| WORLD VOICES DANCING FOR MY MOTHER
BY DUFF BRENNA |
Contents World
Voices Home |
You climb
some stairs, knock and holler trick or treat! The door opens. Music
blasting. A man towering over you. He is smiling. He lifts you up,
attaches you
to his hip, turns and says, Look what I found! There is a party going
on. The
apartment is brimming with men. All men, no women. They are dancing
with each
other. They are shouting. They are laughing. The man passes you around.
Men
carry you swaying to the
music. Men
kissing you on the cheeks, patting your butt, loving you up. It’s
wonderful.
You don’t know how long this adoration lasts, but when you’re put down
by the
door and given a big bottle of Seven-Up you don’t want to leave. Go
home,
sweetie, you’re told. The door closes. Bereft, you don’t like Halloween
anymore. Back in the apartment you and Carol Marie open the Seven-Up
bottle and
take turns drinking it. Like out of control alcoholics you drink the
whole thing.
The
Seven-Up bottle
is worth a nickel at the grocery store, where one day Carol Marie
steals a pack
of chewing gum. When she gets home Mom asks where she got the gum she
is
chewing. Carol Marie says she found it, but she’s no good at lying. Mom
sees
right through her. Carol Marie confesses. She is marched back to the
store and
made to give the remaining four sticks of gum to the clerk at the
counter. With
tears in her eyes Carol Marie apologizes and promises she won’t steal
or lie
anymore. Honest to God she won’t. You
really are impossibly vacant,
Duffy, a worthless bastard bedwetter as Pappas habitually calls you.
But on the
other hand, all the apartments look exactly alike. They have big
numbers
stenciled on the upper right corner, but what five-year-old pays
attention to
numbers? So not paying attention you climb the wrong stairs, turn the
knob on
the unlocked door and go inside and see a treasure trove of—Toys! An
unbelievable number of toys: trucks, cars, dolls, cap guns and
holsters, a
Jack-in-the-Box, a spinning top, a shiny jewel of a tricycle. You mount
the
tricycle and sit there blinking at all the bounty. The door opens. A
strange
woman comes in, sees you. Her mouth falls open. What are you doing! she
yells.
How dare you! she yells. You’re as astonished as she is. This isn’t
your home?
These are not your toys given to you as a surprise? How can you even
think
that? It is like you are dreaming sweet things and suddenly wake to
find the
dream is tragically over. Out the doorway you scoot, the woman warning
you that
she better never see you in her house again or she will call the
police. The
last thing she yells is something you’ve never heard before: You
thieving
little urchin! What’s
an urchin? Where’s
God? You and your family drive
to the airport with an old man, a neighbor whose rattling old car has a
governor that won’t it let go over 30 miles an hour. Cars piling up,
horns
honking. Your mother rubs her temples and complains of a migraine. The
old man
keeps talking about the governor and how everyone should have one. If
they did
the roads would be a lot safer. At one point he yells out the window,
Honk your
fool heads off! I ain’t goin no faster! And he doesn’t. In fact, it
seems he
goes slower. He’s so ornery, your mom whispers. Pappas in front has an
elbow
out the window, his glum chin buried in his palm. 7
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