Momma

The sun charged through the blinds well before the alarm went off.  She didn’t even know why she still bothered setting an alarm -- wishful thinking? Certainty that surely her brain would finally shut down and guarantee her just a couple of hours of blissful sleep?  Hell, at this point, sleep filled with nightmares and not-so-fictional monsters would be welcome compared to the endless monotony of staring at the walls, the backs of her eyelids, the cell phone screen.  Her doctor had tried prescription sleep medication, cocktails of various prescription sleep medication, anxiety medication, everything. On any given night, she took enough “sleeping pills” to knock out a horse...to ensure that she would, in fact, “wake up dead.”  She didn’t WANT to die. She just wanted to sleep -- to close her eyes and open them hours later feeling refreshed and optimistic and ready to tackle the day ahead of her. That was, apparently, way too much to ask. 

At this point, she didn’t even pretend to try to go “back” to sleep for the last few quiet minutes of her day.  As soon as the sunlight hit his beautiful, perfect face, that little red-headed boy -- the perfect angelic monster that he was -- would hit the ground running full speed ahead.  He didn’t have a slow-down function. If he was awake or he could sense any daylight at all, he was wide open. As long as she could hear him, the world was safe from his destruction, but the second it was quiet, you had better run to find out what trouble he had thought up this time -- and run fast. He was three and a half years old.  Hair as red-orange as the baseball infield he spent more time digging in than he did actually playing t-ball that spring. Everything you’ve ever heard about redheads is true. The precociousness. The spirit. The toughness. The temper -- God almighty, Heaven help her -- the temper. But that whole thing about “gingers having no souls?” Completely untrue.  This little boy -- her little “three-nager” -- her little man -- had a soul that would inspire even the most hardhearted or lazy creature in the world -- except for his sperm donor of a father, of course, but that’s for later. This beautiful, perfect little boy was her world -- her whole world -- and very much the singular reason that she was still breathing in and out at all.

No, there was no point in bothering to close her eyes against the onslaught of the sun and the impending disappointments that today would throw in her face.  

“Shit! To hell with that!  Today is gonna be different!  Today -- I’m in charge, and I’ll be damned if that sorry, worthless, son of a bitch gets the best of me, today!!” Her divorce was finally finalized just a couple months prior, but it wasn’t because both of them wanted out of the marriage.  Oh, they both wanted out. He was just too sorry to sign the papers that he had agreed to TWO YEARS AGO.  Of course, she fully believed, and would never be convinced otherwise, that the only reason he wouldn’t sign the divorce papers was because then he wouldn’t have an excuse not to marry the piece of white-trash, meth-eating, sometimes-lesbian-sometimes-not, always homewrecking slut he had been shacking up with since she left him.  And left him with everything. She had tucked tail and run home to Momma and Daddy -- okay, more like they came and got her because she was in a drunken rage again about her gallivanting “husband” and his “extracurricular” activities. She had come home to the poverty-stricken, unemployed backwoods county that was home with a laundry basket of clothes and the one thing she really cared about -- her son.  In the divorce agreement, she’d left him everything -- the house, the land, the furniture (which all belonged to her before she even met him), her clothes, even her parent’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. She had agreed to $200/month LESS in child support than was court ordered and said she would work around his work schedule for visitation. She just wanted him to leave her the hell alone. She’d stayed far too long.  She finally had to put her child first and get him out of the toxic environment that he’d always known as “home.” 

Two years later, at least one and a good chunk of the other spent mindlessly drunk, and she was still sharing a room with her son -- and it wasn’t even her childhood room -- it was her brother’s.  Nope. Hers had been used as a “catch-all” room for ill-fitting clothes, unwanted junk, and basically anything else that would fit in there and still allow the door to shut. To make matters worse, she couldn’t even “live” in her brother’s room -- it was exactly the way he left it.  Her mother had repeatedly told her that her brother “had left it that way and was so particular about his things.” Shit! It wasn’t like he was dead. He moved out to get the hell away from her. He had a beautiful trailer not even half a mile down the road -- that he didn’t even live in.  He had since moved back to Tuscaloosa to work for the city -- freeloading off his rich best friend -- honestly, the only friends he had were rich because he’s as shallow as they come and as much of a bitty as the old women around home they’d always heard tales about -- and a serious drama queen -- a “queen” in every sense of the word.  So here she was, still living out of the same laundry basket she fled with -- and a complete shell of the woman she once was and thought she would always be.

Twenty years earlier, she would never have believed a single detail of her hell that was now her everyday life.  She had the world at her fingertips. She’d gone to The University of Alabama on a full scholarship. Performed in Bryant-Denny Stadium every Saturday as a section leader and member of the one and only Million Dollar Band.  Chilled and partied with some of the biggest names in college (and some professional) football history. She’d graduated Magna Cum Laude and had every opportunity in the world to be a groundbreaking woman. She’d been fat. But she’d been happy because she’d been her.  She could have done and gone anywhere she chose -- and she chose to come home to Wilcox County.  The armpit of Alabama. The county with the highest poverty and unemployment rate in the state -- third in the country.  And she did it because she wanted to.  She loved it.  It was part of her.  

Her first job out of college was the one she ultimately hoped to finish her teaching career with.  And it was hell. She changed school systems. Twice. She had gastric bypass surgery. She got skinny.  She got hot. She got a brand new red Camaro and moved back to Tuscaloosa. She dated a professional MMA fighter.  She had the time of her life. And she met him.  Her other half.  The love of her life.  Her soulmate. It was love at first sight.  She should have realized it was doomed by the fact that she did, in fact, meet him in a bar and they were both so drunk by the time they left that neither of them knew how they ended up back at her place as the sun was rising the following morning.  He asked her if he would ever see her again. She thought “of course not” -- he was the complete opposite of anyone she’d ever been attracted to -- but she couldn’t quit him. They had been inseparable. They were the “it” couple. If you saw one, you saw both -- never arguing -- always looking at each other as if they were the only two people in the universe.  They met in August. They got married the following June. His three kids -- who turned out to not even be his -- were in the wedding, and she loved them as if they were her own. Less than a year later, she was pregnant and couldn’t be happier. Her life was perfect. It was exactly what she had always dreamed it would be.

His wasn’t.  He never felt good enough.  He didn’t come from a family who demonstrated love or even knew what love was.  He resented her for it. And he resented the unborn baby. Sure, he acted like he wanted a baby that he knew was his.  He acted thrilled when they learned it was a little boy. His little mini-me after all his time raising other men’s kids.  But gone were the all-night booze fests and bonfires and amphetamine-fueled fishing excursions. Gone was his partner in crime.  In life -- well the life he wanted. When their child was born, he was never alone with him. He couldn’t be bothered to give up a second of his precious time to look after a baby -- not even long enough for his “other half” to take a bath alone, or pick up a pizza, or go to the grocery store.  

They lived in the boonies.  They had little to no cell reception.  Landlines were all but obsolete. She took extra time for her maternity leave -- and she spent it all alone with a colicky baby boy.  She wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world, but it would have been nice to have slept in a bed instead of straight up in a chair holding him while he nursed and struggled to latch on her sore, bruised, bleeding nipples.  She had no friends. No family nearby. Nobody to vent to. She spent the best part of most days crying -- feeling completely helpless and hopeless -- alone. Sure, she talked to her doctor at her first postpartum appointment, but the meds she got made her feel and act like a different person -- if even a person at all.  He wouldn’t let her go back for something else. No wife of his was going to be walking around living life all medicated -- although, looking back, she didn’t understand how that was any different from anyone else he knew, himself included. So she self-medicated. He’d leave for work, and she’d leave for the package store.  A year later, she was a full-fledged secret alcoholic. Unable to even force herself to shower and get ready for work most days -- the majority of those, she didn’t even manage to get out the door before calling in “sick.” He got a job as a coal miner -- working midnights -- she quit the classroom to be a stay at home “mom.”  Their paths never crossed. The bed was never warm on both sides at the same time.  

Sure, he wanted her around.  After all, he needed someone to tend to his first three “children” - children who resented her child as much, if not more, than he did.  She felt most alone when the house was full. She was miserable. So she drank. And she hid it. And it escalated. And she gained weight, which made her more depressed, which made her drink more.  She succumbed to the vicious hell that her life had become. They fought. He with his fists and elbows. Her with her words and defiance and determination to “show him”. The kids saw more than any child should ever have to watch -- especially her little redhead.  

She wanted her baby boy to have the world -- the world that she had once had at her fingertips -- a world where she was once in control of the circumstances that made up her life.  He was surely smart enough. He was special. Even her ass of a husband knew that. He was unlike any other child she’d ever seen -- he forgot nothing.  Ever.  He deserved more.  

She’d love to claim that she had finally mustered up the strength to leave him.  But that wouldn’t be true. She’d had nowhere else to go but home. No job. She’d totaled two vehicles in two months.  She’d had so many wrecks she couldn’t even get car insurance. Word of her “habits” and “fits” had become so commonplace that she didn’t even bother trying to get a job -- pretending that she was “fine” -- acting like she didn’t know that literally everyone she came in contact with was judging her and gladly voicing their opinions of her behind her back.  It’s the South -- of course nobody said anything negative to her face -- but their tongues wagged the very second she was out of sight and earshot. Gasp! Her daddy was a minister and her mother had been the epitome of a good, Christian, Southern girl. But God, her mother was a bitch. The biggest bitch she’d ever known. Such a bitch that she would cut people down and sling hurtful words at complete strangers for no reason other than the fact that she could.  She thrived on hurting others with words that would cut them deeper than any knife ever could, and boy, did she always know the perfect insult to sling at anyone, whether she knew them intimately or had never seen them before in her life. Her daddy was the opposite. She’d never heard him raise his voice. She’d never heard him cuss. And she’d never heard him put her bitch of a mother in her place. Yes, he was a minister, and honestly, he was the only man she had ever known who truly lived out what he preached from the pulpit.  But he was a coward. The older she got, the more she realized it. He never stood up for himself. He didn’t even publicly stand up for the innocent people subjected to her hateful bullying. But he was her daddy, and she couldn’t think of a better man -- a better example -- to raise her son and teach him how a man was supposed to behave.

She was no fool.  She knew she’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for her parents.  And truth be told, if it weren’t for that little redheaded angel, they wouldn’t have put up with her shit as long as they did.  She had been the perfect daughter -- and they had always been convinced it was an act. She guessed she’d finally just gotten tired of trying to prove to them she wasn’t a disappointment.  She gave in. And here she was. Thirty-four years old. No job. No hope of a job considering how much the lovely people in small town Alabama loved to gossip. Her car had once been her uncle’s.  A fifteen year old hand me down that wasn’t even in her name. She lived out of clothes baskets in her little brother’s old bedroom -- his shrine. She hadn’t slept with being touched, much less alone, since before her son was born.  He’d never slept without touching her. And he’d never slept through the night. So she hadn’t slept through the night in almost four years. She’d once been the perfect, all-American hometown princess. Now she couldn’t wait for her food stamps to be reloaded each month and didn’t bother to avert her eyes when she went to the health department for her WIC vouchers each month.  At least she wasn’t surviving on Medicaid -- although the only reason that was the case at all was that her sorry excuse of an ex-husband was literally too lazy to call his employer-covered health insurance and have her taken off after the divorce was finalized. She hadn’t received a child support payment in months because he’d failed a drug test at work because he “couldn’t pee” -- she later learned that he’d failed a hair follicle drug test for meth -- what a winner! Even when she got his measly child support, she’d relied on her parents’ money for her meals, for her gas in her car, for the shelter over their heads, and regrettably, her alcohol.  She’d been sober for months now -- although that was due to some second-chance program she’d gone through after her charming husband’s girlfriend pressed bogus criminal charges against her.

Nope.  Today, she was taking back the reins of her shamble of an existence.  It didn’t matter that her son didn’t have school today -- he only went four days a week.  She wasn’t going to let that stop her. She rolled out of bed -- always avoiding all mirrors -- she threw her hair in a ponytail, and she opened the laptop.  She opened up Indeed.com and searched for anything that might not be too embarrassing to claim as her form of employment. “Damn! Who am I to judge? Any job is better than no job, right?”  As she wrapped her mind around the concession that she would be thankful to be given the chance to work at a number of places she’d always deemed “beneath her,” she set to work on the bedrooms.  By lunchtime, her little man had his own room -- and it looked like his room and not her brother’s.  She had cleared the junk from her childhood bedroom -- really, she just threw most of it away.  It was cleansing -- both literally and figuratively. As she took out the old junk that just stood in her way of getting what she wanted and needed, she threw out the notions of inadequacy that had become so commonplace in her mind.  As she listened to Thomas the Tank Engine drone repeatedly around and around and around that train track in her son’s room, she updated her resume. She updated her references. She fell back on what she knew and had always known. She was good enough.  And hell == this was her wheelhouse -- she knew how to market her skills on paper -- she was an English teacher, after all.  

It was somewhat surprising how easily everything came to her.  She’d always known somewhere deep in her soul that the real her wasn’t gone.  She’d never been gone. She was just -- hibernating. There was a reason she was still alive, though, dammit.  And that reason was a little redheaded Southern boy -- full of laughter and smiles … and … life. He deserved a good childhood.  It didn’t matter that his sperm-donor of a father didn’t visit him. Or bother to pick up a phone. She’d be all the parent he needed.  He deserved a Mommy that made an effort to make real memories. “No! It’s not just him that deserves it.  You deserve it, too, woman! Yes, you had the world.  Yes, your train got derailed. But you’re here. You’re breathing in and out.  Don’t let it be in vain. Give yourself meaning, again. Purpose. Don’t let that spawn of Satan bastard get the best of you.  Make it count for something. After all, you could have given up on many an occasion in the past two or so years. But you didn’t.  You kept breathing. You kept getting out of bed. You kept “faking” it for that little boy. No more faking. Make it reality. Live truth.”  

By the time she turned out the light at the end of the day, her son was sleeping in his own bed -- by himself -- and she had applied for not one, not two, but fourteen jobs.  She may not get her dream job.  But she’d get a job. She’d do whatever it took to make a real LIFE for herself and her redhead.  It might not be tomorrow. Or next month.  Or even next year. But dammit -- she’d survive.  NO! She’d THRIVE.  And her little redheaded angel -- her reason for breathing -- would be right there watching her -- knowing in his own soul that when everything went wrong for his Momma, she kept on keeping on -- and it wasn’t just for him -- it was for herself, too.