Big Fight in FortReal

Brute

The fall continued to delay the cold in an obvious way.  It was mid fall but seemed like late summer. Bus rides to and from school were lightened with the presence of Jennifer.  One time, looking out of the window, she commented on a hair salon that was on the main road.  ‘I can’t stand hair salons,' she said. ‘Women have to look good, so men are happy even if it means they have to dye their hair - twist their hair - or even fry their hair.'  On another day, she commented on a department store with pink dresses showcasing in the display.  ‘I hate the color pink,' she said.  ‘Honestly, who said pink is a feminine color.  Who makes these rules?  If I had my way, I would get rid of the color, pink altogether.  Just get rid of it’.  Mark was quite indifferent about her stands.  There were the times where he can parallel them to those he read about in Jack’s books but they never really merited great interest in him. 

While the bus rides continued to warrant pleasant times for Mark, Mr. Wilson continued to shower Mark with insults as soon as he was to enter his building.  Mark became quite aware of his mother lax attitude towards paying the rent.   Slipping on rent payments was no longer a mishap but an epidemic.  Margret had a more important priority: The priority of beautifying her flat at the expense of rent. Mr. Wilson’s building was old and hardly maintained, however, Margret begged to differ. She worked in a boutique part time and did other assorted jobs to survive.  However, she wanted the interior of her flat to tell a different story.  She put her time, money and effort to improve the interior look of the apartment and give it a posher feel.  She repeatedly instructed Mark to keep things in good shape and purchased chic items and placed them intelligently in the apartment.

The more pressure Mark put on her to take rent payments more seriously, the more she seemed to grow immune to the problem. What mattered more to her was to maintain the image of being rich.  Her parents were part of, the merchants and land/property owners' class, the elites, in the old country.  However, post-colonization reversed most of their fortunes as the elites got stripped away from their ownerships through nationalization - so a new elite can form. But as far as Margaret was concerned, the degradation of her family's social status was elusive.  She forfeited the rent payments for upscale home accessories.  One time, things really got heated between her and Mark.  He entered the flat and was shocked to see a brand new sofa in the living room. ‘You’ve bought a sofa. You could’ve paid the rent with that money,’ he exclaimed.  ‘Don’t worry about it, Mark.  Worry about crossing the bridge’. 

‘You go and buy a sofa so we can pretend we’re rich while the owner is waiting for his money,’ he yelled out.  Nothing hurt Margret more profoundly than a statement of such.   She articulated with a sequence of words that started in a fury and ended in calm,

‘Mark, we are rich.  Your grand pa was the richest of the rich.  It is only a matter of time, and you will graduate, cross the bridge, and go to university.  We will be with the people we are meant to be with.’

‘Ok forget it, mom.  Just forget it,’ he said as he clasped his head between his hands.  She managed to get hold of his hand after few failed attempts. 

‘Mark, I have a lot of hope in you.  You must concentrate on school. Be careful of not slacking off.  We can’t afford it, Mark. We just can’t.  You know I am reading more and more about the university across the river, right in the Southside; oh how gorgeous it is.  I hear from our neighbor that university graduates make big money’.  She took a pause and then looked at Mark with intensity, ‘Mark, try harder.  Do it for mom.  Cross the bridge.  If not for me, do it for your daddy.  Oh, how proud he would’ve been to see you graduating from university and living in the Southside.’  She paused as the mention of his father, always brought brief periods of silence. 

‘Are you still friends with that Little Mickey,' she picked a different subject that merited just as much controversy as the previous. Mark didn't respond.  She despised his friendship with Little Mickey.  It wasn’t only the age gap between the two that did it for her, but it had more to do with Little Mickey’s family.  Little Mickey’s family was awfully poor and what concerned Margaret more deeply was his family's casual contentment with poverty.  Little Mickey's family knew very well where they fit in the Northside class structure.  They were near the bottom.  Alternatively, Margret saw herself indispensable to the upper class whether in reference to the standard of the Northside, the Southside or the old country.  The mere thought of being remotely judged to be at the bottom of the structure, even if temporarily, made her loose her mind.  Margaret couldn’t apprehend or come to terms with the submissive attitude Little Mickey’s family had about poverty.  They accepted it and that stroke her as a denial of logic and a reversal of sanity.