I Want a Brother for Christmas

A Brother for Christmas

            "I love you, Honey Bear," Momma said, sitting down on my bed. It had been over a week since she took a shower or brushed her teeth, so she reeked, despite pouring some Harley Quinn perfume into her panties. She lit a cigarette, took a quick drag, and held it away from my face. When I went to bed the night before, she was still a blonde. She had dyed her hair black since then, getting globs of dye on her forehead and shoulders. Momma always dyed her hair before she had to go to jail. "You deserve a better mother than me, Jasper. I'm so God-Damned sorry." While she sounded like she was crying, there were no tears in her eyes.

I leaned up in bed, pulling my Children of Bodom tee-shirt down. Even though I saw my mother in her Walmart bras all the time, I wasn't comfortable letting her see me in my underwear. "What's going on?" I grabbed my glasses, held haphazardly together with duct tape, and looked over at the ancient digital alarm clock. Despite the darkness, it was only five minutes before I was supposed to get up for school. My sister, Ember, probably just caught her bus. The high school started an hour before the junior high.

Even though my room was tiny, with only a few inches between my bed and my desk, Momma paced back and forth. She took three more puffs before throwing the cigarette out my window into the trailer behind us. Momma was getting thin, almost bony. I wondered how long it had been since she had something other than cigarette smoke in her system. Ember and I had been getting dinner on our own for several weeks.

"It's all going to be okay, Honey Bear," Momma said. "I've just been stressed. Been really stressed, Honey Bear. Just lost my boyfriend. Just lost my job." She had had both of those for less than a month. Momma lit another cigarette. She always lit more than she smoked, because it kept her mind off the constant itching of the tattoo covered track marks on her arms. "Don't worry yourself none, Honey Bear. I didn't touch that crap." She mimicked shooting heroin into arms like I didn't know what she was talking about. Unless she had gotten better at hiding it, it had been forty-seven days since Momma last shot up. "I just got into a little fight."

"When do you go to court?" I asked with a sigh. Momma spent at least half the year in lockup for something or the other. That's why the courts sent my younger sisters, Bella and Alice, to live with my grandmother.

"Ain't no more court, Baby Bear. I didn't want to worry you." She threw her cigarette onto the ground unsmoked it and squashed it under her flip-flops. "They sentenced me to forty-five days in the slammer. I have to show up by noon." She let out an annoyed sound. "Been trying to get ahold of my phone, so you and Ember have a place to stay."

"I don't want to go to Grandmother's," I said bluntly. "She hates me." There were all kinds of rules in Grandmother's house, and those rules doubled for boys. I always had to whisper in her presence. Now that I was twelve years old, she said that my voice reminded her of every man that had ever interrupted her and spoke over her.

"It's just forty-five days, Jasper," she said, "It'll be over before you know it." She sat back down on my bed. "It'll give me time to get my head together. My friend, Briana, said that I should try for a job at the warehouse she's been working at. She thinks that she can get me trained as a forklift operator. I'll be making good money. A couple of my friends will be working there. They'll help me keep the job." She ran her hands through my dark brown hair. "I swear on Jesus, Allah, Buddha, and all the god damned saints, honey bear. I'm going to get my act together this time." She crossed her heart.

It wasn't the first time that she said it, but I wanted to believe her. Just like Momma wanted to believe, that she was telling the truth.

"I can't believe that you're going to miss Christmas," I said. While mother had been incarcerated on my birthday two years in a row, we always spent Christmas together. Momma, Ember, Me. Sometimes my oldest sister, Ivy, came over, but she stopped talking to Momma and wouldn't tell me why. Last year, Ember's dad, Mike, came over with some Chinese food because nothing else was open but a convenience store.