Anger bubbles inside me. I may be young, but I’m not stupid. I know she hasn’t been giving blood every day like Jewel’s mom tried to convince her she was—before she never came home one night. Now Jewel has a foster family. She wrote me a postcard from Tallahassee. She says it’s nice and they have a real house and all, but she misses me and the rest of her friends in Miami.
How could I have missed this? I see her get dressed all the time; we sleep in the same bed. But actually, she’s been sleeping at Cole’s a lot. She’s been sleeping a lot, period. And I haven’t watched her get ready as much because she’s always in a bad mood lately; she’s no fun to hang out with. I would’ve thought she’d be happy she was dating a movie star, but she’s been super bitchy and she won’t even tell me anything about him.
Is this his fault? It has to be. She’s been seeing him nearly two months, and in that time she’s stopped dancing or going on dates with other guys, even the ones she used to see regularly—even the one that worked for a film studio and would always send home DVDs of movies that were still in theaters for me to watch.
All of a sudden I don’t want to see Cole Power’s dumb movie anymore. I want to punch him.
“Mom, it’s late and I’m hungry. You have to wake up,” I plead. She rolls away from me, taking her arm with her. “Mom! I’m serious!”
She turns her head slightly, wrinkling her brow. “I’m sleeping.”
“It’s four. I didn’t have lunch. You have to feed me. I’m your child.”
She pushes herself up to sitting, confused. “Four?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” She jumps out of bed and crashes into a pile of dirty laundry. “I’ve gotta get ready. I have to be there.”
“Where? Where are you going?” I chase her into the bathroom. She cringes like a vampire when I turn on the light. There’s a giant bluish bruise on her thigh, a paler gray one on her hip. “Mom, I saw the bruises and the needle holes.”
She squints at me. “Stop calling me that.”
“No! You’re my mother and you have to start acting like it.” I stamp my foot, not caring if it makes me look like a baby.
She slaps my cheek hard, leaving it stinging. “How dare you talk to me like that, you little brat! I gave up everything for you!”
I stare at her in shock, tears in my eyes. “Oh, Phoenix, honey…” She crumples. “I’m sorry.” She reaches for me, the anger gone from her like a popped balloon.
I notice I’m crying and run from the room. “I wish I’d never been born!” I yell as she chases after me into the living room. With nowhere to go but out into the storm raging outside, I turn to face her. “Then you’d have the life you wanted, and I wouldn’t have to grow up with a druggie hooker for a mom.”
She inhales sharply, her jaw slack. I can see in her eyes I’ve hurt her before she collapses in a puddle of tears on the stained carpet. Immediately I’m sorry. I love her. I do.
But also, I know I’m right. I’m torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to make her stop this, whatever it is, at whatever cost.
I grab a blanket from the couch and drape it over her naked body, crouching next to her. “I’m sorry, Mom. But you can’t do this to us. I don’t want you to die like Jewel’s mom. I don’t want to have to go live with your terrible parents.”
She snorts, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ll never let that happen.”
I’ve never met my grandparents. Never even saw a picture of them until I went to the library a few months ago and did a Google search with their names and hometown. Fred and Ruthanne Pendley, Parthenon, PA. There they were, smiling tightly in front of a dappled blue background in their Holy Cross Evangelist Church directory photo. He was seated, wearing a navy suit and squinting at the camera through rimless glasses, his brown hair thinning on top. She stood behind him in a matching blue flowery dress with her hand on his shoulder, her blond bob curled, the silver cross necklace around her neck lit by the flash. They looked to be in their fifties and were both a little overweight, but what struck me is how normal they seemed—like grandparents you’d see on TV. Not at all the monsters my mom had made them out to be.
Like me, my mom is an only child. She hasn’t told me much about when she was a kid, except that it was really boring and she couldn’t wait to get out of there. But she does like to tell the story about how I came to be. I’m not supposed to repeat it because she says most people wouldn’t approve of her telling a story with sex in it to a kid, but she never wants to lie to me and also she wants me to know how it happened so I don’t make the same mistakes. This is how it goes:
Iris was from a small town, and her high school had kids from a bunch of other small towns too. When she was a junior, she started going out with a guy named Danny, who was a senior and the coolest guy in school. He was a football player and drove a red F-150 pickup truck because his family had a lot of money from owning the big chicken farm a few towns over.
His parents didn’t like my mom because her family was poor, but Danny didn’t care. She was the prettiest girl for miles. They’d been together about six months when he
