"Emily Buckingshire, get your butt out of my library and make sure your room doesn't have a hint of dust," Grandmother Selina screamed at the top of her voice from my cozy corner in my library.
I groaned noisily and went to work. It has been just four years since I went to live with my blue-blooded grandmother and I still cannot stand that she acts like she is my mother. My seventeen year old brain told me to stop acting like we had any other choice to live but here. I sighed and went to work and saw a diary. It was an old-fashioned one. The covers were made from velvet felt and the papers were crinkled with age. It was not mines, I got it on my ninth birthday.
The day of my ninth birthday, I was presented a diary by my drug-addled mother. My mother was high on whatever drug she was on and her voice reeked of cheap booze as she slurred, "Em, dear, make sure that you read it and just let go of your cheap excuse of a father."
I was empty. Wait, no I was not empty. I was angry and livid and upset. I hated this woman, when she took me away at the dead of night on my fourth birthday, when she goes home every day, passed out drunk or whatever substance she was on. We were always heavily on debt. She was dumb and stupid. She did not ruin my father's life, like she thought she did. She ruined ours and she could not see that.
Even at the ripe age of nine, I know that one day, my mother is going to get us both out on the streets because of her reckless decision to run away with me, we could barely afford to pay rent and sometimes, we did not have lights or food on the table and she was telling me to "let go" of the past and my father.
At that moment, I just wanted to scream at her, "You're not over him, you're not over your ex-husband and you expect me, a nine year old to let go of her own dad, you're a horrible mother and I hate you, and do you wanna know something? Maybe you think Dad was a cheap excuse, but look at you, you miserable hag, you're a joke."
But I could not say that. I wanted to but I cannot. Because she is my mother, despite all the reckless things she has put us through for the past four years of my life, I cannot hate her. She gave me life and that is a lot to say.
When I got into my room, I was contemplating on maybe throwing it in the trash or just leaving it on the street, but my conscience told me to not do that. So nine year old me just decided to chuck it in the only place I could and that was just a chest of drawers to keep everything I owned.
I flung on the bed and just prayed to the God above. I thought, 'Dear God, it's me Emma, I'm praying that my dad will come to this cheapskate, dilapidated excuse of a house and finally file for a legal divorce so he can bring me under his care.' I have been doing this since my mother ran off with me.
But now, here I was, a thirteen year old. Four years down and I have given up on ever thinking my father would rescue me from my miserable circumstances. Why? It was because my mother is six foot under. I was a thirteen year old, coming back from school and saw my mother, pale in her room and lying there. I thought maybe she passed out again and so I carried her.
As I was about to put her in her bed when she felt cold. Then I looked at her pale face and blue lips like she was choked to death. That was when I went to pay for a landmine and called the police. That was when it hit me, if my father actually cared for me, he would have got me out of this debacle that my mother made.
He would have got me in his custody and my mother would have gone to rehabilitation for drug and substance abuse. But no, he chose to not file for legal divorce and now I am a thirteen year old orphan who had a messy childhood. That was when I finally decided that blindly taking my father's side was a horrible choice and that if I had not been an immature brat, I still could have got my mother into actual rehabilitation and myself into foster care or an orphanage, so I decided to find out the actual reason as a salute to my mother dying.
So I went to the only place that could give me a clue. I took out the book from the chest of drawers and looked at it as if it was an old friend and flipped a page. The rain was beading down on the window after the funeral procession and I was supposed to be pack up and move to foster care, but me being curious of the reason decided that I might as well just read what my mother had in this book.
The diary had loopy letter: The diary of Future Countess Mary Selina Jenkinson (otherwise known as Mary to friends). I thought, 'Mum, what sort of friends did you even have?' Last time I checked, if she had friends, she would not be going to the bar or smoking every day. She would not be on those drugs and involved with loan sharks. Her friends would have dragged her to rehabilitation. Her friends would have talked her out of leaving my father. And most importantly, if she had friends, she would not have committed suicide.
I just put it in the back of my mind and told myself to read this in a wide perspective and not in a narrow-minded perspective.