My feet are swinging up from my chair, out of boredom, and hitting the underbelly of the wooden table. Mama’s sitting down at the dinner table dunking vanilla creme cookies into a mug of hot coffee. She’s only half listening to Auntie, who’s pitting some peaches for a cobbler. That tablecloth, that used to be nice and so clean and white and painted with ribbons and apple orchards, is now splattered and soaked in brown coffee spills and bright orange peach juice.
Auntie pries her knife beneath one of the pits and pops it out. It goes flying across the table and hits Mama’s coffee cup with a gentle clink. It rains down on the table cloth a bright orange trail like it was flung across it with a paintbrush. “Now you know,” Auntie starts, with the knife pointed at Mama, “that boy is tellin’ you all kinds of lies. You think he’s doin’ right by God in that trailer park, but I bet you he’s getting into all sorts of trouble.” Mama sighs, “Well, you don’t know he…” Her soft voice trails off. From my spot at the table, I can see her lips move slightly, as if there is still sound coming out, but I can’t hear her over the THWACK of the screen door opening and slamming shut.
Before I can see him, I can hear his breathing. I can hear it as he gulps down the sticky Texas heat; I can hear him trying to cram it in his chest. He screams from the living room, “Mama!” I hear the thumping of his boots against the thin wooden floorboards. The sound, which would be booming and vibrating off the walls, is muffled by the layers of mud caked on the bottom of his shoes. “MAMA,” He screams, “Are you here? Mama, can you hear me? Mama! I’m bleedin’!”
Auntie’s face twists as if she had just gotten a mouth full of something bitter. The corners of Mama's mouth slide down. Auntie doesn’t set down her knife. She doesn’t miss a beat. She picks up another peach and tosses it up in the air and catches it back in her hand. There is more clunking of muddy boots before he appears in the doorway, leaning his body against the door frame and clutching his arm hard.
“Mama,” he exhales, “I got robbed. I wasn’t doin’ anything wrong! I swear! I was just walkin’ home and those boys jumped on me. They made me give them my wallet. Mama, I swear. I’m not lyin’ this time. They really took everything I have. They took my hundred dollars I got from workin’ at the gas station. They took that twenty dollars you gave me for gas. Mama, I swear. They came at me. They tried to stab me in the ribs. I blocked ‘em, but they got me in my arm.. Mama, you gotta stitch me up…”
Her eyes don’t even water. She takes a sip of coffee before getting up and pulling out a chair at the table and motioning for him to sit down. He sits. She disappears down the long end of the hallway and turns right into the bathroom. He hollers after her, “I can’t go to a hospital! You know I can’t! They’ll send me right to jail. You know I have warrants out! You know how they are! They won’t give me a chance, Mama. They’ll just beat me down. They’ll beat me down while I’m bleedin’ all over myself. You know they won’t listen! They’ll think it’s my fault,” he breathes in hard from all the hurt. Auntie wipes her knife clean on the tablecloth before pushing the blade through the skin of another peach.
He starts again, “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t do anything to piss them off. I wasn’t selling them drugs or anything. I haven’t been doing anything but going to work and comin’ home and goin’ to bed. I swear on my life! I swear it on your grave! It wasn’t worth nothin’ either. I finally get it right, and this is the shit I get! I WASN’T DOIN’ ANYTHING! I worked hard for that goddamn cash, and now, it’s just gone. I’m not sure how I’m gonna pay my bills this month! God Damnit! Fuck them! I swear to God, Mama, I’m gonna fuck ‘em up. I’m gonna fuck ‘em up so bad for this. Those sonsabitches are gonna regret that they ever touched me! I’m gonna kill ‘em! Mama, I needed that money… You gotta help me out. You don’t gotta give me much, just enough to scrape by… I can’t get kicked out. I’ll have nowhere to go. You know I’ll be out on the street. Mama, you hear that Mama? Mama! Mama…MAMA?!”
He leans back waiting for her to respond, but the only thing anyone can hear is the sounds of her rummaging through a cabinet of plastic bottles under the sink. I rest my head on the table cloth. My nostrils are overwhelmed with the smell of coffee from a stain right by my nose. I watch as cherry red blood drips down my brother’s arm, makes a little puddle at his elbow, and seeps into the threads of the tablecloth. From the green rimmed clock hanging crooked on the wall, a mourning dove sings to me.
It’s last tweet echoes into the emptiness. I close my eyes. Another pit plops out of the peach in Aunties hand. My brother shifts uncomfortably in the wooden chair and his shoes hit the floor. I open my eyes to the sound of Mamma’s bare feet sticking to the linoleum of the kitchen. There’s a click click click before a burst of flame erupts from the stove. She sticks a sewing needle under the flame until it glows red hot. My brother shrieks, “What the fuck is that for?!” I can see him begin to shake and sweat like a kid who knows he’s about to get a shot.
“Took me a while to find all this shit,” Mamma says calmly, as she sets a basket down on the table. She twists the lid off a brown bottle and peels off the plastic tab before screwing it back on. She looks at him sternly in the eyes, “Let me see your arm.”
“No, just give me the shit and I’ll do it myself. I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, you do! Now give me your damn arm!”
“No! Don’t you fucking touch it!”
“Don’t you dare say that to me! Give me your arm before I pop you in the mouth!”
“I SAID NO!”
She grabs his arm right under the cut and squeezes it. He yelps and flies back, reeling in pain. His arm is now free, and Mamma holds it gently as she pops open the lid of the brown bottle with her teeth and pours it on the wound. She pours the whole bottle on it and shakes loose the last drops. The second it hits his skin, it makes a noise like bread crumbs falling into a vat of hot oil. This grabs my attention. I crane my neck over Mamma’s shoulder to see what it looks like.
The wound is deep. It is a slit down his bicep that’s a little over a half inch deep and four inches long. It slices right through his scary clown tattoo that I’ve always hated. The edges of his flesh look as though pressure from beneath had popped it open. I expect to see bones or strings of muscle where his skin should be, but instead, it is just pink, like a pork chop before it’s cooked. Around the edges of the cut there are white chunks of the liquid, still bubbling and eating away at the bacteria. The cherry red blood looks more pinkish now. It’s kind of the color of melted strawberry ice cream running like rivers down his arm. I take a deep breath in and look away, and Mama threads the needle. Auntie twists open another peach, and it squirts out more juice onto the table cloth. I feel like I’m going to be sick. I hold my breath for a long time before saying anything. “A-are you gonna be alright,” I stutter.
As the needle goes into his skin, he lets out a deep, guttural scream of pain. I press my face into the back of Mama’s shirt and grab onto her tightly. I am comforted by the soft feeling of her. Mama ties off the stitches and gently dabs around the cut with a white washcloth soaked in alcohol. She’s careful not to hurt him any more than he’s already hurt. She sets the rag on the table, accidentally creating a strange imprint of pink blood on the tablecloth. “He’s going to be okay,” she tells me, “He’s just gotten himself into a whole mess of trouble.”