My AN Hiatus Part II

After Leia's return from the hospital, things started to get worse.

My family decided to hate her for a reason I couldn't figure out. They called her a skank. We spent our days living in our little room, my grandmother and my teenage cousin Shannon were our only two allies.

We got interviews at Sear's or something like that, and on the way her truck threw a rod and died. We pushed it into a gas station, and I went in to ask the people for help. They refused to let me use a phone, look at a phone book, or anything. They also told me if the truck wasn't gone in an hour they were calling a tow truck.

Out of options, we left it. It's still in impound out there, as far as I can tell.

One day, my aunt came to me crying. The guy who moved out, Marc, was her boyfriend. He had moved to Omaha to be with my mom, as I said, and Shelly was convinced they were together.

I insisted that my mom was married to my dad, and that he was very jealous.

I called my mom at one point. It was true, Marc was moving in with her. But no relationship as far as I could tell. Still, I suddenly realized that the only reason my aunt was so eager to get us out there was to hurt my mother, and my mother wasn't doing anything to help the situation, being antagonistic as usual.

They were fueding about a stupid buffalo nickel that my aunt had stolen from my mother when they were kids. It had a specific date, I think it was like 1936. Anyway they went back and forth.

I decided to stop speaking to my mom at all, for whatever reason. I think I was trying to believe that I had made the right choice in moving there. That Shelly wasn't the enemy, hadn't manipulated me. I was actually quite cruel to my mother and father. I still think about it sometimes, and it makes me cringe.

Leia's seizure medication started to run out, as we couldn't find work.

I was desperate. I remember standing in the dark outside on the porch, staring at a large K-Bar knife I own. There was a gas station down the street. I could rob it and get away, and pay for her medicine, right? I wouldn't actually hurt anyone, would I?

I even went in there for a "job application", but really I was casing the place. The guy behind the counter, an Indian dude, must have known what was up. It had to be written all over my face, because he not only refused to give me an application but asked me in broken english to leave.

I decided it wasn't worth it. Feeling like a coward, I went home.

My cousin Shannon gave me some money to pay for Leia's pills.



When my aunt found out, she screamed at me for the better part of an hour for taking money from a teenager in my desperation.

About this time we were beginning to starve, and my aunt refused to share food with us. So, we applied for food benefits. Nobody in the house would give us a ride to the unemployment office, and we didn't know how the buses worked yet, as we just don't have them around in Nebraska, so we walked. We walked about five miles. It took us all day.

I remember almost collapsing from the heat and the thirst, and Leia telling me to get up. To think of it as an adventure. As I picked my way through a forest to come home, nearly falling in a gorge, I began to have my doubts.

At one point, there came a knock at our door. My other aunt, Angie, was outside, glaring angrily.

Leia and I came out to the living room and sat on the couch. Not the one Leia seized on, mind you. I never could will myself to be comfortable on that couch again.

Angie went off. I guess she heard about us applying for food benefits and for some reason she was angry. Idk. Anyway she told Leia that she was a skank, that she was worthless, that Leia was dog **** under her heels. Leia started sobbing. I got up and got in her face. We screamed at each other for some time, before I grabbed Leia and lead her out the door and to the edge of the neighborhood to a wooded area with a stream.

She sat beside that stream and sobbed for hours. I offered to use what little money we had left to get her a train ticket home. That I would come and find her when I could afford it. That she didn't have to stay.

She looked at me with broken eyes, and in a small voice she whispered,

"Please don't send me away."

I burst into tears and held her to me. I told her I wouldn't. That we would get through it together.

She cried for days. I will never forget the sound of it.

We stayed in our room more, hiding from the toxicity of the house we lived in. All they ever did was fight. I'll admit, we didn't help the situation after finding out that we were there under false pretenses.

By now winter had set it. I got a job offer guarding the Blue Cross, Blue Sheild headquarters in downtown Wilmington. But to do so, I had to get an ID in Delaware, and get a security license.

Leia and I walked in the ice and the cold to a bus stop. We waited so long that ice began to form on our skin before the bus showed up. We rode the bus for 8 hours round trip. All the way to the other side of the state to the DMV and back. When Leia cried, her tears froze to her face.

I began to have thoughts of my own mortality.

........................................ ......................................

More later, I promise.