I took a journalism class and in two years had only one article in the school paper to show for it: “Graffiti, Art, or Crime.” It made the front page, though apparently from the title, it hadn’t been proofread. The journalism teacher, a guy whose face stayed constantly flushed, would often leave us alone in the class. We’d play Connect Four or dominoes. I’d walk to the store to grab some chips. We’d use the phone in the room to page our friends. We’d watch March Madness on a television locked to a cart. “If anyone comes by,” the teacher would say, “tell them I’m in the computer lab, and I’ll be right back.” It wasn’t a total lie. He was in the lab, working with students on writing the school paper. We were the other students in his journalism class. I was the envy of friends. I got Cs for hanging out in a rec room.
Community college was the only option I could expect. They admitted any idiot who was eighteen. That’s where my brother and sister went.
Caroline sat up against a pillow on the armrest. “You should work with your brother.”
“It’s bad enough I have to live with him.” I handed her the remote and left the room. I didn’t want to be stuck entertaining my brother’s girlfriend. In the kitchen, my mother and brother were arguing, my mom standing tall trying to make herself bigger. Goh Goh had his hairy arms folded.
“It’s none of your business,” my brother said. “I can talk to whoever I want.”
I closed the living room door behind me.
“Listen to how stupid you sound. I’m your mom—everything is my business! First time over and she lies on my couch. And she’s younger than Sai Lo.”
I went into my mother’s room to use the phone. I left the door ajar. I couldn’t resist hearing my big brother put in check.
In the next room, my sister had her door closed, but I could hear her techno music. She had her boyfriend over. He was the guy that turned her Civic into a rice rocket. He didn’t look like a bad boy, though. Quite the opposite. He wore long sleeve shirts and talked like he’d gone to a private school. My mother liked him. It was only months later when Ga Jeh broke up with him that she realized he was a nut job. Wouldn’t stop calling the house. Then he began stalking her. Keyed the Civic. She’d never refer to him by name again, only as the Crazy Guy.
I called Summer. She lived in a suburb south of the city. We’d spoken on the phone for hours but had only met once at a bus stop in front of Wendy’s. She was a white girl with gray eyes. When we kissed I felt her peach fuzz moustache. It was the kind of thing you could overlook; she had a chest that made heads turn. The problem was she had a boyfriend, but in my experience, it was just a matter of time before a guy fucked over his girl. She had a soothing voice, like she could’ve been on the radio.
“You’re not even listening to me,” Summer said. “Stop eavesdropping on them.”
“But it’s getting good.”
The living room door opened. The only sound in the kitchen was that of shoes being put on. Then the front door shut.
“Let me call you back,” I said.
I crossed the kitchen back into the living room. Caroline was gone. I sat in the easy chair, the seat closest to the kitchen.
Two poster-size photos of my mother hung in the living room. One of her drinking a Coke can, tilting her head back, her hair nearly touching the ground. It looked like it could’ve been an ad. The other picture, on the opposite wall, was my mom near a tree, a rare photo of her with a tentative smile, not posing for the camera, not posing for Willie. He’d taken both pictures, and it’d been his idea to blow them up. The only picture hung in the living room that didn’t feature my mother was Jesus.
“This is my house too,” Goh Goh said to my mother.
“Are you the one paying the rent?” she said.
“Are you the one paying rent?” Say what you want about Bah Ba, but he wasn’t a deadbeat dad.
Goh Goh stormed off to our room, his head lowered as if he was preparing to ram it. My mother followed behind waving her arms and shouting.
I closed the door and called Summer back. I heard what sounded like a scuffle in the hallway. “My moms must be smacking my brother pretty good,” I told Summer.
“Shouldn’t you check on them?” she said.
There was a thud, then a shriek.
“I gotta go.” I dropped the phone and opened the door. My mother was on the floor holding her head, her face wincing in pain. My brother loomed over her.
“I told you, I’m too old for that shit.”
Leaning against the edge of the doorway for support, my mom rose. Goh Goh stepped toward her, his fists two rocks.
I leapt at him, tackling him onto my bed.
He pushed me aside. I pulled his shirt to drag him back onto the bed, but he shook me off. He walked past our mother and straight out of the house.
Ga Jeh and her boyfriend came out into the hallway, and we took my mother into her room, laying her down on her bed. “Just like his father,” she screamed. Her body started twitching, so we had to hold her down. She kept yelling, words not sentences, fragments. I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. She wasn’t shouting to us but to God.
“Mom,” my sister said, “it’s Cindy. Mommy?” She stroked our mother’s hand, but my mom only wiggled her head. Her shouts had calmed to mutters, but
