You Really Can't Go Back Home

Word Count: 607

Last year it was quite a shock when I went home for Christmas and my parent's answered with newly faked southern accents. My parents said “ya'll” as often as possible, even when grammar demanded a second person singular pronoun. Or worse, “Jimmy, ya'll want some grits with ya'll'ses hog jowls?” I was alone that year.

I was alone this year, so I expected that once again mom's first words would be, “Ya'll prowling with the old heat 'coon?” She would follow that with a pythonesque wink, wink, followed by a nudge, nudge. Of course I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, not in any rational sense anyway, yet I knew it had to translate into English as, “When are you going to get a girlfriend, James?”

Instead, this year, a Chihuahua answered the door. While the dog sniffed my feet, the door swung open so that I could see the little brass foot switch that had been installed so the dog could open the door. Odd.

The dog looked up from its sniffing. “Oh my God Jimmy!”

“Mom?” It was her voice, though spoken with a badass Mexican accent.

The dog looked up with an expression of bug-eyed horror, “Jimmy!”

“Mom?”

“Oh Jimmy what happened to your face, your whole body.” Then she wrapped her paws around my ankle and wept, “Oh my poor sweet innocent boy.”

“June, what is it?” Dad came trotting in and licked mom's armpit.

“That's Jimmy. Our Jimmy's at the door.”

Dad removed the pipe from his mouth and held it in his right paw, “Is it drugs, son?”

“I don't know, what are you taking?” My parents had turned into dogs. The import of that fact was trickling down from reality's leech-field and into my brain.

“Good gravy Jimmy, you look like a gorilla,” Dad said.

“Dad, you look like a dog.”

“Well of course I do. Now does someone want to tell me why my little pup looks like an ape?”

“Whaddaya mean pup?” I asked, genuinely interested to find out if I'd heard that right.

He regarded me with thoughtful bug-eyed sincerity. “Okay, okay, I shouldn't call you my little pup, you're a dog now.” He sighed. “Or were, before you turned into the Grape Ape.”

“Don't call me that either, it's speciest,” I said.

“Well you have to admit, you look like an... ape, not that there's anything wrong with that,” Dad said.

And so the next hour passed with mom's worried toenails clattering on the kitchen linoleum and dad barking at me. If I was for it, he was against it. If I was against it, he was for it.

I ended the evening with, “You know California's got a glut of Chihuahuas in the pound because people learned they're just nasty bitches.” Fortunately, it wasn't my most mature comment of the evening, though now I do regret it.

Mom dropped a cookie sheet. It wasn't very loud since it couldn't have fallen more than two inches from her jaws.

“You show some respect for the bitch who whelped you!” Dad snarled.

I couldn't take it anymore. I stalked out the door, dad yapping and nipping at my heels as I crossed the lawn to my Volvo. I took one last look at the house. The lawn where once we'd played catch, now a riot of yellow polka dots. Dad graying and pissing on the mailbox. Mom poking her nose between the window blinds.

You really can't go home again.