The Family I Never Dreamed Of—

(This is the second chapter of this short story. Follow the links below to read previous chapters)

Introduction  http://wp.me/p5AbPX-Ot

Chapter 1   http://wp.me/p5AbPX-Ox

Chapter 2

Now off to the kitchen we go.

Our kitchen had peel and stick tile on the floor and a rotary dial telephone mounted to the wall. The stove and the sink shared a wall and the fridge stood tall and stout across from them. If memory serves me right, and of course it always does, we did most of our fine dining right there on that laminate topped bar.  Microwaves weren’t a thing back then so heating up the grub required the use of a pot or pan and some fire. Yes, fire… from a stove… a real stove… with real fire which, by the way, came from one of those little wooden sticks with the red and white tips known as a match. All it took was a single scrape across a rough surface and voila, you were holding the only thing standing between you and that steaming hot cup of coffee. Naturally, the coffee beans had been picked, cracked and crushed fresh from the field, just hours earlier.

Ok, enough of that… let’s get to the memory…

I have total recall of the night I was sitting on a barstool in the kitchen with my older brother. Yes, I was often subjected to being left in close proximity to one of them but who would have ever thought he could injure me with my mother sitting within arm’s length of us. After all, this was a supervised visit and the lights were on. The paperwork from the courthouse stated plain and simple that I should never be left unattended, without mama or daddy present, especially since that incident with the kerosene in the coke bottle. Well, mama was talking on the phone when Chuckie decided to blow black pepper in my face to make me sneeze. Did he realize I had eyes that could be damaged?  Badly! And they say he was the smart one. Needless to say, mama’s telephone conversation with my favorite uncle ended pretty quickly when that black pepper got in my brown eyes. Mama grabbed me and ran to the bathroom, and I can still hear the water rushing in my ears every time mama pushed that handle down trying to flush my eyes.