The Door Girl, Part 8

When I arrived at home on my bike, the door was ajar and the smell of marijuana mingled in with Pine-Sol wafted out in to the night air.

My grandma and Aunt Cassie busied themselves around our little townhouse.

“Junie,” my grandma rasped in her smoker’s voice, “Go throw your pajamas and clothes for church in to a bag.”

Aunt Cassie stood there with one hand on the kitchen table and the other holding a joint.

“Your mother’s at it again,” she sneered, looking at me with lowered eyelids.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Jesus H. Christ, Junie!” my grandma blurted out. “How the hell should I know? How the hell should anyone know what goes through your mother’s brain?”

A memory from three years prior began to play in my mind like the reel of an old film.

Tommy was a hillbilly if there ever was one.  He was from the deep South and had a thick, syrupy drawl.  He always ate his apples sprinkled with salt and ate pizza with anchovies.  Besides strutting around the house all day with his farmer’s tan, he drew.  Pencil sketches lay scattered throughout the townhouse of nude women. 

Coming home after school one day, I open the door to find Tommy sketching lines on canvas that mimic the curves of my mother’s body.  She sits in a chair, her white, slender legs crossed at the knee.  Her silky brown hair hangs down her back and spills over her bare shoulders.  She looks at me and smiles with her lips sealed together, unashamedly.  Her dark eyes are filled with obvious desire and I hate her.  The hate is heavy and thick, just like Tommy’s words. 

Tommy loves to rub his penis against my skin.  As I lay on the couch one day with a blanket, he climbs in behind me and pretends that Tom and Jerry is the funniest damn thing he’s ever seen.  There goes Tom, chasing after that mischievous little mouse again.  Tommy slips my pants down around my thighs and pulls me hard against him.  He places his rubbery penis between my legs and squeezes them together as he moves back and forth.  I stare forward, unmoving.  My mother walks in the room, picking things up, putting them away.  Jerry has thumped Tom on the head, leaving a thimble-shaped lump.  Jerry scampers off to his little hole in the wall until the next time Tom comes hunting.  And I lay there, wondering why Tom can’t just leave that damn mouse alone.

And I know that grandma is right and that not one of us understands the madness that is mama.