"Dad's best suit" by Chewgirl7

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3. Dad’s Best Suit

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5. It was a normal day in the Orange family house with ten kids yelling and yapping about who stole whose two dollar bill. My sister Sima was teasing my brother Kasim and he was teasing my little sister Laamaaly. My parents were at work and everyone else was either trying to mediate the fighting or doing their own fighting.

6. Nobody ever paid attention to me unless I was crying, which, as the youngest boy, I did a lot. This left me with an open opportunity to do something on my own. So, I decided to do a little experimenting with a bottle of creamed corn, an old mattress, dads’ best suit, and a box of matches.

7. Now I was figuring dad wouldn’t miss his suit if the experiment somehow went wrong, because he didn’t even go to church. I really didn’t understand why I had to go to church either, but mom said just because dad didn’t go to church didn’t mean that we were going to get out of it, too. My dad owned an all purpose convenience store and wore a khaki and white uniform. He wore a tag with his name engraved in big black letters. My dad had a bad temper and would whip me good if I did anything bad. He hated when we were bad. His eyes would get squinty and his face would turn red. But, at least he wasn’t like mamma; she made us get our own switch, off the fig tree, to whip us with. She did that a lot. And when our switch wasn’t big enough, she would go get a really big one of her own. We quickly learned to get the right size.

8. I scrambled through the wooden kitchen drawer looking for the place where my mamma kept the matches. Turns out, all I could find was a lighter and some rolled up pieces of paper that mamma used to light the stove.

9. “What are you doing, Ramses,” Kasim asked, just as I stuck the evidence in my pocket.

10. “Oh, I was just lookin’ for some candy,” I said, frowning a little trying to seem serious.

11. Kasim cocked his left eyebrow in suspicion.

12. Sima came into the room with a tattered shirt and the devil in her eye.

13. “Did you tear my shirt, Kasim?” He looked at the shirt in her hand open mouthed and shook his head in silence, slowly backing toward the exit. A shrill cry sounded from Sima, like a tea kettle when the water gets hot. I covered my ears with my little brown hands and watched as Kasim bolted out of the room. He sped off like a horse that heard the starting gun shot.

14. I laughed to myself knowing that when Sima caught Kasim, she would try to kill him, or at least choke him within inches of his life.

15. I gave my head a little shake trying to bring myself back to what I was doing. Yes, the experiment. I was almost ready. Now, all I needed was dad’s best suit. I drug the whit plastic chair across the blue carpet to dad closet. After retrieving the red and white striped suit I headed outside.

16. The experiment would take place out by the old shed. I planned to use the old mattress behind the shed. The shed was really an old house left over from slave times; at least that’s what Sima said. It was white with cracked paint and scary at night. Sometimes it even scared me during the day, but not today, I had an experiment to perform.

17. I’d seen the stunt men jump over fire a lot, it didn’t look hard. I could use mamma’s paper and the lighter; Kasim taught me how to use, to light the mattress. After the fire is nice and hot I can jump over it. The shed had a porch and I would use that to jump over the fire. The porch was pretty big so I would have room to get a good running start. After I finish I would put out the fire with the cream corn. It was mushy and wet, so it can surely put out a fire. Plain and simple, the plan was air tight.

18. Every stunt man had a fancy uniform, and I had dad’s best suit. I didn’t see how my stunt could hurt anything, if all went well.

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20. To my surprise everything didn’t go as well as I had planned.

21. The experiment was a total disaster. Everything went wrong from the start. It turns out that cream corn wasn’t sufficient enough to put out a fire, so I was forced to use the jacket of dad’s best suit. The only other option would have been to let the shed burn down. If I explained it to dad that way, he would have to understand. I decided to head back into the house to hide the evidence, and then maybe no one would ever know.

22. “What have you done, Ramses,” Sima screeched like a banshee. She appeared out of no where, in front of me. Her fists were balled and she looked angry enough to sit on me. Her two pig tails even looked angry. I felt tears spill down my face. I hated when she yelled at me. How was I supposed to know that my experiment would go wrong?

23. “I-I…” The tears came harder and I let out a wail.

24. “I don’t want to hear your sniveling crying, Ramses.” She tapped her foot and glared at me. “It won’t work this time. You are in big trouble. Go to your room and wait for dad to get home.” Dad! So, she was going to tell dad. “And don’t you think that he’ll fall for your crying fits. You are going to get whipped so hard.” Sima smiled as if she was happy about my fate.

25. I ran to my room solemnly hoping that by some miracle all the evidence of my caper would disappear. I jumped in bed and covered my head with a spider man blanket, and shut my eyes tight. Thinking hard about making myself vanish, I fell asleep. Upon waking I heard my father yell something about ‘beating the black’ off of me. It frightened me that he was that angry. He never wore the suit anyway, why would he beat the black off of me for ruining it? The sound of my father’s hurried footsteps sounded like a herd of elephants. What could I do? Tears didn’t seem to work anymore, no matter how hard I cried. I looked over at the partially opened window as the silver door knob jiggled. He was too close and too angry. If only he would let me explain, but first he would need time to cool off, and I planned to give it to him.

26. I was out the window before he could reach me. I felt the wind from his out stretched hand.

27. “Ramses! Get your a**s back here, right now. When I catch you I’m gonna whip you twice as hard,” Dad said. That gave me even more motivation, not to get caught. To my surprise he climbed out the window after me. Instinctively, I took off down the street. The sound of my heartbeat echoed in my ears. All of my concentration was on getting away from the running figure chasing him.

28. “Ramses! Boy, I’m gonna kill you! Stop this instant.” Some one should really tell my dad that beginning a sentence with ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ was not a good way to make someone want to stop.

29. I concentrated on running even harder. I ran four whole blocks. The distance between me and dad seemed to be getting longer. I was winning! But what would I win? A harder whipping or a chance to explain myself? After three more blocks dad stopped running and headed home.

30. “Ramses!” he yelled. “Come on home, boy.” His voice sounded different to me. Should I go home now? Was he calmer after running? I ran a little longer to make sure, then turned around and walked home. All the neighbors were outside watching me. They must have heard dad yelling at me and came out to see what was going on. I shrugged off the nosy neighbors and walked solemnly home.

31. The whole family was standing outside waiting for me, including dad. He had a weird look on his face. I didn’t know what he would do.

32. “Come her, boy,” he said pointing to the spot in front of him. I could tell then that he was trying not to smile. He got down on one knee. “You know what you did was wrong, don’t you?”

33. I nodded my head afraid to speak.

34. “Don’t do it again,” he said, and then burst into laughter along with the rest of the family. It appeared that he ran so hard that he forgot to be mad.

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