This chapter follows Jake’s mother’s horrendous and traumatic melt-down where she rampages through the kitchen throwing and breaking everything in sight.
Chapter 13
What are Friends For?
“At my position on the tree branch, I watched Tee scamper home. As Arv’s bike barreled down the driveway he wiped the dust from his eyes. I hollered, ‘Hey Arv. Hold up!’ I waved. Not likely he heard.
“Listening to my hunger pangs, I swung my legs over the limb and shinnied down. I mounted my bike and took off. The act of traversing the ruts in the path rattled the connections in my old bike. About 25 yards from my house, I hit a mountain of a bump causing the front wheel to shimmy. It felt as though I rode a bucking bronco. As the tire rolled off, the head of the bike dropped like a hoe and bit into the ground. The force threw me over the handlebars into a flip, only to land in a wash of slime that oozed from beneath the pigsty fence. By the time I stood up, Arv rode up, hopped off his bike caught in the rigors of a horselaugh worse than Jimmy McGee. With his hands plunked on his hips, he stood over me, rocking back and forth in laughter.
“I tromped over and kicked my bike. ‘Pretty funny, huh?’ I concealed my wrath until I got close to him. I threw my best tackle landing him against the fence, which collapsed. I bulldozed him into the sty with Will, my 4-H prize-winning pig who oinked a husky reaction to the crazy human invasion. My maneuver propelled Arv backwards into a pile of mud at the butt end of Willy, who rose with a simultaneous shake of his massive body. Mung spatters completely decorated the lump that was Arvin. I stood back to admire my handiwork.
“Arvin burgeoned from the muck reminding me of a burp in a pan full of Ma’s chocolate pudding heating on the stove. He wiped the dark mud from his eyes, the only part of his body not covered in brown slime. ‘You look like a raccoon!’ Then I made a mistake. I laughed so hard I bent forward and lost my vigilance only for a half a second.
“Arv lunged for my knees and crumpled me in the puddle with him. Then we rolled over and over until I thought we’d die of laughitits. Willy joined us by trotting around the pen grunting and snorting.
“Wolf snapped his head up from his snooze and couldn’t resist. He raced for the mud arena, bounded in, cavorted, frolicked and howled. Max took in the whole event while he washed his paws.
“Ma yelled out the back door, ‘What are you boys up to now?’
“I sat up and mouthed, ‘Having a farting contest.’
“Arv chuckled.
“I could destroy a whole classroom with one of my beauts.”
Dani shook her head. “What makes guys so utterly vulgar?” She chuckled anyway.
I grinned and rattled on. “In the middle of flying dust, Pa pulled up in the pickup and swerved to a stop. No doubt he thought we were killing each other at first observation. When he hopped out and discovered that he had two new raucous pigs chased by Wolf, he cracked up. ‘Okay boys out of there right now! You’ll scare off five pounds of bacon.’
“The thought of Willy on my plate as bacon one morning for breakfast stopped me cold, but not as cold as the spray from Pa’s hose as he laundered us back into kids.
“Meanwhile Willy trotted out to join the cows, but not before he head-butted one of the poles of Ma’s laundry lines.
“One of the lines caught in Willy’s cloven hoof. Pa’s boxers fell like a dozen small flags being roped down. The string of underwear hit the ground and wended a path behind Willy all the way out to the alfalfa field.
“By the time we had repaired the fence, chased Willy back into his pen, and tried to whiten Pa’s shorts, we were dry enough to partake of Ma’s bread whose essence floated clear out to the pen.”
Danielle giggled as she pointed to the picture Ma snapped of us in the pen. “You ought to write that one down. Great story.”
“With all the pigsty diversion, I had nearly forgotten the morning’s catastrophe until I reached for the back door. I elbowed Arv off the porch as I opened the screen door and peeked in to the bomb zone.
“I gawked. The kitchen, swept and spotless, shone as orderly as a model home, and I wondered if my imagination had conjured up some false memory like a hideous nightmare.
“ ‘Come in boys. Wash up. Peanut butter and jelly are already on,’ Ma kissed me on the forehead.
“ ‘Aw, Ma. Pa hosed us down already.’
“She pointed at the sink. ‘Now don’t you go mouthing off.’ Ma hummed as she delicately sliced through the warm bread. Pa joined our feast and together we obliterated a loaf and a half. Nothing would taste that good again—until she devised some wonderful new bread or coffee cake recipe on the next Saturday.
“Even before Pa warned me at supper, I knew. Ma’s rage through the kitchen germinated from the mention of Tee who became my forbidden friend. Silence settled on the main course at the table when Ma shoved her meager portion of chicken around her plate, then passed a stern look at Pa. That gave him the impetus to speak. ‘Son.’ He laid his fork down, cleared his throat and then stared right into my saucer-wide blue eyes. This town has no tolerance for mixing races. We depend on the town folk. You are never to bring that Asian child into this house and jeopardize our livelihood. Nor will you associate with her in any way. Is that understood?’
“I nodded casting my eyes at the chicken bone on my plate.
“ ‘Those people remain important and respected members of the community only when they adhere to a strict code of expectations.’
Yeah. When we get sick the doc’s okay.
“Facing my pa, I no longer felt hungry for my second piece of chicken. ‘May I be excused?’
“ ‘You may. Put your plate in the sink. Your mother and I will do the dishes tonight.’
“I trudged up the wooden stairs pulling myself up the stairs by the slick bannister. My lips set tight. Making Tee taboo didn’t change my determination. I would still go to the woods the next day, no matter what would happen. When I reached my room, my baseball glove hung on the door handle. Gripping the mitt by the
strap, I flung it at my bed. As I opened the long walk-through closet to get my PJs off the hook, I saw it. The shiny handlebars gleamed as
the dark blue and white Schwinn Cruiser bloomed from the floor just as it had in the window of the hardware store where I had seen it the previous week. Ma had said it was way too expensive. In my fire engine bank I had counted up my $12.16, way below the $129 dollars that the store wanted for it.
“I barely brushed the floor before I leaped in to touch it, to feel the cool shiny paint job, and smell the newness of the tires. The blue handle grips sprouted white streamers. I squeezed the black horn bulb. ‘Oogah!’ Then I noticed the note taped to the handlebars. ‘I love you, Jacob. Ma and Pa, too!’
“If I could have figured out a way to sleep with that bike, I would have. Instead I rolled it next to my bed and straddled it, while I imagined the wind in my face when I took my first ride.
“Dressed in my PJs, I leaned the bike against the circle quilt Grandma had stitched for me. I positioned my treasure where I could stroke the smooth metal as I drifted off to sleep.
That night I woke briefly to hear the sorrowful music that emanated from the piano downstairs.”
Dani touched my shoulder as my words drifted off. “Your mother? She had many of those episodes?”
I stared at the family portrait that hung across from me. Sitting next to me, Ma smiled serenely. “My mother’s brief period of fury, detonated by what, I didn’t understand. What had I said to set her off?
“I worried for years after the incident if it would repeat itself. It did not. The bike was the only apology she offered. No one ever mentioned what happened that morning in the kitchen.
“But to think back. There was another incident, before the kitchen tirade.” I pinched the stubble on my chin.
