Chapter 13

Family. What was a family?

It was one of her drinking days. He was too young then. He hadn’t yet learned how to predict it. He could only think about his new red yo-yo and the trick he learned to do. He had figured it out all by himself, no one had shown him. His father was away that weekend, and his mother was in one of her cleaning moods. She didn’t want to see the yo-yo, and he had to show someone. He didn’t dare take it to school because Mrs. Bender confiscated toys. Just last week his friend, Buster, lost his super-high-fly airplane to her drawer.

So he brought Buster home after school. He was so excited about showing off his trick he forgot to tell Buster to take off his shoes. Before they were halfway up the stairs, his mother was on them. She stood in the hallway in her see-through pink bathrobe, screaming up at them about the dirt on her clean floors. Her shrill voice slurred and started to shake, her words not making sense, not about the dirt anymore but about his father not coming home that day after all. Buster ran down the stairs and out the door. Buster never said a word to him about it. But it was a long time before they played again.