The Boots My Mother Gave Me (34 page)

“Where is she?” I demanded.

Catching a glimpse of a familiar shape, I felt like my heart had been run through a shredder. There she was, my baby sister, pressing herself up against one of Joey’s cronies as he sat kicked back in his chair. Her back was to me, but I knew it was Kat, completely naked, except for one strip of cloth covering the center of her ass. His arms locked around her waist, his hands groping her backside as she gyrated against him.

Joey stood from the couch, as if that was supposed to intimidate me. I punched my knee hard and fast between his legs, twice, as I hit him in the gut with everything I had, following through with the same knee to his face a few times, I lost count, as he bent over grabbing himself. I pushed him back onto the couch, his hands busily cupping his bloody nose and his
huevos.
I hoped I had jammed them up into his kidneys. I grabbed a jacket from the nearest table, throwing it around the back of Kat’s shoulders, as I pulled her off the guy in the chair.

She struggled against me. “Harley! What are you doing?” she accused, like I had messed up her good time. After pulling her off that sleazy-ass douchebag, I shoved my foot into his chair, right between his legs, pushing back against it with all of my might, successfully dumping him on the floor.

“Joey!” Kat yelled for his assistance. He still groaned and writhed about on the couch. His goons looked from him to me, waiting for his direction, as I literally dragged Kat from the club.

“What are you doing here!” she screamed once we made it to the parking lot, still trying to get away from me.

“Get in the car,” I said, my voice low, seething.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” She pushed against me, as I opened Charlene’s passenger side door.

“Get in the car, Kat. Now!” I barked, my mouth painful from my teeth gritting together. I closed her in, hurriedly making my way around, getting in under the steering wheel.

As I looked ahead, I saw a Mercedes with a license plate that read,
PIM-PIN,
parked in front of me. “Is that Joey’s car?” She said nothing, ignoring me, looking straight ahead. “Is that Joey’s car!”

“Yes!” she screamed, as she started to cry. I reached down onto my floorboard picking up my bat, an authentic, wooden Louisville Slugger I had as a kid. I carried it with me because of all the driving I did by myself. I grabbed the bat firmly in my hand, stepping out of Charlene.

“Harley!” Kat yelled after me. I closed the driver’s side door, shutting her in.

I picked up momentum the closer I got to Joey’s car. My hands doubled up around the bat, I held it over my right shoulder, my left elbow pointed directly at his taillight. Pulling up just before I got there with my left leg and following through with all my might, smashing his taillight into tiny little bits in the gravel of the parking lot.
God, that felt good!
Good enough to do again, and again. I had some anger bottled up over my dad, Joey, and anything else that just so happened to piss me off. Maybe it wasn’t all Joey Harper’s fault, but the little dirt-bag was going to pay. His car provided a fundamental tool in my anger management protocol.

I made my way to the other taillight, demolishing it with the same intensity, the same satisfaction, continuing around to the headlights. I wouldn’t want to leave anything out, now would I? I jumped up on the hood, assessing the windshield, and by this time a crowd had gathered, onlookers, Joey and his pack of wolves, even a few bouncers trying to talk me down. I lined the bat up to the windshield, pumping it a few times.

“You don’t want to do this,” a rather large bouncer coaxed, keeping his distance from the car and me. But I had already committed. I released the tension as the blunt end came in contact with the windshield, a crack surfaced from the center of the hit, branching out like a spider web. I hit it home a few more times for good measure.

“You crazy bitch!” Joey yelled. “Somebody stop her!” He summoned the bouncer, continuing to hold pressure to his bloody nose.

“What do you want me to do, man?” the bouncer asked, as I stepped onto the roof making my way down to the trunk, where I stood lining up with the back window. “Let the cops handle it.”

“You are one crazy bitch, you know that!”

“So I’ve been told.” I looked at Joey and smiled before unleashing on the rear window.

“Stop it!” I heard Kat’s voice behind me. She stood between the car door and the passenger seat.

“What do you want?” Joey asked. “You want me to stay away from your sister. Fine, I’ll stay away from her. I don’t need this shit. You’re both a couple of crazy bitches! I didn’t sign up for this shit, man.”

Kat started for him. “No, Joey. Don’t let her do this to us. I love you.”

I jumped down from the trunk, going to her. “Get back in the car,” I said, placing myself between her and him, as two bouncers stood between Joey and me. Kat pushed against me, I held onto her, the bat at my side. Sirens sounded as two patrol cars pulled into the parking lot.

“Two-twenty-two on scene,” a voice so familiar, I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide as he neared me.

“Oh, my God,” Kat whispered, hiding her head in my shoulder as she saw Jeremiah. He eyed me as he passed us by, placing himself between Kat and me, the bouncer, and Joey. His partner accompanied him, making a quick visual assessment of the situation.

“Thank God you’re here,” Joey said, sniffing blood through his nose. “This bitch is crazy. Look what she...” the sound of his voice interrupted by Jeremiah’s hand clenched tightly around his throat.

“If I were you, I would think seriously about changing my tone and my choice of nouns,” Jeremiah warned through gritted teeth, pushing Joey’s head back against the building before letting go of his neck.

Joey nodded in agreement. “Okay, yeah, I can do that,” his voice returning to him. “I didn’t know you were a cop, man. This cat was all-state quarterback, Big Jeremiah Johnson,” Joey reported to his hounds, blowing blood onto the ground from each nostril, wiping his nose on his shirt. “I thought you were in the Marines or something, bro.”

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.

U
nfortunately, 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.