14.
SOME MORNINGS WHEN I WAS A KID I WOKE IN THE DARK of my single bed, my mother curled into my back. Shadowy memories of metal in muted light kicked around my mind – fresh images of my mother’s manicured hand wrapped around a giant keyring, jagged with all those steel keys and slamming it into my stepdad’s forehead until it bled.
“Tiniest?” My mother would whisper. “Did you have any bad dreams?”
I pretended to be asleep because I liked the warmth of my mother next to me.
“Tiniest?” she’d whisper again, and she’d scratch my shoulders lightly with those red fingernails.
“No,” I’d answer finally. “I can’t remember any dreams.”
“Okay, Tiniest.” She’d slip out of my bed then, floorboards creaking.
When the door clicked shut behind her, I’d climb out of bed too, pull on my corduroys and Keds, my hand-me-down Charlie’s Angels T-shirt and I’d crank my bedroom window open silent as I could and slip out.
I’d walk my bike quiet over the oak leaves, then jump on and ride fast, the amber streetlights glowing as the dawn sky began to blue.
Some mornings I saw Michelle Miller’s mom getting into her Volvo station wagon for her long commute to the Livermore Labs where she made warheads. “What are you doing out this early?” she’d call as I sped towards her. “Be careful,” she’d shout as I whizzed past.
I wasn’t afraid.
I could ride that blue three-speed faster than anyone could ride or run and I knew every alleyway and shortcut in our town.
I peddled faster, imagining some helpless shadow chasing after me. I sailed across University Avenue, ditched down another alley and turned onto the bike path that lead down to San Francisquito creek.
Breathless and elated, I threw my bike down at the creek’s edge and tossed stones across the shallow water as the first commuter train crossed that old train bridge, chclack, chclack, chclack.
WHEN I GOT home, the house would still be quiet.
Only my stepdad up.
I’d creep into the kitchen and say, “Good morning, John.”
He’d smile at me and say, “Well, good morning, chickadee.”
And I’d pretend I didn’t notice the bandages on his head as he fried me a plateful of sliced bananas and leftover brown rice and we’d sit there at the butcher block table, the two of us, pouring honey over our bananas and rice and spooning all that soft sweet sticky mess into our mouths and we’d laugh and lick our lips because we shared this unspoken grateful feeling between us that, yes, we’d made it to breakfast just fine.