Scattered

“Yes, does that happen to be a problem for you?” Mr. Jones’s sarcasm was the last thing I needed right now.

I pressed my hand to my head. “The Preacher’s daughter?” I asked incredulously. “Why her?”

Mr. Malone smiled tightly and wrapped his boney fingers around my upper arm and jerked me by his side. “Don’t worry. He’ll be on that bus tomorrow morning. I’ll make sure of it.”

Mr. Jones wiggled his fingers in a wave and Mr. Davis left while Mr. Malone pulled me from the premises. He was muttering all kinds of threats and punishments that weren’t for my ears to hear as he towed me down to his classroom. Mr. Malone was this school’s best Painting and Drawing teacher. He was my favorite teacher, and I knew for a fact of rumors and praises that I was his favorite student. I had the artistic glow, he said, talent in an artist’s dark soul. He told me that exile by students and adults was the best thing that could have happened to me because I embraced “the painter’s touch and artist’s eye”.

He threw me into his room and slammed the door. His classroom was deserted for first hour, I usually spent it in here with him, working on my paintings and sketches, or writing sheet music with him.

His hands shot into his hair, twined through it, and pulled while his lips released a window-shaking scream. After that, he took heaving breaths and stared at me with a glow to his eyes that was neither a painter’s dim nor an artist’s dark soul. “Don’t you realize that you have no room to pick and choose your battles anymore? It’s time to start giving a shit, Quin!”

When he pushed me into his room, I’d stumbled reversely into a drawing desk, the wood slammed and rubbed into my lower back with penetrating pain. I pointed at him and used just as much force with my words as he did. “You’re the only one who knows the truth! How could you do this to me?”

“I can’t change what the Preacher told the parents about your brothers, Quin. I can’t change that they told their kids. And I can’t change that you acted and became the name he gave you! You’ve made your bed, now lie in it!”

The disdain crept between my teeth once more, which happened to be clenched and aching by this point. “With Sparrow Tompson?”

“Don’t you twist my words?” Malone snapped with an equal growl as he hopped toward me by a couple steps. The fire in his hazel eyes blazed, just as well as the evil genius hair that was once tamed, stuck in all different directions.

“God, this is going to be a disaster, Malone. Can’t you see that already by this idea?” I groaned as I slapped my hands into my face.

He tut-tutted, his finger waving from side-to-side. “If anyone can turn you good, Quin, it’s her. You know it as well as me.”

“Pfft! If anyone can turn that girl evil, Malone, it’s me. Don’t stand there and pretend that’s not true.” I recoiled with mocking laughter.

He didn’t appreciate that. “Do you want to be expelled? I can go back and make the arrangements with Jones, if that’s how you really feel.”

My hands flew up in quick, calm defense. “Don’t get your knickers in such a twist. I’m just being a punk." I paused as realization dawned on me. "What am I supposed to tell my mother?”

He rubbed the scruff lining his jaw for a moment, his eyes staring at the ceiling in thought, and then stared at me pointedly. “Well, the truth would work, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling in his direction. “Who’s supposed to watch over her?”

“She’s thirty-six years old, Quin. She can take care of herself.” I had never felt so doubted and reprimanded.

I tried not to let the words play hurt through my voice, “She needs me! She may be thirty-six, but she’s drunk off her mind and fear ninety percent of her day. I’m her anchor. If I’m gone for three days, and she’s left home alone, I don’t want her to feel as though I abandoned her.”

I’d never admit to the loss and power to my voice as it trailed off, my hand rubbing my jacket-covered arm, tracing over the would-be thorn vines weaving around and through each other. I knew that was exactly how she was going to feel, whether I left her home by herself or I got someone to, for lack of a better term, babysit her. When Malone just stared at me with his brows knitted together, my voice came off meek, weak, and small.

“You don’t understand the life I lead, Malone. I know I’ve confessed more to you than I have to my therapist this last year, but you still don’t understand. I’m her guardian. She’s my child, my responsibility, and she’s going to feel the exact same way a small child would if I disappear for a full weekend. I never want her to feel a single ounce of fear or loneliness that my father destroyed her with, not from me.”

As if by some chance, realization enveloped his whole face as his eyebrows eased away from each other and high on his forehead. “You take care of your mother?”

“Like a newborn.”

“Does Department of Children and Family Services know?” Malone asked slowly.

Paling under the florescence, I felt my black eyes pierce through my teacher, my heart hammering at the mere mention of it. “I would never, ever, never do that to her. And you won’t either. I’m eighteen years old, I’m an adult. If I want to take care of my dependent, manic mother, I will.”

“Quin,” he scolded quietly, “What happened to your neck and cheeks? I know that wasn’t from the fight.”

I felt as though I had paled so much that I was conforming to transparency. Frozen in place, my defensive reply was locked in the walls of my throat. “What did she do to you?”

“Nothing I didn’t allow her to.” I snapped, my mind clearing back to the matter of my mother’s care and safety.

“Quin,” he began once more, his tone empathetic and scolding.

I cut him off with the harshness of my ignorance. “No! I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times – a million if I have to – she’s my responsibility and I won’t let you, DCFS, or anyone else take her away from me. I love my mother more than I’ve loved anything in this whole world, and I know she loves me back. You won’t take her from me, I won’t let you.”

He, with his hands up before him in calm defense, took a few steps toward me with calm eyes and a gentle voice. “It’s okay. We can find her help, me and you, together.”

I stepped toward him with tears running down my face at the thought of my mother’s reaction to being taken away in a straightjacket, hauled and strapped to a stretcher as it rolled away from me. “She is my mother! I don’t need your help. I can take care of her. I’ve already brought her a long way since my father left three years ago. She’s getting better, but she’ll die if you take her from me. I’ll die if you take her from me.”

The soft footfalls resounded through the silent room, my arm ripped across my face to erase my weak tears falling at my mother’s expense. “I just want to help her, Quin.”

My fingers wrapped around his exposed wrists, tightening to a sinful grip. I growled lowly as tears slipped down my cheeks like acid, “You can’t help her. DCFS can’t help her. Good God Almighty can’t even help her. Just me. Please, don’t take my mother away from me. I need her just as much as she needs me. She works, every day she works, she gets up and she functions regularly. You can’t take her away. You have no plausible reason. See my face? I let her do that. I could break her like a twig, but most of my bumps came from a fight I got into last night.”

“Quin,” Malone said through a choked, hoarse voice, his eyes looking down at his aching wrists.

“No. Leave my mother out of this, Malone. Leave her be, let me prove to this pathetic town that Helen Delmarko can live from day-to-day without alcohol. Please?”

He clenched his hands into fists and then spread them out, straining the ache. “Alright.”

I shook my head, “I need you to promise me.”

“You have my word, Quin, on my mother’s eyes.”

I released his hands and stepped back, mumbling a halfhearted apology and stepping out of the room as the releasing bell rang.

_______________

As I was getting off my shift at the SuperMarket, I removed my snapback hat from my head and folded it into my back pocket, pulling the bright blue shirt over my head and leaving me in my navy wife beater and whitewashed grey jeans. I waved to Mark, my boss, to let him know that I was heading out for the day and returned to the staff room to shuffle into my jacket.

Shoving my hand deep into my pocket as I walked past the two sets of automatic doors, I lit up my cigarette and was greeted with a punch to the arm. When I looked over, I smirked. “What’s up, Drew?”

Drew laughed outright when he watched the features of my face tighten with anger and relax at the sight of him. “So, how much trouble did you get in?”

Blowing a lungful of air, I flicked ashes hard at the ground as I remembered this morning with a bitter taste coating my tongue. Or maybe it was the menthol. “You know that Youths of America retreat this weekend? Well, I have to attend that, and apparently, we get paired up with roommates that we get, like, literally tied to. My roommate is Sparrow Tompson.”

I was surprised to see that Drew didn’t completely collapse to the ground with laughter. He was hanging onto my tall shoulder, his arm wrapped around his stomach as he slapped his thigh a couple times. I didn’t push him off me; I just nodded and grinned at his reaction. He sobered with the clear of his throat.

“And how does our main man, the Preacher feel about this?”

I sent a glare his way, a grim line where my normal smirk usually overrode. “They haven’t told Sparrow yet, so I’m guessing they haven’t told him either. I can’t see why they would. Everyone knows what he’s saying about me.”

Drew’s arm draped around my shoulder as he spread his hand in front of my face slowly, waving it slowly from side to side. “Greensville’s Sinner, our very own Anti-Christ! Such a nice ring to it, you know? I think I might like it more than Quin, really.”

I stared at his amused grin through my peripherals as I draped one rose-covered hand over the shoulder closest to me, my hand hanging limply between us. “Yeah, Sinner is really the cherry on top to my existence. Did that fucker ever think about what they named my mother? Greensville’s Whore, our very own Hand-Job Helen, it just sickens me. Didn’t he think about her reputation? You trash mine, you’ve trashed hers. It pisses me off.”

“How is your mom?” Drew asked softly as we made our way down the train tracks, my cigarette hung loosely between my lips.

I tightened my mouth and sucked in before allowing it to go slack once more, then exhaling down through my nose. “Better than she was last week. Harris is gone.”

“Gone, you say? Why’s he gone?” Drew’s face brightened with surprise and the same kind of happiness I did when I threw him out last night. We both hated him.

“I caught him and my mom on the couch. He was choking her while he pounded her in.” I said through my disgust, my words slurring only slightly because of the bobbing cancer stick between my lips.

Drew was quiet for a moment, which caused me to stare blatantly at him through my peripherals once more. “How badly hurt is the asshole?”

I snorted once. “I would have killed him. You know I would have killed him. I stopped for my mother’s sake, though, and broke a rib, I think. Maybe two.”

“Can I come see her? I haven’t seen the lovely Helen since Saturday.” Drew asked timidly.

I snorted again. “You even have to ask? You’ve been my best friend for, like, four years now. You’ve stuck around when everyone else listened to his bullshit. Anyway, I figured you would, since you met me after work.”

A fond smile pulled up my friend’s lips as his hand slapped into my chest. I winced and inhaled sharply. He ignored it. “I just know how protective you are of her. You know, you shouldn’t let people’s words hurt you like they did today. You know the truth.”

I stared at him and winced again at the reverberation of his slap to the chest. He still either didn’t notice or ignored it. “You know the situation better than anyone else. I have to defend her because she can barely defend herself. I could care less what they have to say about me. I smoke, I have huge, arm-covering tattoos, I drink, I get into loads of fights, and I don’t care what they say. It’s all the truth when they say stuff about me. But her? Everything they say about her is just one lie facing into another. It’s not fair.”

“In the Preacher’s town, Sinner, nothing is for you.” Drew dragged out the name the town granted me.

We didn’t speak the last five minutes of the walk back to my house. It was a comfortable silence, one I needed and enjoyed for the most part. It was well-past dark by the time we strolled in through the front door, and to my very dismay, my mother was swirling rum around in a small crystal glass cup.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She said bitterly as she took a long drink, coughing afterwards from the harsh tingle falling down her throat. “Along with my riffraff disappointment. How ’ya doing tonight, son?”

Detangling ourselves, we slowly walked up the few stairs and I stared disapprovingly at my mother. “How’s the Captain, mother?”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Richard.” My mother snapped hard, her words forming acidly down her tongue as she viciously threw my father’s name at me.

My eyes widened and my mouth fell parted, a soft exhale was chokingly caught between my lips. Drew’s fingers wrapped tightly into my jacket to keep me stable. “Mother, I need to talk to you.”

She laughed bitterly at me. This was my mother when she drank brandy or rum, a bitter woman who spited me with every word that slipped past her lips. It was vodka she drank when she depended upon me, that and when she was still sobering. “Speak away, Richie boy.”

I looked at Drew and he smiled encouragingly. He was such a good friend, the best one person, especially me, could have. I walked away from his grip and kneeled in front of my mother’s arm chair, my hands grabbing onto the arm rests. I reached one hand up and pressed it against her cheek and gave her a soft, sweet smile. For some reason, especially when she was drinking rum or some type of brandy, she always softened and sobered into the dependent child I sought her out to be when I touched her.

“Mother, Aunt Jane is taking you to her house this weekend.”

Aunt Jane. She was my only true ally, besides Drew. She saw the suicidal state my father left her in, and she watched her pathetically desperate state turn into one where she was stable enough to eat, drink, and work once more on her own. She knew that if there was anyone to turn my mother back into the person she was when I was thirteen, it was me.

“I am?” her voice was shocked, her eyes were wide. I knew it was coming, I just wanted to avoid her outburst before it hit home.

I reached up and pressed my other hand to her cheek and nearly towered over her slumped figure. I smiled encouragingly, “Yes, mother. But only for this one weekend. I’ll be picking you up Monday afternoon, just after I get out from school. I already called your work, so everything’s set up.”

“Where are you going? Why am I going away? Are you – don’t leave, Quin! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I called you. I swear, I didn’t mean it!”

And there it was. The outburst. Tears pooled and slipped down her cheeks, her fingers clutched my jacket collar and she began to tremble. I turned my eyes to Drew and nodded up. He nodded once and went up to my room, finding a place on my creaky bed to sit.

“Mother, I’m not going anywhere. I will be picking you up, and I will be bringing you back home, I promise. Aunt Jane just thought it would be a good idea to surprise you with a nice, long girl’s weekend. That’s all. Come, though, you need your rest for the weekend.”

I lifted my mother up by her underarms and she wound her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist as I picked up the large bottle of rum and placed it in the liquor cabinet. She weighed next to nothing for me, I always marveled over how small and petite she really was, even for a woman of her age. She only stood at a few inches past five feet and a few pounds under one-twenty. I towered at two inches past six feet, so she truly did look like a child to me, if it weren’t for her young yet properly aged features, I probably would regard her more as my child.

I walked to her bedroom and sat at the end of her it. She disentangled herself from me and crawled sleepily into her bed, snuggling beneath her blanket. I kissed her cheek as she kissed my necklaces and then my hands.

Curling a loose blonde curl around her ear, I whispered for the first time in a long time, “I love you, mother.”

She smiled, pleased to hear the words when I’d say them – which wasn’t very often, if I was being truthful. I stood up and stretched, walking out the door and closing it to its proper point.

She yawned, “Mama loves you, Quin.”

I walked into the living room, grabbed the small bottle of vodka and two glasses before I walked up to my bedroom. Once I plopped down into open, black egg chair, I poured some of the bitter liquid into the cups and threw it back.

Inhaling sharply, I groaned my response to the strength. My head shook fiercely and I slapped my cheeks for a moment. “Holy Hell! I needed that.”

Drew shook his head, throwing his back and laughing at my response. “Yeah, I’d need this every day if I was in your situation.”

____________________

The next morning, I waited until Aunt Jane took mother away before I packed my things and walked over to the school where the bus was waiting for people to file in. I jogged and hopped onto the bus, walking all the way back. I popped the collar to my jacket, pushed my hands into my pockets and hid at the back of the bus. Mr. Malone was one of the chaperones and didn’t call my name out for roll call, seeing me hide in the far back. There had to be only about twenty people on the bus. This was going to be a very long weekend.

I slept for the entirety of the ride, seeing as it was somewhere near a two hour ride. When I woke up, I looked out at the large cabin site. There were about forty cabins within the distance I could see and it was easy to see which ones were meant for sleeping and the others for activity. The ones for sleeping were only about the size of a two car garage and the others were the size of a small ranch. If that wasn’t Hell enough, there were two other buses from two different schools. One had about fifteen people and the other had twenty as well as us.

When I got off the bus, Malone handed me a thick, seven foot long string and said to me, “You’re in cabin twelve. I don’t want any funny business, Quin. How this works is, you tie ankle-to-ankle and you don’t take it off unless you need to use the bathroom or you’re showering. She’s just entered the cabin, go.”

I looked down at the thick-corded orange string and jogged with my duffle bag and guitar hanging on my shoulder over to the logged cabin. Slowly, I pulled the door open and allowed it to crash closed behind me.

Sparrow, with her French braid pulling her chestnut hair back and over her shoulder, her maroon colored eyes staring at me, snapped with surprise. “Quin? What are you doing here?”

I cleared my throat and held up the thick string with an easy smile. “I’m your partner.”