Breakfast With Ed

I eat my breakfast every morning with Ed. It’s just Ed and me in the mornings. We are surrounded, our backs against the walls. The kitchen table barely fits in the room. It’s made of some cheap dark veneer that has started to split and peel back at the corners like the linoleum on the floor. It came with a hutch that sit’s so close it makes it hard to squeeze through the room. Ed picked them up at a yard sale and refers to them as a “set”. He says he can “spot quality at a distance”.

The hutch is full of Ed’s things- old tools, nails, washers and bolts heaped into coffee cans. One shelf is devoted to boxes of shotgun shells. The box tops are ripped-off and the red plastic casings are all lined up like little soldiers. On the first shelf there’s a lone steak knife and a stack of porn magazines that’s tipped over and splayed out sideways. revealing titles like ‘Beaver Hunt’- a magazine devoted solely to photos of naked girls posing spread eagle for the camera. The pictures are all “amateur”, sent in by their proud “old men”. I’m careful when I’m snooping around, there’s junk piled on junk, and I worry the entire enterprise will come crashing down on me.

I don’t know it yet, but somewhere in the hutch is a .357 magnum that will be stolen by my boyfriend, Bird, culminating in our final breakup. But that’s for later.

Tucked into one of the glass panels is a Polaroid of Betty, Ed’s wife. Betty is Darlene’s mom and Darlene is my best friend. I’m living here with them until I can figure out what to do, or until I graduate from high school.

Darlene told me that when Ed bought home his new Cadillac (two-toned, maroon and cream, with a leather interior and almost new) he told Betty to put on a bikini and get up on the hood so he could take her picture- and she did. She got right up there and lay on her side, one hand on her hip, and a big old grin on her face- like the Cadillac was hers or something.  That’s the Polaroid that’s stuck in the glass pane. It’s the only photo I’ve even seen in this house. I love to look at photos, but they just have that one.

I’m hunched over my cereal bowl, staring up at Ed, at the wonder of him. Ed’s happy this morning. He just got new teeth. He got the operation where they cut apart your gums and insert metal spikes into your jaw. Better than dentures, he told me. He got his whole mouth done at once. Now he can eat meat again. Well, just sausage, not steak yet. I’m amazed at his quick recovery.

“See”, he says, peeling back his lips with his greasy fingers. I look back down at my cereal. “Look! See?” he demands, like a little kid wanting my approval. I look up and tell him they look great.

He’s chewing and humming. That’s what he does when he’s enjoying his food. He hums. Not like a song or anything, just one long low hum that you can barely hear.

Two shots of whisky, eggs over hard, bacon or sausage and biscuits with gravy and grits. He makes it every morning with great enthusiasm and sets his place just so. His shot glass sits to the right of his plate, then comes his flask, then his ashtray and finally his open pack of cigarettes- Kools. His own little solar system. 

I can hear him breathing. He’s sucking in air through his nose, and it’s hard for him to get enough before he has to exhale. His cigarette burns down in his ashtray.

He takes a shot. Whisky dribbles down his chin and I can see his mouth is giving him trouble after all. Next time he tilts his head back, pulls out his lower lip and pours in the whisky directly. Then he seals his lips together with his fingers as he swallows. It works. Nothing is lost. 

He sees me staring and winks. I pretend not to notice, eating faster. Laughing manically now, he slams down his shot glass, and I wonder if he saw me flinch. Damnit! I know that’s what he wants and I’m mad at myself. He picks up his newspaper and dramatically unfolds it between us, with a snap. I remember my little brother and sister and I building cereal box walls between us as kids. He’s such a fucking child, but I’m grateful for the curtain between us. He’s silent for a bit, reading, but then he starts, “Hot damn! God damn ni**ers and fa**ots and whores, try’in’na take over the world!” It’s his habit to shout this out randomly, part of an ongoing conversation he has with himself. I didn’t even know there were people who talked like that until we moved down here. I’d never even heard a person say the “n” word out loud. I heard it in a movie once though.

My new stepfather moved us down here from the suburbs NJ last year. It felt like moving to a whole new country. That’s how different it is. My stepfather hates me, and I hate him. And I hate NC too. I didn’t realize there were all these racist people in this country. People should be alerted to this fact. It should be on the news. My mother says I’m not making an effort, but she doesn’t have to go to school here. She doesn’t have to say, “Yes ma’am and no sir” all day, and half the time I don’t even understand what people are saying. Last year was the first year of bussing around here, and no one is happy, not the black kids, not the white kids, and not the teachers. And the Civil War? Boy, talk about sore losers! This kid called me a carpetbagger the other day. I had to look it up. This is not how I’d planned on spending my high school years.

I get up from the table and I can feel Ed staring at me. My bare feet stick to the linoleum floor as I walk quickly, bringing my bowl back to the kitchen. I throw it in the sink with the rest of the dirty dishes, and I open the fridge and put my head inside, shielding my body from his eyes with the door. The cold feels so good on my face and body. I tell myself- the cold is real. The light is real. The door to the refrigerator is real. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still real- if what is happening is real. I grab some orange juice and drink it out of the carton. No one cares if you do that here. There are no rules, just a lot of screaming. No one screams at my house. My house is quiet, and we speak in code. This place is filthy, but you don’t have to be perfect to live here, and people say what they mean. They know who they are here, and they don’t care if people call them poor white trash. Well, secretly Darlene cares, but I’m the only one who knows that.

The kitchen in the mudroom at the back door. The refrigerator, stove and sink are all crammed into the tiny room. When you open the fridge, you have to be careful not to back into the stove. The sink slopes downward into the corner at a concerning angle. I’m afraid it’s going to fall right into the yard.

I grab a biscuit from the stove and open the back door to sit on the stoop. The feral cats scatter in all directions. They live under the stoop and are afraid of people. Most run straight across the yard and underneath the barn. The braver ones loiter under a shade tree between the barn and where I sit, waiting for me to throw them a piece of my biscuit.

This is my favorite time of the day. I call it my alone-time.  I sit down with my biscuit, tucking my knees up under my shirt and wrap my arms around my legs. The morning light is beautiful, before it gets too hot.  The shade trees cast shadows and a slight breeze creates kaleidoscopic patterns across the patchwork of dirt and tufts of grass.

I break off little pieces of my biscuit and eat them one by one. I like to pretend that this is the last food in the whole world, and I close my eyes so I can really taste each bite. I try to see how long I can make the biscuit last, and then I like to throw the last few pieces to the cats and kittens, trying to get them to come closer.

Sometimes I try to catch them, but not today. My legs are covered with scratches and bite-marks that take forever to heal because they get infected. I sit and pick at the scabs instead. My mother says I’ll be sorry when I’m older, when I have scars all over my legs. She worries about all the wrong things.

Two of the cats are deformed. They have their heads screwed on sideways, so they are always looking over their left shoulder. They are the hardest to catch. I usually try for the kittens first because they are so cute, and if I catch a kitten with five toes, I consider it a sign of good luck for the day. Still, the ultimate prize would be to catch one of the head-screwed-on-sideways cats.

When you’re coming home and you approach the stoop from the ground, the cats rush out from under the stoop and attack you, instead of running away. I don’t really understand the difference, but that’s what they do. The best method for not getting bitten is to take a running leap straight to the top step. If you land with a loud thud, it scares them enough that you have time to get through the door unbitten.

 After a while Darlene comes outside and wordlessly sits down beside me. She leans her head on my shoulder but doesn’t speak. It takes her forever to wake up and she’s grouchy. I am completely awake from the moment I open my eyes in the morning. I usually wake up happy and ready to go, but people tell me it’s annoying, so I’ve learned to keep to myself for a while, and I’m careful not to wake other people. After a bit we take a walk down her long rutted driveway, smoking cigarettes and talking. Darlene is smiling with her lips pressed together and shaking her head. She’s looking down at the ground. Her long brown hair is fine and blows easily across her face. 

“I can’t believe you told him off like that last night.” She said, “He was so mad!” I got in a fight with Ed last night. I’ve never fought with someone’s parent before, but I didn’t know what else to do. I wish she would have backed me up though, because I was sticking up for her, but I don’t say that. Ed scares me when he’s mad, but I tell her, “Fat fuck, I can’t wait ’till he bursts open. We could feed a whole ‘nother country.” She tilts her head away from me so the sandy dirt won’t blow into her eyes, but I can tell I’m making her nervous. She’s still smiling but she walks faster and lights another cigarette.

Darlene won’t tell me much about her family, and I don’t tell her about mine either, but she told me that when her mom met Ed, they were living in a mill village she called Creek Town, in South Carolina. She said her daddy was a bad drunk and Ed got them out of there.

They told me the story themselves one night when they had too much to drink and they came out of their bedroom to drink with us. I was on edge because I knew the whole thing could blow up and end badly, but that’s not what happened at all. She sat in his lap, and they laughed and laughed. For some reason I asked them how they met, just to make conversation, and they both got so excited. He said he was driving through town on business (he’s a door-to-door insurance salesperson- the kind that cheats poor people) when he saw a woman walking in the road up ahead. He said she had the best ass he’d ever seen- so he slowed down, creeping along behind her. Betty volunteered that she only turned around once, to make sure it wasn’t her son-of-a-bitch drunk-assed husband. Then Ed said he gunned the engine, pretending he was going to hit her, before pulling up alongside her. Betty interrupted then, unable to handle the suspense, “He asked me if I spoke French!” and burst out laughing even harder, “Can you believe it? That’s what he asked me! That was the first thing he ever said to me!” Ed repeated what she said, chuckling to himself “I asked her if she spoke French.”

Then Betty said, “When he asked me that, I started giggling because I thought he was so sophisticated, in his suit and driving a Cadillac and all.” She said she felt dumb, but she told him that, no, she didn’t speak French. Then they both started laughing and he said, “I told her, Good! ’Cause I don’t speak no French either! Look how much we have in common already!” I know it’s a dumb joke, but for them it’s the smartest joke ever- for them it was a love story. I liked seeing them smile and laugh, because it seemed real. I don’t think I’d ever seen my parents smile and laugh like that, like they were on the same team.

Ed was driving a different Cadillac back then, they told me. They said it like it was an important part of the story. They said it had a navy-blue exterior, with a baby blue and cream-colored leather interior. I asked what happened next and they said Betty jumped in and they drove around talking for a while, and then they went and got her girls, and from then on, they were together. Ed told her he has someplace better to go, and that’s how they ended up here. Darlene says her daddy never did came to look for them. She said her daddy still lives in Creek Town, but she says she’s never going back and she’s never going to see him again. I’m not sure why and she won’t tell me.

Ed doesn’t use our bathroom. He has his own bathroom, but it’s down a long dark hallway with no windows. It used to be an outhouse, so they built a hallway to attach it to the house. I didn’t know you could do that. The hall is lined with stacks and stacks of porn magazines along the wall. I go back there sometimes when no one is home. I just sit down on one of the stacks and look at the pictures. I feel like a detective, but I’m not sure what I’m looking for.

Now Ed’s got two Cadillacs and a boat, but he won’t cover the tarpaper on the side of the house with clapboard like he promised when they moved here. Now he says it doesn’t matter because no one can see the house from the road anyway. 

When we get to the end of the driveway we turn around and look back at the house without saying anything. I can still make out the tarpaper from the end of the driveway, but maybe it’s because I already know it’s there. I want to tell her that living in a nice house isn’t that great either, but I know that’s a stupid thing to say. She really wants to live in a nice house, and she really wanted my mom to like her, but I invited her over once and my mom said she couldn’t come back. She said it was her language, but I said, “Mom, that’s how everyone down here talks. Why did you move me down here then? Why do I have to go to that joke of a school?” My mother hates double negatives and people who say “ain’t”. I call her the language police.

We can only use the back door at Darlene’s house because the front porch collapsed a long time ago. It’s a serious safety hazard. No one seems concerned about this but me, but then I’m the only idiot who keeps opening the front door from inside the house, and barely catching myself before I fall into a pile of silvery old broken boards with rusty nails sticking out of them. I worry about rusty nails and puncture wounds. My mother used to lecture me about the dangers of tetanus and the wonders of hydrogen peroxide, so I try to always have peroxide on hand just in case, but no one here seems to care.

I’ve walked around to the front of the house to assess the situation. The yard is overgrown, and it looks like no one has used the front door in ages and ages. I think I could take one of the boards and nail it across the door from the outside so it would be impossible to open the door, but I know I shouldn’t take liberties with other people’s houses. It’s tempting though because I’m sure no one would notice.

When we get back to the house, we decide to change into our bathing suits so we can lay out in the back yard to sunbathe. After we change, we grab two towels and a big bottle of coke and our cigarettes. When Ed sees us in our bathing suits, he starts to chase Darlene through the house. He starts laughing and hollering that he’s going to grab her pussy. He really does use that word. She screams and starts running and suddenly it’s just chaos. He almost catches her but she get’s away and runs toward the bathroom. She makes it in time and locks the door. I know it’s wrong, what he’s doing, but he never actually has a chance to grab her, so I wonder if that means I should let him off on a technicality or something. He knows I’m watching him. When Darlene’s mom is around, she says, “That’s enough now Ed!” but then she starts giggling. Like she knows how much is enough. It would be so great if moms didn’t need money. Being a kid would be so much better. If my mom didn’t need money I wouldn’t even be here, I’d be back in NJ with my friends and my dad. I’d been looking forward to going to that high school for years, and I had my first boyfriend and had just made the varsity gymnastics team too, and it’s not easy to make the varsity gymnastics team as a freshman either. But now I’m down here- with this.

I stand outside the bathroom door next to Ed and try to coax Darlene to come out. I promise her that Ed won’t do anything, even though he is standing right next to me. I look him dead in the eyes and he knows what I think I know. He raises his hand like he’s going to hit me and when I flinch, he starts laughing and walks away.

When she finally comes out, he acts like it’s nothing, calls her a crybaby and chases us both out the back door and locks us out of the house. The cats’ scramble and now we are stuck outside without any towels, cigarettes, or bottles of coke. We both attack the back door with our fists, hollering for him to let us back in for our stuff. 

Sometimes if you hit the door just right you can break past the lock.