Bud, Not Buddy

This was the third foster home I was going to and I’m used to packing up and leaving, but it still surprises me that there are always a few seconds, right after they tell you you’ve got to go, when my nose gets all runny and my throat gets all choky and my eyes get all sting-y. But the tears coming out doesn’t happen to me anymore, I don’t know when it first happened, but it seems like my eyes don’t cry no more.

It’s at six that grown folks don’t think you’re a cute little kid anymore, they talk to you and expect that you understand everything they mean. And you’d best understand too, if you aren’t looking for some real trouble, ‘cause it’s around six that grown folks stop giving you little swats and taps and jump clean up to giving you slugs that’ll knock you right down and have you seeing stars in the middle of the day. The first foster home I was in taught me that real quick.

There comes a time when you’re losing a fight that it just doesn’t make sense to keep on fighting. It’s not that you’re being a quitter, it’s just that you’ve got the sense to know when enough is enough.

I was having this thought because Todd Amos was hitting me so hard and fast that I knew that the blood squiring out of my nose was only the beginning of a whole long list of bad things that were about to happen to me.

RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 118

You have to give adults something that they think they can use to hurt you by taking it away. That way they might not take something away that you really do want. Unless they’re crazy or real stupid they won’t take everything because if they did they wouldn’t have anything to hold over your head to hurt you with later.

After while the stings and fish-guard bite quit hurting so much. I started getting madder and madder. I was mad at the Amoses, but most of all I was mad at me for believing there really was a vampire in the shed and for getting trapped like this where there wasn’t anybody who cared what happened to me.

I can’t all the way blame Todd for giving me trouble, though. If I had a regular home with a mother and father, I wouldn’t be too happy about other kids living in my house either. Being unhappy about it is one thing but torturing the kids who are there even though they don’t want to be is another. It was my job to make sure other kids who didn’t know where their mothers and fathers were didn’t have to put up with Todd.

I knew a nervous-looking, stung up kid with blood dripping from a fish-head bite and carrying a old raggedy suitcase didn’t look like he belonged around here.

She’d tell me, “Especially don’t you ever let anyone call you Buddy, I may have some problems but being stupid isn’t one of them. I would’ve added that dy onto the end of your name if I intended for it to be there […] Your name is Bud, period.

“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It’s a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that’s you.”

It’s funny how now that I’m ten years old and just about a man I can see how Momma was so wrong. She was wrong because she probably should’ve told me the things she thought I was too young to hear, because now that she’s gone I’ll never know what they were. Even if I was too young back then I could’ve rememorized them and used them when I did need help, like right now.

I opened my eyes to start looking for Miss Hill. She wasn’t at the lending desk, so I left my suitcase with the white lady there. I knew it would be safe.

“I’m sorry, Bud, I didn’t mean to scare you, but everybody knows how you like to sleep with that knife open so I figured I’d best grab holt of you so’s you wouldn’t wake up slicing nobody.”

I spit a big glob in my hand and said, “We’re brother forever, Bugs!”

We slapped our hands together as hard as we could and got our slobs mixed up real good, then waved them in the air so they’d dry. Now it was official, I finally had a brother!

They were all the colors you could think of, black, white and brown, but the fire made everyone look like they were different shades of orange. There were dark orange folks sitting next to medium orange folks sitting next to light orange folks.

“My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her […] She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I’d be OK.”

Someone who doesn’t know who their family is, is like dust blowing around in a storm, they don’t really belong any one place […] I might not know who my family was, but I knew they were out there somewhere, and it seemed to make a whole lot more sense to think that they were somewhere around Flint instead of out west.

The train and my new pretend brother got farther and farther away, chugging to Chicago. Man. I’d found some family and he was gone before we could really get to know each other.

“The people who run factories and the railroads seemed to be really scared. To them if a worker has any dignity or pride he can’t be doing a good job.”

I knew if I was a regular kid I’d be crying buckets of tears now, I didn’t want these men to think I was a baby, so I was real glad that my eyes don’t cry no more. My nose plugged up and a little growl came out of my mouth but I kept my finger pointed, cleared my throat and said, “I know it’s you.”

I was smiling and laughing and busting my gut so much that I got carried away and some rusty old valve squeaked open in me then…woop, zoop, sloop…tears started jumping out of my eyes so hard that I had to cover my face with the big red and white napkin that was on the table.

I wasn’t sure if it was her lips or her hand, but something whispered to me in a language that I didn’t have any trouble understanding, it said, “Go ahead and cry, Bud, you’re home.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am, my spirit’s a lot stronger than it looks too, most folks are really surprised by that.”

“That’s great, Bud. Something tells me you were a godsend to us, you keep that in mind all of the time, OK?”

“We’ve been hoping for eleven years that she’d send word or come home, and she finally has. Looks to me like she sent us the best word we’ve had in years.”

Miss Thomas smiled at me and I knew she was trying to say I was the word that my momma had sent to them.

The picture looked like it belonged. It’s strange the way things turn out, here I’d been carrying Momma around for all this time and I’d finally put her somewhere where she wanted to be, back in her own bedroom, back amongst all her horses.