Feigning Tales

He arrives at the bench early, sitting about six inches to the left of the sun shade line. He measures his wait by how many times he has to scoot further to the left before his departure. He did not need to come out as early as he did. He knew it only increased the uneasy feeling that flowed through his belly, but the longer he remained close to the bathroom, the more he wanted to throw up.

He had done his best to stay busy this morning. He made his bed and cleaned his side of the room. The distinction between his side and the other side could not be more evident. Marcus learned he had control over few things in his life and cleanliness was one of them. He showered everyday taking time to use extra soap on his most smelly parts. He never put an unscraped dish in the sink. And no matter how lazy he felt, he made his bed every day. He could not desecrate the sacred place where he and he alone laid his head. Everyone knew not to touch his bed. Except for a red-head named Louie.

Louie had been visiting the house and managed to escape the claws of the gathered crowd downstairs. When Marcus found him, he was asleep in the bed – under the covers with drool flowing from the corners of his pinched mouth onto the pillow. 

“Thinks he’s Goldilocks does he?” Marcus took one step towards the bed and swiveled mid-air to turn around.

He had to leave the room or he might hurt Louie. Or at least he thought he might hurt Louie. The level of anger that pierced his heart and hurt his brain measured a close second to the time he kicked through a door at his mom’s apartment. His mom screamed at him.

“You louse. We are moving out in two weeks and you put a hole in the door? We won’t get our security deposit back and I need that money.” His mom surveyed the wood shards.

“I don’t care how you fix it, but put that door back together Mr. Humpty Dumpty.”

His mom used the same nursery rhyme tales she used as a reward when he was three and peed in the big boy pot to sarcastically reprimand him.

Marcus spent the few dollars he had to buy wood glue and brown putty to recreate the door’s panel. Two days of camouflage treatments made the hole barley noticeable. His hands however resembled porous stones formed from the empty red caverns and tunnels left after he pulled out the splinters.

A summer breeze brushes his face. Sitting on a bench waiting seems like an easy action. And for thousands of public transportation commuters, it is.

At least public transportation has a schedule to follow. The schedule Marcus relies on is consistently late. And while some people understand he needs predictability at his impressionable age, the most important do not. 

Marcus’s thoughts race faster than ticks on a clock. Waiting becomes a race against the words and images in his head and not a timepiece.

He stands up, dusts off the space to his left, and claims his new spot.

A friend told him the bench never tells its occupant’s age. He doubts that. Luckily his baby fat remains solidly in place on his cheeks. He hadn’t hit the growth phase yet so he still looked more like a nine-year-old than an almost teenager. He dreaded turning thirteen. He remembered what his fourth-grade teacher said when the class made her a card to celebrate her fortieth birthday.

“Life is downhill from here kids,” she jokingly remarked.

Marcus feels the same way now two weeks before his thirteenth. He doesn’t want to get older. It means less time to make memories before his eighteenth birthday when he will be cast on his own. 

Most teens he knew were itching for their independence. He would rather have a movie night at home with real butter on the popcorn or charred steaks cooked on a grill in the backyard. Independence is overrated when it is forced versus arriving as a natural part of growing up. Maturity should not be rushed. Marcus knows he has missed out on many firsts and seconds in childhood, dragged blindly into the ring of adulthood long before his body or mind could catch up.

A pair of flies buzz near his ear. He swats and feels the sun’s rays on his fingers. He scoots to the left two inches. His warm seat cool again.

Thanks to Father Flynn, Marcus knows he is not the cause of his problems. God does not have his name on the doomed and damned list.

“There is a reason for your sadness and heartache son,” he consoled Marcus one afternoon.

“God has bigger plans for you that you have yet to see.”

With numbing butt cheeks, Marcus hopes he is right. Otherwise, what is there to look forward to? 

School would start in a month and while Marcus longed for the status that came along with being in the highest grade in the building, he would trade it for another year in seventh grade, concealing his age with an academic level.

He dreads the back to school process. It takes an army of signatures and approvals to re-enroll. Even buying a college-ruled notebook requires a nod from accounting. Hopefully, this year everything is in place so he does not have to miss the first day again.

Marcus inhales and prays he can manage the hurdles that he is sure will present themselves again this year. A muscle below his rib cage hardens. Feeling nausea creeping up, he scoots for his own gain to the left and slowly begins to kick his dangling legs back and forth until the steady rhythm diverts his attention from his digestive nuances.

He hears footsteps approaching from behind, but does not turn his head. He wants to see if he can predict who it is.

“Mrs. Shooster?” She stands in front of him.  “I was right!”

A short, blond-haired woman in her mid-fifties, she looks more like a grandmother than an administrator. Marcus is glad she is not related. Whenever he sees her, she has bad news for him.

“She’s not coming. Marcus, your mom is not coming today. Missed her court date and was taken back to jail.”

Even though her news comes as no surprise, Marcus swings his feet faster to quiet the continuing battle in his stomach.

“Did she call? Did she ask about me?” Marcus feels as a dutiful son he needs to ask these questions though the answers matter little.

“Her parole officer called last night.”

“You have known since last night?” Marcus likes Mrs. Shooster, but she could have told him last night or even earlier this morning and prevented his body’s churning and loathing.

“We did not tell you last night because a family expressed interest in visiting with you for a possible foster arrangement. Their biological son, an only child, is a couple of years older than you and . . .”

Marcus interrupts, “And they felt a pang for another child, but either didn’t have the money for a doctor to help them have a baby or wanted an insta-kid so their son could be a role model.” All sounds stop around him with his proclamation.

“Am I right?” The words echo in his ears.

“Marcus, you are.” She pauses seeing the strain of five years of foster care rain down Marcus’s face.

“This family is different though,” she tries to reassure. “The Thompson’s said they were drawn to you by the story of why you make your bed. They said they had to meet you.”

Just like the others Marcus thinks. Some righteous reason other than wanting to give a kid a home. Not that Marcus is particularly choosy. He either wants his mom full time – a dream not necessarily worth dreaming any longer or a stable family who wants to share stories and bond over ice cream.

Marcus’s head feels like he ran into a plate glass window and bounced backwards. He tries to rub out the pain at the imaginary point of impact. The dull pain lingers.

This is not his first bait and switch and doubts it will be his last. He finds no comfort in his revelation.

“They will be here in about fifteen minutes. Do you want to stay and wait here?” Mrs. Shooster walks over and pats the top of Marcus’s head like a mother might before bedtime and kisses him on his forehead.

“You might want to get out of the sun,” she adds before heading back through the office doors.

Marcus defiantly slides to the right with an unbeknownst power dropping him off the other edge of the bench and landing him squarely on his left butt cheek. He looks up at the bench and realizes besides his bed, the only other constant in his life has been this three-slat aluminum bench.

His uneasiness about his mom’s visit changes to the fear of not being picked again. 

He decides to wait for the Thompson’s on the ground in the blazing sun, his left side throbbing. He draws his knees towards his chest and laughs. 

The London bridge falls down.