I’m not open to it at all. It scares me, yet I revere it. I have not known how love feels. I hope I don’t ever have to.
Summer, 1994
We were supposed to be on a family vacation out to the Carolina coast, and it was supposed to be my first time going. To a five year old, taking a trip to the beach was the next best thing to going to Disneyworld. We packed a cooler filled with sandwiches, sodas and water, and took a large bag of Lays potato chips and some of my mother’s ranch dip.
The morning we were set to leave, I woke up to find my mother and father arguing, yelling at each other at the top of their lungs, faces red with anger, hands gesturing in every direction. I watched all of this in a sort of slow motion for a while — the words forming on my parents’ lips, the plate that flew by my father’s head, the shaking of my mother’s body.
My older brother Matthew shrugged his shoulders and said, “I knew it was too good to be true.” He began taking his clothing off to change back into his pajamas to go to bed.
My older sister Marcia — Matthew’s twin — turned the music up on her yellow Walkman cassette player. I took the chips, a sandwich and dip out of the cooler and went to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I learned very early on not to cry over my parents’ fights, as they happened far too often and even at five years old, I found that after a while I couldn’t muster the desire to produce any more tears about them.
They continued arguing until the mid-afternoon, until my father went to sit outside and my mother retreated to their bedroom.
By that time I had gotten lost in the numerous reruns of shows playing on the television, episodes I could by then recite like the Pledge of Allegiance that I so often recited in school. My siblings had left to play outside with the few friends that they managed to have.
I will never understand how or why my parents got married and stayed married. They were two people that, no matter what, could not and would never get along and everyone around them suffered. Their families would no longer deal with us, and if they wanted to see us three children, they would come pick us up to spend the weekend with them without my parents — my parents were no longer allowed to even come into my Aunt Cassie’s house after they broke the vase that contained her father in law’s ashes. We rarely went out together as a family, and whenever we did, it ended in what amounted to complete and utter chaos in my child mind, forcing us back to the confines of wherever we made our residence.
***
December, 1995
Matthew, followed by Marcia, carried the last of their bags to the waiting U-Haul truck that was parked out front of our apartment building. When I looked them in their faces as we received the news that we would be moving in with my mom’s parents, I saw an unfamiliar look in their eyes — a look of relief.
I held on to a teddy bear and had my backpack on, feeling cozy in my grandfather’s arms. He hummed a song that I didn’t recognize, but it sounded bluesy.
“You are not taking my children away from me!” my mother yelled at my grandmother. She tried to block the way but my grandmother pushed her out of the way. Grandma had a box of stuff in her arms to put in the truck.
“One of them is going to get hurt if they stay here. You’re throwing plates at him, he’s shaking you, next you’re going to pull a gun out and threaten to shoot him, and what if you miss and hit one of the children? You and Eddie need to get a divorce and get some psychological help, and until you do we’re keeping the children.”
“Are you telling me that I’m a bad mother? You think I’m a bad mother to these kids.”
“No Sarah, you are unstable. You always have been and part of that is my fault for not getting you any help, but I am not going to let you ruin three more lives, they’re coming to stay with us and that’s final.”
My mother tried to take the box from her but she got pushed down to her ass for her efforts.
“Sarah, just come inside the goddamn house,” my father yelled.
“Do you even care that she’s taking our children, you never gave a goddamn about them!”
“I do everything for those children-“ Another argument commenced.
Grandma put her hands up and followed Grandpa to the car and U-Haul, where they finally took off. My mother ran after us until she couldn’t keep up with the speed from the car. I looked back and saw that she had a brick in her hands, but once she lost pace with us, she looked at the brick in her hand. Realizing what she was planning to do, the brick fell from her hands and she fell to her knees, covering her eyes with her hands and wailing to the sky.
***
Almost twenty years after the fact, I’m now staring my Grandma in the face as she lies inside a lukewarm hospital room potentially on her deathbed. We don’t know how much time she has, but we try to make the most of it. So many words left unsaid, but I wanted her to hear a few.
She breathed laboriously, and mustered up a weak smile for me.
“That was a very brave thing you all did,” I said.
“We had to do it,” she replied with some labor. “You all wouldn’t have made it with your parents.”
She coughed. Her IV machine and heart monitor beeped.
“Thank you for that,” I said.
“You’re welcome dear,” she said.
I kissed her, pulled the covers up higher over her shoulders and left.
Inside the parking lot, I got into my brand new forest green BMV and pulled into the light traffic driving by the hospital. I drove for fifteen minutes into the suburbs, parking in the driveway at the house at the very end of the cul du sac. I set the alarm on the car and went inside.
“Baby, are you home?” The smell of fresh flowers greeted me. I looked around the downstairs and found it to be empty and then ran as fast as my heels would allow me to the stairs.
“Andrew?”
I found him in the large master bathroom, relaxing in the Jacuzzi-style bathtub. “Hey, there you are.”
“Here I am,” he said with a boyish grin. “You just got home?”
“Yeah, I stopped and saw my grandmother.”
“Is she doing any better?”
“Not really.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked as he swept a hand over the tub.
“There’s not really much to talk about. I thanked her for everything concerning my childhood.”
“Ah yes, this childhood that you don’t like to talk about; that was very considerate of you,” he said.
“Oh, don’t talk to me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
Like a child. Also, I don’t see you volunteering any information about your childhood.”
“I’m sorry if it came out like that, you’re right. You don’t have to talk about it.”
The truth is that I thought about it so much in my mind that I couldn't muster the mental strength to discuss it with another person. When I think about it now, all it does is cause a headache. I want to save myself the trouble.
I undressed and stepped into the tub, slinking over to him, where he draped his arm across my shoulders. He kissed me sensually, sucking on my bottom lip.
“How was your day?”
“Mercifully short.” He ran a wet hand through his graying hair. “They really didn’t need me much today.” Andrew was the CFO of a company.
“You mean they didn’t need the money man today?”
He laughed at our inside joke. “No, they didn’t need the money man today.” He started stroking my breasts. “I want to watch you bathe.”
I grabbed a loofah and made it extra soapy with some pomegranate scented body wash — Andrew liked the smell of it; some of the suds ran down my arms. He leaned back and I moved in front of him, getting to my feet as I bathed myself slowly. His mouth formed an O as the suds ran down my torso, splitting into a familiar V shape past my hips. I squeezed the loofah over my breasts, coating them in suds. I saw Andrew’s dick poke upward
