It looked as if it would be the worst summer of my life. Until I took control of the situation. My mother was afraid we could not afford our new house payment. She had expressed this over dinner and even breakfast multiple times, while we sat there all together until we believed it, even though two of us were under the age of ten but for my mom, dad and older sister, and most people under ten don’t really know what ‘afford’ means and how that can be determined. When my dad wasn’t around, she said the same thing to her friends but added that my dad was forbidding her to get a job, even though she knew it was necessary and inevitable. Only my mom never really said words like ‘inevitable’ but would say something like “it’s gotta come to this anyway”.
And it did. She drove my dad to work on the morning of the first day of our summer break in our only car, making up an excuse about why she needed the car, saying it was a nearby errand that wouldn’t take too much gas consumption.
There was no errand. She went to the local grocery store and applied for a job. She got the job because she lied that she had worked at several types of cash registers before, one at a department store and one at a drugstore. She even said they were both NCR brands with touch systems like braille so she had gotten to the stage where she didn’t need to look at her fingers and if this store had the same system, she could get through any kind of training even faster. Her sister had coached her to say that about the cash registers, the sister who worked at a drugstore in Ohio. The sister who had lost her husband and had to work two, sometimes three jobs so she could support my two cousins, but still told my mom it was fulfilling to get out of the house. My mom didn’t seem to be the type who needed fulfilling. She wanted to afford the house payment.
She started her job the very next day after my dad had gone to work. She beat him home, but barely, because she had worked a short afternoon shift for her training, and she was still sweaty from her brisk walk as she sliced the onions for the pork chop dinner. She had called home in a sort of panic from the store, and I had answered the phone, but she wanted to talk to my thirteen-year-old sister who knew how to follow directions better than I did. My sister took a package of pork chops out of the freezer and put them in the dish drainer. I guess my mom had been in a hurry to get to her new job and had not thought of what was for dinner since she had always been home all day before and could plan whenever. My dad’s favorite meal was pork chops and fried onions.
At dinner that night my mom said my dad’s name and after he looked up from his plate, she blurted out she had a job and “that was that.” I was glad because it had occurred to me while she was gone that she had never told any of us to lie and I wondered what I would say if I got asked where my mother had been. She kinda had to tell the truth that evening anyway because her shift the next day was gonna run late. In a flurry of hurried words, she explained her salary, her hours, her savings plan, how she could help with the mortgage, and how she would get dinner on the table each night, emphasizing that we would have spaghetti the next night, my dad’s second favorite meal. My dad did not say a word, but his eyes looked kinda slanted the way my mom said they looked when he was mad.
Now, back to why it was a miserable summer. It wasn’t one week into her new job that my mom got a regular shift, telling us that the boss could already tell she was a valuable employee and responsible and mature and all, so Monday through Friday it was 7:30am to 4:00pm. It was perfect in her eyes since she could still beat my father home and avoid any grief by having time to make a meal without rushing too much and feeling too exhausted. But apparently it was perfect for my sister too, who liked the predictable hours so she could invite her friends over – including boyfriends – to have the run of the house, except when she had to do some pre-preparation of a family dinner as instructed by a note left for her hung with a magnet on the front of the fridge. I could’ve done those jobs, like putting the defrosting chicken back in the fridge before it was completely defrosted, or starting a large pot of water on simmer after adding a little salt. But I never volunteered, figuring my time would be coming when my big sister would be out of the house. I could not wait for that day. She was mean.
On the days Big Sis invited her friends over, she would wake my brother and me up too early, tell us to eat our breakfast fast, and then go outside to play, which is what we did all summer but not that early and not that rushed, so I was not happy. Sometimes my sister locked the front door, which was a rare occurrence even when the whole family was not at home, so I couldn’t get inside to pee. This went on for about three weeks. I kept my mouth shut on account of my fear and the love of candy, which was how my mean big sister took care of the situation so we would not rat her out.
But then I got sick of it all and decided I needed a plan. It had to be effective and swift because I knew Big Sis was cunning and could lie very convincingly. And another thing that was bothering me besides not being able to pee when I needed to, or eat my lunch inside if I wanted to, was that I kinda wanted to observe her and her friends. What was the big deal that a little sister and a little brother might be around the teenagers? I wondered if they were kissing on the couch or just watching Leave it to Beaver reruns.
The day came at last, but first I need to mention something ‘cause I’m sure I forgot. My brother was the favorite for a couple of reasons, like being a little sickly (asthma) and being the only boy and the youngest. My mother protected him just a little too much and I knew if any kind of plan was going to work it would have to include him, but I was worried about that part because I wasn’t sure he could pull it off. Also, I wasn’t even sure if he was miffed the way I was miffed. Maybe he was able to pee in the backyard and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at his friend Billy’s house. Anyway, I told him I was mad, and he needed to help me. It turned out that he was tired of the whole thing too, and disliked being locked out of the house because sometimes he wanted to play with his plastic army men or his marbles or something that was in his bedroom. So far so good. I told him that he could get Mom’s attention better than me and he felt flattered by that, as flattered as a six-year-old can get.
On the day of the execution of the plan, my brother jumped right in, pretending to pitch a fit about going outside that morning after breakfast. He told my big sister she would be sorry and that he would take her babysitting money and run away. My sister had a whole twenty-dollar bill in her underwear drawer. Well, that threat only stopped her for a second because she is a cold-hearted, mean selfish person and I had kinda wondered if she would believe her little brother’s threat, which being the only part of the plan that seemed weak to me. So, when he stomped out and slammed the door, I was not surprised she didn’t try to stop him. She never went into her room to investigate the safety of her babysitting money, partly because two of her friends were already knocking on the front door. The friends must have passed my little brother on the way up the driveway. I was in my bedroom still changing out of my PJs and listening with all ears, getting ready to go directly to my best friend’s house to use her phone to call the grocery store to report to my mom that her baby boy had run away, and boy was that gonna make her investigate what was going on. My brother was instructed to stay in Billy’s backyard until he heard my mother calling for him, not me or my big sister, just my mom, because that would be way more effective if my mom found him with the water from Billy’s hose on his cheeks that I told him to put there.
Well, it worked like a charm except for one part that I ended up feeling a little bad about, for a short while anyway.
My mom ran home from the grocery store with her name tag on, a frantic mess. She spotted what was now a group of five teenagers in our living room and ordered them all out. We combed the neighborhood all together which was good because I was able to suggest we start near Billy’s house, and after about fifteen minutes, my sweet, wonderful baby brother came out through the gate of Billy’s backyard with water on his cheeks, and he even remembered not to smile when he saw my mom. What a kid!
Well, my mom was all ears when we got home. She believed every word we told her, and then some. I pretended I had seen kissing on the couch. My mom sent my sister to her room, but she only stayed there for two minutes before she came roaring down the hall to say that her babysitting twenty-dollar bill was gone. My mom told my brother to give it back, but when he reached into his pants pockets, he couldn’t find it. My sister roamed the neighborhood (sheesh, some restriction), including Billy’s backyard, looking for the money, but it was not found. My sister cried, but not as hard as when my dad got home. After yelling at her, he turned to my mom and said stuff like “if you weren’t working” which made my mom cry and made me wonder if she would quit the job and go back to being worried about the mortgage payment.
Well, my mom did not quit her job. She even told my dad it made her feel fulfilled, and I did not see my dad’s eyes go slanted down because I guessed he had been a little worried about the mortgage payment too.
The day after the execution of the runaway plan, my little brother asked me if I would walk with him to the corner drugstore. I figured I owed him. When we got there, he loaded up on plastic army men and told me to buy any kind of candy I wanted since I would no longer be receiving bribes from my big sister. When it was time to pay, my little brother pulled out a twenty.
Susan Andrelchik is a writer of short literary fiction and poetry. She is the recipient of the 2023 Terry Kay Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Bar Bar Magazine, The Paradox Literary Journal, Roi Faineant, among others. Susan resides in Atlanta with her husband and cat.
Artwork by Funny Pearls, made with AI