Page 2 of Rat Park
“You a little runt, huh?” Jay said, and Dominic felt himself frown. That was one word he definitely knew the meaning of.
“I’m gonna get big!” Dominic said hotly. Jay smiled.
“Big man, huh? Well, here. Have a little Big Man Juice,” Jay said and picked up a cup from the dirty coffee table in front of them.
Dominic eyed the cup for a moment, but he wasn’t going to be a runt about it. He took the cup, Jay watching him as he raised it to his lips. The man laughed as Dominic swallowed a sip and immediately started coughing.
“Good, huh?” Jay asked. Dominic nodded even though it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted—even worse than the time he’d been dared to eat dirt. “It gets better.” Jay grinned.
Dominic didn’t understand why anybody would want to take more than one sip of it. Chocolate milk was a hundred times better.
Normally, Dominic was pretty good at keeping track of time. He had to, or he’d be late for school and late for the bus back, and he had to know when the best time to get food from the kitchen was each day because his mom didn’t really like to cook, but sometimes she’d get annoyed if she was in the kitchen and Dominic tried to make anything. Now, however, time slowly seemed to become smoky and confusing like the air around him. He kept taking sips of the Big Man Juice and Jay had been right—it got better. It didn’t burn anymore, and the noise around him started to sound as if he’d gone back upstairs and shut the door.
“Jay, what the fuck!”
Dominic opened his eyes. He was still on the couch. His body felt all weird, like it belonged to someone else and he was just a visitor.
“I just gave him a few sips! Bit of a lightweight, ain’t he?” a voice said.
“He’s eight, you fucking moron!”
Dominic’s mom was mad. He tried to say something because whatever he’d done, he hadn’t meant to do it. He tried to be good…most of the time.
“It was just a bit of fun! He’ll be fine in the morning, relax.”
There was shouting again, but someone had stuffed cotton in his ears.
Everything was nice and far away.
**********
Dominic was pretty bad at school, but his mom didn’t care so neither did he. He’d been bad since it started, not being able to read nearly as well as the other kids in his year. He’d barely gone to kindergarten before that. Mom said the women there were a bunch of nosy bitches, even though they’d been pretty nice to Dominic. One time, Dominic called one of the teachers a nosy bitch and got sent home. Mom had laughed when she’d heard.
A few lessons, though, were okay. He liked P.E., and art wasn’t bad, although sometimes they had to do stupid things. On Mother’s Day, the teacher asked them to make a card for their mom, filled with all the best things about her. Dominic had to think hard because he knew there were some things he shouldn’t tell, like the parties and the cold and the smoke. Mom was good at keeping secrets—almost as good as the house.
At home, it was just Mom and him and all the people she invited over. Dominic had never met his dad, but he’d heard people talk about him a few times. He’d even seen a picture of him once, a school photo Mom had kept. He was eighteen when Dominic was born, a year older than Dominic’s mom. People said Dominic looked like him. Dominic’s skin was mostly trash-white, his brown hair messy but straight, his eyes a light brown that looked like grass when it was summer-baked. Dominic didn’t agree that he looked anything like the stranger in the picture, but maybe it was because the man was smiling so wide.
It didn’t really matter. Dominic’s dad was gone, and they didn’t need him. Dominic was the man of the house now.
Dominic knew all the rules of the house even though they weren’t written down like in school. He’d had to figure them out himself. He’d learnt when it was okay to get close to Mom, and when he needed to give her “some space”, and it all depended on what her hands were doing. If they were tapping a matchbox against the kitchen table or tugging at her eyebrow—half of it disappeared sometimes—then Dominic stayed quiet and away. If they were limp, though, he could go into the kitchen to get some food and she wouldn’t even notice—not even if she was sitting right there.
That was why Dominic didn’t mind the noise. Mom was happiest when there were people in the house, when they brought their juice and smoke and filled up the house with music and bad smells.
The worst, by far, was when she cried. Her eyes and cheeks would get all wet, and she’d call Dominic over as soon as she saw him. She’d hug him too tightly with her bony arms and tell him she was sorry. Sometimes it happened in the middle of the night, and she would crawl into his bed and cling to him. She’d smell bad and her words wouldn’t make sense and Dominic would get scared, although he wasn’t sure why. She’d fall asleep eventually and he’d take her to her bed in the morning and wash his own sheets to get rid of the memory and the smell.
CHAPTER TWO
By the time he was eleven, Dominic had learnt to get out of the house during his mom’s parties. Weird shit went down during the night, and Dominic had no desire to see his mom doing that.
There were a lot of kids from white-trash or low-income black families around. Dominic would hang out with a group of boys, walking around town like a pack of mutts, always ending up in the park to smoke pot if any one of them had scored some. They’d share the blunt between all of them, so there was never much of a high, but Dominic now knew how to hold the smoke in his lungs before exhaling to get the most out of each hit.
Mostly, Dominic’s friends talked about girls. Dominic didn’t really get what the big deal was, but he’d been taught it was never good to stick out. He would nod and joke along and wouldn’t protest when they invited some of the girls to join them, even though it made his best friend, Mason, ignore him for the whole night.
The girls themselves weren’t that bad, though. They were nice but tough instead of justactingtough. Dominic had learnt the difference. Sometimes, though, they’d stand way too close to him. They smelt good, but Dominic didn’t like it when people got so near. He couldn’t push a girl away, though—not only because it was mean but because people would start saying there was something wrong with him for not wanting a girl to stand that close.
Dominic was glad he knew how to keep a secret, because there was something wrong with him—there was no doubt about that.
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