Clouds That Were (Weathered Hearts)

by Addison Footit

  “I don’t really know what to say to that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know anything about you at all, and yet you seem to have this direct line to my soul and know everything about me. I guess I am pretty self-involved.”

  “You have every right to be; your life is pretty messed up. And I don’t really volunteer information about myself readily.”

  “Still, I want to know about you, too.”

  “You know stuff about me. I just told you about my mom.”

  “Yes, and I know that your favorite color is blue,” I say sticking my tongue out at him.

  “See… that’s more than most people know right there.”

  “Still, how is it that you know so much about me?”

  “I told you the first time we talked: there is an incredible sadness in your eyes. I recognized it, because when my mom died, I felt that sadness. No matter what happens to me in my life, there is nothing that will ever affect me as much as knowing that my mom will never be there for me. She will never meet my wife or my kids. She will never be proud of me or disappointed in me. She will never be there when I have a bad day and just need her to comfort me and tell me everything is going to be okay. That feeling is what I saw in your eyes. I didn’t know why at the time, but it certainly makes sense now.”

  “That is very insightful. Seriously, most people don’t get it. I have my mom—she is physically present—but I don’t have a mom in the traditional sense of the world. I know that once I turn eighteen, she isn’t going to be a part of my life anymore But it’s not that I don’t want her to be a part of it; I just don’t think she can be. I have this vision in my head of her dumping a glass of red wine on my white wedding dress. When I was little and still tried to have friends, that fact was one of the first things that made me realize that it was a lost cause. Little girls start fantasizing about their weddings before they can even talk, but I never did.”

  “So why did she have you if she so clearly didn’t want to have a kid?”

  “She didn’t have a choice, really. Her parents said she couldn’t give me up for adoption, and I guess it wasn’t easy to have an abortion at that time. I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she ever loved you?”

  “I don’t know. We used to have dinner at my grandparents’ house every Sunday night. One night we were sitting there just talking, and she said that she wished she would have had an abortion. I had just turned thirteen at the time, so I was having a hard time with life in general. But I think that was the first time that she had ever really said it out loud like that. The thing is, she was just so matter of fact about it, you know? Like obviously, that would have been the better choice.”

  “What did your grandparents say?”

  “My grandma made some half-joking comment about how she could just choose to let me live with them. No one ever stands up to her, however. No one wants to upset her.”

  “What about you? Doesn’t anyone care if you are upset?”

  “I am sure they care, but like I said, if they stand up to her too much, she takes it out on me, so they are stuck. If they help, it makes the situation worse; if they don’t, the situation is still bad.” I ramble on for a bit longer until I feel like if I say one more word, I am going to burst into tears.

  Chase leans across the table and grabs my hand, looking me right in the eyes. “I promise you: I will fix this. And I have already told you I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  The amount of confidence he has in his voice when he says this makes me want to believe him so badly, but to this point in my life, nothing has gone my way, so it’s hard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Chase

  Seeing Tenely the way she was this morning reminded me of how fragile she really is. When I painted that picture, it was the second or third day that I had seen her sitting like that, and there was something captivating about her from the start. I felt drawn to her immediately, and I wanted, no needed, to capture her sitting like that. I had no idea at the time that she would ever see it. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to show it to her in that moment either. After our awesome weekend and right before school was the wrong time in every way.

  Once she calms down I am able to walk her to homeroom. We have second hour together, but first hour drags forever. I just want to be close to her to make sure she is okay.

  All of first hour, while Mr. Ryan is droning on and on about trigonometry crap, all I can think about is her and how she is doing. The last 5 minutes of class I ask if I can go to the bathroom and bolt straight to her classroom to make sure I am standing there when she comes out.

  She seems taken aback at first to see me standing there, but there is a look of relief, too. The biggest mystery about her is how she can convey a thousand emotions in one look. Emotions that should never go together are always right there in those eyes.

  My entire morning of classes that we don’t have together is spent trying to weasel my way out of the last five minutes of class. Thank God we have some classes together; people were starting to think I had some kind of bladder issue.

  By the time we get to lunch, I am just relieved to have some time just to sit with her. I have no idea that I will leave this lunch hour a completely different person than I was before. We sit and talk in between her doing homework at a crazy fast pace and me trying to draw something other than her (with little success).

  Finally, not being able to stand it anymore, I ask “Why do you seem like you are trying to get a week’s worth of work done before lunch is over? Are you an overachiever?”

  She explains how her mother operates with homework, and I am once again stunned by the coldness of this woman and how no one seems to be able to see it. Even after everything Tenley has told me, and what I have witnessed, there are still aspects of her life that shock me.

  Yes, Tenley is incredibly sad. There is no question about that. But she is so strong and so beautiful, and she is truly a woman, even though she is only sixteen. Most girls her age are worried about hair and makeup and what kind of shoes they are wearing. This girl carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, and still, she stands tall. As much as I sometimes hate my mom for what she did, I am grateful that because of what we went through, I was able to see something in Tenley that it seems went unnoticed before me.

  The more she tells me about her mother, the more I realize just how alone she feels. I get the impression that her grandparents love her more than anything, and yet, they don’t seem willing to do anything too drastic to help her for fear that her mother will retaliate.

  The plan to take her away from all of this once again jumps to the forefront of my thoughts, and it takes everything I have to not just blurt it out. I know that it would only hurt her though, and I don’t want to hurt her any more than she has already been hurt.

  And then she tells me about the last dinner with her grandparents, the one in which her mother told her that she wished she had had an abortion. Once I had settled enough to speak again, I asked why they didn’t say anything when she said that.

  “I asked my grandma about it about a year ago,” she replies, “and I think she was trying to help, but she said, ‘Well I don’t know why she said that; she hadn’t even considered it at the time. I don’t think she really thought she should have until you got older.’ Like I said, trying to help, but it had the opposite effect. Knowing that she wished I had never been born only once she got to know me made me feel so much worse. In some sick way, I understood being seventeen and wanting to abort the child you were carrying. It’s scary and would clearly change whatever plans you had for your future. But there is no part of me that understands bringing a child into the world and then not only feeling like, but telling her, that you wished you had made a different, no a better, decision. It was crushing. I know she doesn’t love me; that’s clear enough. What I don’t understand is the control she needs. I think she t
ruly feels like I ruined her life, and in return, she needs to ruin mine. Obviously, I am not a mom, and I don’t ever plan to be, but a human being should not be that vindictive and vengeful. It’s just like she hates me so much that she can’t just let me go; she has to make sure I am as unhappy as I make her.”

  My mind is made up. I will make her the happiest girl in the whole damned universe. Even if I lose everything I love other than her in the process. I reach across the table and grab her hand and promise her with confidence that I will fix this. In my mind I know the plan. I just have to figure out the details.

  “I would love to believe you, but I don’t see how you can possibly make that promise,” she says sadly.

  I reassure her again. I know I will be able to do something, and I know exactly what that something is. I can’t wait to tell her, but I can’t just yet. For now, all I can do is make this promise and hope she believes in me enough and has enough trust left in her, that she can hold out until the time comes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tenley

  Chase brings me home from school that night, but drops me off about a block away so that my mom won’t see me in his truck. As soon as I walk in the door I know something is wrong because she isn’t waiting by the front door to take my backpack like she normally does.

  When I walk into the living room, I see her and some guy sitting on the couch with the biggest smile on her face I have ever seen. Not only is it a smile, but it is a smile filled with genuine happiness which I am fairly certain I have never seen on her face before.

  “Hi sweetie! I am so glad you are home! This is Rick. He and I have been dating for a while now, and we thought it was finally time for you to meet him.”

  What the hell? Wasn’t she trying to date Jack?

  They were sitting on the couch holding hands, and even if I had stretched my imagination to its fullest capacity, there is no possible way I could’ve predicted what was going to come out of her mouth next. Taking into account that she was just interested in Chase’s dad, I have no idea where this conversation is going.

  “Rick and I are going to have a baby! Isn’t that great news honey? You are going to be a big sister!”

  It takes everything I have not to vomit right there on the floor. I am filled with so many emotions that hit me so hard and fast that I have no idea how to react. I want to scream, throw things, cry, hit her, something, anything. But I can’t even breathe. I have no idea how long I stand there without saying anything or moving. My mother speaks again, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Rick and I were talking, and we want to move to a bigger house. You know, this duplex isn’t really fit to raise a child in. We can’t afford to have all of us there. I talked to grandma this morning, and I told her about the situation. We need ten thousand dollars for a down payment on the house. I figured since you want to live with them so badly and I need the money, that if they could give me the money, I would let you go and live there. However, as I have told you before, they don’t love you as much as you think they do, and she said they couldn’t give me that kind of money.”

  More stunned silence from me. Did she just say she tried to sell me to my grandparents? And they said “no”? This is unbelievable, even to me.

  “We have decided to move you and your things down to the basement to make room for the baby, so this weekend I will need you to pack up all of your stuff and move it downstairs.”

  I can’t take this anymore.

  “You, you tried to sell me. To my grandparents,” I say calmly.

  “Yes, and they said no. So now we have to figure out something else.”

  “You do realize that this house that is not fit to raise a child in, is in fact where you have been raising me. Your first child.”

  “Things are going to be different for the baby. He or she deserves the best!” She beams over at Rick.

  “I am your child, too.”

  “Yes, but we want this baby.”

  Rick says nothing, meaning that this baby is as doomed as I am. Obviously a man who can sit there and say nothing as a mother berates her child is not going to be any kind of father. I have a choice to make here, and I am struggling big time to figure out which way to go. I want to scream at her; I want to cry; I want to walk away. I just don’t understand how she doesn’t see how messed up this is.

  At some point I just turn around and very calmly walk outside, sit on the front step and start crying harder than I have ever cried before.

  How this woman, who hates everything about being a mother, can even think about bringing another child into the world is just beyond me. It’s not fair. She has me; why does she need another kid? All I want is for her to love me, and now she is going to love this baby instead of me.

  I want to run away; I want to run to Chase. I want him to put me in the car and just drive. But now I can’t. I can’t leave with this helpless baby on the way. There is no way that I can let her do what she has done to me to another child. I will not allow her to.

  As I am sitting there, I can’t decide if I want Chase to see me sitting there or not. I want him to come and rescue me, and yet I really don’t want him to see me being an uncontrollable mess either. I feel stupid sitting here crying about a baby that isn’t even here yet. My plan is that if I make it to eighteen, I will get as far away from her and her mess as I can. I have no obligation to help this baby—no one helped me—so why should this baby be any different? Who knows, maybe she really will actually love this baby. Maybe Rick will move in, and then when I finally move out, the three of them will be a big happy family.

  Now I really am preventing her from being happy. My presence here is literally preventing her from having the family she has always wanted. I need to get away from this house and now. I get up and start walking toward the park, and glance over at Chase’s house. I am not sure what I want to see, if I want him to be there watching me or if I don’t want him to see, but he isn’t there. So I just start walking.

  The park is my refuge; it is the place where I can go and just be a sixteen-year-old girl without a super-messed-up life. I can just sit there and be normal. Today though, knowing that my mother has chosen to bring another child into her life kills me. Walking to the bench closest to the water, I pull my knees up to my chest and just sit. I sit there for quite a while before the sadness and the tears overtake me. All I want in this world is to be normal. I want to have a mom that I can talk to or at least be in the same room with. Again, the images flash through my mind of girls having their moms help them get ready for proms and weddings. Images of moms and daughters smiling at cameras on graduation day. And when I picture myself, all I see is sadness.

  I see myself, faking a smile for a camera not pointed at me, just in case I should happen to be in the background of someone else’s photo. I don’t want anyone to know how sad my life is or how hopeless I feel. But this is my life. I can choose to make the best of it or choose to focus on the bad. To be honest, it is more than difficult to focus on the good in this situation.

  An image of Chase, smiling, pops into my head, but I push it away as quickly as it comes.

  I know that my grandparents love me. I know that they want me to live with them and that more than anything, they want me to be happy. Even though in my heart I know this, I also know that they won’t do anything drastic to help me, because they don’t want to hurt my mother.

  In some sick way, this makes sense to me. They feel the way about her in the way that I want her to feel about me. Right? They are trying to protect her from the pain of losing her child, trying to protect her from any kind of pain, a sentiment which is in line with how a parent should feel about a child. But it makes me angry. They see that she is mistreating me, some might even say abusing me. And yet they do nothing.

  Don’t rock the boat.

  Don’t cause problems.

  Don’t make a scene.

  And in the meantime, here I sit, not having a life, not having a childhood. Being punished for th
e choices that she has made and not having the option to make my own bad choices.

  Don’t get me wrong. The wrong choices she has made are not the same choices I would make, even if I had the chance. With my life the way it has been, I wouldn’t even think about having sex with someone, unless I was emotionally ready to have a child. And honestly, I don’t know if that day will ever come.

  So then I wonder, what man would want to marry a woman who not only has as many emotional issues as I will undoubtedly carry with me throughout my life, but who doesn’t want to have children in fear of carrying on this messed-up parenting tradition.

  And I think about Chase. How caring he is. How handsome. And how I can picture him with tiny Chases running around playing football in the yard with him, just as I saw him and his dad doing the other day.

  That is a life I will never have. I can’t. In my mind, there is no way that I can bring a child into this world with the chance that I won’t be able to break the cycle. I realize in this moment, that no matter what I do, I will be alone for the rest of my life. This thought, the thought of never having anyone who understands me, of never having anyone who loves me for who I am and doesn’t hold my issues against me, leads me to finally decide that suicide is the only answer.

  I used to think about it because I knew that it was the only way that I would succeed in making my mother happy, but now, I know that happiness is out of reach for me as well. The thought of living a life in which I am no happier than I am in this moment is too much to bear.

  On this park bench, alone, I have decided what I need to do, and no one, no matter what, is going to stop me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Chase

  Leaving her presence after that was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The moment my heart became fully linked with hers, my happiness became dependent on hers. I know that the only way she will ever be happy is if she isn’t anywhere near her mother.