Chaos

Chaos: One year in 1975 on 1136 cooper street, with its autumn breeze with greenish brown leaves blowing off the trees like feathers off a table and making crackling noises, plus the young children running up and down the poorly paved sidewalks that were narrow at best; lies the big white two level house where I lived. With me was my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, who aided in my care. On occasion, my aunt and uncle were like Hercules and Xenia warrior princess; two powerful forces that made our heartbeats jump. Kicking and scratching, clawing and cursing as my poor, distressed grandmother often intervened like a referee in a boxing match. My uncle’s Hercules and My aunt’s Xenia when tensions were tight and scary. The drinking glasses they threw at each other were the swords and their hands, shields of war and emotional destruction lay in their wake. I swear their senseless brawls were like the war in Vietnam in our home and it had to end. As kids in our home we were scared silly, more kicking, more cursing and more and more violence occurred as my grandmother shielded us from the shrapnel that was my aunt and uncle’s foolishness. They used books, sticks and maybe a knife showed up in the battle. We all knew that a butter knife had never killed a soul in fights. Would the crap finally end? Yes! The last fight was on a month I can’t remember, but that was the night Hercules injured Xenia’s eye. My grandmother had had enough, so she not only drove her to the ER, but proceeded to weaken Hercules with the sheer power of her blood curling, screaming voice. The war was over, and it was like the trees in the field had blackened from the violence after a firefight and no winner, no victor. Nothing was left to fight about, but rather smoke rising and a blue-black mist to clear, for the final scar of the teenage war are the glasses she wears.