This week’s homework assignment for my creative non-fiction writing class was on adumbration. “Write a story or several scenes where an object appears two or three times. Consider mapping a character’s change with the object.”
Scene 1
I’m choking back tears, no clue in my ten year-old brain about how to relax my throat so I can swallow this stringy piece of steak.
“You’re not leaving this table till you swallow that damn piece of meat.”
My brother and sister abandon ship while my mother starts clearing the table. “Honey, he’s trying.”
“He’s not. Swallow the goddamned meat, I said!”
I chew and chew and chew but it won’t go down. My dad’s staring at me, sneering at my paralysis. He gets up, shoves his chair into the table, and stomps out of the kitchen.
I don’t know what to do so I just keep chewing. And then I’m in bed, my ear pressed against the tiny speaker in my beige transistor radio, praying that Harmon Killebrew homers on this 2-1 pitch, trying not to hear the screaming in the kitchen.
Scene 2
We’re rolling in the gravel in the middle of the road, trying to gain leverage. Tommy Snyder is the weird kid of the neighborhood, sometimes a bully, but mostly just weird. He tried to run me off the road with his bike so I ran after him, pulled him off his bike and wrestled him to the ground. We’re not punching, just wrestling, and soon I get him in a headlock that he can’t get out of. After about five minutes, my dad walks up to us, watches for a minute, then says, “Let him go, Griff.” Tommy gets on his bike and rides away. On the way back to our house, my dad takes a brief look at my skinned elbows and knees and says, “I’m very proud of you, I hope you know.”
At supper, he’s tells my brother and sister about my big fight. “That Snyder kid’s been nothing but trouble since they moved here. I bet he was the one who knocked over all the mailboxes last summer.” He looks at me and smiles. “He’s had it coming.” And then he asks, “How many hot dogs have you eaten?”
“Four so far.”
“My God,” he laughs. “You must have a tapeworm. How can a skinny kid like you pack it away like that?”
Scene 3
“Hey you guys, come and eat!”
Cassidy scampers down the stairs ahead of them, his white ears flopping, eyes wide with excited hunger.
“Somebody feed the dog, okay?”
My ten year old daughter scoops up a cup of dog food out of the bin in the kitchen and hesitates before she dumps it into Cassidy’s dish in front of him. A menacing growl catches my attention and now he’s on the other side of the room, yelping in pain.
“Dad, you kicked him! He’s hurt!”
My daughter bolts from the table and runs upstairs, crying. Her brothers look at me, wide-eyed and then down at their plates. I pass them the platter of pork chops.