When Bobby came through the door that night, I could smell the booze from across the room. It was more than on his breath, it oozed from his sweat glands.
“I’m home.”
“Welcome back. Tough week?”
“What’s for dinner. I’m starved.”
“I didn’t make anything. I didn’t know if you’d have eaten already.”
“What the fuck did you do all week that you couldn’t even make dinner for me? You lazy…”
I tuned out. I couldn’t listen any more. Whatever he called me, it couldn’t be worse than the names I called myself. I did feel when he slapped me, though. And I still didn’t say anything. I just stared at the monster I once thought was an angel.
He grabbed my arm and pushed me to the bedroom. When he was done with me, I went to the bathroom to clean up. I looked at myself in the mirror, a dirty and pathetic excuse of a human being. An empty face, empty eyes. There wasn’t even fear. When I looked away, I saw the pile of clothes he’d left on the floor, dirty jeans, sweaty T-shirts, and instead of going back to bed, I gathered up the laundry and decided to do the wash.
I went through his pockets. He never emptied them. I usually kept whatever cash and coins I found there.
This time, I found a scrap of paper. A note. “Thanks for an awesome week. See ya next time I’m in town.” And a phone number.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t get angry. This time, I didn’t assume it was my fault. Instead of the heat of anger, I felt a cold resolve build into a protective wall around me. I put the note on the dining table. I finished two loads of laundry. I folded his jeans. And then I went into the bedroom to pack my own.
He didn’t wake up. What I had fit into the one large suitcase we had. I took it into the living room, looked at the note on the table, and I wrote my own.
“I’ve had enough.”
I didn’t even sign it. I picked up the suitcase, headed to the door, and then remembered Jay’s leash, hidden in the coat closet. I retrieved it and I walked out without looking back.
It was four in the morning. I had no place to sleep, a twenty-dollar bill in my pocket, and credit cards that would be cancelled by the end of the day if I knew Bobby. I hit every ATM I saw for as much cash as I could get with the cards.
And then I walked. I saw the sun rise over the pond that had scared Jay. I saw the ducks I wouldn’t let him play with. I saw the lights go on in the pet store. And still I walked. I tried to think of next steps. What to do when you’re suddenly homeless. What to do when you wake up thirty years old and realize you want to live, want to have a real life.
My feet walked where they wanted to, and I stopped thinking. I tried to just be, to find quiet in myself in the waking city. And then my feet stopped. I realized where I was. The animal shelter.
The sign on the door said they opened at nine. I sat down on my suitcase to wait.
A police car drove by, slowed down, but didn’t stop. Birds whose names I didn’t know sang in the trees. Somewhere inside the building, a dog barked, and then a great many dogs barked. My watch said it was seven o’clock. Two hours. My legs had fallen asleep. I stood up cautiously, trying to get rid of the tingling. And then I felt a different sort of tingling. The sort of feeling you get when someone is watching you. I looked around, but saw no one. Nerves. Imagination. Wishful thinking. I stretched. I could get breakfast. But the way my stomach felt, I’d probably throw up. I could go to the bus terminal or train station. Pick a destination. I’d read books that started that way. Did they allow dogs on trains or buses? But I stayed. Right there by the door to the animal shelter.
I heard footsteps on the sidewalk. Not tennis shoes, not tasseled loafers, but boots. When I turned around, I saw a familiar face. A cowboy.
“Jesus Christ, you scared me.”
“I thought I asked you to call me Jesse.”
And then he put his arms around me, and I bawled my eyes out. I tried to tell him everything, tried to thank him for giving me Jay, but I couldn’t form words, didn’t have enough breath leftover after the sobs. But it didn’t matter. He seemed to know it all.
When nine o’clock came and the doors opened, he walked in with me, and used his cowboy charm to persuade the staff that it had all been a mistake. And his success convinced me that he really could perform miracles. He carried my suitcase as we walked out, and Jay was once more safely in my arms. It took the puppy almost no time at all to wash away the salt from my too many tears.
We found a bench to sit on. I could finally talk.
“Thank you. I don’t know what else to say. Thank you.”
He shushed me with a calloused finger to my lips.
We sat there for a while, in silence. A cowboy, a refugee, and a puppy. I wish someone had taken a picture of that moment. But its colors wouldn’t be as bright as the picture I carry in my heart.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I mean, I’m glad Jay and me are together again, but I don’t know where we’ll stay, where we’ll live…”
He reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a card. “Samaritan Shelter, a home for the homeless and their animal companions.” There was a phone number on it, and on the other side, a map.
“Who are you, really?”
He answered with a laugh. “My name is Jesse.”
I looked into eyes that were too deep for his age, too wise. I wanted to ask more, but Jay squirmed in my arms. I put him down, and when I looked up, Jesse was gone.
Jesus came for me, in Wranglers and a Stetson, and I didn’t even get to watch him walk away.
# # #
The Things my Mom Taught Me
By Chris Philbrook
I have two mothers. Moms.
Not in the progressive LGBTQ way. More in the Sybil way.
My mother was born into a reasonably well-off family in rural Maine. Her father owned several small businesses and her brothers all worked for him. A powerful little Italian man, my grandfather commanded a room with his smile, and with his grumbling temper. Did what he asked and you would never find a man who would do more to make you happy. And if you didn’t do what he asked… well, let’s just say my aunts and uncles told a lot of stories about people who had a lot of bad luck after crossing papa.
My grandmother was an angel. At least, I thought she was. Every time we visited her she wore a floral print housecoat and spent all her time drinking coffee out of a mug and cooking for everyone. She was as Irish as they came; pale skin, red hair, bright blue eyes, and fierce. I think back now and wonder if the halo she wore was a bit rusty, turning her hair red.
After my grandpa died of emphysema my dad told me her ubiquitous coffee mug never had coffee in it. It usually had Miller, or Bud. Whatever was cheap, ironically.
Nana was an alcoholic, and I had no idea. Right around that period my mom started buying handles of vodka, and 32-ounce bottles of grapefruit juice to make herself the occasional cocktail after work, or on the weekends.
“It helps me relax,” she explained. I was about eleven, I think. The drinks were occasional as she said, I think. It all made sense. Relaxing was good, and Mom couldn’t be doing something bad. Moms never do bad things.
Very quickly I realized Dad was telling the truth; our visits to Nana became more frequent due to papa’s death and she discarded the opaque mug full of cheap beer for a clear tumbler filled with some kind of liquor. I remember the smell, smoky, and strange. She drank all day, every day, and brought in men who tolerated her drinking for the sake of a few drops of honey from her ample checking account. I remember one guy with long hair that didn’t even talk to us when we visited. He sat on her couch, and ate food out of her fridge and grumbled.
Nana died within a year or two of cirrhosis of the liver, fully validating my dad’s assertions.
My mom’s cocktails became notably less occasional at that point.
Looking back on it all as an adult, it makes sense. My mom had never been good with money; she spent on casual things without
regard or plan, and constantly kept our lower middle-class family in financial turmoil. When things started to get out of hand with debt, or bounced checks my parents would have loud, angry arguments over her lack of discipline, and she’d ring up Papa. A week later we’d make a trip to the woods of Maine and collect a few thousand dollars in cash or check, and the water would get bailed out of the boat.
When Papa died, the bucket bailed at half speed. When Nana died, the bucket got dropped into the ocean.
Financially, our family started to tailspin. Our inheritance never materialized due to medical bills down my grandparent’s stretch years, and the stress grew and grew. My dad had retired early and collected disability due to a shattered back at work, and my mom had no college, and in the advancing technology of the 90s, had no skills of real value. She could type and take shorthand like nobody’s business, but everyone could type then, and shorthand had gone the way of the dodo when voice recorders became commonplace.
She exchanged her secretary position for waitress and hostess jobs, and factory floor work she hated, and I watched day after day as her demeanor darkened, and as those vodka and grapefruit juice cocktails grew both larger, and more frequent.
Let me pause here, and share that my mom prior to my grandparent’s passing was awesome. She was sweet, awesome, creative, hardworking, dedicated, and loving. She never said bad things about anyone in front of me and took amazing care of my dad and I. I think back on that mom and I wish she’d been a little stronger, or really that I had been a little stronger for her. Maybe my other mom wouldn’t have come into my life.
My other mom was a mean drunk. Same lady, different mom, remember.
Mom #2 started coming ‘round when I started High School. I think I was 13. She’d get home from one of the jobs she hated, and she’d start a dinner that was simple but good, and she’d pour herself a vodka and grapefruit juice cocktail in a plastic 32-ounce cup full of ice. I used to call that period of time Happy Hour. While she cooked I had mom #1. When dinner was ready, mom #2 was ready as well.
Sullen, defeated and hostile she’d sit at the kitchen table in our trailer and stare over my dad’s shoulder at the television. Some nights she’d do word search puzzles, circling the hidden words in shaky pen. Always pen. Most of the time she’d just stew, smoking butt after butt as she sipped her drink. When the first one went, she’d pour a second, and as the years went on, she’d manage a third before collapsing into bed.
Hero that I was at that age, I saw my mom’s degradation and all I could think about was my dead nana. Mom was drinking like a fish, and I was so worried she’d die of it I would come out into the kitchen from my small bedroom three or four nights a week to ask her if she’d be willing to taper off.
“Please, Mom. It’s expensive, and I know money is tight. Think of what we could do with the money if you just drank half?” That was one of my tactics. Hit her with the money angle.
“I ain’t changing now. These help me relax after a hard day. You wouldn’t understand. What do you know, you’re just a kid.” Common reply I’d get, especially early on.
“Mom, I don’t want you to die like Nana. Will you please stop drinking so much? Dad and I would love that.” Tactic number two.
“Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t bring Nana into this. You didn’t know your nana like I did. She was my mother my whole life.”
It was hopeless, and I think I knew it… but I had to try. Had to keep trying. When I went back to my room my dad would talk to my mom. I could hear them through the thin wall of my room. He would tell her how much I loved her, and how worried I was about her, and how I really wanted her to be healthy, and happy. He’d tell her how much she really was drinking, and how expensive it was, and how unhappy he knew she was.
That never went well. Mom would never hear it in a caring way, and she’d get angry, and act like we were trying to control her; like we were trying to take away the last piece of happiness she had left in the world.
Maybe that was the case. Maybe Dad and I didn’t make her happy anymore. She certainly acted like we weren’t reasons to be happy. I don’t know. I do know that as High School progressed, her sullen, defeated, and hostile drunken evenings became less sullen and defeated, and transitioned mostly to being just hostile.
I continued to talk to her, focusing my efforts on Happy Hour, rather than waiting until she was drunk. It was too late then, and I knew it. I had to talk to her when she could still hear me, when rationality had a chance.
It didn’t do any good. She started drinking faster and faster on the nights I came out to try and connect. Even on the nights I just wanted to talk to her. Some nights I’d really feel like sharing something I was passionate about; a game I’d played, or a book I’d read, or how I was struggling in geometry class. Didn’t matter. My presence seemed to be linked to unpleasant conversations in her head, and she got drunk, and sometimes in exactly so many words, told me to, “Fucking leave her alone.”
What does a 14-year-old boy do when his mom tells him that? It starts with feeling pain, and rejection, and confusion. Then, he fucking leaves her alone. But he can only hear that message so many times before the hurt goes away, before the shame goes away, before the sadness dies off and all he’s left with is a feeling of abandonment, and the simmering anger that no matter how hard he tries to make his mom happy…
She just wants him to leave her the fuck alone. I had been replaced by vodka.
And in case I wasn’t sure about what she wanted, when I got back to my nearby room, with its thin walls, I could hear her mumbling about how shitty I was, how I didn’t know anything, and how I was, and I quote, “A little asshole.”
Dad’s attempts at translation and communication transitioned then too. He got angry like I wished I could, and told my mom she had to step up. He told her how I felt, and how her words hurt, and how no mother should speak to her child the way she spoke to me. Of course, those conversations were one sided. He talked, she ignored, then he’d yell, and she’d yell back, and my dad would go to bed early, angry, and my mom would sit at the table, drinking and smoking, cursing my father and I loud enough for us to hear, but quiet enough so that she could feign innocence if either of us came out and confronted her.
Which we did.
I opted out. I joined the basketball team. I joined the baseball team. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time after school and on weekends and spending as many days and nights at friend’s houses as I could. If any of my friends could have me over, I was gone. If I could sleep over, all the better. Eventually I started having friends over to sleep on the couch, or go camping nearby. They ran interference, and my mom drank less when they were around. A respite, if you will.
That helped for a while. Six months, a year, I forget.
By then my parent’s relationship had joined the dodo in the afterlife. Her drinking, my father’s health, a lack of money, and a new fellow alcoholic friend for my mom to enable everything combined to make a miserable situation worse. Now, she was out and about with her friend one or two nights a week, driving home drunker than ever, and on the nights she stayed home she drank like there was a competition she wanted to win. Gold medal finish in most stumbles and slurs.
I’d say I was emboldened by my change of lifestyle. Playing sports more than I had in years and learning how to make better friends than ever, I felt a different kind of confidence than I ever had. I no longer needed my mother like I had before. I had friends. I had my dad. I could play harder with my mom because if I lost her, I knew I’d still be okay.
Also, a big fat part of me didn’t give a shit what she thought of me anymore. I was still that little asshole she muttered under her breath about and as long as she drank like she drank, I always would be.
I didn’t go to college after high school. Weird, right? My parents couldn’t help me financially, nor could they borrow on my behalf. In the interest of full disclosure my grades were pretty damn suspect too. Plus, Dad had a triple bypa
ss right after I graduated, and I got a job opposite Mom’s so I could stay at home to help take care of him while she worked.
One night that came apart.
Most of my memories of the night are fuzzy now. She was in the kitchen after the two of us had gotten into it. I’d raised my voice a little at her, my dad had gotten angry at the both of us and gone to bed, and I was in my room, and I could hear her talking shit about me.
More little asshole talk. More of how I was an idiot that couldn’t understand what she’d been through. More of how useless I was, and how she deserved a better son than me. More of how I was just… less.
This is about where my memory kicks in.
I lost it. I threw my door open and stood in the hallway. And I yelled. I yelled really loud, and got really angry at her. I told her to shut up. I asked her how bad I’d been to her. I asked her how bad a son I really was. I told her everything I did all day every day to fight for every dirty, alcohol-soaked bit of love I could get from her. I told her in no uncertain terms I believed I deserved better than that. I deserved a mom who loved all the time, who recognized my love for her.
I told her to shut the fuck up, and she did, if only for a bit. I learned something in that moment. More on that later.
I turned around, went back into my room and slammed the door shut as hard as I could. It felt good to slam the door. Seconds later my drunk mom threw the door open and walked into my room. She’d dropped the pretense of muttering to preserve innocence. Now, she stood right there, just feet away, in arm’s reach, and let me have it.
Most honest she’d been with me in years. No feigning that her under the breath whispers were us hearing it all wrong.
She said horrible things to me. The worst kinds of things that no kid ever should hear from a parent. Hell, or from a stranger. I can’t remember the words, but I can remember how they made me feel. I feel it again now. I feel worthless. Powerless. Pathetic.
I told her to get out. Get the fuck out. Get the FUCK out. But she wouldn’t. I’d raised my voice already. What else did I have to do to get peace? In my bedroom? But, her asshole son had yelled at her in her house and she didn’t have to take it. She was the boss, and I had to listen to her.
Betrayed: Powerful Stories of Kick-Ass Crime Survivors Page 20