The Door Girl, Part 16

When mother and I lived in the townhouse, we had a neighbor named Clifton.  He had a badass mullet and a tattoo of some kind of a falcon across his nipples.  He never wore a shirt and he always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  He was one of those people that bounces when they walk because they think it makes them look threatening.  It’s like they’re saying, “Fuck with me and I’ll bounce your ass right out of town just like I bounce across this street to buy my cigarettes.”  Every bounce is a threat.  And with hair jumping around like that and flying nipples, no one was going to mess with him.  Except for maybe my mother.

For some reason, I was drawn to him. He was always asking me questions about myself and my mom. I interpreted being nosey as actually giving a shit.  One day, he was giving me the third degree about my mother.  “Does she do drugs?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  I think so,” I mumbled.

“How much? Does she do them everyday?”

“Probably,” I answered.  As the words were escaping, I didn’t know whether or not they were true, but I knew that I shouldn’t be having this conversation with Wing-nippled Falcon Bouncing Man. 

After a Say No to Drugs rally at school, I had asked my mom if she had ever done drugs and to my astonishment, she said yes.  I remember burying my head in to my pillow and crying.  We had just been told how damaging drugs are and here was my own mother saying that she had smoked pot with my aunt.

So when Clifton was questioning me about my mother, the words spilled out of my mouth.  I suppose in the deepest part of me, I wanted to confide in someone—to have someone make sense of why my mom would do something that was so bad for her.  But Clifton was not that someone.

Next thing I knew, my mother came flying in to my room barking, “Why the hell would you tell the neighbors that I do drugs?  Junie, why the hell would you say something like that?”

“Because you said you did,” I stammered out looking like a deer in headlights.

“I said I TRIED it!” she screamed.

Without hesitation, she tore a sheet out of a notebook she kept for making grocery lists.  With the skill of an artist, she drew an 8 x 10 sized penis.  Then she grabbed her scotch tape and secured that picture to the kitchen window so that it was facing Clifton’s set of stairs. 

Later that night, Clifton said with all the coolness of John Wayne, “Did’ya see that picture of a penis your mom drew?”  I looked at the window.

“Yeah,” I said, heat burning my cheeks and my stomach swelling up with shame.

“Real fuckin’ nice,” he managed to say with a cigarette hanging between his lips, the falcon staring at me all the while.