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This is the first chapter.
Not even.
Just a little bit. Please tell me if you liked it, what could have been done better, and if its worth writing more of.
And no grammar and/or spell check has been done.
Gracias!!
She has no vivid recollection of how it all began, nor how it will end. She only knows what she felt, who she was, and who she is possibly becoming. She is I... and I will begin with the background, as it seems (naturally) THE place to begin.
My mother's mother, Rita, was born on December 22nd, 1933 in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or some hickass town in bumfuck Maryland... I'm not quite sure. Regardless, her life seems to me to have been very boring. She grew up poor during the Great Depression, attended Catholic school, went to church, sang, played basketball ("like a pro, I was asked by the coach to play, you know, I never wanted to.. should have seen them shots!"), and peeled the occasional potato every goddamned day. She married her highschool sweetheart, Robert, a ginger with a fast car and good looks and they immediately had their first child, Bonita, in 1955. Only nine months after, Robert was out drinking with some friends and got into the car with a drunk driver. Rita was home tending to the baby- what a beautiful baby!- when she got arguably the worst phone call of her life... that her husband had died and she was left a widow.
You might be thinking, "Oh, well she was still young, capable to marry again and all- Restart her life, woohoo!" Definitely not that easy. It WAS the 1930s; men were not too eager to marry widowed gals back then. She settled for Elmer, a German navy seal working at his father's butcher shop. Elmer was a very nice guy, great with children and adored animals, two important qualities, AND had money. Rita thought she had it made. They had their first child, William, in 1959, and then everything blew up. The business went through a slump that eventually ended in bankruptcy. Elmer lost his job and tried to kill himself... Rita walked in on him trying to hang himself in the bathroom. She had to start working again as a secretary for the Immigration Services of the United States Government. She used the money to put him through business school at the University of Maryland. He graduated with a bachelors and spent the rest of his life working for the U.S. Department of Defense. Rita stayed at Immigration. They have an unhappy marriage and many, many problems, but I'll get to that later.
Why did I only say those minor details? Framework. Th ose bits are necessary to understand Bonnie's background. She comes from a very dramatic household. Born in Baltimore, she grew up in the town of Rosedale. Rosedale was a small town then just North of the city. It was a generally quiet, predominantly white area, and a good place to raise children. My mom was an angel until about the age of nine, when my grandmother remarried. Elmer liked HIS child, Billy, but not Bonnie. She was another mouth to feed and definitely had no right to act up. Billy was a terrible kid- he made huge messes and whined all the time, muchless, he would blame his mischief on Bonnie so she would get into trouble. But Billy was a loser. So. You know. Losers can never be wrong in their parents' eyes... they don't DESERVE to get **** on at home no matter what they do due to the fact everyone else shits on them constantly. So my mom took all this **** and *surprise* develops one hell of an attitude.
Thus the result of said attitude: My mom started working as soon as possible and saved up a bunch of money. At fifteen Bonnie immediately purchases a motorcycle and used it to sneak out of the house. She told me once she disappeared for more than a day and my grandparents found her up at the park with some guys, so they grounded her. Instead of taking punishment, my mom decides at 16 that she is going to move out. She convinces her grandparents to let her stay there- got them to embrace it even. They felt sorry for her since her dad was dead and Billy got all the attention and Elmer hated her. Plus, she was a genius. She was going to graduate high school in three years and was going to college for free. So she fought with her mother, her mother's mother fought with her mother, and she was gone.
How everything went wrong is a total blur. She want to Community College for accounting, got a job with the IRS, served in the air force for a little bit, and hosted a TV show that gave tips on getting the most from your taxes. She owned a house and a car by the time she was 24 and was making BANK. She was even proposed to a few times. Throughout all of this, she was partying it up: weed, booze, pills, cigarettes... and then cocaine came along. My mom ruined her life because of it. Lost the house. Lost the car. Started smoking crack. Where the crack at?
And then she met my father. I have no idea how. They were never married, but loved each other. They ****** on the beach and boom, there I was. My mom got healthy during the pregnancy. For an alcoholic and chain smoker, that is admirable, eh? She got healthy and my dad went from being 170 lbs. to over 300. Thought it was a good idea to eat as much as a pregnant lady. Maybe he wanted to be pregnant too, thought it seemed cool... I don't ******* know. I just know it was SUCH a shitty idea. I was born in 1989.Currently I am nineteen.
Why am I writing about my life? Because its goddamned interesting. Let me start with bits and pieces of my childhood. I'll save the details... they're boring. And it is going to jump around a lot. Be prepared.
What is your most distinct memory form when you were five? The beach? Your warm, nice house? Mine is the random midnight excursions my mom would force me to go on. I'd be in my bright yellow room sleeping comfortably in my antique medium oak bed. I had two stuffed animals I liked- thought the others to be too tacky. My bedspread was of flowers that resembled vomit. I had fancy dolls on my dresser, porcelain, sitting on a golden mirror. I'd be sleeping and she'd come in, looking all sorts of distraught.
"KATE- Kate, wake up!" ... "KATE! Kate. Come with me. We're going to the bathroom. I have to show you something."..."KATE! Kate! There's no SOAP in the bathroom! Not only that- ahhh- there's no soap in the whole goddamned house!"... "Kate. Soap is important. We all need to shower. Wash our hands after using the toilet- one AND two. We need to go get soap. Right now."
Mind you, its midnight. Maybe 2 AM even. So I get up, get into the fairly new silver Subaru coupe. My mom drove to the city. And I mean the CITY. The ghetto. Projects. We drove. And Drove. And Drove. Eventually a random black guy would walk up to the car. There were usually a lot -of people outside, sometimes cussing, sometimes laughing. The guy would scream
"Yo Baw-nee. Yo Baw-nee!" "Heyyyy, how you doin'?"-B "Aiight. You?" "Tryna get some soap. All out ta soap!"-B "'Ere you arr miss Baw-nie" *exchange of crack rock and stack of bills*
Then back to the Driving. The Driving was sketchy and ******* horrifying. I was like five, six, seven and she'd ask me to hold the steering wheel. I cannot even hold the goddamned steering wheel now without it being crooked! My mom would sketchily pull out the crack pipe, put my hand on the wheel, and then the smoking of the crack would commence. I watched it. Smelled it. Rancid smell... worse than burning plastic, in my opinion. I of course had no idea though. I thought that we had been out of soap and that all of the stores were closed. I also thought that black people just always had soap because that is where my mom went to purchase it. A crack rock wrapped up in aluminum foil or a baggie CAN look like soap. Try it sometime, I'm tellin' ya. I assumed my mom just liked to smoke that strange substance after buying soap. It made sense to a child.
Copyright 2008 Katershena
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