Slipping

"Donald Haskill, get yo lazy butt up and get ready for school! Don-Don, you heard me, get yo raggedy, nappy-head butt up!" "I'm up, I'm up. Quit hollering like a fool!" Don answered grumpily. "No you ain't, yo lazy butt! Don't make me come up there and throw some cold water on yo funky butt!" Ignoring his sister's last remark, he asked, "Ay, girl, is Momma gone?" "Boy, yeah. Momma been gone since six o'clock this morning. She waited for you to come in till one o'clock last night. She said to tell you to start bringing yo butt in this house at a decent hour. Just because she be spending time over her boyfriend house, she said to let you know that you only seventeen and you better start coming in this doggone house at a decent time on school nights." Don cut her off. "Did she leave me some money?" His sister left the bathroom and climbed the few stairs to Don's bedroom door, opened the door wide, and leaned on the door jamb. She gloated, "She left me some money, but she didn't leave you any. She would have, but you weren't here. She said that she would have had to stop at the cash station and get some out and she wasn't going to go through all of that trouble for you and you weren't even here. If you stopped hanging out in the streets with them no-good friends of yours and got you a little part-time job or something after school then you wouldn't have to wait on Momma to give you money all the time. I got to get ready for school. Something you should be concerning yourself about." As Rhonda retreated to finish preparing to leave, Don chuckled at his sister's short speech. He loved Rhonda and he knew that she loved him, but she seemed to hate all of his friends and told him so at every available opportunity. She was nineteen, two years his senior, but she thought she was thirty. Because their mother worked long, hard hours as a Chicago policewoman, attended college, and still tried to have some semblance of a love life, Rhonda stepped up to play the role of surrogate mother to the hilt. He had to admit, she did manage to take pretty good care of home base with his mother being gone so much. She even looked like their mother, especially when she was fussing at him. Don couldn't remember much of his father, outside of his death, but his aunts and uncles claimed that he was the spitting image of the man. Whenever the subject of his old man arose his mother became tight-lipped. From what information he had been able to piece together about his father, his story was the same as too many Black men in America. Systematically raped and dehumanized by the unholy caste system in America, his father turned to the bottle. After four years of diligent service in the army, then as a glorified janitor at city hall, he grew tired of being overlooked for promotions. He thought no one at work noticed his deepening depression. The last day of his life he appeared to be happier than he had been in years. He whistled a cheery tune all day as he completed his daily tasks. When his coworkers noticed his obvious attitude adjustment and questioned him about the change, his only reply was a smile that seemed to signify that he had a secreta secret that tickled him pink. At quitting time he cheerfully bid everyone farewell. At home he ate the dinner his wife had thoughtfully prepared in between her job as a loss-prevention specialist at Marshall Field's downtown on State Street and her classes at Kennedy King Junior College. He drank two beers as he watched the evening news and then he took his .38 caliber handMoore, Y. Blak is the author of 'Slipping', published 2005 under ISBN 9780345475947 and ISBN 0345475941.