When I was young, my mother abandoned me. I was only 10 years old, and I had to take care of my brother all by myself. My dad had died from a car crash(for all I know)when I was 2, and me and my brother have been living by ourselfvs since my mother left. There was no warning when she did leave. It was midnight, and I had been awoken by a strange noise. Something rolling on the old creaky wooden floors. I got up to get a drink, telling myself it was only a dream. I looked out the window, and I saw my mother with 3 suitcases, getting into a taxi.
The night before…
“Carry! Stop yelling at me! If you stop, then i'll do what you say, but if you keep yelling, i'm just gonna stick my butt onto these ragged yellow couches, and not get up till you finish cooking dinner. Oh wait, are you too to lazy to make dinner, so you’re ordering pizza again?! What a great mother!” I screamed at her. My mom didn't want us calling her “mom” so that if the police ever found out she beat us when we did something wrong, we would be in the habit of calling her Carry, and not mom. I think she hoped that the police would see her as a nanny or something. “THAT’S IT MALLERY NICHOLSON! I’VE HAD ENOUGH. I'M LEAVING!” Mom said that a lot, and so I wasn't really scared when she said it. Though, when I looked at her, she looked like a psycho. She look crazy. She looked…mad. Mom was never mad. Even when she beat us, she was just frustrated about how she thought her boyfriend had broken up with her. Her boyfriend’s name was Gary.
Gary was a weird guy. I don't know why Mom even hung out with him. He had been in jail aver 2 times, and he smoked. A lot. Mom doesn't know that I know they do it. Sometimes I see them in the backyard smoking. Their backs are to us, but I can see the smoke drifting into the wind like stem from coffee. Sometimes, Mom comes home from Gary’s smelling like smoke and cigarettes. I always ask her why she smells like smoke to see if she will confess, but she always says that they made a fire and roasted marshmallows together. I just nod my head like I agree with her, and fun up the creaky old steps to my small, square, twin bed, tiny closet room, and I pull out the piece of paper that I hid in my old ripped up rain boots, and make another tally to count how many times Mom has lied to me. So far, in my 4 years since i've started this, it’s been 963 times. Well... those are the lies I know about.
Jimmy is my little brother. He is 5, and I am 12. The morning that Mom left, I told Jimmy that Mom left a note, and that she realized how she was being lazy and all, and that she had gone on a long grocery trip to get lots of food. Though I knew I couldn't keep this lie from Jimmy forever. Me and Jimmy didn't go to school. We couldn't afford it. We had no friends. It was just me and Jimmy, Jimmy and I. What did we eat? Well, I walked the neighbors dogs every day, and so that gave me $15.00 per walk, and Jimmy stayed home until I had enough money to buy a stroller for him, so that he could come. I didn't want him just walking, because we lived in a weird town, and I didn't want somebody to pull Jimmy off the sidewalks, or for him to just run out into the traffic. When I did go to buy food, I went to the cheapest store in our town. I usually took a taxi, which took money, and also reminded me of mom, but we needed the food. We weren't going to starve to death. Mom also left us $100.00 for food the night she left.
At least she didn't want us to die, as much as she wanted to get rid of us. I knew that someday, she would come back, thinking that we had starved to death. There she would find us. On the old mossy floors, sharing a loaf of bread together. I would be 20 years old, and Jimmy would be 13. She would come back and hug us. Practically squeezing us to death. Then she would say she was sorry over 100 times, and tell us to come live in new house. She would say she dumped Gary, and got a new boyfriend, who was conveniently a psychologist. She would say that he cleaned her up, and that he helped her get a new job, and that- Jimmy inturupted me. "Mallery?" He said in the quietest voice. It was like he was always afraid that Mom was here and listening. “I love you.” He said.
At that moment, I thought of mom. How she never said that to us. How I was wrong. She didn't care about us, and she would NEVER... come back.