Falling Down to Earth, CH. 1

First two pages of Chapter 1 from my recently-written memior about parent/child relationships, Falling Down to Earth. I'd love to hear what people think, and contact me if you'd like to read on:

I.

My son, my executioner

I take you in my arms

Quiet and small and just astir

and whom my body warms

Sweet death, small son,

our instrument of immortality,

your cries and hunger document

our bodily decay.

We twenty two and twenty five,

who seemed to live forever,

observe enduring life in you

and start to die together.

Donald Hall, 1955

M

om leaned on the horn of her dust-caked ’98 Land Rover with all of her hundred and few pounds. To the right side of the street, some construction workers were watching the street parade that had traffic backed up for nearly six miles. Their blatant laughter at her misfortune caught her attention, and the attention of her two children in the backseat.

            “You think that’s funny?” she screamed. Tears welled beneath her eyes and flooded her cheeks. She pounded her fists against the horn again and again, until the undersides of her hands and her knuckles were red as raw ground beef.

“Fucking limp-dick assholes!” Through sobs, she made raspy gasps for air. “I’m visiting someone in the hospital!” she lied.

There was nowhere to go. We were trapped in the transparency of the car, surrounded by flashing lights and the rhythmic snares of the passing parade. Mom put her head down on the wheel. After a moment, she raised her head, checking the status of my younger sister, strapped in the car-seat behind her. I caught her harsh glimpse in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were caked with running mascara, which now had reached her cheekbones and the side of her nose, making her look like a horrifying clown.

            I began to feel a warm tingle in my face. I clenched my fists to stop it. As much as I fought, I began to cry too. I cried because of the traffic, and because I was scared, and because my mother was crying. I cried because she cursed and because she lied. I cried mostly, though, because my father told me to take care of my mother and sister. He told me to be the man of the house. Since I was crying, there was no way I was doing what he asked.

The parade itself was a spectacle. The Radnor High School marching band led the way, dressed in maroon jackets with gold buttons and trim. Their drum major wore a white shako with a tall red plume, and a white cape and gloves. I imagined for a moment that I was there to watch and cheer them on, and quietly inched forward in my seat, sniffling and wiping my face, to keep my gaze fixed upon their leader. He had an angular jaw, jutting out from beneath his tall hat, making him look regal.  As quickly as the tears began, they were over. That’s the way my family has always been, though. We laugh and cry quickly. Then, forget. We feel in real-time, and then move on. How else can you keep moving forward? Maybe it was that I wasn’t used to seeing parades, but something about it that morning still felt special and ironic, before I even knew what irony was.

After an hour or more of watching and waiting, inching closer and closer to the intersection, a burly and fiercely mustached traffic cop waved us through. Mom accelerated sharply, screeching her way onto the entrance ramp for Interstate 76, westbound, toward central-Pennsylvania.

The drama of city blocks became a film-reel of trees, and then just highway. Makeshift vegetable stands and broken-down cars in front yards were the attractions. Every thirty or forty miles we’d pass an old gas station, still wood and with unkempt sprouts of grass around the perimeter, as though a divine finger had touched the earth in random spots and declared, “Life will be!” There were old brass pumps out front and sometimes an overweight attendant sitting out in a lawn chair, smoking a cigarette or drinking coffee.