The Completely Random Adventures of August and Lena

Lena Talks About Her Mom

School's out for the summer like it's been for two weeks, and Lena still hasn't come over to play. you guys don't know her, but she's awesome. Lena is my best friend. When we had school we played at my house, like, a thousand times. We've never played at her house, though, cause she says it's bad. But she thinks everything is bad. She says her house is bad, and the kids at our school are bad, and undressing Barbies is bad. She's funny like that.

I flip out my phone and click the 2 button for the speed dial for her home phone. I call, and it rings for so long I almost hang up. But then she picks up.

"Hello?" I hear Lena's voice say.

"Hey Lena, it's August. Wanna play?" I ask.

"Oh." She pauses for a second. "I've got a lot of chores to do."

"Come on Lena, it won't be all day." I plead. "My mom'll drive you back at five, promise. And then you can do chores."

There's a long silence and then Lena says, "Okay. I'll meet you at the corner of your street, okay?"

"Yes! I'll see you in like five minutes then."

"Bye." She says before hanging up.

I run to my mom's office.

"Mom! I'm gonna take Lena to the water park. Can I have ten dollars?" I ask from the door.

"Sure honey, just stay outside, okay? I'm editing a column, so I need quiet."

"Okay, Mom." I say as she hands me ten dollars from her purse. "Mom, why do you work?"

"To afford you, you little menace." She laughs. "No job means no money."

"Okay, keep working then cause I like having stuff." I tell her before kissing her on the cheek. "Bye, Mom. Have fun working." 

I run to my room and change into my swim trunks. Then I grab a towel and run out the door. I run down my street until I see the corner. I see Lena waiting for me and run even faster.

I get there in like 20 seconds, barely out of breath. I'm a good runner.

"Lena, where's your swimsuit?" I ask her, noticing she's wearing shorts and a t shirt.

She scowls and says, "You didn't tell me to wear a swimsuit."

"Oh. Whoops. Well we're going to the water park, so can we go to your house and get your swimsuit?"

"No we can't go to my house, my mom is sleeping." Her scowl deepens. "Do we have to go to the water park?"

"Well, yeah, my mom's working in her office right now, so we can't go inside, so we have to go to the water park." I know we could probably play in my backyard, but I really want to see Lena's house.

She stares at the ground for 45 seconds at least and then looks up at me. "Okay. You can come to my house. But me and my mom aren't...like your family. We're poor, and our house isn't clean."

"Lena, I don't care. We're not friends because of your house."

She presses her lips into a tight line and starts walking down the road. I follow her, silently. We don't talk the whole way there, and then she just stops in front of a somewhat big looking house.

"It's a duplex, so we only live on the left half. The right half is someone else's." She says walking up the concrete stairs to the door.

Now that I know it's only the left half, I realize how small it is. We walk through the front door, which has a cracked window, and I smell something really terrible. Three chihuahuas run up to me and start barking and growling. I look over at Lena, anxiously.

"They bite, but it doesn't actually hurt cause their mouths are too small. That's Cocoa, that's Flower, and that one's Miller. After the beer."

I don't even know what Miller beer is, since my parents don't drink it, but I still smile at her. I'm afraid how uncomfortable I am is showing on my face, but if it is she ignores it and moves to the back of the tiny house.

I walk behind her as the dogs yip at me. There's small piles of dog poop places, a lot of flies and ants, and dirty dishes everywhere. I step in dog pee while following her, but keep walking like I didn't. 

We get to the back and there's a door leading to a cramped bedroom. There's a queen sized bed with two blankets and two pillows, unmade. There's also a large wooden dresser and a small, Dora TV set on top of it with a VCR player next to it. The fan on the ceiling isn't running, but the windows in the room are open, letting in the hot summer air.

"Where's your mom's room?" I say, thinking about how I didn't see any other rooms.

"We share a room." She replies while she searches through each of the drawers of the dresser.

"Where do you sleep then?" I ask since there's only one bed in this room.

"We all sleep in that bed." She says like it's no big deal. "Me, Mom, and Mom's boyfriend, Dan."

"Oh, is your mom's boyfriend, Dan, nice?" I try to lighten things.

She gets a look in her eyes I've never seen before. It's like a mixture of sadness and fear. "No. He's bad."

She finds her swim suit and walks over to a door I didn't see before. I now notice it leads to a small bathroom.

"I'm gonna change, okay?" She says. Her scowl is gone, and in place of it she looks nervous. I nod and she shuts the door.

I notice something else in the room, letters. I walk over to one and look at it. I recognize what it is from my kitchen table. They're bills. One of them says EVICTION. I don't know what that means, but I don't think it's good since it's in big red letters. Why are there so many bills? Lena's mom is always working.

"Hey, Lena." I call out. "Where does your mom work?"

"Situations." She responds after a pause.

"What's that?"

She walks out of the bathroom wearing a plain, purple one piece, drops her clothes on the floor, and then steps over them to me.

"It's a strip club." She says quickly. I must still look confused so she continues. "Girls who work there take of their clothes and guys throw money at them."

I suddenly feel as uncomfortable as Lena looks. Lena looks at me, and then I think she's about to start crying.

"It's a bad place." She whispers. She almost breaks down for a second, but then she scowls and says, "We need to go to the water park now."

"Where's your mom?" I ask.

"I don't know."\walk back through the house, with the dogs yipping at us, and out the front door. Right when we step off the last step and onto the sidewalk I feel so much better. I feel bad for thinking it, but their house is just so...dark. 

I look over at Lena who still has that scowl on her face and a determined look in her cloudy blue eyes. That's when I realize she has to go back there. She has to go live in that house that's so dark every single day of her life. I felt better when I left because I know I get to go home to my mom and my dad, and sleep in my own bed, in my own room, in my nice, big house. Lena doesn't feel better. She doesn't get to go anywhere else. She goes back to that bad house, and her mom comes home from her bad job, and they sleep in that bed with her mom's bad boyfriend, Dan. And then I know why she's not like the other kids at school. She's stronger than them.

She's the strongest person I've ever met.