The day I should've ducked

When you live amongst the addicted, every single day is a perilous adventure. Forrest Gump's mama was right, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." And with an addict parent constantly lurking about, that box of chocolates is a tad less fun to sample though. It's more like blindly rummaging through a bag full of those liquor filled chocolates, that are laced with mythological razor blades of Halloweens past.

At the drop of a lit cigarette, things would change. A moment of peace and tranquilizers would instantly erupt into a hasty confrontation over nothing of consequence. "What did I say/do?" was on heavy rotation throughout my childhood. I wish those phrases were met with the same comical sensibilities as Steve Urkel's "Did I do that?" was, but unfortunately they weren't. Usually questioning or defending yourself against any inebriated inquest of my mother's, would result in tears at best and blunt head trauma at worst. And that's where I'll begin this specific story...

From the age of 12 or so, I had moved up and down the I-5 corridor, starting in Sacramento, California and ending up in Eugene, Oregon..and then back to Sacramento again. I went to seven different high schools during my sophomore year and eventually ended up graduating from Williams High School (Go Yellow Jackets!) in the small town of Williams, California. I actually spent my last year of junior high and freshman year in Williams. The reason for all the nomadic behavior was because my mother was in and out of prison. Drug and parole violations were kind of her thing.

Most of my high school career was spent living under the wings of my various siblings and friends. My mother had five kids total, with three or four dads. I was the youngest of the five by 11-years, so a few of my siblings were more like interim parents. They tried, but ultimately sucked at the job of parenting me. Why would they be good at it? They came from the same background as I did. Mostly I was just a hanger-on and got in the way of them doing their own families. I believe I was kept around for the added welfare benefits, but that's just me being critical...and truthful.

During one of the instances when mom was around, we were all living in the small town of Maxwell, California, just 10 miles north of Williams. I would've been 14 or 15 and there were nine of us living between two trailers in a one park. Our trailers were right across from each other and my sister's family, my brother's family, and my mother & I would basically have access to either trailer whenever we wanted. In many ways, it was a lot like the Google campus, only with way less jobs and food and our currency was shake weed, food stamps and cigarettes. Between each trailer there was always a small swath of hard dirt littered with the remnants of an intended garden. There'd be bent up tomato wire and weeds or a broke down bike abandoned in the middle of them. Trailer parks are strangely tribal. We all looked out for one another but there was always a sense of petty crime lingering. Like if Netflix were a thing back in 1993, the whole trailer park community would've shared the same account. So that's where and how we lived.

MOM, my mom.

One afternoon, I had returned from school and I went into the room where my clothes were, to change into some shorts. It was like 101 degrees outside that day, so that's all I was wearing, short blue shorts. I went back in to the living room area and slumped down on the couch to watch some TV. Across from me was my mother, sitting at the pop-up kitchen table, with a sour look on her face. She was just staring at the radio and caressing a box of chilled wine with one hand. There were empty beer bottles loitering on the table in front of her and the fan was blowing directly into her face. As I was flipping through channels, I murmured, "Hey mom..." She didn't respond, so I just kept searching for programming. After about five minutes of watching whatever it was I was watching, she abruptly looked up at me and asked, "Where's your watch?"

So, here's the thing about the watch, before we get too far into it. Six months prior, my mother bought me a watch from Target. She had received a $15,000 backpay settlement from something and decided to give all of her kids an "early inheritance" since she wasn't sure she'd come across that much money again. She was right about that. Everyone was to get $1,000 inheritance and did...except for me. Instead of trusting a 14-year old with $1,000 she said she'd make the purchases for me. The only thing I requested a Sega Genesis. Throughout the six months she would go on small shopping sprees and bring me back some shoes or pants or whatever. These purchases were subtracted from the amount she was gonna give me. I didn't outwardly complain, but I thought it was a fucked way of doing things, but whatever. Anyhow, during one of her outings, she picked me up a $35 watch from Target. I didn't know it at the time, but the moment she bought that fucking timepiece, it magically transformed into a 150-year old family heirloom, on account of it being purchased with "inheritance" monies. (Fucking poor people logic)

So here's what happened to the watch. I cheated on my girlfriend and she broke it. (Totally appropriate reaction btw) Evidently I followed the same sentimental logic as my mother and put an undeserved value on the thing, when I let my then girlfriend wear it as some white trash promise ring/bracelet or something. Her and I weren't sexually active and the opportunity for me to become a non-virgin came about and I jumped on it. I lost my virginity on an Indian reservation in Esparto, California to an actual 18-year old mother of a three-year old. My statutory raping lasted one and a half pumps and was quite terrible. I felt terrible so I admitted my infidelity to my girlfriend and we broke up. I never expected the watch back or for her to fuck my friend when we got back together, but that's the way the watch crumbles sometimes.

"Where's your fucking watch?!?!" my mother asks again. "I...er...let Hillary use it." "Well you need to get it back," she immediately retorted. The tension was worse than a heart attack. "I can't get it back from her." "Well you need to get the watch back John!" "It's broken and the bottom of a trash heap somewhere, there's no way I can get it back!" "Well you need to find it," we continued to uselessly volley. With each pass you could smell the anxiety. Finally, I stood up to go back to my room. As I started to walk off, my mother popped up and grabbed my arm. I made quick shrug and was able to loosen her grip. "I don't have the fucking watch anymore!!!" I yelled as I made my way to the hallway door. I looked down at the door knob to grab it and then looked back up at her. Between seeing the intervals of the top and bottom of the beer bottle floating towards my face, I saw my mother's arm fully extended as she came to the end of a pitcher's stance. Super slow motion is how it seemed, until I was showered in domestic beer and brown glass shards. I was stunned. I stood there for only a second before running out of the trailer. My forehead throbbed, but it wasn't painful yet.

Barefoot and bleeding a ran as fast as I could, wailing in the streets like a fucking maniac. The Mexican immigrant kids playing basketball across the street stopped what they were doing to watch what was going on. My sister chased me down the street and unsuccessfully tried to calm me down. "I'm fucking calling the cops on that bitch, " I frothed. My emotions kept teetering between justice and disbelief that my own mother had done such a thing. "Fuck her! She's going back to jail!" I cried into my sister's shoulder. My sister did her best to protect my mother from the law that day. Although she (my sister) was usually the alpha of all of us, this day was different. She knew she couldn't contain the rage I was expressing. She just dabbed my head with a towel and let me writhe. The crazier part of this whole situation was, was that my mother had me believing she wasn't an alcoholic up until that point. The woman was living with cirrhosis of the liver for fuck sake. I was so naive.

I allowed my sister to go grab my shoes and a shirt so I could leave. I didn't really know where I was going, but I just walked to the frontage highway on the edge of town. My friend Jose lived in Williams and I figured I could hitchhike into town and se if he'd let me stay at his house for a night or two. As I walked on the 10-mile stretch between Williams and Maxwell, I just cried and swore a lot. Lots of indignant "Fuck her" and fuck this shit," coupled with sobbing "How could she?." As I got to mile three of the 10-mile journey an old pick up truck stopped long enough for me to approach. It was two Mexican farm workers. They just looked at me a knew something was terribly wrong. There was no language barrier in that moment. They knew things were fucked up. I tried my best not to cry when I said "going to Williams?" in an unintentionally broken English/Spanish accent. They both nodded and let me climb into the back of bed of the truck. The remaining seven miles of rice fields and mosquitos felt safe. The adrenaline was spent and I was coming back to earth.

They stopped in the middle of town at the one stop light and I jumped out and said thank you as the pulled away. They waved. Williams is a small town, you could walk from one side to the other in 20 minutes. I walked over to my unsuspecting friend Joes's house. I knocked on the door and he answered. "Hey Johnny," he said before giving me the once over. I crumbled through his door and on his front room floor, trying to push out what had happened. Jose and his then girlfriend Jolynn just sat there with me in disbelief and let me empty out. I honestly cannot remember what happened that night, or even the next couple of days. I think I spelt at Jose's house, but I can't be sure.

A few days later I returned to Maxwell and let my sister apologize for my mother. My mother never apologized to me directly about that incident, at least not with words anyway. Instead I came back home to a new Sega Genesis, a couple of games and $250 cash. The games were Sonic the Hedgehog and Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing, a game where you ironically have to learn to fight and defend yourself. The shitty thing about it, is that the gifts worked in the moment. It was an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and that was enough for me in that moment. The reason I say "that moment," is because I'm not really sure I'm over it. Even writing this brought back some emotions that I thought
were gone.

Throughout the years, some of my siblings and their families have protected my mother's memory. I've even been chastised by my own nephew about the aforementioned incident..."Grandma didn't throw a bottle at you, it was a hard plastic cup," he'd say. It's frustrating to me because, one, he wasn't there and two, even if it wasn't a glass beer bottle, which it was, MY MOTHER STILL THREW A HARD PLASTIC CUP AT MY HEAD! It's so goddamned strange how much we need our blood relatives to be heroes.