Learning
by Meagan Stallworth
But, David didn’t want to stay outside. He also didn’t want to sit on Tony’s furniture or see him look at his mother the way he looked at her blouse when she first got out of the car. He didn’t want to watch television while he was being ignored. He didn’t want to be the butt of any jokes. But most of all, he didn’t want to stay outside alone. There was no one else out there that he saw but himself and a small brown puppy making its way across the street. It was eerily quiet, quieter than the car ride had been on the way there. Leaves rustled and a trash can fell over two houses down. David curled his lips upward and turned his eyebrows down, but Joanne seemed not to notice his discomfort. She lifted her arm in the direction of the car, and David’s eyes followed.
“Go,” she demanded.
Her gum popped again. Tony smiled a little and looked down. David slowly turned toward the car and heard the door creak to a close faster than it had opened. He looked around. That puppy was still wandering around across the street. The lid of the fallen trash can was rolling past the house. The wind was blowing David’s hair to the left and in his eyes. It was a nice, cool day, he thought. He sat down on the porch and wondered why his mother was attracted to jerks. He attempted to fix his hair, running his fingers through it, holding it with his slightly hurt palms. But, it kept swaying from side to side, going everywhere he didn’t want it to go. Eventually, he gave in to the wind and forgot his hair was there. Then he heard his mother yell, again. He couldn’t tell if she was yelling for him to go get in the car or not. He assumed she was because she’s always screaming for him to do things that she didn’t think he was doing fast enough. He jumped up and began walking to the car.
He heard her yell again, much louder this time. His walk slowed a little. David tried to make out the words she was saying, but couldn’t. He decided she was either saying “Do it now” or “News flick pow.” Since the second made no sense, he continued his way back to the car. He considered that she might have been saying “Move it. Ow.” But, not for very long.
He gripped his hand on the door handle and jiggled it, but to no avail. His mother yelled again. He thought then how glad he was to not be in the house having to listen to her. She was so loud. He didn’t have keys to the car, he realized. He tugged on the handle frantically, hoping the door would fall open. It didn’t. By, now there were no pauses in between Joanne’s yelling, just her continuous voice from inside of the house making incomprehensible sounds.
He didn’t know what to do, so he waited by the door of the car, tapping his toes and pulling on his hangnail. The breeze had chilled his fingers until they were crisp and in need of moisture. He looked in the car for a bottle of lotion. His mother screamed again, so loud this time that the puppy across the street sat up from his grassy spot near the curb. David didn’t find any lotion. The last time this happened, he thought, it didn’t take her this long to come back outside. He felt sorry for Tony, having to listen to her face to face like that. David tried the handle again, desperate to get in. He yanked and wrestled with it until his welts were open and it looked like he, too, was a teacher of some kind, with red ink all over his hands. Then he heard Joanne distinctly—sobbing from the front room of the house, near the door they’d walked through to get inside. David paused.
Disobeying his mother, he walked back up to the front door and knocked like a parent. There was another pause, and then he heard heavy footsteps.
“Yes?” Tony said cheerfully.
Joanne was silent.
David did not want to talk to Tony, so he knocked again hoping to hear a different, more familiar voice this time.
“Look, what the fuck do you want kid?” Tony said. Much angrier this time.
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