My father enters my room and he is in my bed when my mother walks in. I can remember her dark glasses against her milky white skin-her black hair that never changed styles no matter what the weather was. She didn't even have to say anything. The look was all- it blamed me for everything. Blame that was what I remember learning most from that house with its ugly green cinder block and red brick front and the white wood on the back where they made the porch into a room. It was a roomy house with wood paneled walls and an air conditioner in the window. I remember the terrazzo floor with its black and orange and gray specks against a cold marbled white. My mother is that floor-cold, hard, icy, solid, unforgiving, no emotions, stony and silent. Later, there was shag carpeting over my mother, the floor, and I tried to forget it was there-tried to make friends with my carpeted mother. Then, I gave up-I hated her more than I hated him, but I ate my rebellion and hatred up in Thin Mints and chips and cokes. I cost them only as much as they wanted me to. No one ever guessed the secrets behind the green cinder blocks-no one guessed behind the smile. My father tried to fuck me over later in other ways. And again, I was his victim bursting into tears when his drunken arguments got the best of me-yelling at him that I hated him, my mother trying to comfort me like only a mother can, a mother that's a terrazzo floor covered by green shag carpeting.
H.