Abe

Chapter 1

The Beginning

I don’t know what got into me, I’ve never felt such a revelation as the one I am about to tell you.  I am pretty much flying by the seat of my pants now that it’s clear to me.   I think I’ve always been in love with Abraham Daniels (from next door).  Everyone called him A.D.  which I, personally always hated so I started to calling him “Abe” mainly cause I thought it was a cute nickname and I knew he would eventually hate it so it was “Perfect”.  Back then, it was harder for me to express my emotions so I always seemed to do the opposite of what I was always feeling.  I never wanted to be “found out”.   Kids can be rotten and mean so it’s best to keep stuff like that to yourself.  When your 11 years old, it’s about the best way you can express your emotions, you don’t.  Opposite of anything was better to express than love at that age, plus I wasn’t sure I even knew I was in love with Abe.  I lived on a street block in Pomersville, NJ.   I was about the only tomboy who loved playing the fun games like kickball (my favorite), basketball, baseball, etc.    Although, we mostly played kickball unless we got bored and needed a change then we would switch to basketball or baseball.  Although, I relished in kicking the pants out of those boys when we played kickball.  They were so smug and cocky when the girls wanted to play and would act like ALL girls played like prissy girls who can’t play like my friend Karina.  Karina wore a dress every time, even to play outside, who the hell wears a dress for kickball.  Karina was funny, though, she was a bit on the heavy side with curly short black hair, she was always snapping gum, loud and made it abundantly clear to everyone that she was Puerto Rican because she would say stuff like “kiss my Puerto Rican a*s”.   She cracks me up every time she said that.  The boys were Ricky, Shane, Abe and Eli (Abe’s younger brother).  The girls were my sister Eleanor, Karina, and me, Iris.  The boys can be so cocky and smug when they are picking teams to play kickball, too.  Thank goodness for Ricky who actually sees that I can hold my own when it comes to kickball, I can kick as good as any boy.   So there it is, it’s down to Ricky and I picking teams, it sucks that Ricky is the other team captain because we usually always try to get on the same team because we understand each other when we play.  I lost the coin toss so Ricky got to choose first.  He, of course, chose Abe, I chose Shane, who was a pretty good player.  As soon as Shane came over to my team, I told him “you’d better behave or else” and he said “or else what?!?” and I just give him a dirty look…jerk.  Shane was always talking smack.  Anyway, we continue with picking teams, Ricky chooses Eli next,  he is a good player too but was always flapping his mouth and trying to start a fight with someone but would also sometimes get fresh with either me or one of the girls so I always tried to avoid his nonsense.  I choose my sister, Eleanor and Ricky then continue with choosing Karina.  Shoot, we are uneven again.   I go and see if Judy from down the street can come play.  She is the youngest out the bunch but she doesn’t come out to play as much as the others.  Her parents work long hours so she doesn’t come out till late and by then were all being called in for dinner.  I hurry up and knock on Judy’s door, her mom’s home, thank god.  I ask her if Judy can come out and play and Judy comes running out with one sneaker on and the other one off.  She rushes by her mom and says “see you later mom”.  Her mom just chuckles and says in Spanish “pero eso si, cuando te llame no me des problemas” in other words “when I call you, you’d better not give me any trouble”.  I tell Judy about the game and that she’s on my team and we plan to kick some butts.  She’s all for it, we get back to my yard and the boys just said “it’s about time”.  I said “she was all ready to go, you didn’t have to wait long so let’s just start playing”.  I pretty much demand to kick first so the boys go out to the field which is one big open field between my yard and Abe’s yard.  I kick the ball and run to first and second base.  I stay at second.  My sister is up next and I yell that she kick it as hard as she can.  She does but it only gets her to first base.  I get to third. Shane is up next and I yell “bring me home Shane”.   Shane just nods his head.  He kicks, I run to home, Shane runs to first and second.  Judy’s up next.  Here we go, she kicks so dainty sometimes and I’ve got to remind her to kick hard.  She kicks but Abe catches the ball in the air, so she’s out.  I’m up next again and I have to make up for Judy’s out so I kick it super hard and it skyrockets, I run to first, second and as I’m running past Eli on third, Eli has the nerve to smack my a*s.  I felt so violated and went back to Eli on third who was still buckled over laughing because he thinks he just got away with smacking my a*s so I went ahead and kicked his face while he was buckled over laughing.  He screamed in pain because somehow I managed to draw blood and he was bleeding from his eye.  I got nervous and my sister Eleanor quickly ran to my side and said to Eli “that’s what you get for being such a jerk”.  Abe came over and said he was going to tell his dad about me kicking his brother.  I was hurt that Abe was defending his brother even though he saw him smack my a*s.  My sister told me at that moment “come on, were leaving” and then once we got in the front door, my sister said “hurry up and let’s go upstairs, I don’t want his dad saying anything to us even though he DID deserve it”.   My sister and I watched to see if his dad would come out of the house but all we saw was Eli and Abe’s uncle on the front porch.  We saw Eli come to his uncle complaining and showing his bloody wound which from where we stood looked like he was bleeding from his eyebrow.  His uncle asked him how he got it and Eli was lying and said he didn’t do anything but his Uncle said “it didn’t look like anything to me, looks to me like you had it coming”, both me and my sister smiled at each other cause we could see his uncle was a witness to the whole thing.  Yay, I had escaped any consequence I may have endured.  Just when I was overjoyed and relishing in my escape, my dad calls me into the next room.  He said he wants to talk to me and he said to me in Spanish “what happened outside?” and I said in Spanish” nothing” and he said “didn’t look like nothing to me……sweetie, I think you are getting too old and physically maturing too much to play with those boys next door, they seem to be noticing you more and more and especially that Eli.  I particularly didn’t like that he smacked your butt, either; that is just the beginning.  They will get fresher as you mature so you need to keep them at bay”.  I was so upset, why am I getting punished because Eli is so stupid.  So I asked my dad in Spanish, “so does that mean I can’t play with them, anymore?” and he said “no not anymore and if something like that should ever happen again, make sure you hit the guy with a good right hook and knock him out next time, I’ll back you up”.   I certainly didn’t expect to hear that from my dad but it was kind of funny.  So the summer got really lame, I couldn’t play in the evenings while dad was home.  However, I found a loop-hole.  I would play with the kids when dad wasn’t home and mom was.  I don’t think dad shared anything with mom in regards to the boys because she seemed like she had no clue and I didn’t volunteer the information about me not being able to play with the boys anymore.  I wish dad hadn’t been so strict cause once Eli got the stitches to his eyebrow, he and all the other boys learned to never mess with me.  Karina just said stuff like “any boy touches me and I got the okay to hit him upside the head with a frying pan” and my sister…well, she didn’t play much with the boys, she preferred the dolls, the girlie stuff.  The summer went by pretty much the same, played when dad wasn’t home and mom was.  As soon as I knew dad would be coming home, I would go upstairs an hour before and be watching TV so he would think I had been there all day.   The bad part was when mom started working during the day, we had to stay home and wait to go outside when dad came ‘cause he got home first.  That royally sucked.  That was boring as heck.  We would watch TV or read.  After a while, Karina would stop by and see if she could visit but we were good at first, we would say in Spanish, “no we can’t” and she would go play with the guys.  One day we were so bored and Karina happened to come by and my sister told her to come in, I told her she was nuts that we were going to get in trouble, she just told me to hush and to not say a word.  I told her “OK” but that if anything went wrong, I wanted no part of it; she said nothing would go wrong.  Karina came in and before you knew it, her younger brother (who was visiting from Puerto Rico and had a thing for my sister) came in, Abe, Ricky, Eli, Shane and even Judy had come over.  My sister had gotten a portable record player for Christmas that year and she had gotten maybe two records that Christmas.  One of them being Funky Town by Dorris D & the Pins (Lipps, Inc.).  I loved that song; it just made me move my body.    The record player was on this shelf way up top in the living room.  I went ahead and got on my mom’s glass coffee table to get the record player.  I got it and put on Funky Town and we all were dancing, it was like having our very own party.  We were killing it with the record.  We played it so much that it got a scratch on it plus it was almost time for my dad to get out of work so we had to get everybody out of the house so my sister whispered to me to put everything away.  I put the record back in its cover and everybody was hoping I would put more music on but I told them “nah, you all have to get out of here, my dad is gonna be home soon and you all have to go, now”.  I got on top of my mom’s glass coffee table to put the record player back on the shelf and then I felt it….I felt myself fall right through the table.  I still don’t know how it happened but miraculously I didn’t get cut, my sister helped me out of it but I never saw a bunch of cowards run out of there so fast.  Everyone left; they asked if I was okay but then “poof” they were gone.  I started to panic and cry..…I thought to myself, “what am I going to do, this was mom’s favorite table, we didn’t have much but what we did, she treasured and took care of it.  Mom is going to seriously kill me”.  I think I must have truly lost it because next thing I know my sister smacks me and told me to calm down.  She said “let me think now”.  She said, “Let’s call dad and see what he says” and I said “Are you crazy, he’s going to yell at us for having kids over”.  My sister just gave me a stupid look and said “are you dumb or what….were not going to tell him that we had kids over, we have to tell him something else so let me think.”  Eleanore was taking too long with thinking of something so I got an idea, while reviewing the scene, I saw that the shelf came from a cut out in the wall that connected between the living room and my parent’s bedroom so I could go ahead and say that I got on top of their bed to get the record player but when I put it on the coffee table, the weight of it broke it.  Like a lighbulb going off in my head, I thought to myself “Yeah, that’s what I’ll say.”  Eleanore just looked at me stupid again, “how would that (pointing at the light-weight record player) record player break that (pointing at the broken glass table) hard glass table?”  I told her to shut up because it just had to work and that she had to back me up on this because it was her idea to let those kids in the house in the first place.  She said okay but that she didn’t think it would totally work and I couldn’t rat her out no matter what.  She said we should call dad and tell him so this way when he gets home, he will see it’s no big deal and he could sweeten mom up before he tells her.”  I thought about this….after all, Eleanor is the oldest and she seemed to always know what to do in a time of crisis but if I hadn’t listened to her in the first place, I wouldn’t be in this mess anyway.  I told her “okay” and she went ahead and called dad at work.  We were to never call dad at work unless it was an emergency and this seemed like an emergency.   Eleanor and I got on the phone and listened in on the phone together.  Dad’s boss had answered the phone and we could hear him calling dad to the phone, dad got on the phone and said “Hello” and I panicked and started to cry uncontrollably, I kept picturing him yelling and screaming.  Eleanore kept trying to shut my sobbing up and you could hear the panic in my father’s voice when he said in stricken voice when he said in Spanish “What happened?”,  and we said in Spanish, “nothing dad but something happened to the coffee table” …my sister was so calm in expressing to him what was wrong with the table that I felt she wasn’t being totally honest about the big mess we really had going on so I took the phone from her and through my tears and sobbing, I told dad just how broken the table really was.  He seemed to be so happy that it was just a coffee table being broken that he told me to calm down.  He knew just what to say sometimes.  Dad asked me if it was a big breakage and I sobbed “YES!!!” and my sister took the phone and said “No, dad it’s not that big a break.”  Once all was calm and we got off the phone, my sister and I just picked up the glass and got rid of it.   I asked her why did she lie that there was a huge break and what’s dad going to say when he comes home and sees that it is broken right in the middle.  She said he is was fine and that I make too big a deal of things.  I guess she could see I was panicking so she tried to calm me down as best she could.  Dad came home from work at his usual time.  We were so happy to see him that we went to greet him at the door because after all, he understood over the phone it was no big deal up until he saw the real damages.  When dad came upon the evidence in the living room, he was not too thrilled as a matter of fact, he questioned “how did this happened exactly?”  Eleanore and I just looked at each other and I said in Spanish, “well, I got on the bed on the other side to get the record player and when I put it on the coffee table, it broke the table.”  I could see my father was thinking, inspecting the crime scene, looking around, my heart was racing and sweat started to come down the side of my face.  He asked, “that record player?”  I said “yes”.  Again,  I could see he was thinking and he just said in Spanish “let’s hope your mom doesn’t flip out”.   I felt relieved, he was more worried about mom, not so much on how it happened.  He fixed us a snack and I was okay until mom came home.  She immediately saw the broken table and asked it broke.  Dad started to tell her what we said happened and she seemed to not buy it.   “Oh-oh”, I thought, she’s going to figure it out.   I told her how much I loved her and how I would save money to help pay for a new one.  She chuckled and asked where I would get the money from….from my good looks.  Mom and dad just kept eyeing each other and just when I thought I was in the clear, dad started asking, “how did it happen again?”  I could feel it, he hadn’t bought any of it but I had to keep trying because I didn’t want to get us in any more trouble than we already were in.  I finally said I had to go to the bathroom and stayed in there in what felt like forever.  I waited till I heard dad talk about work and mom, too so this way I would no longer be the center of their attention.  Then I came out and went to my room and started to watch the Brady Bunch.  I loved the Brady Bunch, it was one of my favorite shows.  Mom and dad had forgotten all about me, they got engrossed in another conversation while mom fixed “arroz con coco” and “carne guisada”.  Beef stew and coconut rice.  At the time I hated coconut rice but as I got older, my taste buds changed and I love it now.  It’s funny how as a kid you are so finicky about certain foods but it’s the same foods that later on in life remind you of home.  I got bored after Brady Bunch was over so I started to read the new Disney book that came in the mail, it was called Cinderella, I started to read it and boy was it a good one.  I got so excited that I read it with Eleanore, we fell in love with the Cinderella book that we had to read it again.    Mom called us in for dinner and we talked about the Cinderella story and mom said that it is an old fairy tale that where she comes from, it’s called “La Cenicienta”, she told us about it and it was the same story.  We all finished eating dinner and we helped to clean the dishes with mom.  Dad just got up to go sit in the living room.  I asked mom how come dad never picks up his dishes and she has to pick it up for him and she said that is just the way it is.  But why I asked and she said “women cook and clean and the men work outside the home and fix the cars and stuff” and I said “well then sometimes I wish I could be a boy so I didn’t have to do dishes either.” She then tossed me the towel to dry.   Once everything was cleaned up, mom went to sit with dad to watch some telenovela (Spanish version of a soap opera) called “Elizabeth”.   Eleanore and I went back to watch TV in our room and whisper to each other about the coffee table and Eleanore said that no matter what not to say anything about the other kids.  So we pinky swore.  

Chapter 2

Abe

Abe walks into the back door of his kitchen while dragging Eli behind him as he bleeds from his eye, “Why did you have to smack her a*s, anyway?” as he whacks Eli upside the head.  Eli yelps “ouch, don’t you see I’m already bleeding and what do you care, anyhow?”  Abe responds by scratching his head and hesitates before he says, “I don’t but now she’s gonna tell her dad about what you did and he’s probably not gonna let her play with us anymore, why’d you have to go do that anyway, she’s the only girl in the neighborhood who can even kick good.  Do you like her or something?”  Eli just shrugs his shoulders and as he walks away and mumbles “no, but she’s got a nice a*s” and Abe chases him as Eli runs to his Uncle Sebastian out on the front porch.  Uncle Sebastian was a cool uncle who always took us out for ice-cream and you could always talk to him about anything and know he wouldn’t tell mom or dad if you asked him to keep it a secret.  Abe could hear Eli whining about what happened to him and Abe just shakes his head in disbelief as the pile of crap comes pouring out of Eli’s mouth.  Abe still can’t understand how Eli can just make up crap and make it sound so believable at the same time.  He kind of wish he could do that sometimes but Abe was never good at lying and sometimes thinks it’s his biggest downfall.  As Abe hears Eli’s crap story come pouring out of his mouth, it cracked him up when Uncle Sebastian saw right through it all and told him he had it coming.  Now, that was worth listening to.  Abe went upstairs to find his mom while wondering as he climbed the steps what it would have been like if it were him who smacked Iris’ butt.  He shrugged  the thought away as quickly as it came.  Once he found his mom he went to give her a hug and kiss.  Abe loved his mom, she was always his confidant, he could tell her anything.  She always had good advice for him even when he didn’t want it.  She always described Abe as the one who wears his heart on his sleeve (he never quite understood what that meant but it sounded sissy-like) while Eli was her mischief maker.  Sometimes Abe wished it were the other way around.  Abe started to tell his mom about what happened outside and she started to say in Spanish, “Eli is lucky he didn’t get more than that but  wait till he comes in with some tall tale about what happened, I have something waiting for him.”  Abe continued to talk about how he felt, he said he felt weird when Eli did that to Iris and how could he do that when Iris is like a sister to them.  His mom just smiled and said to him in Spanish, “But honey, she is not a real sister to either of you so you have to remember that and perhaps maybe Eli is finding her more interesting these days”.   Abe thought to himself, “Well, of course I know that she’s not my REAL sister but that is besides the point, Eli SHOULD think of her as a sister not anything more.  She’s just a girl who lives next door and she is like a sister to them, they grew up together” but Abe continued thinking and then finally questioned to himself, “then why are you so mad?”  He couldn’t figure it out so he decided to put it to rest and just not think about it anymore.  His mom made dinner and it smelled delicious.  He loved it when he could smell “pernil” (roast pork) cooking in the house, it was one of his favorite dishes.  He continue to eat his dinner with his family until he heard his mom talk about Eli’s cut and how she thinks he needed stitches.  She said she wanted to get him to the hospital and Eli kept objecting to it but dad finally put his foot down and said he was going so I went with them.  I mainly wanted to go because I had my own agenda with Eli.  While my parents talked in the front seat, I whispered to Eli about what they were going to do to him in the hospital, I really didn’t know what they would really do to him but I figured I make it up since Eli was so good at making up crap maybe I should give him a taste of his own medicine.  I whispered to him, “First, they would inject a big ‘ole needle in your scar to draw out the blood.  Second, they would put an acid liquid over your eyebrow to make all the infection ooze out.  Third, they would take another sewing needle and thread to sew up your cut real good.   Fourth, that he should keep his good eye on the doctors cause some doctors are brand new and straight out of high school and have been known to botch up the stitches and he could end up with his eye stitched closed to his eyebrow. “  Eli just snickered at me and said I was pulling his chain.  When we got to the hospital, we waited in the waiting room.  I kept signaling to Eli that he was next and kept pretending to use my finger as if it were a needle.  

Author's Note

This writing is in the very beginning stages.