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Learning to Fall: Terry cries a lot.
Mom came in the kitchen and saw us cleaning up Terry's puke and asked what happened, and when she looked at Alex and me we shrugged, and when she looked at Terry he burst into tears like nobody's business.
Mom spun a chair around in front of Terry and sat down all in one motion crossing her legs ladylike and asked Terry why he was crying and took his hand and looked him in the face, even wiped his cheek of tears the way she used to do with me before I grew up and stopped crying. Alex stepped forward and began to say something and my mom looked at him with that look she sometimes gives to me and Dad when she wants us to mind her and let someone else do the talking.
"Terry, why don't you tell me what made you cry." Mom's mothering voice is the one she uses when we're hurt or sad, or when she sings along with those old Peggy Lee records her and Dad play some nights after we've been sent to bed and the next morning we find a dozen whisky sour packets laying in the sink, and the ashtray full even though Mom and Dad don't smoke. She also was using the methods she developed with Zit Head and me to get to the bottom of why someone was bawling just in case there might be an opportunity for punishment.
"Mr. Gill kissed me on the mouth...." Terry's face reddened like the color of a beet when he said it with even his tiny ears turning red stuck on the side of his head, standing out about an inch straight from beneath his flat-top crew cut like a pair of wax lips.
Mom looked at me with her confused-and-someone-better-do-some-talking-that-makes-some-sense-and-she-means-now face, so Alex stepped forward again and told the whole story with a lisp from his bitten tongue that wasn't bleeding anymore but had swollen up fat in his mouth making him slur. Mom listened and I could tell just from the way she was lookin' at Alex that she wanted to ask him about the slur but she was down to business about fixing Terry. First things first is how mom likes to deal with stuff.
You're next Alex, my boy. That's what I thought in my head but didn't dare speak or I knew I would be up after Alex and the whole thing could spin out of control.
"That's what some men do in France," Mom said to Terry after getting the gist of the story, or the 'nuts and balls' of it as Terry would say on a day when he wasn't all sad and worried that he might now be a homo.
"I'm sure he was just teasing you for making fun of him." She told him, and then added some more saying, "You most definitely are not a homo because Mr. Thierry kissed you."
"Yeah," I said to Terry standing beside mom and kinda' in front of Terry. "You were already a homo long before that."
And then Terry socked me hard in the shoulder and I knew he was gonna be okay.
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