Worst Memory

Maleficent

by Aaron D. Johnson

I am four years old and always climb into Mommy and Daddy’s bed in the early morning hours. I fall asleep between them and feel safe and comfortable in their big bed. On Saturdays and Sundays, when Daddy doesn’t have to work he and I lay there reading the paper. He looks at the tiny print and the small words; I look at the funny pages. I mimic the expression on his face and pretend to understand the big words and the colorful panels. Though they are called the funny papers, I never laugh.

Mommy and Daddy don’t talk to each other at all. They only talk to me. I don’t like that. I don’t know why they aren’t happy living in our big house on Empire Lane way at the top of the hill. It’s the nicest place I have ever lived. I have Brandon and Roberta to play with and my big sisters Kelly and Tammy have their friends too. They even play with me sometimes though I don’t understand their games. They always want to play “Little House” and there is always a blizzard coming. It never actually gets here, but its coming. To me, it’s boring. I like to run and play outside. Nothing is better than running barefoot through the warm grass and playing games with my friends. When I whine and cry they give me the big hardcover Disney book and I sit in Daddy’s big chair and look at all the pictures, except that one with the witch from “Sleeping Beauty”. She scares me with her horns on her head. I peek once or twice and then am terrified that night in my big boy bed, turning the light on and looking underneath for her.

Tammy isn’t happy either. She spends a lot of time in her room and the cats go in her room and poop on the floor and she doesn’t clean it up. Her room and her clothes are a mess. When she and Kelly fight I take Kelly’s side because Kelly’s room is big and nice and clean and she has a big glowing thing with lights that flashes when you talk to it or play music. Kelly is always playing music.

Tammy and Kelly don’t fight with me, just with each other. But their fights are bad. I don’t like when they fight. Tammy fights with Mommy too.

One night, Mommy tells Tammy to give me a bath because I had been outside playing with Brandon and gotten “dirty and grubby”. Tammy fights with Mommy because she wants to be alone in her room, not washing her dirty brother. Tammy brings me upstairs to the bathroom to wash my hair. She puts me in the tub and gets my hair wet, then soaps it all up. I’m afraid of getting soap in my eyes so most of the time they are closed, but when I look at Tammy I see her eyes are red like she has been crying. She turns the water on at the other end of the tub and feels it, then turns it off. My foot goes down there and a drop hits me and it burns and I laugh. Who would ever want water that hot?

Tammy turns me and lays me down under the faucet to wash the soap out of my hair. She turns the faucet on and all that hot water goes all over me. I scream at the top of my lungs. I am burning and cooking alive. I never knew water could be so hot or hurt so bad.

Tammy is beaten really badly by Mommy right in front of me and Tammy cries. My head is hot where the water was. I sit in Daddy’s big chair with the Disney book looking at the pictures again. I look right at that mean witch with the horns. She’s not so scary now. She’s just a picture.