The Flowers by Dagoberto Gilb

ask.
    Cloyd turned away from me and started walking toward his office, when he spun back around. I noticed that the laces on his work boots were untied. I thought, that’s what he does when he’s getting drunk.
    â€œLet me tell you something.” He was way louder than he needed to be. It didn’t even seem like he was talking to me.
    I made a turn to his face, which seemed mad, but I saw the empty whiskey glass. He had it low and was gripping it more like he was about to throw it, rolling it in his hand. I’d turned my head away from the window but didn’t move my feet. I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.

    It was like he was chewing, his mouth full, and he had to swallow before he could talk. Then the office phone rang and he rushed to get it.
    â€œWhat happened?” my mom asked, almost in a whisper. She probably couldn’t help but hear him talking to me. He was in his office being too loud with someone on the phone. She said it more nervous than she had to. She was holding a hairbrush. It seemed like she came out of their bedroom, and I couldn’t tell if she was coming or going. She was all sprayed and decked out, maybe a new dress and new heels, like she’d be when she was going out on a date or even shopping.
    â€œNothing,” I said.
    He was in his office now. You could hear him too easy on the phone.
    â€œWhy is he so … you know?” she asked.
    â€œWhy would I know?”
    â€œWere you guys talking?”
    â€œA long time ago already,” I said.
    â€œDe qué?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œSonny, I hear him.”
    â€œI think it was about French,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNothing,” I said.
    She went over to the front window too and started squinting out there. “Did you take his trash out?”
    All she had to do was look.
    She started seeing what was going on outside. “It was about aquel hombre, wasn’t it?”
    They were still out there, and the hood of the T-Bird was up, though they weren’t even near to looking inside. “I dunno, Mom, okay?” I took the long way around her for the bedroom.I was mad at her. I don’t think I’d ever been so mad at her before. No, I didn’t really like this husband of hers—the Cloyd, the Hernández twins were calling him, a lumpy wad that held it together—but that wasn’t it, because I didn’t care about him no more, bad or good. And even though I knew it was his decision about Goof, I blamed her and her only. I wasn’t gonna say nothing about it unless one of them brought it up. What for? I wanted to show God how I was a man, not him and not her. But yeah I was so mad at her for letting him get away with it. I mean, I could understand why a dog shouldn’t live inside an apartment with no yard, but couldn’t she at least fight this dude a little about it? If she didn’t care how I felt, didn’t she care any about Goof? Didn’t she even miss Goofy a little? Didn’t she think I would?
    For a while my room was being neat. That could be because I didn’t have so much to mess up. My mom never picked up after me at home, before we moved here, except maybe once every few months, if somebody was gonna be coming over. For a minute she did almost every day. She even made my bed. I didn’t think it was for good reasons. More some game. I don’t think she was too happy. I was sure she would want to bust anytime. It’s how she was. I put my blanket—that’s what I slept with, a blanket, no sheet, and it was the same blanket I used at home, which she’d folded and left at the foot of the bed—under my head instead of the pillow, and I watched the ceiling instead of the television. And I listened. When I didn’t hear my mom or them, I just listened harder. The curtains were closed, but the window wasn’t. I heard the yelling from upstairs. Once I got used to it, I