BEFORE THE STORM, there’s peace. We all know this, so every time I sit in the living room with my mother, peacefully watching TV together in silence, I know something’s coming—as sure as the day follows the night. It never fails. Just like when she came in and knocked my damn cereal out of my hands a few days ago. Peace isn’t real. It’s a mirage—something that you see from a distance that gives you hope for the things that are to come, but when you get there, you see that there’s no peace at all. Only darkness. Only pain. Only your fear. There is no peace.
I barely see what’s on the TV—not because it’s only twenty-seven inches, but because whatever is on the screen doesn’t grab my attention the way my mother scratching her skin does. We sit next to each other on the tan couch, both of us staring at the screen, but neither of us watching. I hear the sound of cars driving past our house and the voices of strangers walking by, but my mother is what really has my attention.
Whitney’s focused on the fact that her addiction is getting the best of her and making her want to scratch at her flesh like there are bugs under it. And then there’s me, distracted and annoyed by her scratching and wiggling in the seat next to me. How am I supposed to watch TV with the sound of fingernails on flesh beating on my eardrums? If she wasn’t my mother, I’d take the box cutter from my pocket and slice her fingers off just to make the scratching stop.
I sit for as long as I can before I feel fed up and violent, so I get up from the couch, step past the glass coffee table, and walk into the kitchen to find something to eat. When I open the tiny fridge, I’m surprised bats don’t come flying out of it, because it’s completely empty. The only thing inside is one, single square of American cheese, resting peacefully on the top shelf. Nix paid for my lunch earlier today, so I wasn’t here to notice how my home was completely devoid of food. Whitney, on the other hand, has been sitting in this house for the past few days doing nothing but sleeping and getting high off of the supply she had from Davon before I sent him on his merry way. Junkies don’t need food, they only need their drugs. But Whitney’s supply has run out, which is why she’s itching so much and focusing more on scratching her skin than buying any food. Just looking at this stupid piece of cheese sends a new rush of rage flowing to my heart.
“Whitney, have you not seen that we don’t have any food in this house?” I ask her as calmly as I can. The last time we had a conversation, I wound up putting the tip of my razor blade near one of her eyelids, although she probably doesn’t even remember that happening. I’d like to avoid having to be so dramatic this time, so I try to be patient, which is a luxury very few people get from me.
“Huh? No, I hadn’t noticed,” Whitney replies, staring off into space and scratching her pale white arm, which is already starting to turn bright red.
“You hadn’t noticed?” I ask, feeling like I’m talking to a brick wall. “You haven’t looked because you’ve been too busy scratching the skin off your arm. Ugh. When you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. Where’s your money? I’ll go get food myself.”
“Umm, I don’t know,” she replies, scrunching her forehead. Between the furrowed brow and lost-in-space-look in her eyes, she truly looks out of her mind. “I don’t have any money.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You blew all our money on drugs, didn’t you?”
“It’s not forever, Solomon. It’s just until my unemployment check comes in in a couple of days.”
“So we’re not supposed to eat for a couple of days?”
“Stop bugging me, please. I already don’t feel good.”
“I don’t feel good either, Whitney. Know why? Because my stomach is empty, and my arm is starting to look like a delicious sirloin steak that I want to bite into. I’m starving to death because you blew our money on heroin.”
Silence. Whitney exhales, but then chooses not to speak again. All she does is stare at the TV and scratch. She’s left the arm alone and moved up to her neck now, tilting her head to get a better angle at the spot that’s bugging her. I stand in the doorway of the kitchen glaring at her, thinking of what I’d like to do to that neck if only she wasn’t my mother. That’s when I hear a knock at the door.
Now it’s my turn to look confused as Whitney gets up from the couch and moves to the door. She doesn’t seem at all surprised by the knock, and she even attempts to straighten out her frizzy brown hair before reaching for the door knob. When the door swings open, I see a smooth-faced white guy wearing blue sweatpants and a white hoodie. His facial hair is trimmed into a stupid-looking goatee, and when he sees my mother, he tries to do some dumb ain’t-I-sexy face at her. The moment I see him, I know he’s a drug dealer. Well that didn’t take long, did it? Whitney continues running her fingers through her hair as she leans over to whisper to her guest, the two of them keeping their voices low so I can’t hear, then Whitney lets him in and closes the door behind him, and I feel the familiar sensation of my blood temperature creeping up. What the hell is going on now?
“Solomon, my friend is here to give me the medicine I need. I need you to stay out here while I take him to the back and pay him for it,” Whitney says to me as she grabs our new guest by the hand and leads him down the hall to her room. The asshole even has the audacity to flash a half-smile at me as they head towards the narrow hallway.
“Pay him? You just said we don’t have any money,” I reply, and as the words come out of my mouth, I realize what she means. She’s going to go have sex with him for the drugs. Either that or suck him off. She doesn’t even respond to me as they walk out of the living room, and the next sound I hear is the door to her bedroom closing.
I stand in the kitchen alone, wondering what it is I’m about to do. Whitney has just brought some stranger in our home to screw them for drugs while I stand in a kitchen that only has a piece of cheese in it for dinner. We’re broke, and the little money my mother does get goes to her heroin habit. How am I supposed to live like this? I’m in hell, and if I don’t do something about it, I don’t see how I can survive. I can’t. Not with her as my mother. Her addiction is more important to her than my well-being. I can’t live like this anymore. I will not live like this anymore.
There’s no more silence now. In my head, I hear nothing but never-ending screaming. I can’t let this happen. I don’t need peace. There is no peace. There is no quiet. There is no life if this is how I’m living. I’m in a nightmare that has become a horrible rerun every single day. I won’t have it anymore. I have to do something.
It’s time to change the channel.
I took the time on the walk over to this rickety old red and white house, to figure out what exactly I wanted to do. I thought about the way everything has been for me in my life leading up to this very moment, and I when I arrive and step onto the white porch, unintentionally kicking up flakes of peeling white paint with each step, I know what I need to do.
When I step up to the front door of Nix’s two-bedroom house, I beat on it with my fist until it swings open, but it’s not Nix who opens up. I’m standing face to face with Nix’s father, Moe. Just like his son, Moe is over six feet tall with shoulders as wide as the house he’s occupying. He’s got a face covered in thick, twisted hair, and unlike his son, who’s covered in muscles, Moe has a stomach that pokes out from all the drinking and eating he’s done in his pathetic life. He’s like Santa Claus in a white tank top, and I can tell from the glaze in his eyes that he’s drunk. No surprise there. He looks at me with malice in his glare, because that’s what people like him do. They want to strike fear into the hearts of everybody they can, because it makes them feel better. But what Moe doesn’t understand nearly as well as he should, is that I don’t have a heart.
“Here we go again. Why am I not surprised to see that it’s you, Solomon? Why are you beating on my door like you’re the damn police?” Moe barks at me. After seven years of being “friends” with Nix, I’ve barely spoken to Moe. He usually ignores me and Nix when I come over because he’s a self-centered asshole who only cares about his own well-being. So he knows me, but he doesn’t know me. I can tell from the way he puffs his chest out that he thinks he can scare me. I give him an A for effort.
“Where’s Nix?” I ask, glaring into Moe’s squinty, blood shot eyes.
“It’s too late for you to be pulling Nix out of the house, Solomon,” Moe replies. “Take your ass home,” he says as the stench of liquor comes racing from his gross mouth.
I really don’t feel like wasting time on Moe, so I decide to cut our conversation short. As thoughts of my mother and her form of payment for drugs plays in my head, I grab Moe by his tank top and pull his body towards me as I spin around and slingshot his chubby ass down the cold steps of the porch. Paint chips shoot up into the air like sparks exploding off of fireworks, and I watch from the doorway as he tumbles, hitting every step on the way down until he crashes on the concrete at the bottom. That escalated quickly, but he picked a bad time to be annoying. I’ve got moves to make, and no time for anyone else with an addiction of any kind.
While he struggles to wrap his fat brain around what’s going on, I walk down the steps and straddle him, sitting on his flabby chest and pinning his arms to the icy concrete with my knees.
“What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind, boy?” Moe shrieks, but I ignore his slurred words, because all I can think about is what my mother is doing right now.
I reach into my left pocket and pull out my favorite tool, extracting the razor blade and placing it on his throat, imagining it being Whitney’s. I hear Nix come to the door just as I make myself comfortable on Moe’s fat belly. I can tell he wants to say something, but when I see his mother come stand behind him with a black eye, I know why he doesn’t try to convince me to stop, and I give Moe all of my attention.
“Good evening, Moe,” I greet him with a smile, which he doesn’t reciprocate. How rude. “Quite the sticky situation we’ve gotten ourselves into, eh? Now, I want you to take a minute to listen to me clearly.” I slowly move the box cutter over to his ear and push it forward. “Out of respect for my good friend Nix, I’m actually not going to kill you in front of your house tonight. I want to, but I won’t. Instead, I’m going to make sure you know that if you ever put your chunky hands on Nix or Justine ever again, I’m going to come back here and finish the job, and there will be more pieces of you to go along with this one.”
When Moe frowns, trying to decipher my words, I push the tip of the blade through the soft flesh and slice off a small piece of his earlobe.
“No more earrings for this ear!” I yell as Moe lets out a blood curdling scream. While Moe cries like a baby, I get off of him and laugh as I ascend the steps and stop in front of Nix and his mother. “Your dad says you can come out and talk to me for a while. So, come on. I’ve got something I want to run by you.”
Justine looks like she has no clue how to react, so she just stands there, peering past me at Moe as blood drips onto the sidewalk. I know eventually she’ll go to help her husband, but I can tell she’s taking a moment to enjoy him being in pain. Nix looks at his dad in amazement, and I think I even see a hint of a smile as the two of us leave Justine standing in the doorway and walk past Moe to stand on the sidewalk next to the street. Before we begin, Moe gets up and slowly makes his way inside, clutching his bloody ear while Justine finally snaps out of it and helps him into the house.
“Dude, I’m not sure if I should thank you or tell you how insane you must be to do that to him,” Nix says, shaking his head. I can still see the joy in his face though.
“Aww, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day,” I reply with a grin before going completely serious. “I meant what I said, Nix. If he touches either of you again, that’s it, we’re removing the blade. Got it?”
“Got it,” Nix says with a nod. “Now what’s going on that made you decide to come over here and cut off a piece of my dad’s ear?”
I think about Whitney and how she probably has that drug dealer’s balls in her mouth right now, and decide to not divulge that information. Instead, I focus on the future. Whitney is the past.
“How tired are you of being broke and hungry?” I ask him, tilting my head as I wait for his response.
“Just as tired as you are, I’m sure,” he replies. “But why do you ask?”
“Because I’m more than tired of it. I’ve reached my limit, pulled the last straw, come to my wit’s end. The straw that broke the camel’s back has been placed, and I’m done, Nix. In other words, I’m sick of being broke and hungry!”
“Okay, I get that.”
“Good, because you’re the only person in the world I’d want with me when I claw my way to the top. I’m thinking it’s time you and I start taking what we want. I’m thinking we’re done sitting around in broken down homes with the world’s shittiest parents. I’m thinking you and I put our skills to good use, and go take money from one of our fine local establishments.”
Nix frowns, surprised by the idea.
“Wait, what? Are you saying you want to rob a place?” he asks, still frowning.
“Unless you’ve got a better idea on how we can get some money fast.” He doesn’t answer, choosing to look at the ground in front of him instead. “I thought not, because I’ve already asked myself how else I could come up, but let’s face facts, Nix, we live in Strawberry Mansion. We are in hell, and the only way out of it is to fight your way out by any means necessary. It’s either that, or go back into the house and deal with your father and his half an earlobe, until you’re old enough to move out and live month to month in one of these broken down houses yourself, and have some poor and hungry kids of your own.”
Nix keeps staring at the ground and I can see the wheels spinning in his head. I know I’m getting to him.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to perpetuate this kind of existence. I want to change the channel, and it’d be a lot easier if I had you with me,” I tell him, and he finally lifts his head.
“You’ve got a point,” he says as he looks back at his own dilapidated house where his parents are inside performing first aid on his drunken father’s ear. After a moment, he turns back to me with determination in his eyes. “Alright Solomon, I’m down,” he replies, nodding. “But where?”
I smile from ear to ear, because Nix is exactly the kind of guy I need by my side. He’s loyal and dangerous, and I love it.
“I want to hit Johnny’s,” I reply finally, talking about the Italian restaurant that always gets plenty of customers, but Nix’s motivated face suddenly shifts.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. That place is protected by the Scarfo family.”
I let out a loud exhale. “Exactly what the hell is a Scarfo family?”
“You don’t know?” Nix answers. “It’s the mob. Stepping on their toes means disappearing forever.”
It’s like his words are offensive to my ears. I’ve never known Nix to be afraid of anything. He’s always been smart and calculated, but never afraid. I think about what he said and decide that if he’s mentioning this, he has a good reason.
“Fine,” I relent. “Then we’re going after the Cash N Check. Or is that protected too?”
“Depends on which one.”
“Ah you’re killin’ me here, Nix.”
“I’m not trying to chicken out or anything, Solomon, but if we’re going to do this, we have to be smart about it. I’m just trying to make sure we don’t mess with the wrong people. The Scarfo family? The mob? Wrong people to piss off.”
“I couldn’t care less about pissing off the mob. This is about taking control of our lives,” I snip, glaring at him.
“Hold up. Who’s that over there?”
Nix nudges me and nods towards the street. My eyes follow where he’s looking and I see a figure standing across the street from us, wearing blue jeans and a blue hoodie that’s hiding their identity in the darkness. I can tell from the frame of the person that they’re not very big, but whoever they are, they picked a bad time to come eavesdropping. I reach into my pocket and feel the cold metal of the box cutter, but when the person speaks, I let it go.
“Solomon?” the girl says as she stands up straight and removes her hood.
Well I’ll be damned. It’s Reina.