by Apryl Baker
“You hit your head?”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s what they tell me.”
“And your mom left after that?”
“I hate her.” The words pop out, but they’re true.
Again, Micah waits for me to continue. He doesn’t push or prod, just sits there, patiently waiting.
“She left us the day after the attack. It’s a little odd I can remember that, but not what happened in the park.” I sigh with old frustration, The hurt I keep buried surfaces. Micah’s hand finds mine as a tear slips free. I haven’t cried over my mom in ten years. I’m more than a little shocked.
“I never really recovered,” I tell him. “Something broke inside that day, and it’s been broken since. I guess I just shut down. I stopped talking, and my friends left when I wouldn’t play with them anymore. I’ve had nightmares since then too. Really awful nightmares. The doctors diagnosed me with night terrors. I started to feel afraid all the time, even when I knew there was nothing to be afraid of. I couldn’t sleep, and by the time I hit junior high, you could say I was a real basket case.”
“Sounds like you had it pretty rough.”
Now there is the understatement of the century. A bitter laugh escapes. “You have no idea. It got so bad, Dad and Emma and my psychologist all agreed the best thing for me was Compton Academy.”
“What’s that?” Micah asked.
“A mental institute posing as a school. It’s a real school. I mean, we had normal classes and stuff, but there is an excellent psychiatric staff too. I tried to hurt my brother—I did hurt my brother. I was so messed up, I didn’t know what was real and what was a figment from my nightmares. They decided to put me somewhere I couldn’t hurt myself or others.”
“So your dad locked you up in the looney bin?” Anger laces his words, and I can feel it radiate off him in waves.
“I needed to be there, Micah. I hurt my brother. I needed help.”
“Are you better now?” I don’t understand his anger. Why is he so upset that my dad put me somewhere I could get the help I needed?
“God, I hope so,” I mutter. The voices in my head make me wonder if I really am better or not.
He gives me the patented Micah’s look of patience. “You are better, Blue, you’re just worrying too much. It’s time to loosen up a bit and have some fun.”
“It doesn’t bother you I’ve been in a mental institute or that I could still be just as crazy as I was then?”
“Nope. There’s your dad’s house.”
I slow down and see a car parked behind Dad’s truck. Maybe he has some friends over, or a client? But why would he want me to come over if that’s the case?
“Something wrong?”
“I just don’t recognize the car.” I pull in behind Emma’s car and we get out.
“Want me to wait out here? I can nap if you want.”
“Up to you.”
“I think I’ll snooze, if that’s okay. They might need to talk to you alone. Could be a friend they want to introduce you to or something.”
I toss him the keys so he can have air conditioning then walk up the steps and knock on the door. The man who answers is a shock and I stumble backward. He’s darkly handsome with copper-tinged black hair that frames a strong face. My own eyes stare back at me. There’s no mistaking who he is.
“Alexandria.”
“Uncle Sabien.”
“You remember me?” He looks surprised.
“Not really. Your picture is in some of the family albums. What are you doing here?”
He stands back to let me in. “Please follow me. I wish I were here under happier circumstances.”
Confusion swamps me when I see my dad with his head buried on his desk, sobs wracking him. What is going on? Dad doesn’t cry about anything. “What’s wrong, Daddy?”
“It’s your mother, Alexandria.” Sabien’s voice is quiet, gentle. “She died a few days ago in Paris. There was a car accident.”
A deep, wrenching sob is torn from my father. I stand staring at him, wanting to go to him, to try to help him, but I can’t.
Dead? She’s dead? She can’t be dead. Not yet.
“I’m sorry, John.” Sabien’s voice is soothing. “The hospital assured me she didn’t suffer. They said she died instantly.”
Dad mutters something, his shoulders heaving. Where’s Emma? He needs her.
“I’m so sorry, Alexandria.” Sabien turns to look at me, and I’m struck again by how much the two of us look alike. It’s eerie. “I can’t believe you’re all grown up. Alesha told me you and I looked alike, but I never realized. You do favor our side of the family, the Blackthornes. Judging by his picture, I have to agree with your mother that Jason is the image of his father. He has our eyes, though. There wasn’t a day that went by she didn’t talk about all of you.”
“My mom talked to you?” How dare she?
“Yes, almost every day. Her family was very important to her. You were all she ever talked about.”
Yeah, right.
His next question is directed to my father.
“John, I brought her back with me from Paris. The accident was bad, there wasn’t that much left, but I knew she’d want to be here with her family.” He pauses. “Would you like me to help with the arrangements?”
“I…I…I…”
“Don’t worry, Dad. Jason and I will help Uncle Sabien make the arrangements.”
Sabien looks at me curiously.
“Where’s Emma?” I ask.
“She’s at Marion’s,” Dad whispers, his voice hoarse. He still loves my mom, even after all these years. I know he loves Emma too, but I never realized how much he still loves my mother. She left us, and he still loves her. Even after our talk a few weeks ago, I still didn’t realize how much he loves her. Not until right now. He needs Emma, though. She’ll be able to help him get through this.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to go fetch Emma.”
“Alexandria?” Sabien stops me.
“Yeah?”
“Are you all right?”
I can hear the concern in his voice. Everyone seems to be concerned about me today.
“Sure, I’m fine.” I shrug. “If you’re worried because I’m not crying hysterically, don’t. I decided the day my mom left that crying wasn’t going to change anything. It was true then, and it’s true now. I’ve shed all the tears over her I’m going to.”
“Despite what you may think, Alexandria, she loved you.”
“Really?” I ask in a mocking tone that could rival Luka’s best. “Doesn’t matter. That won’t bring her back either. Now, I need to get Emma.”
Closing the study door, I leave the house.
My mother.
God, how I hate her.
It has been nine years since I’d seen her. Thirteen years since she left us. Pain turned to anger, anger to hate, and hate to rage.
I’m supposed to cry over the woman who so callously abandoned her family, her children? Not in this lifetime.
Micah is out of the Jeep the second he sees me. “What’s wrong?”
“My uncle’s here.”
“Okay?”
“My mom died a few days ago. He came to tell us.” The hollowness in my voice should concern me, but it doesn’t. I think I’m in shock.
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“I need to find Emma…my dad needs her.” I turn blindly and start to walk down the street, Micah right behind me. I know Marion lives three doors down. It’s easy to find. She’s eight months pregnant, and Emma goes over and helps out with the heavy lifting and the chores it’s hard for Marion to do.
“Emma?”
“I’m in the kitchen, Alex!”
She’s standing on a chair, pulling everything out of the kitchen cabinets. The table is covered in a mixture of plates and papers. Marion is nowhere to be seen. She’s probably resting.
“What are you doing?”
“Mark didn’t have time to deposit his paycheck yes
terday. Why he doesn’t use direct deposit, I’ll never understand. He said he tossed it in the cabinet. He failed to tell Marion which cabinet. This is the second time I’ve gone through them and I still can’t…aha! The little rascal was hiding behind a bowl.” She steps down off the stool and gets a good look at me.
I wonder what my expression looks like as I watch the concern start to grow on her face.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“I’m fine. It’s Dad who needs you.” My voice is cold, empty. “Why would your father need me?” Fear floods her expression. Does she think I did something to him? She has to, the way she’s slowly backing up. I guess it doesn’t matter what I do. No one will ever truly trust me after what happened. Her first thought is that I hurt my father.
“I didn’t do anything, Emma. Uncle Sabien’s up at the house. He came to tell us Mom died. There was a car accident or something.”
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” A hint of relief flickers in her eyes. I knew she thought the worst of me. I think her apology is both due to my mother’s death and her assumption of my wrong-doing.
I shrug. It doesn’t matter what people think of me anyway, even my family.
“It’s okay to be upset,” she tells me in a gentle tone.
“Upset?” I cock my head. “Why would you think I’m upset?”
“Because your mother just died, sweetheart.” She frowns, unsure of what I am thinking. She sees Micah behind me. “Oh, hello.”
“Hey.” He steps up to shake her hand. “I’m Micah, Alex’s friend. It’s nice to meet you.”
She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “You too, honey. Alex…”
“Don’t.” I shake my head, holding my hand up to stop whatever she is about to say. “I don’t want to hear it. She left us, Emma. She left us. We didn’t leave her. She made her choice a long time ago. So why should I care now, when she didn’t care about what happened to any of us?”
“That’s not true, Alex. Your mother loved you.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Yes, she did. No matter what choices she had to make in her life, she loved you.”
I sigh. I can see from the look on her face that she will never understand.
“Don’t worry about me, Emma. I’m okay. I always am. It’s Dad I’m worried about.”
“Of course I’m worried about you. You’re standing here telling me your mother is dead and acting as if nothing’s wrong. Something is wrong. Don’t you feel anything?”
Oh, yeah, I feel something. My voice burns with the force of my rage. “Yeah, I’m disappointed I’ll never get the chance to tell her how much I hate her.”
Emma steps back, responding to the anger in my voice and on my face. I don’t think she’s ever realized the full extent of my feelings toward my mother, but she’s seeing it now.
“You’re wrong,” she says at last. “You don’t hate her. If you did, you wouldn’t be so angry.”
I turn, seeing my reflection in the shiny silver of the toaster. My face wears a harsh expression and my eyes flare with that strange color. I watch, fascinated, as they almost glow.
“Alex?”
Emma distracts me from my reflection. She can’t understand. It’s too hard a concept for her to grasp because she’s such a good mother. I’m not going to try to explain it to her. No way am I up for that.
“I just wanted to come and get you. Like I said, Dad needs you. He’s a mess.”
Emma’s lips thin into a straight line. “But what if you’re wrong, honey? What if she really had no choice? What if leaving broke her as badly as it did you?”
I frown. What is she getting at?
Emma forces me to sit down, and she takes a seat opposite me. Micah’s hand is on my shoulder, squeezing it for support. What I would do without him right now, I don’t know. It’s all I can do not to scream. The rage building inside is roaring to get out.
“I knew Alesha was leaving even before she told John.”
Well, now, what is this? I’d forgotten Emma and my mother were friends.
“She’d asked me to come over to help plan your father’s birthday party. It was supposed to be a surprise. I found her in the kitchen crying hysterically and thought at first something had happened to John or you kids. She wasn’t making much sense. Once I’d gotten her calmed down, she told me she had to leave. I didn’t understand and tried to make her explain. She wouldn’t tell me very much, only that her past caught up with her. She said she had no choice but to leave.”
“No choice?” I laugh bitterly. “There’s always a choice.”
“Yes, Alex, there is always a choice, but sometimes the right choice isn’t the easy one. In your mother’s case, the right choice cost her everything, including her family. She told me it tore her apart, but she had to go. Leaving would keep her family safe.”
“Safe? Safe from what?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t explain it, but she was terrified. That much I could see. She made me promise never to say anything about it, that it might put everyone in danger. I’ve kept that promise all these years, but now it’s time you knew the truth. It wasn’t easy for her. She loved all of you so much and knew her decision would hurt her children and that not being able to explain would make it worse. I know how deeply it hurt her to go. I saw the pain in her eyes and held her while she cried. Hate her if you must, Alex, but never doubt for a moment that she didn’t love you or that she wanted to leave.”
I look at her uncertainly. If all of this is true, why had Emma never said anything before? I am confused. I had thought for so long that she’d left us because it was something she’d wanted to do. Now, Emma is painting a different picture. Can it be true?
“Alex, you’ve been angry with her for so long. Don’t you remember anything besides the anger?”
I remember everything. That’s the problem. It’s why I’d hurt so much in the beginning. Compton helped me realize that. My mother had been wonderful. She was kind and loving, with never a harsh word for her children, even when she scolded us. She would read to me every night and listen with patience as I told her of all the grand adventures I was going to go on. She always knew exactly what to say when I was afraid or hurt to make everything better.
I had felt like the most loved little girl in the world until the day she left me crying and broken in the middle of the street.
Tears prick my eyes at the remembered pain. It washes over me with a force I don’t expect. It crashes into me as fresh and real as the day it happened.
It’s too much.
It hurts too much, and I can’t stop the tears once they start.
“Shh, honey.” Emma pulls me up and wraps her arms around me. “It’s okay. You can let yourself feel grief and pain and still be angry.”
“Why did she leave me?” The words tumble out, unbidden. “Why?”
“Shh,” she croons, crying herself.
I don’t know how long we stand there like that. It doesn’t matter. She accomplished what she’d set out to do—making me remember my mother as she used to be.
“Let’s get you home, honey.”
“No.” I shake my head. I’m not going to my dad’s. If I see him like that, it’ll break me. I can’t. I just can’t.
“Alex, you shouldn’t be by yourself.” Worry flares in her voice. She’s afraid I’ll snap. I know it’s what she’s thinking. It’s another reason I don’t want to go with her. If she or Dad starts to constantly watch me for signs of flipping out, I might flip out.
“I’ll stay with her.” Micah pulls me up and wraps an arm around me. I lean into him for support. “I promise I won’t leave her alone.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Emma says, her teeth worrying her bottom lip, “but there are things you don’t know…”
“She told me about Compton.”
The shock on Emma’s face is enough to be comical in any other situation.
“Trust me, Mrs. Reed, I’ll take care of her.”
&nb
sp; I don’t hear much of anything after that. Micah puts me in the car, and the last thing I remember is seeing the clock on the dash flashing 1:45.
Chapter
Thirteen
I blink at the clock with bleary eyes, surprised to see it’s nine fifteen. I’d slept for hours, and Lord, how I hurt. I feel like that same little girl again, and all I want to do is crawl under my covers with my teddy bear and cry.
I hate feeling like this. Anger flares hot and hard. My mother—how, how could she leave us? How could she leave me? I’ll never get the chance to confront her now, to scream and yell. That is what my therapist at Compton was adamant about, that I need to confront her to deal with some of my abandonment issues. She’s gone, and that chance is gone with her.
Do I love her? Yeah, I guess I do, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still hate her. Letting myself feel the pain I’ve bottled up for years doesn’t change that. I can’t forgive all the pain she’s caused. Maybe I never will.
I clean myself up in the bathroom. The girl in the mirror shocks me. I’m a mess—my face pale and tired. Black, hollow eyes stare back at me. I pull out my phone, feeling it vibrate—Luka. It shuts off before I can answer it. There are three more text messages from him demanding to know what is wrong. I usually answer him within a few minutes. I bet he’s freaking out.
Micah is asleep on the couch, a pizza box on the coffee table and a two liter of Dr. Pepper beside him. I smile softly. He must have carried me inside. I don’t remember anything after I got in the car. Jason’s door is open, so I go in. He isn’t home yet. He must be at Dad’s. He still has a picture of Mom. I dig it out of a shoebox in the top of his closet and sit down in the floor, the picture held in my hands.
I have the insane urge to rip it up, to destroy her smile like she had mine. I still want to, despite everything Emma told me. She is the reason I’m crazy, the reason for my going to Compton.