Where I'm Calling From

Nobody Said Anything

    I could hear them out in the kitchen.
    I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were arguing. Then it got quiet and she started to cry. I elbowed George. I thought he would wake up and say something to them so they would feel guilty and stop. But George is such an asshole. He started kicking and hollering.
    “Stop gouging me, you bastard,” he said. “I’m going to tell!”
    “You dumb chickenshit,” I said. “Can’t you wise up for once? They’re fighting and Mom’s crying.
    Listen.”
    He listened with his head off the pillow. “I don’t care,” he said and turned over toward the wall and went back to sleep. George is a royal asshole.
    Later I heard Dad leave to catch his bus. He slammed the front door. She had told me before he wanted to tear up the family. I didn’t want to listen.
    After a while she came to call us for school. Her voice sounded funny—I don’t know. I said I felt sick at my stomach. It was the first week in October and I hadn’t missed any school yet, so what could she say?
    She looked at me, but it was like she was thinking of something else. George was awake and listening. I could tell he was awake by the way he moved in the bed. He was waiting to see how it turned out so he could make his move.
    “All right.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know. Stay home, then. But no TV, remember that.”
    George reared up. “I’m sick too,” he said to her. “I have a headache. He gouged me and kicked me all night. I didn’t get to sleep at all.”
    “That’s enough!” she said. “You are going to school, George! You’re not going to stay here and fight with your brother all day. Now get up and get dressed. I mean it. I don’t feel like another battle this morning.”
    George waited until she left the room. Then he climbed out over the foot of the bed. “You bastard,” he said and yanked all the covers off me. He dodged into the bathroom.
    “I’ll kill you,” I said but not so loud that she could hear.
    I stayed in bed until George left for school. When she started to get ready for work, I asked if she would make a bed for me on the couch, I said I wanted to study. On the coffee table I had the Edgar Rice Burroughs books I had gotten for my birthday and my Social Studies book. But I didn’t feel like reading.
    I wanted her to leave so I could watch TV.
    She flushed the toilet.
    I couldn’t wait any longer. I turned the picture on without the volume. I went out to the kitchen where she had left her pack of weeds and shook out three. I put them in the cupboard and went back to the couch and started reading The Princess of Mars. She came out and glanced at the TV but didn’t say anything. I had the book open. She poked at her hair in front of the mirror and then went into the kitchen. I looked back at the book when she came out.
    “I’m late. Good-bye, sweetheart.” She wasn’t going to bring up the TV. Last night she’d said she wouldn’t know what it meant any more to go to work without being “stirred up.”
    “Don’t cook anything. You don’t need to turn the burners on for a thing. There’s tuna fish in the icebox if you feel hungry.” She looked at me. “But if your stomach is sick, I don’t think you should put anything on it. Anyway, you don’t need to turn the burners on. Do you hear? You take that medicine, sweetheart, and I hope your stomach feels better by tonight. Maybe we’ll all feel better by tonight.”
    She stood in the doorway and turned the knob. She looked as if she wanted to say something else. She wore the white blouse, the wide black belt, and the black skirt. Sometimes she called it her outfit, sometimes her uniform. For as long as I could remember, it was always hanging in the closet or hanging on the clothesline or getting washed out by hand at night or being ironed in the kitchen.
    She worked Wednesdays through Sundays.
    “Bye, Mom.”
    I waited until she had started the car and had it warm. I listened as she pulled away from the curb. Then I got up and turned the sound on loud and went for the weeds. I smoked one and beat off while I watched a show about doctors and nurses. Then I turned to the other channel. Then I turned off the TV. I didn’t feel like watching.
    I finished the chapter where Tars Tarkas falls for a green woman, only to see her get her head chopped off the next morning by this jealous brother-in-law. It was about the fifth time I had read it. Then I went to their