Railroad Tracks

(This story contains abuse, violence, and references to suicide)

I walk into the living room of my mother's house; I have just finished my daily walk around the block. I have an empty cup that once held lemonade in my hand. While I was walking, I came upon a stand. My friend Turner was manning it, he gave me a cup for free. And I am a firm believer that littering, under any circumstances is bad. You can't complain about beautiful places being covered in trash if you throw stuff out of your car window.

The living room of her house is before the kitchen, meaning I would have to slip by her without her noticing to throw the cup away. Put on your big-boy pants Charlie, my late and beloved father would say. So, I will put on the infamous pants. I chuckle silently at what he would say afterwards, just make sure the fly's up. But then the nice memory is replaced with the memory of Dad's death. The mysterious circumstances surrounding it and the way the Private Investigator had focused on my mother during questioning, how he had given her strange looks and asked about the state of their relationship. I could tell how much he wanted to come out and ask "Miss Clara, did you kill your Husband?"

When the urge to cry seeps into my body--the way sand seeps through the hourglass, grain after grain after grain, until it's all through--I shake the memories from my head, they're too sad to keep thinking about, and look at my mother.

She's on the couch, engrossed in something on her phone that is obviously way more important than her only child. Something is in her lap, but I can't make out what as it's covered by a thin blanket. I can see that it's hard and rectangular, an average person would assume it's some type of book, but Ma has never, to my knowledge, read anything besides the captions on TikTok videos. I pay no mind to it, being thankful that she either didn't see me or acknowledge me. Normally I would be sad that she didn't pay attention to me, but the face she was making told me I'd better be happy. The kitchen is so uncomfortably hot, because Ma never pays the bills on time. It must be ninety degrees. I toss the plastic cup in the full trash can and realize how hungry I am when my stomach rumbles. At first I would like to make a peanut butter sandwich, simplicity at its finest, but there's no peanut butter, or even bread for that matter. So, I decide to try a microwave burrito. I open the refrigerator, and it's powered off, yes because Ma didn't pay the electric, I think to myself. And I feel no desire to eat a burrito that's been sitting in a hot fridge. I don't know if frozen food turns rotten when it becomes unthawed, but I don't want to find out.

I pull my iPhone from my pocket and turn it on. I swipe past the wallpaper of Dad and me, and press the Grubhub app. When it doesn't load I again remember, Ma didn't pay the electric bill.

At first I don't know what to do, she never cooks food--for me at least--and there's no Wi-Fi. That's it, Wi-Fi! My friend Turner lives next door, and his family have internet. Surely they would let me use it for a just a minute to buy my lunch-dinner.

I look in the living room and, to my disdain, she's still there. I'm not sure why I was hoping she wouldn't be. I really don't want to sneak back out and risk her seeing me-I have enough cigarette burns as is. For some reason her house lacks a back door, a true safety risk and a major obstacle for me, I bet if there was one I would've escaped her fury a few times, maybe I wouldn't have the big scar on my forehead. "Oh he just fell down the stairs," she told the principal at school, "boys will be boys." But the house doesn't have stairs, in all actuality Ma had gotten mad when she saw the searches I had made on my phone, either the explicit content or the how to run away from abusive parents, maybe both. And Oh how furious she became, and there happened to be a cheese grater nearby. That was one of her worst punishments she had executed: eleven stitches and a life-long scar, both physically and mentally.

There's a window beside the dusty dinner table, it's moderately sized and rectangular, I used it once to leave when I was ten, three years ago. I've had one or two growth spurts but surely I can still fit. My judgement proves correct, albeit with a bit of struggle, I climb through the window and land messily on the grass on the other side. I am happy to see that my bad luck streak had momentarily broken; I just barely missed a large fire-ant hill. I quickly get back up and cut through the side yard, ducking my head in case Ma is by the window for some reason. There’s no reason in particular why she would be there, but you never know. I am now in the front yard, I hurry onto the sidewalk and stop. The stark contrast between the houses is marvelous yet saddening: The downtrodden slump with dirty windows compared to the magnificent, two-story home that is painted a blue just lighter than the clear sky. Turner’s family is the example of perfect. Dad with good job, loving house-mother who used to be a chef, well-behaving son, and older daughter who is beautiful and frequently joke with Turner about. Some nights I can sleep over, but when I leave I get sad. It felt so nice to pretend that I had a loving family, the parents treated me like their own child. But it’s been over a year since Ma forbade me from staying over, I don’t think she likes the Rodney’s, but she hardly likes anyone after Dad died.

When he died I felt guilty, and confused; guilty because I wished I could have somehow stopped it and because the last conversation we had was an intense argument. I used to think I caused him to commit suicide, that I caused him to buy the gun and shoot himself in the forehead. But that’s a bunch of rubbish, nothing I did made him do it. I felt confused because of two things: The strange circumstances and the Private Investigator. Tubbs, the investigator’s name was. Ma didn’t hire him, even before Dad died we weren’t living comfortably in terms of money, Dad’s side of the family did. They never liked Ma, they thought she was a trashy tramp from the street, and I would’ve gotten mad if they had said that to me. But not anymore, I hate to say it, but I think I agree with them.

Tubbs came up with nothing but a strange inkling that my mother had something to do with it, and he had told me just that.

I can’t say I blame him, the timeline was iffy at best and the spouse does it nine out of ten times, and the cherry on top: Dad wasn’t sad, he was happy in fact, he got promoted three days before his death. Sure I thought about the situation, but never seriously thought that Ma had anything to do with it, she was too broken up after his death, surely she couldn't--

The mother of the family, Vanessa Rodney, someone a kid more vulgar than I would call a MILF, is on the porch, listening to Britney Spears on a Bluetooth Speaker and tending to the jungle of plants that make up most of the porch. “Hey Missus Rodney.” I say as I walk up to her. She looks up, “hey Charlie!” I tell her my situation, instead saying that my mother is on a business trip and out of town. “Yeah, sure you can use our internet. The password is RODNEY334, all caps. You might want to go inside, the signal’s pretty slow out here. Bob's at work and Turner and Alissa are out running a lemonade stand.” I say thank you and walk inside. The smell of a sweet ocean candle fills my nose, and the cool air relaxes me. I wish I could have a life like this. No one is inside so I sit on the nice couch for a bit, basking in the peacefulness of the tidy living room. Then I flip open my phone, connect to the internet, and open Grubhub. I decide to order a sandwich from Subway and leave the house. As I walk down the steps of the porch, Vanessa says bye. I think she looks nice, she’s doing great for her forties. Her daughter had to get it from somewhere, I suppose.

I sit down on the worse looking porch steps on the front of my mother’s house and wait for my sandwich to arrive. That’s when Turner shows up on the sidewalk. “Come here bro! I wanna show you something!” He yells, and I go to where he is. I follow him a few houses to a tree, we go to the side of it and there it is, a beehive. A very large beehive with bees swarming around it. “Isn’t the cool dude?” He says, pointing to it as if I couldn’t see. “I guess,” I say and shrug. To be honest I’m not amused at a simple beehive. Sure, it’s something to look at, but in all reality it’s no more than a house for bugs. “Yeah I just wanted to show that to you, later Charlie.” He gave me a pat on the back and goes to his house. I walk back to mine and find a subway bag on the porch, but it’s empty. I swear to God if she, I think, she better not have. In reality I probably won't do anything. I'll just let her eat the food I ordered for myself because I'm too much of a chicken to fight back and she'll eat it in front of me and make me watch while my stomach growls fiercely at the magnificent meatball sub I spent fifteen dollars on.

I open the door and the sandwich is on the table, half gone. Ma is chewing on the giant chunk she tore out of my poor sandwich, I see the bread and meat being torn apart by yellow teeth in the abyss of stench that is my mother's mouth. But then my heart drops at what I see in her lap, the rectangular object now uncovered by the filthy blanket. It's a book, to my utmost dismay. A black book, my book. The book I write in at night to escape the cold world and my even colder mother. The book where every thought, idea I have, or story I write is documented. I know I'm screwed when I remember some of the drawings I drew in it. A normal parent would say "he's a boy being a boy," or so I think, but not my mother. If she flipped past page 150 she would see all of my attempts at drawing the female body. Another thought I have, I keep it hidden, what was she doing at the bottom of my underwear drawer? I am both confused and enraged. That's my book! The sandwich was only another pound of straw hoisted onto the labored camel's back.

"Sit down! Now, Stupid!" She yells at me. I don't obey, I've taken too much torment from this maniac. "Do what I say or I'll rip off your- "You listen to me you old Ragweed!" I yell, I regret using something as tame as ragweed, but it's the first thing to come out of my mouth. My virgin mouth, Turner had said in reference to the fact I have never swore.

"You've tortured me for too long!" My voice comes out deep at first. "I hate you and I hate everything you have ever done! You're a worthless piece of crap and how I loath the fact that I'm a continuation of your bloodline!" I don't know what's taken over me, all she's done is flip through a journal and have a displeased look on her smug, acne-ridden face. I keep screaming and she recoils as I get up in her face.

Then she screams back and I feel like David fighting Goliath, except I have no slingshot to defend myself.

"You are the worst Mother in the entire universe and I hope you go die in the-

I'm abruptly stopped by the slap, and the feeling of a nail cutting across my cheek. She pushes me back and I fall onto the coffee table, it collapses under my weight. "You listen to me you ungrateful brat!" The spitting, rabid, dog-like woman above me yells. I feel the spittle dropping on my face. "Do you know what I've done for you! I birthed you for heaven's sake! You know how painful that was?!" I feel a morbid urge to lunge at her and let all the swampy rage out, particularly through my fists.

"That's it! YOU NEED A PUNISHMENT!" She takes the book, opens it and shows it to me, it just so happens to open on a page where I tried to draw a model and utterly failed. She grips the book and in one quick motion rips it in half, bringing what remained of my heart along with it. Then, while the pain I feel is equivalent to having a rusty nail covered in salt repeatedly plunged into your eyes, she walks over to a shelf and grabs a picture. She stomps back to me. "I killed him!" She yells as she rips the photograph of a once happy family, she chuckles evilly and throws the frame against the wall. I quickly stand up and deliver the most guttural scream right in the old lady's face. "I'm gonna kill you!" My voice cracks on the last word and she laughs at me. I turn away from her and grab a metal chair from the abandoned Family Game Table, fighting the urge to bring it down on her until she is little more than a dark stain on the dirty carpet. Be better than her, my only non-screaming thought. I instead heave it through the window and jump through, sure I could've used the door but I wanted her to have as much damage as possible.

I jump off the porch and run down the street. I know exactly where I want to go, the old railroad tracks. Just over a mile from my house is the Kinston Railroad, it has a track that runs straight through the town. Occasionally one would pass by, and Dad would make up a story that was somehow tied to it. We would walk the tracks on days when we were feeling down in the dumps, or for Father-Son days, now I'm going for the latter. I run the entire mile without stopping, then I make it to where the track runs through the crossroads. I look at either side and decide to go right, into the place where it is only gravel, track, and trees. I walk for hours and hours, the sun begins to set. And I feel the most depressed I have ever felt, an intense mix of homesickness and nostalgia and reminiscence of the days when me and Dad would walk these tracks. I step off the tracks and sit down on the dirt. There I weep, hard, bitter tears that taste salty in my mouth, I miss Dad horribly. I long to see him again, just one time is enough. I hate my mother, or the woman she's become. I shake in the remembrance of when times were different, when the family would play Chutes and Ladders or on Christmas mornings when there would be laughing or happiness. But that's all gone. I'm just a kid sitting on the railroad tracks, sobbing at what once was.

I don't know where I am going, or where. Maybe I should jump in front of the next train that passes and get life over with. The only thing I do know for certain is: You never know a good thing until it's gone.