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Chapter
2 - Solitude
“And I don’t want the
world to see me
Because I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am.”
“What are you doing?”
I whirled around and brought my hand to my chest. “Amy!” I hissed in an
angry whisper. “You scared me.” My sister was looking at me with big brown
eyes, and stood with her hands in her pockets. She was thirteen years old
now- a thought which I had a hard time wrapping my mind around.
“That much is obvious.” She grinned and walked up next to me. “Finished
eaves dropping?”
I narrowed my eyes at her in moch anger. “Yes, I suppose.”
“Good. Because its time to do school work.”
“And I wouldn’t want to miss that,” I said, my voice all sarcasm.
She rolled her eyes and we walked down the hall, away from my parents
bedroom.
“So, what did they say?” She looked over at me expectantly.
“You mean mom and dad?”
“No, I mean Batman and Robin,” she laughed and then tugged on my arm. “Yes,
mom and dad!”
“That I’m disrespectful and rebellious.” I sighed. “What else is new?”
“Did they talk about the incident last night?” She smiled knowingly. Had
anyone else smiled when they were talking about the ‘incident’, I would have
been very angry.
“Yes, actually, but they haven’t decided my punishment yet.” She smirked and
shook her head. I hurried to add, “It wasn’t like the security guards had
to escort me back. They just didn’t have anything better to do. I wasn’t
scaring old ladies or drowning kittens or anything. I was just hanging
around outside.”
“After dark,” she interjected.
“Well, yes, but that’s no reason to get all upset. I was heading home when
the police officer spotted me,” I said in my defense.
“You were lurking,” she said with a grin.
“Was not.”
“Were too.”
“Was not!”
“Were too!” This could go on forever.
“I am not a lurker,” I said as I gave her a stern look. She merely
rolled her eyes.
“If you keep running off-”
“Running off?” I echoed. “Running off! I wasn’t ‘running off’, I was taking
a walk. And its not like anything happened.” I realized that I’d been
shouting, and quickly lowered my voice. “Nothing happened.” I repeated. “I
just wanted to get away for a little while.”
Amy, seemingly unwilling to talk about this anymore shrugged and said with a
groan, “I have to so do math now.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and slumped my shoulders forward. “Me too. Hey, if you do
my math I’ll do yours.”
She smirked. “Suuuure,” she said as she backed away from me. “I’ll get right
on that.” And then she ran down the hall and shut herself in the schoolroom.
We were homeschooled, along with my brother, Mark, and our youngest sister,
Hannah. People always want to know what it’s like being homeschooled, and I
tell them it’s very dull. “But you get to teach yourself,” they say, like
it’s a good thing. Have you ever tried teaching yourself something like
Chemistry? Its not easy. Its like trying to eat jello with a stick. That
year I ended up so far behind that I was still doing schoolwork during the
summer months. “But you get to sleep in and lounge around in your pajamas,”
they say. Well, yes, but then what? It would be nice to have something to
dress up for. There’s not much chance for a social life when you’re
homeschooled.
I stepped up to the computer and looked at the screensaver- a black
background with white stars hurtling ever towards me. It was like looking up
at the sky when it rained and seeing the raindrops falling all around me. It
was mesmerizing.
I really didn’t want to do math. I loathed that subject, and I’m not even
sure why. When I was in school (I didn’t start homeschooling until eighth
grade), I loved math and I was really good at it. Algebra made sense to me,
I enjoyed learning, and I loved my teacher. But once I had only myself and
the math book, it became more of a drudgery than a joy. I started
struggling, often failing tests; something I had never done before.
Reluctantly I turned my eyes away from the computer and walked down the
hall. I didn’t like math, but I knew I had to get it done, if not now, then
later. No college was going to let me in if I didn’t have four math credits.
I didn’t even have one. "All right," I said to myself, "Now is the time.
Today’s the day! I-
“Come wash the dishes!” It was my mother's voice calling to me from the
kitchen. I hadn’t seen her at all this morning and those were the first
words she said to me.
“Good morning to you too,” I mumbled. “Yes, I love you as well. What’s that?
Eggs and toast? Why, thank you, that sounds great.”
“What?” she asked as I turned the corner and walked into the kitchen. She
had the sleeves of her sweater pushed up over her elbows and, like usual,
held the phone in her right hand.
“Nothing.” I walked over to the sink and turned on the water. It would take
a few minutes for it to run warm, so I turned around and looked at my mom.
She wore her hair like she usually did- in a loose bun on the top of her
head, and a pair of worn-out jeans and an oversized sweatshirt. She didn’t
have any makeup on, but she was beautiful without it. My mom didn’t wear
makeup much anymore. She said it made her look too old, which was a
rediculous thing to say, seeing as how she was in her mid-forties and didn’t
look a day over thirty. In my opinion, my mother decided she was far too
busy to get old, so she just stayed young.
“Be sure to get your math done today. You haven’t done it at all this week.”
She reached behind her and, without looking, hung the phone back up on its
reciever.
I made an aggrivated grunting noise, and apparently this was just enough to
push her over the edge.
“I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to get it together.”
She slammed her hands down on the counter. I’m sure she wasn’t really
aggrivated with me, but she must have been having a bad morning and any
little thing would have set her off. I was just the catalyst. “It’s just a
simple request- ‘Do your math today.’ That shouldn’t be so hard. Why
is that so hard? It’s not as if I asked you to chop your leg off.”
“I didn’t say you did.” I knew she wasn’t angry at me- just frustrated at
things in general, or maybe even my dad. But that didn’t keep me from being
angry at her.
“Well, you’re acting like it.”
I made that noise again; that noise that my mom most loathed.
“Don’t,” she said warningly.
“I didn’t even say anything!” I yelled, indignant.
“You didn’t have to. Your body language is more than enough.”
“Well maybe the reason I’m upset is because I was on my way to do math when
YOU called me in here to wash the dishes and then I got yelled at for not
doing math!”
“I have a hard time believing you.”
A short moment passed. “What?” I asked, somewhat breathlessly.
“You always say, ‘I was going to,’ ‘I’ll do it later,’ ‘I was on my way,’
but you never do.”
She didn’t belive me. I was telling the truth this time and she didn’t
believe me. That hurt, and it knocked the wind out of me as if I had just
fallen flat on my back. I stared at her from across the kitchen, but the
phone rang again and she was turning around to answer it. I walked out of
the kitchen.
“Don’t forget to wash your cup!”
My fingers twitched convulsively at my sides and I walked hastily back into
the kitchen. The water, which had been running that whole time, was now very
hot and it burned my fingers as I washed my assigned cup, the one with my
name written on it in Sharpie. In my haste, I splashed scalding hot water
all down my front. "Oh great," I groaned. "And a cherry on top."
***
“We’re waiting!” My dad’s voice carried through the house with all the
effectiveness and force of a fire alarm going off.
“Okay, I’m coming!” I yelled back. “Ouch!” I’d accidentally stepped on
something hard and pointy. In my messy room, there’s no telling what it was.
Abandoning the effort to slip on my shoes without untying them, I picked
them up and walked out into the Main Hall. My dad was already outside.
I turned around quickly as I realized that I’d left my coat and hat in my
room. “Come on!” I heard him yell from the sidewalk. For a second I stood
glued to the spot, my body not accepting what my mind was telling it to do.
Go outside barefoot with no coat? In Winter? But I did, closing the door
firmly behind me and running out to the fifteen-passenger van. The Big Red
Wagon, we called it, among other things.
I took my assigned seat and wrung my hands together. “Sorry” I said quietly
to the van in general. All my brothers and sisters were already seated and
buckled up.
My dad let out a long, loud sigh, like a teakettle’s whistle, except very
gutteral and not as high-pitched . “Now we’re waiting on your mother.”
He spat that word out as if it were a particularly nasty flavored clump of
dirt, and topped it all off with another long sigh.
And then I saw her, coming out of the side entrance to the house. She had
her Bible and notebook tucked under her arm and a wool cap on her head with
matching gloves on her hands. In her right hand she held a water bottle. She
never left home without it.
I could nearly feel my dad’s impatience radiating off him as my mother
stepped up into the car. “Good morning” she said. “Is everybody buckled?” A
few sleepy grunts answered this. “Victor... Isaac... Nick... Tucker...
Mark... Dilbert... Michael...Hannah...” The roll call. My dad started the
car and jerked into reverse, which caused a few of the older, more daring
boys, to make a smart aleck comment about ‘someone being in a bad mood.’
Either my dad couldn’t hear them, or he couldn’t be bothered to care,
because he didn’t respond.
The rest of the van ride was riddled with various angry outbursts, some from
the boys in the back, most from my father. Finally we arrived at church.
For the first few years I’d attended Clayton Christian, I hated it. The
fifth grade class was so boring and I never learned anything. But when I was
in sixth grade, my views of the church changed. I was now a part of the
middle school class and our youth minister was Ben. For some inexplicable
reason I thought of Ben as my personal minister. We rarely talked, if ever.
A simple, ‘Hey, how are you?’ in the halls was all I got most of the time,
and that’s all I gave as well. Except once.
The middleschoolers and highschoolers took a trip each summer to Tennessee
to attend a Christ in Youth (C.I.Y.) conference. We would spend a week
there, having individual Bible studies in the morning, small group
devotionals and classes in the afternoon, at night there were concerts from
various christian artists, and after that, each youth group would get
together and just talk. One night; Thursday night to be exact, our youth
group had this tradition of splitting up into groups of four people and
those groups would talk together. Ben was in my group. He told me really
encouraging things. He said he knew that I went through a lot and that I was
amazing for having come out as strong as I was. I didn’t know that anyone
noticed, but apparently he had. Before I knew what I was doing, I was
telling him things that I’d never planned on telling anyone- and he
listened.
He said he was praying for me. That night was wonderful, but the elation I
felt then didn’t last long. After that I went back to the Foster Home, and
everything was the same. The same fights, the same loneliness, and things
were just as I had left them.
I was having a fight with my mom the day I got back from that retreat and my
dad butted in with, “I see that Church trip has really changed you,
Lynne. That was well worth all the money.” I wanted to scream.
“Hey, guys.” It was Ben. We walked into the church all in a line and Ben was
walking quickly past us. I smiled back at him but he didn’t have time to
talk. Oh well, there was always later.
Now that we were at church, things were fine. Everyone seemed to have left
their bad moods back at the van and we were perfectly happy joking around in
class. I say ‘we’ but in reality, I wasn’t much in on the jokes. I sat by
myself mostly. Today, though, I was in the mood for a change. I didn’t want
to sit alone this week. I stood in the doorway of the classroom and looked
around, searching for someone to make friends with. There, in the corner,
were two boys. They looked about my age, but I found out later that they
were a year younger than I am.
“Hey.” I walked up to their table boldly, although, I admit I was a little
shaken by their expressions. They looked at me as if I had something big and
hairy protruding from my neck like a second head. They didn’t say anything.
I stood there for a minute, looking around the room, suddenly very unsure of
myself. “Um... Can I sit with you guys?” They looked at each other and then
one of them, the skinnier one gave me a nod. I sat down, now very
uncomfortable, and asked them how they were.
“Fine.” The boy who had nodded at me looked up and smiled. His eyes were a
mixture of hazel and green, and he had a portable cd player with him, one
headphone in one ear and the other in his friends ear. I looked to the other
boy, who had shockingly pale, green eyes and the same color hair as his
friend: dark brown. He smiled too and I realized that they weren’t being
standoffish. They were just shy. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my
shoulders and I was suddenly at ease.
I sat with them during service, listening sometimes to Ben, sometimes to
them. I quickly learned that they both had great senses of humor. I smiled
at them when service got out, and then walked away with a quick ‘goodbye’.
***
We went out to lunch that day; to Taco Bell. Now, I don’t like Taco Bell,
but it was far better than sandwiches, so I was happy. Plus, I love to see
the looks on people’s faces when we enter the restaurant. The people behind
the counter look at us in a sort of unbelieving horror (Dee, break’s over!
We just had fourteen people walk in here!), and normally the patrons don’t
even try to hide the fact that they’re staring. Sometimes it embarassed me,
sometimes it made me mad, but today I didn’t care. Let them stare.
“I’d like a number nine with-”
“No, Jaleel! That is absolutley too much food. And what did we say? A five
dollar limit.”
It was chaos, as it always is whenever we go somewhere as a group. At that
time, there were a few very rowdy boys living with us and it was all my
mother could do to keep them in line. “Oh, I wish your father would help
out!” She confided to me, after paying the cashier. I looked around and saw
that my dad was sitting at a table with one of the older boys, chewing on a
straw. Mom’s eyes narrowed into little slits and she let out a long,
exaggerated sigh. She always did that when she was angry. It got on my
nerves, probably as much as my eye-rolling got on hers.
It went downhill from there. Nothing we ordered came out right, and my mom
had to make several trips to the counter, explaining that we were still
short four taco’s and waiting on another chicken cuesadilla. From her spot
by the counter she would look over her shoulder and glare pointedly at my
dad, who would pointedly ignore her glares. For the rest of the day they
didn’t speak to each other unless they had to.
***
I was home. Not at the Foster Home, but my real home; the house in Conyers
where we used to live. I looked around me, noticing that things were exactly
as we had left them, right down to the magnets on the beige refrigerator
door. To my right was the kitchen and to my left was the living room. In
front of me stood a man. He was wearing a floor length robe with long, full
sleeves that hung limply from his thin arms and shoulders. I knew his robes
were blue, but in the poor lighting, they looked black. The only color on
them was that of silver stars and moons embroidered on the fabric. Also, he
wore a tall, pointed hat with the same pattern on it. His eyes were wide and
shone with an eerie silver gleam and his face seemed somehow hollow. His
white hair hung around his face and spilled down to his waist. Suspended in
the air between his bony hands was a crystal ball, glowing a dull silver
color.
This was my nightmare, born out of an image that stuck with me when I was
five years old. The Wizard in Disney’s Fantasia- although this Wizard had
none of that cartoonish charm. He was alive and real and menacing.
His long fingers flexed and tightened around the crystal and I watched as
his lips formed a thin, mirthless smirk.
“No” I whispered. I knew what was happening- what would happen. I whipped my
head around and behind me on the staircase was my father. He walked towards
us stiffly, as I imagined a zombie would, and his eyes were closed. “Dad” I
cried. “Dad!" He couldn’t hear me. “Dad stop! Don’t go near him! He’ll kill
you! STOP IT!”
But it was useless. Nothing I said made any difference, and my feet were
cemented to the ground. I watched in horror as my dad walked by me and fell
to the floor in front of the wizard. He was dead. I had just watched my
father die.
The wizard’s eyes lit with a malitious pleasure and he grinned even more. I
yelled at him; yelled so loud it hurt my ears, but he just nodded in the
direction of the stairs. I turned and saw my mother coming forward in
exactly the same way my dad had, somehow drawn to the wizard.
“Mom,” I cried. “Stop mom! Can’t you see? Look what he did to dad! MOM!” I
pleaded, “Why don’t you listen to me?!”
Then she fell forward, as if she had been pushed by an invisible pair of
hands, and landed on top of my father’s body. I fell to my knees and cried.
Amy, Mark, and Hannah followed. Each of them walking down the stairs, each
of them dying in turn, while I sat on the floor, powerless to stop it. Then
it was just me and the Wizard and I heard his voice in my head, “They’re
dead, and now you really are alone.”
***
I woke up, lying on my side, my arms wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I
felt with painful acuteness how hard and fast my heart was beating against
my ribcage. I’d had that nightmare a few times before; once when Amy was
born, then when Mark was born, and occasionally since.
That night was the beginning of what turned into weeks of nightmares. Most
nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would just walk around my room in circles,
or rearrange things- anything to keep my mind busy. I didn’t have that
specific nightmare again, but the theme was the same in nearly every dream.
All my family or friends would die, and there was never anything I could do
to stop it. Half of the time, it was my fault.
***
Chapter 3
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by
Tegan L. Elliott
© Copyright 2006 Tegan L.
Elliott (UN: ganlynde at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Tegan L. Elliott has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates
non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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