Four Feet Tall and Rising Read Online Free Page B

Both sisters saw me as a nuisance. I did my best to live up to their expectations. I gave them hell. Tearing around the house, running off into the neighborhood and making them chase me through the streets, slapping and hitting them,walking over their board games and kicking all the pieces loose, changing the TV channels. I always got a beating when Dad got home.
    By the time I got to sixth grade, my sister Linda was in high school and she’d become a real slacker. She ditched school and smoked weed. Janet was the exact opposite. She was Little Miss Prissy Straight-A Student. She never got in trouble. Me and Linda tried to get her to smoke a cigarette once so we would have some evidence against her. She wouldn’t take a puff.
    My parents were oblivious to what was going on in my sisters’ lives. Linda had always been Mom’s little girl and Janet was always Dad’s little girl, so me, I became the mutt of the family. Dad couldn’t turn me into a mechanic and I sure as hell wasn’t the sports jock he’d hoped for, so he just wrote me off. I was on my own.
    Until I found my gang.

2
White Blood
    hey called me Mr. Automatic. That first year at Northridge Junior High was the time of my life. I loved the school dances, and I’d dance my ass off. I got lots of attention for it, which I liked, and I even got my first nickname: Mr. Automatic, ’cause I’d shaken my shit to the Pointer Sisters song “Automatic,” and made a big impression. I was named Class Clown in the yearbook, and I even convinced the coach to let me play football—even though everyone was scared to death I’d be killed. I could run pretty fast and when the guys tried to tackle me, they’d jump too high and catch nothing but air. By the time they hit the ground, I was gone. My nickname changed from Mr. Automatic to Shorty, and for a few games, I did pretty well. Until the other teams figured out how to triple-team me with a tackle, and that was too much for me. I had to give it up.
    From there, the train went off the track. I opted for special ed classes ’cause my friends, the jocks, said they were easy, andI wouldn’t have to work too hard for decent grades. I started getting into more and more trouble. Fighting. Detention hall was my second home. I was becoming defiant. I became a master of lies. Sean and Oscar had been shipped to a different junior high, so I’d take the bus from Reseda to Pacoima to hang with them once in a while. I had a friend, DeShawn, who went to a different junior high in South Central L.A. On the weekends, me and DeShawn would head out to Malibu to drink, smoke pot or cigars, and meet girls. I’d be the only white guy on the bus, but it didn’t faze me. Everyone would stare. I figured they were looking ’cause I was a midget. It took me a long time to realize it was ’cause I was white and they were worried I’d get my ass killed.
    By the end of seventh grade my whole social circle had changed, I was best friends with Cerisse and Little Al. I called them my Godsister and Godbrother, even though I had to keep my friendships with them a secret from my family. All my friends were either black or Mexican, and that was unacceptable in my house. It was just better to do my own thing and lie and say I was with my old friends, the white friends I never saw anymore.
    Over the course of the next two years, things at home got much worse. Dad had such strong views about how I should be living my life, and I was hardheaded. I didn’t wanna hear it. Which meant more beatings and constant verbal abuse. I wasn’t a saint, not even close to it, but I didn’t wanna keep living with Dad’s constant bullshit. To come home every singleday and be cussed at, yelled at, beat on … it was too much. I never, ever wanted to go home.
    I confided in Cerisse and Little Al about my home life. Cerisse kept saying, “My mom says you can come over.” It was a risky thing for her mom, Mama Myrtle, to offer. She could have been seen as a