Promise

Promise

1

It was a clear, nice morning when I woke up. Everything was as left last night. I stood up from my bed, stepped into my sleepers, and walked to the bathroom, while everything before my eyes was a blur.

I washed my hands and face, brushed my teeth, fixed my tousled hair, and headed straight to the kitchen.

Mom was there. She was picking up something from the refrigerator. I quietly sat down at the table, without saying a word, waiting for breakfast.

After a while, I heard the refrigerator door close and a second later a short shriek from Mom. Simultaneously, I heard something drop onto the kitchen floor and break with the sound of breaking glass.

Slowly, I turned in my seat. Mom stood facing me, with her hands in mid-air, frozen. Just by a glance at her face, you could tell she was agitated, dismayed, frightened. I switched my gaze to the floor and saw the shards of a broken glass plate around her feet. A fat slice of butter lay among the glass bits.

“Clayton!” my Mom cried out with a high-pitched tone that made the hair on my nape stand. I looked up again. My heart almost froze.

“How many times,” she said, “I’ve told you not to slip in behind me like this? Huh? How many times, I say?”

A dull feeling caught me. I couldn’t say a word. I turned my head away.

Mom kept on: “Every time you come up soundlessly, and when I turn and see you there, I start screaming… And now again… You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’m sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to,” I said, facing her again.

“Shut up, Clayton. You always say that. I don’t want to hear it.”

The room fell silent for a moment. My face turned red. I felt dumb, stupid, ridiculous. I didn’t know what to do.

“Damn it, you’re gonna kill me one day,” suddenly said Mom, walking away from the broken pieces. Then: “Go get a broom and sweep the place.”

Slowly, careful of glass bits under my feet, I stood up and trudged to the kitchen door and was about to leave the room when heard Mom say “Wait!”. I stopped.

“You are still in your bedtime clothes?” she said.

I looked down at my pajamas and said nothing.

“Ughhh!” Mom sighed. “Go!”

Quickly as I could, I went out. First of all, I changed my dress. I put on a pair of black shorts, a pair of white socks, and a white shirt that said “Dude!” with bold black letters on its front. After, I stepped into my room’s balcony, picked up a broom (that’s where we keep them), took a look at the sky, stepped back in, and set out to the kitchen.

Mom was over the sink, washing the dirty plates that were left from last night’s dinner. She didn’t bother to look when I came.

Boy, she’s mad, I thought. Better clean this place up and get the heck outta here before anything bad happens.

I started to gather the glass shards in a pile with the broom, and then swept the pile into the dustpan. I put the broom and dustpan, which was now filled with broken glass, in a kitchen corner (the furthest from mom). Before leaving the kitchen, I looked back over my shoulder to see if mom was watching me. She wasn’t.

With remorse, I went to my room and lay down on my bed.

2

Ten minutes later Mom came in and saw me lying on the bed. I sat up.

“So you think that’s it,” she said, “you think you’re done, huh? Well guess what? You’re not. You’re gonna clean the whole house!”

The whole house! Oh, no! I thought. That’s terrible!

I hate cleaning the house. Well, I have certainly done that before, but it wasn’t a situation like this. It was that time when you go tell your mom you’d like to help her clean the house. But now, when mom was mad actually and I didn’t want to help, it was terrific.

Yes, that’s the word for it. Terrific.

“Do you hear me, Clayton?” mom was asking.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I do.” I wasn’t. I was busy thinking.

“So? What are you waiting for? Go!” she said.

“But, mo-“

“Go!”

“Okay,” I muttered and stood up.

I thought: Maybe I should so myself a favor by cleaning the house. Maybe Mom will calm down and this whole thing will end. Yeah, may be.

“Start with your room,” Mom said and turned to leave.

When she left, I sighed. “Let’s get this thing going.”

So, I started cleaning my room: first I made my bed, then put all the clothes that were thrown around the room (all as left last night) into my closet. I stuffed all of my brother’s toys in a small wooden box with the word Toys written on each of its sides. I brought a vacuum cleaner from the pantry and vacuumed my room.

I did pretty much the same in every room (all, except the pantry, the laundry – these didn’t need to be cleaned – , and kitchen – mom was still there). One thing i did in every room was I vacuumed them. One thing I did only in my room was putting away my brother’s toys.

After I finished cleaning the whole house, I thought of telling Mom that I was done, but then considered it a bad idea and smiled a little.

Suddenly a thought came to me: What if I never scared my Mom this morning? What would have happened then?

The answer came to me pretty fast: Yeah, then we probably would have sat at the table together, chatting, recalling last night (we had a lot of guests, a great dinner, lots of laughter and playing last night – which is why our house was so messy this morning, by the way) and laughing.

Suddenly, I felt I was very tired.

Once again, still with remorse (this time much more of that) and still feeling stupid, I went to my room and lay down on my bed. That day one thing I learned for sure: I will never piss my mom off again.

And that was a promise.

Author: Aydin Shachtachtinskiy