by Cindy Bokma
Grandma turned to give a curt nod to Mrs. Buchanan and Mr. Nealy and then steered me outside, where her old white Cadillac was parked at an angle in the bus zone.
When we arrived at the hospital I saw David’s cherry red 1965 Mustang convertible in the parking lot, parked as if he were in a hurry. Seeing his car parked carelessly sent a signal to my brain that this was serious. My body was hot and cold at the same time and all I could think about was my parents from early in the morning. Where were they?
A doctor in a white coat explained that my parents died in a head-on collision. They suffered serious internal bleeding, broken bones, and concussions, neither of them had a pulse by the time the paramedics arrived with their whaling sirens and flashing lights. My knees gave out and the contents of my stomach emptied all over the hospital floor and the doctor’s shoes. Someone’s arms went around me as I fought the urge to collapse.
“No,” I cried, “they can’t be dead. I just saw them . . .” I repeated it over and over as David and my grandmother held me. I wanted to rewind the day and start over.
The days and nights from then on were a blur. Grandma Wilma sat in a chair, slumped over, her posture defeated; her wrinkled face drawn tight liked a drawstring purse. Grandpa died eight years earlier and my parents’ death was the last straw. Now she had to bury her daughter and son-in-law. I overheard her plans about going into a nursing home. I hadn’t thought about it much but assumed she’d move in here and take care of me
“I have nothing!” she cried into the phone. When she saw me lingering in the doorway, she dropped her voice and quickly hung up.
What about me? I wanted to scream. I wanted to take the phone away from her and throw it on the ground, but I didn’t. I remained in front of her biting my lip, realizing that nothing would ever be the same as it was before the accident.
“Poor Delia,” grandma whispered, wrapping her arms around me and petting my hair.
I cried all the tears I had inside me until I felt hollow. I wasn’t able to sleep. I barely ate. I didn’t want to touch anything in the house, preferring to preserve it all as my parents left it like a museum. I refused to touch my mother’s hairbrush carelessly left on top of the counter in the bathroom or the half glass of water on my father’s night table next to the bed. Anger simmered inside as I watched my grandmother wash the dishes my parents had eaten on, the utensils they used. She ran the vacuum over their last footsteps as I crossed my arms and stared at her, a scowl on my face. I saw my reflection in the window; I barely recognized myself. My hair was unwashed, my eyes swollen.
David and I didn’t talk; we exchanged looks, our devastated expressions mirroring each other. He looked pale, skeletal.
At night in bed, I worried as I tossed and turned. What was going to happen to me? If grandma was talking about going into a nursing home then where would I go? I guessed I’d live with David in our house until I graduated. Hushed conversations and glances from friends and family went on around me.
My father’s parents were already in an assisted living home in Georgia, there was no way they were strong enough to travel to Ohio for the funeral. I only knew them from a handful of visits over the years, so their absence made no difference to me, but Grandma Wilma seemed angry that they couldn’t come see us.
“I can’t do it all,” she told one of our neighbors as they both looked at me with pity written all over their faces. Anger bubbled up inside me; she acted like I was a baby needing constant attention. I figured she meant she couldn’t do all of the funeral stuff, but later I’d learn she couldn’t take care of me.
In the days after my parent's death, friends, neighbors, and relatives who David and I hardly knew came over to the house with casseroles and baked goods. Blueberry muffins and banana breads were placed in front of me along with countless cups of lukewarm bitter tea. I kept staring at all the food, unable to touch it. I was nauseated with no appetite. I watched my brother wander into the kitchen sometimes with sad, blank eyes as he fed his grief, but I couldn’t take more than a few bites of anything.
Rita and Mrs. Van Notti came over after the funeral and Mrs. Van Notti held my hand and stroked my hair. She smelled like cigarette smoke and her spicy perfume. The gesture brought tears to my eyes. Memories of my mother’s touch and my father’s embrace overwhelmed me. There was an empty ache to feel her touch and his embrace once more that caused a pain in my chest that I thought might never go away. I wanted them back.
I hated this new version of my life. Without my parents, what was I going to do? Why couldn’t I rewind the days and have everything normal? I wanted to go back to Rita’s house and look through old magazines, paint our nails, and do homework. I wanted to sit between my parents on our old rust colored couch, reading my teen romance novels and escape into the world of characters whose parents didn’t die. I would give anything to come home and see my mother on the couch watching a soap opera with a mug of tea in her hand or hear my dad’s old car rumble into the driveway at night.
Shortly after the funeral and when the flurry of visitors evaporated, Grandma Wilma told me she could not be my legal guardian because she was too old.
“I’ll live with my brother,” I said, raising my chin so that I looked down on her. I was nearly grown up; she didn’t have to do much. I clenched my teeth and glared at my grandmother who sat on the edge of the couch, tearing a tissue into tiny pieces and staring at the ground. She was going to leave me, too? I shook my head in disgust. How dare she cast me to the side like a piece of garbage especially after what I had been through?
David, however, came home one afternoon and told us that he signed up to join the military and within a week he was shipped off to Virginia leaving me abandoned in my grief. Now I didn’t have my parents or my brother. My grandmother couldn’t wait to get back to her own home and I refused to talk to her. I overheard her talking about me once again and picked up on the words, “silent treatment” and “stubborn.”
Who was going to take care of me? I wanted to die and be with my parents. What was there to live for? Everyone I loved was gone. Sitting on the floor under the hot spray of the shower, I cried. I wore the same outfit every day, and refused to let my grandma wash my clothes. I didn’t make my bed. When my grandma tried to raise the blinds in my room, I screamed, “I want to be in the dark!”
I continued to listen in on my grandmother’s phone calls, picking up the extension in my parent’s bedroom as she talked on the phone in the kitchen.
My Aunt Jill and Uncle Ed could not take me in either; they already had three kids under age ten of their own. Aunt Joyce and Uncle George had just sent their last child off to college and couldn’t see taking me in, even for two years; they wanted to enjoy their time without children. I was sixteen. I only needed a place to stay until I was eighteen.
I begged Mrs. Van Notti to let me live with her and Rita, but she gently told me she could barely handle Rita. I asked over and over and pleaded with her, but she just shook her head and looked at me with her big sad eyes; covering my trembling hand with her soft one, she told me she was sorry.
Finally, when all other avenues were closed and options were no longer available, my grandmother called my aunt in Florida. Aunt Priscilla, who I only met twice in my life, agreed to take me in.
I remembered that she was short, skinny, and pale with a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose and small eyes that were an indiscriminate color. She was tiny in stature, but her shoulders were large and her neck was short, which made her body seem like a badly drawn cartoon figure. David and I laughed about how she looked like Spongebob Squarepants. Her waist was high and her boobs were small.
My chest tightened and my throat burned every time I thought of life as I knew it being over. Done. The final chapter in a book I wanted to keep reading.
I couldn't look at a photo of my parents without tears stinging my eyes. I tried not to think how literally no one wanted me except this aunt I didn't know in a place I had never visited. Florida. Saying it o
ut loud made me shudder.
Grandma Wilma drove me to the airport, but I refused to look at her during the drive. She was getting rid of me and I hated her for it.
“It has to be done,” Grandma said firmly.
I chewed my lip and avoided looking at her.
As soon as I stepped off of the plane in Florida, I longed to go back to Ohio. My parent's house had been sold; furniture and clothes auctioned off or donated. Before he left, David and I picked through what we wanted and now I had a small suitcase full of memories of the past sixteen years, to last me a lifetime—random jewelry, photos, a sweater of my mother’s, my father’s bible with a black cover and thin pages. I took both sets of their glasses and a blanket my mom had knitted. It seemed cruel and wrong that one measly suitcase held my whole life.
The profits from the house went into a trust for David and me, accessible when we turned twenty-one. Aunt Priscilla would receive a stipend to take care of my needs while I was in Florida.
I knew I was not long for the southern state when we got to the car and my shirt, soaked with sweat, stuck to my back. The air was so thick I could have scooped it up with a spoon. The sky was dark, purple and blue, gray and menacing, daring to rain down on us at any minute. Palm trees were everywhere and the predominant color was deep green. It was lush and tropical, but I longed for the comfort of Ohio.
Aunt Priscilla didn’t offer much in the way of conversation on the drive to her house. I wanted to tell David that she still looked like Spongebob Squarepants but worse. Her peach colored hair was liberally peppered with gray and was styled with a severe part down the middle and bangs that marched right across her eyebrows in a thick curtain. She had a good sized gap in between her small yellow corn kernel teeth. The first thing she did when we got in her old Crown Victoria was light up a cigarette and casually blow smoke at the ceiling. The smell made my stomach turn over. Though I was hot, a chill coursed through my body.
I bit my nails nervously as we drove down the highway, windows rolled down and humid air in my hair. I looked out the window, answering her questions with a yes or a no.
“It’s been a few years since I saw you. You’ve grown. You look like your mother now.” Aunt Priscilla steered with one hand and drove with her bare foot on the gas pedal. I had never seen anyone drive without shoes, even Rita’s mom who did all kinds of neat and forbidden things.
“Thanks,” I answered. I didn’t think I looked like my mother at all and I didn’t want to talk about her, so I kept my mouth clamped shut, my teeth grinding into each other to keep from crying.
“Let’s see, the last time I was in Ohio, your Uncle Bruce dragged me to some family thing.” Uncle Bruce was my grandmother’s nephew. “Taffy was a little kid back then. Oh shit, outta my way!” She raised her fist at another driver and let a stream of obscenities rush out of her mouth.
I looked up. No one except the kids at school swore. I could count on one hand the number of times either of my parents said a swear word.
“Now she’s fourteen. I can’t believe it. Where the hell does the time go?” She took a long drag of her cigarette and I glanced at her. Her skin was pockmarked and wrinkles circled her eyes and mouth. She was younger than my mother but looked years older. Like she’d been stonewashed and bleached.
Why was I here with this woman? It hadn’t been that long and I already wanted to run home. I silently cursed my parents and my brother. I wanted to be anywhere but here in this hot sticky place with a foulmouthed aunt who was essentially a stranger.
“Taffy can’t wait to see you, by the way. She’s all excited, she wants to share clothes and do all that sister crap.”
I didn’t say anything. When they came for a visit, she was a sullen, unpleasant kid but that was years ago. David and I didn’t interact with her, but I remember that he mimicked her sourpuss face. I wondered if now she was like her mother. God, I hoped not. I needed a friend, someone like Rita who I could talk to and tell all of my secrets.
We pulled onto a street named Sweet Acacia Drive. The homes were all single story, small, and in shades of pale green, yellow, and white. Green ferns and pink azaleas dotted the yards, citrus trees were ripe with plump oranges dangling from the branches.
Aunt Priscilla’s house was a squat one story with overgrown grass and a big rotting tree in the middle of the yard. The house was pale faded yellow with broken shutters. A carport with a rusty roof sat to the left. I couldn’t help but compare this dumpy dwelling to my split level home back in Ohio.
How I longed to be in my mother’s kitchen, watching her make dinner one more time. I wanted to rewind my life until I could stand by the window and wait for my dad to come home at night. I wished I could reach out and hug my mother, soft in her large cotton sweater, smelling of cinnamon. I closed my eyes and could almost see my dad looking over his glasses at me, asking about school. If only I could answer him one more time, I would say, “I’m not doing so well right now, Dad. Not so well.”
Chapter 4
Past
I knew living with family, even family I didn’t know very well, was better than being taken in by strangers. I could have easily gone to foster care as Aunt Priscilla kept reminding me. “You could be a ward of the state,” she said, her beady eyes narrowing at me. “Bouncing around from house to house. You could be homeless if it wasn’t for me.” She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to express gratitude, but it was hard to drum up appreciation for this new life.
With an aching deep in my chest that was almost visceral, I longed for my parents, my home, and my brother. There was nothing pretty or nice or comfortable about Aunt Priscilla’s house. The walls were white cinder block that gave off a moldy odor. The ceilings had orange water stains that looked like rusty ink blots leaking out in a Rorschach pattern. It was cramped and dark, and reeked of acrid cat urine and stale cigarettes.
I tried to be optimistic; this was a temporary living situation and things could always be worse, but it was a challenge to keep a smile on my face. My room was a cramped box at the back of the house. Yellow stains marked the ceiling and there were dirty smudges on the once white walls. I wanted my soft bed and fluffy comforter from home, not this thin mattress with the shiny, tan bedspread with what looked like a cigarette burn on it. A dresser missing its handles was pushed against the far wall and the closet was only big enough to hang a few shirts and line my shoes up on the bottom. There was cat hair all over the worn brown shag carpet, and by the way the closet stank, I’m sure the litter box was previously kept there. The room was not much bigger than a prison cell and a sense of claustrophobia lodged itself in my head and a dizzy, spinning feeling made me lean against the wall for support.
When I first arrived at the house, Aunt Priscilla and Taffy stood in the doorway of my room watching me as I slowly put my clothes away. Turns out Taffy was a carbon copy of her mother except Taffy lined her eyes with thick black eyeliner and colored a thick line around her lips with pink lip liner.
She eyed my clothes letting me know that she would be wearing my stuff whenever she wanted. Both Taffy and Aunt Priscilla seemed to have some kind of accent, as if they were raised in South Jersey and served hard time in a prison somewhere. Their voices grated on my nerves and instead of answering them, I nodded my head. I didn’t see a shred of warmth or kindness in either of them and again, I found myself thinking about my old home, wishing I could change things.
Aunt Priscilla told me I would be starting school immediately and that I needed to find a job as soon as possible.
“There’s Eckerd’s and Winn-Dixie. You can work at one of them.” She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of her nose like a dragon. She squinted at me through small, cold eyes.
I frowned and swallowed hard. There had been so many changes in a short amount of time and I wanted to rest a little and hang out for a bit before starting school let alone finding a job.
“You know how to cook?” Aunt Priscilla’s voice cut into my thoughts
. She took a long drag on her cigarette, ash thick at the tip and daring to spill onto the floor. Taffy remained next to her, arms folded across her chest, peering at me with beady eyes. She wore a washed out black cropped shirt exposing her belly, which hung over her jeans in a strip of doughy flesh.
“I guess. I don’t really know how to make much though,” I said, avoiding her eyes. I fought the urge to melt onto the floor and start crying. I felt the tears forming and blinked them away. This was all wrong. I didn’t want to be here in Florida with these people, even if they were technically family.
“Well, you better learn fast because I’m counting on you to make dinner every night. I’ve gotta work and Taffy’s gotta eat.”
Me, cook? My cooking was limited. I could boil water and scramble an egg. I knew how to follow a recipe if I had to. My mother’s old cookbook popped into my head. It had a red and white cover and she always wrote notes in the margins as she cooked. I remembered her clear as day, tapping a pen against her teeth wondering if she could substitute one ingredient for another. The memory caused me to catch my breath for a second. I rubbed my eyes and took a breath, bringing myself back to this depressing moment.
I learned that Aunt Priscilla worked at a cocktail bar in a hotel located next to the airport. Most nights she dressed in a short black miniskirt, high black heels, and a tight white top with a plunging neckline. On someone else it might have been sexy, but with Aunt Priscilla’s broad shoulders and short neck, she didn’t look attractive.
From day one, I was “in charge” of Taffy. She smoked in the house and it didn’t take long for me to discover random vodka bottles hidden in the linen closet, behind the toilet, in the carport behind the garbage cans, and under the drooping brown paisley couch.
Three fat cats roamed around the house depositing cat hair all over the carpet. The litter boxes were kept in the front bathroom and the caustic stench that greeted anyone who came in through the door was nauseating.
