(This short story won second place in my college short-story contest in 2018)
Spoon Lane
Anderson Union High School bus #94 squeals to a stop and the yellow double doors swing open. The bus driver, my Aunt Pat, wishes me good luck as I drag and stall my exit. I dread the half-mile walk home, more so today than any other in my 16 years. I glance at her over my right shoulder and tears begin to sprout from the corner of my blue eyes. I wipe them away.
“You got to go, Janet,” she says, “Get it over with.”
I step out onto the dirt. Five mailboxes line the road; all are labelled SPOON. I mindlessly clutch envelopes from the box reading T. Spoon to deliver their mail because it’s on my way home and to stave off the ineveitable; I go inside for a chat with my cousins and enjoy an ice-cold Coke. The telephone rings––Mom wants me home.
I have spent my entire life in the tiny town of Cottonwood, California. I say I am from Cottonwood. In truth, I’m not sure. I have a Cottonwood address, Anderson phone number, attended Cottonwood Elementary schools and now am at Anderson Union High School––appropriately named the Bermuda Triangle.
I am in a sea of cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. No action escapes notice––ever. I am safe from reproach only with my cousins––my cohorts in crime––33 of my 56 first cousins live in Cottonwood proper.
I trek toward home, kicking small rocks from the dirt and gravel with toes encased in black and white Converse tennis shoes. I approach a muddy, slushy pond, divided in two by the road. I grab the contraband from the right front jeans pocket and toss it among the cheerful daffodils, planted years before by my grandmother. I think of her as I stare at the flowers, belying my mood. I wonder what she would think of me… a black sheep… knowing what was hiding in the muck.
Half-way home the surge of a diesel motor snaps me into reality––it’s my dad. I slump shoulders and slow my walk to a crawl. He waves, and I am grateful he doesn’t stop for me––that’s his way––no special treatment just because I happen to be his daughter. I think how now I’ll be walking into a full blown confrontation and how at least I won’t have to hear “just wait until your dad gets home.”
Once home, I trudge heavy feet up the porch of the yellow house at the end of Spoon Lane. The sliding doors open; Mom’s face is the color of gray ash as she tells me she had an interesting phone call from Mr. Litaker, the school’s principal before I step inside. I say I know and look around for Dad. His chair is empty, and I know he is still outside. I stomp to my room, slam the door and throw myself down upon the squeaky springs of my bed.
Within moments, Dad roars, “Janet Lee, get out here. Now!”
I’m not surprised to hear both names are called, the famous code for I’m doomed. I explain to both parents what happened, holding nothing back. Daddy wants to know what I did with it all. I say they are in the pond. Sharp pangs stab at my intestines but it is my elbow he grabs and marches me in silence to the scene of one of my crimes. I dig in the mud. By now a cold spring rain is drizzling then increases in intensity. I wonder if God is weeping over my sins.
“Dad, I’m telling the truth. I threw them in there, but I can’t find them. Please, can we go? I’m freezing,” as I extend muddy reddened hands before him.
I wash the sludge from my hands, relishing the water’s warmth. I wash the tears stains off my cheeks, change into pajamas––pink with large, white polka dots––and crawl under bedding. Mom and Dad are arguing in their room next door.
Mom says I ought to be flogged. Dad says just take her driver’s license and keys for the summer. Their bedroom phone rings––twice, before Mom says a weak, timid hello.
A knock at my door drives me from my cocoon. My mother’s shrill voice squawks that my arraignment is set for 10:00 the next morning, in Cottonwood. The door opens and she shakes her index finger and launches a tirade, a litany of my evils. For the umpteenth time, she asks what kind of mother will people think she is for all my bad behavior. I say she should worry more about what I think.
The door slams. I retreat beneath the handmade quilt Grandma Spoon willed me. I position the goose-down pillow over my ears and close the baby-blues. I dream my mug shot, on over-sized posters––WANTED––decorate the walls of the Post Office and the halls of my school. Morning comes. My brother and sister get dressed for school. Dad left for work in the woods at 3:00 a.m. and Mom reminds me I have other places to go. No one asks if I slept well.
Mom’s philosophy is that if you’re not early, you’re late. It’s 9:15 a.m. and we pile into the ‘65 Belair and make the five-minute drive into town. She says nothing, thankfully. My stomach bubbles like a volcano of baking soda and vinegar. The makeshift courtroom, in the Cottonwood Library, scant of furniture and dimly lit, is empty but for us, two silent souls.Teary-eyed teenagers with stern and weary parents begin to shuffle in two by two. The air, stale, still, and thick with tension suffocates. Judge McCabe swaggers in and slides into position. The “all rise” does not come, but we stand anyway. I am surprised that I am first on the docket. I can’t detect his mood.
“How do you plead?” he asks.
I answer I am guilty. Mom stuns the room with a request that I be sent to Juvenile Hall. I want to burst with laughter at the thought ––me decked out in pin-striped prison garb. But I tamp the urge down deep. (I notice I’m getting good at that.) I think the request is ridiculous. The looks on the faces of everyone in the room echo my sentiments. No one breathes. The judge stares deep into my mother’s eyes and questions her.
“Does she meet her curfew? Does she do her chores? Does she get good grades?” he asks. He looks annoyed.
Mom answers yes to all three.
“Lady, you don’t have a problem, a couple of joints is nothing. Request denied,” he announces as he whacks the gavel onto the wooden table and calls for the next lawbreaker. The even more stale, suffocating air, fills with the sound of breath escaping our lungs. Everything is blurry. I smile at the vindication, and we file out and into the car. Mom is bristling.
She’s fuming as she informs me David Wilkerson (a religious leader) will hold a meeting in Redding next week and we are going. I say I’d have rather gone to juvie. She adds that maybe I’ll learn to appreciate her. I say I don’t know why she thinks her own daughter is so bad, when clearly, even a complete stranger can see differently. This escalates her anger to a level never seen in all my 16 years. And believe me, I’ve drawn her ire many times in my short life.
She drives me to my school, and I am grateful to escape. Exiting the vehicle, I wonder how I’ll survive the summer months at home, this being the last week of classes. I consider summer school.
It’s now dusk as I sit at my cheap, purple particle-board desk, writing my essay on the second World War for American History. A melancholy ballad about the Edmund Fitzgerald plays on KRDG, the local pop-rock radio station. Mom and Dad discuss the events of the day rather loudly in their bedroom. The phone rings and they quiet. I think I am in a déjà vu. Mom says into the phone she thinks that a great idea, thank you and she will make the arrangements. I hear the click of the receiver. They whisper. I strain to figure out why. Mom and Dad say they are sorry to each other. I imagine them hugging and sicken at the thought they might be kissing.
Dad opens the door of my room without knocking. He tells me his sister, Aunt Carol, who lives in Marcola, Oregon, is sending me a bus ticket and I’m to spend the summer with her. I don’t know who is happier to hear the news: Mom or me. I ask if he thinks that is a good idea since the Oregon family is much more liberal than we Cottonwood strait-laced conservatives.
“Yes, I know, but this is what your Mom wants. She’s adamant about that David Wilkerson meeting, so you’re not leaving until that’s over.” In my mind I imagine he stretches his arms out in a big bear hug and whispers he only wants the best for me. Instead, as he leaves, he tells me Mom loves me. I say she has a funny way of showing it.
“Janet, she’s my wife and your mother. You know she comes first with me but that doesn’t mean we agree on everything. I may not agree with her on this latest episode, but we stand together, and I support her regardless,” Dad says with a wistful tone and a sad look in his green eyes as if remembering a few shenanigans of his own in his teenaged years.
I close the door, turn up the radio, and do a happy jig to the current tune, Paul McCartney and Wing’s upbeat song, “Band on the Run.” And begin to plan my flight.