Boot(s)

35- Boots

Peter Jackson

"Go on," her voice was scratchy, worse than normal. "Git, Peter, upstairs."

She shoved me forward, her hand delivering a sharp push to my lower back. Unphased, I did as she said, ignoring the coin that I had stopped to pick up in the stairwell.

We lived in a low-income tenement building, and mom and I had two rooms and a shared bathroom up on the top floor. This was the best place we had lived yet—I was seven when mom got us a place here—and I was eating better than I had been. I actually liked calling this place home.

Except on days like today.

My skips up the stairs hesitated, slowed, then stopped. Mom was right behind me, so she knew exactly why my feet had stopped moving. Right at the top of the stairs, next to mom's bedroom door, was a tall, burly, bearded man in ripped-up cargo shorts and a stained t-shirt. One of mom's friends.

"Go on to your room now." Her voice was quieter, but she still shoved me along toward my bedroom. She didn't take another step up the stairs until she watched me shut my bedroom door.

As I got older, the visits from mom's friends seemed to get less frequent. Or maybe I just got more used to them. It was the same four or five guys, the same full orange pill bottles on the bathroom counter after they came round. Occasionally, they'd stay for more than a few hours. One of mom's friends, Justin, stayed for about a month once when I was 8 or 9. That month I got a brand new pair of Jordan's and a basketball to go with it. Mom never told me where she got the money.

We had cousins though, mom's sister, up north. Once or twice a year they'd come down to the city and take me for a meal and give mom a bag the size of Georgia full of Matt and John's hammy downs and their retired Gameboys. On Christmas, they sent new sneakers, new boots, more games, and gift cards. Every time they came round, or the postman delivered my presents, mom made a big thing about it all. She'd shut herself in her room or leave town for a few days, refusing to even acknowledge their existence. I learned early not to ask what happened between mom and her sister, or ask about them at all. That way, their visits were always a complete surprise.

"Sue is here, get dressed" would be the only indication that Aunt Sue, Mark, and John were out front in their fancy Buick. That sentence used to be my favorite thing to hear of all time.

Then, I started sixth grade, and Aunt Sue was suddenly replaced as my favorite person in the universe. That role was quickly reassigned to the best and only good man I had ever known as a kid, Mr. Johansen. My sixth-grade science teacher.

He was my science teacher and I had homeroom with him, so I managed to get about an hour and a half with him every day. In the morning, he gave us trivia, and in the afternoon, he told us riddles before we packed up our backpacks and lunchboxes for the day. I had science first period, and I quickly grew to love everything about it.

I was genuinely interested in rocks and chemistry and the earth's surface and why Jupiter had rings and what exactly the water cycle even was. I asked questions, about a million per class period. That's why, I think, Johansen took a special interest in me. That, and, my L.L. Bean lunchbox, courtesy of Aunt Sue, came to school with me the first day but never came back again.

"Hey, Pete."

I was tossing my books in my backpack and getting ready to head down to the basketball court at the park when Johansen grabbed a hold of me. Most of the kids were already running out the classroom's back door, headed for the playground or the courts. I eyed them with envy but turned back to Johansen because at that point in my life I thought he was the coolest adult to walk the planet. I mean, he wore a different dinosaur on his tie every day. Of course he was cool.

"Hi Mr. J, I'm just about to play some ball—"

"Yeah, bud, this'll only take a second," he bent his massive legs, squatting down next to me so he was on my eye-level. He raised his eyebrows then like he always did when he was about to introduce a new unit that he thought we were going to love. "I want you to come to science club tomorrow."

My twelve-year-old jaw was on the floor. "There's a club about science?"

Johansen laughed, ruffled my hair, then stood up. "I knew you'd be interested." He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket, unfolding it to show me. "We meet once a week, but I usually prepare some projects and do some research for the club at least two or three additional days after school. You think you could get this signed by a parent so you could join? And maybe help me do some extra research a day or two per week?"

"Uh, duh, Mr. J. Of course."

I got my mom to sign the permission slip a few days later, and then I was a club member, Mr. J's personal assistant, and later, science club president at Atlanta Public. My mom even came to the science fair that year.

When I hit high school, my mom's man friends stopped coming. But the pill bottles and the needles in the trash can and the lack of anything besides canned ravioli in our family cabinet in the shared kitchen told me that things were getting worse. Mom was getting worse, and the money wasn't coming. Aunt Sue had apparently deemed me old enough to get a job and pay for my own Christmas gifts because those stopped coming too. Or maybe, mom told her to stop sending them. Either way, I hadn't heard from them in a few years. I was older, and more mature then, so I decided to ask mom about it.

We were sitting in the kitchen of our building, splitting a box of pasta and meatballs.

"Haven't seen Aunt Sue in a few years," I mentioned, hopefully casually, stabbing a meatball and breaking it in half with my fork.

She snorted. "What'd you think would happen when she heard you flunked your freshmen year?"

I was a junior now, and I had Bo and Jessie in my life. I had Public's high school basketball coach—Coach Shaw—who was one of the only adults in my life, aside from Johansen, who had ever told me I showed promise. I was becoming a man, a good one, thanks to those mentioned above, but still. My mother's words turned in my heart like she was using a perforated dagger.

I had always been of below-average intelligence. I was dyslexic. I never had extra help, tutoring, or more time on exams. And I had a mom who thought spending money on school supplies was a waste. How did she think I was going to do in school?

But I bit my tongue, because if I had said anything besides you're right, mom, she'd probably have thrown her bowl of pasta at me.

It was a few weeks later I decided to try to enlist. Mom was getting worse. She was getting violent, there were definitely more drugs, and for the first time in a long time, men were coming back into our house again.

It didn't bother me all that much. I rose with the sun and went to the courts or to the library with Bo before she even woke up and was only back home for a very late dinner after practice and my job at the local pizza joint. But still, I knew I couldn't be there much longer. The only thing holding me back, of course, was Bo.