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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781524689353 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 05/04/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 126 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Happy Eighteenth Birthday
To my daughter Erin, on a special day, this is the longest it has ever taken me to write a book. I've been writing it, I'd say, for fifteen years. Most of it I wrote while I was still happy, but for the sake of leaving nothing undone, I sat down and finished it.
I don't want to bore you with the facts of my childhood. It's merely one sob story after another, so I'll strip it down and touch bases. I never really ever got to know either of my parents. My father was a professional baseball player. Three months before my birth, he was kicked out of the majors for using performance-enhancing drugs. After the doctors delivered me, he told my mother he was going home to get a few things. He hung himself that day.
I never knew much about my mother Tish. I can count on a single hand how many times I had not seen her piss drunk, stoned, or both. She struggled with alcohol and opioid dependency until the day she finally croaked. She ruined my life in so many ways, and I never thought my hellacious childhood would end. I never even saw fit to call her mom. She stole and lied. We moved from place to place and never had a stable life. If I see her in hell, I'll more than likely start a fistfight with her. There is no absolution for her in my book.
The day was May 18. The leaves were starting to come back. Rooftop gardens were filled with yellow, red, orange, and other exuberant colors. The birds sang a beautiful symphony and the bees backed them up with angelic buzzing, forming an orchestra. The temperature was sixty-eight degrees, the wind brushed everything at seven miles per hour, a waning crescent moon lighted the sky, and an eight-pound, two-ounce newborn was added to the population of the world. I was raised in a very large city. People were always there on vacation or looking for work. The city never stopped. The horns of cars, voices of pedestrians, and the loud shouts of street vendors along with street-side musicians provided the soundtrack of my childhood.
Innocence is truly something to marvel at. Before we are exposed to the actuality of the real world, we possess a carefree life. But as soon as we break into the uncensored life, things can neither be reversed, nor unseen.
"I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me — they're cramming for their final exam." (George Carlin)
CHAPTER 2
My Imagination
On our first wedding anniversary, your mother and I decided to drive up to Canada, for what reason, I do not know. On the last leg of the drive, we stopped to get gas. There was a man in front of me in line wearing worn down clothes and smelling like he hadn't showered in years. His skin, hair, teeth, and nails were something out of a sci-fimovie.
The line was moving extremely slow, and he shouted, "Speed the line up, please. I'm attending a mansion party in Beverly Hills at ten o'clock, and if the line doesn't move any faster, I am going to be late."
People behind me laughed and heckled him, calling him crazy, a drunk, and a few other things. He turned around and said, "My imagination is in Beverly Hills tonight, and tomorrow it might be in Rome, Singapore, Monte Carlo, or wherever I feel like going." He then checked out and left the store.
I always had a vast imagination, but unlike the man in the store, I was secretive about it and somewhat embarrassed and always reluctant to share it with others. Every so often, I imagined being in other places so I could escape my worries of the day. When I was a teenager, I went to the community center every day after school for a writing workshop where we looked in magazines to find a picture and then wrote a story captured in the picture. When I left the workshop, I had been around the world several times. No matter what, no matter when, everything took me on a trip. On every walk and anything else that granted me free time, my imagination ran wild. I anticipated the second I could write down my thoughts. Imagination allows you to think freely and about the things you want in life. One will never become acrimonious in his imagination.
"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." (Albert Einstein)
CHAPTER 3
The Teens
I learned to write and feel in the same year, the fourteenth year. A well-known social media site was starting to become very popular among teenagers at my school and around the country. Everybody I knew was excited to socialize with their friends on the Internet, despite just seeing them at school. There was something fun about going online. One day, I came across someone named Liza Stewart. From our online relationship, I learned a lot about her, but I was most happy to learn that she lived in the same city, in the apartment building I used to live in, and just a short walk from where I currently lived.
I first met her completely by accident. Just about every day after school, my friends and I would congregate at the arcade. That afternoon was as normal as any other. I walked to the soda machine and bought a Mello-Yello and turned to go back to friends. When I looked up, there she was, waiting to get a soda. In a heartbeat, we recognized each other. We had never talked about meeting, but divinely we did meet. We looked at each other with blank expressions.
She broke the silence with "Did you know I'd be here?"
I said, "No ... I just came over here for a soda, and here you are."
We stood in front of the soda machine talking nonstop. I got her number, and when I returned home, I was high on positive feelings. We picked up texting and soon after we started calling each other. We grew into really nice friends.
Erin, if time travel is ever accomplished in your lifetime, go back to this day and destroy Liza's and my very first face-to-face conversation, or the whole damn Internet. I constantly wish I had been catfished.
I asked her to a movie at the classic movie theater, and she agreed. That was the beginning of a whirlwind of emotional and subsequently depressing events. We met up at the movie theater and paid for our seats for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Though Dorothy McGuire, Peggy Ann Garner, James Dunn, and the rest of the cast choked everyone else's attention, Liza firmly held mine. Once the movie ended, all I wanted was to spend more time with her. We walked the streets at 10:00 p.m. and looked at our city and her gorgeous lights.
We sent text messages to each other all day, and I began to feel closer to her by the moment. We shared personal experiences and stories with each other. She told me that she had been born to two heroin addicts. Her father overdosed and her mother remarried but, this time, to a cocaine addict. Her mother and stepfather would spend their pay on drugs, and when it got down to the money's end, they would brutally fight. Liza was her infant sister Erica's primary caregiver.
One day I asked Liza if she had one wish what it would be. She answered that she wished that both of her parents were addicted to the same drug. I was stunned. I couldn't believe my ears. I expected her to choose something else. She was a teenage girl. She could have chosen having every designer shoe in the world, every teen boy idol in the world falling to her feet deeply in love, or being the Hollywood It Girl of the century. But she chose something like that.
In retrospect, I do not know why Liza appealed to me. She wasn't gorgeous, and although she was a reputable writer, she was not an intellectual. She spoke, but she didn't express. She touched, but she didn't feel. Vibrant was far from one of her characteristics. You saw her, but she wasn't seen. Liza was a damaged, nearly destroyed, individual, and for some reason that intrigued me. Maybe it was because I identified with that. At that time in my life, we were the same.
I lost count of the number of times we called each other with our emotions exploding through the phone. But one of those calls and the night that followed is one I'm sure neither of us will ever forget. It was a night under no special circumstances. Nothing out of the ordinary was occurring. My cell phone lit up as it rung.
I answered the phone to a crying, sniffling, and sobbing Liza. "My mother promised she was going to buy Erica's formula before her and my dad went out. She never came. Erica won't stop crying because she's hungry, and I can't put her to sleep on an empty stomach. I know my parents use, I accepted that a long time ago. But, is it too much to ask for them to buy some food for the baby first?" Nothing I could say could stand against that statement, and as soon as I thought to say something she said, "I'm tired, too tired. I try to live for me and forget about my parents, but nothing works. I'm too young to be this worn down. I've thought about suicide, but tonight I'm seriously considering it. I'm going to do it."
I speedily told Liza that I was going to get a cab to her place, and that she could come over to my house for a while. She agreed and I asked the cabby to drive as fast as he possibly could. When our eyes met I saw Liza drowning her cheeks with tears, and I could hear Erica balling from a mile away. Through the streets rode a taxi with a hollering baby, and distressed teenage in addition to a frightened teenage boy. We walked into the bodega across from my apartment building, and I used the end of my pocket money to buy the formula powder. Once I managed to calm Liza down, we sat and watched reruns of game shows from past decades, and I couldn't help but wonder had she changed her mind about ending it all.
Liza was getting ready to leave so she started to change Erica's diaper. While she looked in Erica's baby bag for wet wipes, I saw a composition notebook wedged in the bag.
I snatched it quickly and held it in the air like I had discovered William Kidd's treasure, while saying, "What's this?"
Liza reached at it and said, "It's nothing it's just something I fool around with while I'm bored."
I requested that she let me read the content. She hesitated with her answer and expressed an answer of negation with her face, but she agreed. I rode a cab back to Liza's apartment building making sure she returned safely, and then I eagerly awaited my return home so I could peruse her writings. Once we got to the apartment building, Liza got out of the cab holding a sleeping Erica.
She hugged me, and as she leaned out of the hug she kissed my cheek and whispered, "You're a good friend. Goodnight. Call me in the morning."
I smiled and assured her that I would indeed call her. When I got home I floated into the house to the kitchen table and opened Liza's notebook. I read further I was amazed. Liza was a stunning poet. What I loved the most was they weren't cheesy poems that described nature scenes, or weather, they detailed her inner most feelings. I was knocked off my feet by her writings. They were in depth recordings of her emotions piece by piece, struggle by struggle. They weren't like the poems we studied in school written by classical poets. No, they were real; I looked at them as if they were windows into her heart. The ink was still wet on the last entry.
I remember reading:
January 19
April 1
May 11
June 18
November 9
23
23 Floors down May the angels catch me May I live with the one who died on Calvary I shouldn't leave her, this poor little girl To grow up alone, in a miserable world If I'm sentenced to hell, and by hell I mean more My only solace, I've seen it before
The last thing Liza said to me in person, before we parted ways, the first time, was "A poet and a novelist would surely make for a story book life".
Truth is, it was far from story book. Liza bought carnage back into my life, after I had fought so hard to rid myself of it. Remember, these words of the sagacity, Erin. Some things, possessions, and especially people you have to let go completely. The old saying "If you love something let it go ..." is an old fallacy. When something reemerges, you should have matured in the lapsed time, and recognize the past is destructive of the present and masochistic of the future. As we mature we experience things that are going to make us the people that we are going to be as adults. A redo would be lovely.
"Many things will walk in and out of your life, but only the important things will leave footprints in your heart." (Eleanor Roosevelt)
CHAPTER 4
Dreams v. Nightmares
The last summer that Liza and I saw each other as children was terrible. It started out with promises of golden experiences. Liza and I were intrepid in our hopes. We did everything together. Two nights out of the week we went to the black and white cinema. We went to see Waterloo Bridge, A Streetcar Named Desire, Kim Novak in Jeanne Eagels, and so many others, but oddly or ironically, the last one was Suddenly Last Summer. When we weren't together at the movies, borough hopping and high dollar window shopping, we were at home watching TV and discussing every scene, line for line over the phone. With no school schedule compromising our free time, Liza and I made the city our oyster. We'd just observe all the things it had to offer. I remember standing outside the stadiums with the rest of the over pour watching the game being projected on a continent crossing screen. Liza and I were becoming great friends. That last summer started with a challenge between the two of us to finish a manuscript.
It was as if we took a vow, an oath, or something. Daily, we'd rush to the library to print pieces for each other to review and critique. Liza was going to compile 10,000 poems, and I was writing a fiction piece. At every point, we were running wild with thoughts. I must say, when I was writing this book, I felt amazing. Though it seemed as if a million people cross the street all at once, I felt I was easily noticed among them. It was like the cabs stopped to let me cross, the subways ran on my schedule, and hope was in my bones. When I finished writing it my imagination became a magnet. I saw the opportunity to achieve everything. Liza's poems were profuse in their excellence as well. I was blown away by them. 10,000 poems; some of them were depressing, uplifting, funny, sad, and some eye opening. We'd sit down and look through our copies of each other's work and I couldn't help but think we were on to something. Liza's poems were perfect, and I was sure I had crafted something special.
When I found the courage to tell Liza all my illustrious plans, they were met with critique swamped in skepticism. Liza went on and on about our youth and the steep battle it would call for and how I may be aggrandizing the process without a realistic outlook.
"Those words should taste like acid on your tongue", I said after her sniping remarks.
That comment must have humanized her because she stopped in her tracks, but she still had my dream limited to her imagination. For days I leaned on her. At times I was doing it for her, but I stopped once I was doing it in spite of her. I tried to show her the potential of her work, but she fixated against herself. She was sure that nothing could be accomplished at the time. I would've stopped talking to her then but something terrible happened.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Dreams"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Demetrius Jefferson.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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