I had the familiar dream last night. The general of the cavalry tried to shoot me, but Mom saved me again. She shot him in the heart with an arrow. Ani was a wolf again. And all three of us escaped.
Emjay was still a traitor. He was on the general’s side. It broke my mom’s heart. I saw it in her eyes. But I didn’t wake up at that point. My dream went a little longer, maybe because I was in a comfy bed. But my dream lasted long enough for our injured red horse, Pinto, to collapse. Our horse was broken. And Mom and I sat beside her until she breathed her last breath. Our Pinto was gone. She had gone on to the next world. To run free with all the other spirit horses.
I sit up and see Mom is making me a bowl of cereal. Cocoa Puffs. With milk. Ani is still passed out beside me. I look over and see Emjay asleep on the couch. Holy Hamburger Helper, she found him! But he looks different.
“It’s gone,” Mom says as she approaches me and hands me my bowl.
The cereal smells so good. I definitely go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I take my first bite, and my mouth throws a chocolate-flavored parade. It’s delicious. And crunchy. And sweet. And … Wait … “What’s gone?” I ask.
“His beautiful hair. He chopped it all off,” Mom says, standing over him, looking at his freshly cut head.
That’s what is different. But why? His hair was long and black and so freaking cool. Much cooler than mine. Mine is only half his length. “Why did he do that?”
“In his words … he felt like it,” she says, and fixes herself a bowl of cereal.
“How’d you find him?” I ask, my mouth full.
“He found me. I gave up the search and just parked back at the other hotel. Then up walked your brother, wearing new shoes and his head buzzed.”
All our talking stirs him awake. He sits up and yawns. Mom hands him her bowl of cereal. He takes it and begins eating. And even though his long hair was my favorite thing about him, I must admit, his super short buzzed head looks pretty cool too. It makes him look like a Hawaiian surfer or an Olympic swimmer, that ones that keep their hair real short so no wet strands get in their face and in their eyes.
“Mom says our strength is in our hair length,” I say.
“Just because something rhymes, doesn’t make it true,” he says.
“But if it is true, that means I’m the strong one now. It’s my turn to call the shots,” I say, and leap off the bed, standing proudly.
“Mom’s wrong. Strength is in your muscles, not your hair. And you have no muscle. You throwing a punch would hurt your hand more than whatever you hit,” he says.
Ani jumps off the bed and heads toward Mom, but halfway there, Emjay swoops his arm down and picks her up, like an eagle plucking a fish from a lake. I immediately feel my skin crawl.
“Give her to me,” I say, and reach for her.
Emjay ignores me and just holds Ani up to his face, examining her. “What an ugly dog,” he says.
“She’s not ugly. You’re just going blind,” I say.
Mom gets in between us. She knows how Emjay is, which means she probably wants Ani back in my arms just as much as I do. “Give her to me. I bet she needs to pee,” Mom says, and extends her hand to my brother.
He’s not an idiot. He knows what we’re doing. “I’m not going to snap this mutt in half, even though I easily could. Calm down,” he says, and tosses Ani back onto the bed.
I reach out and pick her up. She has no idea how close she was to danger.
“Out of everyone in the world, it could have chosen anyone … and it chose you. What a stupid dog,” he says, and laughs and fills his mean mouth with a spoonful of cereal.
I guess the saying “you don’t get to choose your family” isn’t true anymore. Ani did choose her family. She chose me. And I’m going to be the best decision she’s ever made. But I bet Emjay would choose a different family. He wouldn’t choose me or our mom. That’s clear. He’s stuck with us and still doesn’t choose us. He only comes back because he … Well … I don’t really know why he comes back. Maybe he has nowhere else to go. Maybe there’s a small part of him that cares about Mom and maybe even a smaller part that cares about me. He just doesn’t show it.
“You’re wrong,” I say, and finish my last bite of cereal, then revel in my favorite part: drinking all the remaining chocolate milk.
“Get dressed. We got a busy day today,” Mom says to me.
I look at Emjay. “And will Emjay be joining us on our day of festivities?” I ask in my most proper voice.
“Not a chance. I just came here for the shower,” he says, and gets up.
That answers that. That’s why he came back. Emjay grabs clean clothes from our folded stacks of laundry. Mine is stack number one, his is stack number two, and Mom’s is stack number three. Before he enters the bathroom, I shout to him, “Em … do you like my new shoes?” I ask, and point to them beside the front door.
He takes a long, hard look at my camouflage sneakers, then back at me, and says, “What shoes?”
He closes the door, and moments later, the shower begins running. It takes me and Mom a few seconds before we both laugh. Emjay can be funny when he wants to be.
“Last night sucked, I know. But we still have this room for tonight. We’ll eat dinner together. All three of us,” she says.
“All four of us,” I correct her, and hold up Ani.
The number four left my mouth, and I usually taste sour on my tongue when it does, but this time, it felt right. We are a family of four. Maybe I won’t dislike that number anymore. Maybe four can be a good word now. It’s okay that I don’t get to five. There are four seasons. Four directions. I hope we’re a family of four-ever.
The next few hours flew by. Emjay stayed at the hotel, but Mom and I went down to the social security office to do more of her adult stuff. Then we went down to the welfare office to see if there were any more food stamps available, because we’re out. And all the cash we have left we need for the rest of our trek down south to Los Angeles. We didn’t stay long at the HUD-housing office because they said the list for an available apartment for low-income families qualifying for Section 8 is a three-year wait.
We don’t have three more years in us.
It was nice to show Ani all these places, and I’m glad I have her, because usually these places are super boring, but she was a hit. Everyone loved her. Mom didn’t have much fun, though. She was told she didn’t qualify for government assistance funds because we don’t have a permanent address. She didn’t get any more food stamps because the records show she received some recently from a different city, even though it was only seventy-five dollars. And she didn’t want to argue too much about it because she’s always afraid of them calling social services on us when she tells them we’re currently homeless. Sometimes, it just slips out when trying to explain the situation to people.
This world makes no sense. Like when you’re staying in a bad neighborhood and need to call the cops. For some reason, it takes them hours to show up. I mean, they should know the neighborhood isn’t safe. They should be there right away. But nope. So why is it that one phone call to Child Protective Services, and within minutes, they’re knocking on our door and trying to arrest my mom? Makes no sense.
I suppose that’s a good thing, in some situations. Like when a parent is beating their kid or is drunk and not feeding the baby, then yeah, in those cases, run all the red lights to rescue that kid. But my mother is not like that. Never in a million years would she hit us. And she’s trying harder than most parents to raise us to be good people. She’s trying her best. But they don’t care. They’d rather split us up and let us all become “products of the system.” That’s what Mom says it’s called when they take kids away from their mamas. In fact, most of the kids I’ve met at the shelters we’ve stayed at are on the run from them. No one wants to be separated from their blood. No one wants to be tossed in a foster home. It’s not like in the movies where a loving family brings you home to your new house with your own room and a bike in the garage.
No, the truth is uglier. The truth is America pays people to house a bunch of kids whose families have no money or are broken in other ways. And who doesn’t want money? Who would say no to that? No one. So kids like me are sent to random houses with random people.
I’ve heard a lot of bad stuff happens at these places. Awful things. And if the kids run away from these places or fight back, they go to juvie. It’s on their record forever. Then what chance do any of those kids got? And does America care? Nope. They treat us like being poor is a crime. Well, if it is, it is America that committed it. Not us. They made the game. They wrote the rules. We shouldn’t be punished for playing it.
Needless to say, the moment Mom mentioned we were homeless, she bit her lip and we got in the car and took off. I am not a product. I am a warrior. And Mom doesn’t deserve jail. She deserves a break.
We pull into a parking lot next to a busy intersection. We need to make money. Mom pulls out our art bag and our AUTHENTIC NATIVE AMERICAN ANIMAL ART sign, and we exit the car and set up on the corner.
I love my drawings, and Mom does too, but I try not to make her feel bad about needing to sell them. “I’ll draw more,” I say as the first person that walks by hands her five dollars for my porcupine.
Another two hours crawl by, and we’ve sold almost all my drawings. Usually, making this money would make us happy, but it doesn’t feel too good today. Maybe we’re both tired. All that’s left is my raccoon and moose.
“I don’t know why no one wants the moose. Meese are so cool,” I tell her.
“Meese isn’t a word. It’s just called moose,” she says.
“But goose has geese,” I say.
She takes my two drawings, and we walk back to the car. “You’re right. Meese are so cool,” she says.
I don’t know why, but when someone offered to buy the raccoon from me, she said that one wasn’t for sale. They even offered fifteen bucks for it, but she still said no. Maybe this is the one that she plans on framing and hanging above her bed. I don’t mean to brag, but it is really freaking good. One of my best, for sure.
“Why didn’t you sell the raccoon?” I ask once we’re back in the car.
“The esiban is all mine,” she says.
I guess esiban means “raccoon.” I’m glad I didn’t draw Ani yet, because chances are, with her adorable face, we would have had to sell it today.
“You know what’s the weirdest part about living in a car after working hard all day?” she asks.
“What?”
“We can’t say, ‘Let’s go home.’”
She’s in her head again. Modesto took a turn on us. I smell it in the air. Mom wants to leave. She wants to try somewhere new. We’ve only been here a day, and too much has already happened … Plus, there’s always a chance Child Protective Services is looking for us now. If they find us, it’s game over.
“Then we’ll just say, ‘Let’s go,’” I say to Mom, and put our DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince CD in, in an attempt to make her smile again.
If anyone can do it … Will Smith can.
The song “Summertime” begins to play, and as I crack my window down, Mom cracks a smile. It worked! Miigwech, Will!
When we get back to the motel, Emjay is gone. That’s nothing new, but still it bums Mom out a little bit. She was hoping to cap this day off with some long-overdue family time. But nothing about today went to plan. We didn’t make enough money to pay for gas, food, and emergency expenses yet, and we have to leave tomorrow. The voucher expires at 11 A.M.
While I stay in the room and play with Ani, Mom heads out to the neighboring apartment complex, beside the motel. We saw people grilling food and hanging out when we parked. So, Mom being Mom, and since we don’t have a kitchen, she filled a bag with our two cobs of corn, three chicken patties, four asparagus, and four zucchinis. I assume the people said yes to sharing the grill, because she’s been gone for almost an hour.
When she returns, she looks happy again. And whew, the smell tackles me and covers me in kisses. It smells so good, like a restaurant.
“Those nice people even let us borrow some plates,” she says as she places both on the table and pours us drinks. She’s drinking Coke. I’m drinking the rest of the apple juice. And Ani is drinking water. “Didn’t speak a lick of English, though. I should teach you Spanish so you can teach it to me,” she says.
“How you going to teach it to me if you don’t know it?” I ask.
“Same way I teach piano,” she says with a smirk. “What did you think of Emjay’s new look?”
“I don’t know. I guess I liked it.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s hard to be mad at him for it when it looks so good. Still, he better not get any tattoos,” she says.
“You have tattoos,” I say, and point to the thunderbird tattoo she has on her left shoulder.
“I’m an adult. I’m allowed to make mistakes that last forever. He’s not,” she says.
“That was a mistake?” I ask.
“Mine? Well, no. I love it. But most tattoos are mistakes. He can get one when he’s eighteen. This one. Our thunderbird. But no girls’ names or those cheesy tribal bands.”
“Can I get the thunderbird tattoo too when I’m eighteen?”
“If you want it. Yeah. It’s your shoulder. But until that day, your skin is my skin, got it?”
I nod and continue eating. Ani eats loud. For such a small body, she eats her weight in dog food.
“I know tonight was supposed to be family night, but…,” she starts.
“I know.”
“You know what?”
“We didn’t make enough money. So you have to go out tonight and fix that,” I say.
“Yeah. Sorry, kiddo.”
“Where do we go next? What city?”
“Plan A, I’m hoping to get us enough to get to Ventura. Plan B, Bakersfield. Plan C, Fresno. All depends on tonight.”
“Where you going to get the money?” I ask.
“Word is, there’s an underground arm-wrestling tournament going down tonight. I thought that I’d enter it and who knows, win.”
“Can I come?”
“Sorry, kiddo. There’s an age limit. You’re going to have to stay here and babysit Ani,” she says, gets up, and walks off to the bathroom.
I sit at the table, staring at my empty plate. I know there’s no arm-wrestling tournament tonight. I know she just doesn’t want to tell me where she’s really going. Which makes me wonder where she is going even more. But I’m not going to ask, because I don’t want her to have to lie to me. That would make her feel too guilty. And tonight, whatever she is doing, will suck if a cloud of guilt is raining down guilt-drops on her all night.
But tonight, since so much has happened, if she gives me homework, I’m not going to do it right away. Because tonight was supposed to be fun, and last night, I didn’t let Emjay ruin my day. Today I won’t let Mom. I’ll eat and play and sleep like a king tonight. Again. With Ani, my trusty and loyal hound, at my side.