Summer Interlude I

 

I went away that summer, with my grandparents and brother to the Caribbean. It was hot down there, and very humid. We stayed for about a week and a half, and it was rather uneventful. I did however, meet someone down there. A guy named Ivan.

Ivan was rather unremarkable, and nothing happened between us. We just talked, and flirted a little. I found out that he was 17, and lived in Florida. A few days later he left the resort, and I never saw him again.

If it weren't for one thing, Ivan would have faded from memory long ago. It was a dream I had about him, not long after I went home. In it, I was back at the resort, and Ivan was there with me. It was nighttime, and there were red and orange fireworks going off in the distance. Ivan started touching me, and kissing me. I told him to stop and pushed away from me. He grabbed me, then threw me down and raped me. I can't remember anything from the dream after that, it's only that part that stays with me.

He first time I saw my om again after I got back, she grounded me. See, while I was away, I had gotten a henna tattoo. It was the Chinese symbol for strength, and I had gotten it on my arm.

I don't remember why exactly she was angry. It partially had to do with the fact that it was “black” henna, and there was a chance that the dye contained chemicals that could scar my flesh. I'm sure another part of the reason was that I had done it without her permission.

Regardless of the reasons why it pissed her off, the end result was the same. I was grounded until the end of the summer. No TV, computer, books, or cellphone. No hanging out with friends. She also made m scrub at the tattoo with peroxide till it was gone.

My dad thought that she was being ridiculous, and didn't enforce the grounding while I was at his house. He also believed that she had no right to include my phone in it, since he was the one who paid for it and had me on his family plan. My mom tried to take my phone away on the weekends. My dad just said he wouldn't let me bring it there if she kept it up. She had no phone of her own at the time, and used mine whenever I was there, so she caved on that one.

However, trouble with my mom was far from over. A few weeks later, my dad and stepmom came to pick us up from her house. She was angry about something at the time, and went downstairs to talk to them. My older brother was already down there, so I was told to stay upstairs with my baby brother, Mike. After a few minutes I heard yelling, which didn't surprise me. I was surprised, however, when the cops came.

I never knew who called the police. It could have been a neighbor who was bothered by the noise. It could have been my mom who called, falsely claiming that my dad was 'harassing' her, as she had done before. Or it could have been my dad, calling because my dad was essentially holding me hostage.

I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but I did know that my mom was demanding something and was saying that she wouldn't let me go until she got it. Every so often she would come upstairs and start going on a tangent about what a horrible person my dad was, then tell me to stay put and go back to yell at my dad some more. When the police showed up, they told her that she couldn't keep me from going with my dad.

When I got downstairs my older brother was gone. He had taken off while my parents were fighting, and wasn't answering when my parents tried calling his phone. One of the police officers asked me to try to giving him a call. He picked up when I called, but he said that he didn't want to come home, and refused to tell me where he was. After he hung up, the same officer asked me to take him to any place I could think of that my brother would go to.

I got in the police cruiser, and told him to try the local library first. We headed that way, and caught up with my brother halfway there. He refused to get in the car, and kept saying that he didn't want to go home. He was close to tears, and was frustrated and angry. We were eventually able to convince him to come back. The fight had settled down by the time we got home, and we were able to go home with our dad. Our mom was still pissed off though.

A week or two later, my mom had another altercation, this time with my baby brother's dad. She had an even worse relationship with him than she had with my dad, and was angry that he was behind in child support at the time. When he came by to pick up Mike for the weekend, she went downstairs and started yelling at him, calling him a bad father. Instead of dealing with my mom, Mike's dad just got back in the car and left.

In response to this, my mom got in her car and took off after him. I was the only one home with Mike at the time, so I ended up taking care of him for the next few hours. About an hour or so after my mom left, my older brother called and told me that our mom had initially been chasing Mike's dad and had tried to run him off the road. Then she suddenly just stopped, and drove to a convent so she could talk to a friend of hers that was a nun.

I'm not sure what my mom would have done if she had caught up with Mike's dad. I would like to think that my mom wouldn't have tried to hurt him. I'm not that delusional though, to believe that after trying to run him off the road she would be content with just yelling at him.