I Had To Hope
(Hell, I've been wanting to try my new writing style for a while now. Figured I'd do it with a semi-biography.)
(My God it was satisfying to write this. Yeah, I sound really depressy and dopey in this, like, fair warning, it gets REAL sad and borderline 'I hate my life' stuff, which is an odd change of pace, but this is almost 100% true. The only inaccuracy is the fact that some names were changed.)
I woke up the same way I always did that last day, Friday the 3rd. The stench of filthy laundry, my blankets mildewing from the damp that had crawled through my shattered glass window, the ragged, fringed duct tape of no aid. She was screaming at him as usual, my mother was. He was our newest 'stepfather', a Native American man named John Near Hawk, and while easily my favorite of her boyfriends, she still treated him the same. Bitching about her drugs, bitching about when she could smoke again with her friends down at the Eagles bar. "Fuck it," I grumbled to myself, crawling from beneath my damp comforter and dressing in my driest, least dirty clothes for the day ahead (she still hadn't paid for the last time our grandma took our laundry to the laundromat, so I was recycling my clothes.)
After a quick breakfast of water and Cheerios (the milk was spoiled), warm orange juice, some of her spiked lukewarm coffee from the pot when her back was turned to keep myself awake, and a kiss from her, I was off to school. This new school, while I had only been here for a month, was already easier than anything, but i didn't care. I trudged from our wet front steps down to the crumbling sidewalk, the smell of fresh moist newly cut grass in the air. Obviously not our yard, as our grass resembled the ancient National Geographic films about the plains of Africa we watched in physical science class. No-one here liked me, and I was the kid who sat by himself at lunch, sat in the back of the class, swung alone at the swings back in elementary school, but high school was a much different game.
In high school, you're no longer saved from ridicule and scorn by the fact that you're all so young and innocent. The moment you walk through those doors freshman year, you gotta know you're a target, and if you don't, then you're the first one shot down. My own insecurities had prevented me from trusting anyone with my secrets, namely homosexuality, as a high school filled with macho-man jocks coupled with a foot washing Baptist centered town in the middle of redneck hell would mean the death of me if I were to tell them I was for dicks, not chicks. The few people I did associate with were other outcasts, even then it was only when we were forced to do project work. Never did i trust anyone enough to actually tell them anything about myself, or even hang out after school. No, after school was for guitar, writing, reading, and working for my ever loving mother.
Now, I think thats enough of my whining about my life, because i don't want to come across as some whiny, depressed, pathetic kid. No, no, I love life, I just wanted mine to be far from the Hell hole i called home. Anyway, I have a story to tell.
Most of it corresponded the 3rd, the day that started like any other. The school day was normal, and after school i walked home like any other day. The only thing different was the absence of a cloud of smoke in our living room. Naturally i took this to mean she was out getting more drugs, so I flopped onto the couch, pulling my tattered backpack to the seat next to me and pulling out some sketch pads and pencils. "Who's to say she'll even come back this time? Man, what would I do then." I said to myself sarcastically, doodling in the corner of my notebook. I wasn't by any means a good artist, but I'm not bad either. I began sketching out elaborate schemes of what to do in case of a vanishing mother figure, and though the fact that I would be screwed otherwise was laughably parodied in my drawings, I was indeed scared of the possibility. Not scared enough, though. Not near scared enough.
It was then I heard the tiny thud, and a slight moaning from the kitchen.
Naturally, I reached for the nearest weapon, which happened to be a steak knife stained with ketchup sitting on our cluttered coffee table, more clutter than table. Growing up in this part of town taught me to always be ready.
I didn't need the knife. In fact, I don't remember ever seeing the knife again.
She was lying in the kitchen floor, drinking glasses shattered around her, holding a pill bottle. The pills were everywhere as well. I stared in awe at her for a few seconds, her gasping blank face looking somewhere over my right shoulder. It took me a moment before I realized I had to do something. Calling 911 and lifting her to the emergency poison relief position was a blur, as were the police rushing in and around me, and the paramedics, and the family members consoling me. It seemed like I spent an eternity sitting at our kitchen table, as each figure who spoke to me heard what they wanted, whether it was a repeat of the story of me finding her, or a 'thank you' to the endless stream of family members consoling me.
They told me she was dead later on. Only they phrased it, 'had passed on'. It was ruled a heart attack brought on by an accidental overdose of prescription medication. I didn't care. She was dead, and now I had to live with someone else, after seventeen years of being with no-one but my mother, druggie though she was, a loving mother, supplying for me what she could. And now she was dead, like my aunt, or my great grandmother. I couldn't take it. I stood up and walked out of the hospital, past all my relatives, and just walked. Rick would let me stay there. While he was a drug dealer, and I hated him for what he did to my mom, he shared with us the fact that he was stuck in our spot as well; this shithole of a town, with no escape for anyone. Rick would let me stay there for a day or two. Surely he would.
Rick greeted me with a hard left hook. Being unexpected I took it and reeled into the doorway, collapsing onto the threshold and holding my jaw, head reeling. "Where's my money?" He said softly, fists grasping repeatedly, the sound of Carlos Santana and smoke coming from the room behind him hidden by the beaded curtain. "She owed me for two. I kept count." I looked him in the eyes and said with as little emotion as I could muster, "And she's dead now. So too bad, too sad for you and your fucking money." Rick stared at me disbelievingly, his jaw drooping under those greasy whiskers of his. After a moment of weak acceptance, he offered a hand. I grasped it and lifted myself up. After all, to go back from the bottom I'd need those above me, regardless of how far.
That night, and for the next three, I stayed with Rick, in his garage.
"Damnit. Fuck this. God damnit." I repeated the swears all night long that entire first night.
Then second.
Then the third.
After the third night, Rick offered me a job at his gas station. Naturally I accepted, due to the fact that I had to get money saved if I intended on leaving this hellhole. I began a long six months working with Rick and saving money. I spent just enough to eat, and saved every other penny.
Soon after my half birthday, when I was halfway through my 17th year, I got a phone call. It was from the person I had least expected to get one from, and least (as well as most) wanted to as well. My father. The man who had left us when I was two. He had heard of her death months ago but avoided calling, and when he did, he had no idea how to reach me. He eventually got my mothers old contact list from my grandmother and had called through thirty pages of contacts to find me. His determination was staggering. I was struck silent, silent as he asked me for forgiveness, told me I could come live with him, how he had a room I could have and how I could finish my high school in peace, away from everything I had experienced that was terrible and bad, wrong and not good for anyone to feel. After a shocked minute of silence, I stammered an agreement, much out of character for my usual cool, emotionless facade. He was tearing up, i could hear him. He would pick me up from Ricks the 23rd of that month. It would all end.
Was this it? Finally, my way out? The one chance I'd get to leave this town behind forever, and all the wrongness, all the bad memories, all the terrifying nights of screaming, the gunshots and squealing tires, holes punched in the walls, and my mothers shrieking cries?
I had to hope so.