The Flowers by Dagoberto Gilb

Author:Dagoberto Gilb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2008-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

“He’ll never know,” she said. “I promise, Sonny. I promise not to tell him ever.”

We walked into the living room together, but she turned toward the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Another game show was on. She was saying something but I wasn’t listening. I sat on the edge of the couch and fought to tie my shoelaces. In one of his T-shirts, she came over smiling, thinking I’d changed my mind. Not for a second did I think of staying. “I gotta go,” I said, and I was out the door.

Cloyd was in his office, and he spun and squeaked in his metal swivel chair as I tried to get by his office door.

“Where’s your mother?”

I wanted so much to get to that room where I could just lie on that bed. “I dunno, man.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!”

It was like I got hit in the face but I didn’t feel the pain there yet. It’s that I was not expecting him to yell like that. I wasn’t even sure what I’d said.

“You talk to me with respect, you understand?” He was standing up.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know I wasn’t.”

“Don’t ever talk to me like that again!”

He was drunk, the red in the bulbs of his eyes at the bottom like it sank down there, or they were the roots growing off the blue above. I nodded at him but turned my sight away. I was too afraid to walk off and I wanted to so bad.

“Goddamnit,” he said. He was still fuming. “Goddamnit!” he said again even louder, swirling his whiskey around the one ice cube so hard I thought it would come over the lip.

I hated that I was afraid to leave, to scratch an itch. I hated him.

“You don’t know where your mother is?”

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