DONT CHAT WITH ME

Major League Brawl

My mother grips her fingers tightly around the shaft of an old wooden Louisville Slugger baseball bat. She holds onto it firmly and raises it to the position as if she’s expecting to hit a home run. A crowd of about forty people watch as I stand ahead of her in the distance, except this time I’m not on the pitcher’s mound and we’re not playing baseball. “Whoosh” the sound of the bat makes as it slices through the air. It’s a wild swing and a miss. I jump back out of range from her swing, escaping the trauma she intends to inflict on me. “I’m tired of your smart-ass remarks...” “ You don’t ever call me a drunk in front of other people,” yells my mother, thrusting the bat even higher. She pushes me back and takes another swing–only this time a little softer having realized the weapon’s potential. After a minute of negotiating with my mom, she shoves me out of the front door and charges me down to the end of our driveway. In the background I see that the entire party, mostly my friends, follow us outside to witness and break up the commotion. “Come on, motherfucker! What are you gunna do?” she screams. With all eyes locked on us, I grab ahold of the bat to snatch it away from her, but she just doesn’t let go. Suddenly, her boyfriend comes rushing towards me, and I struggle trying to disarm my mother, so I pull on the bat even harder. In the process of freeing it from her drunken super-grip; she falls to the ground, and I smash the bat onto the cold concrete. James, my mom’s live in man-child of a boyfriend, grabs me by the shoulders and gently says... “Dude, you better get the fuck out of here.” “Your mother has had waaaay too much to drink this evening.” “Just leave, I’m sure the neighbors have already called the police,” warns James. During the years that I went to high school, the wonderful house that my siblings and I grew up in had deteriorated into a spiraling vortex of negative energy. It all began when my mother, a single parent, met her boyfriend James who eventually moved in without notice. James was a tall, scruffy and sluggish man who had two jobs; one flipping burgers at Jack In The Box, the other job; dealing weed. He ran his side business out of our living room. Soon after, my mother’s house became everyone’s favorite spot to pick up their bags of marijuana. Bongs, pipes, roach-clips, rolling papers and beer bottles were everyday normal items to be found on the table tops in our home. The environment in the core of our house was reduced to the bottom of an ash tray; dirty, dusty and smoke-filled. My bedroom was where I could get away from it all; I would lie on my bed, shut my eyes and reminisce of the “good old” days when I was younger. In the early eighties when my parents were happily married, my father took out a mortgage on a fairly new, average sized three bedroom house. Two of my father’s long term friends, another married couple, had convinced him and my mother to leave the San Francisco Bay Area. They encouraged an idea to relocate to a place that is safe, less crowded and more affordable; so he moved our family to Boise, Idaho. I was just five years old at the time, and my sister Sarah was three. Everything seemed perfect growing up in that house. As a young boy, I was carefree and outgoing, as I made many friends with the children in the neighborhood. A few years after moving to Idaho, my mother introduced my sister and I to our baby brother Jacob. My siblings and I were extremely happy and the best of friends. We spent a lot of quality family time together; camping, visits to the parks, hiking, and playing baseball–lots of baseball. My father had always envisioned his oldest son to be a great ball player. For years, we used to play “catch” every evening in the front yard until Mother would call us in for her delicious, home-cooked dinners. Her food was always so amazing, I especially loved the nights that she baked lasagna. It was thick and gooey from the layer upon layers of melted mozzarella and ricotta cheese. One summer evening, my mother serves us her famous meatloaf next to some white, fluffy garlic mashed potatoes and a heaping green pile of Lord knows what. “Umm... what the heck is this stuff Mom?” I question while pointing at it, swirling my index finger. “It’s steamed spinach. You know, the kind that Popeye likes.” she chuckles. It looks and smells just awful, so I chomp down everything on my plate except the unappetizing slimy spinach. “Can I be excused Dad?” I ask while grinning. “No! You may not be excused from the table. Not until you eat all of your veggies,” he orders. Minutes pass, and I refuse to touch the repulsive spinach. I’m all alone at the dinner table, so I formulate a quick-witted, stealthy plan to get rid of the nastiness. I look around to observe my surroundings, and the coast is clear. Immediately, I run to the kitchen garbage can and toss the spinach under a couple of layers of trash. I return to my seat and wait patiently for my dad to come back into the house. “Are you done yet?” he questions. “Yes Dad,” I reply smiling. “Can I go outside now?” He looks at my empty plate first and then into my sparkling little eyes. “Well it’s about time!” he tells me while looking at his imaginary watch. “But first...let me make sure that you really finished your food.” He walks over to the garbage can and takes a long look inside. My heart feels like it’s going to explode. I’m dead meat if he finds the discarded waste. “Jesse Asa!” my father shouts. Hearing my middle name meant that I was in for trouble. “Get your ass to your room... Now!” he commands. Minutes later; which felt like an eternity, he barges into the room, rips off his belt and with that–he proceeds to thrash at my back for lying to him. My father was an “average Joe” who worked as a buyer for an electronics company. On his days off, he loved to hunt, fish and hike. Being outdoors, I’ve noticed, is where my dad would be in the most spirited moods, so the move to Idaho was perfect for him. For years, my dad would bring the family along for weekend adventures exploring the vast forests of Southern Idaho. Rough and rugged perfectly suited him; he donned a dirty blonde bushy mustache, a camouflaged trucker hat, and a marijuana leaf belt buckle. My dad dressed casual, usually wearing a button-up plaid shirt, Levi’s blue jeans, and brown hiking boots. Over the years, my dad’s happiness reversed to anger, and I can only assume that he was either having financial troubles, or growing further apart from my mother. Most nights while returning home from work, the door would crash wide open; revealing my father possessed from unstable and unpredictable moods. The fighting between my parents had escalated, thus causing a lot of tension in the house. In addition, as a means to escape reality, my mom was consuming more alcohol than usual. My mother preferred to drink mass quantities of Heineken beer, and my father loved Budweiser and shots of Jack Daniels whisky. Although there was a surge of arguments taking place, my parents still had a few things in common; partying and classic rock music. I vividly remember the drive home after attending my first concert. My parents obviously couldn’t find a babysitter, so they took my sister and I to see The Doobie Brothers perform at an outdoor music festival. At some point during the concert, my mother had lost the checkbook. My father was more than furious about her petty mistake, and I’ve never heard him curse at her using such relentless and demeaning terms. As if my dad were a rabid dog, he was foaming out of his mouth, and from the glow of a full moon, I could see illuminated droplets of saliva spewing from his frothy lips. While in the back seat of our car, frozen with terror, my sister and I fix our teary eyes onto something most horrific. Our dad punched Mom right in the middle of her nose. Two dark red rivers gushed from her nostrils, and he smacked her a second time, thus leaving smears and splatters of blood all over the seats, dashboard and windshield. My father’s swift jabs to her face not only shattered my mother’s nose, but also our family as a whole. After their divorce, my mother earned custody of her children, and she decided to keep the house. It wasn’t long after, that the essence of our beautiful home started to mutate; therefore leading to drastic transformations to its condition and our lifestyles. For example, my sister turned gothic wearing no other colors but black. My brother started to bully kids on the playground, and I switched gears from being an athlete with high academic standards to a skateboarding thug. I became influenced by friends in which had bad habits, yet I started to enjoy living a young and reckless life. Our idea of fun was to break into vacant warehouses and set up skateboard ramps that we covered in graffiti. After our skate sessions, we would hang out by the ramps while we smoked cigarettes and experimented with alcohol, weed, and other drugs. Once my friends found out that my mom’s boyfriend James sold weed, the word spread like wildfire. Soon, my house became party central. I thought it was cool at first, but it grew old fast. Sometimes, my girlfriend Karla would come home with me after a date night, and we see all of my “friends” in the living room smoking out with my mother and James. At that moment, I knew that I was being used. My mom encouraged my friends to party at our house, and with that being said, the parties progressed from mellow “kick-backs” to raging keggers. I’m sitting shotgun in the seat of my own car, a 1970 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, which is too big for Karla to be driving, and she hates it, but I’m in shock and way too faded. We’re racing over to Karla’s house as fast as we can; my mother just attacked me with a bat, and I’m trembling from the adrenaline. Ten minutes later and only a mile from reaching our destination, a police car comes up behind us. While making a right hand turn, this boat of a car hops onto the corner of the sidewalk; therefore causing the police officer to fire up his lights and pull us over. Fortunately for Karla, she passes the breathalyzer test, but I get taken to jail for underage drinking and outstanding warrants for my arrest. The one person I never thought would’ve bailed me out of jail was Karla’s mother, Naomi. Now understanding the severity of my home life, her and Karla suggested that I move into their house right away. I accepted their offer, and I moved out of my mom’s house one week later. I’ll never forget the bitter, priceless look on my mother’s face the day I left home. “Oh you’ll be back soon enough,” she yelled to me as I drove away. Little did she know that I would never move back home again. My mother’s last words had inspired me to work hard, so I never have to live under that roof again. I slowly ditched most my friends, and I started working at the airport. Karla and I eventually moved away from Boise, and in ten years I’ve lived in four cities; Reno, San Francisco, Oakland, and finally San Diego. Last January was the first time in a decade that I’ve returned to Boise to visit my family. Although I was excited to meet my two little nephews and my brother’s fiance, I was nervous to face my mom. I walked in, and there was James sitting in the living room. All of a sudden I had a sickness in my stomach from the stench of animals and cigarette smoke. It was as if I had never left, yet my mother’s silky brown hair was now riddled with silver strands. Her eye’s lit up when she saw me, but she tried to hide her true feelings until she started drinking. Halfway through beer number seven, she revealed to me that she had given up on life. I knew that she was depressed, but I never thought it would go this far. I felt obligated to ask her if she needed any help, and she’s refused not only my offer, but my brother’s offer as well. We continued to talk into the early hours of the morning until it was time for me to say goodbye. Feeling the sense of relief that my trip was complete; I was looking forward to flying back to San Diego. With its great distance from my dysfunctional family, perfect weather, palm trees and beaches, it is a place that I am proud to call home.