Eat Your Vegetables

This is a story about a young girl living in poverty

Eat Your Vegetables

Introduction:

Imagine the three worst crimes out of all of them. Just try to think of the worst possible things you could do. Murder? Stealing? Assault? Anything else you can think of? Just come up with a list. Got it?

Okay. Now think of the person who it would just kill you to hurt. The person who you would commit any of these crimes for just to avoid causing them discomfort. Child? Sibling? Significant other? Friend? Parent? Anyone in your extended family? Pick one. Got it?

Now the really hard part. Who would you do part one to in order to avoid hurting the person in part 2? Who would you harm to keep your loved ones from suffering? Frenemies? Meaner family members? Maybe an ex significant other?

So what are your top three. Anyone pick Child Abuse, Sexual Harassment, and Human Trafficking? Yeah, those are pretty bad. Okay now on to the second part. Anyone pick themselves? Would anybody here commit those crazy crimes just for their own benefit? I know one person who did. Anyone pick their child, who they supposedly love more than anything in the world, for the third part? Yup, I still know someone with that combination. My mother.

Not There:

My life wasn’t particularly dangerous in the beginning, I can tell you that. But before my mom started using me for money we had no source of income. My mother had given up on having career, so most of our money came from weird part time jobs that my mom had for a month at a time. She had this crazy drug addiction took over every aspect of her life, including mothering.

I didn’t have to eat any vegetables* when I was 7,  but my life wasn’t fun. Tons of angry people showed up at our house, banging on the door and demanding that my mother give them money. She used to pay them off with sex, but she had gotten too messed up to do that. I mean, she looked pretty scary. Besides, I’m sure her debt couldn’t all be payed of like that.

Because of all these people coming over, my mother was out a lot. She told me that she was trying to scrape together some extra money. While she was gone, people rarely came by. One time, however, a someone started banging on the door and screaming for my her to open up. I had no idea who they were, and they wouldn’t go away, so I hid under my mattress and pretended I wasn't there. 

I imagined that I lived far away, so far away that my mother and the angry people wouldn’t be able to find me no matter how hard they looked. I closed my eyes and dreamed up a new family, a new one each time. There were always two parents and many siblings. Sometimes it was sunny and sometimes it snowed. There were times when the weather wasn’t noticeable, but each time there was a happy family with me in it. My mother was never, ever there.

*My mother’s idea of a cutesy code name for a BJThe Store:

The Store:

There was really only one non-gas station store in my neighborhood that sold food. It was technically a liquor store, but I always just thought of it as the store. It had alcohol, soda, candy, snacks, cereal, cigarettes, and sometimes ice cream. I liked going there because if my mother was in a good mood she gave me a dollar and I could get some candy or bubble gum. But my main errand was to get my mom cigarettes. When I was little, like 5, this guy worked there who would always just give them to me when I payed. But two years later this policy where you couldn’t sell tobacco to minors started to be taken seriously. They hired an old women who refused to sell me the cigarettes, even though I obviously wasn’t going to smoke them. 

“Mother, they won’t sell the cigarettes to me anymore.”

“This generation is f*****g up my life. Why not?”

“The lady isn’t my generation, she’s old. And she says its the law.”

“Steal them.”

“Thats even more against the law. And don’t they check for those things?”

“Hide it in your underwear.”

“Why?”

“They can’t check there.”

“How come?”

“Pedophilia you dumb a*s.”

Ironic, Right?

DUI: 

My mother has only gotten two DUI’s that I know of. The first one happened when I was seven, and it was definitely one of the top five scariest things that happened to me. It was really late. Past midnight I think. I knew something was up when I got a phone call. We never got phone calls. I was just surprised that the phone bill was paid.  At first I didn’t answer it. Then on the last ring, curiosity got the best of me and I answered it. 

“Naia, it’s your mother. Shut up. Seriously, don’t say a word. Someone is coming to the house to pick you up. I want you to listen very carefully because you can’t f**k this up. Go to the cabinet under the sink and take out the money. In a few minutes Sean is coming over to get you. I want you to give them the money and get in the car with them. He’s taking you to the jail. When the person at the desk asks, say you’re his daughter and that I’m his wife. Now this part is important: take $80 dollars out of the envelope and stash the rest somewhere in the house. Only give him 80. He’s going to ask for more but say that’s all you have. No matter what. Got it?”

“Yes”

“Alright, I have to hang up.”

My heart was racing. I could feel it all over my body. I waited for his to show up. Someone finally knocked on the door. I got up to answer it and, sure enough, to way a guy. 

“Are you Naia?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Wheres the money?”

“Um… hang on.”

I ran back inside and grabbed $80 out of the the envelope.

“Here.”

“You’re twenty short.”

“That’s all we have.”

“You sure? Cuz I hate liars.”

“I-I-I’m sure.”

“Whatever. I can’t do anything to you anyway since you’re like five.”

I was seven and way to scared to correct him.

“Lets go.”

I followed him to a beat up yellow car with a cracked windshield. We got in.

“What’s our last name?”

“Huh?”

“Aren’t we pretending to be a family?”

“Um… It’s Colver.”

We didn’t talk for the rest of the way. When we got there her said one more thing: “act natural.”

I don’t think I acted natural. I was too nervous to act anything. He talked to the security guy at the front dest and they brought my mother in. She hugged him, briefly acknowledged me, and we went back to the car. This time I sat in the back.

“You promised me one hundred dollars. I only got eighty. You still owe me twenty.”

“I can do math you idiot.”

“So wheres the twenty.”

“I’ll give you something worth more than twenty.”

“You mean…”

“Naia, wait outside.”

I got out of the car. What followed was sex, even though I didn’t know at the time. When I got back in nobody was arguing. He dropped us off and drove away. My mother gave me a piece of motherly advice:

“If you’re going to drive drunk, be prepared to f**k your way out of a DUI.”

Don’t Sweat It:

You know the little things that kids blow way out of proportion? Like a splinter or small scrape or something? The things that freak out the kids, which freaks out the parents, and freaks out the kids more? That never happened to me. I remember being in class when a kid fell out of his chair and got a little scratch on his wrist. He started crying and a teacher rushed over to him and put a band aid on the cut. The thing is, she didn’t put numbing cream on it, but he stopped crying anyway. The second she started making a big fuss over him he magically felt better. I was confused. Would screaming and crying over a little cut make my mom pay attention to me? Was that all it took? 

So when I got home screamed. 

“Ow! It hurts so bad! Mother it hurts so bad! Ow!”

Nothing happened.

“Mother? Mother! Ow Ow Ow”

Silence.

“Mother”

“What?”

“Mother I fell and-“

“Are you f*****g kidding me?”

“Mother it hurts-“

“Are. You. F*****g. Kidding?”

“I-“

“Shut the f**k up you good for nothing c**t! You just cost me a client, you know that? Guess we won’t be eating for the next few days, now will we? I shouldn’t have fucked your good for nothing father five years ago. You get it all from him, you know that? Your attitude, whininess, everything.”

“But I’m seven.”

‘What?”

“You said five years ago and I’m seven.”

“You don’t think I can count you little b***h?”

“I just-“

Her hand hit my face and it stung for a while. It really, really hurt. But I didn’t cry or scream because we all know what my mother does when I do.

Good Mood:

Sometimes my mom would be in a really, really good mood. Usually she wasn’t, but everyone in a while she was. I know now that she was just really high that day, but when I was 8 I just thought it was one of her good days. I loved good days. Those were the days when she wouldn’t yell or smoke or anything. But what I liked most about them was that she was more like a ghost than a person. I could ask her for just about anything. If I said I needed something and she didn’t respond with insults, I took it as a yes. I would usually just ask for candy, but once I asked for something big. 

This one time she was really out of it, and I needed some money for school. We were doing this thing in our class if each kid got ten dollars to bring in, we would get pizza for the day. Nobody wanted to be the kid who didn’t bring their money, especially not me. Whoever it was would probably get beat up and there was no way I could hold my own in a fight. Especially back then when I weighed like 50 pounds. So I looked under the cabinet, which is where she kept her money when she had it. I found $64 taped to the cabinet’s top. I guess you would call it the cabinet’s ceiling. I took $10 and looked for a place to hide it. I knew I couldn’t risk leaving it around the house, even if I hid it, so I just kept it with me all day.

The next morning I left the house as soon as I woke up. I waited at the bus stop for a few hours. When the bus finally showed up I had finished my entire math workbook. Most of it was probably wrong, but I didn’t care. When I got to school the teacher asked for money and only four kids out of the 30 in my homeroom, including me, brought $10. My teacher said it was plenty and ordered two cheese pizzas. I had just done hours of math and it took me until then to figure it out. 30 kids times $10 each is $300. Who needs $300 for pizza? Most people in that room probably hadn’t seen that much money in their life.

The First Time:

“Get out of bed we’re trying something new today.”

“Why?”

“Will you shut up and get to the little room!”

“Okay but-”

“No buts. I’m your mother and you will do what I say.”

“Now what?”

“Get in and wait.”

“You can come in!”

“What the hell is that girl doing here?”

“She’s the one I told you about.”

“No way she’s like seven!”

“Eight, and we agreed to do this.”

“But-”

“Close your eyes. Naia, suck when I say go.”

“On what?”

“You are so f*****g naive, aren’t you?”

“I just-“

“Seriously, just suck on the private part when I say to.”

Side Effects:

“Where is it? Where is it? Where the f**k is it?”

My mother stood there rifling through the trash for hours. She just kept shouting “Where is it” and digging through our garbage. I thought it was a joke after a while. It wasn’t. 

“Where is it?”

I never really understood my mother’s drug addiction. I didn’t even think these things were out of the ordinary. Didn’t all adults have a breakdown like this every once in a while? No. Normal parents might yell at their kids and break down crying at worst. But this? It was too bizarre not to have been caused by drugs.

“Where is it? Where Where Where?”

A car came by and she jumped behind the trash can. I just sat outside, to scared to come out. To confused to get it. To young to even begin to comprehend why this was happening. I just watched her out the window. Eventually I got bored and went to my room to read ad daydream.

She came into my an hour later.

“Where did you put it?”

I had never seen that look in her eyes before. She grabbed my shirt and dragged me off of my mattress. I didn’t know what she was talking about, let alone where “it” was. 

“I’m not messing around you little f****r! What did you do with it? It was pure, and you went and got your filthy hands all over it! That cost me a fortune! All of those clients! You’re going to pay for this. Double vegetables for as long as it takes to repay me! And then some for lying you b***h!”

She let go of my shirt, but kind of shoved me while she did that so I fell backwards. I was only eight and, like I said, had no idea that she was talking about drugs. She came in and told me she found it on her dresser. So there you go. I don’t take her precious drugs. It was like in sitcoms, when the parent is overwhelmed and loses their keys, only to realize that they were in their hand the whole time. Except, you know,  different. 

Shoplifted:

I kind of became a pro at taking things from the store. Without paying. Shoplifting, thievery, stealing, whatever. I was good at it. And thats a good thing too, since a lot of my food came form there. Food I definitely couldn’t afford. Yes, I know its a sad thing to be bragging about. But seriously by the time I was eight you could drop me off at a department store with a dollar for water, come back in a half hour, pawn everything I took, and come out if the whole thing with ten dollars or more. We didn’t have a department store by us though. Just the store. That doesn’t mean we never went. In fact, we pulled off a department store mini-heist once. It was like something out of a movie: a mother/daughter crime duo steals from a department store to put food drugs on the table. Except a lot less awesome and a lot more depressing. Here’s how it actually happened:

We took the bus to Target and got off a few blocks away from it. My mother was holding the back of my neck the whole time. Not in a protective way, more of a controlling way. She told me the plan and sent me inside. I went in with a family, walking behind them so it would look like we were together but they wouldn’t see me. I waited by the toy aisle until for my mother, just like she said. She walked past it and I followed her to the jewelry area. She was holding a backpack that she obviously stole off the rack. She looked around, pointed to a Target employee, and told me to ask him where the toys were. I did. When I went back to the jewelry area she handed me the backpack and told me to look around at the kids clothes area by the cash register. I took the backpack. It was a lot heavier but I didn’t look inside because it would have looked suspicious. 

I walked over to the clothes area and browsed in the girls section. I browsed for a little bit. I seemed to be coming back to this one dress a lot. It was orange on the skirt part of it, but it had little white polka dots all over it. Except for the top part, which was a denim tie-up shirt. It looked kind of like a skirt and shirt but they were definitely connected. It was on the rack, but above it there was a picture of a model wearing it. She was laughing with her friends. She looked happy. 

Ten minutes later my mother came back, carrying a plastic target bag with cereal in it. I was still looking at the dress. Se smacked my hand away from the soft skirt and told me to listen. She pointed to a family and told me to follow them out of the store and keep walking out, even if the alarms went off. I was nervous, but not that nervous. I had done it at the store plenty of times. I followed a family out and, sure enough, the alarms went off. I kept walking. The security guard stopped my mother and she showed him the receipt, proving that she bought the cereal. He were too wrapped up in checking my mothers stuff to stop me, or the family I was pretending to be a part of. He decided that it had gone off on accident and left. My mother met outside and she gave me a dollar for a bus ride home. I didn’t ask where she was going. She was private about stuff like that. I did ask her how she thought this whole thing up though. She said she saw it in a movie. I’m not surprised. She isn’t that smart.

I understood how she pulled off most of it. Distracting the security guard, leaving and entering separately, actually buying something, and leaving the store quickly when the alarm went off before the security guard had time to check everyone bags. But it took me a while to figure out how my mother knew that they would check her bags instead of mine. What if they saw me and wanted to check my backpack, completely ignoring my mother? What if the security guard saw all of the stuff in my backpack, which I obviously didn’t have a receipt for, and realized it was stolen? How did she know that they would stop her? Well, here’s your answer: they didn’t. They just as easily could have stopped me and found the stolen jewelry. The thing is, she planned it so that even if it went wrong and the security checked my bag, she wouldn’t have gotten into trouble. She would have walked out of Target, probably a little upset that she didn’t have the jewelry, and run off to wherever she used to go. I one the other hand, would be in a lot of trouble if they had stopped me. She didn’t care though. I mean, she put my safety and reputation on the line instead of her own, of course she didn’t care. What do you expect though, considering everything else she’s done?

Stroke of Luck:

I used to believe in almost every superstition. My therapist thinks that it’s because my life had no order and I wanted to create some, kind of like when people created gods to explain the weather. I wasn’t that focused on walking under ladders or knocking on wood or anything, mostly just the ones all little kids like. Rainbows, 4-leaf clovers, pennies, ect. One of my favorite  things to believe in was that pennies bring good luck. I never threw the pennies into fountains, I just saved them in my “luck box.” My luck box was, as cliche as this is, an old lucky charms cereal box. I would put all of the pennies I found on the street into the box and hide it in my room. Then, whenever someone came to my door and started screaming and fighting with my mother, I would wish for them to stop and blow on the pennies, as if they were the birthday candles I never had.

They usually didn’t go away when I wished for it, but sometimes they would by coincidence. Based on those few times alone, I was convinced that it works. I didn't even consider most of the fights, when they kept on screaming. I only seemed to remember on the times they actually left. Maybe I was trying to find order in my life.

Anyways, the pennies were only part of my obsession with luck. I would get really excited over rainbows, and I looked for 4-leaf clovers all the time. Well, not all the time, but whenever I saw a clover growing in the sidewalk cracks. I never found a real four leaf clover, but one time I got close. Close enough, anyway. 

I was at the store and there was another girl there with her mother. I watched her buy a soda, a sprite I think. As she walked out the door something fell out of her pocket. I thought that it was money, so I rushed over to pick it up. It was green, but it wasn’t money. It was one of those rubber band bracelets that was shaped like an animal or something. It was kind of tangled, so I stretched it out. It was a 4-leaf clover.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I had just won the lottery. I didn’t even take any snacks in my underwear, I went straight to my house and swung the door open, to find my mother and a man standing in the main room. 

“Naia, time to eat your vegetables.”

“But mom, I-“

“You already kept this man waiting. Hurry up!”

“I need to go to my room for-“

“I don’t care. Get in the little room.”

I wished and wished as hard as I could.

Caught:

I only got caught stealing from the store once. You see, I was nine at the time and we were going through a rough patch with money. My mother couldn’t even buy cigarettes. I couldn’t buy candy or snacks to feed myself. I know, I know, why didn’t I just steal?  Well, I had a system to make sure I wouldn’t get caught. I would buy one thing, but steal three or four things. That way I didn’t look suspicious. But this time I couldn’t even find a quarter for a gum ball. 

So later that day I went to the store and looked around for a while. I didn’t actually plan on buying anything, I just wanted to seem like I was. I only took two small bags of pretzels. That’s it. But the guy at the counter saw me take them. I guess he thought I was going to pay, because he didn’t say anything until I was almost to the door.

“Hey, ware you going to pay for those?”

“Pay for what?”

“Don’t play dumb. I saw you take something off of the shelf.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Empty your pockets.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Show me your hands.”

“Here. Nothing’s in them.”

A guy in a huge hoodie and sneakers walked in.

“Pull down your pants.”

The guy looked over at us.

“What did you just tell that girl to do?”

“It’s not what you think. She was stealing-“

“Likely story, pedophile. Stop taking to her before I call the cops.”

“Call them on her, not me!”

“You should go. No not you, pervert.”

I left. My heartbeat got softer. I turned the corner and walked around for a while, so the guy at the store couldn’t check where I lived. My mother was right about one thing, they can’t check there.

A week later I went back to the liquor store. The old lady was working at the register, the one who wore a lot of lipstick. I asked her if there was a middle aged man working there. She said that he moved to the liquor store across town. It was further away from the parks and schools.

Fired: 

My mother never stuck to anything. I mean, except drugs. She could never hold a long term job, she didn’t have hobbies, and she had the most inconsistent lifestyle ever. She would just disappear and reappear as if nothing happened, stuff like them. Well thats not entirely true. There is one thing she was consistent with: getting fired. 

Her jobs always had a few things in common. They were the weird jobs that nobody else wanted. Actually, I take that back. She worked for the people doing the jobs that nobody else wanted. Even they didn’t want to do whatever she ended up with. She would clean the floors of nail salons, take out the trash at the park, clean equipment for gardeners, one time she even took the late shift at the store for a week. That’s another thing: the hours were awful. Late shifts, early shifts, sometimes both. And because she got paid under the counter they could pay her less than minimum wage. She basically worked long hours at crappy jobs for very little money. Karma’s a b***h, right?

The worst part of this whole thing is that she managed to get fired form these jobs. Mainly because she was really bad at them. To the point where she made we scrape rust off of the gardening equipment she was supposed to clean when she “forgot” about it. And then she would get fired because she left work that was meant for an adult to a nine year old. Another reason that she always got fired: “ethics” wasn’t in her vocabulary. She got caught stealing from the store. I’m pretty sure she peed in the park trash cans. She was just a mess.

I should have loved seeing her fail, but when she lost a job, I lost dinner for the night. It probably affected me more than it affected her, because as long as she had drugs, she was happy. And as long as I was eating vegetables, she had money to buy the drugs. I, on the other hand, needed food, which she never bothered to buy using the vegetable money. Sometimes when I was hungry she would actually say “good, you can eat vegetables tonight.”

Home: 

I used to love the saying “home is where your heart is.” I liked it because my house was never my home. Why? There are too many reasons to count. This survey went around when I was 9 about living conditions in the U.S.. It was basically comparing poverty here to poverty in other countries. I figured that it might make me feel better about my own conditions, or at least make me grateful. It didn’t.

The average “lower class” american still has a house, a car, a phone, a television, a credit card, and possibly a computer. Well, I had a house. And even that was paid for by the government.  My mother kind of had a car, but she didn’t drive it and I’m pretty sure it was part of a deal with one of her clients. No TV, no phone, no credit card, and definitely no computer. Apparently in other countries things were much worse, but still. Even in the bellow average category, we were bellow average.

Another reason: my mother. People may think homemaker another word for housewife, but it’s not. A homemaker can be a sibling, mother, father, or anyone who brings love to your house. It’s not about cooking or cleaning or whatever, it about caring. My mother definitely didn’t care. She might have been a housewife, but she wasn’t a homemaker. Actually, she wasn’t a wife. But thats kind of beside the point. Im just saying that home has to do with love and there wasn’t any in my house.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a home. I made up a home. Every once in a while, especially after I had to “eat vegetables,” I would think of a home with no vegetables at all. Not the without regular kind, just without my mother’s kind. The home wasn’t too big, and it wasn’t too small. My father and his family was all there. My family.  There was a garden with a lot of grass, and a hill to roll down. Me and the other kids would roll down it. My father would stay at home with me all day. He was the homemaker. 

Library:

We had an old, run down library at the edge of town that nobody went to. Parents would make their kids go sometimes, and the few old people in our town liked to sleep in it. But it was volunteer run and completely broke, so they couldn’t kick out the people who used it for non-reading purposes. I went there a few times. I didn’t really understand libraries at first. I knew how they worked but I almost didn’t believe it. You just take books and the people there assume you’ll bring them back? That was crazy to me. I was never trusted with the honors system, nobody was. And for a good reason: I didn’t return a single book.

Yeah, yeah, it was a broke library that probably couldn’t afford to lose any more books, I know I should have given them back. But I’m pretty they didn’t even notice. I went there once to check out more books, with no intention of returning the ones I already took. The lady who worked the front desk didn’t even check if I had a library card. I guess she was just glad to see a kid there without a parent, one who wasn’t forced to be there. 

I walked out and started connecting the dots in my head. I could just… take the books. It wasn’t stealing exactly. I mean, nobody said I could’t keep checking out books. The lady at the desk didn’t say anything. I thought it was a breakthrough. This could be my place! So, I walked there every day of the week, taking one book a day. Seven free books. I couldn’t believe it. I looked forward to going there after school every day. 

The next Monday I went there again. I walked in, picked out a book, and went to check it out. Only I didn’t check it out because the lady was gone and a guy was there instead. The one who smelled like tires. The one who had a tattoo under his hair. I knew about the tattoo because I had watched his hair grow in over it for the past year. He was a regular client. We locked eyes. We both had blank faces. I walked out of the library, still holding the book. I stepped outside. When the door closed behind me I ran. 

I went back to check if he was there a few times. I would peek through the window and stand on my tip toes, trying to see the front desk. He was usually there. I thought about going back to return the books a few times. I know its weird because I stole tons of things from the store, but I needed the food. I didn’t need the books. I just wanted them. But thats not going to happen. Not because of the guy who works there, I’ll bet you all of my stolen library books that he’s in jail or dead. It’s because of the library itself. I’ll bet you every stolen library book in the world that the library closed down.

Birthday

It was half past nine, and I was determined to stay up until midnight, determined to experience the exact moment of turning ten. My birthdays weren’t much. For most kids it would just be a normal day. But birthdays were important to me because each birthday made me a year closer to being eighteen. At eighteen, I would have had a job for a few years. I could move out. I could get away from my mother. 

A half-hour later, my mother came to get me. She was jittery. 

“Naia will you come to the little room?”

I got up and followed her through the living room to the little room.

“Wait here, you need to eat your vegetables.”

“Mom, please don’t make me eat my vegetables. They make me throw up.”

“Shut up you idiot girl! Do you want me to go crazy? Is that what you want? Thats what I thought. Wait here,” 

Definitely my worst birthday. 

I would always talk about eating my vegetables to the other kids at school. They would say stuff like “Ick!” and “My least favorite is sprouts, what about you?” It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about.

Runaway:

I ran away when I was 10. My mother had made me eat my vegetables one too many times one week. So I wrapped all of my clothes in my blanket and stole all of the money I could find in the house. At the time, it was about ten dollars in quarters and singles. So I went to the store and bought a Baby Ruth bar. I wonder if anyone noticed the other candy bars I took with me in my underwear. I walked out of the store. I felt the need to tiptoe, because it was the time when the women started to come out. The women were these people who, every night, stood on the street to eat their vegetables, except nobody was forcing them. AKA hookers. I was terrified of them because I couldn’t imagine that any sane person would eat vegetables all by themselves, without anybody making them. 

I passed my school, and stared at the huge trucks coming in to instal medal detectors. I wished they would instal vegetable detectors, they would probably see how many times I had to eat vegetables and tell my mother I wasn’t allowed anymore. I wasn’t sure who “they” were exactly, but there had to be someone. I reached the mountain, which was really just a hill in the sidewalk that kids liked to ride their bikes down. I headed for the hill and right before I started walking down I tripped over my own feet and dropped my bundled up blanket with all of my stuff in it. I chased it down the mountain, but I wasn’t fast enough. I was so close, but I knew it would get squashed by fifty cars before I reached it. But it was stopped. And I did a sidewalk-dive for it, only to realize that a foot had stopped it. I looked past the foot and saw a lacy outfit on a girl. It was one of the women. 

I picked up my blanket and ran up the hill as fast as i could, past my school and past the store. I finally got to my house, where I collapsed on my mattress and had a few minutes until my mother came in to tell me to go to the little room. She didn’t know I had gone.

Later that night, I was trying to get to sleep, but I was too uncomfortable for some reason. I decided to change clothes, and realized that I hadn’t taken the candy bars out of my underwear. I took them out and ate them to get the taste of vegetables out of my mouth.

Alone:

I have only been left alone in the house overnight once. I remember it clearly. I had just gotten off the school bus and I noticed that the car was missing, which was weird since my mother almost never used the car. I went inside the house and checked all of the rooms for my mother. She wasn’t home. At first, I panicked. I thought she had been killed or something. But then it hit me: I didn’t need her. 

I mean, I did in a way, but for legal reasons I didn’t know about when I was 10. I had faced really bad things by the time I was ten and had to grow up fast, but that didn’t mean I was always realistic. I figured that I would steal candy for food, drink sink water, and use the school bus like I normally did. I knew we lived in the projects, so we didn’t pay for the house. All I had to do was pretend she was here and wait until I was old enough to get a job. Then I would never eat “vegetables” again and live by myself. What I didn’t think of was the clients. They would turn up sooner or later, wondering where my mother was and why I wasn’t doing what I usually did. And then there were the dealers, my uncle who showed up for money, and probably more people I still don’t know about. 

None of that crossed my mind. I was happy that night, the next morning, and the whole day at school. But when I got home I saw our car parked outside and knew that she was back. 

That night my mom said I would have to eat double “vegetables.”

Grow Up:

Ruling something out doesn’t really rule it out though. Like, you could say “I’m never going to work in sewage because I hate the smell,” but then realize that it’s the only job you can get. Or you could rule out being a mother but still get pregnant. Or you could say you will never do anything illegal, but hold up a grocery store because you’re starving. So even though a lot of people say stealing is wrong and they would never do it, but I bet they would if it was their only way of getting food because their deadbeat mother couldn’t put food on the table. I mean, she could, but drugs before food, right? And no, I couldn’t just call the cops because then I would probably be put in foster care. I knew which kid in my class were the foster kids. They were the broken ones. I wasn’t quite broken, just damaged. But I didn’t know I was damaged. In a world where ignorance is bliss they were broken and they knew it.

When I was 10, one of them killed himself. He was one of four foster kids. They all shared a bedroom and ever night the other boys would touch him. Then in the morning they would eat his breakfast and walked him to school so they could call him names. Nobody knew about any of it until after he had taken a bottle of Advil. He went off to the bathroom and locked the door. The worst part is, the foster parent didn’t even realize that he was gone. She just yelled at the three boys for using up her painkillers and yelled through the bathroom door at the other boy for hogging it. She didn’t know he couldn’t hear her. 

They found his journal after he committed suicide. It had tons of stuff in it about verbal abuse and from the foster parent, physical and sexual abuse from the boys, only having one meal a day, which was free lunch, and people brushing him off and calling him a liar when finally spoke up about it, just because there weren’t any bruises. But because he couldn’t testify that the journal was true, the boys got out on probation and the foster parent lost her rights to be a foster parent. No jail. But doesn’t the fact that the boy is dead prove that it was true? It was such an obvious suicide, and people don’t kill themselves for lies. At least not the sane ones.

The Witch:

My mother might have been beautiful once. Maybe when she was twenty or something. But with years of doing drugs her skin had gone pasty and pale. The cigarettes gave her wrinkles and a raspy voice. She looked older than she really was.

I didn’t fully understand how scary she looked until one of my friends from school came over to play. I didn't really have toys, but our favorite thing to do was play pretend. We would act like mermaids who just got their legs, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid. Sometimes we would be pirates fighting over a ship. Usually, we went to her house, but on that day we wanted to change it up and go to my house. I figured we would drop off our backpacks and go to the store, but she wanted to go inside for some reason. That’s when she saw my mother.

My mother was wearing a big grey shirt and no pants. Her skin hung off of her bony legs and she was obviously mad. My friend, Ada, dropped her backpack walked straight back outside. I followed her, kicking our backpacks under the table. She asked if that was my mom. I said it was. We walked for a while until we got to the store.
“Hey Naia, I know what we should play. Let’s pretend that your house is a haunted house and the queen is the scary witch lady. The scary witch lady is always mad. Let’s pretend we have to defeat her by finding her greatest weakness: candy! Witches hate candy! And the lets pretend…”

This went on for a while. We played haunted house and I pretended not to know who the “scary witch lady” really was.

The Dress: 

My mother hated bringing me places. She only took me places when she absolutely had to. Or, at least when she thought she had to. I’m pretty sure this was one of the times where she thought she had to. I don’t know exactly why we had to go to a strip mall that was just outside of town, but my mother insisted that I had to come with her. Again, I have no idea why. Some of her business is still a mystery to me. We took the bus, which my mother also hated. Ever since she heard about that big case about the undercover cops busting each other for drugs she thought everyone was an undercover cop. And there’s nowhere to run on a bus. So she was completely quiet the whole way. It didn’t really affect me. She wouldn’t have talked to me either way. We got off near the strip mall.

“Wait outside and don’t bother me.”

“Can I look around in the stores?”

“Ugh. Sure, do whatever you want but do not come into this store tight here.”

“Okay.”

“Be ready to go when I’m done.”

I didn’t get the chance to ask her how I would know if she was done, especially since 

I wasn’t allowed in the store. I passed an antique store, a laundromat, and a video hut. All of them were closed. I walked to the last store, which was open. It was a tiny used clothing store with racks and racks of unorganized clothes. I looked for a kids section, but everything was mixed up so the “kids section” was full of adult size stuff. I didn’t really care though. I wouldn’t be able to buy anything anyways. 

I was about to walk out when I saw an orange skirt out of the corner of my eye.I  pushed the other clothes out of the way to look at it. Turns out it wasn’t a skirt, it was a dress with an orange bottom. It had white polka dots, but they were dirty and the orange was faded, so they sort of blended together. The top was a sleeveless denim tie up, which was a little frayed and had a noticeable hole on the side. It looked about my size. I turned it around and saw a faint grass stain on the back of the skirt. It was worn down, but I liked it. Something about it seemed familiar, almost like deja vu. I looked at the tag. $9. I knew my mother wouldn’t pay for it but I really wanted it. So, you guessed it, I stole it. 

It wasn’t until we got home that I looked at the tag to see where it came from originally. Target. Well, that explains why it seemed so familiar.

No Daddy No Dinero:

For the most part, school was fine. It obviously wasn’t the highlight of my life, but it was normal enough. I didn’t have money, but neither did most of the kids at my school. I only had one parent, but so a lot of other kids. The most unique thing about me was that I was an only child. And of course, my crazy mother, but they didn’t know. Anyways, I fit in with the rest of the kids. Nobody singled me out. I got made fun of a few times, but nothing too bad. That is, until the school systems were re-arranged.

We got this letter that basically said there were too many kids in my district, so some of the kids who lived farther west were going to a different school. I was one of them. So on the first day of fifth grade, I got on a bus and rode in the opposite direction. It was about the same distance away as my old school, but it was in a completely different town. Over there, most kids had both parents. Only a few kids didn’t have money. But the most embarrassing part was free lunch. The only people in my grade with free lunch were me, another boy, and this girl who left halfway through the year. 

For the first time in my life, I had a reputation. I was the girl without enough money. I was the girl who sat by herself. I was the girl without a car. I always took the bus. I was that girl. I don’t think I fully realized it until I heard about my nickname. 

“Why does she always sit alone?”

“I don’t know, she’s weird. Who knows why she does it.”

“Should we invite her to sit here?”

“ No way! She’s probably messed up. She grew up without the two D’s. Daddy and Dinero.”

“What’s dinero?”

“Money in Spanish you idiot.”

The next day, that same person called me Deedee. DD. Daddy Dinero. It stuck. 

Scare:

Remember my mother’s DUI? Well, this was almost her second one. She decided to show me where she met her clients to make deals. Honestly, I think she just got paranoid that i would steal from her or something. I know she had been drinking and my mother is crazier than usual when she’d drunk. We were in the car she was doing a terrible job driving, and all of the sudden we heard sirens.

“S**t. S**t s**t s**t. Naia, get in the drivers seat.”
“Why?”

“Don’t f*****g question me right now! Say I’m having chest pains and you’re taking me to the hospital.’

We pulled over. I climbed into the driver’s seat and my mother took my seat. A cop came over to us. He was wearing sun glasses even though it was night.

“ License and.. whoa how old are you?”

“Twelve.”

I was eleven, but I said twelve because of a book I had taken from the library. It was one of the Harry Potter’s. Harry’s twelve year old friend drove a car in it so they could get to Hogwarts on time. The Harry Potter car could fly, and the situations were completely different, but I thought twelve sounded a lot better than eleven.

“And why are you driving?”

“I’m taking my mother to the hospital. She’’s having chest pains.”

“ Why didn’t you cal 911?”

“Our phone bill isn;t paid.”

That part was true.

“Okay, hang on.”

The cop called an ambulance. They took my mother to the hospital and I rode in the cop car. I had to repeat my story a few times. A few hours later me and my mother were on our way back to my house. All my mother cared about was the client that she was supposed to meet, and how he would be pissed that we made him wait. She ranted on and I tuned her out, eventually falling asleep.

When I woke up the next morning my mother had gone inside, but I was still in the car.

Father:

I never asked who I my father was. I used to daydream about him all the time, about him being a hero who would one day re-adopt me. I imagined him in my head more than I imagined anything else. Some days, he would have high cheekbones and black hair. Other times, he would have light hair, kind of like my mother’s, except blonde, not washed up yellow.  Sometimes he was soft and kind. Other times he was strong like a typical movie hero. I even imagined him with greying hair a few times. But he was always my father.

I imagined him with other kids, maybe four or five. I imagined that he married another woman who loved her kids and would one day love me. Sometimes, I would write a note with my address and name on it and throw it up in the air, hoping that somehow it would reach my father. One day I found one of my notes in our neighbor’s trash. That’s about the time the daydreams stopped. 

I was 11, which is depressing when you think about it. The dream of every kid with a mystery parent is to find them one day. I gave up that dream too soon. I’m glad we eventually took in Suzie, because without her I would have ran out of dreams completely. And what kind of life is that? I know what you’re thinking, it’s the life of someone who whose own mother is their pimp.

But every eleven year old should have dreams. 

We’re Moving:

By the time I was eleven, the “we’re moving” scare started to get old. My mother didn’t even mean it as a scare. When some angry person would call, or even come to my our house, I would press my ear to the wall and try to hear what they were screaming about. Probably drug debt. But a few hours after this would happen, my mom would tell me to get my s**t together and meet her on the porch. We would usually just drive around for a while and eventually come back home. That is, if I actually went inside of the car. My mother saved the gas money for “emergencies,” like not having enough money to pay off dealers. 

When I was younger I hated this. I would cry and scream and tell her not to make me go. I had friends at school who I didn’t want to leave. But once I got into middle school, things changed. I wasn’t as attached to my new school. So the most recent time that my mother said “we’re moving,” I just rolled my clothes and a few unreturned library books into a fitted sheet, slung it over my shoulder, and left. 

Of course, we didn’t move. She turned the same corner she always does to make a U-turn back towards our crappy town and we went straight back to our crappy lives so I could eat my crappy “vegetables.” I think maybe part of me wanted to move. But it didn’t matter where I went if she was there. It felt like she would never leave. She never really will.

So Fast:

I always wondered what it would be like to watch a kids grow up right before your eyes.  To be sitting at home watching them play one day and sending them off to college the next. I always hear about it, people constantly complain about how time moves too fast or how the years just slip away from them. Well I always had the exact opposite problem. I always wanted time to move faster than it did. I wanted the clock to speed up a bit, just enough to make me turn eighteen. Just enough so I could leave my mother.

I did have one of those weird experiences where you look around and realize that everything’s different from when you were younger. I was with my mother. She was sitting on the couch complaining about the price of cigarettes going up. I was on the floor, half listening. I didn’t even notice that she changed the subject until she started yelling.

“Answer me!”

“What?”

“When I give you cigarette money do you pretend that the cigarettes are more expensive than they really are and keep the change?”

“No-“

“Don’t lie to me you little s**t! Admit that you’re a lying c**t! Admit it!”

“I’m not -“

“Don’t dive me that crap. I know a dirty b***h when I see one.”

“Listen to me. I can’t-“

“Shut the f**k up!”

I stood up, ready to just walk away. So did she. But she wasn’t going to walk away. She balled her fist and threw a punch. I swatted it away. I literally just swatted it. She looked a me, then her hand. 

“So thats how it’s going to be.”

I noticed a few things while we were standing there. For one thing, I was a little taller than her. I was only eleven and she was barley 5’1, but I was a tiny bit taller than her. I was also stronger. Maybe not emotionally, but physically I was much stronger than she was. I had just blocked her punch by, essentially, brushing it off. But the weirdest thing was the reason she got mad. I couldn’t buy cigarettes since you can’t sell tobacco to kids, so I stole them. She never gave me money to buy cigarettes. There was no way I could “keep the change” if se never gave me money in the first place. That means I was mentally stronger than her. That doesn’t mean I was more intimidating than her. People tend to think crazier people have weak minds, which is true, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be more intimidating then a sane genius. 

The Guy:

A lot of guys didn’t even care that I was a kid. I mean, they wanted a hooker and got one. Most guys would do a double take, like they couldn’t believe their eyes, but usually they would shrug it off and just look away. Sometimes, they would say “that’s messed up,” or something, but even those people stayed to get their money’s worth. Other times they would look at me and leave. This was the only time this happened.

“Is this a joke?”

“No, it is not.”

“Then it’s you really expect me to do this with.”

“She’s not that ugly.”

“She’s not ugly, she’s a minor. Do you have any idea how bad this is?”

“You’re one to talk! You came in to buy a blow job!”

“From a woman who does this willingly! Not a kid!”

“Watch it a*****e, or you won’t be getting one.”

“I don’t want one from a child trafficker!”

“Mother, does that mean I don’t have to-“

“Shut up and try not to be so repulsive.”

“You’re lucky I know how fucked up the foster system is, or I would call the cops.”

I didn’t have to do it that night. 

Awake:

My mother usually didn’t wake me up at night to eat “vegetables.” When she did, it was because we was completely out of money. This only happened a few times, and only once while Suzie was here. I hated doing it at all, but getting up in the middle of the night to do it was way worse. Mostly because I was half asleep and groggy throughout the whole thing, and the guy would keep snapping his fingers to wake me up. One time I accidentally bit someone, but I don’t think the guy brought it up, because my mother didn’t yell at me for it. Anyways, the worst time was definitely when I was 12.

I was in a deep sleep when my mother woke me up. I was having a dream, but I can’t remember what it was. When she woke me up I got out of bed and followed her like a zombie to the little room. It started normally, but then he started hitting me. It wasn’t that hard, but I could definitely feel it. He started slapping my back. Really hard. I pulled away. He looked at me and stared.

“Stop hitting me. I can’t focus.”
“You’re imagining things. I wasn't doing anything.”

He closed his eyes and I started up again. So did he.

“Seriously, stop.”

“Are you delusional or something? I’m not doing anything!”

“What’s going on Naia!”

That was the only time my mother ever came in during it.

“He’s hitting me and I cant concentrate.”

“No I’m not.”

“Okay okay. I’ll watch. If you really are hitting her then stop.”

“Okay, but any more interruptions and I’m not paying full.”

I did it more and he hit me more. It really started to hurt. My mother didn’t say anything.

Suzette:

By the time I was in seventh grade, we were desperate for money. Really desperate. My mother had lived paycheck to paycheck before, but never like this. The money just kept disappearing. I guess it was because of her drug addiction, but I was twelve and didn’t put two and two together. Maybe I was just in denial. 

Later in the month, my mother told me to wait outside the bus for a little girl named Sky to show up. I asked what she looked like. She didn’t know. I waited and when the bus finally came three people got off. One was a really thin girl carrying a small blue backpack. She went over to me.

“Um, excuse me are you Adina Colver?”

“No, that’s my mom but she told me to wait here. I think it was for you. Is your name Sky?”

“Yeah. Sorry if I took too long. My dad wasn't there and my grandma didn’t show up to put me on the bus until noon-“

“It’s ok. Seriously don’t worry about it. Why don’t we go to the store? It’s just across the street.”

I needed to get some food in this girl. She wasn’t just skinny, she was definitely lacking nutrition. I bought a jumbo box of fruit snacks for $5 and slipped a few snickers bars into my underwear. After I paid, we walked back to my house. I think my mother had left. I gave her the entire box of fruit snacks and two of the three snickers bars. She was completely unfazed by the fact that they came out of my pants. She simply stared at the food, probably in appreciation, but I couldn't really tell. From that day forward I kind of became her mommy. Not her mother, her mommy.

School:

I remember when Sky first went to our neighborhood school. She was excited. Like, more excited than I have ever seen anyone get over school. 

“You really seem to like your school.”

“Yeah, it’s great! Well, the school itself is okay, but the free lunch is awesome.”

“Oh yeah, I had that.”

“I didn’t until now. Its good because now I have lunch every day.”

“Thats great! But didn’t you have lunch before?”

“Sometimes.”

“Your father didn’t feed you?”

“Not all the time, only when he could.”

“We can feed you now though. And so can the school.”

“Can I tell you a secret?’

“Of course.”

“I kind of hope he won’t come back. When he does, I want to stay with you.”

“You can stay with me forever if you want.”

“But what if he comes back?”

“He might not.”

“Why?”

He’s either in jail or six feet under.

“He knows I wouldn’t let him take you.”

Responsible:

I know how a pregnant woman feels when they say that they are responsible for another life. When you are pregnant, you are the only person who can take care of your baby. Nobody else can give it life. Once the baby is born, some of the responsibility is given to the father, older siblings, friends, and eventually teachers. Pregnant women can have moral support and medical support from doctors, but no matter what others do they are, in a sense, alone. 

Nobody, except me, took responsibility for Sky. Her deadbeat father gave her up. Her grandparents would rather pay my mother, knowing full well that she will use the money to buy drugs, then take care of Sky. The teachers in this town wont do anything for her. Not that I blame them, our school district doesn’t pay them much. Don’t even get me started on my mother. Sky would be out on the streets if my grandparents stopped paying us. 

The funny thing is, I’m only four years older than her. By the time I’m twenty eight and she’s twenty four that difference will seem like nothing. But by the time I was twelve I was really an adult already and Sky was still pretty small for her age at eight. This definitely caused trouble in our house. I don’t know when most teenagers hit their rebellious phase, but mine happened when we took in Sky.

I never used to stand up to my mother. She could call me stupid or retarded or whatever she wanted, because it only affected me. But once she started to do that to Sky, I got mad. Why on earth would she call Sky those things? She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t deserve it. So I started talking back when my mom would yell at Sky.

“Stop calling Sky those things.”

“Well she is.”

“Actually no. She’s not.”

“What did you just say?”

“She’s not a b***h.”

“Maybe you’re the b***h.”

“Maybe I am, but she’s not.”

“Get the f**k out of my sight you little b***h.”
“Like mother like daughter I guess.”

“What?”

“You called me a b***h, and I’m your daughter…”

I usually left after that. 

Christmas Pageant:

Sky needed something to wear to the Christmas Pageant. Her school was doing a nativity scene on the last day before winter break and she had nothing to wear. We weren’t the poorest family at the school but our mother was definitely the most incompetent. She needed something nice. It had to be a skirt or dress, or nice pants. Sky said not to get nice pants because the girl who wore nice pants to last years pageant has had the nickname “fancy pants” ever since.

There weren’t any yard sales around our neighborhood since people started stealing form them, and nowhere within walking distance sold children clothes. So I got out my trash bag and went through my old stuff. There were barley any things that could actually be worn. Most of it was second hand. Or even third or fourth hand. I found one sweater with so many unraveled strings that it literally looked like a a ball of knitting yarn. I let Sky look through some of it. She found a skirt that she tried to turn into a dress, but it was way too short.

“You try it on,” she said. I did.

It looked like a misshapen poncho. She looked at me for a second and burst our laughing. 

“Wait here.”

I pulled the skirt down to my waist. It was still way to small but it made me look more like a s**t than a grandma. I put on a t shirt that used to be white (it got dirty. Like, really dirty) and tied it up so my stomach was showing. I turned around to face Sky.

“Oh baby baby, how was I supposed to know…”

Sky had just discovered Britney Spears. I did a bunch of crazy dance moves that made her laugh even harder than the skirt/poncho had. She eventually joined in, jumping around and pretending to be Britney. It wasn’t sexy or anything, obviously. I mean come on, we were kids. We eventually got tired and laughed ourselves out. We had to get back to work anyways. She needed an outfit and she couldn’t wear the Britney costume. So we went through the rest of my stuff. Sky already had most of my old clothes that weren’t too worn out to wear, but we looked anyways. We found a tiny brown dress that was too small for Sky, a pair of denim capris with so many hole in them that they could be polka dots, and four shirts with tons of stains and tangled strings hanging from the hem. I had just tossed out a pink skirt with a huge rip in the elastic when I spotted an orange skirt at the bottom of the bag. I pulled it out. I think it was lightened by the sun or something, because the skirt was a washed out orange color. And I remembered that dress. It used to be pretty bright. The denim top was also faded. it was a tie-up style shirt, but the strings were tied in a triple knot that I knew we wouldn’t be able to untie. Other than holes it was fine. 

I was about to give it to Sky, but something stopped me. I felt like trying it on for some reason. I went to the bathroom and shut the door. At first it tried stepping into it. I could’t get it past my hips. I tried rolling it up from the skirt part, but that just that just made it look like an awkward belt. I took it off and tried putting it on over my head. I had to do this weird shimmy movement to get it past my shoulders. When I finally got it there the skirt part right under my b***s and the top was scrunched up. I tried to get my arms through the sleeves but it was way too tight. The finished product looked like a rectangle trying to fit into a hole shaped like an oval. I pulled it up and, with some effort, got it over my shoulders. I wished I had worn it more often when I was younger. I went back into our room and put the dress on the floor. I smoothed it out on the floor and showed Sky. She loved it.

She tried it on. It was a little bit big, but she would grow into it. She smiled, ran into the bathroom, and came out a minute later wearing the mini skirt. She had tucked the entire orange skirt into the shirt. It looked ridiculous, but the tie up shirt/mini skirt combo sort of resembled Britney Spears’s outfit in the music video. She started dancing like a maniac.

“My Loneliness is killing me…” I got up and started dancing too. We danced until we both fell over laughing. 

Godless:

God was always kind of a touchy subject in my house. My mother was raised Catholic, but I don’t think she was ever confirmed. She then went on to be have a baby before she got married, do drugs, and probably break most of the Catholic rules. So by the time I rolled around, she didn’t bother having me baptized. I never went to church, got my first communion, got confirmed, or anything like that. I don’t even believe in God.

My mother used to pray in front of me a lot. I had no idea why, because God obviously wasn’t there for her. I mean, she was an awful person without morals, so if there was a God, and he actually did answer prayers, he wouldn’t pick hers. I think she must have known that. But  my mother is obviously bad, so the fact that her prayers haven’t come true isn’t proof of anything. The only proof I have that God doesn’t exist is that he didn’t answer Sky’s. 

Sky was innocent. She never yelled back at my mother, and never complained about anything. And she had a lot to complain about. On the nights we ate stolen pretzels for dinner she held her tongue, and sometimes she would throw up in the trash can and not say anything, because she didn’t want to bother me. She is the best person I know. If there was a God, Sky’s prayers would have been answered before anyone else’s. 

One day, I was sitting outside braiding Sky’s hair. I liked doing that. It was one of the more normal parts of my life. 

“How’s the braid coming?”

“Great Sky. You have amazing hair.”

“Thank God I didn’t get my father’s hair.”

“Wait, do you believe in God?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know exactly, I just like having something to believe in.”

I couldn’t understand how she believed in God. How could she, with the life she had? Didn’t she get sick of praying without results? Didn’t she feel cheated? I guess if there was one person in the world who could tolerate that, it would be Sky. But now that I think about it, believing in God is no crazier than blowing on pennies to make the monsters crawl back under your bed. 

Out:

I tried to run away once, and that didn’t work. I thought about taking Sky away when I turned 18,  but that was five years away. I never thought I would get kicked out. 

After five years of “vegetables” I was done. I knew what they were, but I couldn’t call the police because they would separate me and Sky. Besides, Sky wasn’t in danger, and in foster care she would be. But I knew I couldn’t put up with five more years of this. So one day, when my mother told me to “go to the little room and wait”:

“No.”

“Excuse You?”

“No.”

“Are you retarded? Should I send you to retard school? Or are you just being a little b***h.”

“No.”

“Wait, don’t tell me. You’re PMSing. Well suck it up like the rest of us and-“

“No.”

“Then get out.”

“…”

“Did you hear me? Get out!”

“…”

“Wow you really are retarded. Leave!”
After that everything was a blur. I really thought that I was leaving. That I would never see Sky again. I had walked her to her friend’s house after school. What were my last words to her? Probably just “bye.” But then I thought about my plan. Five years. Maybe my plan to leave would just have to come early. 

I waited two houses down for Sky to walk back. I knew we would need things, so I would tell her to back a bag, without telling my mother she was leaving. Then, she would sneak out and we would move away. Far away…this speech I was planning to give to Sky sounded familiar, really familiar. `I stopped planning, and started thinking about how much I was turning into my mother. 

I knew I couldn’t make it by myself, especially with Sky with me. My mother knew that too, every time she told us we are moving. She knew, deep down, that we wouldn’t move. I knew, deep down, that me and Sky wouldn’t be running away any time soon.

I went to the store and stole some candy for Sky. Then I went back to my house, opened the door, and found my mother sitting at the table. She contorted her face into a smile-type thing, walked straight to the little room, and opened the door.

Poems By Sky 13:

  When I was thirteen, I asked Sky, for the first time ever, what she wanted to be when she grew up. She was only nine, so I figured that she would say astronaut or ballerina or something. She said a poet. Not that I’m surprised, I mean, she had more to write about at nine than most people do at thirty. Later she asked if I wanted to read some of her poems. I read them. I cried for the first time in a while. I’m not ashamed.

Want a new place

Wish I had a new face

So I could run away

And do nothing but play

Daddy’s back

He’s really mad

It’s raining black

It’s really bad

I just got a new mommy

she's nice

I hope she stays

this already happened twice

I’m turning seven in a week

I better not speak

Remember last time I asked for a present?

It rained black

We went to McDonalds today

We didn’t buy anything

My pockets were stuffed

With Ketchup and straws

 “We didn't break the law”

Seven years, three mommy’s and counting

Is this normal? No.

Even I know.

Daddy didn’t come home tonight

I don’t know when he’s coming back

At least it didn’t rain black

I was right about the mommy

For my eighth birthday

I got two new mommy’s

But lost a daddy

It’s a sad day

My two mommy’s were waiting

One was pale and small

The other was wrinkly and tall

Naia loves me like no other mommy has

I love her back

Even more then my daddy

Now it never rains black

I love my new school 

My free lunch is so cool

I don’t have any distracting hunger pains

Which means I don’t get detention

For not paying attention

Explained:

“You’ll never guess what happened under the bleachers at the high school the other day.”

“What?”

“So apparently Val was waiting for her sister’s track practice to be over, or was it soccer… doesn’t matter. But she saw this guy and said she would give him a BJ for money.”

“A what?”

“BJ.”

“What’s that?”

“Blow Job.”

“Like I said, what?”

“You seriously don’t know? Its…………………”

“Wait, so she’s a w***e?”

“Not just a w***e, she’s also a prostitute.”

“Yeah, that’s the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Idiot.”

“I’m not the one who didn’t know what a BJ was.”

I couldn’t believe it. I thought my ears were malfunctioning. I tuned them out and replayed that chunk in my head. 

DUI Two:

Remember my mother’s first DUI? And the time she almost got one? I probably mentioned how she eventually got another one. I was home proofreading Sky’s homework. She had to write a paragraph about giraffes. I told her exactly how pointless it was and started listing other outrageous things that were more useful than knowing about giraffes, like being able to fart the alphabet. She laughed. That would usually make her laugh. 

I heard someone knock on the door, which was weird because nobody ever came over. I figured my mother forgot her keys. I opened it. This guy was standing there. He looked at me, kind of surprised.

“Uh, is this the right house?”

“Who are you?”

“You’re Naia right?”

“Who are you?”

“Sean… I’m guessing you’re Naia… your mom said you were eleven.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, obviously.”

He sort of smiled, but it a creepy way. Not a happy way.

“Why are you here?”

“Adina’s got a DUI. She needs you to come down to the station with me.”

“No way.”

“Come on baby, whats with the cold shoulder?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Well then lets get to know each other. On the way to the station. Because we need to go.”

“No.”

“So you wanna do this the hard way?”

“I’ll pay you.”

“How much?”

“Let me see.”

I went inside, fully prepared to pay him if we had any money. But if we didn’t I would hide Sky and run. Then he would run after me and never find out about Sky. That’s the worst thing that could happen. We had $40. I gave it to him.

“Adina promised 60.”

“Well you’re saving yourself a ride to the station.”

“It’s on the way home.”

I thought about it for a minute. I had no idea what to do. Sky was in our room and had no idea what was going in. We didn't have any valuables. But maybe… no. But yes. It was the only way.

“Come inside.”

He followed me to the bathroom.

“Close the door.”
He did. I was facing him. I pulled down his pants. I ate vegetables. No wait, what did those guys at the school call it? I gave him a blow job. But he wanted more. He pulled down mine.

I made him leave the house before getting Sky out of the room. I talked to her like normal, only it wasn’t normal. I wasn’t a victim anymore. I mean, I was all of the other times, but not this time. This time it was all me. That was the time I ever told anyone about. My mother came  back a few hours later and she was beyond mad. She screamed and screamed. She didn’t touch Sky though because she knew that if she did I would kill her. I made sure not to let her know about what went down with the guy though because I know exactly what would happen. Her lips would curl up into an almost-smile. She would get that look in her eye that she gets every time she wins. The look that she almost never uses anymore because losers don’t win.

Finding Out:

I was picking up Sky one day, but the attendance lady stopped me. 

“Oh, you must be here for Sky. She got picked up already.”

“What do you mean? By who? Why on earth would you just let her go with a stranger?

“Not a stranger miss, her aunt”

I rushed back to my middle school and opened the doors. They shut behind me as I ran to the 8th grade guidance councilor’s office.

“Hello,” he said, looking up “Can I-“

“We need to get social services to my house right now.”

“Could you explain-“

“My cousin. My mother picked her up and now they’re alone together at my house.”

“But why is that-“
“My mother used to sell me to men. I would blow them or sometimes worse for money to support her drug addiction. I started standing up to her and fighting back, and now she has my cousin, she’s only nine-“

“Settle down, and lets get someone over there right away. Your address?”

I followed the social services representative in the passenger seat of my guidance councilor, Mr. Elliu’s car. We were going really, really fast, I hoped we didn’t get ticket. We stopped outside of our house. I opened the car door and followed her to the door. I ran straight into my house and without thinking, I went towards the little room and opened the door.

Sky was wearing her favorite old shirt of mine with a rainbow on it.

“Sky are you Ok?”
“Yes”

“Did mom make you, did she make you eat your vegetables?”

“Not this time.”

“This time? You mean-you can’t be saying-this has happened before?”

“I hate it, it makes my queasy.”

I picked up Sky and hugged her tighter than I ever had.

Suddenly, the room went quiet. My mother was here.

I put her down and charged at my mother. It took the social worker and Mr. Elliu to hold me back. My mother just stood there, speechless. At the moment, however, I wasn't the priority. Once I calmed down I sat on the floor and picked up Suzette, as Mr. Elliu grabbed my mother’s phone and tried dialing 911. 

“Phone bill isn't paid. Do you have a cell phone?”

“Yes, but lets get Naia and Sky statement first. Naia, Sky, did this woman make you engage in sexual intercourse with men?’

“Yes”

“What’s that?”

“Eating your vegetables”

“Then yes”

“Let’s call the police”

“Don’t you dare!” My mother screamed, but it was too late. For her, at least.

Exit:

One month. If I had found out about Adina Colver using Sky one month ago this whole mess could have been avoided. Not the big mess that was my childhood, a smaller mess. The aftermath of my childhood. And yes, I stopped calling Adina Colver “mother”. The court “terminated her parental rights” so basically she can’t be within 500 feet of me or Sky. Nor any child, for that matter, since she’s probably going to a prison or a mental hospital. That’s a whole other mess. The fact that she could avoid prison if she pleads insanity. But that’s a completely different mess than the one on hand.

I bet my grandparents are going to try to give me back to social services. One week with them and I’ve already done something that would make them hate me. God, when this shows up on their medical bills… Maybe I should run away. I mean, they would probably sue me when they find out about this. No. I definitely can’t just take off like that, just as my life starts to be normal. And Sky… Yeah, I can’t run away. D****t, I should have gotten a job with health insurance and used that to pay for it. Too late now though. Guess I’ll just go to my grandparents house like always and wait for the dreaded medical bill to show up in our mailbox. I’d better call a cab though. It’s not like I can ask my Catholic grandparents to pick me up at an abortion clinic.