The Fourth of July Read online

  Chapter 1

  It wasn’t even seven p.m., but my lower back and ankles must have thought it was after midnight because they were killing me. Anthony had totted all the boxes in; he even put the dismantled bed rails in our respective rooms together. I never thought that our two-bedroom apartment back home would fill up our new house.

  Propping my behind on the kitchen counter, I had to keep reminding myself that this was now home, at least for the time being. Not Washington State. I wouldn’t let Anthony watch me sulk or look like I was second guessing the decision. I had to play it cool. I had to make Planters, Georgia the bees knees or the cat’s meow, or what Anthony calls ‘the shit’ when he thinks I can’t hear him.

  I rolled my shoulders and looked at the disaster that was my kitchen and waged an internal battle. Unpack now or later? That was the question. It was Thursday sliding down the calendar, ending June in a heat wave.

  The lazy side was winning the war with the thought of, just crash on the unmade mattress. Sleep in. You drove cross country in record time. You’ll need your sleep you’ll start bright and early Monday morning.

  But my driven side, the side that saw procrastination and kills it slow, that side roared.

  Get it done now so you can play later. Take in some sites with Anthony. He’s never been in the South before. Make sure that he is comfortable with the move. You can sleep when you are dead.

  Gazing over what seemed to be an ocean of half opened boxes, I made a peace treaty with my war. I’ll just empty five boxes now, then call it a night and carry my sore ass to bed for a midday nap.

  I thanked God every night and every day for my son. Anthony had put together the kitchen table together that I had placed a box that felt as if it weighed as much as an elephant.

  Flipping open the flaps, I peered inside.

  Dang, another set of plates.

  I looked to the open cabinet to what I thought was the last set stacked high. I wanted to open another box, maybe mix it up a little and find the glasses. I needed something to drink out of once this manual labor for the night was finished.

  Stepping wide legged over my household contents, I heard it. It was a grunt coming from outside. A mother could hear her child’s dreams if she listened careful enough.

  Being selected to play D-1 basketball over what was a trillion years ago, I turned into a track star and bolted to the door.

  My son, my dear boy, at the ripe age of fifteen years old was on top of another boy from what I could see pounding his fist into the boy’s face.

  “Anthony!” I hollered, dismissing the porch steps; I hurtled over a flower pot and was in the street. “Anthony, what the hell has gotten into you?”

  Taking the collar of his shirt and balling it into a fist, I pulled my son down to look me in the face.

  “Ah man, I thought we were going to see a good one.” A tall brown haired kid said in the middle of the crowd.

  I hadn’t notice, but it looked as if someone had taken a middle school and a high school and tipped it on its side. The contents that fell out were kids of various ages in front of my house.

  “Dude, who is that lady?” one tall boy said.

  He quickly shut his trap when I glared at him.

  “Boy, you better answer me and now!”

  I couldn’t help but feel compassion for the young man that was on the ground. He struggled to get up while wiping his bloody nose with the back of his hand.

  From the way that my son was heaving and all red faced, Anthony would have killed him, if I hadn’t come out of the house in time, but now the kid would die another slow and ugly death of embarrassment.

  “I want to go home!” he shouted down at me.

  This time last year, Anthony and I stood face to face. Now, I had to take a half a step back to look up at him.

  I let go out of his shirt and let him cool off. There was no need to snatch him up to drive my point home. The point was you don’t yell at me and I don’t have a problem with whipping his little ass.

  I heard the thunder of an engine before I saw the pick up nearly peeling the asphalt off the cul-de-sac. I heard the whispers of the kids behind me and a moment of dread began to wash over me.

  Three large men hopped out all with an intense look on their faces. My son, God bless him, stood in front of me doing his best to shield me. His already bruised and battered knuckles flexed and balled again.

  “What in the Sam hell is going on ‘round here?” the driver of the pickup asked, pushing kids out the way until he saw from what I guessed was his son on the ground. “Everybody went dumb, deaf and blind? Tell me what happened.”

  The two other men stood at his side. All three wore tattered jeans and work boots.

  Construction, I thought.

  “Well, they got in a fight,” some mousy kid said, pointing at my son and the boy that erected himself off the ground.

  He was busy dusting himself off and not looking into the eyes, from what I guess of his extremely disappointed father.

  I felt as if this were high school all over again, but this time I was the principal.

  “Hello. I’m Lauren.”

  He looked right past me to his son, who from the looks of it was trying to make his tall frame smaller.

  “It looks like your son and mine got into a scuffle,” I answered, pulling Anthony closer to me. That got his attention like I knew it would.

  More whispers started and Anthony turned and glared at his peers. With just the look alone, he silenced them.

  The two men that flanked the beaten boy’s father looked as if they had swallowed a cat whole. They looked at each other.

  His upper lip pulled back at the corner showed his teeth.

  “You?”

  His question was filled with more distain than I would have liked. At this point, I would have rather a look of confusion and barrel of questions.

  “Yeah, me.”

  I was trying to match his tone the best I could.

  Turning away, I looked at my son with fists so tight that I could see the tendons pull and strain under his flesh.

  “Now, can you tell me what was the fight about, and if you lie, there will be trouble!”

  Anthony’s chin hit his chest and he shook his head.

  “Really?” I took a step closer to him. “You haven’t been here for ten hours and you started a fight.”

  “I didn’t start it. He did,” he spoke, his voice loud and quivering, lifting his chin to the kid.

  I looked at the young man that repeated my son’s posture, shoulders slumped showing a lack of bravado that young men do when they get caught. The one black eye that was beginning to swell looked at the blood streaked pavement. Either, he was pissed that he got his ass whipped or angry that the neighborhood had seen it. It was probably a mixture of both.

  Feeling the eyes burning into the back of my neck, I knew the three men were looking me over as if I had crossed a line.

  “Did he whip ya?” the father growled to his son.

  Silence.

  By this time the other neighbors started to come out on their porches and watch the free entertainment. Great, now people are going to think there goes the neighborhood. It wasn’t really hard to notice that I was the only black person on this street. The few other times that I had traveled down to Planters. It was painfully obvious that I was going to be the only person of color on this block.

  “Boy, you better answer me. Did that boy whip ya?”

  “Yes, sir he did,” the mousy kid said. “The whole neighborhood saw it.”

  Note to self, never, if I could help it, do anything out of character that could land me in jail because this kid would lay his lips on the table.

  The boy’s father turned every shade of re
d on the color wheel. “Now pick up your pride and shake his hand.”

  The boy’s mouth dropped and another crashing wave of embarrassment washed over him.

  “Yes sir,” he mumbled, sticking out a long, bruised hand out to my son.

  Anthony stared a little too long at the boy’s hand until I nudged him.

  “Are we good,” the boy asked.

  It wasn’t what he asked that gave me pause, it was how he said it. The kid looked back at me instead of my son, which came off as odd. If I had to drill Anthony until the sun came up, I wanted to know what the hell this was all about.

  Anthony took one look at me. His stance was strong and masculine and it made me proud that I didn’t raise a weak child.

  “For now,” Anthony grumbled, giving the boy’s hand a firm shake. Looking dead in the boy’s eyes.

  Anthony left me standing there as he pushed at the crowd, moving up the driveway through the open door to our new house.

  The kids began to disperse and make their way to their homes; I turned my attention to the adults. “Look, I’m sorry. We’re new to the neighborhood, and believe me, this wasn’t the way that I wanted our first impression to be.”

  There are just a few things that I hate about myself; the first would be that I never could watch a movie without crying at some point, and second, the nervous and stupid smile that I couldn’t wipe off my face. I know right about now I probably looked like a demented clown, from the goofy smile.

  The two other men took a few steps closer to me, like they were analyzing me for some sort of research study. I’d been getting these looks ever since I was nineteen years old. But right now, at thirty-four, and in the midst of these aggressive looking men, I was uncomfortable about the questions that they probably didn’t have the balls to ask me.

  “Lauren, is it?” the boy’s father asked me, this time his question didn’t have the tint of malice in it as before. “Well, ah. Boys, they tussle every now and again. Lady like yourself wouldn’t know nothing ‘bout that. So um, ya new, huh?”

  “Just moved in today,” I answered, looking back to my home.

  The two men at his side kept staring. I wondered if they lived in this neighborhood, too.

  “Look, I’m sorry about all of this. I will talk to my son and I can reassure you that this will never happen again.”

  “No worries. Like I said, boys will be boys. Now, you tend to ya boy and I will tend to mine. Fair?”

  His face was hard looking with leather tough crow’s feet that dug at the corners of his eyes. He and I looked were roughly the age, but he looked like his life had been long and unyielding.

  “By the way, my name is Ernest. This here is my little brother, Marvin and my friend, Leland. You need anything you just holler.”

  Like his son, there was something else. Something that I couldn’t put my finger on. Like a child lying about a piece of candy so they wouldn’t get in trouble.

  His face was pleasant, yet it seemed painted on.

  “Likewise,” I smiled, turning to address all three men.

  Marvin seemed to gaze off in the opposite direction of me when I caught his eye. Leland couldn’t take his eyes off. His look was a mix of hunger and disgust.

  Welcome to the South.

  “You fellas have a good night.”

  I turned and fast walked my ass up the driveway into the house.

  “Anthony!” I shouted, and my unfurnished house echoed back to me.

  I went up the stairs and knocked on his bedroom door.

  “Open up.”

  Opening the door and turning his back to me, he lay across the mattress on the floor with his eyes piercing holes into the ceiling.

  “You know that I can stay up all night until I get an answer from you.” He didn’t move. “I can out last you and you know that.”

  He huffed.

  “It was stupid. Don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

  Mothers now and days would let sleeping dogs lie. He and I had a rough few days. We went through everything from saying goodbye to all our family and friends, driving literally across country, and tittering on the verge of tipping over the edge of exhaustion.

  “Well, that is too bad. You are going to talk to me, and you are going to talk to me right now!” I demanded, pushing his long legs to the side of the bed so I could sit down. “What did the kid do to piss you off so bad? Did he make fun of you for not having an accent?”

  I smiled.

  He rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t fight him for that.”

  “Then why did you fight him, son? We can do this all night,” I warned.

  He sat up and put his back up on the wall.

  “It’s what he said.”

  Anthony shook his head.

  I watched as whatever got my son so fired up replayed in his head.

  “I’m all ears,” I said, shifting back on his unmade bed and propping up on the wall.

  “The kid’s an asshole. I bet his whole entire family is laced with them.”

  That was a strong statement coming from my kid, but I let him continue.

  “After I brought the mattresses in I went out and saw some guys shooting some hoops. Thought I would introduce myself and join in.” He shrugged. “I was killing them, Mom. I was doing everything that Uncle Larry showed me. I crossed that kid over and damn near broke his ankles. I went in for the layup and we won.”

  As quickly as his smile came, at the recall of the memory, it faded.

  I played sports growing up and I knew how competitive it could be.

  I sighed. “So, you beat him in a pick-up game, he started to talk trash and you handled business, right?” Trying my hardest to understand why scene from Mad Max was being played out in my front yard.

  “No. More to it than that.” I could see him trying to get his words together. “He said that I played well. I played just like… you know.” He shrugged.

  “I’m a great reporter and I think I’m a pretty kick ass mom, but a mind reader is something that I haven’t mastered.”

  “He said, I played just like the n-words on television. Not the rapper n-word but with the –er on the end. I hate that word.”

  I grinned at my son, but we both went through this type of garbage and I knew how the word affected me. Even with that said, I often forgot what it did to him.

  I had to kneel on my knees to kiss my son’s blonde head and I held his hand.

  “There is always going to be hate. No matter what you do. You have to be a good person; you have to not let someone else’s ignorance make you resort to violence, you understand?”

  His not so little cheeks turned red.

  “You’re my mom. I can’t have anyone disrespect you.”

  He looked down at his lap and I could feel the anger start to rise in him again. “Nana and Papa are black. Uncle Larry and Aunt Lakeisha are black. I couldn’t let the piece of trash say that and make it sound like some compliment.”

  I would have loved to tell him that it was just a word and use the whole sticks and stones thing, but I’ve had a few busted knuckles in my day living in the Northwest from that very word.

  “I’m a big girl and thank you for sticking up for me, but it’s my job to protect you, not the other way around.”

  He gritted his teeth and flared his nose.

  “We’re new here and let’s try to fit in, okay? If you don’t want to be friends with that boy, leave him alone. Y’all probably will be going to the same school in the fall.” I tried to reassure him.

  Even though I prayed that he and I wouldn’t be in Planters that long.

  “Ant, remember the ass you kick today may be the ass you kiss tomorrow.”

  “Screw him.”

  I gave him the eye and he straightened up.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I continued, struggling to get up off the mattress, “Get your bed put together and put some sheets on it. I’ll order pizza in a few. And for the love of God, take a shower.”


  I fanned my nose.

  “You haven’t been here for a day and it already smells like a locker room.”

  I closed the door to my son’s room, hoping that this would be the only incident while we were here. I wished that while the both of us were here in Planters our neighbors would be cordial, if anything. There was need to make enemies.

  ★★★★★★★★★★

  “You gonna embarrass me in front of the whole neighborhood like that?”

  Ernest Sr. slapped his son again.

  The moment that he got into the house he knew what his father was going to do to him. He had stripped him down to his underwear in front of his uncle and his dad’s friend.

  “Then his black ass momma had to come and save yo’ sorry ass.”

  Another slap that one made him hit the floor. The cement floor felt cool on his bruised cheek. If Ernest Junior could ask for one wish, it would be for his father just to leave him there on the cold floor to die.

  He heard the scuffled sound of boots and the boy thought he would wet himself. Last time he came in with a D in history, his father kicked him until he began to vomit.

  “The boy has had enough, Ernest, let him be.”

  The boy unshielded his eyes and saw his father’s friend, Leland.

  “Hell, he already got the crap knocked out him from that boy across the street. Shit he feels bad enough, don’t ‘cha think?”

  Bare chested and cold, the boy sat up and saw Leland hand his father a beer.

  “My only son. My only child.”

  Ernest threw his hands in the air, spilling beer foam on his son’s bare legs.

  “I need for you to understand that you have made a fool of me. Made me look like an ass in front of all those people.”

  A sick grin came on his face and his son winced.

  “But, you are going to pay for this. In the morning, you are going to march your ass across that street and you make nice with him.”

  “Dad!” the kid yelled, then caught himself.

  His father raised his hand up like a viper. He was ready to strike his son.

  “You become that boy’s best friend if you have to. You smile and grin at his momma.” Pausing and shaking his head in disgust at the thought of the family across the street, he continued, “You get close, and when the time is right, we make them…. uncomfortable.”