The Bottom

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I’m grateful that Jacob helps out around the house, but lately I’ve been finding dried food on the bottom of plates. He’s supposed to have cleaned them. I know I wasn’t the greatest mother, but he could at least wipe off the top and the bottom of the dishes. Don’t nobody ever realize that stacking dirty plates gets the bottoms all dirty. The simple solution would be not to stack them, but nobody wants to walk back and forth from the kitchen to the table all day.

A few weeks ago, I asked him why there was still food on the bottom of the dishes. “Because we don’t eat off the bottom,” he said.

He’s always been like that, quick to talk back. A smart ass really. But, that’s the thing, he’s real smart. He’s going to do things that I never thought of. I know it.

Two years ago, he was only eleven, and pretty much taking care of himself and his two-year-old sister. If it wasn’t for him, we’d probably still be living in that burned out shack down by the river with Worm. Probably would’ve lost my daughter, and probably would still be sleeping on the floor with strangers from all over the county, all of us out of our mind.

I know I could have done better then, but what matters is I’m doing better now. We’re fed, our power and water are up to date. And Jacob has decent shoes now. They aren’t new, but they were the best ones on the shelf at Dianne’s Thrift Mall.

Our lives were running on an endless loop. Worm would get his disability check on Fridays. The kids would need clothes and lunch money for the next week. Jacob’s shoes were always too big and falling apart. But we’d always end up buying more shards by Saturday instead. We stopped paying the utilities. The county turned off our water and the power company shut down the electricity. On days when I was clear-headed enough to look around and see how we were living, I’d tell Worm that it had to stop, that we needed food and clothes, a better place to stay. Worm would have none of it. He’d beat me until I gave in and went and got him more meth. Then we’d get high and roll around on the floor for days. Wandering around in our oblivion while Jacob and his sister raised themselves.

If Jacob hadn’t saved his sister from drowning, I don’t know if I’d have ever made it out. That day, I was halfway through my grocery trip, grabbing a jumbo pack of white bread. And I had this sinking feeling inside my gut, like a deep pain inside me. I can’t explain it other than that, really. I knew she was in trouble though. I left a half-full buggy in the aisle and stuffed the bread under my sweatshirt before soaring back in the car.

When I got back to the house, Worm was passed out on the floor, mumbling to himself. I dropped the bread and ran down to the riverbank. Jacob was holding his sopping wet sister. The color was coming back to her lips. “I remembered the song from school, momma,” he pressed his hands together and moved them up and down to the beat, “ah ah ah ah, staying alive, staying alive,” he sang. Like I said, he’s so damn smart.

I want to say that I scooped my kids up and left that day. But that’s not what happened. I slept in that burnt out shack for two more weeks, knowing that me and my kids were more in danger every day. Those other whacks that Worm hung around had already caught our house on fire once because they thought building a fire in the living room was a good idea. Worm had nearly killed our own daughter. That’s what that stuff does, takes everything you got, while you’re floating off in another universe, on another planet. Then you wake up days later and wonder where all yourself has done run off to.

I knew I had to get out. But, I had to wait. I had to plan.

The time eventually came on the last day of one of his three-day-highs. He had crashed and fallen asleep on the floor in a puddle of his own piss again. That was it. No argument, no fighting back, not even a fucking note. I grabbed my kids, and we got out. We took the old Trans-Am. We roared down the street smelling like burnt oil, a cloud of smoke behind us.

We live here now. People don’t know where we came from. They don’t know what we’ve seen and lived. The kids at school don’t make fun of Jacob’s shoes anymore, and yesterday I bought my daughter a new dress. Jacob still doesn’t wash the bottom of the dishes, but, now that I think about it, we don’t eat off the bottom. We never have.

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ADAM FORRESTER is a writer and filmmaker living in Atlanta, Georgia. Most recently, his essay work was published in Drain Magazine, and he was awarded the Paul Bowles Fellowship in Fiction at Georgia State University, where he studies creative writing.

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