In his early days, Bradford could be seen in the yard pushing around red dirt with all happiness. It covered most of his backyard where the grass was nonexistent and he wondered until the day that he put a handful of it in his mouth, if it tasted like other red-colored things he enjoyed so much, like cherry Koolaid or strawberry lollipops. After that initial dirt taste test he was slapped by the swift hand of his mother across the face and screamed for hours. Bradford pouted around the house, unwilling to do anything his mean mother asked him to do, like clean his room or eat his beans. His brother, Randall, looked at him begrudgingly, hating Bradford for his audacity, unaware where such a brave heart, that would defy his mother and the imminent threat of her wooden switch she could pull from any of the countless trees in the yard, had come from. Surely Randall was not so brave and would not feign the courage. Rather, he looked dark eyed across the dinner table at his brother, threatening with his gaze, then up at his mother at the sink who had already started the dishes for the night because it was well past nine and she would be late for her night shift at the nursing home. Bradford ignored everything, especially the beans on his plate, and when his gaze happened to wander past Randall’s eyes that were full of his well-placed hatred of Bradford’s needless protest, he would stick out his tongue and sharpen his eyes with a silent, ‘Forget you!’ He could not understand why Randall cared so much about pleasing their mother, she was, quite frankly, a mean old lady who had no idea how to look as pretty as other people’s mother’s did and Bradford was embarrassed. His mother was nothing like Ms. Davis, his teacher at school, who dressed like a model in newspaper advertisements and always smelled like spring regardless of the season. Ms. Davis liked Bradford and she would smile at him when he came to class in the morning, and he was sure that lingered at his desk when everyone did silent reading and she walked around to help anyone that was having trouble. Of course Bradford never had trouble reading, he was the self declared best reader in the class and he figured that Ms. Davis just liked him so much that she needed an excuse to talk to him. Bradford was confident of Ms. Davis’s affection when she asked him to stay after school and the two read books for children much older. He bragged about it to his classmates and his stupid brother Randall.
“Why you bragging about extra work?” Randall asked.
“Cause I got a girlfriend, stupid.” Randall really was very stupid.
“Bradford, she is just helping you, making sure you stay smart so you can go to college one day,” his mother told him.
Bradford didn’t believe that. Even in the fourth grade he knew that he was going to college and because Ms. Davis loved him so much and knew him so well, she must have known that too.
Needless to say, Bradford was usually at odds with his mother and his brother. He can’t remember a time when he liked them and he usually spent time at home lost in reruns of Frasier. He didn’t really understand the humor of the show, but for some reason he watched it religiously and he would fight with his brother for control of the TV when the show was on (he will never know this, but his mother was a fan of Kelsey Grammer from his years on Cheers and before Bradford started school he would crawl into bed next to his mother who fell asleep to reruns of Frasier). Bradford was content being different and the older he got, the bigger the rift became. It was a worthwhile trade off too because Bradford was sure that he was turning into a very refined gentleman and one day he would feast on tossed salad and scrambled eggs every night before hosting his own radio show, and Ms. Davis would be his wife.
School was Bradford’s haven, even if he was the only one paying attention to his teacher (of course he wasn’t, but he liked to think he was superior to everyone else in every way). His school was a rowdy, inner city school, and most everyone that attended was as poor as Bradford’s family; but you wouldn’t know that from the way Bradford treated his peers. He told them that they should practice their reading skills when they struggled to read aloud, and he mocked their artwork as appearing to have been done by a kindergartner. And if anyone got upset with him, he would run to Ms. Davis who would defend him to the principal. Bradford had it made at school; meals that were more substantial than his mother could afford at home, and the woman he loved more than anyone else in Ms. Davis. He felt like the king of something.
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