Page 2 of Stronger Than Blood
As I reached the door, I froze.Blood. I remembered… so much. On my hair. On my arms, and… on the walls… what I now know was both blood and brain matter! My stomach flipped.
“Come on, standing there won’t make it any better,” she said like she knew exactly what I’d been thinking.
I drew a deep breath and forced myself to go in, pushing down the fear and the memories of death.
It was different now. “Thank God,” I said under my breath.
She sighed from not far away. “It all had to be redone,” she said, reaching over and taking my elbow to lead me out of the living room— the room where it had all happened. The blood. I flinched, more from her grabbing me than from being back inside this house.
“You come on in the kitchen, now, boy. We’ll deal with all that shit later,” she said.
I bit back my instinctive fear of her, and then I noticed the smell in the air. Food? She was cooking?
We always ate fast food if Mom had enough money. If not, we ate granola bars ‘cause Mom could get those by the dozen at the shelter’s pantry. She had a weird thing going on with the man and woman who ran the pantry, so they gave her all the granola bars she wanted. I didn’t want to know, and I’d never asked what that thing was.
“Come on in here and sit down.” The old woman pushed me toward a stool behind a bar that protruded from the kitchen wall. “I’m just about to pull the cornbread out. Then you can eat,” she said as she stirred the pots on the old stove.
The smells were foreign to me, making my mouth water, despite not knowing the contents of the pots. Home-cooked meals—a home without drugs. I’d been in enough homes where meth was cooked, and that was not what was being cooked here. But cooking food? No, that was a foreign concept.
This woman, my family, although someone I didn’t really know and was afraid of, pulled the steaming hot cornbread, in an old cast-iron container, out of the oven and placed it in the middle of the stove, the only place that didn’t have a boiling pot. “We’ll just let that cool,” she said, turning toward me.
“Now, let me get a good look at ya. Whew, Lord, you have grown! Been a bit since I’ve laid eyes on you. Reckon last time was when you was still a little boy.”
When I didn’t respond, she moved her progressives up and down to get a better look at me. “You’ve turned out handsome enough. Reckon you got that from your granddaddy; he was a looker and a good hard worker as well. Pity your grandma…” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Well, don’t reckon this is the time to get into that. Tell me about yourself. You in school?”
I hadn’t spoken since I arrived. My tongue refused to form words and I wasn’t sure what I could say to this stranger whom I had last seen holding a gun.
I hadn’t known where I was going this morning when Mom put me in a car, saying I needed to be gone and quick. If I had known it was here, I might have disobeyed her and locked myself into the bathroom instead.
Well, that wasn’t true. I never argued with my mother, went against her, or contradicted her. I never said anything. No one ever expected me to say anything. Disappear in the corner. Try not to be seen. Hide in a closet if I had to. Being asked a question surprised me.
“Um… yes’m. I’m a… I’m a freshman,” I managed to stammer out.
She smiled for the first time. “Oh, I remember when I was your age. Those were the good old days, son. Well, reckon we’ll go on down to the schoolhouse tomorrow and get you registered. Your cousin Joann is the principal down at the high school these days. She’ll know what to do. ’Sides that, what do you like to do?”
“Um…” I didn’t really have an answer. WhatdidI do? Not much. Hide?
“I like to read.”
“Oh, that’s good, son. Got lots of good books here from… well, from when your great-grandaddy was alive. Man kept his nose in a book. But you don’t wanna hear about us old folks, I’m sure.”
She jumped up from her seat, surprising me at how spry she was. I flinched before I realized she only wanted to stir the pots again. Then she slipped a plate over the old black container with the cornbread and flipped it before bringing it to the table.
It smelled amazing. I can’t remember ever smelling anything like that.
She grabbed another plate from the cabinet and began filling it with stuff she’d been cooking on the stove. When she placed the overfilled plate in front of me, she cut a pie-shaped piece of cornbread and put that on top.
“That oughta do ya,” she said as she turned back to the stove. “You go on and get started. A young man like you, I bet you’re starvin'.”
She had no idea. I hadn’t eaten in a week. Mom had gotten into it with some woman living across the hall from us. Then the law had shown up, and the woman had been arrested and all hell had broken loose.
I stayed in the bedroom, hidden from view, as it seemed that my mother screamed at every neighbor we had.
Every time the shit hit the fan, Mom would leave and then come back. She came in with a bloody nose once, and the cops had come again—that time, she left for a whole day. I’d been afraid to move. Not that it would’ve done much good. All the food, even the damn granola bars, were gone.
Mom had come into my room in the morning, told me to pack, stuck me in the car with a man I’d never seen before, then sent me away.
I decided to ignore the memories and because I was no longer able to resist, I dug into the food. I went for the cornbread first. It was a strange taste. Musty? Could you describe food asmusty? It was bitter too… but sweet at the same time. I put the cornbread down, not sure I liked it.
