Your Mom’s back and she’s sitting on your couch. She ran off on you and your Dad when you were seven. You’re seventeen now, and you’re not doing so well.
“Your Dad still suck?” she asks.
“He’s making do,” you say. “He wasted a lot of time wondering where you’d gone and what he could have done to make you stay.”
“He used to tell the worst jokes and he snored,” your mom says.
You don’t say anything.
"His breath stunk too. I’m just saying. I had my reasons.”
You don’t say anything.
“If you’re just gonna sit there and not say anything, maybe I shouldn’t have come back at all.”
You ask your Mom, “Why did you come back?”
“I wanted to see how tall you got,” she says.
You stand up against the door-frame where they used to mark your height. The last mark is only three feet from the ground. Your mom marks the wood at over six feet.
“Those are my genes you know,” she says. “Your Dad and his whole family are real short. Fat too.”
“Is it your genes that are making me fail out of school and break into houses so that I can buy drugs?” you ask. “Or am I just doing that because my Mom ran off when I was seven?”
“Sorry kid,” you Mom will say. “But I’m betting it’s because you’ve been living with your Dad all these years. I mean, man does he suck.”
Just then your Dad walks into the house. He farts while chewing with his mouth open then he says something racist and makes a phone call to his real estate company to tell them to make a business deal that leaves thousands of low income families without a place to live. He’s bleeding from someplace on his body and he’s tracking blood on the carpet.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he says when he sees your Mom.
Your Mom takes off. After she’s gone, your Dad tries to clean up the blood with a rag that he wet with grape juice. It upsets you, but admitting that he’s doing something sucky would be siding with the mother who ran off on you all those years ago. So you get down on your hands and knees and help him rub grape juice into the carpet. While you’re down there, your Dad gets angry and hits you.
Happy Guess Who’s Back Day!
