Growing Pangs

She tried to make him pose and he hated it. He hated the way she always, in the end, made him do what he didn’t want to. It was how she looked at him that made him do it.

“Stand still, won’t you.” She kept snapping pictures and he gnawed on his bottom lip until he tasted blood, then he swiped his mouth with a grimy pair of fingers and rubbed the slimy mess onto his pants. “Hey Michael, try looking like you’re interested, okay?” The snapping kept going, the whirring of film rolling into the camera getting on his nerves.

“Are we done, yet? I’m hungry!”

“In a minute.” The whirring continued. He had homework to do, maybe he could use that to get out of this crap.

“I got homework,” he called to her. “Let me do my homework!’

“Man, you must be bored. Just a minute, okay?” Click click. Whir whir. “Okay.” She lowered the camera and grinned at her subject. Her teeth weren’t straight or even very white, but when she smiled she did it with her whole face, dark eyes crinkling and cheeks puffing out. He liked her smile and it made him smile back even when he didn’t really feel like it. “You’re done. Thanks for the time, and you can come over later if you want to.”

He stared up at her flowing brown hair, a tangled mess in the late spring breeze. He didn’t know why she did some tingly thing to him, she really wasn’t anything special. She looked like all the other girls in their trailer park, with tight faded jeans and rock t-shirts and too much gunk on her face. But she was the only one who paid any attention to him, even though some of the others called her a freak for it. Sometimes he liked her and sometimes he didn’t. And what really got to him was knowing she knew. He could tell she knew. “Probably not,” he raised up a hand and tugged on the thick mass of dirty brown hair. “I got that homework and stuff to do before my mom shows up later.”

“Okay.” She nodded and looked down at her camera. “But I’ve got some cigarettes if you change your mind.” She turned to trek back over to her own trailer, then she turned and gave him the smile he kind of hated and loved all at once. “Course you’re already short for twelve. Maybe I shouldn’t keep giving ‘em to you. Stunt you more and they’ll keep you in seventh grade another year.” She laughed at his blushing face and came back a few steps. She leaned in and whispered, “Casey won’t be there. He has band practice.”

Michael’s chest thumped. “I’ll see,” he called to her as he backed towards his own trailer and clumped up the wooden steps. He slammed in and leaned against the door. “Geez,” he said to himself. He walked farther into the living room, weaving around a pile of clothes and a meowing black cat. “Shut up, cat” He absently kicked out at the animal and she hissed back at him, but not with any real malice. He grabbed a brown backpack and plunked himself on the floor. He wasn’t in the mood for homework, but what the hell. He looked up and locked eyes with the cat. “Whaddya think, Stinker?” The cat blinked her yellow eyes at him and refused to share her opinion. “Think I should go get a smoke, instead?”

He jumped at the slam of the trailer door. “No she does not think you should ‘get a smoke’.”

“Dam,” he muttered. Loudly he greeted her. “Hi, ma. You’re home early.”

She stomped her squeaky white rubber shoes into the kitchen off to the right and slammed down her heavy purse, then she sat at the plastic-covered plywood table and burst into noisy tears. Her head bowed to the surface and she started banging her forehead while she sobbed. Her son scrambled up from their orange-carpeted floor and ran to her. He put his hand on her forehead and winced when she kept banging. Finally she stopped and the sobbing reduced to snivels while she grabbed a sock off the table and wiped her nose with it. She let loose one last shuddering cry and slumped, staring at the now-wet sock balled tightly in her fist. The boy sat beside her and stroked her back until she spoke. “Yeah, buddy, your mom lost another one.” Her red, blotchy face raised to meet his somber one. She seemed to belatedly realize that it should be her doing the comforting. She tried to straighten her back while she patted his shoulder with a calloused hand, the one without the balled sock.. “We’ll be okay.” She took a deep breath and briefly closed her hazel eyes. “We always are.” He nodded even through he wasn’t too sure they would be. He was never sure.

They ate dinner-macaroni and cheese, the kind with the powdered stuff he hated but ate anyway-and afterwards she lay down on the sagging brown couch with the television remote and a diet Pepsi. He washed the dishes and when he was done, the front of his t-shirt soaked, he told her he was going outside. He braced himself, wondering if she would remember what she’d heard him tell the cat. But she just said okay and kept flipping channels. He didn’t know why that bothered him. Then he thought about her waiting next door. His chest thumped again and he didn’t know if he liked the whole thing, the way she made him do whatever she wanted because of that buzzing in his brain. He gave one last look to his mother. She was already closing her eyes so when he left, he shut the trailer door quietly.

The television droned on while she started to snore. The cat licked herself fastidiously, sitting on the forgotten brown backpack, as dusk settled quietly into night.


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