As a 7-year-old Northern girl of color, nothing mattered more to me then than hot chocolate, Barbie dolls, television and Michael Jackson. So, as I squatted in front of the television anxiously awaiting the Michael Jackson concert replay while my hot chocolate cooled down in the kitchen, I stroked the locks of my Barbie and fiddled with her legs so that she could sit and watch, too. I wanted a black Ken, but Mom told me that they didn’t make them.
It was after school one afternoon and it was barreling down outside. The winter brought my little town in Connecticut lots of snow and some strong wind gusts to boot. While I walked home with Sarah Patton and Christopher Robinson, our eyes watered and our lips chapped. My duck boots sunk three and four inches with each step towards the steep hills of Peppermill Village. Christopher Robinson turned left before the second hill started and headed to his apartment where his mother stood, seemingly agitated, but high, waiting to let him in. I turned into our section, where my mother, her boyfriend (who is now my stepfather) and I lived, opened the hallway door and stepped in. The wind shut the door behind me. I never had a key to the apartment because Mom knew I would lose it within days, hours, minutes even. I wish I could remember her name, but this older woman down the hall who always had her door open had a key and would let me in everyday after school.
It would be around 3:30. Mom was at work. Her boyfriend, my stepfather, was a mystery.
Our apartment was perfect for a mother and a daughter. The walls were painted beige and our carpet was tan with sprinkles of little black specs here and there. The hallways were wide for rough housing and playtime and pitching fake fortresses with Sarah Patton and Christopher Robinson and for when Sarah Patton’s mom would come over with her 300-pound figure bouncing up against our paint. Mom hung some of my kindergarten drawings along the hallway walls. The kitchen was like a walk-in closet equipped with a stove, microwave, sink and too many cabinets and drawers. We never had enough stuff for them drawers. The living room stemmed off the kitchen like a bloom of a room. Very spacey. Good for more fortresses and Michael Jackson watching events.
When Mom picked up this boyfriend, my disdain came instantly. He was fat. He was bigger than Mom. Mom was getting fatter by the year I had noticed, but it didn’t matter. Her face and her smile lit up whatever room she walked into. That royal purple lipstick. Her boyfriend scared me most because he hardly ever smiled. He ate everything and always took Mom’s car in the middle of the night. If I made any bad moves, I was beat until I cried. The problem was that I never cried, hence, I got beat more. Once, I actually laughed and ran around the house until he caught me and whooped the skin clear off my ass. Mom yelled at him and smacked him that night, and slept in my bed with me until I fell asleep.
It wasn’t until this day that I realized that my Mom was probably the only thing that mattered to me in my life. She was my sunshine and my moon. She was my reasoning and my impracticality. My pain and my joy. It wasn’t until this day that I realized that my Mom is everything to me.
Michael Jackson came down from the skies of Bucharest in some rocket ship contraption and the crowd roared. I smiled hard as it blared through the speakers of our television. I had my hot chocolate in hand, and my Barbie sat by my side in awe, I’m sure. I heard the door slam in the hallway and figured it was Mom coming in from work, but heard the heaving and panting of a fat person shuffling to get his snow boots off. I didn’t even turn my head in his direction as he walked into Mom’s bedroom. I couldn’t even muster up the strength to utter a greeting. Hell, neither could he.
I glanced at the clock above the television. It was 6:45. I looked outside the glass doors to the deck and it was dark.
I remember Bruce (that’s his name, by the way) yelling to me, asking if “your mother had come in yet.”
I shook my head. Like he could see me.
He opened the door and stepped out into the living room from the hallway and asked again.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s not here, Daddy Bruce.” That’s what I was forced to call him.
He stomped back into the bedroom. I heard him on the phone after a while, sighing and yelling. I think he called all the wrong people though. He never did take the time to invest in relationships with our family. He didn’t know my Aunt. I know my Aunt didn’t want to know him either. My grandpa didn’t like him. My father definitely didn’t like him, but probably didn’t care too much seeing as he was busy in his own world. Mom was good with staying in contact with family and friends, though. Daddy Bruce knew her best friend, Mena, really well. He called her and I heard him yelling at her to try and find out where she was.
It was later now. It was past my bedtime and everything. Daddy Bruce didn’t care though as long as I wasn’t in his way. It was always Mom who wanted me rested up and not groggy in the mornings. Michael Jackson was still on anyway, nearing the end. The citizens of Bucharest delighted in his sparkling presence.
I had fallen asleep on the couch I’d noticed when I woke up the next morning. It was Friday and I was late for the bus. I ran in my room, threw my homework and pencils in my book bag, brushed my teeth as best I could, put deodorant on, and switched into a Christmas sweater that Grandpa gave me. I didn’t notice that Daddy Bruce or Mom wasn’t there. I closed the door behind me and raced through the snow to catch the bus.
When I got back at 1:30, the lady down the hall opened the door for me and I went in my room and started my homework. I hadn’t eaten all day since it was half day (parent-teacher conferences) and they didn’t serve lunch. Mom kept the refrigerator full of bologna, ham cheese, bread, milk, eggs and the freezer was filled with frozen dinners for her when she went to work. The cabinets had cereal and powdered juice mixes, ramen noodles, boxes of hot chocolate and other random things that Daddy Bruce liked. I grabbed a packet of hot chocolate and a pack of ramen noodles. While the noodles cooked, I turned on the television. The Animaniacs were on back to back.
It was around seven o’ clock and Doug had just gone off and the Rugrats were about to come on. Mom hadn’t come home yet. And as I sat and glanced back and forth – TV to clock, clock to TV – I became upset. I know I started to cry and become scared. I locked the front door and the glass doors to the deck, too. I shut Mom’s room door because I was afraid of what was going to come out of it. I left my room door open with the light on. I cleaned it, made up my bed and put my pajamas on just incase Mom came in. I could act like I was on my way to bed at least. Daddy Bruce hadn’t come home yet either, but it was a rarity anyway if he came home at all on some nights.
No one called. No one knocked. The only thing that come through the front door for the next month and a half were the short bursts of wind from the storms.
Everyday until the end of spring, I walked home from school by myself. Sarah Patton had moved to a new neighborhood, and Christopher Robinson couldn’t come over unless his mother got permission from my Mom. Mom never went to the parent-teacher conferences anyway, so no teachers ever asked where she was when she didn’t show up twice a month. I told the lady down the hall that my Mom gave me permission to have the key to the apartment, and without interrogation, she gave it to me. I tied it around my neck with the locket Mom gave me for my seventh birthday.
I turned eight without her that year.
I made sandwiches everyday for school and had hot chocolate, cereal and frozen dinners for dinner. I skipped breakfast regularly because I woke up late. I was groggy because I went to bed late waiting for Mom to come in. Mom was always my wake up call. Finally, the gallon of milk we kept in the freezer had to be put to use. It went bad one day when I left it out for multiple days. I used some change in the ashtray on the counter to buy some more from the corner deli along with some bread and cheese. After a while, I ran out of deodorant but never bothered to get any. I used Mom’s, and then Daddy Bruce’s once Mom’s ran out. Mom taught me to wash my clothes in the bathtub when “times got gritty”. I hung them from the clothesline outside on the deck to dry. I took toilet paper from my school bathrooms and I never remembered running out of the other toiletries.
One day, as I approached the steps to our apartment, I saw a car in Mom’s parking spot. I didn’t recognize it, but the driver recognized me as I got closer. It was my Aunt. And I was thrilled. She hugged me tight, just like Mom would, and asked if I was all right. I told her I was and she asked me where daddy Bruce was and I told her I didn’t know. Angry, she held my hand and walked me up to the apartment. We gathered my clothes and some of my other things, and left. I haven’t seen that Peppermill Village apartment since then.
My Aunt explained to me that my Mom had run away from home because she was sick. Sick with what, I didn’t know. My Aunt thought I was too young to completely understand the severity of the situation. I knew Mom was sick. She was sick of twelve-hour shifts at work. She was probably sick of car troubles and the expenses that went with that. She had to be sick of Daddy Bruce and always trying to save me from his wrath. I was sick of it. But unlike Mom, I had an attitude problem and I exposed it on a daily basis to Daddy Bruce. I must get it from my father. She was modest and humble and only spoke out when the ones she loved were being tried.
After a couple months of living with my Aunt, my Uncle and my little cousin, I found out that Mom had sought help. I would get to see her in six months time. She suffered from a clinical depression that got so bad that she felt she could run away from it. I felt horrible. I thought I mad her upset. Aunt Anita sent me to see a therapist and I barely spoke. I held it all in until it exposed itself in physical displays. Mom would have torn a new hole in my ass if she had seen me act the way I did. I stopped after a while because I knew I was wrong. If Mom came back suddenly to see me failing by her standards, I would hate myself forever.
One morning in December, right before I was to turn nine, my Aunt told me that my Mom wanted to see me. She was better and stable enough to not mentally breakdown when she was talking to me. I missed her and wanted to tell her about school, and my new friends and how badly I wanted my Barbie’s back from Peppermill Village. I was for sure going to tell her about Daddy Bruce’s mysterious lack of care for any of our family and how he yelled at Mena.
When I walked into the rehabilitation office and Mom was sitting there, I ran up to her and hugged her. She had gained some weight and her face was chubbier, but she hugged me the same way she would every day and night before she left. She held me tight and cried and told me she missed me and that she loved me. She kept saying she was sorry and that she didn’t mean to leave me. I looked over her shoulder at my Aunt and the rehabilitation supervisor both smiling down at us.
For a while, she asked me questions about school and my Aunt’s house. I told her about some of my new friends and about how my little cousin and I make fortresses in his room like I used to at Peppermill Village. She smiled, tears rolling down her cheeks. The supervisor handed her tissues and kept telling her to relax. I repeatedly asked her where she went and why she left me with Daddy Bruce. She told me again that she didn’t mean it, and I tried to tell her it was fine and that I could take care of myself. I told her she taught me how to do everything and that I kept the apartment clean and locked like she said. I told her we still had food there because I bought some with the change we had and that I never went into her room because it was always off limits to me (house rules). I told her about Daddy Bruce, and she said she didn’t want to hear it. She was just glad that I was the girl she had raised. She hugged me again, even tighter, and told me I was so smart and so brave and that she was proud of me. Soon it was time for me to leave, and I said goodbye, telling her she had to write to me or I wouldn’t be her best friend anymore. She smiled and whispered, “I promise, baby.”
And she wrote me every week. And I wrote back. And I visited her once a month until finally she was able to check herself out of rehabilitation, and start her life over again. She found work and a therapist. She visited me at my Aunt’s house every other day until she got an apartment of her own. I spent weekends with her for six months until she got permission from a judge to be my legal guardian again. I moved in and eventually Daddy Bruce moved back in, but he was different, too. More reserved, housebound and hard working at his new job with a drug dispensary clinic in Hartford.
My mother and I are best friends and always have been. We both respect each other and are very playful with each other, but the boundaries between mother and best friend are well defined. Even though she may be the only woman on this planet who I can tell anything to, she is also the only woman on earth who can tell me what I will and will not do. She is my sunshine and my moonlight. She is the prick to my pain and the J in my joy. And I swear to God if she ever left me again, I would go to the far ends of the universe to find her.
By Christina Louise Burton
© Christina L. Burton
All rights reserved.
