Marco's World

Chapter 1

Marco's World

Age 5

Lights in the driveway. It's dark. Daddy's home! Mommy told me to stay in bed and Daddy would come up and say goodnight, but I don't listen. I scamper down the stairs as quietly as possible. By the time I get down the stairs, the lights are on and Daddy's white button-up shirt has already been discarded in its' usual corner. I wonder why he always takes it off the minute he gets in the door.

"DADDY!" I fling myself at him and grab onto his leg.

"Daddy why do you always take your work shirt off?"

With slight disgust, he carefully peels my hands away.

"Shhh. Go back to bed, Marco." He whispers. He turns his back on me and heads into the kitchen.

"Okay." I whisper, hang my head and pad back up the stairs.

Age 6

One night, I came down early enough that I got to see daddy taking off his business shirt. The sleeves were soaked in red.

"Daddy, why do you have paint on your sleeves?"

He whirled around and shoved the shirt behind his back.

"What shirt?"

"The one behind your back, silly!" I giggled.

His gaze in that moment could have cut the tension in the air like a knife.

"Go to bed." He growled. "Now."

Safe and sound from dad under the covers, I pondered why he wouldn't tell me about the red paint on his sleeves. Or why he never talked much about his job in general. The rush of water downstairs showed that dad was washing his hands, another of his routines after he got home each night. But what confused me was why some nights he never came home at all. The nights when my superhero didn't return home were the worst.

Age 7

When he wasn't away, Dad spent all of his time in his office or in his shed in the backyard, neither of which I was allowed in. I'd already tried what I was about to do a few times before, but I was trying it again. I rapped softly on his office door.

"Dad, come draw with me?"

"Later, Marco. I'm busy right now...and drawing is for girls. Go throw the football with Jeff or something."

That was the first time of many of being called girly. Jeff was the boy who lived next door. Jeff was the child Dad had wished he'd had. He was sturdy for a 7 year old, and loved nothing more than hurling a football at your head then barreling at you at full speed. He'd hit you so hard that your teeth would rattle in your skull and every inch of you would ache. Dad loved that about him.

But that was what Dad wanted me to do, so I'd do it. I pushed open the metal chain link fence and stepped into Jeff's yard. His three pit bulls snarled from their cage in the far corner of the matted yellow grass. The lawn was strewn with broken toys, an assortment of teeth-marked deflated balls, and shards of Heineken glass. The screen door was hanging on by one hinge, and the steps up to it were laden with cracks and precariously protruding weeds. The doorbell had a sign taped to it that read, "NOK. THIS DAMN THIN DUN' BROKE." Obviously written by Jeff's lovely mother, Dakota. I knocked like it told me to. I waited a minute before finally hearing voices from inside.

"JEFF, YOU 'SPECTIN SOMEBODY?"

"NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS IF I AM!"

"THEN GO ANSWER THE DOOR!"

"FINE."

Heavy footfalls, then the screen door creaked open just an inch. He looked down, saw me, and made a face.

"Waddya want?"

"Could you come out and play football with me?"

His face brightened at the mention of that pigskin filled with air.

"Yeah! You go get your football. Cupcake chewed our last one."

"Cupcake?"

"That one." He motioned to the largest pit bull, black in color, missing half an ear on hi-her right side, and chewing something that may have once resembled a football.

"Um...sure?"

"And you'd better come back, because I'm ready to clobber someone!"

"Great." I whispered.

That day, I did return with the ball, and we played football. Three broken ribs and seven stiches later, I vowed never to play football again. But even more painful than the breaks was seeing how disappointed dad was in me for not being tough enough.

Age 8

The year I turned 8, dad thought I needed to toughen up, so I was uprooted from my tiny Catholic school and plopped in public school without warning. The first three months were nothing but torture. Even at age 8, I was head and shoulders shorter than every other kid in my grade. I was taunted, teased, and picked on relentlessly. During recess, we could either go outside to play or stay inside to paint and draw.

All the other little 8 year old boys flew out the door like bullets, screaming and laughing, pushing and shoving each other. Some of the girls went outside, but for the most part they sat in a circle on the floor and talked about who had the better My Little Pony, or who thought boys were cute already and who still thought they were gross. I always stayed inside and painted or drew. All of the little girls just ignored me. All but one.

Her name was Margret. At just 8 years old, Margret was already the child with the doe eyes and the sullen attitude. She'd never had (and refused to ever get) a haircut, and her curly black hair reached far down her back and ended in a giant poof of knots. She also rarely allowed anyone near her head with a brush. We became immediately inseparable.

I still remember the first words she ever spoke to me. They were "I do not enjoy the company of girls who have a propensity to exert their energies with plastic Equus caballus." I had just stared at her, smiled, and said, "Okay." Of course I'd had no idea what she'd just said, but it seemed to mean we weren't playing with the other kids, and that was more than fine with me.

Margret became my favorite subject to paint or draw. Partially because no color or texture I used could ever do her hair justice. When I drew with charcoal and mixed it with a little bit of black watercolor paint, that was the closest result I could get to the real thing. Margret was always the prefect model, hardly moving an inch in the 30 minutes of recess. One day, I asked her how she was able to sit still for so long. That was the first time I ever saw her smile. The corners of her mouth crinkled up, and just a flash of her tiny pearlescent teeth showed.

"Had you ever considered that as you use this time to observe me, I am also observing you?"
"Huh. I hadn't thought about it that way before. Do you like observing me?"

"I do, actually. For I find something new and interesting about you every day that I had not noticed the day before." As usual, I had no idea what Margret was talking about. Perhaps it was because I was a clueless 8-year-old boy who couldn't spot when a girl liked him if it hit him in the face like a frying pan. Or maybe it was because Margret somehow knew that she needed to be mature, because she wouldn't have the chance to get there later in life.