The Boots My Mother Gave Me

by Brooklyn James

  Jeremiah ignored him, returning to the bouncer as he faced me. He looked at me less than impressed, directing his question to the bouncer. “What happened here?”

  Who did he think he was, looking at me as if I had done something wrong? “He got what he had coming to him. That’s what happened,” I said, approaching him.

  “She smashed the shit out of my car. I think my nose is broke, too. Ya crazy...” Joey stifled his own words as Jeremiah turned to him swiftly, simply daring him to finish his sentence. Joey humbly threw his hands up in the air, quieting himself.

  “Ma’am, I’m directing my questions to the bouncer,” Jeremiah warned, insinuating I should refrain and avoid incriminating myself further.

  “Ma’am? Ma’am!” I replied. “This piece of shit took my sister...my sister.” I pounded my own chest, then pointed to Kat standing in front of my car, with only a jacket hung around her pencil thin frame. “Inside this place,” I seethed, my body shaking, vague tears of anger welling in my eyes. “He had her in there, nothing but a piece of string covering her ass, rubbing all over his goons. The dirty bastard’s lucky it was his car.” I turned to Joey, the bat extended in my hand, lined up with him perfectly. “It should have been your head.”

  Jeremiah walked to me, his chest contoured with mine, closing the gap between us, tight enough only a pin could slide between. My eyes focused on Joey, I could feel Jeremiah’s on me, his breath on the side of my face. “Harley, look at me,” he said, his voice low. I ignored him, continuing to eyeball Joey. “Look at me.”

  Giving in, I diverted my focus from Joey to him. At first contact with his eyes, I was done, my guard no longer needed, he had me, as he always did. I let the bat fall to my side, a lock of hair swept over the outside corner of my eye. He raised his hand to push it from my vision, catching himself, reminded of where he was, he let his hand fall, coming to rest on his gun belt. “I need you to go. Take Kat and go home. Let me take care of this.” I did as he asked with full trust in him, backing away toward Kat, coaxing her into the car.

  “Hey, where’s she going?” Joey demanded. “What about my car? What about my nose?” I closed Kat in the passenger side, making my way around Charlene.

  “You wouldn’t have anything illegal in this car, would ya, Joey?” Jeremiah asked, tapping on the trunk of his Mercedes, the sound of shattered glass from the rear window resonated off the metal frame. I shut myself in Charlene and drove away.

  “Why do you have to ruin everything?” Kat accused, after we pulled out on the highway.

  “Because that’s what I do, Kat,” I said flippantly.

  “That was humiliating.” Her mascara ran down the sides of her face from crying.

  “What happened outside the club or what you did inside?” I slapped my hand frustratingly against the steering wheel. “How long have you been doing that?”

  “I don’t have to answer to you anymore. In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been doing just fine on my own the past seven years.”

  “Don’t you worry, this is the last time I’m sticking my neck out for you,” I lied through my teeth. “I am so tired of cleaning up everybody’s mess.”

  “Don’t make yourself out to be some kind of martyr, Harley. You’re just as screwed up as the rest of us.”

  “I’m sure I am. But why are we doing this? Why now? Mom is finally getting it together. Dad’s a freaking train wreck, so what! He always has been. Why are we tearing ourselves up? I am so ready to get out of this place,” I vented, my answer to everything, run.

  “Why don’t you go then, and leave me the hell alone! I’m so tired of you running this place down. ‘I have to get out of here. I can’t stand it here. This place is so suffocating,’” she mocked me in a snotty tone. “Some of us live here, Harley, we can’t leave.”

  “That’s bullshit, Kat, and you know it. How many times have I asked you to come stay with me, you and Megan?”

  “Oh, we’re supposed to go stay with you, so we can pack up and leave every time you get tired of some town? We’re just supposed to tag along on your coattails? I have a life. You’re not the only one with dreams.”

  “What are your dreams? What do you want, Kat?”

  “I want to make clothes, and marry my daughter’s father, and have a home, maybe have a brother or sister for Megan. I want a normal life. The one we never had,” she said, completely choked up in tears.

  “I want you to have all of that. You can have it all, but can’t you see he’s never going to be that for you?” I referred to Joey.

  “But I love him, Harley.”

  “I know.” I took her hand in mine. “It’s just sometimes, the people we love aren’t any good for us.”

  “You’d think I would know that by now,” she scolded herself. “Why does it always hurt?”

  “It doesn’t have to, baby.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried, hiding her head in my lap.

  “Me too, Kit-Kat,” I whispered, rubbing her back and stroking her hair.

  Jeremiah Johnson

  Unfortunately, Kat did not stop seeing Joey. I had to let her go or lose her. Funny how we get so protective of our own lives, rights, and decisions, even if they may not be the best things for us. She got her old job back and stayed at home more often with Megan. She carried on her relationship with Joey, at his place or some neutral location, anywhere but here. Fully convinced I was absolutely crazy, he kept his distance. Maybe I was. I didn’t want him around Megan any more than he had to be. Even though her father by biology, what good could he bring her, really.

  I wondered what my life, Kat’s life, would have been, if we hadn’t contended with our father in our youth. Megan took it with a grain of salt, when she saw him, fine, and when she didn’t, it didn’t seem to bother her much. It’s not like he stayed around, anyway. He always had other things to do. By now she had acclimated to life without him.

  What she couldn’t get used to was Dad’s absence from her life. Both Grampy and a father figure to her from the time she could remember, and now he had disappeared. She asked about him often, requesting to go see him. Even considering how rotten he acted to her and Kat that day, she forgave him. She still loved him, still wanted to be around him, and wanted him to want her.

  What was it about my father? He could do twenty rotten things, then turn around and do one nice thing, and it was magically okay. We didn’t like him a lot of the time, but we still loved him. He could be so good, we reasoned.

  For the most part, he holed up like a hermit, isolated, anti-social, shut off from the world, but people who met him most generally liked him. He could be so charming when he wanted, filling a room with his presence. What magical powers did he have that kept people coming back?

  Kat and I pinky swore we were done with Dad until he got it together and came to us. We would be here for him, when he desired to help himself, but for our own sanity, we had to step away, fully aware we couldn’t make him change. He had to come to his own conclusions, currently nowhere near the finish line.

  Somewhere between August and September, he regressed to depression, drinking himself into oblivion. People say, sometimes a person has to hit rock bottom before they can make their way back to the top. We hoped those people were right. He had a long way to go, but I remained confident he would get there. After all he was our father, biologically we shared the same blood. Kat and I attempted to find our way, Mom too. Albeit run amuck at times, we kept trying. And he would, too. He had to. It resided in him to do so. There was no other option.

  November rolled around, and the first snow had long since fallen, the landscape beautifully frosty, creating a perfect winter wonderland. The weekend before Thanksgiving, Cassidy, Tate, Megan, and I returned from an all-day holiday shopping extravaganza. We bought anything and everything needed to decorate for the upcoming Christmas season.

  Christmas at our house, growing up, was always such a dog and pony show, depressing one moment, happy the next, and completely scary two hours
later. We never knew what to expect.

  It was of utmost importance to Kat and me to make our own holidays, especially this one, the best it could be. Tate and Megan, simply beside themselves with plans for decorating, had it all figured out, what they would do with every last strand of lights, and where they would put the big blow-up Santa Claus. Somewhere between the store and home, they became interior decorators. The sun set as we pulled up to Kat’s.

  “Here, Tate, you help Megan with this one,” Cassidy said, handing them a bag from the trunk of the car, as they took off running toward the house.

  I passed Kat’s car in the drive, my arms filled with bags. Tate held the front door open for me. “Such a gentleman,” I complimented him.

  I looked around for Kat, noticing her bedroom door was closed. Setting the bags down on the kitchen table, I hurried down the hallway. “Kat! Come see what we got. You’re going to love it,” my voice dropped as I opened her bedroom door.

  Cassidy followed close behind me, while the kids dug into the bags in the living room. Kat sat at her vanity, attempting to apply cover-up to a bruised cheekbone and a split lip.

  “I hit him first,” she defended, a makeup brush in her unsteady hand.

  “I’ll take the kids to my place,” Cassidy excused herself, rushing the kids out the door.

  I breathed in deeply, running my hands through my hair, stopping at the roots, my fists holding pressure against my scalp, as I leaned against the door casing to her bedroom. “He asked me to leave. I didn’t. I just kept pushing,” Kat maintained.

  “So, if I went to see Joey, his face would look like yours?” I asked calmly, requiring further explanation, my hands now gripping the back of my neck.

  “It’s not his fault. I accused him of seeing someone else,” she began, her eyes diverted to her compact, she would not look at me. “I slapped him, across the face.”

  “And then what?”

  “He slapped me back.” She looked at me annoyed, as if it was acceptable, to be expected. All the while, on one side of her face her cheekbone was discolored, black and blue, and on the other side her lip looked painful, cut open and swollen.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night.”

  “What’s under the turtleneck?”

  “It’s winter, Harley. People wear turtlenecks in the winter. Would you please just leave? I don’t feel like being interrogated.” She turned back to the mirror, continuing to apply cover-up to her bruised flesh.

  “I remember watching you watch Mom in the mirror,” I said, stepping into her room, sitting down behind her on the bed, as I looked at her through the reflective surface. “When she would put on her makeup. You would watch her so closely, taking mental notes.” I smiled faintly with the memory. “Not everything can be covered up, Kit-Kat.”

  “I’m not in the mood for your metaphors, Harley. Please, just leave me alone.”

  “Do you want me to leave, or don’t you? One minute you’re throwing it up in my face because I left, walked out on you. And the next, you’re telling me to go.”

  What did she want me to do here? What should I do? I wanted to beat Joey Harper’s ass, that’s what I wanted to do, within an inch of his putrid existence.

  She pulled the neck down on her sweater, exposing a ring of bruises around her throat, perfectly finger-shaped. “Fine. Is this what you want? Do you feel better now? Poor pitiful Kat, always getting herself into a mess over some guy, always playing the victim,” she said. “You wouldn’t ever do that would you, Harley? All hail strong, capable, independent Harley. We’re not all like you.” She slammed her makeup brush down on the vanity.

  I looked at her in the mirror, my sister. Did she know what she was worth? I sat there on the edge of her bed and the waterworks started, a steady stream. She looked at me, perplexed by my actions. I don’t know how long it had been since I cried in front of her.

  I didn’t like crying in front of Mom or Kat. How could I be strong for them if I was the one crying? Seeing her there, bruises on her body, I knew I couldn’t protect her, I couldn’t keep her from Joey Harper. And I could not talk myself out of this little downpour, my almond unable to deliver.

  “I’m sorry,” she immediately apologized, spinning around in her chair, facing me.

  “It’s okay,” I assured through a smile. She hugged me. I put my arms around her to hug her back, and she groaned with my contact, pulling away.

  She looked at me, shrugging her shoulders as she began to explain. “After I slapped him, he hit me twice.” She pointed to her cheek, and her lip. “We were in the kitchen. He had me up against the refrigerator...my neck,” she abbreviated. “I grabbed the closest thing to me...a broom. I hit him with it, and he let me go. I fought back, Harley.” She smiled faintly.

  “I ran toward the upstairs bathroom, the one with a lock. But he caught me on the stairs. He had the broom in his hand,” she said so calmly as if she replayed it in her mind, to the point it didn’t even faze her anymore. She lifted the back of her shirt, displaying welts and bruise marks the full length of her back from the broom handle. I put my hand to my mouth, stifling the desire to yell out, wail, something, anything to let go of the nauseating feeling rushing over me. I ran to the bathroom, instantly sick to my stomach.

  The next morning in the Emergency Room at St. Mary’s hospital, Kat was delivered back to her room from the radiology department. I talked her into getting checked out and filing a report, leaving a paper trail.

  “The doctor will be in momentarily with the results of her scans,” the nurse said, leaving the room, acknowledging the police officer standing outside the doorway.

  She, Officer Julie Ayers, took the report from Kat late last night. She returned, awaiting the final medical documentation from the hospital to accompany her file. We had been there for hours, since midnight at least. The reports and testing required to document everything appropriately proved time-consuming. But we had no other option. If it took all week, we would go through the correct channels. We hid everything in our childhood. We were through hiding things, covering up abuse.

  Kat finally rested. I pulled the covers snugly up over her shoulders, kissing her on the forehead as she lay there, peaceful. Watching her, I thought of all the times I peeked through the railings of her crib after Mom first brought her home from the hospital. It seemed like all she did was sleep. I remember standing there, my three-year-old self watching, waiting for her to move, to get up and play with me. At first, I thought Mom had brought home a baby doll, one of those that slept, ate, cried, and pooped, because it seemed like that’s all she did for months. Eventually, she started moving, and cooing, and crawling. I thought she was the coolest thing, a little sister.

  “Twenty-seven-year-old male, possible frostbite to the extremities, generalized hypothermia,” I heard a commotion outside Kat’s room.

  The paramedics brought in another patient. They came quite regularly throughout the night and into the morning. I happened to look out through the curtain, and there he was, Joey Harper, lying on the stretcher. I walked outside Kat’s room, standing beside Officer Ayers, making sure my eyes did not play tricks on me. It was Joey, all right, covered in blankets, his body nearly the color of a Smurf.

  “The local Sheriff found him this morning, handcuffed to the flagpole in front of the city hall building over in Georgia, in the freezing cold,” the paramedic continued reporting to the admitting nurse. “Said he drew quite the crowd. He was in his underwear. And in black marker across his back read, I LIKE TO BEAT WOMEN. The crowd wasn’t any too pleased with him. The Sheriff had to reprimand a few people for throwing snowballs at the guy.”

  “We’ll take him in room twelve,” the nurse replied, leading the way.

  “That wouldn’t be my guy, would it Ms. LeBeau?” Officer Ayers asked curiously, surely too good to be true, his falling into her lap.

  “Absolutely your guy, Joey Harper.”

  “Sometimes the universe is too kind. Now, I do
n’t have to worry with you putting something in his IV solution, or finding him smothered under a pillow, do I?” she casually warned me to keep my distance. I shook my head. “I’ll be back to check on you ladies in bit.” She walked away toward room twelve.

  That evening, after I took Kat home, I continued on to Jeremiah’s. As I pulled up to his place, his Jeep sat in the drive. The house dim, only the flicker of candles glowing in the living room window. I stepped onto the porch, my breath visible in the cold winter temperatures, as an all too familiar sound came from inside, my voice:

  Jeremiah Johnson,

  He was my neighbor.

  We shared our childhood dreams,

  He was my favorite.

  I debated whether I should go inside or turn around and leave:

  I grew up a tomboy,

  In a house with stone walls.

  Jeremiah gave me,

  A soft place to fall.

  Growing colder, I turned the knob on the front door, pushing it open, allowing myself in, as the song played on:

  I’d sneak in his window,

  He’d put his arms around me tight.

  Softly wipe away my tears,

  Tell me, girl everything will be all right.

  Jeremiah sat in his recliner, every light in the house off, two candles burning beside him in the window. I looked at him apprehensively, leaning my back against the front door:

  I left him there in Georgia,

  Bittersweet escape.

  I wonder, does he think of me?

  Does he even know I still call out his name?

  I taught him how to drive a stick,

  In an old flatbed Ford.

  He taught me how to kiss,

  A feeling I’d never felt before.

  He simply stared at me, holding my gaze while I remained at the door, immobile, as he continued listening intently to the truths of my heart:

  I never thought he saw me,

  He always dated the pretty girls.

  Graduation came, my time had come,