Jacob's Mother—31
School
Jacob’s Mother is a serialized novel. Start with Chapter One.
Chapter 31: School
California—1978
When Jacob Arthur was five years old, his favorite thing to do in the world was go to school. He loved school. He loved the routine of the classroom activities. He loved his teacher, old Mrs. Connor, who shut down any bad behavior with a stern look. The most important thing in the classroom was order. If students were to be cutting paper, that’s what they did, cut paper. No one did anything strange, like making holes in walls, or cutting holes in shirts to let the spiders out. If it was paper cutting time, Mrs. Connor made sure that is what everyone was doing.
Jacob often daydreamed that Mrs. Connor was his mother. He imagined going home to a clean house where there would be cookies and dinner and a nightly bath. He imagined having a mother who read him a story every night and tucked him into bed. He wanted a mother who would discipline him when he misbehaved. He wanted order in his life, and Mrs. Connor’s class gave him that. He loved going to school to get a daily dose of order before going home to the chaos.
He woke up each morning, and poured cereal into a bowl. If any pieces of cereal fell on the floor as he poured, he picked them up and threw them away. If there happened to be milk, he would carefully pour it over the cereal with both hands, trying not to let too much milk spill out. He would eat, rinse the bowl, put it back on the counter, and brush his teeth. He would put on pants and a shirt which were often dirty, since the laundry didn’t get done, and he didn’t know how to work the machine. Sometimes he wore socks with his shoes. Then Jacob would quietly go into his mother’s room and give her a kiss. Sometimes she would wake and sometimes she wouldn’t. Then little Jacob Arthur would walk to school.
When possible, he would join some of the other neighborhood kids and their mothers to cross the main streets. He was always smiling and greeting people, so they would let him walk with them. He found that if he was pleasant, he was welcomed by others. Then he would enter school, where everything was scheduled and there were no surprises. In school he could breathe again. He didn’t have to worry about what would happen next, because it was up on the board.
On one particular Wednesday morning, Jacob woke up very early. The sun hadn’t come up yet. He heard loud noises coming from his mother’s room. He slid off the bed, his feet softly hitting the cool floor. He opened his bedroom door slowly and peaked out. He could hear banging and his mother talking with someone. He stopped in the hallway. His mother was angry at someone. She said the F word. He considered going back to the sanctity of his room and hiding under the covers, but he was worried about his mother, so he crept down the hall and opened the door to her bedroom.
Julia was naked, even though it was cold. She was crouched down near the floor of her closet. Jacob could see her bottom, and the sides of her large breasts, and he felt ashamed but didn’t move. Julia had a hammer, and she was hitting the wall with it, making a big hole. She yelled into the hole, “Do you hear me?”
Jacob stood there, and no one answered. His feet felt rooted into the floor.
“I’m giving it back to you!”
No one answered.
“No, no,” Julia continued. “Nothing you say can change my mind. What?”
No one answered, but Julia laughed.
“You’re not going to trick me this time!” She pulled a necklace off over her head and threw it in the big hole she had made. “Come on now,” she cried. “It’s lost to me, now. Come get it.”
Arthur stepped into the room. “Mommy?”
Julia whirled around, her breasts swinging, holding the hammer as if she would hit him. She looked at him with hate. “You won’t trick me again!” she screamed at Jacob.
Jacob flinched, covering his face with his arms by instinct. The world seemed to slow down as he waited for the hammer to strike, unable to move away. He felt a warm stream go down the side of his pajama pants. Oh no, he thought. I’m going to get in trouble.
Julia took a step towards him, the hammer raised.
Jacob couldn’t move. He was frozen to the ground.
Suddenly, Julia’s face changed. She lowered the hammer and looked at it with sad eyes. Her chin quivered and tears welled up in her eyes. She looked down at her naked body and back to Jacob. She set down the hammer and grabbed her robe and put it on. Then she went to Jacob and knelt before him. He couldn’t help thinking that the corner of her robe was touching the pee on the floor.
“Jacob, I’m so sorry.” She grabbed his face, and his skin crawled. She pulled him close, into her bosom. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
Jacob held very still. The wetness on his pajamas was getting cold, and he wanted to change. He tried to make his mind blank. He knew if he cried, it would make it worse.
“Baby, you can’t sneak up on me like that. I thought you were them.”
Jacob didn’t say anything. He didn’t know who “they” were.
“They’re coming for us. I can hear them. We need to stay inside. We need to stay inside. Jesus will protect us.”
She held Jacob captive in her embrace for several moments, then she finally let him go. He backed away down the hall and closed his bedroom door. He pushed his toy box across the room and put it up against the door, so she couldn’t get in. Then he peeled off his wet pajamas and crawled completely under his covers, head and all.
When the sun came in through the window, Jacob got up, put on the same clothes he wore the day before, and went into the kitchen to pour his cereal into his bowl. His mother was there. She was up. He stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. She didn’t have the hammer. She was smoking a cigarette, sitting in her robe at the table. The smoke swirled around her head like ghosts.
“You’re not going to school anymore.”
Jacob stood there, trying to figure out how to get out of the house to get to school.
“It’s just not safe out there for us anymore. I have to protect you from them. They’re out there. God is telling me to protect you from the devil. The devil is out there.”
Jacob began backing out of the kitchen. He hoped Julia would get distracted and forget he was there. Julia got up and grabbed his arm.
“Do you hear me, Jacob. No more school.”
“Mommy,” Jacob whimpered. “I have to go to school.” Jacob believed this with all his heart. School was the only thing that held his tiny life together. School was everything. It was the only place he felt safe. He would die without it.
Julia didn’t let go and shook him. “You are NEVER going out of this house again! It’s not safe!” She let go and began pacing back and forth. “Go to your room.”
Jacob ran to his room, sliding the toy box in front of the door again. He opened the bottom drawer of his dresser and used it as a step to climb up to the top of it. From there he unlatched the window and slid the pane across to open it. He pushed on the screen, and it bent. He kept pushing, and it popped out, landing on the grass in the front yard. Jacob jumped out after it and landed on his hands and knees in the grass. His palms and kneecaps throbbed, but he quickly got up and ran across the street towards school. He didn’t wait to try to cross with the neighbor kids and their mother. He didn’t look both ways, and he didn’t see the blue Chevy coming around the corner as he darted into the middle of the street.
***
When he woke up, he was in a bed in a small room with duck wallpaper. There was a machine next to him that beeped. He sat up, and his arm and head sang out in pain. He looked down and saw his fingers sticking out of the end of a white cast. He wiggled them, and a shooting pain went up to his elbow. He raised his other arm to touch the wrapping on his head and saw that a tube stuck into the crook of his arm with a big bandage over it. A lady in a blue suit, holding a clipboard, rose out of a chair at his side and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Easy there, sweetheart. Take it easy.” She wore glasses like Mrs. Connor, his teacher, and she smiled at him. “You’ve had quite a day. Just relax now. You were hit by a car, but you are going to be just fine.”
Jacob could only remember running into the street. He couldn’t remember actually being hit. “Where’s Mommy?” he asked.
The lady looked sad and sighed. “You’re mother is in another hospital. She is very ill.”
“Did she get hit by a car?”
“No sweetheart,” the lady brushed her hand over his head. It felt nice. “Your mother’s body is fine, but her mind is sick. The doctor’s are working hard to help her, but she may have to be in the hospital for awhile. Do you know where your daddy is?”
“I don’t have a daddy.”
The lady took a pen out from behind her ear and wrote something down on the pad of paper. “Ok, what about a grandma or an aunt? Do you know any relatives names?”
“No.”
She wrote something else down. “Ok, sweetheart.” She put the pad of paper down. “My name is Ms. Jones, and I am going to stay with you until we get you situated in a place.”
“Will I still go to school?”
“Yes, Jacob. Yes.” Ms. Jones looked him in the eyes. “But you may have to go to a new school, sweetheart.”
Jacob could feel hot tears plopping down on his face. More than anything, he just wanted to be in class with Mrs. Connor. He might never see Mrs. Connor again. He wanted to sit in desk number three and have a snack every day at 11:30 with an apple juice that came in a carton.. He wanted story time and craft time. He wanted Mrs. Connor to come get him out of this place and take him back to school. Ms. Jones held his hand as he cried and told him everything would be ok. He didn’t believe her.
Continue to Chapter 32.
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Jacob’s Mother is an original publication by Laura Ellis. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law and fair use.