Page 10 of Paint the Town, Dove
Harley. My very own guitar.
Mine to play, mine to strum, mine… until the end.
I cradled Harley in my arms, promising aloud, “I will take care of you.”
[It will be over a decade until Harley was well worn and loved, battered with scratches and chipped paint. Ryden didn’t know this at the time. He was just a kid who loved his guitar, who loved his mother.]
A distant crash sounded from downstairs, forcing my eyes away from my birthday gift to the cruel reality.
I knew it was Mom.
It was never Corban.
When I reached the ground floor, the front entrance was in ruin, the door wide open. Shattered plant pots scattered the hallway. Mom crouched over her knees, picking up the broken pieces.
[Which pieces were broken? The plants? The pots? Her?]
“Oh, baby… you – you shouldn’t see this,” she whispered.
“I see it.” I replied. “I always see it.”
She rubbed a shaky hand over her wet nose, a nose crooked and bent. Permanently.
“What do you see, Ryden?”
“He swatsyou and yells and tears the house down.”
“He… love, he doesn’t tear the house down.” She tried to smile, but for the first time, it fell down. Like a wilted willow. “We have a roof over our heads.”
“I don’t want a roof if you keep getting hurt.”
She didn’t think I noticed. She never thought I noticed. Maybe she thought I was too young.
Was I too young to hold my dad’s hand when he paid for my chocolate dipped ice cream cones? And held that same hand when he shut his eyes forever on the hospital bed?
No, I was six.
Was I too young when Ernest, Mom’s first boyfriend, stole a wad of rolled up bills from her wallet every Tuesday night?
“He likes to play poker,” Mom said.
That’s when she learned how to trick people with her smile.
But not me.
I was eight.
Just a few months later, I was old enough to understand that the dents in the wall weren’t from earthquakes or tornadoes, they were from human fists.
Corban’s fists.
I was old enough to understand that shattered glass wasn’t a pattern in our flooring, but decorated it every other night. Sometimes with fruit punch stains…
No one drank fruit punch.
I was ten, and now I am eleven.
I will be twelve.
