Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Willie’s nightmares and bedwetting don’t happen if I’m in his room even though he tells me I don’t have to keep doin’ it. I often wind up there anyway - sleepwalking. I’ve been sleepwalking off and on most of my life. Most often when shit bothers me.
My mother’s complaining that the teachers are saying Willie’s acting out in school. So she tries to punish him for it instead of realizing what the problem is. He starts acting out even more.
The day after I turn seventeen, (Mom didn’t remember my birthday. Nobody did except Gina who baked me cupcakes and tried to kiss me) I’m getting back home in the morning after crashing at my buddy Dario’s. I went over there for a big boxing event that earned me over four grand in profit.
Five minutes after I walk in, I find out Max threw my brother’s mattress out the window because he pissed the bed again, threatening to put him in diapers, too.
Things are tense and no one will tell me what’s goin’ on. Not even Willie, who says nothin’ happened other than the mattress being tossed, but he’s sulky and it’s not easy to make him laugh these days. I know the feeling. I’m pretty damn serious myself nowadays.
I pull my mattress into his room for him. Sleep on the floor most nights anyway.
This goes on for a couple weeks and Willie doesn’t piss the bed, probably because I’m there and he feels safe.
Mom gets him a cheap mattress that’s barely three inches thick. It’s just foam covered by a thin cover that she puts a plastic sheet onto. It doesn’t even look new. The church gave her money for a new bed and she bought that secondhand for probably way less, spending the rest.
I take the shitty thing and let Willie continue to use my bed.
***
A Few Months Later
“Not even thirty bucks?”
She started off asking for sixty and dropped by tens until we got to thirty.
“Got none. And even if I had money, I’m not paying for booze again.”
Her face goes ugly, and I know what’s coming. A tantrum.
“I pay the bills around here, Killy. I’ve given up everything, all my hopes and dreams to be your mom and…”
I bark out a laugh. She pays? More like the government pays.
She keeps going. “I’ve done so much for you and you’re raking in cash and can’t even-”
“Do not start that,” I cut her off. “I’ve paid the electric bill the last few months, or we’d be in the dark. There’s food in the fridge because of me. You sold my brother’s Xbox that I bought for his birthday not two weeks ago, pretending we got broke into. I saw it in the window at Sully’s after Crackhead Joe told me you were the one who brought it in. I’ll pay for stuff for Willie, and I’ll pay for food, but I ain’t giving you cash so you can get drunk or buy booze for your asshole.”
Less than a year left and I’m taking Willie and I’m gone. Fucking gone.
I’m making good money with my bookie business, though I don’t leave any of that cash lyin’ around here or else she’ll spend it. I learnt that the hard way more than once, and four hundred bucks went missing a month and a half ago from my jeans pocket not two feet away from me while I was fuckin’ sleeping.
She glares at me with hate. Yeah. She hates her own son because he won’t help her get drunk. I give no fucks.
When Max left for that month while she thought she was being evicted, she moped on the couch like she was in a depression for weeks. Then there was another asshole here for three nights before Max came back and beat up the other asshole.
She took him back. Again. And then got into a fight with Sandra Iadanza over him, accusing her of calling social services.
Today she’s got another black eye along with her new ‘engagement’ ring.
She’s calling him her fiancé now; he bought her that cheap, shitty ring with a diamond so small you need a magnifying glass to see it. This was his grand gesture after the black eye. He flirts with everything in a skirt in the building and I’ve heard their arguments – he’s fucking around as much as he wants.
Three days after I saw that ring on my mother’s finger, I also saw him staggering out of Iadanza’s at one in the morning on the other side of our complex coming back from the pizzeria and there stood Sandra on the doorstep in a slutty outfit with the bandage over her eye where she had to get stitches from a scrap with my mother.
Word is that Raymond’s father is in jail again for writing more bad checks. I’m hoping when he gets out, someone tells him about Max, and he kicks Max’s head in. Johnny Iadanza is a crazy motherfucker. It’d be fun to watch.