I:VII

My house was far. Well, it was far in relation to school, my friends, and it was just the complete opposite- in terms of direction and distance- of Castlevek… close to Erick though. My house was far out in the orchards, off in a labyrinth of two lane roads that were primarily used for machinery. Night time outside my house was blindness. It was so dark outside my house. I mean dark. I’m not sure you understand how dark it was; it was like closing your eyes, duct taping your eyelids down, wrapping your face in black construction paper, burying your head in the dirt, and parking a car over it. Flashlights, which we needed to find the steps and our cars, cut the blackness with limited range. Getting back on topic, it was daytime now, probably getting close to noon anyway, and Erick and me were getting close to my house. Erick didn’t have to check in with his folks for a few reasons. One: they liked me. His parents only know me as a collected respectful responsible young man. Two: Erick didn’t have many friends to their knowledge. To his parents this meant that he was not to be easily swayed by the masses to take part in any illegal activities or anything that may cause harm to Erick. Three: I’ve had my car for two years… let’s just call it a routine. They probably figure that Erick has to come home to take a shower eventually.

Erick’s home life was stable. It had been that way since his mom left with his little brother and sister. She had given Erick the option of leaving to parts unknown, chasing men, and check to check income with the three of them, or he could stay with his grandparents who make a fair and honest living and love Erick as if they had given birth to him. I’m really glad he stayed. No gains and no losses. The only question I had about his home life: the whole family speaks Spanish when talking to one another, did Erick speak the same way in Spanish that he did in English? I may never know the answer to that question. My classes only covered basic Spanish. So if I ever need a glass of water when I’m at Erick’s house, I can handle my own.

My home life was not so easy to sum up. It had been four years since anything. Since our last family outing, family picture, since my sister moved out, since my older brother dropped out of college, since my father died, since my little brother died, since my mother had spoken a word to me or anyone.

I have never been mad at my mother for one moment in my life. Once when I was young something happened, a death of someone close to my mother. I wanted to cheer her up and stop her form crying but my dad stopped me. He picked me up and took me outside and sat me on the porch. He explained to me that my mother’s life was hell. When she was a young girl, she and her brother watched her father strike their mother in the back of the head with the claw end of a hammer, killing her, for trying to leave an abusive relationship. He took them and gave them to a very bad person, a friend of their father’s, before he died in a violent gun battle with the police. The bad man they were left with did horrible things to them and eventually turned them out as drug dealers in a big city, I can’t remember which. She and her brother stuck together for as long as they could. When they were escaping her brother told her that she was worth his life and that would be the cost for her to get away. She was seventeen when she watched her brother kill a dozen men before being shot in the head. The man who had shot him found her hiding on the massacre site. He knew her situation, all of it. For a reason unknown to any but himself, he looked at my mother for a long time and took his own life. She escaped to California where she met my father. The two married and moved to Mortem. This is where is becomes my story.

My mother gave birth to my brother Peter, my sister Louise, Me, and my little brother Carmichael all by the same father. Four years ago Peter was a sophomore off at Arizona State and Louise was still home with me and Carmichael. My mother was, for the first time in her life, safe, secure, and happy. Every day for my mother was the first of a new life with her four children and her very special husband. One day at the bank in Lancaster, My mother was waiting in line, for a long time, with my father and Carmichael. Louise and I had stayed home. They had been waiting for so long that my father had to go outside and put more money in the parking meter. He stepped outside and not two minutes later did a drunken man with an automatic weapon step in to make a withdrawal. Some hero jumped on the man’s back. As the man with the gun flailed around wildly spraying bullets in every direction, he killed seven people, and as my mother clung to Carmichael to keep him safe a bullet went straight through my mother’s bicep into my little brother’s chest, killing him. My father, across the street, the commotion and came running to the bank, but just before he could step on the curb in front to the bank the drunken man’s getaway mobile struck him and pinned him between the “getaway” and an innocently parked car.

At the hospital, my mother lost all faith. She lost all religion, patriotism, hope, and became a shell. To me it was all so fictitiously bizarre, but the evidence was irrefutable.

At the funeral my brother and father were buried side by side. My brother pulled me aside and tough tears told me was leaving school to move back with us. The next day my sister made the opposite decision she packed her things and left home. She said she would be back. No one stopped her. Now it was just my mother, my brother, and me in this big empty house.

Yeah, that’s the sob story. I figure that will better explain my mother and brother to you, the reader. Erick and I pulled up the house. I parked next to my mother’s ’08 Gran Cherokee. My brother had bought it for her birthday, his 0-something Tacoma was gone. He worked a lot. Erick and I climbed the steps. I pushed open the front door and felt the outward rush of air. As if the oxygen inside was anxious to leave the vacuum sealed packaging of my house. As usual, the air in the front room as stale. All of the lights were off. No one had been in the living room for a long time. Erick and I crept past the living room to the kitchen. My mother sat at the table smoking a cigarette; reading the paper. She was motionless.

Her face was finely sculpted. She was an aging woman, with lines now cutting into her smooth dark skin at the corners of her mouth, ends of her nose and under her tired brown eyes. She was in her waitressing outfit. She was of average height, but maybe a little thin for a woman her age.

“Hey mom,” I said shattering the silence, “Erick is here.” Erick smiled and waved to her despite the fact that she didn’t move to look up at us. “I was out with him all night.” Nothing. We began to leave. Erick went down the hall to my room. Before I was completely out of the room, I stopped and turned to my mother, peaking my head in just enough to see the back of my mother as she continued reading. I said, “Hey mom?” she said nothing, “You’re beautiful.” She chuckled lightly; a sweet sound I hadn’t heard in years. I also noticed her mouth move in the corner. I left to my room.