Peanut Butter Cookie Crumbs (Interlude)

I remember sitting in the back seat of the old black Beemer with the hot leather seats in the summer time and the broken way beyond repair heating in the winter time. A car that, in spite of all its cracking leather, broken knobs and faulty wiring, I’m still not sure how we managed to afford but still, somehow, there it was.
I remember my mother sitting in the driver’s seat, her face turned away from mine and as much as she tried her best to hide it, I could tell that she was crying.
We were parked in front of the house, my mother in too much of a state to drive. The sad part was, even if my Mom had been in a condition to drive, we had no where to go. No where. Not at ten o’clock pm on Tuesday night anyway.
It was the hurled vases, baseless accusations and hysterical threats that chased us from the house that my Mother and I had called a home for the past three years. It was not until much later, however, that I was able to make any sense out of it. At the time though, all my ten year old brain could piece together was that it had something to do with my Mother’s sister’s husband Vincent and my Mother. We lived under the same house you see. My Auntie Lydia with her family, my Mother and I at 4046 Canary street. An address that will always stay with me. It was the first address I ever committed to memory. And the last. *sigh* A lot of good times there. A lot of memories. It was where I first read Walk Two Moons and Maniac Magee and Ender’s Game. It was also the place where I saw my first pair of real boobs (the baby sitter’s), where I learned how lies could hurt people (another baby sitter) and where I got tired of watching The Lion King (trust me, with younger cousins watching it three to four times a day it was kind of inevitable, no matter how awesome the movie is).
And as much as I probably should have been thinking about where we were going to sleep, as well as maybe figuring out how to get my Mom to stop crying, all I could seem to think about was my toys. All three chests full. My Power Ranger transforming Zords, my Beetle Borg action figures, my Double Dragon remote control car, my Nerf bow and arrow and Gatling gun, my Ninja Turtle tent, my Hot Wheels racing track with the four foot drop and double loopty loop…I could probably go on for hours if given the chance. It still kind of makes me smile just thinking about them. Those were good times those…more innocent times really.
Anyway, as I sat there, something told me that I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while and so like I typical child they were the things forefront on my mind. Appropriately or not.
The longer we sat there though, my mother trying her best to muffle the sound of her tears, the more the whole situation kind of just washed over me. And then Snap! Just like that, all thoughts of my three chests chocker block full of toys and of missing them evaporated. Interestingly enough, I’ve noticed that this sense of delayed reaction to certain, usually pretty traumatic, situations has followed me all the way into adulthood. Unhealthy or not.
“Mom…? Mom…?”
I watched as my Mother wiped her nose and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her coat. She turned to face me.
“Yes Hun?”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
My Mother sighed. Seemed to think about it for a moment.
“Sit back and put on your seat belt honey.” was her answer. “Everything is going to be fine.”
I did as I was told. Satisfied, my Mother turned back around in her chair, started the car and shifting the car into D, pulled into the street.

***

Safe Haven was a shelter for women on the run. Not like convicts or anything like that, no, but women who were running from abusive husbands or boyfriends or uncles or even fathers. It was supposed to serve as a, as the name suggests, a safe haven for them. And even though I knew that we weren’t exactly in that kind of trouble (flying vases non withstanding), I said nothing as my Mother explained our way in. She was doing what she had to do and so I let her do it.
They usually didn’t let women in with children as old as I was, is what Betty, the head of the shelter told my Mother. Betty was a small woman with a small voice but she had an airs about her where when she spoke you were compelled to listen.
“But for tonight, I think, we can make an exception.”
“Thank you, thank you.” My Mother said again and again, pumping Betty’s hand up and down until I thought that she might even pull it off..
“Okay, okay. Come on, let’s get you two settled in. It’s late.”
The Shelter was a two story house that had been left to Betty when her father had passed five years prior. She had once been a victim of an abusive relationship and knew first hand that many a time when a woman did finally find the courage to leave, often times they had no where to go. As she hadn’t. and so she had decided to open up her home to women who needed a refuge, a place where they felt safe, a place that gave them time to figure out their next step. All of this I garnered from a conversation between my mother and Betty that I just happened to eavesdrop in on.
The room we were given was a simple one. Two single beds with old hospital blankets and an ancient dresser. Unpacking my pajamas and toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste (she had managed to pack a small travel suitcase with the bare essentials) my Mother instructed me to get ready for bed. It was way past my bed time and I readily obliged. Five minutes later I was crawling into bed and then in spite of the strangeness of the room, five minutes after that I was asleep.

***

I woke up to the sound of voices, lots of voices, most, if not all of them belonging to women. Chatting and laughing and gossiping, as well as the sounds of footsteps on stairs and a faint sizzling that after a whiff of the air revealed itself to be that of grease in a frying pan with bacon. Like a snake to a charmer I found myself suddenly on my feet and heading for the stairs…I was hungry.
There were women everywhere. In the sitting room, in the kitchen, along the hallway…no kids though. Well, none my age anyway. I did see a couple of them, maybe three maybe four years old skittering around with the kind of toys that three and four year olds like. Like the telephone with the wheels and the eyes and that made a different sound every time you pressed a different button. You know, toys like that.
Still in my pajamas, still crusty eyed with my eyes still crusty with sleep, when my Mother saw me (she was standing in the door way to the kitchen conversing with a heavy set woman holding a spatula) she quickly excused herself and rushing over to me was on the verge of ushering me back upstairs so I could wash up when the heavy set woman interrupted.
“Oh let the boy be Joyce. Let him at least have some breakfast first. He must be starving. Must have smelt the bacon from all the way upstairs. Didn’t you now sweet pea?”
I nodded vigorously.
Moving over to me the heavy set woman wrapped an arm around my shoulder and leading me to the dining room and gestured to a chair.
“Now sit down and I fix you up a plate. Auntie Frida will take care of you.”
Needless to say that I liked her instantly. And loved her cooking. According to her, after she had fried the bacon she had then gone ahead to fry everything else with the left over bacon grease. The eggs, the sausages, the pan cakes, the French toast. Everything had the faint taste of bacon in it…it was the kind of cooking that clogged your arties and could kill you at forty. I absolutely loved it. Loved it so much so that I ate until I couldn’t eat anymore and I still wanted to eat more.
Seeing that I had eaten to my heart’s content and then some, my mother sent me upstairs to shower and get changed.
I didn’t go to school that day. Or the day after that. Or for the rest of term. I think that was around the time that my Mother decided to home school me…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
I spent my days watching TV, reading anything and everything placed in my hands and getting fat from Auntie Frida’s cooking. And man could that woman cook. And bake. Apple crumble, Strawberry short cake, the richest cheese cake I’ve ever eaten, Oatmeal cookies, almond cookies, sugar coated white chocolate-chip butter cookies with M&M’s but my favorites, my absolute faves were Auntie Frida’s Saucer Sized Peanut Butter Cookies. Yup, that’s what she actually called them: Auntie Frida’s Saucer Sized Peanut Butter Cookies. She said that one day, when she opened up her own bakery and she had her own menu, that’s exactly what they would be called.
When fresh out of the oven they warm and soft and gooey inside but just crunchy and crumbly enough to give it that “Yep, now that’s one cookie” feel.
It got to the point where Auntie Frida baked three or four of them everyday just for me. My Mother didn’t always agree with this of course, (I was quite the chubby kid not to mention the damage it was doing to my teeth) but auntie Frida always seemed to find a way to side step my mother’s protests and deliver them on time. With a tall glass of milk and a good half hour sometimes an hour of some good conversation. We would sit at the dining room table and we would talk…about everything. I loved these chats because she would talk to me as if I was an adult and not some clueless nine year old kid. I’m not quite sure how my Mother viewed these chats of ours but she did nothing to hinder them.
She gave me books to read as well. I don’t know where she would get them but whenever I was finished with one, she always had another one in hand to give me. Misery by Stephen King, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Rain Maker by John Grisham, She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and many, many more. Auntie Frida was pretty much my captain and ranking officer in my virgin foray into the world of adult fiction. And since I wasn’t exactly in school I had plenty of time on my hands I tore through them at, as she put it, “a speed called high.” Not spending more than two days on one particular book. And then we would talk about them. About the stories, about the characters, about what words were used and why and what the author was trying to say when he used them. It was my very first book club. My very first Lit class. And then one day, one day it all came crashing to a halt.

***

It was a Friday night, I remember that much. I had just finished watching that year’s Soul Train Music Awards, quite intrigued by LL Cool J’s and The Bone Thugs N Harmony’s performances of “Doin’ It” and “Cross Roads” respectively. LL Cool J’s because of the winding women in skimpy clothing (obviously) and Bone Thugs because the theatrical set piece (complete with a horse and carriage) they managed to turn their performance into.
Even though it was pretty late (probably around midnight) my plan was to grab a couple of Auntie Frida’s peanut butter cookies from the jar in the kitchen, a glass of milk and get me a couple of chapters in (I was reading Dune by Frank Herbert) before I went to sleep.
Knowing that my Mom wouldn’t approve of the midnight snack I sat down at the dining room table and munched away, breaking the cookies into quarters then eighths and then dunking them in the milk. I would slowly count to five before pulling the pieces out of the milk and shoving them into my mouth. There were crumbs and soggy bits of cookie everywhere as a result. On the table, in the milk, on my hands, shirt and around my mouth.
I was moving onto my second cookie when I heard it. A choked and ceaseless sobbing. Not very loud but still loud enough for me to notice. There were two or three bedrooms on the first floor (Auntie Frida’s inclusive) and so I figured that the sobbing was coming from one of them. At first I was just going to ignore it, it was really none of my business, but then the sobs were joined by words. Not audible enough to decipher the words but they were audible enough for me to know who the words belonged to. Armed with this knowledge I only hesitated for a moment. Then I was up out of my chair and padding across the carpeted floor towards the side of the house with the down stairs bedrooms.
Her door was slightly ajar. Just enough for me to see in but not enough for her to notice that there was someone watching her. In her big faded yellow happy face night shirt, Auntie Frida sat on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands, the little moonlight that managed to peek around the edges of the curtains glinting off of a piece of steel resting on the bed next to her. It took a moment for me to process what it was and then…and then…and then I just stood there. I was frozen in place. Fascinated by the shoulder racking sobs, the words that streamed from her lips that sounded like some sort of prayer and ultimately by the glint of a gun. Not a toy, not a replica but a real gun.
Looking back, I should have done something; barged in, given her a hug, told her it was going to be alright, anything. But in the end, I wound up doing nothing. As she wiped the tears from her face with a corner of her night shirt, sniffling and muttering to herself, I did nothing. As she shakily took a sip from an almost finished quarter of cheap looking whisky, I did nothing. As she took the piece of killing steel and stuck it in her mouth, I did nothing. And as she pulled the trigger, BANG! Spraying blood and brain and bone everywhere, I did nothing.