by Randis, K. L
Kat scrunched up her face and her bottom lip started to quiver. “Mommy, we have to show you something.”
“Yea Mommy, we have to show you something.” I pointed. “It’s in our room. Come look.”
I grabbed Kat’s hand and started towards the door as I heard Mom throw the blankets off of her. She answered back rubbing her eyes, “What is it? A mouse?”
Mom pushed the door open and flicked on our bedroom light. Kat and I stood next to our suitcases holding hands. Mom looked from the floor to the open window. “What are you two doing? It’s freezing out, close that window.”
“Mom,” I said, “We are going to Grandma’s. We’re gonna run away now, and we just wanted you to know. So you didn’t worry.”
“Yea,” Kat finished, “You can come with us if you want Mommy, you just have to get a suitcase. We only have two.”
Mom folded her arms across her chest and stared at us. She lowered herself onto the bed. “Wait, I don’t understand. You’re running away? From me?”
“Mom, we have to.”
I don’t know who started crying first, but all at once we were in a group hug. “My babies, oh Brooke I am so sorry. Is this what you want, this is what you really want?”
I nodded through my cloudy eyes. “Yea, Mommy. We need to go.”
She stared at the open window. “Oh, Brooke. I am so sorry. Please stay home, please stay. We can make things better here. If you ever want to run away to Grandma’s house just tell me, we’ll all go together. Your brothers too, we’ll all go.”
I didn’t need to explain? Maybe she knew. Maybe she realized when Dad wasn’t in bed and when he savagely tore after my brothers when they did something wrong. Maybe the pills didn’t make her as numb as I thought they did.
“Okay, Mommy,” Kat said on our behalf, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “We’ll stay. We can run away to Grandma’s later.”
Mom looked at me. “Okay Brooke? We’ll all run away together someday, we’ll all go together.”
I looked at my feet, at her face. I believed her. “Okay, Mom.” I forced a smile.
She helped us unpack. When Mom got to the bottom of my suitcase she pulled out a black and white marble notebook. “What’s this Brooke?” Mom turned it over. The front read:
Brooke Nolan’s Journal
PRIVATE ** KEEP OUT
“Can I read it?” Mom bit her lower lip. “I won’t tell anyone, promise” She smiled.
I hesitated. “Sure. I need it back tomorrow.”
I used composition notebooks as journals now since Mom and Dad wouldn’t buy them for me. They were the first things I packed, I couldn’t live without them.
The sound of a glass breaking in the kitchen woke me the next morning. Adam must be unloading the dishwasher. I wiggled under the covers stretching my arms and legs before I sat up and saw my journal sitting at the foot of my bed. I opened it up to the last entry.
Watermarks stained the page as I touched the spots and listened to it crinkle. Mom’s unique uppercase writing and run on sentences sprawled across the pages at the end of the last journal entry I wrote.
Dear Brooke- I love you with all my heart. I love all of you. But you have an extra special place in my heart you are so smart and aware of everything and I don’t know what I would have done without you (and your brothers and sister). They don’t understand yet, but I know they will someday and then they will say my God how did she do it and I am going to have to say with a huge help from your sister Brooke. I am so sorry for all the times I yelled at you. I had no idea the burden, stress and strain I am putting on you. You’re only a child and this should not be. My God, help me to make Brooke’s life a whole lot better. I promise I will try to help you Lord, please help her, she’s only 11 years old. With all my love. I’m sorry for getting your book wet but I was crying.
That week my brothers, Kat and I were sitting in the living room when Mom and Dad came in to tell us some big news.
“We’re moving!” Mom exclaimed. She clasped her hands together. “We’re going to Pennsylvania, it’s about three hours from here and there is so much room to play and run around. There are farms and woods to explore, you guys can build your own tree houses. Best of all, I found the most beautiful house, it’s perfect.” A sparkle in her eye told me she loved this house already, she loved Pennsylvania.
Dad looked at me.
“What about school?” I tried to hide the desperation in my voice. “School isn’t over yet, it’s almost Christmas. We can’t move.”
Dad leaned forward. “We’re moving the day after Christmas. You’ll be on break, so you won’t miss anything while we switch your schools.”
Adam and Thomas started talking about the bears they were going to hunt and Kat asked if she could have a pink tree house. I looked out the window.
Three hours away? We didn’t know anyone who lived in Pennsylvania. All of our family was here, in New York. We might as well move to Mars.
Mom smiled while she listened to the boys talk. Her eyes met mine and suddenly went soft. Her smile retracted, and I noticed wrinkles outlining the corners of her eyes.
My face pleaded with her to remember her promise, begged her to remember. Whether she knew it or not she had let me down. My shoulders slumped to my sides and I fought with the screaming voices in my head. I guess this meant we were never running away to Grandma’s house.
Chapter Six
At first Mom didn’t believe me when I told her I was dying.
“You’re twelve. You’re not even close to dying.” Mom poured her tea and sat down at the kitchen table. “Didn’t you just invite Cristin to come over? If you’re not feeling good then maybe she shouldn’t come over.”
“It’s not that I don’t feel good, my stomach just hurts.” I pressed my hand into the lower right of my stomach. “Right here. It just started hurting. Can I use your heating pad?”
“Go ahead.” She turned on the TV and dropped a dollop of milk into her tea. “While you’re up there, bring me my pills?”
Dad sat at the kitchen table listening. “Why don’t you try and use the bathroom, Brooke?”
The new house in Pennsylvania boasted four bedrooms that quadrupled in size compared to what we had in New York. All Kat and I had in our room was our bed and a small vanity my cousin handed down when she got tired of it.
We struggled to fill all the space; we needed two couches, a real dining room set, and dressers since there was room for them. Most of the furniture was mismatched and thrown together. The best part about the new house were the three bathrooms. Three. One upstairs, one downstairs, one in my parent’s room. Kat and I could get ready for school in the upstairs bathroom while the boys got ready downstairs. It was heaven.
I clicked open Mom’s medicine cabinet and pulled four bottles off the top shelf. White, cream colored and pink pills slid into my hand as I counted out the different dosages. I squeezed my hand around them. The heating pad Mom used for her back was dangling over the edge of the bed and I picked it up as I headed to the door.
I made a friend on my bus, Cristin, and she got her period for the first time two weeks ago. While the unfamiliar pain crippled my stomach I tried to smile through it knowing I was finally going to get to hide tampons in my book bag too.
I stood at the top of the stairs and gripped the handrail. Geeze, this period stuff is no joke. My stomach felt tender to the touch and I shuffled one foot in front of the other. Cristin walked through the front door as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Her voice seemed muffled. My stomach flipped over and I caught my breath.
“Hey, what’s up?” She eyed me, “My dad just dropped me off. You okay?”
I shook my head and doubled over, clutching the pills in one hand, heating pad in the other. Cristin raised her eyebrows and took the heating pad. “I’ll go plug this in, living room okay?”
I couldn’t talk. I nodded my head, forced a smile. Sweat formed around my eyes and lips as I trudged into the kitchen. Mom’s eyes wer
e glued to the TV. A stabbing blow dropped me to my knees and I cried out. “Ah, Mom, it hurts!”
“Brooke?” Mom rolled her eyes, “Oh come on, Brooke. Do you want some ibuprofen? Do you want…”
The kitchen spun into a white cloud. I could hear Mom screaming for Dad as my head hit the kitchen floor. Pills scattered across the linoleum. Mom’s breath engulfed me, she smelled like a smoky teabag. “Hang on, Brooke, Call 9-1-1! Oh my God. David call 9-1-1!”
I woke up confused in a white room surrounded by a curtain. Monitors hummed and needles pulsed under my skin on both hands.
“Brooke, Brooke honey, you need to wake up.” It was a masked ninja. How’d he know my name?
“Brooke I’m Dr. Destachio. You need to wake up sweetheart. You’re just coming out of surgery now.”
A nurse to my left pushed the bed and I realized I was being whirled into a room. Suddenly pain radiated through my stomach up into my throat. My body shook in waves. “Pain…Pain medicine, please. Please.”
Dr. Destachio smiled. “You got it kiddo.” He fumbled a tube going into my right hand. “There you go, gave you some good stuff. I’ll be back to check on you soon.”
I didn’t understand what was happening but I couldn’t stay awake long enough to talk to anyone. Mom was there at one point but the weight of my eyelids wouldn’t let me see her. I heard voices. Dr. Destachio’s voice.
“If you would have waited any longer...” He trailed off. “Her appendix ruptured as we were removing it. She was very lucky.”
Mom choked out some words, I imagined her crying. “We called 9-1-1 right away, I knew something was wrong when she told me she had a bad stomach ache. She’s a little stubborn to see doctors but I told her it was important we get her to the hospital.”
“You did the right thing. If she needs anything, just let us know.”
I woke up hours later and squinted while the sun turned my room a bright orange before fading to black. A voice echoed from the TV. Mom shifted in the oversized hospital lounger and flipped through Dr. Phil re-runs.
“Mom?” I didn’t recognize my voice.
Mom shimmied out of the chair and set her tea on the table next to her. She lowered herself to my side. “It doesn’t hurt,” I said, following her eyes to the tubes sticking out of me.
She smiled and reached across the bed and tucked a Precious Moments doll next to my face. Angelic eyes stared back at me, wrapped in fleece. It smelled like a hospital doll. “Daddy got you this when you were in surgery, to look over you.”
Over the next few hours the doctors wanted me to eat some crackers and walk around so the gas they used to fill my stomach for surgery would loosen up. It hurt to walk, to sit, to laugh at my Grandpa when he called me on the hospital phone and told me if I scared him like that again he would put me in the hospital next time.
“Well, we’d like to keep you another day, Brooke. Your appendix was pretty infected. We just want to make sure nothing got into your bloodstream to make you sick.” Dr. Destachio flashed his crooked front tooth. I glanced at my mom shifting in the seat beside my bed. She was in pain when she did that. “Unless you’re really feeling okay to go home. You’d just have to take it extra easy the next couple of days.”
The hospital was a vacation. I had slept more in the past two days than I had in years. I had a team of watchful adults all catering to me. I never wanted to leave.
“If it’s okay, I want to go home.” I struggled to say the words, but I knew Mom needed to be in her own bed. It only meant more pain for her if she wasn’t.
A nurse helped me into a wheelchair while Mom brought the car around to the front of the hospital. Dad stood at my side. I flinched when he slid his hand to smooth the top of my hair. “You’re very brave. And you were a very good girl while we were here.” I pretended not to hear him as I watched a young mother get into the car in front of us.
I struggled to get into the van but soon we were pulling onto the highway and headed home. The Precious Moments doll sat at my side and I picked her up. There was a string attached to the bottom as I flipped her over. Soft lyrical music filled the air and my stomach sank. Dad smirked and watched the outside scenery float by. Was this some kind of joke? Mom glanced at me in the rear view mirror and softly mumbled the words to the song. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”
For two weeks I was untouchable while I healed from surgery. Mom put a little bell next to my bed and all I had to do was ring it for a snack, pain medicine, or for the remote. Kat ran in to help me most of the time, which she was happy to do as long as I didn’t show her my wound.
As I healed I caught up on school work and looked through Seventeen Magazines that Cristin dropped off. She spent most of her afternoons entertaining me from my bedside. I yelled at her a lot to stop making me laugh since it felt like my insides would spill out when I did.
Soon I stopped taking the pain medication the doctor prescribed and ibuprofen was enough to make me comfortable. I put the pill bottle on top of the TV in my room just in case I needed it. Walking around was easier. I was allowed to go back to school in a week. My days dragged, and I daydreamed out the window waiting to hear the bus for Adam, Thomas and Kat to come home.
Mom was out at the grocery store. Dad was working overnights and usually didn’t get out of bed until around five. When my bedroom door creaked open, I rolled over in bed expecting to see Cristin.
“Yea, Dad?” My heart raced. No one was home.
He held a white cup in his hand. “I made this for you, honey.” The bedroom door was closed behind him. My breath became shallow.
“I’m okay, thanks though.” I supported my stomach underneath my sheets as it rumbled. I can’t, not now, please. He didn’t blink as he crossed the room, hand outstretched. “It’s chocolate milk. Your favorite.”
I took the cup, searching my head for a distraction. “Thanks. Um, Dad can you check and see if Mom is home yet?” I gripped the sheets. He needed to leave.
“She’s not home, snuggle bug. Drink that up, so I can bring the cup downstairs.”
I mentally cheered myself on. Okay, Brooke, chug, chug faster, faster you drink the faster he’s gone. The chocolate milk disappeared behind my milk mustache. I outstretched an arm. “Done.”
He sat on the futon next to my bed. “Good girl, see I thought maybe you were thirsty.”
I stared at him. Why wasn’t he leaving? We locked eyes. “You can bring the cup downstairs now, Dad, I’m done.” It wasn’t a suggestion.
He must have sensed my resistance. “I will.”
The room began to spin. Slow at first, then so fast I closed my eyes and moaned. My body floated above the sheets, a heaviness refusing to let my arms leave the bed.
“My…head. Why’s my flace..Flace? Face. Whaaaat.” Words slurred out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure Dad could even hear me. I rubbed my eyes and the room began to shrink. My eyelids were bricks. As I drifted, I tried to focus my attention. My eyes set on my TV. I studied the square box, the red buttons…my pill bottle was gone. Brooke, stop it. Stay awake. Sleep later. Stop it, stop.
A suffocating body was on top of me, pulling down my bottoms and sheets. I smelled cologne, spicy aftershave. My eyes wouldn’t open as I struggled to see what was going on. Prickles of cold made the hairs on my arm stand up and I shuddered. A violent force of pain shot between my legs and up through my stomach. I cried out.
Consciousness came and went. The room spun and I tried to focus on something, anything. I remembered my bell. My outstretched hand fumbled across the bed. I grabbed air, sheets, the side of the bed. Come on, come on. The smell of blood gagged me. The bed fell beneath me, and I was falling, falling.
When I woke up, the room was dim and the hall light was on. Voices lingered from my parent’s room. “I’ll tell you, it was a good god damn thing I was home.” Dad was talking to Mom.
“I don’t understand, David. She just…fell in the shower?”
“I was dead asleep. All of a sudden,
BAM, I hear something loud. I ran into the bathroom and Brooke was laying at the bottom of the shower, passed out cold.”
My hand reached for my hair. It was wet.
“Why was she taking a shower? I mean, I helped her take one this morning.”
“Damn cat peed on her bed. She must have laid down in it before she figured it out and got it all over her. I threw the sheets out, disgusting mess that made. Brooke’s clothes too, piss all over them. I can get her new pajamas, I threw those out too. I didn’t think she needed to go to the hospital, figured she just turned too fast or the wrong way and sent some pain through her. It’ll teach her. She’ll be fine Molly, I checked on her a few times.”
Jesus was all Mom said. Then there was silence, and the TV was all that echoed through the corridor.
My throat stuck together and my chest heaved as I struggled to hold back my sobs. My hand lowered between my legs, praying that it had all been a dream. A scary dream. My fingers rolled over swollen skin, and I cried so hard it rocked me to sleep.
Chapter Seven
Mom leaned against the shopping cart as we maneuvered our way through people in Wal-Mart. “The pain in my back makes me walk on my toes. The doctor said it shortened my Achilles tendon, so there is a surgery to make it longer. I can’t believe I have to have another surgery. Never a dull moment.” She stopped and picked up loose leaf paper from the shelf. “Didn’t you need this?”
I looked at the price. “No,” I dismissed her. “How long is the recovery?”
“A week. Maybe two. He didn’t say. Why?” She shook her head at the notion that I had a problem with her recovery time. “It’s a serious surgery Brooke, you can’t rush things like that.”
I turned my head toward the fluorescent lights hovering above our heads. The thought of being alone in the house, again, for more than one night terrified me. It was like catch twenty two. If I stayed with a friend, I risked Dad lurking on one of my siblings. If I stayed home, then I was subjecting myself to the unknown and to him. Every time, I chose to stay. I chose my peace of mind knowing they weren’t hurting, every time. It was the right thing to do, I was older.