Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [46]
Eli and his brother, Aden, never saw their father after the divorce. Weekdays their mother worked as a housekeeper for the Marriott and on weekends she took a second job cleaning house for a well-to-do family whose garage was bigger than two normal-sized houses. By rule, his mother did not bring her work home; it therefore fell to Eli and Aden to throw the beer bottles away and empty the ashtrays the mornings after late night parties and poker games. Eli topped off whatever beer was left in each of the bottles before finding inventive ways to make his little brother clean them up. They played Monopoly or poker, betting their chores, Eli winning easily every time. When bets didn’t work, he resorted to sheer physical intimidation: locking Aden in the closet, pinning him down and threatening to drip loogies on his face until he gave in.
Their mother had boyfriends, one the same as the other. They got drunk, stayed over, slept it off. There were a few who showed kindness, treated the boys to playing cards, gum, little gifts of recognition. The truck driver (Eli couldn’t remember his name) had been a decent man. He let them sit up front in his big rig just to drive to the grocery store, just to rent a movie. That was a good summer.
When the brothers were alone, Eli was in charge by virtue of being older and a handful of inches taller. He protested this arrangement every morning, cussed at his mother, said he shouldn’t have to waste his time taking care of a baby. He complained so he wouldn’t look like a sissy girl; really he liked the responsibility. He made Aden do his homework. He made him SpaghettiOs and grilled cheese sandwiches. When there wasn’t any food they walked to the nearest Kmart and slipped Twinkies and Snickers bars and M&Ms in their coats, a feast they shared on the living room floor, laughing riotously, the sugar rushing through their skinny bodies and out their open mouths, molars packed with half-chewed candy.
When their mother met Carl Roker, this comfortable routine changed. Roker was different than the other men, enormous and unkempt, with a temper that flushed his cheeks a blood red. He made them stay in the house even though he never wanted anything to do with them—he didn’t like their running around. He brought their mother novelties, new highs to take her where the alcohol couldn’t. Eli knew the little baggies of white for what they were—he wasn’t stupid—and the sight of the powder on the living room table gave him a sinking feeling of dread. The school had presentations on the campaign against drugs regularly. He was everywhere accosted with his mother’s sin: “Just say no,” the smiling teachers singsonged. Just Say No, the high school students’ T-shirts declared.
Roker and their mother snorted lines of coke from the living room table. They watched television for hours, never ate, had sex. One night they forgot to shut the door. Eli only wanted the remote control. He’d thought they were sleeping. “Little perv,” Roker said, laughing.
Eli ran from the room, his cheeks burning with shame. Roker pulled Eli aside the next day, wrapped the impossibly fat weight of his arm around the thin boy’s shoulders. His breath was sour with cigarettes and alcohol. In the other hand he held two magazines. A different woman on every page, each exposed in creative and gymnastic ways, a world Eli had never known existed. “You want to watch?” Roker asked. “You’re gonna have to study.” And then, the only gesture of affection between them, he tousled Eli’s hair.
Eli took the magazines to his room and locked the door. He read every page, studied the pictures slowly. The next morning, sick with the same burning heat on his face that he’d felt at the sight of his mother’s nakedness, he stuffed the magazines into a trash bag and set fire to them in the backyard. Roker saw the flames from the kitchen window.