All the Ways We Learn

Maggie stomped to her son’s room, opened the door with a hard movement, and hollered at him, “What’s this I’m hearing ‘bout you trying to show all these girls the town? I didn’t raise no mut to whore ‘round the streets, Jameson Daniel. I don’t care what hormones you have raging through you right now, but, boy, I swear to the Jesus and Mother Mary, if I hear anything else ‘bout you rummaging through these girls’ drawers, I will skin your white ass red on the courthouse steps for the entire county to witness. You hear me, boy?”

James was in the middle of playing a video game. He had his headset halfway on his head. He didn’t stop playing. He was laughing and saying something in his headset.

“Did I not make myself loud enough?” she said.

“I heard you,” he said. “Give me just a minute. This round is almost over.”

Maggie bowed her head, crossed herself, and prayed, “Lord, please give me strength.” Then, “You are sixteen years old, Jameson, but I am not above giving you to the count of three to turn that thing off and look at me when I’m talking to you.”

James didn’t turn off the game. He nodded, and said okay, but didn’t move. Maggie counted one, counted two, paused, counted three. She ripped the cord from the wall and yanked the headset from the top of his head. “Boy, I done told you,” she said with her teeth clenched tightly.

“What the fuck?” he yelled. “Why would you do that?”

“Let me get something through to you right here and right now. Stand up, boy. Stand eye-to-eye with your momma. Go ‘head, stand up. And don’t be all huffy with me. I see that look in your eye. You ain’t happy with me, and I understand. Now, you listen here, ‘cause I ain’t gonna tell it to you again. The next time I try talking to you, and you give me this show you just put on, that little station of yours will be smithereens, you hear me? Now, don’t turn around, you stand right here with me and you look me in my eyes. If I hear another word about you trampin’ ‘round this town, ‘specially with your grades how they are, I will send you off to reformatory school and visit you on the weekends for the next two years.”

James could barely speak without the foam from his mouth slurring his words and spewing spittle everywhere.

“Momma, I’m not a child anymore.”

“Then it’s damn time you stop acting like one.” He didn’t answer her. He was spilling over with rage and embarrassment. He started bouncing his leg up and down. “Sitown,” she said. “Let me talk to ya.” He took a seat on the bed. Still bouncing his leg. “Ever since your daddy left, your grades have been terrible, I’m getting bad reports, you’re smoking – no, don’t you try to lie on yourself, Jameson, ‘cause I’m not gonna stand for it. You’d have better luck just telling me about it because I know it’s happening. Now, let me finish. You been smoking, which ain’t no good for anybody and you can’t hide it to save yourself. You been getting around with these girls ‘round town. You been back talking me. You been angry, son. I don’t want you to be angry. It makes me cross with you. I don’t want to yell at you, hear these things about you, not know where you are or worry about the people you’re with. Hell, I’m angry too, and that’s something I’ve felt rarely in my life. But I am. And you are too; but we have to stop this.”

James didn’t look up at her. His leg had slowed. He was biting at his nails. He stared blankly at a corner of the room. She ran a hand through his hair and kissed him on the forehead. “Talk to me,” she said. “What is going on up in that head of yours?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She nodded, rocking her head back and forth. She kissed him on the head again. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. And I’m sorry for what I did to your game. But I mean what I said. If I try talking to you, I need you to listen to me. Can we agree to that? I’m not some fly you can ignore and swat away on a horse’s ass. I am your mother.”

He still didn’t look at her, just nodded and continued biting at his nails. “Okay,” he said.

The next morning, Maggie was at the salon cutting a woman’s hair. There was Trisha, Patty, Julia, and Danny too, all with their own clients in their chairs and a handful of people in the waiting area. Light music played over the speakers, a muted television was on with the weather channel. They kept the front door of the salon open to let a warm breeze in. They were talking the way they always did, about something or another, or somebody or somebody else.

“How people expect a young man to act anymore?” Maggie started. “What with social media, and ass and titties shoved in their faces”

“Not even real ass and titties neither,” Trisha said.

All the women let out an agreeable, “Mhm.”

Maggie continued, “The idea of a man has changed so much, how else a boy supposed to act? They don’t teach how to be a gentleman in school and there ain’t nobody around to teach them anything. I ain’t no man!” she said. “I’m only a woman.”

“Mmm, say it again, but like you mean it,” Julia said.

Trisha said, “Ain’t a woman in this world that needs a man. Every mother can be a father, but ain’t no father that can ever be a mother.”

They all laughed and smiled. Danny started washing a woman’s hair. She said, “Your boy gettin’ ‘round ain’t the biggest deal. ‘Least he comes home. Even if he does just sit on those games. You know where he is, don’tcha?”

Another woman from the waiting area said, “Those games is what’s rotting these young boys’ minds. What with the blood and violence ‘n all that.”

Danny said, “And the boys raised during wartime, those ones that had to go kill people when they wasn’t even yet twenty, fresh off their momma’s tit, had it any different? Men have always been violent things. That’s why fathers can’t be mothers, but mothers can be fathers. Us women, we got that violence in us, but we know how to control it. Them men don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that.”

All the women let out an agreeable, “Mhm.”

Maggie started again, “All I’m sayin’, is this boy hasn’t been the same since his daddy left us.”

“I’m sure you haven’t neither,” Danny said. “There’s nobody that blames you either. You can’t blame your son for that. He’s a good kid, Maggie. You raising him the only way you know how. He’ll be all right.”

All the women let out an, “Mhm.”

Maggie started to cry. “You all think so?”

“Sure as summer is hot,” Trisha laughed. “You want to teach that boy how to be a man without a man around. There’s some things that can’t be taught and you won’t learn ‘em ‘til you learn ‘em. Let that boy alone and be there for him when he learns what he needs to. That’s all you can do, that’s all I can do, that’s all any of us can do.”

The woman from the lobby let out an, “Amen! Let God do God’s work.”

All the women let out an agreeable, “Mhm.”

At the same time, when James had left to go to school, instead he went to Holly Brown’s house. It wasn’t the first time they had been together. Holly thought they might be in love and that one day they might run off and get married and have a few kids. That’s the way she looked at James; that’s the way she talked to him.

They were lying in bed, and James was deep in thought, far away from Holly Brown or his mother or school or even himself. His head was where those thoughts go that take you away from the world. Holly heard a car pull in. She jumped up and looked out the window.

“My dad,” she said. “James, my dad is home. You have to run. He’ll kill you. And I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean that literally. He will shoot you. Get up, get dressed. Run! Run!”

James jumped up out of the bed and struggled to throw his clothes on. He was just hopping to get his socks on when he heard the front door open in the other room. He heard shoes step inside. He heard the way they rushed into Holly’s room with the swiftness of a mother bear running toward her endangered cub.

“Hey, Mr. Brown,” James said, grabbing his shoes and opening the window.

“What the fuck is this, Holly?” Mr. Brown said. He leapt into the room and Holly tried to get between the two of them and gave James just enough time to hop out the window.

“Daddy, stop it. I love that boy, now you leave him alone.”

“I’ll be damned if I do. You stay here and don’t you leave. You’re grounded for the rest of the school year. I’ll deal with you when I get back.”

James was sprinting through yards, laughing the entire way. Mr. Brown had grabbed his shotgun and threw it in the front seat of his truck and sped off down the road.

James was back on the sidewalk, walking at a leisurely stroll. He looked around at the houses, at the sky, at the clouds and the sun. Then, he heard the roar of the truck. James turned, and there it was, the huge white Ford truck, barreling down the street. Before the thought to run reached his legs, the truck was there and Mr. Brown, a grizzly of a man, jumped out of his truck. He had his shotgun in one hand and grabbed James by the shirt collar with the other. His grip was stronger than a German Shepard’s jaws.

“Don’t you come around my house again. Do you hear me?” James didn’t answer him. He didn’t realize it, but he was terrified. Mr. Brown pushed James up against a nearby telephone pole and with one hand raised him up off the ground by his shirt. “I said do you hear me, boy?” James nodded. “What’s your name?”

“James,” he said.

“Well, listen to me, James. I am not a man to fuck with. Where’s your dad at? Didn’t he teach you anything?”

“Hell, Mr. Brown, I ain’t seen that man in years. But if by dad you mean mother, well she’s at work down at the salon on Main Street.”

He loosened the grip on James just enough that his feet touched the ground. “So your momma’s out working at a time you’re supposed to be in school, and instead you out shackin’ up with my daughter in my own house when I don’t even know what your name is?”

“That’s about the whole of it,” James said. “I’m real sorry, Mr. Brown.”

“Why ain’t you in school?”

“Didn’t feel like going today.”

Mr. Brown pulled James toward his truck and opened the door and threw him in. He threw the shotgun into the bed of the truck.

“Where you taking me?” James asked.

“Down to your mother.”

“Mr. Brown, please. Take me to school, take me out back and shoot me, just please take me anywhere but to my momma. We had a fight just last night and she’s already not happy with me.”

Mr. Brown didn’t answer and instead drove to the salon. When they pulled in, James stayed in the truck.

“Please don’t make me go in there,” James said. “Please, Mr. Brown, I’ll do just about anything you want. I’ll never even talk to Holly again. Please, Mr. Brown.”

“Get out,” he said. When James didn’t move, and he sat there staring like a statue out the windshield, Mr. Brown opened the passenger door, thrust himself in and unbuckled James’s seat belt. James was smacking and fighting trying to do anything to keep himself in that truck.

Mr. Brown hoisted James out of the car and grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the salon. When the two walked in, all the women stopped what they were doing and looked at them. James was behind Mr. Brown, though he still had a tight grip of his wrist.

“Welcome in,” Patty said. “Something we can do for you today?”

Mr. Brown pulled James in front of him. “Which one of you does this one belong to?”

Maggie was trimming up a woman’s hair. She calmly put her scissors on the counter and told the woman she would only be a minute. She said, “Jameson Daniel Jones, what have you done?” Her voice was scornful and mean in a way that none of the women had ever heard before.

James looked at Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown said, “Found him at my house this morning. Ran off through the window putting his clothes on.”

“Boy, I told you. I told you just last night, didn’t I?” James didn’t answer. “Didn’t I?” James nodded. “You thank that man holding onto you for sparing your life. Go on, tell ‘im. And you better apologize like you never apologized to anybody in your life before.”

“I’m sorry,” James said.

“That ain’t no apology,” Maggie said. “You call him by his name and you tell him what you’re sorry for.”

Maggie grabbed her son and brought him in front of her. All the women and customers were watching.

“I’m sorry for having sex with your daughter this morning while you weren’t home, Mr. Brown. Thank you for not shooting me.”

At the sound of hearing daughter and sex in the same sentence, Mr. Brown’s blood began to boil.

“Thank you for bringing him, Mr. Brown,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry for any trouble he might have caused you and your family.” Her voice was soft and gentle and friendly. “Is there anything we can do?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just don’t let him around my house again. You all take care now.”

That night, Maggie made pork chops for dinner. James came home from school and stayed in his room. He didn’t play video games, only laid in his bed. Maggie made no attempts to talk to him until dinner was ready.

“Food’s on the table,” she called to him.

His door opened and he came into the kitchen. Maggie was smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table. She hadn’t picked up a cigarette since she stopped when she got pregnant with James.

When James sat down with his plate, she looked at him and asked, “What’s the matter with you?” James didn’t answer. She took an inhale on her cigarette. “There ain’t much sense in yelling at you anymore,” she said softly. “It’s time we talked. What’s got you the way you been?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. I’m your momma, you can talk to me. So let it out. I’m not gonna say I’m not mad atchu, but I’m willing to listen and talk to you. Let me hear it. Go on, get you some cornbread over on the stove, too.”

He did so, and he came back and sat down. Maggie finished her cigarette and lit another one. “Go on,” she said. “Talk a bit.”

James took a few bites of food and they sat in silence in the kitchen.

He started, “Why did he leave? Didn’t he love you? Didn’t he love me? I loved him. Hell, momma, part of me still does. Doesn’t he want to be here and watch me grow up? Teach me things? Mr. Brown had a shotgun with him today and when I saw it I wanted to learn how to shoot it, and I almost asked Mr. Brown right then and there with his big hand wrapped ‘round my shirt if he’d take me out to the range and show me how to shoot that thing. Why doesn’t he even call me? The phone’s right there, he knows the number. I don’t even know where he is or nothing. Just left and disappeared one day. Why don’t he love me enough for even a phone call, momma? What I do? Was I a bad kid or something?”

Maggie put her cigarette out and walked over to him and hugged him and kissed him over and over. He began to cry. She said, “You’re the best kid a person could ask for. Don’t you go blaming yourself for you father’s sins and shortcomings. You didn’t do a thing wrong, not a single damn thing. Your father leaving was him. Had nothing to do with you or with me. The wind blows where it will and it has nothing to do with you or me.”

“I don’t know what to do, mom. I feel like I don’t know what I’m supposed to be or anything. I’m lost and confused. I want a daddy, I do. I love you and you can’t do more than you do, but I miss having a dad, momma. Maybe it’d be better if I never had one to begin with, but I had one for eleven years. What do I do now?”

“We’ll figure it out. Don’t you ever let no man, or lack of a man, define you or make you feel less than. You are beautiful, sweet, and perfect.”

James started crying more. He pushed his head into his mother’s arms and wept.

“We’ll start right here, right where we are,” Maggie said. “Sometimes that’s all you can do. I won’t ask no more of you than that.”