OYM Day 40: Poor Girl, Rising Sun Pt 4

I’m back in full force. I went through a good week of not feeling like I had anything to say. It made me nervous. Maybe all I have in me is a few stories about high school and daddy issues… But I know that’s not true. I just didn’t have time for myself and I really need it if I want to concentrate the way I like to.

I’ve had people ask me about this, so I wanted to clarify, but I only allow myself to write each day for a short period of time. Initially, I was only supposed to write for 15 minutes a day. I chose 15, because I didn’t want to get too hung up, or obsess, or make it precious. I just wanted to start and not set myself up for failure. Some days I write for closer to an hour. Other days I wait and watch a few minutes pass until I hit the 15 mark. But here I am. Day 40. Still going.

I also know that I have typos, both spelling and grammatical. But honestly, I don’t care. I write in fragments and I like it. My husband says my 4 word sentences drive him nuts. Sorry not sorry, Daniel. :)

This is just the way I write and I am not being facetious when I say it’s a stylistic choice. I’ll download Grammarly when I write a biography. Until then, enjoy my misuse of quotation marks and over use of …

He told her he’d do it. But he also said he’d quit drinking. He told me to bite my tongue and I told him to kiss my go-to-hell. I got slapped good for that one, but I was used to it. I had to let him know that I was capable. That I could get him in trouble. Caught. Daryl sold everything you could think of. He seemed to know the right people in all the right towns. He also received disability from about 3 different women, including his dead mother, and organized a weekly poker night behind the the tractor supply.

I don’t know why my mother always went back to him. I still don’t. He was mean and ugly. I was the one that loved her. I took care of her. I brought her the aspirin and diet Coke the mornings her eyes were swollen shut. I made the fried eggs and toast. I collected the quarters for the laundry in the special jam jar. But she loved him more. Once, after a particularly violent fight, I heard her say to him that she couldn’t live without him. She never said that about me and that’s how I knew. It was no use. Nothing would change and we would keep moving every year, rearranging the suitcases in the back of the car. With a little less or a little more every time. More when she thought things were going to change. Less when we had to leave quick in the night. She’d leave, take me with her, and we’d pretend it was for real this time. He’d follow, eventually. He’d have his fun, take his time, and then find her when he needed her. This is how it would be.

We had moved about 6 months ago, this time just outside of town. I helped her find the place. I loved to pick up the weekly saver at the grocery. I’d look at the classifieds and the “for rent” section. We were moving from an apartment to a house and I couldn’t believe it. It was small and one storm away from collapse, but it had a front stoop and a big window in the front room overlooking the vacant lot across the street. Mom got a job as a receptionist at a travel agency and worked normal hours now. I attended a small Christian school called The Ark and suffered through being the new kid in a painfully small town for a few months until summer arrived. There were 8 kids in my class and all of them looked wrong. Eyes too far apart. Eyes too close together. Strong underbites. One kid had a knobby hand that he kept in his pocket. I learned that I was inherently bad at The Ark. It made me think of mom. She sang to the plants, because she said it made them grow bigger and more beautiful.

She said sweetness begets sweetness. I told my teacher. Maybe being sweet would make us better. It may be too late for the bad kids in my class, but maybe it would help the younger ones. My teacher laughed and told me my mother was as full of it as a tick.

We ate popsicles on the front steps when it got hot. I got my own bed. We went to the drive-in every weekend and we’d pack sandwiches, bbq chips, and soda. She’d have diet coke and I’d get the strawberry kind. She said it tasted like cough syrup, but I thought it tasted like all the lights of a carnival. She was home to make sure I brushed my teeth and went to bed at a reasonable hour. It was the best summer of my life. It was my last with her.