The rules in our house were very strict.
Dinner was six o’clock sharp every night—you clean your plate or else. Come straight home immediately after school. Church every Sunday morning. Half an hour of television only on weekends, and no TV at all if any rules were broken. And every night before bed, my mother would watch me say my prayers:
Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should live another day
I pray the Lord to guide my way. Amen.
If the rules were broken, there were consequences. When my dad was in town, it was usually something reasonable. No dessert. Go to bed early. But if he wasn’t around, the punishments were more creative.
When I was coming home one day when I was twelve years old, my mom caught me chewing gum. We had recently moved to a new school, and I was trying hard to make friends this time. One of those friends had given me a piece of gum at school, and I chewed it all the way home. I had meant to dispose of the evidence once I got home, but my mom was vacuuming in the living room and caught me.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed at me.
I should have just spit it out and apologized. But I was dumb. “All the other kids at school are allowed to chew gum.”
“You mean all your hoodlum friends?”
“It isn’t fair,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Fair?” My mom pushed the vacuum aside, her eyes flashing. “You want to talk about what’s fair? Do you think it’s fair that I’m stuck here with
you while your father is off…”
I didn’t say anything else. It was time to shut up.
“Gum.” My mom held out her hand in front of my lips. I spit the flavorless gum into her palm. “Good. Now go outside and ask God’s forgiveness for what you’ve done.”
“Outside?”
It was January. One of the coldest days of the year. I had just walked half an hour to get home and I could barely feel my toes in my sneakers. I didn’t want to go back outside.
“Yes.” She glared at me. “I’m not letting you up to your room with all your games and books. Outside. Now.”
“But—”
“If you want to argue, I’d be happy to take your coat for you.” I had no doubt she would do it.
I trudged out to the backyard. It was even colder back there than it was on the street. Some of our neighbors had tire swings or play sets out in the backyard, but I had nothing. Not even a bike. The backyard was all just my mom’s berry bushes.
I was hungry, but the bushes were barren right now. I hugged my chest, trying to keep warm. I jogged in place, which helped a little, but it didn’t make my fingers, my toes, or my ears feel less frozen.
I walked over to the tiny wooden cross in the center of the yard. That was where Snowball was buried after she died last year. My mother had wept on her knees. I wondered if she would cry that way if something happened to me. I couldn’t imagine it.
I waited and waited. After fifteen minutes, I was sure she was going to call me back in. But she didn’t. The sun went down and I was still out there. Waiting.
I was out there for three hours. She finally let me in for dinner. By then, my fingers and toes and the tips of my ears were bright pink and I couldn’t feel them. I was scared I had frostbite and needed to see a doctor. I once read a story about a man who got frostbite when he was lost in a blizzard, and they had to remove part of his nose.
I ran my fingers under warm water but the feeling wouldn’t come back. My mom watched me, clucking her tongue impatiently. She still towered
over me—I was the shortest kid in my class. Most people thought I was three or four years younger than I was.
“I told you it’s dinner time,” she said. “If you don’t want to participate, you can go back outside.”
“I can’t feel my fingers.” I tried to make a fist with my right hand.
They moved, but slower than I wanted. “I need a doctor.”
She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just eat your dinner.” “What’s for dinner?” I asked.
“Do you think I’m your servant?” She blinked at me. “You can make your own food, can’t you?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. When my dad was around, we ate well. His favorite meal was pork chops with apple sauce. He also liked my mom’s lasagna. But when he wasn’t around, I usually had to fend for myself. I backed away from the sink and went to the refrigerator. My mom would not let me use the stove, so my choices were limited. I pulled out a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. My fingers were clumsy, but I managed to make myself a peanut butter sandwich. I only dropped the knife
twice.
The next day, there were blisters on my hands and feet. When I went to school, I hoped my teacher would notice and send me to the school nurse, so I could be seen without getting in trouble. But nobody noticed. No surprise there—my teacher had spider veins all over her nose and smelled like alcohol in the morning.
My fingers ended up okay after all though. I got the feeling back and the blisters healed. You can’t even see where they were anymore.
Two days later, when I pulled my favorite T-shirt out of my dresser drawer, I discovered there was a piece of chewed-up gum stuck to the shirt that had been there for days. I couldn’t get it off.
