Chapter 1
I am writing this now from a place I never knew how to imagine back then. Time has passed, the children have grown, and memory has softened some edges while sharpening others. This is not a story about being perfect, or having enough, or doing everything right. It is a record of staying. Of choosing, again and again, to be present when leaving would have been easier. If you are reading this, I want you to know that you were never abandoned — not in thought, not in love, not in action.
This is how I remember it.
Here I go, yet again. Can I have a drum roll, please? What is this, the third? No, this is the fourth time that I’ve had to begin again. The trip from New York to California had been exhaustive, especially with the six of us crammed into the cab of that Ryder truck, but we all made it in one piece. Thank God, no cops pulled us over to the side of the road on our long haul west to freedom. We have come back to my beginning, to a time that seems rooted in the days of Arthurian legend. A place I called home. It is almost like coming full circle in a jaggedly haphazard roundabout way. I’m thinking that maybe this time I can make a success of my life, instead of the failures that hound me at every turn, clamping on with feverous suction like voracious leeches in a wet and stinking bog, sucking me dry until only an empty husk remains, threatening to blow away at the slightest hint of a breeze. Is there any energy left in my rejected and discarded body? It doesn’t matter. It’s push and push some more until safety can be grasped. The body will eventually do what the mind asks of it. Besides, this emancipation has a body-deep glorious feel to it, leaving my mind at an uneasy foreign peace within itself. The hieroglyphics in my head are now readable, if only for a short span in time.
What exactly is dysfunctional? The dictionary says that it is an abnormal or impaired functioning. If this is so, then wouldn’t nearly all of American society be abnormal? And then, because of the vast amounts of dysfunctional families, wouldn’t it then become the norm? We, the functioning dysfunctional, could then be labeled as fully functioning instead of being attached to the negative words that abnormal and impaired imply.
I remember all through grade school, continuing through middle school and onto high school, that my mother was really never there for me. I would come home to find her usually asleep on the couch, the soft exhalations of her breath causing her bangs to flutter as if a calming breeze were flowing past her. She looked at peace. Upon awakening, she had never asked how my day at school went or if I had learned anything new and exciting. It was always how her day went and what she was going to make for dinner (which was always on the table in deference to our step-dad), and what we could watch on the television before settling in for the night. It wasn’t until I myself had become an adult with the responsibility of looking over my own children that I began to understand her feelings of sadness. In modern terminology, you could say that she had no life. Her universe centered around the home and the rearing of her children; the children having started when she was but a mere fourteen years old. I was old enough by this time to understand that there was something different about her. She never hugged or kissed her children, never any comfort was given and she never sacrificed a thing for her children. I grew up knowing I was unwanted, which haunts me to this day.
I had my first child when I was eighteen, a little girl (or maybe not so little at eight pounds eleven ounces), that ended up being cesarean section after sixteen hours of labor. At least I can say that I waited for an additional four years more than my mother had but with the same results: No living of my own life. One aspect that held a great deal of influence over my decision of whether or not to keep the child was that in Amber, I would have someone to love me. A child of my own that I could smother with a buildup of the years and years of suppressed love that I was never able to show at home for lack of a recipient, and that was seemingly impossible for my mother to show me simply because she didn’t care to. Amber has given my life so much meaning but not in the ways that I had initially, and wrongfully, thought. She is not here to justify my existence, but to greet this thing called life on her own terms and excel. Hopefully along this road the exits and detours will be few and she can learn to love life on this byway as her mother was never able to achieve. She has, however, shown me that I am worthy of being loved because she is discriminative of whom she gives her attention to. I am one of the chosen few, and I feel blessed in a way to have this ability to raise such a magnificent human being from such rocky beginnings. It has taken me twenty years to realize that I am capable of doing something right. The blooms in this once desolate and parched land reach out tenacious fingers to rid the area of sand and grit, making it a lusher place in which to live.
Growing up, I was never an overachiever. My grades in school averaged in the C range. I never really applied myself, thinking why should I? I’ll never get anywhere. And I was right. Obviously, if my own mother could not help me with any of my homework, I must not be worth the effort. I have carried this feeling of unworthiness all of my life, like a Medal of honor. If by some small chance I should happen to succeed in any endeavor of mine, that would be great, but I never looked forward to it. The disappointments in my life wouldn’t hurt as deep in this manner of not expecting any success, this way of carrying my self-depressing shroud about me like a cloak, covering me entirely to keep the pain from entering. But this pain doesn’t keep its distance. It is always closer than you may realize, lurking just under the hem to stab and poke at you until there’s nothing left that you can recognize and call friend.
In my search for love and acceptance I have made some really horrid choices. My first husband and I were married for just under 10 years. In this interim, we produced three baby girls and a son. In the last four years of this marriage, I felt as if my husband had a lover on the side because of the elaborate excuses he made up in his quest to avoid me, but I generally attributed these feelings to my own feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. He, of course, let me foster these feelings of self-doubt and self-flagellation, keeping me centered in a world where my concentration was centered on myself and the everyday pain that suffused my life like an intricate web produced by some unfathomable alien spider. This is the crux of where I failed my children. They should have been the focus of my attention instead of on myself and the inner turmoil that had consumed my very existence, creating walls of stone and mortar between myself and the world outside. This wall surrounded me on four sides and it was piled high for the longest time. There were no stones missing to allow a glimpse through into the outer world, and all was darkness. Eventually, spying a fault line, I labored with bare hands to gouge and rip an opening that I could escape through. My hands were great bleeding orifices and screaming pain, my flesh leaving trails in its wake, reminding me not to return in that direction. I catch a glimpse of the world outside that, although not perfect, has hope in it. I want to leave this place behind me. I want to feel well once again and so with my escape, my children and I packed up our belongings, and broken dreams, and moved out.
Amber had seen my husband, her stepfather, and myself, arguing on numerous occasions, too often to be able to keep track of. It was fight and make up, fight and make up, and when she saw that two months had gone by after our move with no making up afterwards, she approached me and told me there was a secret that “daddy” had forced upon her and didn’t want her to tell about. A secret that she didn’t want to keep, a secret that her twelve-year-old mind couldn’t cope with any longer. She awakens in the dark hours with a jolt, springing upright in bed with a scream issuing from her throat. I find that her sheets are a cesspool where her perspiration has collected, matting her hair to her scalp and in her eyes, weaving towards the back of her throat with no thought as great gulps of air are swallowed. A vortex of emotions is spiraling slowly into awareness, but for now the body rules, the primal fears must be played out.
“Momeeee!! Where are youuuu?!” I am crouched beside her in the blackness, clutching at her with trembling fingers, repeating over and over into her ear, “I’m here, baby. I’m right here.” She doesn’t hear me yet. From experience I have learned that it will be a while before she registers my presence.
“Momeeee!” Her wails have awakened her little brother. I can see his dark outline silhouetted in the shadowed doorway, his little four-year-old body standing vigil against any intruder, unmoving except for the slight up and down movements of his shoulders as he feels his sister’s anguish.
The shudders are lessening. The breathing is becoming more regular and with a final hitch, she cries, “He killed you all. You were all dead, B-b-but not me! He, Saved, Me, For, Last! For last!” There is a final deluge of tears as her body purges itself of the poisons festering within. The two of us are so intertwined by this time that if a stranger were to look upon us they wouldn’t be able to tell where one person started or the other one ended. We sit, her forehead on my cheek, my hand at the nape of her neck, gently rocking as our tears mingle into the single stream as a small form climbs into the bed and makes this confusing mass of limbs even more so. My son has joined us and the Twins soon follow suit. There is further rattling of the bed as my final daughter extricates herself from a tangle of sheets from the overhead bunk. They cascade over the edge, blocking out the light from the lamp post just outside of the window. The darkness descends even more as the final piece to this puzzle inserts itself into its own little niche, completing them and making them whole. They sit and sway in their collective pool of tears for an unknown amount of time finding solace and comfort and feeling the warmth of the body that is next to them. These are good human touches and we are not alone. Sometimes, the darkness can be a considerate friend, allowing us respite from the vision of unbearable pain.
“This is the moment I want you to remember — not the fear that brought us here, but the fact that none of you were alone.”
We have traveled long and far and yet still have many miles to accomplish. The road is marked by bumps and potholes, nary an even surface in sight. There are no signs to signal the way and the path is lost at times in the haze of fear, but with perseverance the way can be found through the thickness of the trees. They are standing on the lip of the pock-marked road as I stumble and fight my way through to them, sometimes becoming entangled in the branches and vines that seek to bind my arms and feet. I see them there in the light beckoning to me, encouraging me with their radiance, their beacon shining to light my way.
Amber was twelve going on twenty-two. She had to grow up ahead of her time, and I know that now in a way I didn’t fully understand then. I depended on her more than a child should be depended on, and I carry regret for that. I wish she could have had her childhood without responsibility weighing on her. I depended so much on Amber, my oldest, to help watch her younger siblings while I worked. It wasn’t because I didn’t care—it was because there was no one else. After my first husband went to prison, there was no child support. What we had came from my paycheck and the aid I received from the state, and I made sure it went where it mattered. There was always food on the table. They never went without.
I bartended nights. The hours were hard on the body and harder on the mind, but the tips were good, and those tips were what kept the lights on and the refrigerator from going empty. I wasn’t there for the music or the laughter or the easy conversations people came in looking for. I wasn’t chasing a good time. I was chasing something far more basic than that—stability. I worked so my children could stay home, stay fed, and stay together under one roof. Every shift I picked up, every late night I pushed through, had their names written all over it, even if they never saw it that way.
I didn’t see myself as strong back then. That’s something people say looking back, like strength is something you can recognize while you’re in the middle of it. But I didn’t feel strong. I felt tired. Tired in my bones in a way that sleep never quite fixed, tired in my head from constantly thinking three steps ahead, trying to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks. And still, I got up and went, because there was no version of my life where I could afford not to. Strength didn’t feel like strength—it felt like having no other choice.
Every night I tied my apron and walked out the door knowing my children were home without me, and that knowledge settled into my chest in a way that never got easier. I would pause sometimes before leaving, just for a second, listening to the quiet of the house, watching them in their beds or in front of the television, trying to convince myself they would be alright until I got back. There’s a particular kind of guilt that comes with walking out that door, even when you know you’re doing it for them. It doesn’t argue with logic. It just sits there, heavy and constant.
But staying home would not have fed them. Love alone does not keep the heat on, and it does not fill a pantry. That’s a hard truth, one I learned early and lived with daily. So I worked nights. I counted my tips at the end of every shift, sometimes right there before I even left, my hands moving through crumpled bills while my mind was already dividing it up—what would go to rent, what would stretch into groceries, what might be left for anything extra, if there ever was such a thing. It was a quiet kind of math, the kind no one teaches you, the kind you learn when survival depends on it.
I measured success differently back then. Not in promotions or praise, but in small, steady victories. Groceries bought and carried into the house. Rent paid on time, or close enough to it. The lights stay on. The heat worked when it needed to. Mornings when everyone woke up in the same house, under the same roof, with food to eat and a place to be. That was a success to me. It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t easy, but it was enough to keep us going, one day into the next.
When I came home, the house had already settled for the night. The kids were tucked into their beds, sleeping quietly, the kind of sleep that only comes when you feel safe. I always felt relief seeing them there, a deep breath I didn’t even realize I was holding released once I knew nothing bad had happened while I was gone.
Sometimes Amber was still up when I came home, a movie playing low on the television, the kind of soft background noise that filled the quiet without disturbing it. The glow from the screen would flicker across the room, casting shadows along the walls, and there she would be—curled up or sitting quietly, waiting in her own way. The place was always picked up. Dishes washed and drying, toys put away, everything in its place like she had gone through the house and made sure it was ready for me to walk back into. It was a kind of care that went beyond her years, something no child should have had to carry, and yet she did it without complaint, as if it were simply understood.
I would notice it all the moment I stepped inside—the order, the calm, the feeling that things had been held together in my absence—and I knew who had done it. She had taken care of things before I ever walked through the door, quietly stepping into a role that was never meant to be hers. There was comfort in that, a deep and immediate relief that settled into me after a long night, but it was always tangled with something else too, something harder to name. Gratitude, yes—but also the ache of knowing she had grown up faster than she should have, that pieces of her childhood were being traded for responsibility.
She was my angel. Not in some distant or perfect sense, but in the way she showed up, night after night, holding things together when I couldn’t be there to do it myself. She carried more than she ever should have had to carry, and she did it with a quiet strength that still humbles me when I think about it now.
If I could give you back those years, Amber, I would. I would hand them back to you whole and untouched, let you be a child without the weight you took on for all of us. And I hope, in all the ways that matter, you know how deeply you were loved then and how deeply you are loved now. That never changed. Not for a single moment.
