It was only a matter of time before Lafayette had to go back to school again. He looked out the kitchen window even though the blazing sun was burning his eyes. It was the last day of Spring Break and he wasted every moment of it by staying at home. He leaned closer to the window and pressed his cheek onto the smooth hot glass.
The kitchen smelled of two things. One was alcohol. His father had been drinking again, and even after many lectures Lafayette had gotten about what a bad thing beer was to the body, his hypocritical father had been hitting the bottles again. The air was starting to get sticky and humid, and the lingering odor of bourbon and sweat as no help to the fact that Lafayette was trying to avoid the annoying heat that stuck to him like feathers on tar. The other smell that was in the air was smoke. Not just any smoke, though. It wasn’t from any cigarettes, his father knew better than that. It was burnt syrup and eggs. The awkward food combination could only mean one thing: his father was drunk yet again. He whirled around to find his father coughing and choking down overdone eggs and syrup as hard as the pan it was stuck to. Lafayette’s hunch was right.
Mr. Cano was an alcoholic, and his drinking binges were overbearing. Lafayette witnessed every downed bottle for every day in the sixteen years he’d been alive. His father always kept alcohol in the house wherever he could, even in Lafayette’s bed. Once, when Lafayette was about nine, he found some of his father’s drinks between his own mattresses and tasted a little. It was warm and it burned down his throat with a bitterness that made him gag. He tossed it out and threw up on the sheets. When Mr. Cano found out what his son had done, he decided to punish him. A closet, a belt, and a single swinging light bulb were all Lafayette could remember before everything became a single blur of black and white, as well as the echoes of the cries of the child he was. Lafayette thought that he could get his mother to help him, so he told her everything that happened, from the alcohol to the incident in the closet. He even had the marks to prove his story true. His mother was speechless. She stretched her arms towards him. Instead of the sweet, comforting hug he was expecting, Mrs. Cano grabbed him by the shoulders, threw him in the closet, and screamed at him. Lafayette couldn’t understand what he did wrong. When he tried to speak she slapped him and he was instantly trapped in another snare of pain.
Mrs. Cano felt as if she was as equal in power as any other man, especially her husband, so she thought that she was the best thing for her family. She found herself doing everything every day and considered herself the strongest person in her family, even the neighborhood. She didn’t need alcohol to have temperament issues as intense as her husband’s.
Lafayette thought that the worst would be over once he got some help for his family, so in the dead of night he called the police to ask for a place to take the family to counseling, to help bring their family together. When he heard someone coming into the room he ran into the closet and locked himself in from the inside. It was his mother coming from the living room into the kitchen where the phone was. Her feet patted swiftly against the tile floor as she made her way towards the telephone. She picked up the phone and held it to her ear, just in time to hear the woman on the other end ask for their address.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry, but it looks like we won’t be needing your services. Looks like our little boy is playing some dirty tricks on our trustworthy, honorable policemen about our family. He needs a stern… talking-to. Thank you, thank you. Goodbye and goodnight.” She set the phone onto the receiver and called her child out. “Lafayette? Lafayette, come out this instant. Who in the hell told you to call the police on your dear, loving family? Young man, you are in the absolute worst trouble of your damn life. Come out right now!” His mother screamed. She picked up the phone, answering machine and all, and slammed it into the white tiles underneath her feet. The plastic shattered and she screamed profanities into the frayed wires. Lafayette peered through the keyhole, breathing quickly and silently. A tipsy Mr. Cano stumbled down the stairs to check what the noise was.
“Now who in the hell was that s’posed ta be? Ain’t nobody tell you you ain’t s’posed to be up at this hour? Damn, what is it, midnight or somethin’? Get back to bed already dammit!” He glared at his wife and burped a little. “An’ just who the hell was that?” he asked, rubbing his forehead. Mr. Cano was already suffering the hangover symptoms scheduled for the next day, and that didn’t help him calm down.
“Nothing, nothing. It was just our town policemen checking up on our wonderful family,” his wife snarled sarcastically.
“Wait, you tellin’ me you called up the damn police on me? Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me woman! You tryin’ to start somethin’ with me or what?”
“Me? You think I had something to do with this crap? Me? I’m the mother! I’m everything to this family and you think I’m trying to screw us up? Idiot!”
“We’ll see how much of everythin’ you are when you’re lookin’ up at me from the damn floor!” Mr. Cano swung his hands and picked up a sharp, glistening piece of metal from their ruined phone and lunged at his wife. Lafayette couldn’t take his eyes off for one second. In another flash of blinding shadows and cries, he knew at that moment that he was the cause of his mother’s death. And he couldn’t stand it.
He pushed his father out of the way to fix his breakfast so that his last parent wouldn’t at least choke to death. As turned to hand his father the repaired meal, he noticed a fresh, unopened bottle of Budd Light sitting on the middle of the counter.
“Hey, what in the hell are you doing with another one o’ these in the morning?” Lafayette gasped, and he snatched the bottle while pushing the breakfast plate into his father’s hand.
“Jus’ one more. I’ma stop after this one, I swear. Jus’ one.” Mr. Cano slurred his words and threw the empty bottle that was beside him into the wall. “Jus’ one. Jus’ one.”
“You know you’ve had too many. Get off it already.” Lafayette scowled at his father while trudging to the sticky wet wall to pick up the shattered bronze glass. The air was getting thick with the smell of beer, just like his father’s head.
“You don’t tell me whatta do ‘cuz I’m yer dad and I ain’t takin’ no crap from you, boy,” Mr. Cano growled and slammed his fist down onto the table he sat at. “Now bring me another one,” he muttered.
“Fine. You can have another. I don’t give a crap. But next time I’m hiding these things, sure as *edit your post and this will go away*.”
“You stupid or somethin’? *edit your post and this will go away* cain’t be sure, it’s *edit your post and this will go away*!” Mr. Cano laughed at his joke. Lafayette rolled his eyes and went back to the window.
Lafayette’s eyes drifted along the sidewalk outside of the house until he stopped at a moving figure. A girl was hopping along the concrete, her front braids bouncing around like little jump ropes. Lafayette wondered what a girl like her was doing in his dump of a neighborhood. She wore nicer clothes than anyone else around did, even if it was just a clean jacket and jeans without any rips in them. All he had was one change of clothes for school and one for home because his dad thought that they’d never need any clothes with him around.
The girl was humming. He could hear her from inside the kitchen through the thin walls of the house. She seemed to be touching something, but there was nothing there. She turned to look straight into his eyes through the window. She smiled. He closed the curtains.
It was the first time anyone has done anything like that towards him; any act of joy or happiness always seemed to draw itself away from his house. He peeked outside once more to see her sitting on the sidewalk mumbling something to herself. He wanted to know why she decided to hang out by his house and his sad little mess of a neighborhood instead of the rich one she probably came from. He hesitated, then walked on outside. As if able to hear his thoughts, she automatically got up and greeted him when he stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Hi there. I’m Secily. I just moved here, sort of. So hi, what’s your name? You live here huh? I live here too. But not here, over there I think.” Secily pointed and talked in little fast sentences and used her hands to spring some emotion into her little introduction.
“I’m Lafayette Cano. And what the hell do you mean by ‘I think’? Don’t you know where you live? Why don’t you ask your damn parents or somethin’? They probably do everything for you! They can just buy another damn house whenever their dumbass child gets lost.” he snapped. He saw the look of hurt on her face and wanted to scream for screwing up their conversation. He didn’t even know this girl and he was already getting at her about her parents.
“My parents left me when I was like four or something. They thought that they were being sneaky and wanted me to be alone with the other. They both wanted to be ‘the parent that left’ but they left at the same time and I’m alone now.” She waited a little, like she was listening. “Oh, I don’t even remember their faces, but it’s okay. When I look at myself I think maybe I can see my dad or my mom. I don’t really care that they’re not here because I didn’t know them anyway. Where’s your mommy and daddy at?”
“Girl, I am not about to tell you no *edit your post and this will go away* about my damn personal business! Now get out of here!” Lafayette screamed. It was easy to tell where he developed his anger from, and he didn’t like it.
“Um, well, okay. See you at school, maybe. You look like my age. Doesn’t he?” She paused for a few seconds, mouthing out some words he couldn’t make out. “Of course he does. You’re taller than me, but that’s because you’re a boy. Bye bye, Lafayette.” And with that, she skipped away.
That night, Lafayette couldn’t take his mind off of her. No one ever talked to him before outside of home, let alone acknowledged his existence. He was alone at school and people usually avoided him. Then he had an idea. He thought that maybe he could become her friend. But the thought left his mind as fast as a rabbit trying to cross a highway. He noticed how easily she was scared by his angry outburst about family, so maybe he’d just have to be quiet. It was going to be difficult to even talk to this girl with the way he “dealt with” his anger. She wouldn’t be safe with his screaming, but he was going to have to tolerate it to be with her.
Weeks went by as he tried to talk with her. She rambled about this and that to him and her imaginary friend Remi. He wasn’t the only one alone out there in the world. Secily was alone enough to make a friend out of her imagination. She didn’t have anyone, but Lafayette still had his father, even if he was a drunkard. Secily had been traveling alone all this time to find someone to be with, someone to look out for.
Lafayette had been trying to be courteous to her, trying to be nice to her so that she’d get closer to him, but their relationship never changed. It seemed as though they were still the acquaintances they met on their first day. He was getting furious. He liked her so much, yet she showed no feelings towards him. All of this being nice and being happy for nothing. Now he knew why his father and mother never were. Being nice was useless.
Then, he pulled Secily into his house, right by the kitchen next to the closet. He thought that nevermore will he be seen being a gentleman in public. He didn’t want to keep her around. She was starting to cause him trouble. Mr. Cano walked by and grabbed another beer, not once looking at his son.
“You know, um, I talk to Remi all the time. He acts like a mommy and a daddy.” Secily smiled. “You ever think of that? Maybe you can talk to your dad. I see you walk by him like you don’t know each other. Why don’t you be friends? I don’t like seeing you and your daddy treat each other like—”
“Shut up!! You think you know everything when you never even had a damn family in the first place! What makes you think you can tell me any crap about mine? Why won’t you ever listen to me you stupid idiot?!” he screamed. He rose his hand up and struck it on Secily’s face, the slap so hard it stung his hand and left her cheek red. “Is it so damn hard to actually give a *edit your post and this will go away* about me? Is it so hard to frickin’ listen?!”
“Well… Maybe it’s because you just never say anything. When we first met you were able to say whatever you wanted however you wanted, but now it’s like… nothing. You never want to really talk to me anymore and I just wanted to help you. I wanted to know if you liked me, but you were never happy with yourself, you never screamed anything out anymore and I thought that maybe I did something wrong, so I tried to talk to you, talk about anything that can help make you talk too, and you never did. I really like you but if you don’t want to be the person you were when we first met, I don’t understand why you would get so worked up in the first place.”
“But I thought you’d like me if I was nice to you. Everyone seems to like people when they’re nice, when they’re good, but this doesn’t make no sense.”
“I didn’t meet you as a nice person, so I don’t expect you to be like that you know,” Secily whispered. She leaned into him and sighed. “Don’t hold back on who you are just for someone else. It’s not right, and it’s not you.” She kissed him then; the taste burned down his throat and made him feel fuzzy, the way the alcohol made his dad feel, only not in a way that would hurt him in the end. He realized that he didn’t have to change himself in order to have her like him, to have anyone like him. And he was glad. Just because he was mistreated didn’t mean he had to avoid his past or who he was for other people.
“Just shut the hell up and kiss me again,” he snickered. He pulled her into the closet and locked it from the inside. He grabbed her hair and slammed her against the wall. “Didn’t I tell you to kiss me?”
“Yes, I just wanted to hear your voice again,” Secily replied. Lafayette smiled at her. “And see you smile.” She giggled.
“Good, ’cuz I’ma be smilin’ for you for a long time.” And his lips pressed against hers once again.
