I Don't Want To Be You

 

An unending stream of profanity, gunfire, and explosions flowed from the living room, down the hallway and into Billy Joes bedroom as he worked through his assignment on quadratic equations, needing to finish the work before bedtime, which was a mere forty-five minutes away. The math was not a problem, as numbers had always come easy to him, but the source of his gift he couldn’t identify.

He had an older brother named Clem who was borderline literate, always looking toward Billy Joe for help on his schoolwork. Billy Joe’s older sister Annabelle was four years older than Clem and had the unfortunate combination of stunning physical appearance and an IQ even lower than Clem’s, which was difficult to imagine. Billy Joe leaned back in his chair, struggling to filter out the noise from the living room, knowing that his father had less intelligence than even Annabelle, constantly, repeatedly, incessantly filling his mind and attention with video games, professional wrestling and monster truck rallies.

He did his best to avoid interaction with any of them. His relationship with his mother was easy enough to maintain, as she too was remarkably beautiful and unbelievably ignorant, making the task of saying the right thing at the right time an easy chore to accomplish. He felt bad for them all, wondering what it must be like to go through life without a clue about reality, about how everything functions, and without being able to read above an elementary school level.

He understood that his father meant well, and he was thankful that he chose to get married and reproduce, for without those two decisions, Billy Joe would not exist, would not have dreams, goals or aspirations, which were all carefully planned out for the next twenty years. He stuffed tissues into his ears to block out the noise, giving him a brief reprieve to complete his homework. Packing away his books, his notes, and his assignments, he noiselessly slipped into the bathroom to take a shower.

When he emerged from the steamy bathroom, the living room lacked the cacophony that filled every room less than twenty minutes before. Again, working to remain unnoticed and silent, he paused at the end of the hallway to see his father passed out on the couch with a now silent television in front of him. Clem was already sleep, it appeared that Annabelle had gone out for the night, and he saw his mother sitting alone in the silence of the kitchen.

He joined her, ate a few cookies and chatted until he felt tired enough to call it a night. His alarm jarred him from his sleep at seven a.m., giving him thirty minutes to dress, eat breakfast and climb into Clem’s pickup for a ride to school. His father had already left for his job at the rendering plant, his mother was cleaning and organizing their small living space, and Annabelle was still in bed, after doing God knows what for how many hours the night before.

Dropped off at the front door of the school, he watched Clem drive around the building to park in the rear parking lot, away from everyone else. He floated through a normal day at school, offering answers, offering help, and connecting with his wide variety of friends between all six classes. He liked to think of them all as friends, when in reality they were actually just acquaintances who connected with him for the academic help he could offer.

The school year ended, and he and Clem spent the summer working together building fences for a massive local ranch. Clem had graduated that year, a remarkable achievement considering that he could barely read or perform even basic math. As the summer ended, Billy Joe’s morning routine remained the same, finding himself being dropped off at the front door of the school to watch Clem drive away to his new job at the rendering plant, learning the basic skills of slaughtering, dismemberment, and shoveling offal into large bins for incineration.

He knew full well that his father expected him to join them immediately after graduation, but the idea of being locked into a mindless, violent, and gory job was an impossibility in his mind. As his third year of high school continued past, he obscured all of the paperwork for his plans for attending university from everyone except his mother. He knew that with his grades, he would be receiving a full scholarship into an engineering program.

This was a plan he had worked through in his imagination more times than he could count. The vision was clear, articulate, and flawless. The suitcase under his bed would be packed the night before, he would hurry home after his last day of school, and have two hours to gather his few things, buy a bus ticket and be out of sight before his father returned home. He could picture his mother putting on a dramatic act of “Billy Joe didn’t come home yet,” she would say. “You should drive by the school and see if you can find him.”

His third year ended, he worked another summer building fences, saving up his money in a bank account of which no one in his family knew existed. As his final year of high school drew close to an end, he replayed every detail of his last day of school over and over in his mind, that now included a trip to the bank to withdraw all of his money for his bus ticket, for schoolbooks, and for whatever insignificant items he would need at the university.

As his last day of school finally arrived, he hurried into town, bought his bus ticket, hurried home to spend a few moments with his mother. Role playing how she would react and speak when his father arrived at home in a few hours. His emotions were a strange combination of excitement, fear, and grief, hating the idea of leaving his mother behind as he would grow to become a different human being. He hugged her a final time and walked the back streets to the bus station at the opposite end of town.

He waited in the shadows, knowing that his bus would depart in less than an hour, giving him the opportunity to watch the small town of Driftwood disappear into the darkness, trusting that this would be the last moment he would spend in this horrid, empty, painfully dirty and ignorant place ever again. He and his mother had developed a plan to write letters once a month, updating one another on progress, news, and anything of interest. Fortunately, the mail was delivered well before his father arrived home, giving his mother time to read his letter, write a response, and mail it the next morning after his father had left for work.

Billy Joe, now presenting himself as William, graduated at the top of his class in mechanical engineering and received a job offer with an aerospace company in Austin, Texas. He looked at his first paycheck and thought back to the minimum wage pay he received building fences, trying to wrap his mind around the overwhelmingly large amount of money he would receive every two weeks. He and his mother continued their letter writing exercise and he began to wonder if there was some way he could rescue her from the deplorable state of her current existence.

After two years at his job, he received a letter from his mother informing him that Annabelle had left late one evening and did not return home, and at that point had been gone for over a week. Considering her choice of men and entertainment, he was not surprised. He learned as well that his father had “accidentally” fallen into one of the grinders at work. While Clem did all that he could to rescue him, he managed to lose only a hand and not his life.

“Well, there’s my answer,” William said to himself. With this new cache of information, he scheduled a one-week vacation, bought a comfortable SUV and return to Driftwood to steal away his mother, settle her into his home until he could establish her in her own apartment relatively close to his own condominium, giving him the opportunity to take care of her needs, protect her, and care for her as she had cared for him.

As he made the one-hour drive to his hometown, a particular phrase repeatedly came to mind, “I don’t want to be you.” His father now gone with no chance of making a connection or saying a final goodbye, his sister having disappeared, and his brother now handicapped and incapable of doing any other type of work, he could only think of making his mother’s life as comfortable and safe as possible.

His skin crawled and his stomach turned as he entered the small town, catching a whiff of the smell that he had completely forgotten during his time away. When he pulled up in front of his childhood home, now in a terrible state of decay, having been neglected for easily ten years while his father was focused on video games and wrestling, he wondered how a husband and father could be so blind to the needs of those who depended upon him.

The one-hour drive back to his home was an unending dialog. His mother was a constant stream of stories about Annabelle, about Clem, about the ladies at church, and the sorry decline of Driftwood in general. William gently turned the conversation around to the reality of her new life, her new possible friends, and her reality of never lacking anything she would need to make her life good, right and comfortable.

The following day after arriving home, he took her shopping to find everything she could possibly want or need. As William and his mother walked from store to store, the phrase continued to play in his mind, accompanied by an image of his father, “I don’t want to be you.” Knowing that he had taken the skills with which he was born and shaped himself into a successful man, allowed him to care for the one person who truly loved him.