The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [24]
“Doctor Lambert wanted me to share a few things with you,” I announced.
My father shifted around and my mother mumbled, “Uh huh?”
“Well, he seemed to think that you thought I would be dropping out of school. I just want you to know that I’m not.”
“That’s a relief,” my mother said.
“I can’t believe you thought I’d drop out!” I said, laughing.
“We can’t figure you out at all these days, dear. We don’t know what you’ll do next.”
“But aren’t you being a little unfair? I mean, I haven’t done anything differently! My last report card was the best this year.”
“We’re not being unfair. You said you didn’t want to go to college. It scared us,” she explained. “Right now, we have so much to deal with, with Junior, that having our shining star fall from the sky was enough to shock the hell out of us, love. That’s all. You’ll understand when you have children.”
When she said that, I felt the ball of anger in my belly. First, she had me in college and running a local practice. Now, she had me having babies and obligingly understanding her warped view on life. I was only sixteen years old. Why was she making me imagine slicing her eyes out? Why was she forcing me to take my cutlass to the ligaments at the back of her knees?
“After I graduate next spring, I just want to travel for a year before college,” I lied. “And then I’ll come back and do everything we’ve always planned.”
The two of them just stared at me with a depressed sort of disbelief on their faces. My mother was shaking her head slightly and my father took a long swig of his beer. I could imagine them yelling at Doctor Lambert the next day. Why hadn’t he cured me? Why hadn’t he changed my mind?
“Is something wrong? Doctor Lambert said you’d be happy to hear this. You don’t seem it.”
My mother said, “Well, it is a relief to hear you’ll finish school.”
“That’s it?”
“What was the part about traveling and coming back? You’re going to go away? Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s part of the plan, yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“I can’t really say yet,” I replied. “But if it doesn’t work out, I’ll fly right back here to Hollow Ford for a little while before I go off to college.” I felt bad for lying.
“You can’t say yet?” my father asked, annoyed, still looking past me at the cupboards. I loaded my musket with used tampons and fired into his throat. I doused a maxi-pad with gasoline, stuck his lips shut, and lit it.
“Not yet, no.”
“Not yet? What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s a year away anyway. Can’t we leave it until then?”
My mother whined, “Well what will I tell the other parents when they ask me about where you’re going to college?”
“Tell them I’m looking into going abroad for a year. That will shut them up.”
“Abroad?” My mother’s face nearly cracked with pain.
“Well, wherever. You can say Philadelphia—it just doesn’t sound as exciting.”
“Where would you get the money for that, anyway?” my mother whimpered. “Why are you ruining your life?”
“I’d get a job and save. Don’t get upset.”
My mother tried her very best to hold back tears while my father looked at the table and said, “Saffron, give your mother and me a few minutes.”
I gave them a few minutes, which turned into a few hours. I sat watching whatever boring shows were on the television while they stayed in the kitchen with the door closed. I heard my mother’s bottle come out and my father’s beer cans snap open three more times before I went to bed.
The next day, my parents’ attitude toward me took a new turn. They cut me off. First my father, who was frightened of blood and estrogen, and then my mother, who was afraid she would never see me again, like the rest of her scattered family. That conversation was the last time we talked about anything, ever.
Junior moved out in August, finally pushed by a fight he had with my father when he said the Army was for redneck losers, and he only came around when he needed something—usually