Comfortable Liar

goodbye; a taking of leave

May 23, 1999. I was finally out of school. I was free for a whole two months! That wasn’t even the best part. My birthday was only about a month away, and I’d be seventeen. My shoes slapped against the sidewalk in a repeating pattern as I walked away from my school and towards my loving home. One of my friends, Kacey, was walking beside me. She was the only person in school I could have a normal conversation with, so we tended to get along well. Our heads were swimming with future summer plans.

“Call you later, okay?” Kacey asked as I stopped in front of her house.

“Yeah. Are we still going over to Derrick’s tonight?” I asked and started walking backwards.

“Do we ever do anything else?” Kacey asked as she started walking up her lawn.

“Good point! Call you later!” I yelled and turned in the right direction. I finished walking up the small hill, and then I turned down the second street on the right. I’m not sure when I first noticed that something was wrong. All the neighbors standing outside told me something was up, but I had no idea it would be something so…life altering.

I walked past curious neighbors with sympathetic glances, and then I saw what all the commotion was about. Three cop cars were on my front lawn, and two policeman were dragging my cursing mother out of the house. Another three cops had my step-dad, Jake Mason, pinned to the side of another cop car. Yet another police officer noticed me and ran over.

“Excuse me, miss, but you can’t be here,” he said.

“Those are my parents!” I yelled and pushed him to the side. My mom saw me and instantly stopped struggling.

“Erika, I’m so sorry,” Mom said with mascara bleeding down her cheeks.

“Mom, what’d you do?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter anymore, honey. You go live with your dad and forget all about this, okay?” Mom asked. The policeman holding her looked bewildered, and they loosened their hold on her.

“You can’t send me to Dad, Mom. I don’t even know him!” I yelled.

“But you will. He’s a good man, and he’ll take care of you better than I ever did,” Mom said and dropped her head to my shoulder. We both stood at five-five, but right now she looked so much smaller as she sobbed on my shoulder.

“I’ll stay here, Momma, with you,” I whispered and leaned my head against hers. She lifted her head, and some of her hair stuck to my tear strained face. She kissed my cheek and placed her lips at my ear.

“Stick around for the funeral, please,” she whispered desperately. My breath caught in my throat and my vision blurred, and then Mom was thrown into the back of a cop car.

| ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~

“Erika, sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Kirkland, Kacey’s mom, said. I’d heard the same thing countless times in just a few short hours, but I knew that it was meant this time. I nodded my head, because my breath is still caught in my throat. It’s been two weeks and I still can’t breathe right.

As it turned out, my parents were the biggest drug dealers in town. They sold some…stuff to a minor and a kid wound up dead. The cops traced everything back to my parents, and they were both looking at, basically, life. Apparently, my mother couldn’t live with the thought of life in prison, so she committed suicide in the county jailhouse. I’ve heard that the correctional officers were very impressed. It obviously isn’t easy to kill yourself in that place.

So, here I stand, at my mother’s grave to say goodbye for the last time. She’s gone now, and she’s never coming back. I’ll never see her love in her eyes, or hear her laugh, or smell her perfume, or have one of her hugs that only a mother can give. She left me here. Well, not exactly here. When the funeral is over, I’ll be escorted to the airport, where I’ll leave my old life. I’m going to live with my father, a man I’ve never met. He’s just a name on a check.

“Oh, Erika!” Kacey yelled and threw her arms around my neck. I stumbled back and then wrapped my arms tightly around her. I wanted to cry, but there were no more tears left. I had shed my last tear for this life. It was time to start a new one.