The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

  This one night I was watching the TV. I already ate a cheese enchilada frozen dinner, which was crap, and the fried chicken, which I loved but my mom said cost too much. My dog, who I named Goofy because of her floppy black ears even though she was a girl dog, was with me on the couch after she licked the tin containers all clean, dragging them all around with her tongue, then scratching and biting at her pulgas back near my lap, when all the sudden she heard something and she was digging her claws against my legs because she was on it before a human ear could, running so fast she was barely able to make a corner turn to the straight-ahead for the front door, barking all excited like it was somebody she hadn’t seen all day. I didn’t hear nothing, probably because I had that TV on and nobody ever knocked on the door unless it was a Mormon or Jehovah or one of those ex-tecatos who love Jesus like their heroin, and I learned to stop opening the door for any of them. Usually I wouldn’t even look if I did hear but because Goofy’s barking so crazy I go, and before I even get near the door I could feel the pounding on it through the floor and I heard some man yelling at it loud and he’s beating on it, so hard that it’s shaking and rattling. I ain’t going to answer but he keeps hitting on the door so much I can’t help myself, the words pop out of me that my mom’s not here. It was that he was screaming about her. He was screaming like You bitch, open the fucking door right now, you goddamn thief, you slut, you bitch, open this door, Silvia, right now, or I’ll fucking bust it in.

  I was standing there not sure what to say or do next, Goofy all barking and wagging like it was something fun.

  “Open the door,” he says. “Open the fucking door.”

  And without thinking first, now I’m talking too. I’m saying no. I’m saying that my mom’s not home. I go reach over and check that it’s still locked, and I hook the chain thing, backing away from it as quickly as I got close.

  “Open the door,” he says. He was beating on it so that the door was wanting to give in. “Open it!” I felt like the whole house was shaking.

  Finally I can think for a second. It was hard because Goofy was going all crazy. “She’s not home!” I shouted. I can think finally, and what I’m thinking is that I know who it is. I’m thinking it’s the man I heard her talking on the phone about. That once he’d shot a man. That he got drunk a lot. This man’s voice sounded drunk.

  “You open the door,” he says, “or do you want me to bust it in?”

  I swear he was slugging the door with his fist, and there was like a crackling wood sound.

  “Do you hear me, kid? Do you fucking hear me?”

  I’m whispering to Goofy to stop barking, Come on, Goof, trying to make her calm, but she’s on automatic. It got like she was barking at another dog and wanting to bite.

  “Where is the bitch? You tell that fucking mother of yours to open the door or I’m busting it in right now! You hear me?”

  I ran to the kitchen. I had to open a bunch of drawers because my mom never put things in the same ones or maybe I didn’t because I didn’t know which drawer either. I found that big knife. It was as long as my wrist, a wood handle. As soon as I grip it in my hand, I don’t feel as scared. I didn’t care if he carried a gun. He comes in, I cut the dude. Goofy was still wailing at the door and he was still hitting on it and saying shit but it seemed quieter to me. I walked back a little slow, and I didn’t go near the door but to one side of it. I held the big knife in my hand and I’m gripping it so hard I didn’t feel like it was a knife but me.

  The man started kicking the door. Then he was throwing his body against it, and you could hear wood cracking. I’m just standing there and I didn’t hear Goofy no more, if she was even barking. When the door blasts, splintering the side it opened on, it swung so hard and wild that Goofy didn’t move away and she made a loud crying yelp, getting thrown against the wall, crushed between it and the door. The man was standing outside on the front porch and breathing fast. He rolled up the sleeves of his white business shirt and tucked it into his black slacks and there was some tattoo on his right forearm muscle and he had on a slippery tie loose around an unbuttoned collar and he was big. His face all purple. Real quick Goofy went back to her barking again and the man couldn’t figure out which of us to look at first until I see him see my knife. His eyes were slits but I could feel heat and breathing out of them too and I was standing there maybe ten feet away, one hand with the big knife loaded in it, the other hand clenched and a little up, looking ready to jab in a left-right combination.

  “Watch yourself now, kid,” he says, stepping inside toward me.

  I stepped back, though not like I was backing off.

  “You have to put that down right now,” he says to me. “You just drop it, okay kid?”

  I didn’t say nothing. I stepped back once more, keeping the same distance between us. He stepped toward me again and I backed up once more, thinking where a knife should go.

  Then he went at me. He was so fast he took me down even before I saw him come and his hand locked my hand with the knife in it to the floor. He pushed the air out of me because his body on me was so heavy I couldn’t breathe. Goofy was growling and biting him and I was trying to at least kick his nuts but I didn’t do a thing to him and when I made him roll a little, it made the knife dig into my own stomach.

  He got me onto my back and pinned me, both my hands pressed to the floor, his knees into my chest, hurting my ribs, the knife not cutting me or him.

  “Stop,” he says, too close to my face. “You gonna stop?” Goofy was back to biting him and that was when he let go of me, ripping the knife away from me as he stood up. Goofy kept going for his leg until his hard black shoe lifted her jaw and head when he kicked her there really hard, and she whimpered, hurt. I got up once he got off me, and I was crying, and I saw how I was bleeding at my stomach. It didn’t hurt or nothing yet. He was standing there watching me for what might not have been such a long time, and then he just turned around and took off out the broken front door.

  And so all the time it seemed like I was hearing her on the phone when I didn’t want to. I probably wanted to know, but I didn’t want to hear. Wondered who it was when I heard her going, Whatever I have to do, or, No, I won’t, no. The phone was nothing good. It was like waiting on a school bell, jumping at how loud and always expecting. When I can’t not listen in on her, I want to smash that quiet between. When it was her voice I was following, when there was silence it meant that some shit would hit. So I tried to never listen. I made it go black inside my head, and then words, when she’d make them, were these shapes that wormed around, spraying light that would disappear into a hole that was bigger than any room I been in.

  It was like right then, even if it was really days or something, that my mom introduced me to Cloyd Longpre. He was wearing a fake blue suit and tie. I never saw him in one ever again. Also, his hair was all pomade oil. That also would be the only time it was so neat that you could see the comb lines. I was sitting on our couch in the living room, and he sat in a chair—it was Goofy’s favorite unless she was sitting with me on the couch watching the TV—across from me, a kind of stupid but really happy stupid smile on his face. He had a silver tooth on one side, showing at the edge of his mouth. Between us was the floor where I’d been taken down. I was still feeling mad about it, so there was that. Not the cut. I didn’t care about that. It didn’t hurt no more. It didn’t really hurt even when it was supposed to, right after. My mom was sitting next to me. She was wearing a flower dress—I think roses, though I call all flowers roses—a new one, and shiny red shoes that matched. She was being too pretty like always. I loved my mom, and sometimes it scared me because I thought maybe I wasn’t supposed to say that even to myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have thought about it except that I was always seeing how men looked at her. When I did too, just to think about what it was about, I knew what it was about. How pretty she was in the way men are flipping through pages of dirty magazines. My mom sometimes would go around in her bra and panties in the house.
You know, especially in her bedroom and bathroom and between. Nothing fucked up, she just wasn’t embarrassed. So seeing her, I really started knowing what it was about her. It made me sick when I did too. I even had some bad dreams a couple of times. One that made me the most upset was that I was going up some stairs and then I opened a door and went to the bed there to—well, you know, and when I was getting in and shit like that I saw how it was my mom and I jumped right out of that dream. It woke me up feeling messed up.

  Cloyd Longpre had questions. He was trying to show he was, you know, interested in me. That I mattered to him. It was a show for my mom. He thought it would matter to her. It was hard for me to pretend back. There was nothing I could do about who my mom went out with, and mostly I didn’t say or think shit about it. But there was something else I couldn’t point to about him, and it made it even longer to sit there.

  “You look a lot bigger for your age,” he said.

  I should say no? I should say right?

  “Built,” he went on. “Strong.” He looked at my mom, stupid smiling. “I could maybe even put him to work now.”

  I looked at my mom too. She had an expression that this Cloyd was supposed to see as proud and that for me was to feel proud too. He was only flirting with her, and she was only going along with him.

  “You gonna play football?”

  I played street and schoolyard football a lot. My side usually won. I played for the junior high team for two games and stopped. I made more touchdowns on kickoffs than anyone, more on interceptions too, and we won, but then I stopped going. I didn’t like coaches telling me nothing, yelling. They screamed and shit and so fuck them. I didn’t like nobody getting on me, never. Pissed me off bad. I didn’t watch sports on TV, college or pro. Sports was in my head, it was just for me to play, a game to keep the brain in shape. I could play but didn’t and didn’t say any of this to him though, because I could play this game too and already I thought maybe I had to.

  “Dile, tell him,” my mom said. “He’s an athlete, always the fastest runner.”

  She didn’t know that. It wasn’t even true no more. It hadn’t been true since elementary, since sixth grade, when I finally got beat by a black dude who was four legs and I never could beat, hard as I tried and I tried. That other time, hundreds of years ago, was probably the last time I told her about anything that made me happy—or that she heard from me anyways.

  “But you like sports?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, my first sound in front of him. That was because I wanted to make my mom happy, not him.

  “I like sports,” Cloyd Longpre said. “Though I can’t say I get to follow it much these days.”

  “Maybe he likes baseball,” my mom told him. “I think that’s his favorite.” She came over and sat on the armrest of the couch, next to me. She touched my hair like she did her skirt when she first sat there. “Don’t you, m’ijo?” She had no idea. We never talked nothing about me.

  He didn’t wait to hear an answer from me. “What about huntin’?” he said. “You like huntin’? You ever been?”

  “No sir, “ I said.

  He smiled and it came out dumb. This was when I saw it that way for the first time. It was that he meant it, it was a real and honest smile, and it came out looking stupid. “No sir you never been, or no sir you don’t like it?” When he said no sir, I could tell he was making fun of how I said it.

  “He’s never been,” my mom told him for me fast, defensively.

  “That I never been,” I told him. I don’t know which I would have answered if my mom hadn’t jumped in for me. The truth is, I didn’t want to go hunting and especially not with this hillbilly.

  “You’d love it,” he said. “Wait till you eat fresh venison or fresh duck. Nothing better.”

  I was back to not knowing what to say, or wanting to say something, and it was way quiet.

  “I can get you a rifle,” he said.

  My mom looked at him sideways, then away from him, then moved like she wanted to stand up.

  “Not a big one, Sil. Just a twenty-two. To get the boy used to it.”

  “No guns. I don’t want him to shoot anybody,” she said.

  I didn’t say. It didn’t seem to be about the gun anyways.

  “Well then, what would you like?” he asked me. “What would make you happy?”

  My mom stood up, a little nervous, like she didn’t know which way to go.

  He noticed and spoke to her. “Okay. What say I promise any one big thing? How’s that sound?” He ran his fingers through that greased-back hair of his and messed it some. Then to me—“You pick it.”

  My mom, for a second or two, made her mad look. Then, like that, she changed, and she went over to Cloyd Longpre and sat on the armrest of that chair. When she was next to him, and she put her hand on his shoulder, scratching him with her polished nails, he looked up at her like he was the luckiest man because her warm body was next to him, thank you, and thank you Lord. She made her eyes go like she’s so flattered, and you’re welcome. What he didn’t know, and I did, was that she went like that lots of times. It was nothing special.

  At the same time I watched this, while it seemed like he might have forgot, I thought of something to ask for.

  “One thing?” I said.

  He had his finger rubbing the belt of my mom’s dress, above her butt.

  “You name it, partner.” That smile all stupid.

  It’s that I picked up on what was really going on here, and now I wanted to play too. I wanted to mess with him. “I wanna go to Notre Dame,” I told him. Not that I did, because I didn’t. I didn’t care. It’s what I thought of and I wanted to think of something. It’s that I just saw a movie on TV, and people in it were at Notre Dame.

  He made a laugh that went along with his smile. My mom was surprised too.

  “You gotta get good grades to go there,” he said, “and, son, that has all to do with you and nothing to do with me.”

  “No—” I started.

  “Oh, I hear you! But I thought you weren’t interested in football!” he said. “He wants to see a football game. Are they coming to town soon?”

  It took me a couple of seconds. “No, that’s not what I mean.” I almost gave it up right there. Then I didn’t. “I mean Notre Dame the church. The one in Paris. In France.”

  My mom and Cloyd Longpre both laughed like it was the wildest thing they’d ever heard. They didn’t think I meant it. That I could possibly mean it.

  “Oh, that Notre Dame game!” he said.

  “Well, you said anything!” my mom said, laughing just like him.

  “I did, I did,” he said. “Wouldn’t that cost a fortune!” he told her. “The boy don’t think cheap, I give that to him.”

  His body leaned toward me from the chair.

  “You keep your eyes open and you watch me surprise you,” he told me. A couple of times in the sentence, he made fast winks, kind of crooked, like that was to let me know how this was a special communication between us only.

  That he didn’t believe me, or he did? I say that at first he didn’t, but as he looked longer, he snagged something. Didn’t catch what I was up to, because there was no way. I was good at not being seen inside, even if I wasn’t sure yet how I would hold him to this promise or whatever you call it, or how I was going to make it into a big dream I was counting on. And so yeah he was on to something behind my eyes, because when we looked at each other again, him kind of rechecking, maybe he saw more, and he backed off wondering what I was up to.

  I got one of the bedrooms in Cloyd Longpre’s two-bedroom apartment. I never really thought about the bedroom I’d been in before that. For a while I’d shared it with my sister, until she made herself one out of the dining room to be alone, which had been where we watched TV, ate dinner, and I’d played with toys. That old bedroom wasn’t mine no more than the kitchen or the bathroom or the whole house, but this new bedroom was in a land far away from my home. It wasn’t only because it
’d been Cloyd Longpre’s son’s, who’d left it like this hundreds of years ago with all his junk still in it. For example, a really ugly red checkered bedspread. I never even had a bedspread before. Only my mom put one on her bed back in her room, and she only made it sometimes, when she was in a mood. In my home, I slept with a blanket, once in a while two when I got cold. When you pulled back this bedspread deal here, there was a blanket and it also had one of those sheets under it. I had a pillow for my old bed too, and it was on the side where my head would go when I got in to go to sleep. Here, the pillow was folded into the bedspread at the top, all show, and above it was a headboard, one with a shelf cut to go inside it. That was the only thing I got used to and even liked. It also wasn’t because I hated baseball pennants on the wall, but I did hate the one about National Parks in Utah, and the one from Carlsbad Caverns, and the one from the Grand Canyon—I wanted to yank them down without asking. What did that have to do with where I lived? Except why bother when I wasn’t going to be here that long, so I liked them there for proof I wasn’t staying. Didn’t ever move the fishing rods in the corner, or the globe, which I sort of liked really but I didn’t spin around or even touch anyways because it wasn’t mine, or the bookcase with a bunch of boyscout camping books—which why would I fucking want and so I left exactly there too. But no, I didn’t sit down on the bed there thinking how I missed my old bedroom. I didn’t have feelings nothing like that. This just wasn’t the bedroom back in my home and wouldn’t ever be and that’s it.

  “Whadaya think?” Cloyd Longpre asked me. He was standing at the door, grinning dumb, wearing his work uniform, matching gray pants and shirt, laced high-top work boots. His hair was messed up because he also wore a gray work cap, which he was holding in his hand.