Arizona Allspice (12 page)

Now, I finger the page corners hesitantly. I’m invading his privacy. I wouldn’t want someone to read my journal without my permission. But Joey’s mother wants me to do it. Taking a deep breath I open the page. The entry has no date. I skim the next couple entries. None of them are dated. The content clues me in on the time frame. I read the first two sentences.

Mom gave me this journal because she says I write really well like a real author. I don’t know how true that is because Mom loves me too much to see anything I do wrong.

 “You’ve got that right, Joey. Otherwise she would see you are a complete womanizer.” I realized that calling someone in a coma names only made me look like the bad guy. Remembering my promise to Miss Kinsley I awkwardly start to read aloud.

It just makes me feel even guiltier when I mess up and all she does is give me hugs, kisses, and encouragement I don’t deserve. Yesterday I left the toilet seat up after I used the bathroom and Mason came home and accused Mom of having another man in the house. He thought some other man had come in and left the seat up and was sleeping with her. Mason smacked her real hard. I tried to tell him it was me but he hears what he wants to hear.

When Mason left, she kissed me on the forehead. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she told me. I grasped her hand and tucked all her four fingers into her palm and pulled her thumb across them.
A fist.
I stared up at her as I placed her fist at my cheek. She looked at me and laughed, “What are you doing, silly?” She took her fist away and ran a hand through my hair. I told her I wasn’t hungry when dinnertime rolled around. She’d made dessert. I made sure I didn’t eat breakfast the next day either. She’d made my favorite blueberry pancakes. My insides felt torn up because I was so hungry and I could hardly see straight but I didn’t eat lunch at school. My punishment was working fine until I caved and ate four whole slices of pizza for dinner when I got home.

By the end of that first entry I am floored. My heart weeps at the thought of little Joey living in a home with that abusive man and feeling so guilty and helpless. I turn the page.

I don’t like any of the girls at school. Not one. All my friends, all they talk about is how they want to ask so-and-so out or go to the dance with her so they could eventually kiss her or touch some naked part of her. All of my friends want that. I’m the only one that doesn’t. I seriously wondered what was wrong with me. I resigned to my friend Alex’s idea that I was simply gay...

Laughter bursts from my mouth. After shooting silent Joey a bewildered look and trying to stifle my loud laughter in the quiet hospital room, I read on.

But, I realized that not liking girls was only half the requirement. The other half was to actually be attracted to guys. I absolutely do not meet
that
requirement. Some of the girls at school are pretty but in a distant, removed way like watching a movie with a plot that amuses you but that you would not want to be a part of in real life. I’m trying hard not to see right through them but all they want to talk about is what other people are doing or about going to the school dance with me. None of them know who E. E. Cummings is! Mom says not to worry about it. I’m only in middle school; I’m still a baby, stop trying to grow up so fast. Well, I’m already in seventh grade.

Q: When am I going to start feeling like anything makes sense?

A: Probably never.

Astonished that Joey read the poetry of E. E. Cummings in middle school, that he read poetry at all for that matter, and amused that he once had problems getting along with girls, I turn to an entry scribbled on the next page.

I don’t know if I can take him hitting me anymore. I don’t think I can take him hitting Mom anymore. Mom, if you’re reading this I hate him. I HATE HIM I HATE HIM I HATE HIM! I love you but this is so stupid! Why do you put up with him? Do you know how much it hurts to not be able to change our situation? I fall asleep to you in the bathroom crying at night. We can do better by ourselves. We did it on our own for seven years when my dad left, remember? It was just you and me and we were fine. We’d be fine.
Maybe even happy.

Joey’s words were so familiar. I’ve listened to Raul utter similar declarations about his father. Saddened, I read on. I glimpse the next page in the journal and audibly gasp. It’s a poem. Joey? Writing poetry? Never in a million years would I think that
El Fuego,
the in-your-face soccer star, would set a rhythm of words to his feelings.

For Mom:

A Lovely Rose

However lovely
bloom’d
rose may be,

If it is thrown with great strength to the ground

Its detached petals splatter all around.

However grand a grand artwork may look,

Step closer to the canvas you will see

One misshaped apple hanging from the tree.

However beautiful the rose may be,

The severed petals scattered on the floor,

They cannot reattach like once before.

However lovely, perfect, she may seem,

If she is pushed with anger to the ground

Her
bruise’d
petals will fall all around.

Love,

Joseph

With moist eyes I read over the poem again in awe of its construction. Joey had this gift when he was only in middle school. I’m twenty years old and I still can’t figure out iambic pentameter. What was laborious for me came so easily to Joey.

I grew six inches taller this summer. Mom said I’m looking more and more like my dad, Richard, every day now. She said I’ll be tall and handsome like him. Mason growled, “He doesn’t look a thing like me.” You see, Mason likes to think he’s my real dad because he pays the rent and occasionally feeds me. My real dad, I’ve never met him, but I’ve seen pictures and he makes Mason look like rat shit. He has golden light brown hair and a strong chin and a nose like mine. And he is really tall with big biceps. I want to lift weights like he did and look just like him. Thank God Mason isn’t my real dad so I don’t look anything like him. Richard was a writer. My mother showed me a poem he’d written her once. Maybe that’s why I like to write, too. He got my mom pregnant with me and so he had to marry her. He wasn’t ready for all the responsibility so after they were married, and I was almost one year old, he ran off. Then my mom moved to Arizona then met and married Mason seven years later.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t idolize my real dad. I know he’s a deadbeat and a coward. But it’s just so hard not to make that man smiling in the photograph the knight in shining armor that would take me and Mom away and kick Mason’s ass. Mason reminds me of something Mark Twain said: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Anyways, I’ve had lots of time to do whatever I wanted to do this summer. I played basketball and soccer with my friends and snuck into movies and read a lot. My friends Alex and Dion would probably make fun of me if they knew how much of I nerd I am when it comes to reading. If they knew I wrote poetry they’d obliterate me. Not that they’re bad people. They’re my best friends. They’d only tease me from a place of obligation to their manliness.

I’m reading The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. I suppose I could tell Alex and Dion I was reading it. It’s about Hell which could probably pass the ‘Man Test’. But I can only imagine what they’d say if I told them I honestly enjoy reading the poetry of William Wordsworth.

-------

Spare Some Change?

Hate is a strong word

so
I won’t use it

for
you

anymore
.

You de-serve,

something
weak

like
maybe,

dis-interest
or un-care.

You’ve got dollars but no sense.

Do you hear me, ignorant
smuck
?

You phony patriotic smear!

Don’t dis-regard

my

words
. Don’t

un-listen
through your ears.

It is weakness that hits women,

it
is cowardice that loves fear

and
no earthly amount of money will

justify
or make unclear that

You belittle ‘
cause
you’re

small