It’s Kinda Funny
Mercedes Browne
Bright and early, as the sun peeked its way into the sky, I lay upon my giant mattress not meant for a girl my size.
I awoke to the sound of screams and yells from outside my bedroom door to all the way in the kitchen.
At the age of 10 or 9 I was surprisingly fine.
Until my mom said she would throw me out the window.
A cruel joke, I remember thinking. She couldn’t possibly do that. Nah. She would never.
the two of them roared at each other at an ungodly hour for a child to rise.
What did I wear? Oh, right. My tiny feet were bare. Ugly orange shorts wrapped themselves around my waist. I really liked those shorts but they were really crappy now that I think about it. Only a white undershirt covered my chest as I sat and listened to their hisses.
A button within my bed being poked and pulled at by my tiny slender finger as I waited for the storm to pass.
And instead of passing itself through, it suddenly came to my room with my baby sister in hand. The storm having the face of my tired mother.
“Go!” My mother shouted after opening the window and ripping out its screen with one hand.
And so I went without question.
When I made it to the frame, I was careful as can be, Thinking only about the spiders that crawled in the dirt below me. So it came as a rude surprise when I felt the floor punch me out of nowhere. Turns out my mother had to shove me just to hurry me up.
I glanced back and I knew I had to bolt
Cause he had shoved my dearest mother aside and was making his grown man body fit through the small gap mine was able to slip through so easily. Like a giant baby being born with rage and was already balding.
With bare feet I ran down a long sidewalk screaming bloody murder, finding myself crying in a bush until the danger went away.
When I think about that day now, it was kinda funny. How I woke up to ruckus and was suddenly tossed out the window a few moments later. When I sucked at running in gym yet I managed to out-run a grown man. How when I returned home, my sister never once cried. It was me and my Mum who did most of the tear shedding. Salty like potato chips.
It’s kinda funny to me.