Pieces of My Heart (6 page)

It didn’t matter that my voice stuck in my throat, she wouldn’t have heard me anyway. Flinging herself down in a chair, she dug into her own food with abandon, completely dismissing my presence.

Why did I always do this to myself? Why did I always have to mess everything up? There were so few good things in my life and one comes along and I just throw it in the trash. At least she was trying. At least she’d cared enough to
try
to make it up to me. And I’d spit at it.

I was a miserable human being, and that was entirely
my
fault.

“Just so you know,” she spoke to the table, “your father’s going to be around for a while. You might as well get used to it.”

“I’m sorry.” Choking back the sob threatening to tear free, I ran down the hall, collapsing onto my bed.

It was times like this when it was easy to understand why she hated me so much.

I hated me, too.

Five

“You didn’t buy it.
I
bought it!” I blinked awake, staring dazedly around my dark room, slowly tuning in to the sound of my mother’s shrill voice. “Whose money do you think that is you’re spending?”

“Screw you, Lyn. I—”

“Sat on your fat, lazy ass! That’s all you did. That’s all you’ve
ever
done!”

“Watch your mouth, you stupid whore, or I’ll . . .”

Scrambling out of bed, I threw open my door and found myself standing in the hallway, the center of everyone’s attention. I kind of wished I was wearing something black and badass. Maybe leather. But my fuzzy polar bear pajamas were going to have to do.

“Don’t yell at her.” I took pride in the fact that my voice didn’t shake nearly as bad as the hands I had tucked away behind me, out of sight.

I don’t really know what I was thinking. Michael was a big guy. Thin and lean thanks to his predominantly liquid diet, but still
big
. If he meant to do either of us any harm, there wasn’t a whole lot me and my arctic army were going to be able to do to stop him.

Michael’s lip curled in disgust. “Get the hell out of here.”

“No.” Oh, crap. Now would be a really good time to grow a backbone. One made of steel. “Maybe . . . Maybe
you
should go.”

“
Excuse me?
” It wasn’t the look of shock on Michael’s face that put a damper on my rising pride and rooted me to the spot. It was the blatant rage on my mother’s. “Who the hell do you think you are? This is
my
home!”

“But he . . .” I was stunned speechless. I’d gone out there, stood up to him, to help
her
. “I heard you . . .”

“Why don’t you try minding your own goddamn business for a change?”

“I . . .” I really didn’t know what to say.

“Get out of here! No one asked for your help. No one wants your help. No one wants
you.
Looking at you makes me sick.”

I was the one who felt nauseous when Michael chuckled behind her. Tucking tail, I threw myself back into my room and slammed the door shut.

“What do you want from me, Lyn?” Michael barked.

“Why don’t you try getting a job, you lazy piece of shit. You only owe me eighteen years of child support!”

“Child support, my ass. You only got yourself knocked up to keep me around in the first place.”

“I got
myself
knocked up? That’s rich. Obviously I caused that disaster all by myself. I’m a goddamn miracle worker. You stupid ass. You only ruined my whole damn life.”

That ‘disaster’ they were talking about was
me
.

Mrs. Parks had tried to tell me once that the things my mother said while drunk weren’t true. That she only said them to hurt me because she was hurting. But she wasn’t saying these things to me. She wasn’t saying them to intentionally hurt me. She was saying them because they were true. They were both speaking the unfiltered truth. Neither of my parents ever wanted me.

They
still
didn’t want me.

Curling my knees to my chest, I pulled the pillow over my head and did my best to shut them out.

***

Some kind of rap music blared in the parking lot, the steady pumping bass, rattling my windows. The loud clomping of someone traipsing up the stairs. The steady hum of the television.
All of these sounds were normal to me. Almost soothing in their familiarity. But, there was a new sound. The deep, rumbling of a man’s voice inside our home, coming through the paper thin walls, burrowing its way into my brain. No matter how loud she got, I could always tune my mother’s drunken rants out. Those, too, had become almost soothing when they weren’t aimed at me, a sign that everything was as expected. But Michael was like a wrench thrown into an already faulty machine. He clogged my brain and sent it careening out of control.

The sound of his voice grated on my nerves, rubbing away at them like sandpaper. I was constantly on edge, wincing each time he raised his voice, analyzing every word, every nuance. Exactly the way I’d done with my mother my entire life. Only now it was worse. Now,
I
didn’t have to be involved for an explosion to occur. She was the bomb and he was the fuse. And the match. They could rock my world all on their own and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. Just duck and cover and try to prepare.

The smooth material of the sheet clung to my face, making it difficult to breathe. The air was thick and humid from my exhalations. Something crashed that sounded like glass and I pulled the blanket tighter around me.

The explosions were endless. Loud voices. Angry words. Horrible names. It felt like living in a battleground. I couldn’t understand it. Michael I got, to a degree. He had nowhere else to go. But my mother? To listen to her scream at him, you’d think she hated the man. And yet, he continued to live in our home, providing not a single contribution.

There was a thud against the wall behind me that may or may not have been a body, making me flinch, and the shouts turned to moans. Even worse to listen to than the endless fighting.

My head buzzed with song lyrics, quotes from books I’d read, memories. Anything to tune them out. My fingers ached with the white knuckled grip I held onto my pillow with. I wasn’t in danger. No one was coming into my room to hurt me. I doubted anyone even remembered I was there. Still, my body and mind reacted as though I were. I cowered and hid and tried to convince myself that everything was alright. But it wasn’t. Each altercation, each interaction between them was a step in the wrong direction. Down a path that could only lead to dark and painful things. And like it or not, I was along for the ride.

I was halfway through a song that had been popular when I was in middle school when I heard the front door slam. It was after three in the afternoon. Way too late for Mom to be running errands. Definitely late enough for her to be totally—

Jumping out of bed, my foot got wrapped in the sheets and I nearly landed face first on the floor. I hopped around for balance until I was able to free myself and lunged for the bedroom door, racing down the hallway to the kitchen where the window had a clear view of the parking lot just in time to see Mom and Michael bump off each other as they blundered down the sidewalk, past her car, and around the corner. Wherever they were headed, at least they weren’t dumb enough to drive.

Sinking against the counter in relief, I squinted at the sudden onslaught of light from the bright fluorescents overhead. You don’t realize how dark a room has become until you actually leave it. The air out here felt cooler too. Guess that’s what happens when you spend most of your time hiding under blankets. Inhaling, I ignored the gag worthy stench of alcohol and BO beginning to overwhelm the small apartment. It had never smelled like the ‘spring rain’ the air fresheners I kept buying promised, but I couldn’t remember it ever smelling
that
bad. In correlation, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Michael shower. Ever? The man was a scumbag. And a slob.

The counters and table were cluttered with empty beer cans. Collecting an armful at a time, I set them to drain in the sink while I moved on to trashing the dozens of wadded up paper towel tossed wherever they happened to land. I nearly put an eye out trying to finagle the broom to sweep the crumbs off the counter into the waiting garbage can below. And I didn’t even want to think about what the sticky film was on the floor as I used a towel and some dish soap to wipe it up.

When the glare was nearly blinding, I moved on to the living room and stopped. What was the point? It looked exactly like the kitchen. No matter what I did, five minutes after they got home, it would look that way again. Why bother? I was ready to throw in the towel—literally—when a knock sounded at the door.

When someone knocks on your door, what do you do? You answer it, right? Not in our home. In our home, the door existed for one reason and one reason only. To keep people
out
. I knew that. I’d known that my entire life. So, I have no idea what possessed me to open it. My only defense was that I was wrapped up in in the daze of roaming free around the apartment for the first time in days and all logic simply vanished with the unexpected interruption.

Somewhere around the time I cracked the door wide enough for my head to peek out, it returned, sending me into a panicked frenzy. “Hello?”

“Good afternoon. Is Marilyn Carlson home?” A man in a pale blue button down shirt and black slacks stood at the door holding a clipboard.

“Not at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”
Please
be here to tell me all about God’s love.

“And you are?”

There was a right and wrong answer here. I just had no idea which was which, so I went with what was easiest: the truth. “I’m her daughter.”

“How old are you?” The man was tall and the way he squared his shoulders and stuck his chin out made it very clear he was looking down on me.

Shut the door. Tell him you’re not allowed to talk to strangers. Lock him out and go hide. Any of these options would have been wise. Instead, I chose to do the stupidest thing possible. “I’m eighteen.”

“Excellent. You can sign for these, then.”

No. No, I cannot.
“Um . . .” He thrust the clipboard at me and before I knew it there was a pen clutched in my hand. “I—”

“There.” He pointed to a red marked X. “And there.”

The moment the pen left the paper, he snatched it from my hands and tore off a copy, which he shoved back at me. I stared at my name scrawled across the signature line in disbelief.  What was wrong with me? I let some stranger come to my door and interrogate me? And then I signed something without even knowing what it is? I couldn’t possibly be that stupid. And yet . . .

Across the top of the professional letterhead read ‘
Farnel and Associates’
.

“Tell your mother that she has twenty day to dispute the debt or repay it. Otherwise, we will be forced to move forward with legal action.”

“Legal action?” I blinked slowly at the page, letting my brain catch up, and then back up at the man.

My question went unanswered, however, because he was already hustling down the stairs like the building was on fire.

“Debt? What debt?” Muttering to myself, I shut the door and navigated my way across the living room by memory alone, eyes latched onto the paper in my hands.

I scanned line after line of legal mumbo jumbo, looking for something useful until I came across the Amount Due section in the upper right hand corner. Useful? Not exactly. Terrifying? More like.

“
Twenty-three-hundred-dollars!
Who the heck do we owe that much money to?”

Farnel and Associates was a collection agency, so that didn’t tell me much. The original creditor was listed as a bank. So what? A credit card? We didn’t have any credit cards . . . did we?

Idiot
. Of course we did. And of course I didn’t know anything about it. That’s the only way something like this could have happened. But twenty-three-hundred-dollars? What could she have possibly spent that much money on? How long had this been going on behind my back? And, worse, where the hell was I supposed to come up with that kind of money?

I couldn’t show it to Mom. Not now. Not when our entire lives felt like they were dangling by a thread. This would surely snap it, plummeting us further over the edge than she’d already taken us.

So, I did what I’d always done. I hid.

Scurrying into my room like a kid about to be caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I scanned the limited space for an ideal hiding spot. Where was a good old false-bottom drawer when you needed one? Then I realized how dumb that was. No one even knew those papers existed. No one was going to be looking for them. And no one came into my room. Ever. I could leave them in the middle of the floor and no one would ever see them.

Deciding on something slightly more discreet, I tugged open the shallow drawer on my nightstand and tucked it inside, promising myself that I’d figure it out later.

***

Morning broke with a rare sense of tranquility. A stillness that made me squirm with anxiety. Rolling out of bed, I shuffled down the hall.  Mom was out cold on the couch. Judging by the motorboat sound effects coming through the door, Michael was in a similar state in the bedroom. Not surprising considering how late they’d stayed out. I was up half the night just waiting for them to get back. I’d told myself to take advantage of the quiet to get some overdue rest, but it was useless. I couldn’t sleep until I knew she was home. Safe and sound.

Looking at her lying there, I didn’t feel anger, or fear, or resentment. All I felt was an overwhelming amount of guilt. And a fierce need to protect her. This hadn’t always been her life. She’d been young once. My age. Newly graduated with a world of possibilities before her. And then I’d come along. I couldn’t even imagine what having a baby at my age would be like, but it looked an awful lot like a slamming door from where I stood.