Drunken thoughts
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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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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 piece is based on events from my life.
With all sternness, I was told never to inform my father where we lived. If he did drop me off, it was blocks away from home, but most of the time, I was on the bus or, as I aged, bike. I recall him calling her at all hours, liquor loosening his lips so he could admit how sorry he was, how he loved her and would change. He taught me that words of love were lies and that nothing could be trusted. He taught me people can change, but sometimes it's best to leave them to it and remove yourself from the situation.
So much more abuse had been visited upon her than I ever knew. She never told. It wasn't until I was older, and we were years away from the situation, that she began to share the more awful things he'd done. The smashed plates full of food that she had lovingly cooked for him cast to the floor. The kicks, punches and choking that would bring the police to our door. I once heard him complain they threw him down the stairs because he dared to lay his hands on her. It is ironic, considering she was unable to deliver my brother naturally. He kicked her so hard that her pelvis shifted. Yet none of it helped her leave, nothing before the incident we would never mention again.
This firmed my decision never to allow a man to treat me as he had her. Nor would I stay with a man who drank. Despite his actions, she encouraged me to form my opinion of him.
She genuinely believed just because she had an unhealthy relationship with him didn't mean I had to. After his reprehensible behaviour, I'll never know where she developed such a balanced viewpoint. I didn't share it, nor would I come to such a generous conclusion for some time. Some relationships are like oil and water, a simile found in writing but more accurate than the word 'incompatible.' Incompatible says nothing about how a couple will always be incapable of forming a stable bond.
In some sense, my mother would move from the fire into the frying pan with her new relationship. Before the year was out, and her lover discovered the existence of their child, my mother and her newly beloved separated. After my brother was born, an aunt urged my mother to let the man know, and she did.
Whatever spark they had rekindled their connection, but this time, there was a significant omission on his part. He failed to mention he had reconciled with his wife, and my mother became entangled in his world as his employee. Here, I would transition from grade six to grade seven, break an ankle, make and break a great friendship and discover how important it is to have your integrity intact.
I always hid behind short hair and boyish shirts, afraid to be seen as feminine in case it would invite an issue. My parents continued to live their lives, and I was called on to do the things that should have been left up to them. Even typing this aggravates the heck out of me, but I appreciate the why.
One such memory is when she sent me to elementary school to enroll myself. She was still healing from the c-section they performed, as well as caring for my newborn brother. She told me what to do and then expected me to go about whatever I needed to do to make it happen. I'm still only eleven years old. Unbeknownst to me, she would call the school before I arrived, but I was left to act for myself in another new neighbourhood, new place, and new set of circumstances. We had moved from our white stucco house to a third-story apartment across from Millwood's Town Center.
Mom told me we were fortunate to get something so cheap even though we no longer had a phone. She took the larger bedroom and my brother the room next to hers because he was an infant. It was here I slept in a storage closet on a cot and couldn't have been happier. Our living room overlooked the central courtyard, filled with grass and a sidewalk. We had two brown cloth chairs which hung on a metal frame an uncle had given us, a small thirteen-inch television with two channels, my cot, my mother's mattress, and my brother's crib. Mom had a cassette tape player she listened to ABBA on. It was her only tape. At first, I wouldn't say I liked the band until I couldn't deny the words in their songs inspired something in me.
"I have a dream, a song to sing
To help me cope with anything
If you see the wonder of a fairy tale
You can take the future, even if you fail."
On the day I was to enroll myself in school, I walked out the front doors, down the sidewalk behind the apartment complex and hit the first school-looking structure. I introduced myself, told them what I was about, and was informed I was in the wrong place. I suppose I already knew it but didn't want to travel further.
Again, the sheltered lifestyle I had led to this point wasn't one where I did anything alone. Let alone going to register myself for school, and now I had to talk to another group of adults and repeat the hard things I had already said for a second time.
I hated this as much as going around the apartment, knocking on our neighbour's doors, asking if my mother could borrow or buy a cigarette from them. This would become a regular occurrence as her habit soared to two packs a day, followed by her typical chaser of a 2L of Pepsi, but at least she didn't drink.