Learning
by Meagan Stallworth
The car rolled down the highway; it curved around a tall, green forest and slipped past other vehicles that moved too slowly. David leaned his head against the glass in the backdoor that he just barely reached. His eyes moved slowly from the leathery back of the front seat toward the dark trunks outside that moved so fast. The sun pierced through them, flickering red as it followed the car. While it dipped behind the thick branches, David’s eyes became heavy. He picked at a hang nail and watched for as long as he could bear as the light faded, then tucked his tiny hands into his jacket pockets and dreamed about something he could not remember.
It was quiet except for the gum popping in Joanne’s mouth. Her rows of teeth met fiercely as the pink goo meshed in between, sounding like small firecrackers. She wore dangly silver earrings and a pale blue low-cut blouse. Joanne hardly looked like she could be David’s mother. He was only eight; she was not much older—fourteen— when she gave birth to him. As David napped, Joanne checked her reflection in the rearview mirror and adjusted her bra strap. He wriggled beneath the seat belt with his eyes strained shut and droplets of sweat swimming away from his hairline. His mother sipped from her cup of water and sped the entire way to another one of her friend’s homes. The last time, she visited a lawyer.
When he awoke twenty minutes later, the car had stopped moving and sat in a large paved driveway, big enough to fit two cars side-by-side. A bald man with a lit cigarette in his left hand and a blue blazer in the other came to greet him at the car door. The man smiled and knocked on the window. David wiped the sweat from his brow and the sleep from his eyes, but did not unlock the door. He stared thoughtfully at the man’s big smile while he was gesturing toward him to come out. David lifted his hands from his pockets which had formed fists—fists so tight that there were small, pink welts where his nails had jabbed into his palms. He was rubbing his hands against his blue jeans when the bald smoker knocked against the window with a little more force than before.
“Get your ass out of the car David,” Joanne said from the top of the driveway.
She squinted her eyes at David, and then turned apologetically to the man at the car door. David unbuckled his seatbelt slowly as to not agitate the new-found pain in his hands.
“Today!” Joanne yelled again, much louder this time.
David wondered why his mother was always talking so loudly. He used to think that it was just him that she yelled at—maybe that he was just a bad kid. But, Joanne yelled at the mailman for not closing the box all of the way last week. She yelled at her father the night before for spelling her name wrong on her birthday card. She yelled at the remote for not being where she put it last just before they got in the car. When David bumped his leg getting out of the car because the tall man with the blazer was standing so close to it, she yelled some more. He was used to it by now.
“I am so sorry, Tony. Damn kid. He’s real clumsy,” Joanne told the man.
He backed away from the car a few steps.
“That’s alright. He didn’t hit me. Is he OK?” Tony gestured toward David still sitting in the seat with the door cracked open and one foot out. Joanne didn’t look.
“He’s fine. Come on, let’s go in. Show me that new microphone you got.”
As if she needed to be any louder, David thought. He scrambled out of the car, trailing behind the two adults. After seeing the man throw his still-lit cigarette on the ground and toss his arm around Joanne, he came to the conclusion then that he didn’t like Tony very much. The trees around him were not tall like they were on the highway, but stubby. The houses all looked the same: two story, uncommonly bright green yards, big driveways. David was uncomfortable. He looked around, put his hands back in his pockets, and made it to the porch noticing the red pen stain on the side of Tony’s trousers move with his legs. He must have been a teacher, David thought. Those were the only people he had ever known to use red pens.
“You can stay out here, if you want,” Joanne told him when the front door began to creak open.
