Thereafter

I set my alarm for 7 a.m. because my grandmother is picking us up at 8 a.m. It’s presently 5:14 a.m., and I’m still staring at my ceiling. I didn’t sleep one bit. I kept shifting back and forth. I even tried counting sheep. The last time I did that, I think I was 6 years old, but thank God it didn’t work because lately, every time I fall asleep, I regret it instantly the second I wake up from the weird nightmares I get. My mind didn’t let me sleep with all the chaos going on in there.

The last time I saw my grandmother was 11 years ago, when I was 6 years old. Do you blame me for not wanting to see her? She took my brother away from this life when he was only 2 years old but left me here with my junkie mother and father.... Why wasn’t I good enough, like my brother, to be saved from this lifestyle? It took my mother’s death for her to consider taking me in.

My life is completely getting turned upside down. New school, new city, new home. I don’t know how I feel about it, whether I’m happy or mad... At least my father is tagging along with us, but I’m still not sure how that’s going to work out. My grandmother and father don’t get along much, and honestly, that’s why I think she doesn’t like me much, because I remind her of my father. They both promised my mother on her deathbed that they would get along for my sake, but I don’t believe it. Only time will tell.

“Melissa!” I hear my father’s voice from the other side of the door.

I groan and look at the clock. Wow! It’s 6:30 a.m. I must have lost track of time with all this thinking, but I still have 30 minutes before I actually have to get up. I take my time getting up from my little inflatable mattress. The closer we’re getting to 8 a.m., the more nervous and annoyed I’m getting. To take my mind off it, I decide to deflate my inflatable mattress and put it in the one box of things I’m bringing with me to my grandmother’s. I have little: my clothes, one photo album from when I was in foster care, my journal, and let’s not forget my inflatable mattress. Today is a new beginning, and I don’t like change. I don’t know what to expect. I’m certainly not getting my hopes up, but with any upgrade from this, I’m sure I’ll be fine.

“Melissa!” he says, banging on my door like a maniac.

“I’M UP!” I yell.

The loud noise of his fist meeting the wall startles me, and I know that’s his way of telling me to shut up and not yell at him the way I did. He’s already mad! It doesn’t take him much to get mad when he doesn’t have any drugs in his system.

In one way, I’m kind of glad my mother died because now I get a second chance to get out of this life with them. I get to see what’s outside these walls and what I’ve been missing. It might sound cruel, but I’m not mad or sad that my mother died. She suffered enough for too long, first battling her demons with drugs and alcohol and then cancer. My father was no help during those times. He was abusive, and while she was battling her cancer, he was feeding her drugs instead of helping her get clean. Anyway, I’m glad she’s not suffering anymore, but mostly because she’s not around anymore. I have one less person to deal with.

I spent the last few years expecting this. I spent so much time thinking about how my life was going to change the second my mother passed away. Was it going to be better? Was I going to get along with my brother and grandmother? Was my father going to be his same old self, or was he really going to change like he always said he would?

Now that the time has come, I am more than nervous. I’m scared I won’t like my new beginning. Most teenagers aren’t like me. I have no friends. I don’t want any because I don’t want to explain how my parents are. I don’t want anyone to step inside my home and see the nightmare I’m living in. I never went to a friend’s house, a birthday party, the movies, etc.... I just didn’t have the opportunity. Maybe that’s going to change. Maybe I’m going to have a great start, and I’m going to live a teenager’s life instead of being the parent to my parents.

I hate my mother and father so much for not giving me a childhood like most of the other kids had. I used to see the other kids playing outside, and I used to ask myself why I couldn’t do the same. I cried days and nights, but as I grew up, I learned how to numb the pain and jealousy.

The morning that my grandmother called my father to tell him that my mother had passed away in her sleep at the hospital, I felt this weird feeling inside of me. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a tight feeling in my stomach with this kind of overwhelming headache. I felt like I was going to pass out, but I took a deep breath and numbed the feeling, and it was like nothing happened.

I became a pro at numbing my feelings over the years. My father looked at me with a face full of worry, but when he saw I wasn’t affected by the news, his face changed and became confused. He just left it at that and went to the bathroom to do what he does best: inject his veins with heroin. I remember at my mother’s funeral, her best friend started screaming at me and lunged at me because when they were putting my mother’s casket in the ground, I was talking with my father instead of crying.

A lot of times in my childhood, I just wondered how it felt to snort cocaine or inject my veins with heroin. I wondered why they loved it so much. It was right in front of me my whole life, but something—I don’t know what it is exactly—but that thing always stopped me from trying it. This time around, I didn’t let it stop me.

As my father closed the bathroom door, I walked to the kitchen table, where my father’s little grey baggie was with cocaine inside. I opened the baggie, put the powder on the table, created a small line with a business card just like my mother and father would, took the little blue straw, put it to my nose, and snorted the white line. It kind of burned and made my nose hurt. I remember I instantly didn’t like the high but loved it at the same time. It made me feel weird and not like myself. It felt like I was escaping my body, my mind.

At that very moment, I asked myself, “Why? Why did I give in to the urge? Why did I do that? Why do my parents love this so much? Why did my parents always choose this feeling over loving me? But most importantly, why would I do this again?”

I didn’t understand. I became really confused as to why I wanted more when I hated the feeling. I was frustrated. I took the baggie, threw it in the garbage, and just wiped the rest of the cocaine off the table with the back of my hand.

I have mixed feelings about going to live with my grandmother, but I know it’s for the best. I’m not getting my hopes up for an amazing new start, but I know it’s going to be better than this life. It’s 100 percent going to be a weird change, living with my brother and grandmother, whom I barely know, along with my father. It could be amazing, or it could be a disaster. One or the other.

I open the bedroom door and hear two voices coming from the kitchen. One is my father’s voice, and the other voice I don’t recognize. I’m trying to listen to what they’re saying, but I can’t make it out because they’re whispering. I step into the kitchen. As I walk in, they stop talking completely, and they’re both looking at me: my father and my grandmother. She automatically starts crying and comes my way to hug me. I don’t even hug her back. I honestly feel uncomfortable. Like, how sad is it that I don’t even know my grandmother’s voice? And how sad is it that it took my mother’s death for her to acknowledge me? I don’t like this moment. I look at my father with these eyes, asking him to get me out of this hug.

“Melissa, this is your grandmother! Your mother’s mother,” he says as she steps away from the hug.

“You’ve grown up so much. You look so much like your mother, but you are your father’s daughter,” she says while holding my hands in front of her.

I just stand here quietly. I don’t know what to say. A flow of anger and sadness rushes through me. I’m so angry. I don’t know this woman, and she’s my grandmother. Not wanting to make my father mad, I smile and nod, ignoring what I’m feeling inside. I feel my cheeks getting hot, and I know my face is turning red just by the way he’s looking at me, his eyes wide open with fury. As she lets go of my hands, I step back, still with a smile on my face.

By taking a step back, I’m avoiding any further touchy interaction with her. As she and my father continue to talk about what’s going in the car and what’s being left behind in the apartment, I wonder to myself, since when do these two get along? Every time they have spoken on the phone in the past, it was constant yelling. I never knew that it was possible for these two humans to have a civilized conversation. My father ends the conversation by going to pick up the stuff that we’re taking with us and putting it in the trunk of my grandmother’s car, leaving me alone with her.

“How are you feeling these days, Melissa? How are you handling all of this?” she asks.

Handling all of this!? Is she serious? Obviously, she has no clue what I went through these last years for her to even ask that. If she knew what I really went through, she would know that this is a piece of cake, but I decide not to even go there with her.

“Good, I guess,” I say, looking at the wall.

“Ohh, darling, you don’t have to pretend you’re okay with me!” she says with a saddened tone.

“I’m not pretending,” I respond with a bit of an aggressive and annoyed tone.

“Alright, darling. Did you get to say goodbye to your friends?” she asks.

“No, I don’t have any friends,” I answer.

“You must have some friends. It’s impossible that you don’t even have one friend,” she says with confusion.

“Why would I lie about having no friends? That’s one of the stupidest things to lie about!” I answer in a much louder tone than I expected.

She looks at me with a shocked expression.

“All done,” my father says after finishing, saving me from this odd and annoying conversation that I don’t want to have with her.

I focus my attention on my father as he asks me if I’m ready to leave. I nod and make my way out the front door. As I go outside and walk to the packed car, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I want it to go away. It feels as if my stomach has turned upside down. I open the door of the car and take a seat. Next to me, there’s a couple of garbage bags that didn’t fit inside the trunk.

I’m thinking to myself about how annoyed I am that I have to be in a car for 2 hours with this woman and this man. I just wish I could forget and be in my own world, exactly like how I felt when I did that line of coke the day my mother died. I shake my head, trying to get that thought out of my head. It works.

As we drive, it hits me hard that this is really happening. I’m starting a new chapter in my life, and unexpectedly, one question dominates my thoughts:

Will I be able to be a normal teenager? Be able to love? Be able to trust?