Before she died Anthony’s mother used to wake him every morning, make his breakfast, pack his lunch and bring him to school. When he came home from school she had his dinner ready and after he had finished his dinner she would help him with his homework before the two of them would sit looking at cartoons on the TV. Since her death Anthony hadn’t been to school once and despite getting letters from the principal about Anthony not attending classes, his father never brought Anthony to school.
He missed his school friends the most. He missed playing with them and having fun in the yard at break time. Now there was no fun in Anthony’s life. His biggest concern was making sure that his father bought food. Every day his Dad went to the store but most days he never bought food, just more bottles of whiskey. Usually when his father woke up, before he started drinking again, he would tell Anthony that he would bring him to school and that life would be normal again but Anthony was still waiting. He knew that his father was missing his mother and that was why he was drinking but he also knew that he had to go to school.
His father’s drinking had started the day of his mother’s funeral and not one day went by without him drinking. When he passed out from drinking too much, Anthony would sit in the kitchen looking at photographs of his mother. He didn’t fully understand how she died; all he knew was that she wasn’t coming home again. His father had tried to explain to him what cancer was but anytime he spoke about her death he only ended up crying into his glass of whiskey and calling out her name. Even when Anthony was in bed he could hear his father calling out his mother’s name. The more his father drank, the worse he got.
Anthony longed for some sense of normality to return. He knew that his father couldn’t continue drinking every day, it had to stop some time and when he was in bed he prayed for that day to come, when things would be normal again. His aunts and uncles, before they stopped visiting, had told his father that he had to stop drinking and think about Anthony. They had told him to pick himself up and bring Anthony to school but nothing had changed. His Dad kept drinking and Anthony remained at home instead of being in school.
Sitting at the window Anthony could see the other children coming home from school. He wanted to be like them. He wanted to have a dinner ready for him, just like his mother used to have but most of all Anthony wanted his father to stop drinking so that he could bring him to school. Even though Anthony thought it was selfish of him to wish for it, he still wished that his father would stop thinking about his mother and start thinking about him.
