Thus ends the seemingly endless string of nightmares. It happened yesterday but I didn't take it too seriously. Flukes can happen all too often and our morning memories can many times be as reliable as a condom made of cheesecloth. So when I awoke yesterday without my heart drumming in my ears and the sheen of sweat I have grown familiar with absent from my face and body, I didn't feel relieved. If anything, I felt even more cautious. A night without nightmares signified to me that I would just be in for quite a doozy of a nightmare the next day. The main Doozer of nightmares to be exact. It didn't happen. Thus ends the seemingly endless string of nightmares haunting me for the past X number of years. I don't remember exactly when they started. I suppose around the same time I started grinding my teeth. So the end of my senior year of high school. I had already moved out by that time. I had to. If you lived in that house for sixteen years with that monster named Mommy you would have moved out the second she was too drunk to notice too. I didn't leave without a battle though. Clarification: battles. Battles I lost. But the war... from where I'm standing, I guess I won. If you count being haunted day in and day out by the memories she left me with and the misplaced guilt that still dwells deeper than the depths of my heart can hold winning. I escaped but the guilt stems from who I had to leave behind. Poor little Autumn. Growing up, we raised each other. She was brave, I was meek. She gave me courage, I gave her love. She, two and a half years younger than me, was my warrior. My protector. That terrible night when my entire world stopped on its axis for a minute and then flipped completely upside down, like the Dominator II at Dorney Park, Autumn was my savior.
I walked into my mom's townhouse in Shawnee, Kansas, right down the street from Shawnee Mission Parkway, by the BP, the Price Chopper and that Sonic all the high school kids thought was so cool to hang out at. They would all drive in the cars their mommies and daddies bought them with their Christmas bonuses and park beside the menu boards and...well, I'm not entirely sure what they did. Maybe compare smart phones and Northfaces? I have no idea. I didn't have the time to waste time. While they were laughing and flirting in the backs of their F150 pick up trucks, I was about 2 miles down the road, walking back into my mother's house. I had moved back briefly. It hadn't even been two months yet. I had been living with my former best friend. She had big plans to move to Hollywood and become and actress. I told her I'd come with her. And then I fell in love. I told her I couldn't. I couldn't put an expiration date on this new relationship. I felt like I needed to give it a real shot. And so she kicked me out. Very classy. I had no choice but to move back into the place I had fought so hard to get away from. And now here I was, a chilly night in March (because March in Kansas is chilly at its warmest) with take out food from my date with Gavin in one hand and a lump the size of a baseball lodged in my throat. Mom was getting evicted. Even though her rent was $1,o00 and she was getting $1,500 a month in child support from Andy, $600 in food stamps, $400 a month from me, $900 from Autumn's social security (Autumn's dad passed away in 2006 and since then, she has gotten an $900 check every month although, thanks to Ma, Autumn's fingertips never grazed that check once,) $500 from unemployment (even though she was employeed and) about $600 a month from her serving job at... Fine example of how memory and cheesecloth condoms can be compared. It's irrelevant. I remember she wore a black skirt, a black blouse and black pantyhose. That job was one of maybe five jobs my mother has worked at in her life. When I was a kid, she was dancer. As a preschooler, I naturally assumed she was a ballerina. I just didn't quite understand why she left for ballet practice so late at night. That phrase comes to mind right now. That one in the movie Gattica and also in the Matrix and a series of other tv shows, movies and books: ignorance is bliss. I guess my mom was a regular Alex Owens from Flashdance (if Alex Owens wore body glitter, clear platformed stilettos, pasties and called herself "CoCo".) My mom worked with primarily men during the day at a meat packaging company- she wore a hard hat, blue jeans and steel-toed boots. Then at night (after she had a drink or seven at the pub right across the street from Lustig's Meat) she went to Erv's Gentleman's Club (hold on a second, gentlemen? Is that supposed to be funny?) and bore it all for a buck or twelve hundred. I hear she made a lot of money doing that. But one time, when I was four or five, I overheard- Sullivan's! That's the restaurant my mom was a server at when she got evicted. When her mind, heart and soul were evicted from her body. Anyway, I'm four, maybe five and we're at my mom's friend Cindy's house. Cindy is an alcoholic just like my mom. That's why they get along so well. I have no idea where they met or why they decided to hang out to begin with. But Cindy and TJ-her husband-were alcoholic swingers and I don't know if the paycheck TJ brought home was always a couple hundred dollars too short to live off of or if Cindy just drank through Benjamins every week, but they were beyond broke. Their younger of two children was a little girl whose name has been misplaced in the cluttered attic of my mind, and whose teeth were misplaced in the blackened, decaying gums which gave up on trying to keep them secure after three small years of neglect. Even though she was approaching seniority in her toddler years, the rubber nipple attached to a bottle of formula was gripped between two of her maybe six total teeth rotting from root to crown in the once soft pinks of her gums. This little girl's older brother (whose name is probably stuffed in the bottom of the same dusty cardboard box in my mind as his sister's) was a huge jerk, for lack of a better word. He was maybe two years older than I am. He made fun of my skin color constantly, saying I needed to take a bath to wash off the dirt that was making my skin brown. He and I got into incessant arguments over whether my hair was black or brown. (It's dark brown.) The bully insisted, with a laughing sneer dancing across his chapped lips, that it was black. Black black black! Every evening, I left with my mom whose belly was now snug the way only the warmth of alcohol can blanket you, feeling exasperated and yearning to be big enough to teach him a lesson. A big, mean lesson. Many times, when my mom came to pick us up from Cindy's, I would escape to the patio in the backyard and sit on the cracked and weathered multi-colored children's picnic table beside my mom and across from Cindy while they drank Miller Lites and smoked Marlboros while they gossiped and talked grown-up talk. It was there on the bench of that picnic table where wasps made their home in the summertime that I learned of sex and drugs and my mom's real occupation. One night on Cindy's patio, Mom was livid. "They want me to start taking off my underwear and show...you know," shooting a knowing, cautious look from Cindy to me. "...and they don't even want to pay me more. I mean, I don't mind taking more off if more will be added to my check every week. Oh, and tell TJ to just wait outside when he picks me up tomorrow night. I don't want him to see me like that." I looked up from the one of the jagged cracks in the plastic picnic table I was praying would open up a little more so I could crawl inside of it, and looked bravely at my mommy. "Why does your teacher want you to take your underwear off, Mom?" She drew the neck of her beer from her lips and slammed the bottle down on the picnic table. Beer spittle flew off of her lips and my face was hit with a massive cloud of alcohol and cigarettes when she said, "Mind your own business! This is grown-up talk you little pervert!" I looked back down at that crack and willed it to pry open. Let me in. Please let me in. "Go find something to do," she snarled, bringing her beer back up to her lips and consuming it in large swallows I could see through her throat. One. Two. Threefour. I reluctantly peeled my eyes from the crack in the table and walked without confidence or faith or any other uplifting feeling to the steps leading from the back door to the patio. I sat there, my elbows on my knees and my palms on my face, alone with only the quieted, distant voices of drunk so-called-mothers as my company. Oh and misery. Misery sat right beside me as it had for years before and many years to come. Me and my pal Mis. Two peas in a fucking pod. Two birds of the same lonely feather. Because even at five years old, I felt the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness wash over me. This was my life. And there was nothing I or God could do. The ball was in Mommy's court and she was just slumped against the wall, staring at it in a drunken stupor. This was my life and there was no end in sight. It wouldn't change. It didn't change. Until one day, it did.
Andy Angelino was a twenty-eight year old Italian who stood five feet and one inch tall. He was going to the community college full-time and working part time until his uncle Johnny Lustig offered him a job at his meat company. Then Andy worked full-time and went to college part-time. And then no-time. He had saved his money for years to buy a custom-made 1997 nectarine-orange Ford Mustand. It had grey, leather interior, a kick-ass stereo, and it was his baby. He met my mother while they were both working at Lustig's. I was only a kid-5 years old- so I didn't know all the intricacies that go into meeting and dating in regards to my mom and Andy, all I knew is that when I first met him, I hated his shoes with a burning passion. Maroon Reebocks, scuffed and dirty from work. I'm pretty sure they also had a velcro strap across them too. Heinous. Therefore I wasn't fond of him. Then he changed his shoes and all was jake. Andy and I had a very rocky relationship for thirteen years. Initially, I adored him. I wanted to marry him myself. He was my real-life hero. He took us on vacations. Took us to the circus. He picked us up from daycare so we didn't have to be at Cindy's all the time. One day, he and Mom both picked us up from daycare and they announced that Mom was going to be able to quit her job and stay home with us so we didn't have to even go to daycare anymore. I remember only thinking of construction paper. Hundreds and hundreds of sheets of construction paper. So many different colors. I could even smell it. Mom being at home made me think we would have so much time together. I never got to see her really before then. I would go to school and she would be sleeping all day and when I got home she would leave and go to Erv's all night (or "KMart," as my Mommom swore.) I only really saw her when she was at Cindy's or when she would throw parties. Since we lived at my grandma's house, me and Mom and Autumn all slept in the living room. I had a little metal children's bed in front of the television, next to the woodstove and across from the couch for a while before they fixed up the upstairs bedroom. Along the back wall of the living room, there was a blue pull-out couch where my mom and Autumn slept. So, when Mom had parties, Autumn and I were told to sleep. Even with the loud music and the laughing, dancing, stumbling, fighting and every other rowdy noisy thing that goes on during a party, we were supposed to sleep. The parties were held where we were supposed to sleep and if we didn't, boy were we in trouble. The parties irritated me but I sort of liked them too. Because if Mom had the parties at home, she wouldn't be gone. But when she met Andy, the at home parties stopped. Andy was my real-life superhero. Finally, someone normal, someone who was made of love, came into the darkness of my life and he had a flashlight. Even that little bit of light made me so happy. He supported our family- gave Mom the chance to spend some time with us. Even though she didn't take it. You see, while all I could envision and smell was construction paper, signifying all the arts and crafts we would make together, Mom envisioned reruns of Days of Our Lives and smelled BudLite in aluminum cans. Gabrielle, grab Mommy another from the fridge. I was beyond disappointed but I contented myself with the fact that more time here, even as my mother's personal bartender, meant less time at Cindy's. And less time at Cindy's meant less time with her jerk son. When Andy proposed to my mom on Christmas eve with the ring so perfectly concealed in a long velvet box meant to hold a necklace, I watched as my mother's look of disappointment quickly turned to elation when the box opened to reveal, not a beautiful diamond necklace, but a beautiful diamond ring and my heart felt happy. This meant he wasn't going anywhere. And he never did. Even through it all, he's still here, wearing his tattered superhero cape and still rescuing me day in and day out. At this point, I knew about my biological dad. Or at least, I knew the twisted version of the story my mother fed me with a twisted silver spoon. Either way, I knew Andy wasn't my real dad. I knew Autumn's dad, Pete, wasn't my real dad. I didn't hold it against either of them. Not yet. In about 7 years, I would hate both Pete and Andy, not realizing that no one other than my mother deserved my hate. And the hate would dissipate. For Pete, it was too late. For I didn't realize what a good guy he was and how much he really did love me, without reason, until it was too late. I have a lot of people in my life who love me so completely and unconditional and for no good reason. No reason other than they do. I didn't realize how much Pete really did fight for me until the grass was already beginning to regrow over the shoveled earth over top of his grave. Thankfully, it wasn't too late for Andy. I said some really awful things to him. Things he was so undeserving of. But I was reacting to the lies my mother told me. Those many many lies. The ones about Andy were the meanest. He raped me, Gabrielle. As punishment for drinking. He's so crazy. I don't know what to do. Lies. Lies I believed. I always picked my mom's side. Always. I'm staying with my mommy. And she knew it. She relied on it. You heard her. She'll always pick her mama. Finally, on the chilly March night in Shawnee, Kansas, I didn't pick my mama.
I walked into the house, with the baseball lump in my throat and the leftovers from my date in the Styrofoam take-out box in my hand. Mom was getting evicted and I was supposed to pick up boxes on my way home. I didn't know where to get boxes. And after months of unpaid service, her phone was turned off. Her only communication a prepaid cell phone which I knew better than to call. And use up her minutes? Yeah right. So I figured I'd go home tonight and ask her where to get boxes and pick them up tomorrow. Even so, I knew she'd be mad. But not that mad. I walked in to find her on the couch in the living room. Her face was gaunt from what I didn't know. She had started to look worse and worse every week. Every day it seemed. Her once beautiful face was now ashen and sunken in, skin clearly clinging to her high cheek bones. Dark circles framed her once sparkling eyes and her lips had begun to become extremely chapped with dark red sores nesting in the corners. My mother, once so vain and prideful, now sat there with her frizzy lambs-wool hair sticking out all over the place and not a stitch of makeup on her suddenly aging face. She sat there in her pink terrycloth robe watching her DVD episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent because her cable was also turned off. Plus she had the hots for Detective Goren. I set my purse on the yellow vintage 1950's table (during my mother's short Holly Housewife era, she styled our kitchen to be a replica of the kitchen you would see if you walked into Darrin and Samantha Stephens' house) and put my take out in the stainless steel refrigerator. "What's that?" she asked. "Gavin and I went to Waxy O'Shea's for dinner. I brought home the rest of my fish and chips." She paused the television, Goren and Eames frozen mid-interrogation. "You didn't bring me home anything?" I responded with silence. When confronted by my mother, it was best to just take every question as a rhetorical one because there was never a right answer. "You didn't think to call and ask if I wanted anything?" When I was silent again, she raised her eyebrows, signaling she expected me to answer. "Gavin took me out to dinner. I wasn't paying. You can have my leftovers if you want. I barely ate any." She got up off the couch and walked towards me, her robe catching a draft and opening a bit to reveal her dark bony chest. "Oh, so I get your scraps? Thanks. Thanks a lot Gabrielle. You're out there living it up with your boyfriend while I get to stay here, trying to figure out where to move our family-something that benefits you and eating the scraps you bring home for me. You're so selfish. It's disgusting." I focused on the red vinyl chair in front of me. Staring at it until all I could see were bright red spots, sparkling and glinting off the two light fixtures on the ceiling above the table. Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water... I repeated Jack and Jill over and over in my head trying to tune her out. Jack fell down. He broke his crown (crayon)... "And where are the boxes you said you'd bring home?" Jack rolled lifelessly down to the bottom of the hill and his sister followed as my heart dropped and tumbled along with them down the hill to my stomach. "I didn't know where to get them," I said, almost whispering. "But I can get them first thing tomorrow," I said, rushing through the sentence, making it sound like one long foreign word. Buticangetthemfirstthingtomorrow. A foreign word translating as let me make this better please don't be mad. She stopped. Her head slowly dropped about an inch lower, her mouth hung dumbly open, and her eyes squinted as though deep in thought. The words her face were saying are you serious? "You...didn't know where..."she drew out where making it sound like whaaaarrrrrre. "...to get...boxes?" I shook my head. "Are you retarded?" she said, distastefully. Rhetorical. "Uhhh...what about the grocery store?" she said mockingly, like "Aha! There's a bright idea!" I felt stupid. Of course a grocery store would have boxes. Why didn't I think of that? I am retarded. "I didn't think of that," I said stupidly. Stupid stupid stupid. Stupid Jack dropping that stupid pail. Stupid Gabrielle forgetting those stupid boxes. She shook her head and walked back to the couch, pretending like that was the end of it. I knew better. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'll get them tomorrow. I swear." She hit PLAY on the DVD player and Goren and Eames went back to inquiring the whereabouts of the art dealer in front of them on Thursday night between 9pm and midnight. I've seen this one. The art dealer did it. Of course, the detectives won't know that for another twenty minutes or so. The DVD would be paused indefinitely about 18minutes before that happens. Mom said nothing. Just sat there pretending to watch the tv. Pretending it was over. Pretending she was normal. They're the greatest singers. They're the greatest dancers. They're the great pre-ten-ders! I apologized once more and said goodnight. I walked slowly up the steps. Around step number three, Goren and Eames were frozen once again and I heard Mom get up from the couch so quickly I barely processed what was happening by the time I was at a dead run, stumbling up the next fifteen steps. Mom was right behind me. Grabbing at my ankles. I was kicking her off, trying to get up the rest of the steps. So close. So far. She was screeching. "You're so selfish! You selfish little bitch! Get back here!" I managed to kick free and bolted up the last of what seemed like millions of steps and ran faster than I thought I was capable of into the open bathroom next to Autumn's room. And next to Mom's room. I got in and locked the door then sat down on the cold lid covering the toilet seat. I drew my knees up and held them close to my heaving chest. I sat, tears streaming but my lungs too short of air to make any noise at all other than cold, harsh wheezes coming in short gasps through my trembling lips. Silent prayers drifted up to (I hope) to God from my heart. Please God. Please send your angels to rescue me from this place. Mom's fists pounded on the door and rattled the doorknob. For a few minutes I thought she might break in. Please God. Send your angels to rescue me from this place. Please God. Pl- She had been hurling her body up against the bathroom door, screaming things I couldn't understand. Then there was silence. I couldn't breathe. My head was swimming. I thought I was dying. I later found out that I had had my first of many panic attacks I would have. I heard a light tinkering in the doorknob. She was trying to pick the lock. My panic grew, overtaking my body in a no nonsense, no questions asked kind of way. I had no control. I couldn't even breathe, let alone think. Luckily, I didn't have to. The tinkering ceased and the doorknob turned effortlessly. The door swung open, letting a cool wave of air in, relieving me the tiniest bit. She stood in the doorway, body heaving, glaring at me with the eyes of a predator who has just found its prey. She stepped in, leaving a gap between her and the door. My way out. I didn't have to think about it because my body thought for me and before I knew it, I had leaped up off the white plastic toilet seat and I was rushing past her at an incredible speed to my sister's bedroom where I locked myself in, chest heaving against the securely shut door. Autumn had been laying in bed however, she was wide awake. Her eyes were wide with confusion. "What happened?" she asked. I was slumped down on the floor, my back pressed against the locked (and thank God for it) door, unable to say a word. I was trembling and my whole body was succumbed by one giant hiccup. I sat there, sure I was dying, my body jumping and twitching uncontrollably. What is going on? I didn't know. I was safe now, but for how long? She picked the bathroom lock, it wouldn't be long before she would pick this one too. And where was she? I hadn't heard anything for what seemed like twenty minutes but in reality was probably more like two or three. Then I heard footsteps going downstairs. Was it over? Autumn and I sat in her bedroom, both scared out of our minds and both having absolutely no idea where to go from here. We couldn't stay here. I'd never be able to sleep. Not with her in the house, able to get me at my most vulnerable state. The only way we could get out of that house was straight through the front door. Downstairs. Past Mom. "Are you okay?" Autumn asked. The growing questions in my head scared me and the answers scared me more. I didn't answer her couldn't answer."Alright," she said decidedly. "Gab, I'm gonna get you to Gavin. Okay? I promise. But you need to calm down, okay?" By the end of her sentence, she had lost the authoritative tone in her voice and it was swapped for something that sounded almost imploring. Almost frightened. Even though I knew she was afraid (who wouldn't be?) she would never show it. Because she's a soldier. A soldier with the bravest, stoniest face walking upright and unflinchingly to the front line of battle. She turned to me with her index finger pressed against her pursed lips. "I'll be right back," she whispered. I nodded, still shaking. Honestly wondering if I was going to die here tonight. What in God's name was going on? This was insane even for Mom. I just wanted to get through that night alive. And still in possession of my sanity. What little I had left. My little sister bent down to where I was crouched on the floor trembling like the strings on a violin, and touched the warm flush of my cheek with the cool of her palm. "It's gonna be okay, Sissy, I promise. If it's the last thing I do, I will get you to Gavin. I swear it." I nodded and scooted on the carpet away from the door. The wonderful, protective, locked door. She wrapped one hand around the brass doorknob and, holding her breath, unlocked the door with the other hand. Every muscle in her body tensed as she slowly opened the doorway to hell.
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