The Belt

Every member of the family knew what “Get the belt,” meant.  My old man would usually give voice to the words—but occasionally Mama would call for it. On that day, a day during which I had spent another hour after school in detention, Mama had called for it. She took her eyes off the steering wheel, something she seldom did, to let me know what was going to happen when we got home. “Your daddy is gone-get the belt when we get to the trailer.” She said I’d had too many after school detentions but she wasn’t boasting about my inevitable pain; she was indifferently informative. 

At home, the old man grinned and then told me to go to the back of the trailer, to my room. I went and waited for him to come and whup me. I was fourteen then, in the eighth grade. By then I’d forgotten the motions involved in getting a whupping. Back in the day, he would just lash out, grab the belt, and whup till he figured I’d had enough. He was different now; raising three boys had weakened his authority with the belt; I was different now. I cared about my appearance. The Buick Regal that Mama had driven to pick me up, embarrassed me. The last time I’d felt the belt, I could care less about the Buick's fading paint job or loud muffler.

Would the old man remember how to do this? If not, if he mistakenly hit me in the face with the belt’s brass buckle I’d have to go to school with a messed up face! 

He walked back to my room that I shared with my kid brother, Quack, as I sat on the bottom bunk bed by the open window admiring the blue spring sky. My heart raced. But not as it did back in the day when I didn’t care about the Regal. The belt wasn’t as intimidating now. 

Immediately, I pulled my pants down revealing my butt cheeks. 

“Boy, pull ya damn pants up” he snickered. “I don’t wanna whup you. I’m gonna whup the desk with the belt and you scream?”

 It took me a moment to figure out that he was asking and not telling. The old man had paused after talking, looking at me deceptively—he was waiting for an answer. I knew that facial expression. I’d seen that look on my classmate, Telly, earlier that day—and I said yeah to him; that’s why I’d been in detention in the first place. 

I bobbed my head reluctantly, thinking this was some trick question. Daddy whipped the desk and I yelled and the scenario likely sounded staged to Mama who was more familiar to what his actual whippings sounded like than the old man or me; she acted as the spectator during the whupping. “What are you two doing?” she asked, befuddled, with a wry smirk on her face, standing in the doorway with her right hand on hip, creating a triangle with her ribcage. The farce worked as a façade for my punishment that day. Before leaving the room, the old man said “Boy, ya gettin’ too old foe the belt, gone have to learn on ya own to stop showing your ass.”