I Was a Baby in Her Arms

I Was a Baby in Her Arms



I was popping wheelies. Up and down my dead end street, all day long. Bunny hops, fish tails, tail whips, building ramps.

I would come home with scrapes up and down my knees and on the palms of my hands. Battle scars. I was a bad ass in the making. I didn’t cry anymore, or complain when I got hurt. In my mind I was a grown man, and men don’t cry.

One evening I went to Johnny’s house. He and his brother wanted to grill out, so we did. We almost burned his house down.

My grandparents just so happen to be Johnny’s neighbors. Grandma came out screaming at us to stop and wait for my dad to get there that they would be grilling up some pork and hamburgers for dinner tonight.

Thankfully she didn’t see the plastic gas tank we used to start the fire on the grill, and the melted spout when it caught fire.

We were young, and knew better than everyone else; stronger, faster, smarter.

That was in the seventh grade.



I walked into my house to dress a recent scrape on my knee after having jumped a makeshift gap over the ditch in front of Johnny’s house earlier that day. I went straight from the front door to the bathroom and looked for cotton swabs and peroxide. I sat on the toilet and proceeded to douse the cotton ball in peroxide. It stung, but I watched as the bubbles eat away at infection in my scraped up knee.

I put a washcloth over my knee to dry it out and used tape to hold some cotton over the wound. I pulled my pant leg back down and walked out of our lime infested bathroom.

My family and a nurse whom I’ve seen before were in the kitchen, my mom in a chair. Jen, my sister, asked me to stay and I told her that I was going back over to Johnny’s house.

“Johnny and I are about to go to Cody’s meemaw’s house. She’s making us lunch after we cut her grass.”

Dad didn’t object.

I looked from the nurse to my dad and Jennifer to my mother sitting there with a concerned look. I didn’t know the severity of Multiple Sclerosis at the time and regret not having watched the nurse stick the needle in. I just thought that if I didn’t watch, I would never have to do it.

I went back outside and jumped on my bike and pedaled off.





“Hey mom, I think I want to join the military when I grow up.”

“No.”

“Why not? I think it would be pretty cool. I want to be like Mr. Greenwell and grandpa’s brother Earl. Didn’t they fight in Vietnam?”

“Yes they did and they also can’t sleep at night. I don’t want you to go off and get yourself killed in some country.”

“Didn’t someone get shot down the street from us the other day? And what about last week when those two kids got shot behind the Union Hall? It can happen here just as anywhere in the world. At least I’d be doing something.”

My mom looks ahead into the gas station we’re parked at. A black man with sagging pants pulls open the door and almost runs into an elderly woman as she walks out of the store.

“They were doing something, too. They were selling drugs. I don’t want you thinking about the army, so just put it out of your mind.”

She rips open her pack of cigarettes, rolls down the driver’s side window and lights one of her Virginia Slim Light Menthols.

She takes a drag of her cigarette. “I have multiple sclerosis. In ten or twenty years I won’t be able to walk, maybe less than that.”

I don’t say anything.

“My legs are always numb and my vision is going as well.”

I remain quiet as she starts the truck and pulls out of the parking space.

“I won’t go to the military, I promise.”

The seven minute drive to our street was a quiet one. A dead quiet one. Nothing needed to be said though.





“Can you help me with these groceries? Chris, go get Max and let him out to go potty.” Chris’s grandmother closed the door to her explorer and strung her purse over her shoulder.

I went around back of the truck and opened the door and got out all of the bags so his grandma didn’t have to carry any and I had her shut the door for me.

Chris had already gone in the house.

As I walked up the three short steps, I knew something was wrong. The screen of the window to my right looked like it had been cut open on the edges and I knew that they just put that screen in last week.

I heard Chris yelling in the house. I dropped the bags and ran in through the kitchen to see a black man trying to kick the front door down to make his escape. I step in front of Chris and lock eyes with this man. Both Chris and I stop our advance as he holds up one of Chris’s grandpa’s knives.

“Get the fuck back!” He proceeds to kick at the front door. It won’t budge.

I take a step closer with as a fierce look in my eyes as I can summon up. The next thing I know a lamp shade hits my head as Diane, Chris’s grandma, attempts to defend her grandson and I.

The black man bolts by me and out the door we came in at and I’m off on the chase. I dial 911 and throw it at Diane as I’m skipping the three steps.

Apparently there were two men in the house. A white man was also running holding his pants with his hand. He had thrown a lot of mixed paper; money, checks, drug prescriptions. Maybe he thought that’s why I was chasing them.

I’m just a pissed off Junior that just had his day ruined by two idiots who think I’m scared shitless.

I’m not really.

I chase the white man down Robb’s Lane and through a person’s untended garden.

“Get the FUCK back here!” I’m yelling all the way down the lane. If anyone happened to be sleeping this late in the afternoon, they weren’t anymore.

He turns the corner of a house and by the time I turn the corner I’ve lost him. I keep running in the direction I think he went. I run through a vacant lot with many stacks of cinder blocks housing different types of mulch and different grades of gravel.

I stop to pick up a half broken red brick and search through the lot; all the while yelling at the top of my lungs. I was attracting attention from an old couple tending their garden behind their house.

I continue my search of the lot and see a figure darting out from behind a stack of cinder blocks. It’s the white man with a blue flat-billed hat and a long white t-shirt that would normally come down to past his knees.

I take off after him accidentally dropping my improvised weapon. The man who broke into one of my best friend’s grandmother’s house just got lucky and won’t be killed after all. The chase takes me across Outerloop and I lose my shoes in the middle of the four lane road. It’s pretty busy.

I hear a crash behind me but I do not turn around. My eyes are locked and will be locked on the back of that shirt for as long as necessary to be locked on that guy lying face down in the dirt. I do not care about that crash.

He finally stops and turns around.

After that point it’s a vague blur of what actually happened. I remember the feeling of that fight and the words he said to me and what I said to him that started our scuffle.

He must have been at least 22 years old. A little taller than me and a little more built.

I was invincible.

The adrenaline tore through me and I forgot who I was. I remember the feeling of his ribs cracking under my fist, the sour taste of blood in my mouth, his teeth shattering from the force of my elbow. I was on top of him and dominant. My knees held his arms down and I remember hitting his face in like the guy in Fight Club.

The next thing I clearly remember is an older man pulling me off.

“He broke into my friend’s house,” is all I said and tried to pounce back on him. The older man, now appearing in his late fifties held me back and threw me on the ground. “He ain’t moving. The cops are on their way. Just sit tight and go get your shoes.”

I look over to my piece of work. His eyes were a bloody mess, his upper lip no longer existed and a mix of his blood and my own blood soaked his white t-shirt. He was calling for his mother. I could tell through his sobs that he had never experienced such a beating.

I stood up and turned around. I must have been a sight walking into the middle of that road; a young man with a blood ridden dress shirt in black pants crossing the road to get his shoes.

I shoved my hands in my pockets. I felt a chain of beads attached to a cross. I pulled out my grandfather’s rosary and stopped there in the middle of Outerloop looking at the rosary.



“You could have been killed! What if he had a fucking gun on him? You knew he had a knife! What in the hell were you thinking!?”

I didn’t really get a lecture when I got home later that night. I got a scourge. My dad didn’t really say so much except that I should have thought about my safety. My mother on the other hand... well… she wasn’t happy.

“I know you think you did the right thing, but think how your father and I would have felt if something had happened to you.”

“I knew what could have happened. I could have grabbed that metal bat sitting next to the door and it would have been over quicker. Chris and his grandma could have been killed if I wasn’t there. Just be happy you don’t have a submissionist as a son.” I didn’t really know if submissionist was as actual term, but it got my point across. I thought anyways.

“What’s done is done I guess. I’m happy you’re ok.”





It’s really obvious that we like each other at this point. My best friend Hollyn even says so.

“So do you like Alex?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I do, but here’s the thing. We’re going to different colleges in two freaking months. I don’t think that we would be able to make it work out. Maybe if she had broken up with that asshole sooner it may have worked, but I have my doubts.”

“I know you. I also know Alex. It’s a match made in heaven if you ask me. I know it would work out.” Hollyn rarely spoke like this about any of my crushes. “Besides, what do you have to lose?”

“Ok. I’ll think about it.”



Alex and I started hanging out more and more that month of June. Pretty soon I didn’t have to call Hollyn or Tony to go to Alex’s house with me. That, and Alex just invited me over.

We cooked food a lot. It was a kind of common ground for us. I never ate at home, I practically lived at other people’s houses, particularly Alex’s since we were hanging out.





“Help,” my mother gasped.

Wheezing and gasping my mother was holding herself up in front of the air conditioner. She had a bad reaction to her shot that day and her blood pressure was soaring.

I had grown accustomed to the process. Whenever she had a bad reaction, she would first begin to vomit and then her blood pressure would rise making her sweat all over.

I had just walked in the door this time when I heard her calling me. I ran to the hall closet and grabbed a towel and threw it in the sink. I turned the cold water on then I went to get ice packs.

I came back from the kitchen and grabbed the washcloth and started for my parent’s room. I put the towel on her forehead.

“Hold that there for awhile.” I held one ice pack on her neck and the other one on her bare torso. She wasn’t clothed except for her undergarments. She never was when her reaction started.

I held the ice packs in place for a longer than normal time until she cooled down. This is the worst part. Her blood pressure drops way down and she starts to shiver. The sweat induced by her rise in blood pressure just makes it worse. I wrapped her in blankets and lay there with her until my sister came home.



“So, do you want to go out with me?”

“Yea?!”

We both laughed in my truck. We kissed as I was pulling my little S-10 around the building where the show was going on. It was Schitzo’s last show they were ever playing and my friend Tony wanted me and Alex to go with him.

We laid out on her front lawn with blankets several nights that summer. Sometimes we would climb into the bed of my truck kissing each other like we would never see the other again; it felt like it too. We counted the stars and wished on every single shooting star.

One night we were in the back of my truck and I asked her what she thought would happen when we went to college.

“I think we can make it work. Josh says that it won’t. That just makes me want it to work more though. Besides, we’ve been friends so it’s not like we’ll hate each other if we do break up.”

I was looking for something a little different because of what was on my mind. It was the same thing except what I was hoping for was a little more serious. That answer did for now though.



I felt myself falling for her. I would wake up at five in the morning just to talk to her as she went to work. I worked construction with my dad, so I figured if I woke up at five, I would already be ready to get up at six to get ready for work. It worked both ways.

Kevin would ask about Alex at work.

“So how’s Alex doing?”

“She’s doing alright. She and I are going to the movies with some of my friends tonight.”

“So are you all going steady?”

“I don’t know.”

I hunched back over and kept rubbing the concrete down. Sweat poured down the side of my face, but my sweat drenched shirt felt cool in the summer breeze.



I woke extra early one morning at 3 AM. I had been learning a song called “Mixed Tape” by Butch Walker. She loved that song. She has what I like to call a “seasonal song.” Every few months she has a different song stuck in her head and she listens to it over and over again until she knows it by heart. Then she sings it to me on the phone.

It was my turn to sing it for her.

I got my guitar and stuck it in my truck. I let my truck warm up a bit before I put it in drive and pulled out of the driveway. I drove to the gas station to get us coffee.

Six creamers and four packets of sugar with a little bit of coffee. That’s how she took it then.

I pulled in her driveway at about 4AM and called her.

“Good morning beautiful. I’m here.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

I sat in the truck waiting for her to come out. We were going to Waffle House to meet up with Hollyn and Tony before they went to work. This was the last time I would see them for a few months because I was leaving the next morning, so we went to Waffle House.

We made friends with the waiters at Waffle House over the past year we went there so much. They gave us free food and discounts and loved to see us when we came in during the middle of the night.

Alex opened up the door to her house and let the screen set gently so it didn’t make too much noise and skipped to the passenger side of my truck. She opened the door and gave me a kiss.

“Is that coffee mine?”

“If you mean the sugar then yes it is yours.”

She smiled. I loved that smile. It floats around in my head all day and night. When I work, envisioning Alex’s smile makes me work ten times harder and makes me feel like I’m not really working a ten hour day out in the blistering heat.

We meet Tony and Hollyn at Waffle House at 4:30 and get a free breakfast. I leave a tip equaling what the meal for four would normally cost.

I tell Hollyn and Tony that they need to drive down to my college and visit me once in a while and we say our goodbyes.

Alex and I jump in my truck and I drive to Flextronics where she works. She has another 20 minutes before she has to go in so I pull out my guitar.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

I start to play the tune to her favorite song and I see a tear well up in her eye. She stops me.

“I’m falling for you.”

“Yea, me too.”

From that point on we knew something was going to happen. Nothing was going to keep it from happening, but we knew that if we screwed up when we left for college, we would both be heartbroken.



That night I went to Alex’s house. My grandmother had just gotten out of surgery and it went well. They had to replace something in her throat or heart or something. I was made to believe it wasn’t that serious and it turned out that I was right. I visited her after I dropped Alex off at work and talked to grandma for awhile until I had to leave for lunch. She seemed fine.

I opened the front door and came in to a cool house. Her parents were sitting on the couch so I sat on the one next to them.

“How are you all?”

Her mom took a sip of her nightly wine, “We’re doing fine. How’s your grandmother?”

“She’s doing great. I visited her this morning after I dropped Alex off at work. She’s a little hoarse and a little tired, but other than that she is fine.”

“Well that’s good. Tommy and I have been sitting around since I got off work watching movies. Alex should be in her room.”

“Alrighty,” I say as I get up and walk to her Africa themed room in the hallway.

She is sitting in the middle of the room with a frown on her face. She has clothes in piles and folded, two crates full of notebooks and paper and other school supplies. I sit down on her bed.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“But I don’t want you to.” She gets up and starts to cry. I’ve never seen her cry before and I feel bad, but I laugh at her because of the face she makes. She starts storming around the house and crying.

“What’s wrong honey?” her mother asks her. “Do you not want to go to U.K.?”

Alex just stands there with a pathetic look on her face and doesn’t say anything.

I walk into the room and then her mom realizes what she is crying about. She understands.

I pack Alex’s bags for her while she is watching me on her bed. I get everything ready for her and in piles. She’s ready to leave and she’s not leaving for another week.

“You can come over in the morning before I leave. I would love for you to come. I think Tony and Hollyn were coming after work.”

“Ok.” She doesn’t really say much for the rest of the night, but she doesn’t really need to say anything.

We grab a blanket and a pillow and go outside to the back of my truck. I spread out the blanket and pick her up and set her on the bed of my truck. We just lay there holding each other until one in the morning when my dad calls wondering where I’m at. He was driving me to school the next day and I wondered why he sounded so awake.

“I’m getting ready to leave. I’ll be there in a little bit.”

I hang up the phone and Alex holds on to me for dear life. “Don’t leave yet. Please?”

“Ok. I’ll stay for fifteen more minutes.”

She smiles again, and we just hold each other.

An hour later I pick her up and take her to the front porch and tell her I need to go. She looks disappointed but gives me a kiss and a hug and then I walk away and put the blankets in my truck. I drive off.



When I pull down my street, something seemed wrong. My dad was packing the back end of his truck with all of my stuff to take to college with me. I guessed that he was just getting packed so we could be off really early.

I turn off my music and pull in the drive way out of the way of my dad’s big truck and put mine in park.

“You need some help?”

He doesn’t say anything to me.

I walk up the steps and he is following me. My mom is standing in the kitchen, leaned up against the counter.

My mom looks at me with eyes that had obviously been crying. Right then and there I knew what had happened.

“Grandma was out of surgery and doing fine. The doctors said she was stable and she would be out in a few days. Al went to go get a drink.” She starts to sob into my shoulder.

My dad finishes what she was trying to say. “Your grandmother passed away about four hours ago.”



We drove down to my college that night to drop my stuff off. My sister came home with my dad and I and my aunt Leigh and her kids stayed the night with us that night. The week drug on like it would never end.



I woke up on the morning of the funeral with an invisible weight bearing down on me. I don’t know why but I felt obligated to do something or to hold something in.

I let the hot water flow over my body like a cleansing liquid washing away last night’s unease. I felt oddly invigorated after the short shower considering the circumstances and commenced to but on my clothes.

I wore a black tie and a white shirt I picked up at Kohl’s a few days before. My shoes were the dress shoes I always wore to school and I wore black pants.

After being completely ready for the day I set out to pick Alex up from her house. She wore a flowing knee length white and red skirt. She knew I loved to see her wearing yellow, and she wore a yellow shirt. She wanted to stay with me all day long, and she did. She never left my side the whole day.

We pulled into the funeral home at 9 30AM. My family was all standing in the parking lot waiting for me and Alex to get there. My cousins Matt and Devin and Al’s grandson’s Jake and Josh and my grandmother’s nephew, on her deceased husband’s side of the family, were pall bearers, as was I.

Alex and I got out of the car and my immediate family, including Aunt Leigh all gave Alex a hug. It made me feel good that they had taken a liking to her.

There was an air of somberness to the parking lot, and that somberness definitely did not relent as we stepped through the doors of the building. All of us stood in a big group in the entrance way. Several couches were placed around a coffee table and the lighting was very soft, which complimented the comfortable looking couches.

My mom, Aunt Leigh and my uncle Mark, who is from Ohio and Matt’s father, are beckoned by whom I think to be the person who put the funeral together. Al cannot go as he is technically not family; though, I pretty much consider him my grandfather since my actual grandfather died of cancer before I was born.

After twenty minutes of standing around and talking with one another, we are allowed to go into the viewing area. Pictures are posted everywhere. There’s me and Jen with Grandma on one of our vacations. There’s my grandma holding my sister as a baby.

I stood back from my mom and aunt as they go up to my grandmother’s body. There were flowers all around her casket, donated by several families whom I’ve never met. I avert my eyes from anything that may make me breakdown; especially my mother and sister.

I introduce Alex to my family whom I have never met; she actually introduces herself, and by doing so, I remember their names. I find my father and he is talking to Kevin.

“Well you must be Alex,” Kevin says.

She takes his hand as she says “Yes I am.”

“My name is Kevin. I’m your boyfriend’s boss.”

“I’m also his boss,” pipes in my father.

Alex, Kevin and my dad continued their conversation as I walked off. I floated around the room shaking hands and talking to people whom I must have met when I was younger. I knew many of them and they knew me, but others I did not know, yet, they knew me. I found myself wandering closer and closer to the casket. Not realizing it until my grandmother’s sleeping face was in my sight.

She looked tranquil. Usually bustling around the house looking for old pictures or candy, she didn’t look like she was looking for anything. It was like she had already found it. I got to thinking at that moment. She had found everything she needed in the people around her. Everything she wanted to be was because of those she knew. They supported her.

I didn’t realize it, but Jen had come up and stood beside me. She looked horrible. She and grandma were really close. I put my arm around her and pulled her into my chest and let her sob for as long as she needed to.



I didn’t breakdown the whole of the ceremony. My shirt was soaked with tears from my youngest cousin Kristen and my sister, but not my own. All of the grandkids sat in the same row; Alex was behind me the whole time, and I didn’t even know it.

After the extended family was filed out of the chapel and had paid their respects, my cousins and I got up and followed suit. My sister held onto me as we walked up to our grandmother. It’s hard for me to remember the details of the moment’s following this particularly because I averted my eyes from my mother once again. I cannot stand to see her upset, and I was not about to breakdown in front of my sister and cousins.



“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Just not here.”

“Do you want to go to a park or a parking lot or somewhere else?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about McNeely?”

I sat in Alex’s passenger seat as she drove to McNeely Lake Park where we used to go sledding whenever the city would get hit with a heavy snow. I leaned my head against the window and kept my eyes on the full moon through the clouds. I never have seen anything more beautiful than a full moon.

I’d been so deep in thought that I hadn’t noticed that we’d reached McNeely until she put her car in park and killed the engine. I looked at her in the light of the moon and she was as clear as day. Nothing hid her feelings for me and I’m sure it was the same for her. She unbuckled my seatbelt and pulled my torso over to her and laid my head on her lap. I felt a warmth come over me I’ve never once in my life felt before. I’ve never been hit with so much power, so much emotion. I let everything flow out of me. The sobs soaked Alex’s yellow shirt and I buried my face deeper into her. Alex’s arms folded around me and held me all the while. She didn’t let go.

As my sobbing subsided I looked up and into her eyes. I could distinctly see a reflection of mine in her eyes. I lifted my head and kissed her.

“I love you, Alex.”

“I love you, too, Keith.”

I let my head fall down to her lap yet again. I lay there for several minutes until sleep overtook me. I fell into a deep sleep.

I was popping wheelies. Bunny hops, fish tails, tail whips, building ramps.