Savior

Jess Kincaid



After I hung up the phone, I sat for a long time thinking…crying…wishing once again, as I had so many times before, to be someone else. Anyone else. I remember as a small child, laying on my bed, listening to my parents have yet another screaming match. I would close my eyes, and be instantly transported to this perfect world I had created for myself. No one ever fought, or hurt anyone else. There was no alcohol, no cigarettes…and parents stayed together no matter what. It was such a beautiful, perfect place. It sometimes took my mother hours to “wake me”.

I met Erin Wakeman when we first moved to Milton. I was nine years old. My mother was still pregnant with my baby sister Jamie, due any day. Life had been fairly quiet and peaceful for the last several months. Once mother found out about the baby, she calmed down, stopped drinking, stopped smoking, she and my father still argued some, but it was definitely an improvement from the all-out, knock-down, drag-out fights. She was happy and fun again. You see, my mother, she wasn’t always the ruthless, horrible monster she turned into shortly after my father left for the last time. She actually used to be a really fun, sweet, good-hearted, loving person. When she was about six months pregnant, she took me shopping with her one day, to decorate the nursery. We had just movnto nto the house on Culpepper Drive. We had such a beautiful day. We had lunch, and shopped all day for just the right shade of pink for the walls, and just the right pattern for the crib and bassinet. When we got home, she promised that I could help put it all together with she and Daddy. I was so excited. Two months later, we moved again. We moved into the new house on Cooper Street the day before my ninth birthday. That was the day I met Erin.

I was playing in the yard, daddy had bought me a puppy the day we moved out of the old house, and I had her in the yard with me. She was a beautiful puppy, golden retriever. Her name was Sassy. I looked up to see a woman and a little girl walking on the sidewan frn front of our house. I was so excited. I was pretty sure the girl was my age. Her hair was long, and red, and super curly. She was very pretty. Nervously, I fingered my own limp blonde locks. It was extremely warm that afternoon, and the only breeze blowing was just as hot. I had been helping move all day, and was about to go in for a Popsicle. I stared at them for a while. Then, the girl turned and waved. I smiled and waved back. The next afternoon, she and her mother brought a pie to our house. My mother welcomed them sweetly, they chatted for almost an hour. Erin and I played in my room. We became instant friends, and were inseparable for the next four years.

When I was ten, my father took off again. I vaguely remember he and mother fighting, right before I drifted off to sleep. When I woke the next morning, he had gone. Mother was furious. She slammed things around all morning, and spent most of the afternoon crying in her room. Jamie cried almost all day. I finally went into the kitchen and prepared a bottle for her. I had been watching my mother do it for months, and was fairly certain I could do it myself. Besides, the baby had been crying for hours, and I knew she hadn’t been fed yet.

I reached up into the cabinet and pulled down the little yellow bottle with the fuzzy farm animals all over it. I liked it best. I knew she was still having formula first thing in the morning, so I filled it halfway with milk, spooned three heaping spoonfuls of formula into it, then filled it the rest of the way with water. I put the lid back on the bottle, and shook it until it appeared to be well mixed. I found the little pot my mother used to warm the bottle, filled it halfway with water, and turned the stove on the lowest setting. Gently, I settled the bottle in the pot, and watched it closely, careful not to let it begin boiling. When it seemed like it had been in there long enough, I lifted it carefully out of the hot water, set it on the counter top, and went to turn the stove off. That’s when I saw herotheother stood in the doorway of the kitchen, with her arms folded over her chest, a drink in one hand, the other clenched tight in a fist. Her face was pink, and getting more red by the second. She looked so angry. That’s what I remember. I remember wondering what had made her so angry.

She began slowly, quietly,

“What are you doing in here, Jess?”

I stared at her, a little confused. I chose my words as carefully as I could, but as I figured out later, careful shouldn’t have been the objective. Silence was the key. She glared at me,

“It looks to me like you’re doing my job. Is that what you’re doing?”

Her voice was getting louder and higher with every syllable. I stammered,

“Mom…the baby was crying and hungry. So, I was just gonna…”

“You were just gonna…what? WHAT! Be the mother? Oh, okay. Why don’t you just be the mom from now on? Apparently, I just don’t do a good enough job.”

She sauntered toward me, almost floating. When she reached the stove, where I was standing, her hand flew out anocknocked the pot off the stove, sending scalding water down the front of my shirt. I screamed as it burned me. I had never felt pain like that. I tried to push past her into the living room. I was headed for the stairs to get out of that shirt and get a look at my throbbing chest. That’s when she started throwing things. A plate narrowly missed my head as I bolted for the stairs. I heard her pounding up the stairs behind me, before I ducked into the bathroom…the only room in the house with a lock on the door. I locked myself in there for almost two hours, with her on the other side pounding, sometimes throwing all her body weight against the door, screaming, hurling obscenities. I was in shock.

My little, pink, Hello Kitty watch proclaimed the time to be a quarter of three in the afternoon when it had been quiet long enough to assume she had either gone, or passed out. Gingerly, I eased the bathroom door open, ever watchful…ever listening. When I felt that I had adequately secured my safety, I crawled through the doorway, and headed for the top of the stairs. I peeked over the railing, and saw her lying half on the couch, half on the living room floor…passed out.

That day, I searched the entire house, and every bottle of liquor I found was emptied into the drain in the kitchen sink. I went ahead and fed the baby, then put her down for a nap. When my mother woke almost four hours later, she was still cranky, but kept mostly to herself. I heard her ransacking the house, in search of her liquid diet. She tore her bedroom apart, and then the kitchen, before she finally decided she must have drunk it all. She shouted to me to get the baby dressed and ready to go, then loaded us all into the car for an impromptu run to the local liquor store. When we returned home, she locked herself ir ber bedroom. I gave Jamie her dinner, then put her down and went to stay at Erin’s house for the night.

This only happened when my father would walk out on us. He wouldn’t even say anything to me or to Jamie, he’d just leave in the night. It got to be kind of sad. Often, when he would finally come home, Jamie wouldn’t know who he was. She would cry when he tried to hold her. He would get really annoyed with this. Then, he and mother would be at it again. He always accused her of turning his children against him, etc. It got old real quick. For several months at a time, I practically lived at Erin’s house. Then, the summer we turned twelve, it got really ugly.

It was a day almost like any other. Erin and I were playing at my house. We had been in the living room most of the morning, playing Monopoly. Jamie was in her play area, happily playing. Eveing ing was relatively quiet, for my house. Mother came in from the study. My stomach began to churn as I noticed the small glass of dark liquid in her left hand. I was terrified at the prospect of her wrath while my friend was present. She stopped just short of the ce tae table, where we were situated,

“Jess, I’m going upstairs to take a nap. Keep an eye on your sister.”

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, then smiling, answered,

“Yes, mother.”

She disappeared into the hallway, and we heard her plodding doggedly up the stairs. Erin looked at me, grinning,

“Jess…I think your mom’s sloshed!”

She giggled. I must have turned a million shades of red. She had noticed. I had hoped and prayed that it had gone unnoticed. I was embarrassed…then kind of angry. I snapped,

“Shut up.”

She stop laughing, and stared at me,

“Jess, you don’t have to be so snotty with me. I was only joking. Sorry…”

She looked hurt. I felt bad for snapping at her. Playfully, I swatted her arm,

“I’m sorry, Erin. I’m just…tired…or something. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

She smiled, and then said,

“Hey! I have a GREAT idea! Let’s go outside under the sprinklers! It’s so hot out.”

I brightened, that was a great idea. When I glanced over to the play area, Jamie had crashed out in the middle of her own My Little Pony dream world. She would be fine for a little while. Erin and I crept to the front door, eased it open and slipped out into the blazing afternoon.

We had only been playing for about fifteen minutes, when the front door flew open and mother came marching across the lawn toward us. That’s when I heard Jamie crying. Apparently, she had awakened shortly after we left, and fell or just got scared because no one was around, and started screaming. This, of course, woke mother and thus began the nightmare.

She was furious. Her eyes were wild and blazing like two coals burning into her head. It was scary. Erin dropped the hose she was holding, and somehow I felt comforted by the icy water rushing over my toes. It was soothing. It sounds strange to put it into words here and now, but that moment has always stuck out in my mind about that day.