“Aaron!”
From my room, I heard my mom’s shouts. No doubt she’d just checked her e-mail.
“Aaron Thomas Grant! Get in here right now!”
I allowed my self 2 seconds of hesitation, and a nice long breath. Enjoy this last moment before the chaos, I told myself.
I got off the floor where I had been laying and walked as slowly as I dared to the kitchen.
My mother, a pretty Asian woman 39 years of age, sat at the retro, steel kitchen table. The light on her Apple laptop pulsed in a gentle comforting way.
“Aaron Grant, how did you manage to get sent to the principal’s office for the third time this week!”
I averted her piercing brown eyes, choosing instead to examine the gray tile on the floor. The gray had a sort of bluish swirl in it.
“That was a question, Aaron,” she said, her voice dangerous.
“John was being a retard. We got in a fight, and he blamed me, Mrs. Sanders sent me to the office,” I said quickly and quietly to no one in particular, shifting my gaze from the floor to the refrigerator.
On the corner of the side of the refrigerator, a small crayon picture hung, forgotten. I had drawn in when I was in 4th grade. It depicted 4 people, slightly more detailed than stick figures. Me and my sister, Aaya, stood between my mom and my dad. A big heart was drawn around us all, and each little figure had a smile. That was the last paper I’d brought home from school before my dad moved out. In the last 3 years, my mom hadn’t hung any thing of mine or Aaya’s on the fridge. Now the front of it was plastered with schedules and deadlines and fliers.
If my mom knew that anything that linked her to her divorced husband still existed, she would rip it to shreds. Then burn the pieces. Then collect the ashes, and dump them in separate oceans. Then cause a massive oil spill and light all the oceans on fire.
“Aaron Grant, do you find it so terribly difficult to abstain from getting sent to the office for one week!” Her eyes flashed dangerously, and I couldn’t not look at her. Our eyes connected, and she sent shivers down my spine. I could read her eyes. They showed the truth behind the words she had said to me so many times. We didn’t want you Aaron. You weren’t even supposed to be born. I don’t love you. I don’t need you. You should be grateful I still let you live in my house. You’d better stop causing me so much trouble, or you’ll have to stay with your father all the time.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, my nose itching, and my eyes beginning to fill. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Just wait until it’s over, then cry.
“SORRY! Don’t give me ‘sorry,’ Aaron. You’re not ‘sorry’. That’s what you said the last fifty times.”
She rose to her feet, extending herself to her full 5”4 height. “How dare you cause this much trouble! Don’t you understand? You’re already a failure! Salvage what little you can. Stop getting in fights, stop getting sent to Sister Marianne!”
I broke eye contact, mercifully enjoying a break from the intense, hateful, savage eyes.
My cheek stung with sudden pain. “Look at me!” screeched my mother. I obeyed. She slapped me again, harder.
“If this is what you do at the school I spend money to send you to, then you’re not wasting any more of my money tonight. You can go without dinner for a day.”
I took this to mean I was dismissed, and I lowered my head, turned and trudged off to my room. My full eyes overflowed as I lay back down on the floor of my room. Tears ran slowly down my stinging cheeks.
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