Demetrius’s Childhood

An exquisite yellow morning ascended onto Sacred Point Apartments. The Section-8 targeted habitat was once a clean and thriving community built on uplifting its neighbors confidence to get back on their feet, but the years turned and the new wave of residents’ reliance on the public assistance created a permanence never seen before. This new era was as inviting as addiction was to a ‘casual’ user.

Demetrius Freeman was a precocious eight-year-old black boy. Every morning he’d wake up and immediately run to the bathroom to give himself the ‘superhero’ pep talk. I’m Superman today. I’m saving the world today. Next, he shoot faster than a moving bullet to his baby sisters bedroom and carry the sleepy princess to the kitchen to heat her formula. Demetrius, for his age, was a good cook. He knew his way around the kitchen well enough that he could put together a decent breakfast: cereal, milk, and toast.

Next, he’d bath his sister, put a diaper on her, brush his teeth, and walk her to the baby sitters, Sheila, who lived near the front of the complex. Sheila was a useful member of the community, as her home daycare center was unlike any other business out there. She accepted the welfare mothers received, food stamps, trade in services, to care for the kids while the mothers worked or spent their time doing whatever they didn’t talk about.

Demetrius enjoyed the few blocks he had ahead of him. It was a nice way to bond with Keisha and help teach her to walk on her own. Also, he’d pass his best friend, Alex’s apartment, and talk to him while he ate breakfast on the front porch.

Each day, he’d see some of the neighborhood boys playing in the rusted playground that sat next to the renovated leasing office, across the street from his home. Behind the playground was a giant dumpster some of the white kids would play in. Demetrius liked playing Peter Pan with them, and didn’t mind getting dirty a little. The basketball court sat just behind the dumpster, and he and kids knew: off-limits. Beside the intense basketball games, others hung in groups and Demetrius had heard the horror stories that happened at night there. One night his mom’s friend was carrying her baby and one of the boys said something to her. She cursed them out and he flicked a lit cigarette into her hair, watching it light on fire and the baby suffer some burns. Demetrius knew the older boys and young men were nothing to mess with, so he kept a careful distance.

On his way back home, Alex jumped in his way.

“Let’s do something,” Alex said, backpedaling in his steps with Demetrius.

“Alright. I got a baseball we can throw, but I only got one glove,” Demetrius stated, shrugging his shoulders as he knew Alex didn’t mind catching bare handed. He was hardened in that way. Enough beatings and hard labor inside his home, catching a hard baseball meant pure joy.

Demetrius reaches his porch and finds his mom half wearing a robe, top chest exposed, and smoking on a cigarette. She flicks the cigarette and motions for Demetrius and Alex to get out of her view. Alex knew each night his mom worked from home and he knew better than to ask who the men were that came in and out of her room. Usually she’d be in the living room most mornings or stuck in the bathroom for long periods of time. Whenever she was on the porch smoking, she looked as if she was thinking or trying to find  a way to break the news to her young, but capable son.

“Your father’s back. Don’t know how long. Don’t ask. Go say hi,” she said, not once looking at her son or his fear washing over him. Demetrius looks back at Alex who knows to walk to the park and wait for him.

Demetrius stands in the skinny, fluorescent lit hallway. He hears nothing. Not a good sign. He walks to his mother’s room and shies away from the strong robust smell of something he knows all too well, the men, the cigarettes, and the green stuff his mother sells on the side. A laughter erupts from the living room.

Demetrius stands at the end of the steps staring at his father. He is in and out of his life so often, that Demetrius forgets that he has a father. He has heard the horrific stories of the man that he is. The drug slinging, thug life is one thing, but the violence his father has forced his young son to watch is another. Some years ago, he was trapped in a small bathroom with his father and a friend, as they cut a white powder and smoked in front of him. Demetrius was so dizzy that he stuck a spaghetti noodle in his ear to kill the ringing that wouldn’t go away. Another time, his father lectured him on respect and loyalty, and took him to a friend’s place where he threw a woman on a bed and watched his father terrorize her and then beat her. He remembered how his father didn’t look like his father, but like the wild dogs that roamed the streets; the kind that lurk around and seek weakness to destroy and impose its strength to kill or dominate.

His father doesn’t notice Demetrius, nor care to look his way. He sits and laughs at the t.v. show Martin. Demetrius feigns a weak Hi his way and his father just looks at him and nods his head: Wassup. 

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Early evening, Alex has to get back home because his mother is under the watchful eye of child services, so she has to “pretend” to care about their whereabouts. Demetrius, sadly, watches him sink away. He knows he has to get back home and deal with him.

Sitting on the porch with a large beer and weed, Demetrius’s father takes all of his son in.

“Where you been boy?” his father asks.

“With my friend,” Demetrius replies.

“Get over here,” his father demands. Demetrius hangs his head and walks to sit next to his father. “Drink this,” he says to his young son. Demetrius only stares, he’s scared as to what it will do to him. He knows what it does to his parents.

“I don’t want to,” Demetrius responds. His father turns.

“Put hair on ya nuts boy,” his father says. “More for me then shit,” he says chuckling to himself. Demetrius’s friend, Corinthia, from next door walks over to him.

“Hi D,” Corinthia excitedly says.

“Hi Corinthia. How was camp?” Demetrius asks.

“I had fun. Too many bugs though. We got to jump off a diving board onto this big balloon thing that shot us in the air. It was scary, but fun,” Corinthia says as she motions with her hands on what that might look like to Demetrius.

“Where ya momma at?” Demetrius’s father says jumping in.

“Right here. Where yo ass been,” Corinthia’s mother says, surprising everyone.

“Hustlin baby,” he says, turning to her, licking his lips, looking her up and down.

“Hmm. Corinthia get in here. It’s late,” she says. Corinthia walks up the porch, but slips and falls. Demetrius’s father and reaches out and helps her up. He slips a hand between her legs while lifting her, causing Demetrius’s heart to drop and that sharp, red, pulsating feeling he only feels when something isn’t right. It’s the anger he doesn’t know how to sum up nor control. Without missing a beat, Corinthia’s mother burst onto the steps beating Demetrius’s father in the face with her shoe as she watched what he did to her daughter. She grabs Corinthia and rushes her inside. His father jumps up and bangs on their door. No response. He takes his large beer bottle and smashes it into their window and rushes inside his place.

Demetrius, stunned and confused, slowly gets up and walks back inside. He walks up the two steps to the skinny hallway and turns a corner and like getting hit with a bolt of lightning, everything turns black. He opens his eyes and finds himself laying on the floor with blood coming from his mouth. He hears his mother screaming and his father yelling behind a closed-door. Demetrius helps himself up and quietly slips into his room and shuts the door. He was used to being hit, but never had he been caught off guard the way his father got him.

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Demetrius awakes and lays in bed. He touches his face and he hesitates as it feels tender and puffy. He gets up, opens his door, and walks into the bathroom. No superhero speech today. He just looks back at himself and shakes his head.

Demetrius walks to Keisha’s room and she isn’t there. He turns around, alarmed. He darts forward and hears voices on the sidewalk. He opens the door and spots his mother holding his sister and Corinthia sitting on the steps eating cereal. It doesn’t feel right.

“Imma take her inside, but I’ll be right back girl. Come in if you want though,” his mother says to Corinthia as her gaze prolongs. She turns away and pushes Demetrius backward. His mother walks downstairs and Demetrius follows.

“What happened mama?” Demetrius asks, as he kisses his sister on the cheek in her high chair. His mother lights a cigarette at the small, crooked kitchen sink and turns to him.

“You won’t be seeing that no good bastard of a daddy again,” his mother says as she pulls a long drag from the cigarette and lets the smoke rise to the headache inducing lights. “Don’t tell nobody I told you this. He killed that girls mother and her boyfriend last night behind a grocery store. I dunno why they was there, but it happened. He got picked up early this morning. He did that shit,” his mother says as she puts out the half cigarette on the chipped kitchen counter. She opens the refrigerator and pulls out eggs, milk, and bacon.

“Sit down. I’m cooking today,” she says, sadly smiling at Demetrius and briefly, just briefly, feeling sorry for him as a son and what he may become as a man.

Demetrius, quietly and nervously, takes a seat and stares at the women in his life. What did it mean? What really happened to Corinthia’s mom and will Corinthia be okay? He just thinks and thinks to himself.

I wonder if Alex and Emily want to explore the woods today, cuz I do.