In Between Days: Raising Jordan (boyxman)✅

Cities in Dust

When I was eight, Mom went through her Siouxsie Sioux phase with the heavily done black eyeliner under and around the eyes together with the purple eye shadow and bright red lipstick. In a tight black leather mini skirt, her dyed black hair sticking up everywhere in punk rock fashion, I remembered her singing "Cities in Dust" on the top of her lungs, making brownies with me in the kitchen. We'd make brownies whenever I had a good day at school, which didn't happen too often.

Even though she was in her mid-forties, she dressed as if she were still in her twenties, wearing knee-high black boots and fishnet stockings that were torn along the back of her thigh.

Tim hated the way she sung, but I always thought she was the greatest singer ever. This one time Tim brought a girl home and he knew better than to do that. Mom never liked people she didn't know in the house, especially Tim's girlfriends.

"How many times have I told you she can't be here?" Mom scolded Tim and the girl.

"Mom, this is Sabrina," he said. "My girlfriend, remember? We've been going out for months." Mom's memory was never great.

"You're a liar and she's a slut," she said. Tears instantly came to the pretty girl's eyes. "Get her out of here."

"Mom!" Tim exclaimed as the girl ran out of the room and the house.

"Now where were we, sweetie pie?" Mom said to me, returning to the brownies. I was just about to turn on the mixer, but was afraid to, afraid to mess up and deal with her flipping out.

Tim returned shortly after. "Thanks a lot, Mom. You're psycho, you know that? Dad's right. You belong locked up."

"Wanna help make brownies, sweetheart?" she asked Tim as if she hadn't heard what he just said.

"I'm 18. No, I don't want to make brownies," he said. "I want you to be normal. I want a normal mother for once."

Normal. That's all Tim ever wanted, something neither of us ever really knew.

A few days after that incident, Mom landed in the hospital for about the third time that year. I didn't like this memory as much as I liked the song and remembering my mom in the Siouxsie Sioux outfit and make-up. Art was away on an assignment so it was up to Tim to make sure both me and Mom were taken care of.

Mom definitely had her good moments, though. She wasn't always so-called "psycho" and mean. I would never forget the time she stayed with me in the hospital when I was six and sick with pneumonia. She slept in that uncomfortable pull-out bed every night for three nights, never leaving my side. And then there was the time the school tried to prevent Tim from going on the eighth grade trip to Washington DC because he had a broken ankle. Mom ended up going with him, dressed like a normal woman, a normal mother for a change. Our mother wasn't all bad and psycho

For the most part, though, Tim never had a normal life. He was the one who took care of both of us. I didn't blame him for harboring some form of resentment for the both of us.

In mid-song, I turned off Cities in Dust and ventured out of my room. At ten in the morning, I knew Tim was at work and I assumed Jamie was somewhere in the house. After I made myself a cup of coffee, I headed to the back porch where I found Jamie sitting on one of the chairs, a sketchbook or something in his lap. I almost forgot he was an art teacher so I concluded he was probably an artist, too. I sat down across from him.

"An apology would be nice," he said.

An apology for what?

"You have no idea, do you?" I shrugged. "For pushing me in that gross water. I didn't deserve it." To me he deserved it. "And it was freezing."