When in doubt, farm your kids out
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Fiction
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Moral rights
S.E. Saunders asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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S.E. Saunders has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
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Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.
Authors Note:
While the assertion above states the stories found in this book are fictional, I will include notes where the stories aren't fiction. As is the case with the following story. This non-fiction story forms the body of events leading up to Our Last Christmas.
Mom stays in the city's south end in a suburban community while Dad moves to the north. I'm living amid the war between the North and South, my parents opposites in word and deed.
I never want to visit, although she tries to coax me to go. My father rarely comes to pick me up and never has any money. We speak to each other when he uses a friend's phone. If I do visit, it feels like a convenience to him. He expects me to take the bus for two hours to his place, not thinking about how he lives in the scummiest part of town. Nor do they consider I've never done anything without either of them. Or the fact I'm only eleven. Since they've adapted, they think I have too. They choose not to see how their actions affect me, caught up in their selfishness. Walking from the Belvedere light rail station to his house, I often fear for my safety.
I realize today that it would have been hard to buy him enough time to keep me entertained to stop working on cars to survive. I know I withdraw and alienate others in a comparable way when I'm overwhelmed, as I did back then.
Mom starts dating my new soon-to-be baby brother's father in earnest. She's social again after being held captive in their marriage. She stays out all morning hours and plays darts or dominoes. I say nothing because she's happy. I haven't seen her smile this much in a long time. I've also made a few new friends as well. While she's out, we run through the apartment complex, climb the balconies, and behave like orangutans. The new man appears and disappears. I still hate the new life we've begun despite having more fun. I feel barren, like there's a hole in my family.
As mom's delivery date approaches, we're at an aunt and uncle's townhome a few months later. No one has told me mother has been rushed into surgery because she's hemorrhaging. After his birth, my new brother clings to life in the intensive care unit. This uncle taught me to play chess on a green marble and white granite chessboard. It's this uncle who showed me how to draw and paint. It's this uncle who had so many National Geographics that I'd sit and page through for hours.
Dad comes to pick me up, and I hear a part of the news from him. We visit a barely coherent Mom and a son who isn't his. I listen to her swear for the first time. The tiny scrap of flesh that is my brother rests in a neonatal bassinet attached to so many lines your heart cannot help but leap from its cavity to join him there. I learned his heart hovered at twenty-five beats per minute when he was cut from our mom's womb. The placenta separated from the uterine wall early, and I struggle to understand anything beyond it's a miracle both are still alive. It's the first time I recall feeling genuinely angry that they've hidden yet another thing from me.
Mom continues to recover slowly, but my tiny brother's health takes a drastic turn. He spends more time in the neonatal unit than most healthy children should. I'm there listening when Mom discovers he'll require surgery. I'm waiting with her and praying as I've never prayed before. I always wanted a brother or a sister, but I'm scared to love this one in case he goes away. It's worse than expected, and he'll need to go under the scalpel a few times.
He'll need to wear a colostomy bag. He's so tiny and adorable. His hair is like the softest peach fuzz, and I love holding him and looking at all the other babies in the neonatal unit. Mom cries when they shave his hair off to attach the required leads during the surgery. I am a bundle of nerves, as is Mom, as she smokes and paces outside the Charles Camsell Hospital at first and then the University Hospital.
Dad suggests he will never have a son and urges Mom to return home. He wants an opportunity to be a better husband, but he's still a poor excuse for a man.
We move back home, and the cycle begins again. After months of arguments, I became involved in their skirmishes. He's screaming again, and I've had enough. If she doesn't defend herself, I will.
How can I watch a six-foot-two-inch-tall man terrorize her five-foot-one frame? Looking back, I see she had PTSD and battered woman syndrome. She couldn't act. She was stuck in the fight-flight-freeze-fawn portion of survival mode. She had nowhere to go. The moment he laid his hands on me, though, it was done. It was a minor incident. I'm thirteen. I've leaped onto his back to prevent him from advancing on her. My gangly arms and legs hugged him like a crazed ape as he flailed to remove me. The fact I landed on a small table made the event seem more significant in her mind, but it was the catalyst for action that needed to happen. That night, we crawled out of the bedroom window with a few things on hangers and went to a motel arranged by social services. She never returned, but I would go to live with him less than a year later.