Walking home from school on a Friday afternoon in 2nd grade. We walked home a bit slower on Fridays, the whole group. We ran out of the school like we were excited to go home, but we were playing the role of happy kids. We each had our ongoing home traumas we were being locked down with for the next 72 hours. We were talking about Mother’s Day. Reggie starts, “You, you got anything for yer Ma’s on Mother’s Day?” “Nah! What I’m a save my candy moneys I hustle off Zack?” I said. Way you be getting him wit those wack ass jus opened baseball cards I can’t imagine you don’t have extra.” I gave a wry smile that indicated he might be accurate, but I would admit nothing. “But I would like to get her something.” I leave of with. “Yeh, us too Reggie says. He looks at his older sister Amber, she was a 4th grader. She had to walk with us with our parents’ stipulation or get beaten, again. She hated it. But she looked down at her siblings Cassie in 1st grade and Reggie in second grade with me. Her tone was unusually nice, “What would yall get Mama if you could. Not like we has moneys to go get her something but what if we could?” “We” could? I thought to myself. She was affiliating herself with us, it was a new day! As we crossed Milwaukee Street in front of the Reynolds Recycling Center where I’d already exhausted the local trash bins for cans and took them in. Think I got Snickers and some marbles from Walgreens. I could steal candy, mom loves chocolate. I’d lie and say I earned it somehow. She’d be so pleased I got her something for Mother’s Day.
Across the street from the recycling center was a newly opened Antiques Business, a struggling one from the looks of it. The storefront was originally a car repair shop and not very suited for the repurpose. There in the small oddly placed window on the side of the building were two pretty statues about 12 inches tall. They sparkled a little through a dirty window. It was two women in some kind of black shiny stone. I thought mom would like those, or maybe one and Cassie, Reggie and Amber could take the other one for their moms. Moms would be so proud of us getting something so nice for them on Mother’s Day. I said, “Look at those.” I said, pointing to the delicate statues shimmering faintly through the grimy window. Then, “If I had money I’d go in there and buy Mom something.” Amber’s gaze lingered on the statues, her face softening in a way I rarely saw. “We could get those,” said Amber. Somewhat matter of factually. We all looked at each other. We knew what she implied. We’d need a good story for moms, but she’d love them. The store was closed. The window was a bit high. But we also eyeballed the pallet on end in front of it so that if climbed any of us second graders could almost reach the statues. We all turned at Amber, taller than us and taller than most girls her age. “OK!” she yelled, “I’ll reach em, but yall gotta bust the window. I’m not getting involved with anything illegal, but yall open that window and I’ll get ‘em. Reggie and I started for rocks nearby, we couldn’t find anything quite large enough but small enough they wouldn’t also break the statues behind it. Ten minutes later we stood huffing, getting anxious, a passerby would catch up to what we were up to. “Maybe we should give up,” Cassie whined. I could sense she was feeling dragged into something again by her siblings. “Knock that ole pussy shit off!”, Amber enraged at her. “You want Mom to smile on Mother’s Day or not?! Jesus knows, Daddy ain’t finna do it!” Just then I spotted a long black pole along the side of the building. I’m now a contractor by trade and know that it was a 10 foot “black metal” pipe used in gas plumbing, about 60 pounds of hollow steel. “What about this?” I went to pick it up, for a 2nd grader of any stature this is an awkward heavy lift. Cassie got on the back end, Reggie, a little taller than me, got in front. We were too short. We started on our third attempt at getting one end of the pole to the window, almost, bang, clang crash. It hit the ground again. Amber is laughing hysterically at us, all at once we start yelling at her. “Help us please!” “We want it for Momma!”, Cassie cried. “Fine, she grabbed the high end of the pole as we were lifting it under duress, and suddenly with us all the pole was a bamboo spear we lurched forward somewhat uncontrollably. Crash! The glass came down, still the high end of the pole, “Grab ‘em!”, Amber screamed as she made to push them forward with the end of the pole. I let the pole go and dashed forward to catch the first statue. “The other one”, she was already screaming as I set the first one down and spun back around. It was wobbling already and about to go. My knee fell forward into the pallet and gouged into a nail as I caught the second statue. I wave of elation came over me as I admired it. We all looked around at each other and smiled at our success as Amber tossed down the pole and picked up the other statue. I began to imagining my mother’s face as I revealed it and said “Happy Mother’s Day!”
“HEY, YOU KIDS!”, the shrill righteous voice of a white woman cam blazing at us a across the street. Both Amber and I turned while simultaneously dropping both statues on the hard pavement. I heard Cassie whimper at the sound of the crash. They were heavier than I imagined from the window. They went down so fast, just like my dreams of making my mother so happy. We didn’t even look down, the statues had instantly become part of some distant passed failed experience for us all, I don’t know who yelled it, “RUN!” and we were all moving at what seemed to be the speed of light to us. Behind the store and out onto Union St and Clyde Gallagher Ave, down the edge of the creek. As I ran the shattering glass kept echoing in my mind. It would continue to echo through my life with shattering consequences.
Cassie is falling behind; she can still see around the corner. “She’s getting in her damn car!”, Cassie yelled. You always know when Cassie’s terrified, she starts swearing the rest of the time she tattles on our bad language to anyone will listen. We were exhausted already in our hearts and our legs were not seeming up to the task. The car’s tire screech around the corner seemed to reignite some adrenaline and we bolstered for a moment. “The creek!”, I yelled. Midway down Clyde Gallagher on the side of the street there was a sand bar in the middle of the creek when the water was low. We had used it before to escape to the other side in a foot chase. Two good leaps and you were across with maybe some bruised ribs from the second landing but not many police wanted to speed around 5 city blocks to chase kids across the Starkweather Creek. None ever dared cross the creek.
I lined up a running start looking over my shoulder at Amber who was starting to look back at Cassie. “I can’t leave her!”, Amber yelled at me as I stumbled to a stop at the creeks edge. Why didn’t I jump? I was clear. This “Karen” wasn’t going to follow that far. I could be free, even if they got caught. I couldn’t leave her either. I looked back again at Amber, “Fuck! Fine!” I yelled as assertively as any second grader ever did. We both spun and started back with a new wind at Cassie who was balling now about being left behind. As if we’d done this before Amber and I landed on each side of her and grabbed an arm and began dragging her at the maximum pace her shorter legs would keep her upright. Reggie was now in front and yelling at us to leave her, Reggie was always for himself. “There she is!”, Cassie tried pointing from her dragged wrist hand down the street. The woman was in her car and speeding down the street, we had to cross to make for any other direction, I knew we weren’t going make it, I tried to pull them back, but they broke free of me and for a split second I watched everything slowed down, it all caught up to me. My friends were about to be hit by a car by an overly zealous citizen speeding a car down the street to do us justice. Shattering consequences begin.
I’ve survived a lot of sudden traumas in my life, each time it gets easier to calculate and react faster. This is a time the past traumas paid off in the moment, I reacted.
I dashed forward again pretty sure I was about to put myself in their place. I wrapped my arms around Amber and kicked Cassie in the back, somewhat violently. She later would hold that action over my head, even though we all agreed it probably saved her life or at least a severe injury. I Jumped in the air to try and get Amber and I to the curb. She was bigger than me, we didn’t get far.
Amber and I lay on the hood of this woman’s car. My side hurt and my leg was trembling in the most uncontrollable way. “Fucking bitch!”, I screamed. The woman hopped out of her car and for a moment it seemed she realized what she’d done. Then, “Get over here you little bastards.” “What?! You crazy bitch! You just ran over two minors you, fucking cracker ass, righteous bitch!” Cassie went straight in. The woman looked as if the fact phased her none. “I’m calling the police!”, the driver announced as she grabbed us by our arms off the hood of her car leaving it in the street. She proceeded Reggie and Cassie stayed, they had moved on to being caught and were now balling vehemently about how their dad was going to “bet their ass”. The white lady driver dragged us to the nearest porch and began banging on the door. A woman appeared at the door with her phone in hand. She was already calling the police. “These ones were caught, by me! Breaking a window in a business around the corner. Call the police to come and get them. “I think they are just grade schoolers.” Said the woman holding the phone in her doorway. She seemed to be judging the woman in front of her. “I’ve called them and reported what I saw. You can leave the kids with me, and I’ll talk to the police.” I don’t know why but I could sense maybe that’s what us kids wanted to happen too. “Well, I do have to go to work.”, said the driver sleuth detective. Amber glared up at the woman, “You ran us over with your car you crazy fucking bitch!” The woman started back to her car and ignored Amber’s comment. “I’ve got it”. said the woman in the doorway of her house. Just then the sirens came into earshot. Amber staired down at me with a cold hard look, then she was gone, faster than any of us could have taken after her. The citizen detective was gone, and she took her chance. Her dad was particularly hard on her, the oldest. Reggie and Cassie started balling incessantly about their abandonment and how it was because Amber knew their dad was going to be unrighteously cruel about being brought home by the police. So was my stepdad. I pulled back into some icy hole in myself already preparing for the irrational beating I had coming. I told the woman my dad would do the same, but their show was better, I guess. I had only spite for any adult figure already, even one trying to help me when I didn’t know. “You two can go.”, said the woman. Cassi and Reggie looked at each other and her for no more than blink and they were off. They looked back at me as if to say they were sorry as I sat alone under guard waiting for the ever-approaching sirens.
A large black officer with an intimidating oneiric gaze got out of his squad as the sirens turned off. The light stayed on spinning in an ominous forecast of future trauma to come in life.
“I’m officer Johnson.”, he spoke in a tone that commanded authority, and a reassurance that you should trust him. For all my growing oppositional defiance disorder. I wanted to trust him. The woman began explaining what she saw and the encounter with the zealous citizen detective.
“She hit them?!”, officer Johnson exclaimed. You could hear actual concern in his voice, and I thought an underlying contempt for the driver. “Yes.” The woman paused and took a breath. The other children seemed to be tagging along.” she said. “The oldest escaped me.” “Cassie, Reggie and Amber?” He asked me. I nodded. “Their Dad is head Umpire for the Madison Muskies baseball team, yes?” I looked up astonished, damn it I’d just snitched not thinking I was. “I am too.” Says Officer Johnson. I hung my head lower and wondered how long till my friends forgave me, how I was to know he would know them and their dad personally. I thought no one in my neighborhood would be caught dead talking to a cop. “What are your parents going to say?”, says Officer Johnson. “My stepdad is gonna beat me till I can’t go to school for three or four days. My Mom…” How this all started caught up to me. I started to choke some and a tear fell. For her, not me. Then I sucked in a breath and said, “I’m get whooped, caught being a bastard stepchild on a Friday, nothing new.” I set my eyes on the pavement and resolved to stop talking all together. “Sit here a moment and we’ll be on our way, Ty.” From that moment on I started to relax. Something in Officer Johnsons tone felt good. I was surprised at how much I wanted to trust him. I knew what was coming, but that was normal. The unpredictable chaos at least seemed to be over. Officer Johnson stood a little way away with the woman discussing and writing notes for a moment then came over and said, “Let’s go.” We walked to his car, and I paused at the door. “It’s ok.”, he said. “No one is going to jail today. I gotta let you in and out cause sometimes I put real criminals back there. Today you’re going home though. Let’s do it, time to face your music kid.” He opened the door as if it was a carriage that would soon turn into a pumpkin. “After you.” And he smiled at me. I felt reassured and got in.
The ride four blocks to my house silent. The police radio chatter, the sound of Officer Johnson putting the cruiser in park, the chime as he opened the door and slammed it turning around to grab my door. It ripped open with a cacophony of noise that seemed to deafen me. My senses had gone hypersensitive. What was I afraid of? Him. Chances were that I had an “ass whoopin” coming whether my mom or stepdad was home. If he was home though, who knows what it would turn into. We approached the door and if the typical large policeman’s knock was loud, this seemed to wail the bell toll of Christ’s second coming. I was going to need him soon I thought.
My mother opened the door. The pulse of my heart in my ears had risen so I could barely hear them. I looked past her around what I could see of our urban townhome from the door. She was packing the diaper bags to get my siblings from HeadStart, she looked down at me and interrupted whatever Officer Johnson was saying. “He’s not here!”, she said, her tone gave the distinct impression she was too angry with my stepdad to be angrier at me at this time. “He has the car and there’s no one to get Doanld and Vinnie. Grandma Diana across the way is gonna take me, hopefully the change in my purse is enough in her old beater…”, she paused and took a breath. “Go to your ROOM. And don’t open that door until I come, if the god damn house isn’t on fire that door better not open.” I marched past her immediately. Tears erupted and my face planted itself firmly in the direction of ground as I marched with dead arms as fast as I could towards my room.
“I think he just wanted to get his mom something for Mother’s Day.”, is the last thing I heard Officer Johson saying as I shut the door.
She never came. I heard her come home with my siblings and yell them around the house. I stayed there like a statue in my bed. Tears couldn’t be mustered any more. I heard them have dinner. Overheard my mom talking in her room to Grandma Diana across the way about what happened. I only caught pieces. “I don’t know what to even say?” “This is not like him.” “I can’t tell him you know what will happen…”
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