The Front Porch Club (revisited)
Title: The Front Porch Club (revisited)
Length: 11 pages
Genre: Fiction
LJ-Cut:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Had to rewrite The Front Porch Club for class, this is the newest, and actually very different version
When my little sister was younger, she liked to sit on the living room floor and play with her toy dolls that had old photographs of our mother rubber banded to their heads. She always played out the same story with her dolls, which is the one that Mom told us years ago about her older brother Viktor and how he saved her life when she was thrown from the back of a horse. Sadly, it was the only thing that my sister remembered about our mother and she never got tired of hearing or telling that tale.
As a seven year old she spent a lot of time getting lost in her imagination and, in turn, forgot to do a lot of things she was supposed to do in reality, like brush her teeth at night, finish her vegetables at dinner, and to say please and thank you, but she was particular at forgetting to pick up her toys. Stumbling over a bunch of Barbies and crinkled photographs of his wife was just one of the many things that infuriated my father when he came home from work.
I, on the other hand, had to remember to pick up after my father, take out the garbage, keep my sister "under control" and make sure we stayed out of his way when he came home. More often than not, neither of us remembered our chores. When this happened-and it did happen, all too frequently-the same scenario played out in our house like clockwork: Dad stumbled home (fresh from the bar), punished my sister by dragging her out of her bedroom by her long blonde hair and then forced her to watch him behead a doll or two, all the while telling her how horrible of a daughter she was through unintelligible slurred words. Next, he would turn his attention to me, when I tried to comfort my sister, and threw me into a wall while pointing out the reasons why I was a horrible son and a disappointment to the family name.
As soon as Dad left the room, or kicked us out of the house, I took my sobbing sister's hand and we ran down the block to the place we felt safest: Aunt Neda's house.
It was one of the oldest houses in our town which stood on the far corner of our block. It was large and weather beaten at every angle. The porch wrapped itself half way around the house and the ghosts of dead flowers and withered vines tightly choked it. Long ago, during its debut, I'm sure people slowed down their horse drawn carriages or walked a little slower passing that house, just so they could marvel at its beauty and workmanship, and wonder what it would be like to live inside.
Now it sat lifeless on a lot with snarled, overgrown grass and dead plants trapping its forgotten beauty. The shutters that still remain attached to the windows are struggling to hang on and the paint is peeling like bad sunburn. The dying willow tree in the front yard casts such a depressing shadow that it makes the house look tired and defeated; you could almost hear it sigh in exhaustion when a breeze floated by, threatening its stability. "It's a pity," I've heard people whisper as they passed by on their mid afternoon walks, "that they just let it sit there to rot."
The negligent person who was letting this historical house die was Mr. Jimmy Devorac, third rate mechanic at Wilson's Repair Shop down on Third Street, and equally talented father to my sister Joyce and me. The house wasn't always so barren though, in fact for the majority of its existence it was full of life, and only those past five years after Dad inherited it, which had determined its present state.
When I was younger, my great aunt Neda lived in the house; it had been passed down for generations by my Bulgarian ancestors. My mother would drop Joyce and me off at the house before she left for her classes at the college. She was determined to get a bachelor's degree in English Literature (her favorite author was James Joyce and the person whom my sister and I were named after) and Aunt Neda helped by baby-sitting. For much of my young life, I remember Aunt Neda sitting in her rocking chair, swaying Joyce to sleep in a yellow fleece blanket while I ran back and forth on that porch, burning off energy and occasionally pausing to color a picture in my Power Ranger's coloring book or to build a goblin's castle with Legos.
After two more years of hard work, Mom finally graduated from college. Grandma and Grandpa Kubrat visited our tiny town of Godric from upstate New York to see their daughter graduate. Two days later, Aunt Neda and Mom drove my grandparents back to the train station so they could return home.
After hours of Joyce and I impatiently sitting at the window waiting for their return, two stern looking police men rang the door bell to tell us that all four of our relatives died when the driver of a semi truck fell asleep and crushed our old, rusted Oldsmobile.
The last time we used Aunt Neda's keys to open her front door, was only to move in all of Mom's belongings from our house, shortly after the funeral. Dad never stepped inside again and gave Joyce and me implicit instructions to do the same. He left it to drown in dust and slowly transform into the town's fabled haunted house that children stand outside of and whisper about on Halloween.
We obeyed our father and never set one foot inside the house, but he never said we couldn't sit on her porch, so that's where Joyce and I spent a lot of our time. It was the place we retreated to when Dad was drunk and looking for a fight. We'd spend hours on that rickety old swing, making up stories about how we would treat the house if it was ours. Sometimes we'd close our eyes and the smell of lilacs that would have blossomed in the backyard and the sight of bright red roses climbing up the pillars would seem so real that my chest ached with grief when I opened my eyes to see the bleak and dreary reality.
Home was not a word I liked at all and at times it would make me cringe. Home was where Joyce and I walked on eggshells because of our father's unpredictable behavior. We needed a battle plan when we went home to avoid stepping on a trigger that would set Dad off in an angry outburst. The strategy we developed seemed to work great: we would walk home from school together, or we'd meet on Aunt Neda's front porch before going home so we could face our father together.
One September afternoon when I was twelve years old, I was kept after school for fighting with Clementine "Beastie" Beasley after I found him picking on Joyce and her best friend Sandy during recess. Beastie and I were both in detention until four o'clock and as soon as the second hand clicked its way to twelve on Mrs. Petersen's classroom clock, I bolted out of my seat and ran home.
When I reached Aunt Neda's house Joyce's pink book bag was on the swing with various school books spread out on the floor but she was nowhere in sight. I took a seat and pulled out my science book, waiting for her return. Ten minutes slowly drifted past and I still didn't see Joyce skipping up the street. Worried, I made a beeline directly to our house.
It was eerily quiet as I stood outside the filthy screen door of our home. When I walked into the living room it was littered with empty Busch cans that Dad left askew on the floor from the night before. As I entered the grimy roach infested kitchen I noticed Dad's large gray thermos sitting on the counter that he took to work every morning, which he filled with coffee and his morning dose of vodka. Then I heard a muffled sound coming from behind the closed door of Joyce's room. My heart began to beat in my throat and a terrible feeling began to rise in my stomach when a loud crash echoed throughout the silent house.
I flung open the bedroom door and saw Dad straddling Joyce on her bed; her face was smothered by a flimsy, piss-yellow pillow and her arms were flailing around at anything she could get her hands onto. "What are you doing?!" I yelled, completely in shock. My father had done some horrible things to us in the past, but this was beyond anything I ever thought he was capable of doing.
He immediately got off the bed and stumbled his way over the broken bedside lamp that Joyce had flung to the ground moments earlier, in order to get to where I stood. Joyce flung the dampened pillow off her face and she jumped out of the bed. She leaned against the window ledge with her hands around her neck, gasping for air.
"Stupid little boy," was the only thing I could make out from Dad's severely slurred speech as he grabbed me by the ears and threw my head into the wall like a volleyball.
Joyce tried to embrace me but Dad grabbed her shoulders and hurled her through the doorway and onto the kitchen floor where she landed on her back with a thud. When the tiny dots that appeared in front of my eyes stopped flashing, I ran to Joyce and peeled her off the kitchen floor as Dad staggered after us.
I was a skinny, lanky boy and I knew I couldn't carry Joyce all the way to Aunt Neda's house so I ran into the bathroom; the only door in the house with a lock on it. I tossed Joyce into the tub and turned around just in time to see Dad in the door frame. Without giving it another thought, I slammed the door as hard as I could and turned the lock, out of breath. "Open this door, you little bastard!" he yelled, beating its wooden frame.
"Undo this door or I will break it down!" he continued to pound as Joyce cried uncontrollably in the filthy bathtub. I planted my gym shoes solidly on the linoleum floor and leaned all my twelve year old body weight into the door, feeling the vibrations of every pound my father made.
"That's it boy! You're gonna wish you were never born!" Then there was silence-the kind that made every atom in my body stand on edge, waiting for the big blow, like the eerie calmness that comes before a storm.
Then it came; Dad rammed himself into the door so hard that the wood in the door cracked behind my back. The only thing that followed was a heavy thud on the floor. Moments flew by as I tried to figure out what to do next.
"What happened, James? Is he gone?" Joyce asked, looking up from the wad of toilet paper she was crying into.
I carefully pried myself from the door and laid my body flat against the floor. I peered through the gap between the door and the floor and saw Dad lying awkwardly on the ground, with his left foot up against the bathroom door. "It's okay Joyce, I think he passed out," I whispered.
Kneeling in front of her I checked every limb of her body to make sure she was alright. "I'm sorry I came home without you, James," she explained in between tears. "I needed construction paper and I-he wasn't supposed to be home!"
"Shh, it's okay. It's over now," I did my best to calm her down and after two band aids and rinsing her face in cold water she stopped crying but threatened to start again when I told her we needed to leave the bathroom. "We can't James!" she pleaded, "He's out there! I don't want him to hurt me again!"
"Listen to me Joyce, I'm here and I won't let anything happen to you. I'm your big brother and I won't let him touch you again. Now, I need you to be really quiet. We can make it out the door if he's asleep but you can't wake him up, can you be the quietest that you've ever been for me?" I asked her as I held her hand tightly.
She nodded and I once again checked the gap below the door to make sure Dad was still sleeping. I turned to Joyce and put my index finger to my lips and Joyce covered her mouth with both of her hands to remind herself to stay quiet. I slowly turned the lock but it still made a sharp thud when it unlocked. My heart beat quicker and I pressed my ear to the door but there were no sounds of movement. Slowly, inch by inch, I opened the door. Dad's foot was still up against it and the rubber soles of his work boots roughly and slowly slid down the door. When they crossed the threshold of the bathroom and softly hit the floor I let out the breath I had been holding in.
I motioned for Joyce to come towards me and we maneuvered our way over his body and into the living room. Joyce ran out the door first and I followed, absentmindedly letting the screen door noisily slam shut behind me. We both froze stock still, straining to hear any alarming noise from behind us.
Hearing nothing, I grabbed Joyce's hand and we ran down the street to Aunt Neda's front porch where we distractedly did our homework in silence and tried to repress the events that had just occurred, something we should've been used to doing by then.
When Joyce's Scooby Doo wrist watch blinked 11:00 I thought it was time we went home. After I promised Joyce that she could sleep in my bedroom and I would stay awake and guard the door all night, she agreed to go home. We walked up the street which was periodically spotted with the dim street lamps that guided us home. We were only a few houses away from Aunt Neda's porch when I heard a car approaching from behind us. Joyce was a few feet in front of me, walking along the curb like it was a tightrope; her arms were out on either side of her in order to keep her balance. As the car got closer the familiar boom, clank it made sent chills down my spine. I turned around to see Dad's dark gray pick up truck swerving down the road. The car was on the opposite side of the road of us and it looked like it was going drive up the curb and through a few lawns before it parked itself in our front yard, but before it could hop the curb the car swerved again and its headlights flooded over Joyce's body.
Without thinking, I sprinted the short distance between my sister and me and shoved her forward, hoping it was far enough out of the way. I tried to keep her in my line of sight but before I knew it, I was bouncing off the hood of the truck and the last thing I remembered seeing was our elderly neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Frooger running down their front porch steps and the image of Dad's pick up truck plowed into a large Oak tree.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital room covered in bandages with a hard itchy cast that encased my right leg. My head throbbed with pain as soon as my eyes opened and it took a few moments for me to figure out where I was and to remember why I was there.
I heard two men conversing in soft whispers and saw their two shadowy figures in the corner of the room but I didn't see Joyce. I coughed before I could speak and the two men rushed over to my bedside, "Oh, you're awake!" It was my neighbor, Mr. Frooger; he was dressed in a red flannel shirt with a pair of square, black-framed glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose.
"James, I'm Dr. Galackinski, how are you feeling today?" The doctor wore a vibrant red tie with purple polka dots that peeked out from underneath his long white doctor's coat that he was constantly straightening whenever both of his hands were free. The longer I took to answer his question, the more time he played with his tie.
"Where's Joyce?" I said and tried to sit up.
"Take an easy, cowboy, you took quite a hit last night," Dr. Galackinski put his hand on my shoulder and made me lay back down. He pressed a button on the bed rail and my pillows began to rise up until I was in a sitting position.
Mr. Frooger took my hand and said, "I'll go get Joyce for you but you need to talk to the doctor first and answer his questions, can you do that for me?"
I nodded and after he left I answered Dr. Galackinski's questions as curtly as possible, constantly glancing and the door. Finally Joyce walked in holding Mrs. Frooger's hand and ran over to my bed as soon as she saw me. Mr. Frooger followed Dr. Galackinski out of the room as his wife sat down in the chair next to my bed, looking tired and worried.
Joyce was coloring a picture on my cast with the markers that Mrs. Frooger got at the gift shop that morning when Dr. Galackinski walked back into the room with a tall, thin man in a gray suit. "James, Joyce, this is Mr. London, he's a lawyer and we need to tell you something very important." Hearing this, Mrs. Frooger got up from her chair and sat down on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on my shoulder and her other arm around Joyce, as if she knew what the doctor was about to say.
Dr. Galackinski pulled a chair up to the bed and began to explain while Mr. London stood up straight, both of his hands grasping a black attaché case. "Last night your father was the person driving the car that hit you, James. He crashed his car right into a big tree and when the paramedics brought him to hospital with you, he needed surgery because he was bleeding in his insides," the doctor rubbed his stomach for emphasis. "The doctors downstairs worked as hard as they could but they couldn't keep him alive. When doctors were trying to fix him, he died and they couldn't bring him back to life," he paused and looked at the ground before continuing. "What I'm trying to say is that your father's dead." When he finished, he expected a huge wave of emotion to overcome Joyce and me and we would spout an endless river of tears but the both of us just stared at him.
After a few uncomfortable moments of silence Joyce asked skeptically, "Are you sure he's dead?"
"I'm positive," Dr. Galackinski nodded sympathetically.
The doctor, Mrs. Frooger and Mr. London all looked at one another quizzically while Joyce and I were emotionless to the news. Mr. London then pulled a number of papers from his case and declared, "Well then, I'm here for two reasons. First, James, everything that was your father's has now been passed down to your ownership. His money, his car, his house-"
"-Aunt Neda's house too?" Joyce asked, her eyes growing bright. In her mind, that house was as mysterious and intriguing as her mother, and the thought of her finally getting to know one of them excited her.
Mr. London glanced at Mrs. Frooger and she nodded, which made a small smile grow across Joyce's face.
"But I don't understand," I said, "Who's gonna take care of us? We can't live by ourselves, we're only kids."
Before anyone could answer, the door to the hospital room opened and Mr. Frooger walked in with a man a few inches taller than him. He was a thickly built man in his late forties with hair so dark that it drew attention to the few strands of gray that were sprouting. "I hope we aren't interrupting," Mr. Frooger said as he put his hand on the stranger's shoulder and walked further into the room.
"No, as a matter of fact, you're right on time," Mr. London said as he shook their hands and introduced himself.
"Kids," Mr. Frooger began, pointing his hand to the stranger, "this is your uncle Viktor; he's your mother's older brother." Viktor forced an uncertain smile and Joyce became uneasy and unsure that this man was actually the hero of her favorite story. "When Mr. London told him what happened to your father, he hopped on the very first plane from Bulgaria to come see you two."
Thinking that this was his cue, Mr. London began to explain, "The second reason I'm here is to tell you that according to the will your parents made shortly after Joyce was born, if anything should happen to the both them, then your uncle Viktor would become your guardian." Mr. London nodded in Viktor's direction as he opened his attaché case once more and pulled out an even thicker bundle of papers.
Before anyone could continue in deciding our future, Joyce had to test the validity of her super hero. "Is it true you saved my mommy from a bad horse?"
A huge nostalgic smile grew across our uncle's face that made him look ten years younger and he nodded. Joyce automatically believed him and gave him a hug so tight she didn't want to let go.
"If we live with you, do we have to move to Booger Area?" Joyce asked when she finally let go of his embrace, unsure she would want to live in a place with such a name.
"Bulgaria?" he laughed, "We could, but I've always liked to stay at Aunt Neda's house when I was younger."
Joyce turned to me and winked and subtly as a seven year old could be. I couldn't help but smile at how happy she was. If Uncle Viktor could restore the happiness in my little sister's life that our father had robbed her from, then he was someone I could learn to trust.
"Now, Mr. Kubrat, if you'll come with me and sign a few papers, you'll be able to take these kids home." Mr. London informed, searching his pockets for a pen.
"Home!" Joyce said to me in an excited whisper when the grown-ups left the room. I smiled and rested my head on the soft white pillows behind me; that word had an entirely different and wonderful meaning now.
Length: 11 pages
Genre: Fiction
LJ-Cut:
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Had to rewrite The Front Porch Club for class, this is the newest, and actually very different version
When my little sister was younger, she liked to sit on the living room floor and play with her toy dolls that had old photographs of our mother rubber banded to their heads. She always played out the same story with her dolls, which is the one that Mom told us years ago about her older brother Viktor and how he saved her life when she was thrown from the back of a horse. Sadly, it was the only thing that my sister remembered about our mother and she never got tired of hearing or telling that tale.
As a seven year old she spent a lot of time getting lost in her imagination and, in turn, forgot to do a lot of things she was supposed to do in reality, like brush her teeth at night, finish her vegetables at dinner, and to say please and thank you, but she was particular at forgetting to pick up her toys. Stumbling over a bunch of Barbies and crinkled photographs of his wife was just one of the many things that infuriated my father when he came home from work.
I, on the other hand, had to remember to pick up after my father, take out the garbage, keep my sister "under control" and make sure we stayed out of his way when he came home. More often than not, neither of us remembered our chores. When this happened-and it did happen, all too frequently-the same scenario played out in our house like clockwork: Dad stumbled home (fresh from the bar), punished my sister by dragging her out of her bedroom by her long blonde hair and then forced her to watch him behead a doll or two, all the while telling her how horrible of a daughter she was through unintelligible slurred words. Next, he would turn his attention to me, when I tried to comfort my sister, and threw me into a wall while pointing out the reasons why I was a horrible son and a disappointment to the family name.
As soon as Dad left the room, or kicked us out of the house, I took my sobbing sister's hand and we ran down the block to the place we felt safest: Aunt Neda's house.
It was one of the oldest houses in our town which stood on the far corner of our block. It was large and weather beaten at every angle. The porch wrapped itself half way around the house and the ghosts of dead flowers and withered vines tightly choked it. Long ago, during its debut, I'm sure people slowed down their horse drawn carriages or walked a little slower passing that house, just so they could marvel at its beauty and workmanship, and wonder what it would be like to live inside.
Now it sat lifeless on a lot with snarled, overgrown grass and dead plants trapping its forgotten beauty. The shutters that still remain attached to the windows are struggling to hang on and the paint is peeling like bad sunburn. The dying willow tree in the front yard casts such a depressing shadow that it makes the house look tired and defeated; you could almost hear it sigh in exhaustion when a breeze floated by, threatening its stability. "It's a pity," I've heard people whisper as they passed by on their mid afternoon walks, "that they just let it sit there to rot."
The negligent person who was letting this historical house die was Mr. Jimmy Devorac, third rate mechanic at Wilson's Repair Shop down on Third Street, and equally talented father to my sister Joyce and me. The house wasn't always so barren though, in fact for the majority of its existence it was full of life, and only those past five years after Dad inherited it, which had determined its present state.
When I was younger, my great aunt Neda lived in the house; it had been passed down for generations by my Bulgarian ancestors. My mother would drop Joyce and me off at the house before she left for her classes at the college. She was determined to get a bachelor's degree in English Literature (her favorite author was James Joyce and the person whom my sister and I were named after) and Aunt Neda helped by baby-sitting. For much of my young life, I remember Aunt Neda sitting in her rocking chair, swaying Joyce to sleep in a yellow fleece blanket while I ran back and forth on that porch, burning off energy and occasionally pausing to color a picture in my Power Ranger's coloring book or to build a goblin's castle with Legos.
After two more years of hard work, Mom finally graduated from college. Grandma and Grandpa Kubrat visited our tiny town of Godric from upstate New York to see their daughter graduate. Two days later, Aunt Neda and Mom drove my grandparents back to the train station so they could return home.
After hours of Joyce and I impatiently sitting at the window waiting for their return, two stern looking police men rang the door bell to tell us that all four of our relatives died when the driver of a semi truck fell asleep and crushed our old, rusted Oldsmobile.
The last time we used Aunt Neda's keys to open her front door, was only to move in all of Mom's belongings from our house, shortly after the funeral. Dad never stepped inside again and gave Joyce and me implicit instructions to do the same. He left it to drown in dust and slowly transform into the town's fabled haunted house that children stand outside of and whisper about on Halloween.
We obeyed our father and never set one foot inside the house, but he never said we couldn't sit on her porch, so that's where Joyce and I spent a lot of our time. It was the place we retreated to when Dad was drunk and looking for a fight. We'd spend hours on that rickety old swing, making up stories about how we would treat the house if it was ours. Sometimes we'd close our eyes and the smell of lilacs that would have blossomed in the backyard and the sight of bright red roses climbing up the pillars would seem so real that my chest ached with grief when I opened my eyes to see the bleak and dreary reality.
Home was not a word I liked at all and at times it would make me cringe. Home was where Joyce and I walked on eggshells because of our father's unpredictable behavior. We needed a battle plan when we went home to avoid stepping on a trigger that would set Dad off in an angry outburst. The strategy we developed seemed to work great: we would walk home from school together, or we'd meet on Aunt Neda's front porch before going home so we could face our father together.
One September afternoon when I was twelve years old, I was kept after school for fighting with Clementine "Beastie" Beasley after I found him picking on Joyce and her best friend Sandy during recess. Beastie and I were both in detention until four o'clock and as soon as the second hand clicked its way to twelve on Mrs. Petersen's classroom clock, I bolted out of my seat and ran home.
When I reached Aunt Neda's house Joyce's pink book bag was on the swing with various school books spread out on the floor but she was nowhere in sight. I took a seat and pulled out my science book, waiting for her return. Ten minutes slowly drifted past and I still didn't see Joyce skipping up the street. Worried, I made a beeline directly to our house.
It was eerily quiet as I stood outside the filthy screen door of our home. When I walked into the living room it was littered with empty Busch cans that Dad left askew on the floor from the night before. As I entered the grimy roach infested kitchen I noticed Dad's large gray thermos sitting on the counter that he took to work every morning, which he filled with coffee and his morning dose of vodka. Then I heard a muffled sound coming from behind the closed door of Joyce's room. My heart began to beat in my throat and a terrible feeling began to rise in my stomach when a loud crash echoed throughout the silent house.
I flung open the bedroom door and saw Dad straddling Joyce on her bed; her face was smothered by a flimsy, piss-yellow pillow and her arms were flailing around at anything she could get her hands onto. "What are you doing?!" I yelled, completely in shock. My father had done some horrible things to us in the past, but this was beyond anything I ever thought he was capable of doing.
He immediately got off the bed and stumbled his way over the broken bedside lamp that Joyce had flung to the ground moments earlier, in order to get to where I stood. Joyce flung the dampened pillow off her face and she jumped out of the bed. She leaned against the window ledge with her hands around her neck, gasping for air.
"Stupid little boy," was the only thing I could make out from Dad's severely slurred speech as he grabbed me by the ears and threw my head into the wall like a volleyball.
Joyce tried to embrace me but Dad grabbed her shoulders and hurled her through the doorway and onto the kitchen floor where she landed on her back with a thud. When the tiny dots that appeared in front of my eyes stopped flashing, I ran to Joyce and peeled her off the kitchen floor as Dad staggered after us.
I was a skinny, lanky boy and I knew I couldn't carry Joyce all the way to Aunt Neda's house so I ran into the bathroom; the only door in the house with a lock on it. I tossed Joyce into the tub and turned around just in time to see Dad in the door frame. Without giving it another thought, I slammed the door as hard as I could and turned the lock, out of breath. "Open this door, you little bastard!" he yelled, beating its wooden frame.
"Undo this door or I will break it down!" he continued to pound as Joyce cried uncontrollably in the filthy bathtub. I planted my gym shoes solidly on the linoleum floor and leaned all my twelve year old body weight into the door, feeling the vibrations of every pound my father made.
"That's it boy! You're gonna wish you were never born!" Then there was silence-the kind that made every atom in my body stand on edge, waiting for the big blow, like the eerie calmness that comes before a storm.
Then it came; Dad rammed himself into the door so hard that the wood in the door cracked behind my back. The only thing that followed was a heavy thud on the floor. Moments flew by as I tried to figure out what to do next.
"What happened, James? Is he gone?" Joyce asked, looking up from the wad of toilet paper she was crying into.
I carefully pried myself from the door and laid my body flat against the floor. I peered through the gap between the door and the floor and saw Dad lying awkwardly on the ground, with his left foot up against the bathroom door. "It's okay Joyce, I think he passed out," I whispered.
Kneeling in front of her I checked every limb of her body to make sure she was alright. "I'm sorry I came home without you, James," she explained in between tears. "I needed construction paper and I-he wasn't supposed to be home!"
"Shh, it's okay. It's over now," I did my best to calm her down and after two band aids and rinsing her face in cold water she stopped crying but threatened to start again when I told her we needed to leave the bathroom. "We can't James!" she pleaded, "He's out there! I don't want him to hurt me again!"
"Listen to me Joyce, I'm here and I won't let anything happen to you. I'm your big brother and I won't let him touch you again. Now, I need you to be really quiet. We can make it out the door if he's asleep but you can't wake him up, can you be the quietest that you've ever been for me?" I asked her as I held her hand tightly.
She nodded and I once again checked the gap below the door to make sure Dad was still sleeping. I turned to Joyce and put my index finger to my lips and Joyce covered her mouth with both of her hands to remind herself to stay quiet. I slowly turned the lock but it still made a sharp thud when it unlocked. My heart beat quicker and I pressed my ear to the door but there were no sounds of movement. Slowly, inch by inch, I opened the door. Dad's foot was still up against it and the rubber soles of his work boots roughly and slowly slid down the door. When they crossed the threshold of the bathroom and softly hit the floor I let out the breath I had been holding in.
I motioned for Joyce to come towards me and we maneuvered our way over his body and into the living room. Joyce ran out the door first and I followed, absentmindedly letting the screen door noisily slam shut behind me. We both froze stock still, straining to hear any alarming noise from behind us.
Hearing nothing, I grabbed Joyce's hand and we ran down the street to Aunt Neda's front porch where we distractedly did our homework in silence and tried to repress the events that had just occurred, something we should've been used to doing by then.
When Joyce's Scooby Doo wrist watch blinked 11:00 I thought it was time we went home. After I promised Joyce that she could sleep in my bedroom and I would stay awake and guard the door all night, she agreed to go home. We walked up the street which was periodically spotted with the dim street lamps that guided us home. We were only a few houses away from Aunt Neda's porch when I heard a car approaching from behind us. Joyce was a few feet in front of me, walking along the curb like it was a tightrope; her arms were out on either side of her in order to keep her balance. As the car got closer the familiar boom, clank it made sent chills down my spine. I turned around to see Dad's dark gray pick up truck swerving down the road. The car was on the opposite side of the road of us and it looked like it was going drive up the curb and through a few lawns before it parked itself in our front yard, but before it could hop the curb the car swerved again and its headlights flooded over Joyce's body.
Without thinking, I sprinted the short distance between my sister and me and shoved her forward, hoping it was far enough out of the way. I tried to keep her in my line of sight but before I knew it, I was bouncing off the hood of the truck and the last thing I remembered seeing was our elderly neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Frooger running down their front porch steps and the image of Dad's pick up truck plowed into a large Oak tree.
When I woke up, I was in a hospital room covered in bandages with a hard itchy cast that encased my right leg. My head throbbed with pain as soon as my eyes opened and it took a few moments for me to figure out where I was and to remember why I was there.
I heard two men conversing in soft whispers and saw their two shadowy figures in the corner of the room but I didn't see Joyce. I coughed before I could speak and the two men rushed over to my bedside, "Oh, you're awake!" It was my neighbor, Mr. Frooger; he was dressed in a red flannel shirt with a pair of square, black-framed glasses that rested on the bridge of his nose.
"James, I'm Dr. Galackinski, how are you feeling today?" The doctor wore a vibrant red tie with purple polka dots that peeked out from underneath his long white doctor's coat that he was constantly straightening whenever both of his hands were free. The longer I took to answer his question, the more time he played with his tie.
"Where's Joyce?" I said and tried to sit up.
"Take an easy, cowboy, you took quite a hit last night," Dr. Galackinski put his hand on my shoulder and made me lay back down. He pressed a button on the bed rail and my pillows began to rise up until I was in a sitting position.
Mr. Frooger took my hand and said, "I'll go get Joyce for you but you need to talk to the doctor first and answer his questions, can you do that for me?"
I nodded and after he left I answered Dr. Galackinski's questions as curtly as possible, constantly glancing and the door. Finally Joyce walked in holding Mrs. Frooger's hand and ran over to my bed as soon as she saw me. Mr. Frooger followed Dr. Galackinski out of the room as his wife sat down in the chair next to my bed, looking tired and worried.
Joyce was coloring a picture on my cast with the markers that Mrs. Frooger got at the gift shop that morning when Dr. Galackinski walked back into the room with a tall, thin man in a gray suit. "James, Joyce, this is Mr. London, he's a lawyer and we need to tell you something very important." Hearing this, Mrs. Frooger got up from her chair and sat down on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on my shoulder and her other arm around Joyce, as if she knew what the doctor was about to say.
Dr. Galackinski pulled a chair up to the bed and began to explain while Mr. London stood up straight, both of his hands grasping a black attaché case. "Last night your father was the person driving the car that hit you, James. He crashed his car right into a big tree and when the paramedics brought him to hospital with you, he needed surgery because he was bleeding in his insides," the doctor rubbed his stomach for emphasis. "The doctors downstairs worked as hard as they could but they couldn't keep him alive. When doctors were trying to fix him, he died and they couldn't bring him back to life," he paused and looked at the ground before continuing. "What I'm trying to say is that your father's dead." When he finished, he expected a huge wave of emotion to overcome Joyce and me and we would spout an endless river of tears but the both of us just stared at him.
After a few uncomfortable moments of silence Joyce asked skeptically, "Are you sure he's dead?"
"I'm positive," Dr. Galackinski nodded sympathetically.
The doctor, Mrs. Frooger and Mr. London all looked at one another quizzically while Joyce and I were emotionless to the news. Mr. London then pulled a number of papers from his case and declared, "Well then, I'm here for two reasons. First, James, everything that was your father's has now been passed down to your ownership. His money, his car, his house-"
"-Aunt Neda's house too?" Joyce asked, her eyes growing bright. In her mind, that house was as mysterious and intriguing as her mother, and the thought of her finally getting to know one of them excited her.
Mr. London glanced at Mrs. Frooger and she nodded, which made a small smile grow across Joyce's face.
"But I don't understand," I said, "Who's gonna take care of us? We can't live by ourselves, we're only kids."
Before anyone could answer, the door to the hospital room opened and Mr. Frooger walked in with a man a few inches taller than him. He was a thickly built man in his late forties with hair so dark that it drew attention to the few strands of gray that were sprouting. "I hope we aren't interrupting," Mr. Frooger said as he put his hand on the stranger's shoulder and walked further into the room.
"No, as a matter of fact, you're right on time," Mr. London said as he shook their hands and introduced himself.
"Kids," Mr. Frooger began, pointing his hand to the stranger, "this is your uncle Viktor; he's your mother's older brother." Viktor forced an uncertain smile and Joyce became uneasy and unsure that this man was actually the hero of her favorite story. "When Mr. London told him what happened to your father, he hopped on the very first plane from Bulgaria to come see you two."
Thinking that this was his cue, Mr. London began to explain, "The second reason I'm here is to tell you that according to the will your parents made shortly after Joyce was born, if anything should happen to the both them, then your uncle Viktor would become your guardian." Mr. London nodded in Viktor's direction as he opened his attaché case once more and pulled out an even thicker bundle of papers.
Before anyone could continue in deciding our future, Joyce had to test the validity of her super hero. "Is it true you saved my mommy from a bad horse?"
A huge nostalgic smile grew across our uncle's face that made him look ten years younger and he nodded. Joyce automatically believed him and gave him a hug so tight she didn't want to let go.
"If we live with you, do we have to move to Booger Area?" Joyce asked when she finally let go of his embrace, unsure she would want to live in a place with such a name.
"Bulgaria?" he laughed, "We could, but I've always liked to stay at Aunt Neda's house when I was younger."
Joyce turned to me and winked and subtly as a seven year old could be. I couldn't help but smile at how happy she was. If Uncle Viktor could restore the happiness in my little sister's life that our father had robbed her from, then he was someone I could learn to trust.
"Now, Mr. Kubrat, if you'll come with me and sign a few papers, you'll be able to take these kids home." Mr. London informed, searching his pockets for a pen.
"Home!" Joyce said to me in an excited whisper when the grown-ups left the room. I smiled and rested my head on the soft white pillows behind me; that word had an entirely different and wonderful meaning now.