The Flowers Read Free

disrespecting the police and authority and to hear about all the potential trouble I was going to be in if I didn’t go right and goodboy, straighten out and care about school and my education and get good grades. My mom had to be there with me too. She had to take off from work and listen and act like she was all worked up about me too, which she wasn’t, I knew it, because I heard her talking all the time on the phone about what she was up with, but the lady judge wasn’t going to notice nothing. Once I told my mom how the police dude threw a fart, she cracked up just like me, because it was funny, right? But I knew not to say nothing to a judge about what really happened. I’m not stupid. That judge, she wouldn’t have laughed, and then I don’t think my mom would’ve laughed no more, and she never laughed as much as me. She was tired, and she didn’t like to waste time because she was already way too busy.

    It was that my mom, if she wasn’t at her job, was out on dates and whatever. And sometimes she’d get in so late I wouldn’t be awake. That was better for me than when she was home, because when she was home, though I lived there and slept there, it was better to be inside a neighbor’s house than pissing her off. She could get all mad and complaining about me and go how I messed up this and that and she could yell at me how she couldn’t afford a maid to clean up after me, though once in a while a lady named Marta, a sister of a friend, would come to pick up the house and scrub the floors and wash windows and dishes and vacuum even under the torn couch cushions. That Marta thought I was all right because I made my own dinner and lunch and did my shit without nobody. She told me whenever she came too. That didn’t mean much to me except when I was getting yelled at and I knew it really wasn’t about none of what the yelling was about. Probably my mom’s screaming at me was that it used to be my sister, Ceci, she would yell at. Then it got to be me. I didn’t ever believe it was because I was a man or made bigger messes, like she said. My mom used to fight loud with my sister. She would get so she’d go after Ceci with belts or wooden hangers or whatever was near. One time it was a soda bottle. I remember that time good. I was eating banana after banana during the fight and my mom turned on me for one second too—maybe why was I eating all the bananas the minute she bought them—and my sister screamed right back so much it jumped back over to them and they called each other out, like they would go at it for real. Sometimes both of them would cry for a while during and after, though mostly it was my sister, once she got old enough, and meaner, until she finally stopped being at home much. Ceci wasn’t talking to me very much then either. Then they were both gone mostly. It was just, without my sister there, I was starting to have the whole house, like it was mine. I never got hit or yelled atlike Ceci. My mom would be around for maybe an hour or two, and she’d either change clothes and leave or be so tired she went into her bedroom and went to sleep.
    This one night I was watching the TV. I already ate a cheese enchilada frozen dinner, which was crap, and the fried chicken, which I loved but my mom said cost too much. My dog, who I named Goofy because of her floppy black ears even though she was a girl dog, was with me on the couch after she licked the tin containers all clean, dragging them all around with her tongue, then scratching and biting at her pulgas back near my lap, when all the sudden she heard something and she was digging her claws against my legs because she was on it before a human ear could, running so fast she was barely able to make a corner turn to the straight-ahead for the front door, barking all excited like it was somebody she hadn’t seen all day. I didn’t hear nothing, probably because I had that