29 #2
“How did I luck out with a kid that’s so responsible, hmm?” she asked, squeezing him to her side. She smelled like beer. “You’re a lifesaver, Adrien.”
It was always like that—one minute it was “what the hell is wrong with you,” the next it was “how did I get so lucky.” Adrien wasn’t sure if he was the worst son in the world or the best. He would certainly try to be the best—his siblings deserved it and his mom needed the help.
“Uhm,” he hedged. “Some guy came by tonight asking for money.”
What little of a good mood his mother had been in evaporated. She released Adrien at once, throwing herself back into the couch with a groan. Her hands sought her pockets, withdrawing her lighter and a box of cigarettes.
“Fuckin’ perfect,” she groused, clicking her Zippo to life. “Do you know what he wanted it for?”
“It was… to keep me safe,” Adrien admitted in a small voice. His mother’s hand froze with a cigarette halfway to her lips, her eyes falling upon him with no small amount of contempt.
“Of course it was.” She sneered. “We don’t want you to end up like your father, do we?”
Adrien looked back down at his knees in guilt, shaking his head. “No, ma’am.”
“Well isn’t this great ,” Joyce huffed, sucking furiously on her cigarette. “You don’t know how much of a burden you are, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” Adrien whispered. “I’m sorry, Mom. I don’t mean to be like this… thank you… for paying him. I really appreciate it.”
Joyce snorted. “Like I have a choice.”
?
While other kids went to baseball games and science fairs, Adrien potty trained toddlers and cooked.
Food was spread thin some days. But Jessica and David always came first, and Adrien insisted he had enough to eat whenever his mom commented that he was looking a little thin.
She always got upset when he asked her to go grocery shopping, anyway.
During lunchtime he drew on the scrap paper from class instead of eating.
It was hard, being an adult and a kid all rolled into one.
It came with all of the hardships and none of the perks.
Everyone at school liked him, but thought he was a blow-off because he was always so busy with watching his little siblings and could never hang out.
It was for the best, anyway: the more he kept to himself, the less his mother had to worry about anyone finding out about his “condition”—and the less hush-money she would have to pay.
But every day, anger and resentment towards his mother simmered in him like a pressure cooker, only for him to shrink back in fear the second she clambered home at two AM.
It needed somewhere to go.
1991
Adrien sat outside of his middle school, waiting for the bus. At the park across the street, some older students were spray painting big, colorful bubble letters onto the side of the bathroom. In public. In broad daylight.
Adrien couldn’t wrap his head around it.
It was totally irresponsible. But something in him ached for that.
He didn’t know if it was the rebellion, the expression, or the blatant disregard for authority.
Maybe he thought the colors were cool. He looked down at the robot that he’d been doodling into his notebook and then up at the older kids’ clumsy attempts at art.
He could do better.
The next day, pocket full of quarters, Adrien left school. Instead of heading several blocks over to the elementary school to pick up Jessica and David, he marched down to the nearest hardware store and bought a can of spray paint.
It took him less than an hour to get caught by his math teacher, but the thrill itself was worth it. Sighing, the man looked at Adrien with disappointment, then up at the robot that he was spraying onto the bathroom wall.
“Come on, kiddo, let’s call your mom,” he said, taking the can from him.
Adrien let it go. Part of him had been trying to get caught.
For someone to finally notice that no, he wasn’t okay.
He was trapped and frustrated and if it continued to be that way, then he was going to do something about it. Something bad.
“I have to pick my brother and sister up,” he told the teacher, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I’m already way late and the teacher’s probably already put them into the after-school club and my mom is gonna have to pay for that.”
“I’ll walk you there,” the teacher replied and together they traversed the distance to the elementary school. To his relief, Jessica and David were still waiting by the gate with the kindergarten teacher.
“Jelly!” Jessica shouted at him, looking enraged. “Where the heck were you?”
“You’re never late!” David clutched his fists at his sides and stomped his feet in fury.
“I was getting worried, too.” The kindergarten teacher glanced at Adrien’s math teacher with a concerned expression. “Everything okay, Frank?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I gotta give this guy’s mom a call. Can I use your office phone?”
Throughout the entire ordeal, Adrien experienced no guilt.
He didn’t care that Jessica and David had been worried, or even that he’d wasted money, or broken a law.
He was finally seen, noticed. But there was a hollowness working its way open in the base of his gut, a maw made of dread gnawing at his insides.
Mom would get called at work and she’d be embarrassed to get a call and she would lose money having to come pick them up early and—
He started crying.
It took twenty minutes for the call to go through: the line kept being busy. It took another ten minutes for his teacher to connect with someone, wait for them to track down Adrien’s mother, and bring her to the store’s phone.
“Hey Mrs. Marin,” the teacher said. Adrien flinched, shrinking into himself.
His mother wouldn’t be happy hearing her dead husband’s surname.
The teacher frowned at the reply. “Sorry, Ms. Porter. This is Frank Yang, I’m Adrien’s math teacher.
Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could come down to the elementary school to talk, I got all your kids here—”
A pause. Adrien could hear his mother’s furious, tinny little voice on the other line. The teacher responded: “Because I caught your son spray painting the bathrooms at Moscone Park.”
Mr. Yang sighed as Adrien’s mother lit up the other line of the phone with another tirade, glancing at Adrien out of the corner of his eye. “No, he’s not in trouble.”
Adrien could hear his mother shout on the other line: “How the hell could he not be in trouble?!”
“Look, ma’am, I think we all need to get together with the school counselor to talk this over,” Mr. Yang told her, voice gentle.
“Adrien is a great kid. This is the first time he’s ever acted out like this.
I don’t want him to get in trouble for something he could work out or express in a healthier way—yes, I’ll put him on the line. ”
Mr. Yang handed over the phone, expression apologetic. Adrien almost said he didn’t want to talk to her, but thought that would only make her angrier. He took the phone.
“Hi Mom,” he said, tone dead.
“Adrien Kaito Porter-Marin, what the hell is wrong with you?!” she screamed over the line. “You wait and see what I’ll do to you when I get home.”
The rest of the conversation was a blur, but all Adrien remembered was what Mr. Yang told him as he handed him and his siblings their Muni fare and sent them on their way home:
“You have a real talent, kid. Don’t waste it on the side of public restrooms, okay?”
His mom didn’t come home that night. Adrien fully understood that her earlier threat was just to mess with him.
She’d promised to punish him when she got home, but coming straight back and letting him have it would have been merciful.
It was the waiting—the wondering —that was the worst part: the Joyce Porter in his mind did worse things to him than the real one could ever cook up.
She ended up ignoring him for the rest of the week instead.