Mr. Tan

Chapter 18: The Art Of Fighting Back

Its been a month since school has started, a month since Earl had to keep guard outside at night with his shot gun, a month since Tammy cornered me in the girl's locker room and threatened to beat me to death cause she saw me talking to Benjamin one Monday afternoon before lunch. Adrian was due to come back to school after suspension any day now. Just in case you wanna know, she was suspended for slapping Tammy across the face after Tammy tripped her in the cafeteria causing her to knock her bowl of clam chowder onto the floor. Tammy Snyder was what we at school called untouchable. She was untouchable cause she was the star of the track and field team, her wealthy grandparents made dozens of huge donations to the school every year and she had an aunt that was a member of the school board. She also had Benjamin wrapped around her finger and knew how to control him. Kelly was more afraid of her than I was. Whenever Kelly saw her coming, she would go in the opposite direction. It sucked more for them cause Tammy lived in the off white trailer with the colorful flower garden underneath the windows, right next door to Kelly and Benjamin. We've tried going to our principle Mrs. Simmons about it, but all she would do is make lame excuses such as "oh, Miss Snyder is lovely young lady, she would never do anything of the sorts", or "we can't just suspend her based on your accusations". It was no way I was gonna tell Earl about this. He'd come to the school and raise Hell, I'm sure of it. It's been a month since my mamma made another threatening phone call. This time she fucked up by calling here one Sunday afternoon, an hour after Earl came back from working his second job and he picked up. It was so hard to keep from laughing out loud after I overheard Earl cuss her out over the phone. We haven't heard anything else from her since then and no mysterious vehicles staked out in front of our trailer. However, I'll never forget Sunday, well this particular Sunday. It was a hot and sunny day in mid September. Earl was out front working on his El Camino with blues music blasting from his car stereo. He was in a pair of black and silver basketball shorts, house shoes and shirtless with his usual cigarette hanging from between his lips. He was working on his car, stopping to occasionally take swigs from a gin bottle that was sitting on a orange milk crate by the front steps. I was in back of the trailer hanging up freshly washed laundry from the washing machine in the laundry room, mine and his, and hanging them on the clothes line that was tied up between two trees. I looked up and saw Benjamin walking towards me, he looked worried.

"Oh, hi Benny", I greeted dryly, long time no see.

"Yeah, I know", he said with a weak smile. I've been busy a lot. Your foster dad said you'd be back here.

I couldn't help but feel a little upset with him. Every time his girlfriend would bully me, he never came to my defense. So while he talked, I kept my eyes straight ahead and focused on hanging laundry. I picked up a pair of Earl's black overalls, the same one's he wore months ago when Felicia Davenport came to perform at his juke joint awhile back. They were still wet and heavy from the washing machine, I almost dropped them in the dirt below the clothes line. Benjamin caught them for me and helped me hang them on the clothes line with big white plastic pins.

"I gotta talk to you about something", he said, it's real important.

"Like what?", I asked, still concentrating on hanging wet clothes.