Holes in the Floor

I was eight years old when we moved into the old, Red Adam’s store. People in town called it that, but it wasn’t a store anymore. According to my mom, it hadn't been used as a grocery store for probably 30 years. I didn’t think it looked much like a store at all, just a little run-down house.

The squat, wooden house faced a two lane highway with no neighbors for miles. Tall trees surrounded the little old house in every direction. Flaky yellowed paint peeled from the exterior walls revealing grayed wood underneath and you could see the stacks of cinderblocks underneath the house that held it off the ground. The red-brown roof sagged in the middle and the two square windows in front were spray painted black and let no light in.

Three rusty iron steps led to the front door which opened to the living room where the floor and walls were made up of a splintery dark brown wood that my brother and I didn't dare walk on barefoot. There were two bedrooms in the house. I chose the closet-like room just off the living room as my own. Though I wasn't allowed to sleep in there due to the big hole in the back corner where you could see straight down to the dirt underneath. I called it my own room, but I never went in there for fear of any creepers that might have come up through the hole. 

My parents took the biggest room, without holes, and my little brother and I slept in the kitchen. I suppose it could have been called a dining room. Our bunk bed sat very near the stove, opposite the door to the only bathroom in the house. But we didn't care much about the inside of the house anyway, since we spent most of our time outside. 

My favorite part of the house was outside. Tied to a tree with a short chain was a dog named "Smack." Mom said the people who moved out of the house the week before didn't want him anymore, but we weren't allowed to call him "Smack," so we changed his name to Mack. "Like a Mack truck," my Dad said. We were thrilled to keep him.

Most of my memories of the time spent in that house were of the hours spent sitting under the big shady tree that Mack was tied to, scooping up piles of sandy dirt and piling it on top of his soft gray and black fur while my brother loaded more dirt into two small buckets. Mack didn't mind. I think he enjoyed the company. 

After a few months living in the house, we got off the school bus one day and found our mom sobbing by the kitchen sink. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me everything. 

My Dad found a new girlfriend at work, so we were moving back to Texas to live with my Mom’s parents, Nanny and Papa.

Our Mom drove us to school the next day in our bright blue Geo Metro to check us out for good before we left town. I loved the car because my feet touched the floor when I sat in the back seat and my feet had never touched the floor in any car before. It made me feel big.

My mom walked me to my second grade classroom. I returned all my books to my teacher and told her I was leaving. 

"But, where are you going, Courtney?" my teacher asked. 

In front of a classroom full of other students, I loudly explained, "Well, my Dad got a new girlfriend, so my mom and Dad are getting a divorce and we're moving back to Texas." 

"Oh dear, I'm so sorry." she said.

Then she hugged me for a long time while I looked around at all the other kids staring back at me. 

We returned home that day and I watched as my mom gathered all of my Dad's clothes from their closet, still on the hangers, and threw them in the trunk of the little blue Metro. Then we drove across town to Grandma's house; our Dad’s mom.

My brother and I watched from the car as my mom climbed the concrete steps to Grandma's front door and knocked, then waited for someone to answer, with a pile of clothes thrown over her shoulder. When Grandma opened the door she said, "What the hell? I don't know want this shit. He ain’t staying here." 

Then my mom dropped all the clothes to the dirt below and grandma pulled her into a hug, my mom's shoulders shuddered up and down for a long time and Grandma patted her on the back over and over. “Bring the kids in, I’ll make them some food.” Grandma said. We jumped out of the car and ran inside.

The next day was Friday, AKA payday. The plan was to pick up Dad's paycheck early, drive to the Wal Mart in the next town over to cash it, then we would leave town for Nanny's house in Texas.

I sat in the front seat, my brother in the back, along with all of our belongings we packed that morning. We brought all of the important stuff. Clothes, shoes, my teddy bear, Patches.

On the way out, the hot wind from the rolled-down windows blew my hair in every direction as we headed to cash the check.

The dark-skinned lady behind the counter at Wal Mart, took an extra long time staring at her computer screen. The three of us stood waiting as the lady slid the check through the cube shaped box again. "It didn't go through. I'm trying it again," she said. My mom's eyes closed tight and she pinched the top of her nose with her fingers. I started to feel uneasy, and a little hungry. My brother moved a few feet away. He was staring into all the different quarter machines filled with rubber balls, plastic rings and bracelets. I wished I had a quarter. He wanted the temporary tattoos. 

Then the lady said, "Ok, it worked that time." And my mom said," Thank God," and stared up at the ceiling. 

The lady counted out a bunch of twenties and some change and placed it in my mom's hand. I didn't know how much it was, but my mom said it would be, "Just enough to get us to Texas and feed us for a few days.”

I could smell the McDonald's across the street as we walked out of Wal Mart, and my stomach growled. I decided not to ask since Mom had gone a week without buying cigarettes. I knew the money situation was pretty serious.

As we approached the little blue car, my mom gasped and said words that I'd only ever heard my Dad say.

"Sonofabitch, that motherfucker." 

Then I saw that the two tires on my side of the car were completely flat and the car was leaning sideways toward the driver's side.

My mom sat down in the driver's seat and cried with her head rested on the steering wheel. I sat in the back seat with my brother. "I'm hungry,” he said. I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow.

Sweat dripped from the end of my nose while we sat in the car and waited for the tires to be changed out. My brother used his sweat to spike his hair into a Mohawk, which made me laugh.

A nice man stopped and asked my mom if we needed help. She asked if he would give her a ride to the used tire shop down the road. He did. 

My brother and I waited in the parking lot until mom came back with two small round wheels she called “donuts” to replace the flat tires. She used the jack from the trunk and put them on herself. 

Then we drove back home because my mom said, “There’s no way we could make it to Texas on donuts.” I thought a donut sounded wonderful.

That night, Dad came home and I heard my mom scream for the first and only time in my life. “How could you? We were trapped there!” were the words she screamed at him. Then my Dad denied having anything to do with the tire incident. I believed him.

My brother and I sat on the bottom bunk of our bed and ate cold hot dogs out of the package while we listened to their voices rise and fall from the other room. My stomach ached. I hoped they would work it out. 

After a while of listening to the fighting, I took my brother outside and we sat with Mack under the big oak tree. The sun was going down and there was a light breeze that made it seem a little cooler. My brother grabbed his buckets and went to work filling them with sand from the driveway. His bare feet made small prints in the soft dirt as he walked back and forth, dumping pile after pile beside me. Together, we cupped the sand in our hands and patted it onto Mack’s upturned belly until the dog's only visible parts were his head and his wagging tail.

Dad stayed that night, and every night after. My brother and I returned to school. And soon, Dad found us a new place to live. It was two miles closer to town, a little bigger, and it didn't have any holes in the floor. I picked out my room and my brother picked his, but we decided to keep the bunk beds together so neither of us would have to sleep alone.

We unchained Mack from his tree and loaded him into the back of my dad's pick-up truck. Then the three of us rode together in the bed of the truck, hair flying as the cool wind whipped it in every direction. We both laughed at the sight of Mack's long pink tongue hanging from his mouth, stretched long in the wind behind him.