The Board Not Skated
by
shortshots
Never should've gotten off, said Tommy in the dark. Or had he thought it?
Speech, thoughts, the two blended often in this new home of his. He dug a finger in the gap between the inside of the shackles and his wrist, and scratched the itchy calluses with his overgrown nail. They were long and jagged, his fingernails. When boredom and a rare burst of energy possessed him, Tommy spent hours filing them against the concrete walls around him. Its surface was more familiar than his own face. For a minute, his brain roared into a panic. When had he last seen it? He asked himself, or he thought. My face? There was a muffled thump in the distance. Angela was home. He heard her walking down the steps and retreated to his favorite corner, curling into a ball to sink into the memory of brighter days.
~
His mom had got him a Powell Peralta skateboard for his thirteenth birthday. Just the shape of it under the un-used Christmas wrapping paper made his dad stutter with frustration and restraint. There was cake, a table, his best buds Win and Jermaal, and so the old man didn't have the heart to interrupt the festivities. Taking a step back, he pulled at his beard and watched, bug-eyed, as if Tommy were performing open-heart surgery instead of unveiling his newfound freedom. Now effin way, said Win a Korean kid from down the block Tommy had befriended the day their family had moved into a the dark blue house up the street. Tommy had been immediately jealous of Win's Globe skateboard that day and pestered his parents for one ever since. Damn now I'm the only who aint' got one, said Jermaal a white South African who lived with his adoptive black family one thirty-minute bus ride from Tommy and Win's neighborhood. Well son what do we say? Said his father suddenly beside him with a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. While holding up his brand new skateboard, Tommy turned with joy in his eyes and grinned at mom. Super-duper thanks, he said already turning away from her to gaze at the plank of wood and wheels, Best freaking birthday ever. It felt like something happening a million miles away but his thirteen year-old brain just managed to register the sensation of his mom kissing the top of his head through his greasy hair and whispering -- Glad you like it, sweetie. Happy birthday.
~
PBS, church, his parents, and secular American culture in general had taught Tommy and his pals to be wary of strangers. To look out for creepers and foreigners who might do him harm, always men. Ugly men who were evil, witch-like women. Some magazines and movies he promised his parent he hadn't watched thanks to Win's older brother had given him a glimpse of the so-called femme fatale. But that day in the park when he was clutching his new Powell Peralta and watching Jermaal do tricks on Win's sturdy but seasoned Globe skateboard, nothing and no one had prepared him for Angela. How could they? She had been a friend of his mom and still was. Everyday after work she's come home, go to the soundproof door behind the sliding bookcase and shut it behind her to come down the stairs and tell Tommy after all these years how his folks were doing, how his mom was. His dad and her had had another kid after seven years. Seven years. What did that make him now? He scratched at the calluses in the shackle gaps and saw the numbers -- two and one. Impossible. That's -- that's not right , he repeated over and over. That's not right. I'm thirteen, he whispered while tugging at his beard the way he'd seen his dad do on that last birthday. How many had he missed? Had his mom got her and his dad's new kid a Powell Peralta too? His head began to shake as if a blizzarding wind had snuck in. The chains connecting his shackles to the wall rattled as he whimpered while beating his fists on the concrete. If he or she had gotten one too, he thought sniveling to himself in the dark, I hope they at least got to ride it. The rhythmic clink of Angela's key unlocking the door made him withdraw his outstretched limbs to himself and return to his corner. Her opening the door would be blinding. Tommy hated it. The light from the hallway stairs. It felt sterilizing as if every opening of the door burned away at the life he knew, little by little.
~
His mom's friend Angela was a widow who'd lost her husband and daughter in a house fire. The police detective investigating it, died shortly in an automobile accident. There had been whispers of a gas leak, arson, or lightning. Since then Angela had been given charge by the local church pastor of the monthly bake sale in the front parking lot. Not drop-dead gorgeous but athletic and homely, none of the other moms ever let their husband talk to her alone. Often, Tommy's mom would ask his dad -- That Angela huh? She sure is something. He wouldn't respond, having identified that last statement as her answering her own question. What -- why are you looking at me like that? He'd say, raising his newspaper to shield himself from her laser-like gaze. My friend, Angela, his mom would say. What do you make of her? Tommy's dad grumbled and said, I don't know -- those cookies of hers are pretty good, polite woman too. Her cookies? Said his mom raising her voice. You like her cookies? His dad would look at him, shake his head at Tommy and whisper -- Don't get married, son. Just get on that skateboard and never look back. But Tommy never did. He'd been too scared to rough something so brand new on their pot-hole infested roads and resorted to carrying it around with him wherever he went. Like the park that day when Angela had started talking to him for so long that he finally put his Powell Peretta down and stepped on to ride away with Win and Jermaal to avoid such a long conversation ... but his parents had taught him better than that. Manners, his dad had told him once, They're what separate people from animals. But that day, after his friends had managed to rudely shout -- bye! -- and skate off, Tommy learned that some animals looked exactly like people and that the worse ones were the type that preyed on people with manners.
(*** I looked at this picture at the top and tried to come up with a story inspired by it. This image shows me someone about to kick off or someone stopping, there's a frozen-ness to it. Thank you to @cute-cactus for tagging me! Great prompt from A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Hope any who read this enjoy!)
It's a fun story to read, I can understand Tommy's excitement, as a child when I had something new I treasured it for a while, either on my bed or propped up against my bed.
Thanks! Yeah looking at the skateboard pic I couldn't help but think of how much someone loves that skateboard, what it represents to them -- stuff like fun or freedeom.