Storymania - The Fallen Arc by Brotherman

The Fallen Arc
Brotherman

James Dumars stood over his upstairs bathroom sink and washed his face in a way subconsciously similar to the way he saw the practitioners of Avery Baptist Church get baptized on the banks of the Gulf of Mexico when he was a boy. He had a habit of splashing water on his face, in order to cool his body down every time he got overheated or stressed out. But no matter how many times he splashed his face with water he couldn’t calm himself down or make himself forget the massive catastrophe at hand. His parents, Abraham and Mary Dumars, had come 1,877 miles away from Mobile Alabama with the full expectation that their grandson Jovan was graduating from Stadium High School. Abraham, a retired postman, was in his best pinstriped suit, the one that he wore only to Easter and funerals. Mary had her favorite had made out of pheasant, a jeweled ermine coat and graceful red dress that she wore at her son's wedding, the one which gave her regal airs. In her hand was a card with two hundred dollars in it, enclosed by a letter hand typed from a 1964 Stevenson typewriter, saying how much she loved him and how she was so glad that he was bettering himself by graduating from high school.

The only problem was that nobody was going to graduate. Jovan Dumars, member of a stable two parent home and resident of one of Tacoma's most elite neighborhoods, failed to meet the rudimentary requirements to graduate from Stadium High School. His senior year was akin to a nine month long accident in the process of happening; as everyone from guidance counselors, to teachers to even the principal told him that he needed to buckle down and at least get through his senior year, so he could at least go to a junior college and have plenty of time to make something of himself.

An all of their pleas were met with the same assuming grin that reeked of effete snobbery. His usual response was a shrug, a quick mumble about getting his GED, a causal reference to " the white man" and some throwaway joke. For there wasn't a situation, no matter how serious it could be, that he didn't have a smarmy crack up for. The frustrating thing for James and his wife Rebecca was that there was nothing wrong with the boy. They tried to get him tested for dyslexia, but he could read and understand the test just fine. They tried to get him tested for ADD, but his concentration worked when he wanted it to.

No, James had to be resigned to the fact that his son was merely an a*$hole, and had been for several years. Long after most students his age in the neighborhood had concentrated on their SAT's, what schools they were going to and what scholarships they were going to get, Jovan held to his role of class clown. Finding a joke whenever the situation didn't need it, he hid his insecurities with the same dopey smirk that led to anyone with a lick of sense to feel the urge to smack off him.

Until the night before his parents had been merely worried and perplexed by this. They went to the right classes, read the right manuals, tried to be civil and tried to understand his situation. James had come up from a strict upbringing, but he thought that he and his times were different. He could do better, he thought. His mother and father had been hard on him because of the era, he told himself. we were intellectuals,( he an engineer, she a jewelry salesperson) we were advanced, we knew more, they had said on many occasions. But what perplexity they had was transformed into anger the day before when Jovan walked into dinner 45 minutes late, pronounced," Uh, mom, dad I’m gonna get my G.E.D" and skipped away into his room, as if he had something to skip about and he just didn't just take the heart of his parents and just rip it into pieces.

His mother called in sick from work, and spent her whole day in her garden tending to the same Petunia's for four hours straight, as if she was so traumatized that she was somehow stuck in the same painful place and time. There was a bleary, aged and sleep deprived look in her eyes when she decided to come up to James to try and convince them that he had to break the news to his parents.

" you have to tell them. They've been downstairs for hours." she told him.
" Yeah " he whispered.

There was no way they could stop James's parents from coming because they were already in mid air when Jovan broke the news to them. When James picked them up from the airport they could see that something was wrong by his emotionally drained demeanor. They were inquisitive when both James and Rebecca had had walked down the stairs in the manner as if they were in a funeral procession.

" What's wrong baby." said Mary, curious about his son's expression
" Speak up boy, what's the matter, Ain't we gonna be late for the boys ceremony" Said Abraham, as James began sit down.

They sat in the living room right next to each other, Abraham was watching the Mariners and Mary was writing down her lottery numbers. James sat down in his recliner, looked straight at them, and put his hands over his face while Rebecca sat right next to him, bracing herself as James started to tell them what’s happening. This was traumatic to them because they took his not graduating from high school as a reflection on their parenting style, and to admit this was to admit that they had failed for eighteen years.

"Dad, mom I’m sorry" James started to say.
" Bout What?" Abraham interrupted "Boy you aint done nothing to me"
" Aint nothing wrong baby" Mary added " I'm proud of you, I’m proud of Jovan and I'm so proud of this house."

" Dad, Mom Please, I need to tell you something." And just as he was about the vocalize his explanation, in came Jovan, wearing a backwards baseball cap, source sweatshirt, dirty black shorts and that same smirk. He hadn't bothered to close the door and only gave a "hey" to his grand parents before running up the stairs to go into his room.

" Boy, aren’t you gonna say hi to your grandparents!" said a perturbed James.
" Chillax! man I said hey already. What's your f*cking problem" Jovan replied, perturbed that James had the temerity to raise his voice in Jovan's presence.
" BOY DON'T CUSS IN FRONT OF YOUR GRANDPARENTS!" he yelled back only to hear a slamming door.
" Is he on them drugs" said Abraham, " Boy, you better talk to him"

He got up from his chair and walked towards his bedroom as if he was possessed. Everything, from his breath to his thoughts to the way he moved, reeked of anger. Rebecca tried to grab his hand to ask him if he needed to calm down but he just went right past her as if she wasn't even there. As he went to the door he took a deep breath and opened the door to see Jovan, laying in his bed, nodding to a DMX's " we right here" playing on the radio. James pulled the plug out of his socket to an angry response.

" Dad what is your f*cking problem" he yelled at James in protest

James snapped, grabbing him by the neck and putting him against the wall. " listen you little f*cking failure! You are going to go downstairs and tell your grandparents why you are not going to graduate today, and then you are going to wait one week while I get your apartment and then you are going to pack your f*cking bags"

" Why are you tripping dad, I told you I’m going to get my GED!" He yelled in a voice that everyone in the house heard. " Mommmm!!!!!!"

" I have tried, I have tried I have TRIED" he said, nearly welling up in tears, "To help straighten you out but your antisocial a$$ just doesn't want to do anything. Do you know your grandfather worked 48-60 hour weeks to put me through school? Do you know your grandmother cleaned white folks toilets, so I could pay my tuition? How do you expect they are going to feel when your lazy a$$ tries to tell them that you couldn’t get through high school."

" You dont understand me!" Jovan cried " You dont understand where I’'m coming from, I hate you!!!!!" as he grabbed his stereo system and threw it at James. It bounced off his head and went spiraling leftward into the nose of his grandmother-who just opened the door to see what was the matter-fracturing it on instant.

A year later he was in entirely different place whatsoever. To be exact, he was in the bottom floor in the roach infested Winthrop studio apartments. A year before, after spending the duration of two days trying to fend his grandfather from beating him within an inch of his life, James made good on his promise to move him out of his hous, even finding him a restaurant job at Red Lobster. But James knew that the immediate freedom that was given him was an extrordinary punishment in itself; because with that freedom came responsibility, something that Jovan responded to with the similar effect that a rat responds to cyanide.

He barely lasted six months at Red Lobster before he quit and got on welfare, which was a smart move as the 339.00 that he was given on every first was the only reason that he had a roof over his head. He got his food from browsing garbage cans and begging soup kitchens; because he was kicked out of a food bank when he recognized one of the volunteers was a student he used to bully and, forgetting this was the real world, proceeded to do so again. He generally slept with his clothes on because he hadn't paid nary a bill except a couple of cable ones since he got there, and even that didn't last because he pawned his 19 inch tv and all his video games for food money a long time ago.

But mostly Jovan went through quite a change; as he began to realize that the emotional penance he had to pay for his crimes was quite steep. Upon hearing he was kicked out of his job, James tried to help him by offering him a position as his understudy, but he turned him down because he didn't want to be any more of a bother to him and he had to give up marijuana to do so. Lately he had a hard time getting out of his bed, much less doing anything constructive. His mother tried to get him on section eight, but he was in such a state of inertia that he ended up using the registration papers to roll blunts. His hair had grew long and he started to smell because the money he spent for rent, weed, junk food and booze took his whole income, leaving him with virtually nothing for toiletries.

Most of the time he kept stoned because he didn’t want to face all the things that he had done, from high school to breaking his grandmother's nose. James had even suggested that he come home to try and straighten his life out. " Boy’s suffered enough" he said. But once again he turned him down. There would be even times when he would call his mother late at night and spend hours and hours on the phone, drunk and stoned, begging for her forgiveness.

On the exact day of the first anniversary of the incident, he rolled out of his makeshift bed( two mattresses and a box spring on top of each other) and stood up to look at his surroundings. He would grab clothes that he wore for eight days straight, and was planning to wear a ninth; Kick over a empty case of beer surrounded by half empty cans of beans that had became fly receptacles; walk past an array of news papers, rolling papers and porno's, and grab a book on suicide that he bought at a local book store only to throw it out of the window that he broke in a violent rage two weeks ago. He went to the kitchen to get some pizza and beer, only to realize that he was out of the latter, there was only one slice of the former, and he had no place to put it because the microwave was broke and he hadn't washed his dishes in 3 months. Then he would go, like his father, to the sink and try to wash his face, but the water that came out of it was a color combination of aqua, forrest green and three different shades of beige.

But mostly he spent the day looking at the mirror, and gazing at the heartbroken face that his grandmother had on the floor while she wiped the surge of blood that was coming from her nose. He visualized it a million times as well as his fathers and grandfathers rage in coming after him, as well as his own mothers sorrow. Mary died only three months later and heartbroken, Abraham died three weeks after that. And the only thing Jovan could do was apologize and cry countless numbers of times. He had not only realized how much he had ripped his parents heart out and affected their lives. He had finally realized how much he wrecked his own.