Belly Aching

24

My original childhood bedroom which had become my eldest brother's room during fourth grade, now became my mother's living room during fifth grade. Same white walls and nude charcoal drawing, now the room had the old couch from the porch and a new color television. Some two foot wide strips of orange shag carpet that my mother had bought somewhere at a discount filled the center of the floor and a little fold-up table that we children had used for projects over the years became a permanent table with some light chairs to either side. The family's console color television had begun to give up the ghost by the Fall of Nineteen Seventy-Four, it had reached the point that all the replacement tubes in the world wouldn't give the fuzzy off-color picture the grandeur it once held. This and the fact that mother let me watch whatever I wanted on the new television upstairs, made the new living room a perfect lure for me.

My not as older brother, in his final year of High School, was finding reasons not to be home during the evening. So to keep the family dinner table full my mother encouraged me to have friends over, not just for the afternoon once school was out, but for dinner and through the evening. This I took advantage of, mostly with my friend Pete, sometimes with my friend Jonathan. During the early fall months this gave us time to play outside in the dwindling light, during the winter months a chance to play games in the rooms upstairs. In later years I heard how The Beatles had invited guest musicians to the studio to keep things civil as they felt too self conscious to squabble in front of them. I wonder if this was the same goal with my mother encouraging me to have friends over when dad was home.

By Spring, these opportunities became fewer as instead my mother had other things to keep us busy. She switched to working the night crew at the main grocery store across the hayfield instead of the daytime hours she had been working at the branch store twenty miles away. This meant she had daytime hours to go apartment hunting and by April had found a townhouse style apartment she liked less than a half a mile from the branch store. On weekends, she would take me and we would shop for some pieces for the apartment, such as a bunk bed set and chest of drawers for me, or curtains and side tables for her, and a fake leather recliner for Joe Giacomo to use during his anticipated visits. The rest of the furnishings for the apartment would come from the house later, she said. She had me mount the curtains and window sheers using a small ladder she had bought. I was surprised by this and asked why we didn't have my not as older brother do it as he was taller. She said he wasn't mechanically inclined. I guess this meant I was. The final purchase for the apartment was a new washing machine to fit under the stairs of the apartment, and a drier which fit into an attached storage room just outside the back glass doors.

These Saturday trips to run errands with my mother became a staple of our lives for the next four years, not only did it provide a second set of hands to carry bags for her, but she treated me to lunch at a restaurant as part of the trips. Before hand, eating out at a restaurant was a rare thing reserved for special occasions, thus eating out weekly like this made these trips seem extra special.

One time during fifth grade I had become sick and stayed at home. Often when this would happen I'd be left at home, alone, since fourth grade to get better. On this day, it happened to be my father's day off. Managing the park meant that my father had to work the weekends as they were the busiest times of the week, thus he had always had his two days off in the middle of the week, either Tuesday-Wednesday or Wednesday-Thursday. As I was sick on this Wednesday, I got to spend the day with him in the house. As his routine at the park during the off season was doing morning paperwork, then taking a mid-morning break to visit the combination general store & post office, on his days home he would spend the mornings reading the newspaper, then take a mid-morning break to visit the nearby drug store. While I was home sick, I guess he didn't feel I should be left alone that day and took me along with him for the trip to the drugstore. Apparently he hadn't been aware that I had been spending my other sick days alone at home during recent years.

By the start of Nineteen Seventy-Five, it occurred to me that 'if I were sick' on my father's day off this would not only get me a day away from the fifth grade teacher, but give me more time to be with my dad. Though, let's face it, it was little more than sleeping late in the morning, joining him for the trip to the drug store, then hanging out with him while he did other things at the home. He wasn't much for conversation so it was literally staying in the same room with him as he did something else. This became my Wednesday routine, 'I'd be sick' and then I'd spend the day with Dad. This was probably the most contact I had had with him to date.

Once the end of the school year came, I became sick, this time for real. It started with a sore throat and my mother's remedy for times like this was to buy a bottle of ginger ale and feed it to me over the next two days. Once the bottle was empty, I'd start to feel better. But this time it didn't work and all the bottles of ginger ale in the world didn't help. Given my fever, I'd be moved to my mother's bedroom during the day where there was a window fan that would blow on me and help cool me down while I laid on her bed. I missed the last week of school and also wasn't able to attend my not as older brother's high school graduation. I usually wasn't well enough to join the family at the dinner table and would just have crackers or ginger bread cookies brought to me.

After the last days of school was the move to the apartment and my mother concluded that all my being sick during the preceding week and into this one was my way of protesting against the move. Unable to help with that morning's preparations, my mother lead me to the back seat of her car as the moving van showed up and they loaded the furniture that she was taking from the home, the new living room set she'd bought a few years earlier, all of her bedroom, the dining room set she'd taken once Bumpa was in the nursing home, and the new color television and strips of orange shag carpet. I stayed lying in the back of the car once the moving truck was loaded and my mother lead them to the new apartment. Once there, I was taken to the lower bunk of the bunk bed to stay as they filled up the house. Once it was time for my mother to go to work on the night shift I had started vomiting and she took the night off to be with me, then a second night.

The weekend came and went with me lying in bed. Walking to the bathroom to pee had become a chore as my hips, knees and ankles hurt so much, so I waited until I really really had to go. A bedside pan was provided for the times I had to throw-up. By Monday, her next work day, mother scolded me for faking my illness and I just had to get used to the fact that I was now going to live in the apartment with her. The plan for summer had been that I would spend the days with her at the apartment, then the evenings at the family home with my father as she worked with the night crew, but with me vomiting, she couldn't let my father see that. As she couldn't take any more time off from work, she left me in bed for the evening while she went to work. By the second day of this I was throwing-up blood regularly and two days later, my mother thought maybe I should see the doctor.

Straight from bed to the back of her car, we took the twenty mile drive back to my home town to see my childhood doctor. He was told of the fever which I had for nearly two weeks, the vomiting which had recently turned to blood and he took one look at my throat. I was out of the examining room and, as I was having trouble standing, a chair was brought for me from the waiting room so I could sit in the hallway between examining rooms while my mother and the doctor had a heated exchange behind the examining room door. It seemed to last forever as I struggled to stay in a sitting position. Once the argument was over, we left and I was returned to the back seat of the car as we went to the drug store. I lay there for a while as my mother got a prescription for me and then we started the twenty mile drive back to the apartment.

My mother explained to me over the front seat of the car that she had thought my belly aching had all been about the move and I should have told her that I had Strep Throat all this time. Even though it had now ''developed into something worse'' and the doctor insisted I should be in the hospital, she couldn't have that as then my father would know and he could use it against her during the separation agreement negotiations...

To me, all this meant was I was going to die.

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