The Memory Giver (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 7

                                                        Chapter seven

        Uncle Johnny was a fun lovin’ guy.  The entire family adored Uncle Johnny until he got drunk.  When Uncle Johnny got drunk the fun whooshed right out of him, like helium from a hot air balloon, which is why Aunt Jenny left him.  Aunt Jenny loved the fun Uncle Johnny—the Uncle Johnny who bought her flowers for no reason, or got up in the middle of the night and said “let’s go watch the grunion run.”  But the mean Uncle Johnny who baited and insulted her, who spent up his paycheck buying rounds of drinks before coming home angry and broke was a man she could no longer tolerate. 

        Aunt Jenny left Uncle Johnny and moved to Arizona to be with a man who treated her the way a woman ought to be treated.  He even bought her a house with a swimming pool.  Uncle Johnny moped around for two years after Aunt Jenny left.  He stopped drinking and joined the church, hoping his new-found religion would lure her back.  Then, one day she returned to him. 

        He said he woke up one morning and she was lying next to him in bed as if nothing had ever happened.  The family was happy Uncle Johnny was getting his life back together. 

        Then Dad started wondering why Uncle Johnny didn’t bring Aunt Jenny around anymore.  Dad did some investigating and found out Aunt Jenny was still in Arizona with the man who bought her the house with the swimming pool.  Dad decided to go over to Uncle Johnny’s and confront him about the lie.  Uncle Johnny said Dad must be crazy.  Aunt Jenny wasn’t in Arizona in the house with the pool, she was in the kitchen making tacos. Soon after that Uncle Johnny went away.

        A.D. had said poor Uncle Johnny took a one way trip to The Twilight Zone.  He said it making his voice sound exactly like Rod Serling’s.  As morose as it was, Turtle thought it was the funniest thing.  Any time A.D. wanted to get a laugh out of him he’d say: reason number thirty-six why Uncle Johnny has taken a one way trip to the Twilight Zone.

        Now, what had happened to Uncle Johnny wasn’t so funny.  Mabry had to call Turtle three times to get up that morning to start getting ready for school, finally standing outside his bedroom door Don’t make me come in there, before he moved.

        Can’t she hear him in there?

        When Turtle finally came out to use the bathroom he could hear A.D. fast at work behind closed doors putting the Millennium Falcon together. He heard paper rustling (A.D. referring to the instructions) then the sound of plastic pieces being snapped together.

        How can she not hear that?

        Turtle knew why his mother couldn’t hear it, because she would not be joining him in the Twilight Zone.  No way Jose; this was a solo ride, a one-way trip to the other side. One passenger, one ticket.

        Turtle was relieved to leave for school that morning.  At school he could think about Rita, and his classes, and even Ansley contemplating another ass whuppin’.  Things that didn’t make it seem as though he’d jumped the tracks and was going crazy as a bedbug.

        He loved A.D.  His older brother was his best friend.  He missed him terribly, they all did.  But he was the only one who could hear A.D. in the bedroom putting the Millennium Falcon together.  Only he had taken his grief to insanity—to The Twilight Zone.  A queasiness erupted in his stomach.

        When Rita arrived in home room that morning, Turtle leapt from his seat and escorted her to hers, carrying her backpack in his arms as if it were a baby.  His eyes scanned the students in the room to find everyone gaping at him with the exception of Ansley Meade, who was busy writing on the palm of his hand with a ballpoint pen.