Sugared Strawberries

Slowly fading back into reality I could smell what he was about to say before he even said it, “Dre! Get yo ass down here for this dinner.  I won’t ask again.”  Pork chops was the only scent that immediately jumped out at me, but I could make an educated guess that the sides would be corn and mashed potatoes.  I placed my journal under the bed catching a glance at the ceiling fan that made a knocking sound when the speed was too high.  I pulled the cord twice to turn it off, then back on to the slowest speed before turning off the light to head downstairs.       

I could hear how much I weighed in every creak of the exposed wood floors that turned into the staircase.  Wood that you wouldn’t want to walk barefoot on because of how black it appeared with ants rallying in the cracks.  Going down the stairs was no different as I always wondered why he left these pictures up that lead straight down to the bottom.  They were my mother’s choice after all.  I made my way to the kitchen where there was a table, two chairs and two plates of food that were ready for the both of us.  I was right; pork chops, corn and mashed potatoes. 

There sat my father occupying his spot while smoking a cigarette as I walked through the doorway, immediately putting it out as I sat down to eat because he knew I hated the smoke.  It made the smallest difference as the smoke was already dancing in the air with the aroma of burnt grease forcing me to lose my appetite.  I sat down in my spot directly across from him refusing to tell him that I wanted to eat.  I’d much rather go to my room, mess around with the antenna for fifteen minutes trying to get a signal.

“You finish your homework like you were supposed to?” he asked before I could place my fork onto my plate.

“Yes sir.  Went to the library today.”

“Good, I don’t have time to be on top of you tonight.  You know imma have to leave outta here for my shift soon.  You need to do them dishes and get ready for bed after.  School tomorrow.”  Reminding me as if I wasn’t aware.  We normally ate in silence and tonight was no different as I forced myself to eat the meal my father prepared.  Took us both twenty minutes tops to finish our meals and plate the dishes into the sink.

“Alright, well I’ll see you later,” my father says to me making his way to the front door, “you know what I told you to do; see ya when I see ya.”   As he placed a ten dollar bill on the arm of the couch for lunch the next few days, disappearing behind the front door letting a crisp breeze into the house.  Very rarely did I ever get to say anything to him on his way out.  The next time I would get to speak to him was after I arrived home from school the next day.  I walked over to make sure the door was locked, grabbing the money on the way, then proceeded to clean the dishes. 

Life at this point was a simple routine.  My father worked the night shifts, but always cooked before he left.  While I took care of the dishes and took out the trash that ran on Tuesdays in my neighborhood.  I could hear the sirens blasting over on the main road as they passed by.  Someone must be dying again.  I always wondered where they were rushing to and why I heard the same siren at least 5 times a day.  There was a time where I thought that every time I heard that siren there was someone having a heart attack because I had seen it in a movie.   Then there was this incident at the bodega on 56^th and Girard where a kid was shot for stealing.  After this, I realized that the siren comes around for all kinds of reasons.  Reasons that exceed anything that I could imagine.

I finished the dishes as fast as I could so that I could then shower and watch some television before heading to sleep.  I always kept the shower under ten minutes to keep the hot water from turning cold.  I had no energy after I lotioned my body, so I pulled the fan cord once, turned out the lights and fought against the knocking of the fan to fall asleep.  The same knocking assisted me in waking up the next morning for school. 

The city winds made their way underneath my coat to brush against my thermals to remind me that it was cold that morning.  I was fond of the winter even though I was born in the middle of July.  Whoever came up with the idea of ‘summer babies’ versus ‘winter babies’ is fucking stupid.  What if I was born in September?  Am I a ‘Fall baby’?  Hell no.  Just like if I’m born in Brownsville, New York it doesn’t make me a crack baby.  Maybe this wasn’t the same thing, but in my mind I was right.

FUCK. What the hell was that?  Turning around I realize it was Saheem, preparing another snowball full of ice.  He cocked his stubby arm back, which was wrapped inside of a black puffer coat, as if he were going to throw it at my chest.  I acted quickly sprinting to smack it out of his hand.  I was much faster than Saheem and slimmer too.  He was a bigger boy that played football for high school; roughly six foot.  However, his head was the size of a basketball.  His sense of fashion wasn’t bad either for his size and I often told him that.    

“Yo Dre! Get ya head out the clouds man! What’s good bro?” he says to be hooking his fat arm sleeve around my neck.

“It’s too early for all that nonsense, dawg.  Chill out.”

“Relax!”

“Whatever, man”.

“Peep the kicks,” pointing at his size 13 feet wearing a fresh pair of Air Max 1s.  “You don’t got nothing like these do you?”  I shrugged looking back at my feet; an old pair of Timberlands from last year.  They weren’t beat down, or anything, but they weren’t in the best of conditions.

“At least my feet aren’t cold!” I responded to defend myself. 

            Saheem and I had been friends for about 4 years starting in middle school.  He was one of the only people that I consistently hung out with through those years.  We made it routine to walk to school together once we started high school.  We tried our best to avoid the gang blocks because the hustlers never slept; no matter how early we walked to school.  With Saheem’s new kicks on we definitely didn’t want to make a mistake today.  We often took the shortcut through the park to the main road which led us straight away to the school yard. 

“How was your weekend, bro?” Saheem says as he looks over his shoulder.

“Same old shit” I respond back doing the same by looking over my shoulder.  “Just did my homework.  Wrote a few poems and chilled.  Nothing really popped off this weekend.  How about you?”

“Man! You know that girl Aleena from Brooklyn high?”

“Yeah.”  Everyone knows her.                  

“Then you know what I did this weekend,” he responded with a big laugh showing his gaps and white tongue.

“I don’t even know why you do that to yourself.  You need to leave that girl alone, bruh. You already know everyone in the hood been up in…”  Saheem halted, interrupting me by looking across the street pointing at the figure that stood across the street.  From the look on his face I could tell I didn’t want to look, but I did anyway.  It was her; wearing a stained purple winter coat with fur on the hood, thick leggings that ran short at the knee, and a pair of boots that compensated for the space left from the knee to the bottom of the boots.  Her hair had lost it volume since the last time I had seen her and the fullness of her cheeks had slimmed out.  There she was- there was my mother. 

She was huddled next to two people on the corner in an exchange I had seen too many times.  One of those people was a dealer and the other was someone that was just like my mother.  She didn’t see me, but I saw her clear as day.  I had trained myself for situations like this, but this training was never actually put into action.  The reaction that I imagine I had was not the same one that showed in reality.  I wanted to laugh it off, but I ended up saying five words. “It is what it is.”  Seeing her was the only thing that I could think about the rest of the day.  In fact, the next few days seemed to go by so quick.  Eat dinner, wash dishes, and wake up.  Head out for school and back home to repeat the cycle.  The more I forced myself not to think about her, the more I did.  The more I thought about how she left.  The more I thought about how she’s being controlled by a substance that won’t love her the way that I do.  By the time I managed to clear my head, it was Thursday night and I was sitting across from my father.

“I saw mommy the other day.” I said to him, breaking the routine silence.  He looked at me with sadness that was masked by the hardened shell he had built for himself. 

“Mhm. And?” he mustered out to me as he chewed a piece of his Salisbury steak.

“I don’t know.  I just uhh… I just saw her that’s all.”  He didn’t seem to want to talk about it because he put us back on track by staying silent for the rest of the meal.  We finished our food, placed the dishes in the sink, and he left out the door after placing a ten and five dollar bill on the arm of the couch.

            There was the knocking sound accompanied by a grey sunlight that covered my entire room.  I didn’t get out of bed.  My father wasn’t here to tell me to get up, so I decided to stay home for the day; after all it was a Friday.  I rolled out of bed, put on my slides to make my way to the wood exposed flooring in the hallway.  I stopped at the front door of the bathroom and stood there contemplating if I wanted to brush my teeth.  I decide to just go through with it.  I had no idea what I would do after I finished brushing my teeth, so I brushed them for five minutes.  I stood there thinking about what to do; thinking about my parents.  Making the decision to eat a bowl of cereal I dragged myself down the stairs and fixed myself a bowl.  Of course, I had no appetite.

            Before I knew it, my father was walking through the door and I was sitting on the living room couch in the night clothes I had rolled out of bed in.  He didn’t seem too surprised at me being there, simply taking off his coat and heading upstairs for his nap.  Time took the form of a snail with each minute becoming the equivalent of three.  I went to the porch to sit, back inside to my room, back to the porch, and back to my room once again.  I stayed there, fixed the antenna to let the television play in the background.  Around 3pm my father began to wake up from his nap to start dinner.  An hour later the smell had infiltrated the entire house and before I knew it he was calling my name.

            “I know we’re eating a little early, but I wanted to talk to ya before I headed out to work.”  My father says to me after a few minutes of silence at the table.

            “What for?”

            “Let’s not sit here and play stupid, son.’

            “Sorry.”

            He looked at me with a bit of anger that was quickly taken back and replaced with fake empathy.  “Don’t apologize.  We talked about that.  Sit up straight.”  He took a pause and proceeded.  “Now, I didn’t mean to leave you hanging last night.  I uhh… want you to know that I care deeply about you and your mother.”  I could tell that this was hard for him.  I sat there listening to him because I knew that he was being as sincere as he could be.  “It’s been a while since we really discussed this and you know I’ve been wanting you to stay strong.”

            “Yeah I…”

            “Let me finish.” He interrupted and proceeded.  “I failed at letting you express how you feel about the split we needed from your mom.  I don’t show it, but I love her still to this day.  You’re not alone in that.  I just want you to know it’s okay to… to… express these feelings you have with me.”  He leaned back in his chair giving me a loom as if it were a signal for my chance to speak.

            I couldn’t.  I sat there feeling something that I hadn’t felt in a very long time.  My dry cheeks were met with tears that had been absent for years.  I had no control over these tears as they began to fall freely to my lips.  From my lips to my shirt.  My father sat across from me in silence, now leaning forward on the table with his left arm holding his head up.  I could tell he didn’t know what to do.  I was in the same position that he was as I had no idea what I should be doing.  My father got up from his chair and went over to the fridge.  I wouldn’t be wrong for thinking he’d pull out a beer, but instead he pulled out the carton of strawberries and placed them on the kitchen table next to me.  He walked back over to the cabinet for the jar of sugar that rested next to the flour.  I knew what was coming next.

He then placed a few of the strawberries on a plate in front of me and sprinkled a bunch of sugar over them.  Sitting next to me now, I wiped my tears on my shirt and gave him a smirk with my eyes in a mix of pink and red hues.  Exchanging no words we sat there eating those strawberries.  I couldn’t help but to think how these sugared strawberries were my mother’s favorite snack.