“Do you have any baggage?” my stepmom asks me curtly.
“No, ma’am. I just have this package.”
“You just have those—clothes, I suppose?”
I look down at my clothes. They are a bit dated, but they are clothes; they serve the function to cover the body. I look up at her and shrug. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Stop calling me ‘ma’am’. It makes you sound ridiculous.”
I can’t believe this woman. I want to stop dead in my tracks, and just run away, but she pinches my shoulder.
“Come, we are leaving. Dinner’s getting cold.”
About forty-five minutes later, we get out of the taxi, but I don’t believe that we’ve travel far. There was a lot of traffic to navigate through, and our driver gave us quite a ride, although my stepmom seemed used to it. She was too busy to pay attention to me, though; she was far too busy applying eyeliner to her already blackened eyes. Her excessive use of makeup appalls me. I’ve never seen so much expensive makeup being wasted on a worthless occasion.
We are dropped at a high-rise apartment building. I look up to count the floors, but my neck gets sore. My stepmom grabs me by the shoulder again.
“Is that necessary?” I ask her indignantly.
“You’re moving too slow.”
I let myself be dragged through the revolving doors, across the marble-tiled lobby, and into an elevator, where I watch the floor numbers light up as we ascend. Three, four, six, nine, finally the elevator stops on the sixteenth floor. My stepmom exits quickly, heels clacking as she struts down the hallway at a brisk clip. I follow her, trying to keep up.
“Where is our room?” I ask, trailing behind.
“Right here,” she replies icily, sliding a key into the lock on a door marked 1617. My stepmom shoves it open violently, and yells: “Sean, I’m home!”
I timidly step into the room, and close the door behind me. When I turn around, my stepmom is embraced in a tight hug with some man who hasn’t shaved in a month, and wears black pants and a vest. He has one hand wrapped around my stepmom, and the other holding a glass of some alcoholic concoction. My stepmom literally grabs his face and pulls it towards her face and smooches him on the lips. They seem to be too engrossed in each other to recognize me.
“Mom?” I ask, timidly, “Is this your new husband?”
The two stop what they are doing immediately, and turn towards me. Sean puts his hands on his hips and swishes a toothpick around in his mouth. “Well, well if you didn’t walk right off the set of Little House on the Prairie,” he remarks. “That’s quite a wardrobe ya got there. Is that what people in Kansas wear all the time?”
“No, these are the only clothes I have,” I tell him. “And are you married to my stepmom?”
“Married to Nance?” He laughs. “Naw, me and Nance are just friends.” He pecks her on the cheek before offering her a drink. She accepts it, and walks off into another part of the apartment. Sean continues to walk around me, looking me over from head to toe. He spies the package in my hand. “Whatcha carrying, man?” He reaches for it, but I hold it to me.
YOU ARE READING
Kansas Summer
SpiritualEveryone wants a perfect love story, although we find that it's impossible at times. Colin King and Jenna Jackson believe they have written the best one of all. However, their faith in their relationship is sheltered by the small Kansas town they...
