Amanda tightens her grip on my biceps leads me over to couch.
“Sit down,” she says, and disappears into the kitchen.
No matter what I do, I think to myself, nothing for no one ain’t ever going to be good enough.
Amanda comes back out with two plates of food and we start to eat.
“Don’t worry about Margie,” she says. “She’s harmless.”
I say nothing. I mean, I feel kind of guilty and maybe Margie senses that I’m truly the impostor she thinks I am.
“So, you’ve never really told me about what happened?”
I look up as I’m about to shove a chopstick-full load of white rice into my mouth.
“About what?”
“About you, about your life.”
“Oh,” I say and emit a sigh of relief.
I guess my guilt is getting to me.
“Tell me about your childhood,” Amanda says and laughs.
“Well,” I begin.
I place my plate on the table and lean back and start thinking.
The years roll back and by, and I see myself as that hurt little kid whose father hated him and whose mother would do anything to hold onto a man even if it meant abusing her own kids to satisfy his sick fucking perverted pleasures.
My mother was a total fuck up.
It’s no wonder I don’t want to see her sorry, pathetic ass.
Anything for a guy. Wow, what some women will do just to hold onto some fuckin’ loser guy.
And the guys my mother was with, my father included, were just that.
Fuckin’ losers.
And my mother was too.
And, I’m sure, still is.
My younger brother and sister ended up on foster care before me, and I consider them the lucky ones.
I’m lucky they got out unscathed.
I feel proud about that.
I guess you could say I took it for the team.
“My dad left us,” I say to Amanda. “And my mom tried to get him to stay.”
Amanda places her plate on the table and sits on her feet as she snuggles into the corner of the sofa.
“Yes.”
“It was pretty ugly. All I remember are these scenes of my mother’s desperation.”
I explain it all to her. My father would return once in a while when drunk to fuck my mother and, as he left, she’d be a bawling mess and grabbing onto him as he walked out the door.
“Don’t leave me, Jim! Don’t leave me!” she’d cry.
“Fuck you, you whore!” he’d yell back as he got into his brand-new pickup and drove off.
(Yeah, he could buy a brand-new truck and not support his own fuckin’ kids.)
My mother would collapse onto the floor and sob.
It was all I could do to get her to bed.
“Oh, you poor baby,” she says and moves over and rubs my thigh.
She takes my hand in hers, and I continue.
My mother had always drunk, but it reached a point where it became excessive. She never went to work, drank all day, and whored all night. Soon the booze turned into crystal meth on top of the alcohol. She was a complete mess.
Amanda squeezes my hand, and I’ve never opened up to anyone like this before, but I keep going. I need to get all of this out of me.
My grandmother would come over and yell at my mother to get her act together, and it was just so hurtful to see it all. My grandmother was a tough woman who took nobody’s shit, and my brother, sister and I feared but respected her. She got my brother and sister out of foster care and they went to live with her. My grandmother had money, and my brother and sister went to private schools and had nothing to do with me or my mother
I, on the other hand, refused to abandon my mother.
Until that one night.
Earlier that day, I had come home from school and was doing my homework. I started paying attention at school because I figured if I was smart like my brother and sister then they would talk to me again. Dr. Phil droned on in the background when the door to the dingy apartment opened.
It was my grandmother.
“Hello, Lincoln,” she said.
I stood up and went over to her.
She hugged and kissed me and cried.
“Here,” she said. “I brought you this.”
She had brought me a chicken salad sandwich with chips and pickles.
“I don’t want you to go hungry,” she said and wiped her eyes.
“Thank you, Grandma,” I said and hugged her again.
I felt happy.
I don’t know what she sensed at that moment, but she leaned down, held my chin between her fingers, and directed me to look at her.
“Anytime you need to,” she said. “Anytime you need me, call me and I’ll come pick you up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Just remember,” she said and turned to leave.
I opened the bag up and looked up to thank her but, when I did so, she had vanished.
I woke up in the middle of the night to laughing and crashing sounds.