called us for dinner, I noted that there was no plate set for him. I asked, “Mom, where’s dad?” Mom look at me a moment and then turned her back to me. Ella spoke from behind me as she entered the room, “Daddy has gone out of town to a job.”

Mother, still facing the other way, said, “Ella, you don’t know that.”

“But momma, he wouldn’t just leave,” Ella said.

“He took off with all our savings—every last penny. Closed the account yesterday without saying anything to me,” mother said. Although she was trying to hide it by keeping her back to us, we knew she was crying.

“How much did you have in savings?” Ella asked.

“Not much, a few hundred, but he should have asked me. He just snuck off like a thief in the night,” mother said before she fled to her bedroom.

Ella sat me at the table and filled up my plate. I ate my normal amount, but Ella just pushed the food around on her plate. I asked her why she was not eating. She said she was not hungry. “If momma was here, she would say, ‘Eat anyway,’” I said. She jumped up and ran to her room.

That is how I remember the day our father disappeared for six years. I did not know it for a year or two but nearly once a week mother would receive an envelope in the mail with money in it with no letter of explanation or anything. She could tell by the postmark from where it was mailed. He never seemed to spend more than six months in one place and the amount of money was not enough to raise two kids on, so mother had to continue working.

There were no more shouting matches, so Ella told me I could sleep in my own bed. Those first few nights I found it very hard to get to sleep because I had become quite accustomed to sleeping in my sister’s arms. We fell into a peaceful routine. I did well in school as did Ella.

Then about six months after our father left, mother started coming home about our bedtime saying she had to work late. At first this only happened once a week but when it began to happen nearly every night, Ella questioned mother about it. The shouting began as I headed to my bed but shortly Ella went to her room and the house quieted down except every few minutes, I could hear mother shout a word or two.

When this happened three nights in a row, I slipped into Ella’s room shortly after she had gone to her room. She was just slipping her nightgown on. I asked her why she and mother were shouting at each other. “Just go to bed. It won’t happen again.”

“Did I hear something about working and drinking?” I asked.

“Well if you heard that I may as well tell you everything. Come sit on the bed. As you know, our mother is an alcoholic. Not a staggering, falling-down drunk alcoholic but the type who can handle the booze pretty well, but she loses her sense of judgement.” Ella fell silent. I think she was trying to decide how much to tell her 12-year-old brother. I waited and suddenly she said, “Oh hell, I will just tell you. Mother has been known to have a few drinks and then go to bed with the man who bought the drinks.”

My 12-year-old mind said but she is going to bed here at home. Then it hit me, and I said, “You mean having sex?”

“Yes, that is what I meant,” Ella said, “I just did not want it to sound that awful.”

“Well so what? Dad left her,” I responded.

“I suppose you are right, but she could have a baby,” Ella said. As I thought it my sister said, “I don’t want another baby brother or sister.”

As it turned out mother reformed her drinking by only doing it once every three or four weeks and then only on a Friday. Ella showed her disapproval by refusing to speak to her. Mother turned to me and I decided that Ella was right. When mother found there was no one to listen to her she would go to her room and shout at the walls. On those nights I would go to my sister’s room and fall asleep with her hands over my ears.

Then one day the spring before I turned 15, I came home to find my sister gone. When mother got home, she claimed she had no idea where Ella was. The next night, which was a Friday, mother did not get home until after I had gone to bed. I was awakened by mother shouting at the walls. My sister was not there to cover my ears, but I still went to her room to sleep. After this happened three or four times in the next couple of months, I decided to change rooms.

I do not believe mother noticed the change until the following winter. Her hours at work were cut back from 40 hours per week to 30 hours per week so she decided we had to cut back on expenses. One of the ways of cutting back was her moving me into her bedroom and closing off the heating vents to the other two bedrooms. When I say she moved me, I should have said she said, “Grab your things. Bring them to my room. You are sleeping with me the rest of the winter.” When I asked why she shouted, “I told you why. I am not getting paid as much as I was.”

I waited until she came to bed to ask, “How does your getting paid less mean I have to sleep with you?”

“We have to cut back so I turned off the heat to your room. Do I have to explain everything to you? Now go to sleep.”

It worked out quite well, since I was almost always asleep before she came to bed and I was off to school before she woke up. However, the first Friday she came home late and could not get the key in the lock, she started knocking on the door with her shoe.