Prologue
Saying Goodbye
Chris scrambled around his room, stuffing whatever he could find, whatever he couldn’t live without, into a trash bag. His heart raced and his thoughts twisted.
He needed to hurry.
Before it was too late.
“Mom! I’m going with you, Mom!” He hiccuped when he tried to hold back a sob.
He didn’t get a response.
Quickly glancing around his room, he made sure he didn’t miss anything important. But his room was a mess. His clothes were scattered on the floor. His sheets a tangled ball in the middle of his unmade bed.
His closet door hung open because he couldn’t close it anymore. He had stuffed it with so much crap. Stuff he thought was important, stuff he thought he needed to keep, but not important enough to pack.
Underwear!
He scrambled over the piles on the floor to get to his dresser and ripped open the top drawer.
Empty.
He scoured the discarded dirty clothes taking up most of the floor space and found a few pairs not too holey or worn, throwing them into the black garbage bag. His eyes then landed on his most treasured possession propped in the corner next to his bed.
He rushed over to it, almost tumbling when his feet caught in a pair of dirty jeans on the way. Without a second thought, he shoved the last item into the bag and decided whatever else he’d need his mother could get him when they got to where they were going.
He had no idea where that was. He just knew they were leaving. And quickly.
His mother had had enough.
And he had no idea where his father was.
Probably at the garage. Or the warehouse. Or Crazy Pete’s.
Or in some other woman’s bed. He’d heard his mother yell at his father about that one too many times.
Something happened tonight, though.
Something she wouldn’t explain.
When she had walked through the front door a little while ago, she shot him and his older brother a frown, shook her head and announced, “You two will end up just like him.”
Right after that, she went into her bedroom. Chris had followed her, wondering why she was so mad.
What had their father done this time?
Or did Randy do something? He was always getting in trouble.
What he found was his mother packing a bag. Emptying her closet and drawers, and throwing everything that wouldn’t fit into that bag onto the bed.
She didn’t even hesitate when she spotted him standing in the doorway, clinging tightly to the frame. “Go get me the box of trash bags under the kitchen sink.”
“What are you doing?”
“Do what I said.”
He always did whatever his mother said because maybe, if he did, she’d give him a smile or a hug, or tell him she loved him.
She never did.
But he always hoped...
Maybe she would this time.
He’d taken off down the hall, found the open box of black garbage bags and ran back to his parents’ bedroom.
By then she had so much stuff on the bed. Possibly everything she owned.
As he’d stepped closer, staring at the mountain, she snatched the box from his fingers.
“What are you doing, Mom?” His heart had been racing so badly, his chest became as tight as the drum he’d found in a dumpster a few weeks ago. The drum he wasn’t allowed to play in the house, but only outside.
And even then, it still disappeared.
Randy said Mom had thrown it away, somewhere Chris wouldn’t be able to find it, because him playing it gave her a headache.
His mother, with an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth, began to pull bags out of the box.
“Are you leaving?”
She didn’t answer him, only kept stuffing bag after bag full.
“Randy!” she yelled. “Randy, get the fuck in here. Now!”
She was piling bags up on the floor, all of them full of her things.
“Yeah?” Chris’s older brother came and stood in the doorway, his face unreadable.
His brother’s eyes, the same dark brown as their father’s, had swept the room. But he said nothing. He stood there casually, not caring that their mother was leaving and hadn’t told them to pack, too.
“Start loading those bags there in my car,” she’d jerked her chin toward the pile of full trash bags, “while I pack the rest of my shit.”
“I can do it, Mom,” Chris had volunteered quickly, even though at twelve, Randy was taller and stronger than him. “But I’m going with you.”
“No, boy, you’re staying here. Boys need to be with their father.”
Boys needed to be with their mother, too. Didn’t she know that? Even he knew that and he was only eight.
“But, Mom—”
“Get out of your brother’s way,” was all she said as she made sure Randy was doing what she told him. She turned back to the bed, shoving more clothes and other stuff into more bags.
His eyes landed on an empty trash bag that had fallen to the floor. He grabbed it and rushed back to his room and that was when he began to pack.
She was not leaving without him.
Now, with his own full bag, Chris stepped out into the hallway, no longer hearing any activity coming from his parents’ room.
With the bag bouncing off his legs, he ran back there anyway to check.
Empty. His mother was gone, her bags were gone and he had no idea where Randy was.
“Wait, Mom!” he screamed. “I’m going with you!”
He rushed down the hallway, his stuffed-full garbage bag becoming heavier with each step. “Mom! Don’t leave without me!”
He dropped the bag to the floor and began to drag it behind him so he could move faster. He had to catch her before she left.
He wasn’t staying here.
He wasn’t.
Another hiccup-sob surged up from his gut as he reached the front living room. She wasn’t there, either.
Neither was Randy.
The front door was wide open and he could see his older brother standing outside on the porch, staring out at the street.
Alone. Quiet. With both hands on his hips.
Chris dragged the bag, which held everything important to him, through the door and out onto the porch, pushing past his brother who blocked the two steps to the yard.
“She’s gone, kid.” He turned his head and spat into what used to be a garden in front of their small house. Before the weeds choked the flowers the previous renter must have planted and had been left to die once his family moved in.
Chris kept going, the heavy bag thumping down each step, even though her car was gone.
Even though their mother was nowhere to be seen.
No sign of her anywhere.
“Why?” he screamed. His stomach ached painfully, like it had been hollowed out with an ice cream scoop. “Why would she leave us?”
She’d come back for them. She had to. They were her sons. What mother didn’t want her own children?
“She’s a fuckin’ whore.”
“No, she ain’t! Dad’s the whore!” he shouted at his brother.
“Dad ain’t a whore, stupid. Dad didn’t do nothin’ Mom didn’t do. Saw her suckin’ dick plenty of times. And it wasn’t Dad’s.”
What? Now Randy was just plain lying!
At the bottom of the steps, Chris dropped his bag on the narrow sidewalk and, with a roar, rushed his brother.
Before he could make it to the steps, Randy jumped down and tackled him. Chris fell backward and his head just missed the edge of the concrete.
“You’re an asshole!” he screamed, grabbing Randy’s hair and ripping on it.
A wild, flailing fist made contact with Chris’s cheek and the pain caused him to lose his breath.
He growled and tried to roll his brother, but he was much smaller and couldn’t get his weight behind him. Instead, he shoved his brother with both palms, knocking him off balance.
As soon as he rolled on top of Randy, he found himself once again on his back in the grass, unable to catch his breath. His brother was sitting on his chest, crushing his lungs and pinning his arms to the ground.
“Knock it off, you little shit. You made my fuckin’ lip bleed.”
“Good!” came out on a half-sob. He couldn’t cry. Not in front of Randy. But he couldn’t wipe the tears away while his asshole brother held him down. “Lemme go!”
“Only if you stop tryin’ to fight me. I didn’t do this to you. That bitch did. You think she gave two shits about you? She didn’t. Her leavin’ just proved it. She was just the twat used to squirt us out. That’s it. Nothin’ more.”
“You’re wrong.” Why was Randy lying like that?
“Yeah, so wrong,” Randy muttered and shook his head. “I’m gettin’ off you. You try fightin’ me again, I’m not gonna hold back. Dad will find you out in the yard when he gets home with your ass kicked. Then he’ll kick it a second time for bein’ a whiny-assed pussy.”
Randy slowly lifted his weight and, when he was on his feet, his brother wiped the back of his hand across this mouth, smearing the blood. He spat into the grass next to Chris’s head. Luckily, Chris twisted it away in time to keep from getting splattered.
“We don’t need that bitch. What the fuck did she ever do for you?”
Chris laid in the grass, taking deep inhales since his brother was no longer crushing him. Anything to keep himself from crying.
With another shake of his head, Randy walked over to Chris’s worn, dirty teddy bear that had tumbled out onto the dead grass, along with the rest of his things, when the bag spilled during the struggle. His brother picked up the stuffed animal, stared at it for a second, then came back to where Chris laid sprawled on the ground. He dropped it onto his chest. “I’ll tell you what the fuck she’s done. Nothin’. So, don’t be such a fuckin’ baby. We’re better off without her.”
Chris laid there, staring up at the late afternoon sky, and a hot tear slid from the corner of his eye. He heard his brother stomp back up the steps, go inside and slam the front door shut.
From inside the house, Chris heard a muffled shout of, “Fuck her!”
He grabbed his teddy bear, hugged it against his chest and curled into a ball around it. “She’ll be back,” he whispered, unable to stop the tears anymore. No longer caring who saw him cry.
Shortly after, the tears stopped.
And much later, he forgot what she looked like.
Because that night, when his father got home, he burned every damn photo of her in that house. Anything she left behind was burned, too. Then he told them never to mention her name again.
That rule wasn’t difficult to follow because Chris never knew what her name was.
He’d only ever called her Mom.
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