Pulling up Roots

The distinct roar of the freight train rang in Bea’s ears as her taxi drove her down familiar streets. She was suddenly transported back in time to her adolescence, when she would walk along those tracks with her friends, smoking joints, watching the boys try skate tricks, and sharing their fears of the future.

For Bea, the train chugging was one of those unmistakable noises, like the crunching of gravel as your dad’s truck pulls into the driveway. The cicadas outside your open window in the summertime. The patter of your cat’s paws on the linoleum. For years, that was the soundtrack to her life. Being back here was like putting on a song she hadn’t heard in a while. She still knew all the lyrics, but the chords made the hair on her arms stand up.

Bea had grown up in house just a couple of miles from the tracks, something most people would consider a nuisance. There was a reason their home was affordable. The neighborhood was low-income and undesirable, not least of all for its proximity to the train.

But Bea treasured that sound. From her early childhood, she always got excited when she heard the “choo-choo.” Her face lit up and she toddled her way through the house to find her father, if he was home, and they would imitate the train and laugh. It didn’t matter how many times a day she heard it, it never got old.

After her father passed, one would think the sound of the train would trigger her grief, eliciting the happy memories she shared with him. But for Bea, it brought a sense of peace. She felt her father’s presence as she listened, and it calmed her in a way only children of trauma could understand: its consistency provided comfort. She could track the locomotive as it neared the neighborhood, visualizing exactly where it was as the thundering dialed louder.

As she aged, the sound began to signify hope and opportunity. After her mother remarried, the atmosphere in her home quickly descended into a tense, dark cloud. Not long after Frank moved in, he started having angry outbursts directed at both Bea and her mother. It didn’t take much longer for him to get physical toward Bea – it wasn’t often, and it usually wasn’t bad enough to leave any marks, but that made it worse, because her mother never believed her.

She desperately wanted to run away from Richmond and never look back. The train reminded her that there was life outside of the bubble she felt trapped within.

She had never flown anywhere; she had barely travelled at all – family vacations consisted of long weekends at Taylorsville Lake less than two hours away, and those stopped after her father’s death.

The train only stopped in Richmond for a moment, and Bea spent years imagining the expanses it passed over on the rest of its journey across the United States. She couldn’t fathom the vistas it zoomed by, the diverse terrains, wildernesses and cities.

Over the past ten years she had grown used to different sounds – overlapping chatter, constant honking, and the stiff, recorded voices announcing arrivals of a different type of train than she was used to. First the elevated trains of Chicago, then New York subways.

Ten years. That’s how long it had been since Bea stepped foot in Richmond, Kentucky. She was 18 years old and had managed to scrounge up enough of her savings to buy a big suitcase and a one-way flight to Chicago. She had been accepted to Northwestern University and received quite a bit in scholarships and financial aid. Unfortunately, it didn’t cover the full tuition, and Bea was forced to take out hefty loans.

Her mother and stepfather refused to support her, monetarily or emotionally. Her mother actively discouraged Bea, insisting she go to the community college nearby while working full-time – she wasn’t smart enough for a fancy school. She was going into debt for nothing - she would end up broke and jobless, back on her mother’s doorstep, tail between her legs.

Luckily, Bea took that doubt and used it as fodder to succeed. She refused to come home during the holidays or summer breaks, opting instead to pick up extra shifts at her waitressing job in Chicago, spending Thanksgiving and Christmas at the family home of any friend who lived local.

While Bea was away, Frank left her mother and without his income, Veronica was forced to move to an apartment by herself. She ended up in Nicholasville, forty minutes from Richmond and ten minutes from Wilmore, where her own mother, Bea’s grandmother, lived. Nana had moved following her own husband’s death when Bea was a baby, but her funeral services were in Richmond, where she was to be buried.

After the separation and move, Veronica began reaching out to Bea more, begging her to come home. Bea finally relented after a few half-baked apologies and began visiting for holidays, now that she knew Frank wouldn’t be waiting for her. She was more inclined to visit knowing her grandmother would be nearby. If she and her mother got into a fight, she would make the quick drive out to Nana’s, who always welcomed her with open arms and a home-cooked meal.

Six years after getting her diploma, Bea was still struggling financially, despite landing a decent magazine job within a few months after graduation. Her debt had racked up while in school and her mother continuously refused to send her a penny – not that Bea ever asked. It wasn’t until her first Christmas out of college that Veronica hit her own daughter up for cash, and Bea obliged.

When she moved to New York for the editorial assistant position at Condé Nast, she quickly realized that the city was expensive, and her chosen career wasn’t as lucrative as she’d hoped it would be. What’s more, having inherited her mother’s impulsivity and her grandfather’s addictive personality, her money didn’t tend to stay in her wallet long.

Whether she was supporting her mother, providing a boyfriend with a “loan,” or racking up a tab at her local pub, Bea never hesitated to empty her pockets for momentary bliss, or the fleeting thankfulness of those from whom she craved approval.

Bea walked into the funeral home with a brick in her stomach, overnight bag in hand. She smoothed her plain black thrift-store dress and took a deep breath as she approached the open casket.

Her breath caught at the sight of her lifeless Nana – the woman who always had so much vitality, so much fight in her. Bea stood for a moment in a limbo, not really hearing anything around her. She felt like she was drowning. The best person in her life, gone.

“Beatrice?”

Bea spun around and locked eyes with a ghost – her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in nearly three years, looked like she had aged at least ten. Her milk chocolate eyes were encircled in dark shadows and tendrils of hair spilled out of her frizzy ponytail, some black, some gray.

“H-hi mom,” Bea stammered, as she turned away from the casket and took a step toward Veronica.

They hesitated before Veronica extended her arms clumsily and they shared an awkward embrace, during which Bea’s chin rested on a rip in the shoulder of her mother’s dirty brown coat and she inhaled the strong scent of the same vanilla shampoo she’d used when she lived with her.

“How’ve you been?”

Following a few moments of awkward “catching up” conversation that should be reserved for exes and old coworkers, mother and daughter parted ways, chatting with other guests neither of them had seen in years.

After the wake, Bea was itching for a distraction. Not only did she have to confront the reality of the death of her grandmother, the only person since her father who provided her with any morsel of the comforting, unconditional love that one should receive from family, but she also had to face her mother, who was a reminder of her turbulent teenage years.

High school and puberty are difficult for anyone, but Bea’s was especially soured by a violent stepfather and a mother who chose him over her, only exacerbating the void left in her by her father’s death.

Arriving in her hometown face-to-face with some of her most painful memories stirred up something in Bea she immediately wanted to push away.

As she made her way to the exit, she saw her mother wave her down.

“What are your plans now?” Veronica asked.

“I need a drink,” said Bea, swallowing tears and avoiding eye contact with her mother. She ran out of the front door of the funeral home before she could hear a response.

Losing her grandmother left her heart shattered worse than any ex-boyfriend had. And as usual, Bea was going to numb her pain with alcohol, so she took a cab to the Ace Bar, a local dive she used to sneak into underage.

“Jack and coke, please,” she said as she sidled up to the one open stool at the dirty, crowded bar. The dim lighting half-hid the various characters standing in the red-walled, beer-stained room. A group of tattooed men stood around the pool table.

“Bea? Is that you?”

Bea knew that syrup-sweet southern voice anywhere.

“Katie, hi!” It was Katie Philipps, one of her fellow degenerates from high school. She hadn’t spoken to her since the last time she was in town – it was nothing personal, she just didn’t want to associate with anyone that reminded her of the past.

She and Katie would get into trouble together, with drugs, with boys. Katie never made it out of the area, and Bea got the feeling Katie resented her for the fact that she did.

“How are you? I heard about your grandma, I’m so sorry.” Small town, huh, thought Bea.

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

“I was just on my way out, but if you’re here tomorrow, let’s catch up!”

“Definitely,” Bea agreed, halfheartedly. She felt guilty that she would likely blow off her old friend. Katie gave her a quick hug and sauntered out of the bar with a short blonde girl who looked vaguely familiar.

Yet another ghost of her past appearing at an inopportune time. She wanted to be alone, or at least not in the company of anyone who had known her in high school.

It was hard for Bea to be in the midst of so many reminders of her past – what she didn’t admit to herself was that the hardest part was knowing she couldn’t blame this place for her own decisions. She went through life thinking it had shaped her, turned her into who she was today and caused most of her problems. In reality, deep down, she knew she had to take that blame.

“Can I buy you your next one?” Bea flipped her head around to the source of the raspy voice to see a dark-haired man with a five o’ clock shadow sitting at the stool next to her.

Bea gave a teasing smile. “Sure.”

“I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“Oh, I live in New York. I grew up here, but I haven’t been back in years.”

“What brings you back now?”

“A funeral, actually. My grandmother’s.”

“Ah shit, that’s a bummer. I’m sorry.”

Bea shrugged. The bartender returned with their drinks and the mystery man raised his glass to hers.

“Nice to meet you…”

“Bea.”

“Bea. A beautiful name,” he said as he took a sip.

“I’m Matt.”

As they continued their conversation, Bea realized he was the kind of guy who could ruin her life. Good thing she wasn’t staying in Richmond past tomorrow, she thought.

She could tell Matt was a regular at this bar by the way the bartenders eyed them, and the fact they gave them two rounds of shots for free. On her fifth drink of the night, Bea had the fleeting thought that she couldn’t remember the last night she didn’t have a drink. An alarm bell should have sounded in her mind at that realization, but it didn’t.

When Matt leaned in to kiss her, all she thought about was how she wanted to escape this place. Men, particularly men she shouldn’t be with, seemed to fulfill that escapist fantasy for her.

The vibration of her cell phone on the bar interrupted Bea and this mystery man’s tryst. It was her mother. Seeing the contact name on her phone sobered her up quickly. It was like divine intervention, a warning to stop what she was doing.

“Sorry,” she flashed her phone at Matt before picking up.

“Hello?”

“Uh, hey, Bea…I don’t know where you went after the wake, but…did you want to stay with me? Do you have a hotel?”

“I was going to get one, yeah,” Bea said, knowing that she likely would have ended up this strange man’s home, instead.

“Well…you know you’re always welcome. I wanted to talk to you after the wake but you rushed out. Are you doing okay? I know Nana was your person.”

It was strange, hearing her mother speak so kindly to her. She wondered if Veronica had grown up at all since she’d seen her last.  They fell out of touch when Bea got fed up with sending money to her mother – money she didn’t even really have.

“Yeah, uh…I’m at Ace Bar.”

“I can pick you up, you know, if-if you want. I’m not far. I just grabbed some food with Uncle John and was going to head home. Just…let me know.”

Veronica sounded sad, which made sense since her mother had just died, but Bea also recognized an apologetic tone that her mom rarely used. She could tell she wanted to say more.

“Um, yeah. Okay. Actually, that’d be great. I’ll stay with you.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Bea left some cash on the bar, picked up her overnight tote and said goodbye to her new friend, who had immediately looked bored once Bea answered the phone. He muttered a goodbye and before she had left the establishment, Matt had turned to talk to a slender brunette woman sitting on his other side. Bea rolled her eyes as she shoved the heavy front door and stepped into the bitter cold night, hugging her arms. She was grateful she hadn’t gone home with him. It was ironic that her mother was the reason why.

Veronica had made terrible choices when it came to men. The only decent one she chose was Bea’s father – although Bea was too young to know for sure if he was as upstanding as she thought him to be. He was her idol. Her mother never said a bad word about him after he died.

Veronica was overcome with grief. She was drowning her sorrows in alcohol, neglecting her child, and dating anyone who made her feel less alone. Ultimately that meant she was involved in some of the most tempestuous romances with less-than-upstanding men.

Unfortunately, it looked like Bea was following in her mother’s footsteps.

Her heart lurched into her throat when she saw her mother in the parking lot. Veronica sat alone in her beat-up 2004 Chevy, dark circles under her eyes, angrily attempting to light a cigarette. Widowed, divorced, broke, motherless, estranged from her daughter – Bea knew she was staring directly into her own future if she didn’t change something soon.

She opened the passenger side door and sat down.

“Beatrice? What’s wrong?” Bea hadn’t realized there were tears on her face. The whiskey and the her mother’s voice softened the annoyance and resentment she usually felt toward her.

“I’m sorry, mom.” Bea’s voice cracked.

“For what?”

“Everything. I need to do better.”

“No, no honey. You don’t have to apologize to me…I need to do better too.” Without discussing any specifics, the two of them knew exactly what each other was talking about. They left the painful parts unsaid, as their family tended to do.

Veronica grabbed her daughter’s hand across the center console and used her other to wipe Bea’s face. She smiled sadly, her own eyes watering.

“We can do better,” her mother added.

Bea gave a weak smile.

“I’m happy you’re home.”

“Me too.”