A lady down the street in my neighborhood kept a lion for a pet for a couple years. She had a tall fence around her backyard but also had a back porch and sometimes the lion walked around there. I could see it from the road when I walked to Landon’s house.

I never brought the lion up to Landon because he didn’t have pets and I was afraid he’d want to go get a closer look. I didn’t need to see the lion to know it could kill me and part of me thought I might live longer if the lion didn’t know I was ever alive.

When we got tired of riding our bikes in the woods or rolling down hills until we couldn’t stand up, we’d go to my house and my mom would give us soda and make us grilled cheeses. She’d tell us, “Take off your tinnie shoes and grab a sodie. I’ll make y’all a grilled cheese.” She’d let us eat at the table with her while she read the bible.

I used to call my mom Mama and then Landon started calling her Mama too. Some kids in the neighborhood liked the way Landon and I called her Mama, so they started calling her Mama too. One time she told me it made her nervous. “People are gonna think I got kids all over town.”

People didn’t think that though. They knew we were all just friends. That my mom was a good mom. Maybe their real moms could have been jealous, but I never saw them talk about it. My mom never spent much time with the other moms. She had one friend who used to live with us after my dad died. Lynn. She helped raise me for a while. When I was mad one time, I told her, “You’re not my mama. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Lynn was a type of mom though. I loved her like one. She met a man and got married. They moved to the country. Her and my mom didn’t see each other much after that.

The lion the lady down the street kept never escaped. There was a small zoo in the town next to us and they had a chimpanzee get out and run around. We didn’t go back to that zoo anymore. My mom said it wasn’t worth the risk. 

And a little girl got mauled by some dogs at one point. I didn’t know where the girl lived, so every time I pictured it, I thought about the curve in the street above our house where we could see the lion. I assumed that was where all animal attacks happened.

I guess my mom told me about the little girl. It made the papers it was so bad. It might have even been on the news. The little girl lived. She needed surgery. She spent a week in the ICU. They put the dogs down. We got to see the town’s name on TV.

A couple weeks after the little girl got mauled by dogs, Landon and I were at Skateland USA. We went there a couple times a week. Tuesdays and Fridays and weekends when no one in the neighborhood could hang. It was a Saturday and there was a lot of younger kids. A lot of parents with babies. And a birthday party next to the concession stand. That meant we couldn’t get anything until everyone ate their cake and opened their presents. It meant we watched them closely to see when we could get lunch.

“That’s the girl,” Landon pointed to the crowd of people around the cake. “The one that got jumped by all those dogs.”

And it was her. She had thick bandages on her arms and hands and neck. Her head was wrapped in a different color bandage so it looked like she was missing part of her face and scalp. The skin that wasn’t bandaged was red and torn and she was missing big chunks of hair.

Her mom was with her. Standing too close and helping her cut the cake with a fork. None of the other kids were by her. She was alone with her mom trying to do something normal.

Landon and I got pizza or nachos or Airheads for a quarter when the party was over. But I kept watching the little girl and her mom. All by themselves. I kept thinking it was all too soon for her to be out here. She wasn’t ready for the world. I saw other people watching her too. Drawn to her. Landon would look at her. Then I’d look at her. Then we’d look at each other and back down at our skates. There wasn’t anything to say about the girl who got mauled by dogs. She was just there and all we could do was watch.

They turned the lights low and had lasers and a disco ball drop from the ceiling. They played “Mmmbop” and “Macarena.” Landon and I got on the rink. We leaned down low on the turns and crossed our feet over toe to heel.

And while we spun 360s on the straightaways, while they played that “Barbie Girl” song, the little girl and her mom stepped out slow onto the rink. They were holding hands, barely moving. Walking with the skates like you do when you’re learning. We passed by, far on the inside. Tried not to watch the way they moved. The way the little girl seemed even more broken doing something so incompetently.

A guy on inline skates cut between us and the little girl. She lost her balance. She landed hard on her butt.

When she started crying people got off the rink. They stopped the music and turned the lights up. Her mom got down beside her and was touching her face and arms and that made it worse.

The little girl was screaming so hard. It was the only sound at Skateland. She wasn’t looking at anything or touching anything or saying anything to her mom about where it hurt. Just screaming and staring straight ahead.

I watched from the benches near the kiddie rink. Her face and tears and bandages. Her wrapped up arms out to her sides. Her half-healed scars where bandages didn’t cover. She had stitches around the back of her ears. Skin grafts at the base of her neck where they put her back together.

I kept thinking over and over how it all had to do with the mauling. She wasn’t crying because she fell. She was crying because of everything she was and would be forever. All she had been through wasn’t over and wouldn’t end. She was still back with those dogs in the street. The lion was watching from its cage, licking its lips. There were parts of her in their stomach burned and thrown out in black garbage bags.

All the pain in her life came out in that scream. She was asking to be taken away. To be invisible again like before the dogs found her. Before she tried to be normal. Before every person at Skateland USA watched everything she did until they got their proof. Something was wrong with her. She wasn’t better yet.

I skated to the empty bathroom by the rental booth and cried hard. I beat my fist against the stalls and sink and hand dryer. I couldn’t catch my breath. Over and over I thought about the girl becoming her pain. She’d never be anything else. She’d only be a story for people in her little town to tell and she was figuring it out right then. Sitting on the skating rink. Getting carried away by her mom. Going home to keep screaming. 

When I left the bathroom, the girl and her mom were gone. The music started back up and we all skated again.

“Shit,” Landon said.

“Yea, man,” I said.

I don’t think I ever knew the little girl’s name. There’s a good chance I’m wrong about everything. Maybe it really did hurt that much to fall on a hard wooden rink. Maybe none of it’s related at all. People can be stronger after they go through shit like that. They can get better and stay better. They can live normal lives even with such a bad start.

Landon and I stopped hanging out around the time we started driving. Landon got a new best friend. A guy named Joe who lived in a different neighborhood. I never got to see where. Joe and Landon made fun of me and the people I hung out with. Said we were weird or losers or whatever. High school stuff. Joe sold me weed a few times though. After we graduated, I moved away for college and Landon moved away to be a tower climber in South Carolina.

Landon and I started talking again for the first time after Joe overdosed. I got his number through Facebook and we texted some. There were so many people dead or in prison. We talked about ways we were staying sober. I took vitamins and drank tea. He found a new rink where he lived and was teaching his daughter to skate. He and his wife took her on Thursdays. We were lucky to get out. That’s what we said.

I was living up north delivering packages for a small company. I tried to come back to see my mom when possible, but only got a few days off a year. It’d been a few years since I could make it down. We talked on the phone. Texted back and forth. She sent bible passages and monthly devotions. I told her I read them. It was never enough. She asked me every time we talked, “When you coming back home? When can I see you again?”

About a month ago she texted me a photo. Her and Landon standing in the driveway. She was holding her little dog Martin and Landon had his arm around her. He had a goatee and was wearing sandals. He was almost a foot taller than her. They were both smiling. He’d come back just to see her. To tell her about his family. He even brought pictures.

“He still calls me Mama,” my mom texted. “That’s funny, ain’t it?”

It made me smile.