Only Child(75)
Some of the news people were turning around, too, and that’s when I saw Dexter. He was standing on the side of the grass, and he was holding a camera and pointing it at Mommy and Charlie’s wife. It gave me a mad feeling that he was doing that. Miss Wanda was standing next to him and making an excited face. Happy excited.
“How dare you come here today!” Mommy shouted at Charlie’s wife, and it looked like Mommy was about to jump on her.
“Stop!” Charlie’s wife said. She didn’t shout like Mommy, but she said it loud so everyone could hear. “You have to stop,” she said. She took a step toward Mommy and she was holding her hands out. “Please, why are you doing this to us?”
“Why am I doing this to YOU?” Mommy laughed a loud laugh. I didn’t like the way it sounded. It sounded kind of like a witch laugh. Mommy turned around and looked at everyone on the blacktop. She yelled over to us, “She wants ME to stop what I’m doing to them!”
“Jesus Christ,” Daddy said behind me in a quiet voice. I turned around and next to Daddy I saw Mimi. She covered her mouth with her hands and tears were spilling out of her eyes. Someone next to me said, “That’s awful.”
I didn’t want Mommy to talk like that and laugh the witch laugh. The cameras were all pointing at her, so people watching TV would see how she was acting, too.
“I’m asking you to please leave us alone. We are…our family is suffering, too. You have to leave us be,” Charlie’s wife said. She was holding her hands together in front of her chest like she was doing a prayer.
“That’s great! That’s just great!” Mommy yelled. “They’re suffering, too. Everyone, did you hear that? They’re suffering, too. And it’s because of what I’m doing to them.” Mommy laughed her witch laugh again, and her voice didn’t even sound like her own.
“See this?” she said to Charlie’s wife, and she waved at all the people. “All of this is because of you. Because of what YOU did to US! Because of the…monster that you raised and because you didn’t stop him!”
A lot of people around us said, “Oh” and “Oh my,” and that’s when Charlie’s wife fell down. She landed on her knees and she covered her face with her hands.
“You need to leave!” Mommy yelled at her.
Daddy squeezed my shoulder with his hand and then he started walking to Mommy. He had his head down, like he was hoping maybe no one would see him like that. He got to Mommy and he talked to her in a quiet voice and tried to touch her arms.
“NO!” Mommy yelled very loud, and she gave Daddy a push. “You don’t tell me to calm down!” Daddy tried to grab Mommy’s arm, and he looked at her in a mad way, but she snatched her arm away. Her eyes were really big and her whole body was shivering.
A woman walked over to Charlie’s wife and helped her stand up, and they walked away to the cars. Daddy went closer to Mommy and talked to her again, and then Mommy turned around and walked away from him. Daddy waved at me to come, and I did and my whole face and neck and whole entire body was like on fire from the red juice spill when I walked across the grass. I could feel all the eyes on me.
I looked over at Dexter and his camera was still pointing at us, me and Daddy, walking after Mommy to the car.
We sat in the car for a long time and no one said anything and I didn’t know why we weren’t driving away. I stared out my window and all of a sudden I saw a big white cloud go up in the sky from behind the water tower. It was the balloons to remember. I watched them go really high up in the sky, and it looked like they were going to fly all the way up to heaven.
[ 44 ]
A Minute in the Spotlight
O N THE DAY AFTER the memory ceremony, some news trucks came in the morning and they parked in front of our house, like when the LOCAL 4 news van came and parked in front of our house for the interview. I watched them from my window for a while, but nothing was happening and no one came out of the vans. They just stayed parked there. I was glad about that because I was definitely not going on an interview again. I was only wondering what they were doing there, and then it got boring to keep watching them.
I went downstairs to find Mommy and to ask her why the vans were there in front of our house. She was in the family room, watching TV. I sat down next to her on the couch. It was like Mommy got famous or something, because on the TV she was watching herself. It was the news, and it was about the memory ceremony and the fight between Mommy and Charlie’s wife on the grass. I didn’t like that I was seeing it all again—how Mommy yelled, “Everyone, did you hear that? They’re suffering, too,” and then she did the witch laugh. And then she said the thing about how Charlie’s wife raised a monster, and Charlie’s wife fell down on the grass.
Then the news showed me—I was right there on TV— I was walking behind Daddy on the grass. The TV like zoomed in and showed my face, and it was red all over. That was from Dexter’s camera when he was pointing it right at me, and he made it so that it got all the way close to my face like that. My face got burning hot when I watched my red face on the news. Tears came in my eyes. I really hated Dexter a lot because he did that to me.
The news switched away from my face and it showed Miss Wanda. She was holding a microphone and she was talking to a woman and I noticed it was the woman who went over to Charlie’s wife yesterday and helped her get up from the ground.