The Diary of Bink Cummings: Vol 3 (MC Chronicles #3) (17 page)

“Are you listening to me?” she growls, irritated.

Without looking up, I nod and smooth my hands over my belly to distract myself from blowing up on her dumbass. Chewing my inner cheek, I breathe in an audible breath.

How dare she do this to me. How dare she expect me to listen to her lunacy. This bitch is lucky I’m tied to the bed, or I would kill her slowly. Here she is talking about Big like he’s a fucking trophy to be won. I don’t think so. Then saying my father was the consolation prize? Well fuck her and the broomstick she rode in on.

The rocking resumes its steady creaking, and her voice turns sentimental. “I’m not saying I never loved your father. I did.”

Did
, that word hangs heavy in the air as she carries on. “He was a good man. Treated me well. Loved me. Everything was great. He patched in at eighteen. We got our own place on the compound next to your grandma and pa….”

She sighs, “It all started to go downhill when Boss Man suddenly died. Everybody knew Richard was going to take his father’s place and run the club when the time came. Boss Man had been preparing Richard since he was little. That’s what he wanted. Except some of the old timers didn’t see it that way. They didn’t want a kid running the club. Push came to shove, and there was a vote. Those who didn’t want Richard to be their president were booted out, and Richard became the club’s president, bringing your father in as his second. Young, inexperienced boys running a clubhouse meant a lot more parties, and with those parties came the booze and loose women.”

I don’t know what the hell she’s leading to…. not sure I want to know.

“I pulled back from the club to raise your brother and sister. I didn’t want them anywhere near that life….Then I got pregnant with you…”

And what a fucking mistake she thinks that was. Here we go, the story of how Eva Louise Cummings is such a disappointment. Gee… I can hardly contain my enthusiasm.

“Rodney and I had always said we wanted a big biker family. I still wanted the big family, but I was tired of the bikers. Tired of boys revving their engines at two in the morning and waking your brother and sister up, which left them restless and me dog tired. It was past the point of fun brotherly games when I couldn’t even leave the compound without fear of driving over a bottle of beer and busting a tire,” she mumbles something under her breath that I can’t make out before continuing.

“With most of the old timers gone, Richard was patching in new members after three to six months of prospecting. I was sick of it all. Sick of the noise, the nightly parties, the trashy compound, and the pointless runs that left me taking care of two kids by myself while pregnant with you,” she takes a deep breath.

“Things got much worse when I’d taken a bad fall down the front steps when I was five months along. The doctor put me on strict bed rest. I couldn’t do a thing, including have sex with your father anymore.”

That hits too close to home. My hands that are touching my belly stop, and my chin drops to my chest. I take a cleansing breath. I can’t believe mother went through what I’m going through. Maybe not exactly, but it’s similar. Talk about the fucking twilight zone.

“Your grandma, even though we never liked each other, ended up helping me when I was bedridden, because Rodney was useless. He was always doing club business and coming home drunk, ready to have sex….And like a good wife I always gave it to him. But then…. then… I couldn’t anymore…. because of
you,
” she emphasizes, like the word leaves a bad taste in her mouth.

“By the time I was close to my due date, I’d heard rumors circulating the compound that Rodney had found himself another woman to have relations with. She was some young whore named Amanda…”she makes a disgusted sound in her throat. “After that he stopped coming home altogether. There were times when I wouldn’t see him for five or six days straight. But money would always make it into our account for bills and food…” she pauses for a beat, and the rocking slows.

“The day I went into labor with you, I hadn’t seen your father for six days. Your grandfather was the one who got in touch with Richard to tell him I was in labor, while your grandma drove me to the hospital in the pouring rain...” she pauses again, as if she’s drawing from memory.

“By the time Rodney got to the hospital, you’d already been born. Richard scolded him right in front of me for his preposterous behavior. I remember it all like it was yesterday…There I sat in the hospital bed crying, unable to look at you because of what you being inside of me had caused, while Richard yelled at your father,
‘You’ve got an old lady at home and three kids, brother. It’s time to get your shit together and let go of the easy pussy.’
Richard had stuck up for me, and all Rodney did was defended his relationship with Amanda… A month later I found out Amanda was pregnant and beginning to show.”

“What!?” I blurt, unable to control my outburst.

If this Amanda chick was pregnant then that means….. Oh my God… I have a brother or a sister! I have another fucking sibling!

A tidal wave of rampant thoughts consume me…

Where is she or he? Does this person know about us? About my father?

Shaking my head, I throw those thoughts to the side, and my brain takes a detour to replay my mother’s story. If all she said happens to be true, then my father is most definitely not the man I thought. He’s an asshole. There is no other word for it. He’s a deceitful bastard. Not only for putting my mother, the Cunt, through the seven levels of hell by cheating on her and forcing her to be a single mother. He’s an even worse asshole for hiding a brother or sister from me. Who does that? I mean…
fuck
! That’s really messed up. Why would she have even put up with his shit in the first place? I wouldn’t have. And more importantly why is him cheating on her my fault? I didn’t put her on bed rest; she did that to herself. And even if I had done that, that’s the lamest excuse imaginable as to why you hate your offspring.
L-A-M-E-S-T.

Glancing up, I meet my mother’s misty eyes. She smiles sadly and sighs with palpable relief. “I’ve wanted to tell you that for so long.”

“Tell me what exactly?” I need her to be more specific.

“About everything.”

She’s being too vague. I hate vague. But seeing as though I now have a sibling and my mother is spilling her guts to me, I muster up the strength to keep my attitude under wraps. It won’t do me any good in this stressful situation.

“Why didn’t you?” My tone is light.

“They wouldn’t let me,” she states matter-of-factly.

That doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.

Furrowing my brows, I probe, “What do you mean
they
wouldn’t let you?”

She ignores my question. “After I found out about Amanda being pregnant, I wanted to leave your father. He begged me to stay. So I did. Even though it was wrong, I couldn’t look at you. Every time I touched you, all I felt was pain. Every time I saw your face, all I saw was loss. I didn’t want to hate you, Eva. I really didn’t. But I couldn’t control those feelings. What kind of mother hates her innocent daughter?” A tear escapes her eye and rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away.

Although I shouldn’t feel any relief listening to her morbid confession, I do. At least she admits to hating me and acknowledges it’s morally wrong. Sure, it doesn’t fix thirty years of neglect, but it does solidify the truth for me. And that’s something.

Watching my mother work through a slew of emotions alongside me, I remain speechless. Because…what can I really say? Thanks for telling me that you hate me? Thanks for telling me I have a brother or a sister? Or revealing that my daddy is a complete jerkoff? Or thanks for telling me you had a thing for my man? Nothing sounds appropriate, does it?

Swiping another stray tear, she solemnly carries on, “I stayed with Rodney because I loved him. And with Richard’s motivation, Rodney became a better husband again. He helped with you kids. We had two more…Overall we were fairly happy until I realized how foolish I’d become….. Those monthly runs where Rodney would leave for a week at a time were a rouse. I’d thought Amanda was out of the picture, that he’d finally gotten over her. Sadly, I was mistaken…What a stupid woman I was thinking my loving husband was faithful to me,” she sighs, exhausted, and licks her dry aged lips.

“It took me years to catch the pattern. Then one day he’d left to go on a run,” she emphasizes, chuckling bitterly under her breath, “I followed him to Amanda’s house only an hour away. I sat in the car and watched my husband greet his blonde mistress with a kiss on the porch of her quaint home. Then I watched in horror as their daughter came out of the house dressed in a pink dress. They took her hands and walked her down the steps with smiles on their faces. They buckled her into the backseat of Amanda’s car, got in, pulled out of her driveway, and took off down the street…” Choked up, she shakes her head like it will wash the painful memories away, as she wipes away the tears that are trailing down her ashen cheeks.

A daughter? Did she just say daughter? Does that mean I have a sister? Fuck! It does. I have a sister! Another sister! Holy shit!

My sudden excitement is short-lived as she keeps talking, “I died a little that day as I cried all the way home.” A whimper escapes her lips as more tears begin to descend.

Unexpectedly, my heart goes out to her. Even though I don’t want it to my heart aches a little for her. I can’t even imagine what that must have felt like to experience. Nobody deserves that kind of heartache and pain. Nobody
.

“That was the first day I’d ever hit you,” she tacks on.

Now, that day, I vividly remember. I had to have been five or maybe six at the time. I’d just finished playing at Debbie’s house when my mother came home angry. To spare you and myself the gory details, let’s just say a switch was pulled from the ornamental apple tree in my parents’ side yard, and I was dragged by my long blonde hair to the back of the house. That’s where she pushed me to the ground and with tears hysterically pouring down her cheeks she began wailing on me with the inflexible branch. Over and over, I remember the ‘swish’ through the air, and the ‘crack’ as a fire of blinding pain struck my back, my ass, and the backs my legs. I remember curling into a small ball, hands covering my head, preparing for the next blow that would steal my breath and rob me of my tears. Seconds felt like hours as the pain radiated, consuming me in its entirety, so that I could no longer speak, no longer move, and no longer feel anything but the red-hot brand of each impending,
swish, crack, burn
. Time became meaningless as prolonged moments of debilitating agony felt like they lasted a thousand lifetimes.

My brother Brew is the one who’d stopped the madness by tackling her to the ground. Afterward, he was also the one who’d bathed me and applied salve on my swollen blood crusted wounds. To this day if you look close enough, you can see three of the whipping scars. They serve as a painful reminder of the kind of woman my mother is.

My own anger flares as I replay that painful day. And here I almost felt sorry for the bitch. The same bitch who beat me with a switch. The same bitch who tormented me, called me names, neglected me, fed me last, and left me to wear dirty clothes to school. The same bitch who bought my brothers and sisters candy from the store and never had any for me. From an early age, I learned never to get my hopes up when she’d come home from the grocery store. Brew always got the peanut butter cups, Elise the sour gummies, Jizz the taffy, and Elizabeth a plain Hershey’s chocolate bar. What did Eva get? Nothing. Not unless I was with Big or Gunz. That’s when the spoiling came.

Staring blankly at the wall behind my mother’s head, I focus on the present and tear myself from the past. It doesn’t matter what happened. It doesn’t matter how horrible of a mother she was and remains to be. She’s dead to me. As far as I’m concerned, she can rot in hell. I have a good life with a decent man and a family who loves me unconditionally. And more importantly, a family that is probably sick as hell with worry wondering where the fuck I am. Gunz will never live this down. A stab of guilt lances my heart, and I reach up to rub it. Big is going to ream him for me getting kidnapped. I can only hope I can prevent the fallout; it’s not going to be a good one.

My mother continues to silently cry, rocking in her chair, her hands cupping her cheeks, collecting the tears, and I avert my attention from her soppy prissy bitch sobbing. It’s only going to make me angrier.

What else can I do here? What else do I want to know? Need to know? That’s what I have to focus my efforts on. Not the Cunt’s sob stories on how broken she is for inflicting damage on her daughter, who’s now thirty. Has it really taken her over two decades to feel remorse for her parental neglect? It seems that way.

Venturing back to a previous question she ignored, I break the silence and ask, “Why is it you decided to wait until I’m a grown adult before you told me any of this? You keep saying they wouldn’t let you… they who? And why?” I think it’s a valid question, and I asked it pleasantly enough that she should answer it.

Swiping another tear, she sniffles and exhales a long breath, “I’m sure by now Richard has told you he’d paid me off in order to keep you. Which is only partly true…” She pauses for a moment and sits forward enough to reach into her pocket and pull out a delicate hankie. She always did carry one of those. Probably the same one too. I remember her using it on my brothers and sisters when they were sick, crying, or had hurt themselves. Of course I never had the privilege of it used on me, being the evil child and all.