When it rains in the desert

Letters from Celia.

If I was to split my life into parts, there would only be three. The time I spent with my parents, the time I spent with my uncle, and the time I spent with you. So let's start with the time I spent with my parents.

I love that you grew up in a stable home Jacob, I hope you never take it for granted. To put it simply my parents were drug dealers and drug addicts. Me and my brother were both born addicted to heroin. The only good memories I have of my childhood are those of my brother. I don't want to go into detail. I don't want to break you but i will say that I had an extremely abusive childhood.

We didn't go to school until the lady across the street noticed we weren't going and began taking us. Mrs Valarie, bless her. She would wake up every day at 7am to take us to school. One day she'd asked us if we'd eaten breakfast and like clockwork me and my brother replied yes. 5 seconds later Carter's stomach betrayed him and began grumbling. From that day on she began packing us breakfast and lunch for school. She had no kids of her own and if people ever asked me what my mother was like I would describe her. She was fearless. My father was a scary man. Drunk 95% of the time but that didn't scare Mrs Valarie. One day my father noticed that we weren't home and when we came home that evening we got a fresh beating.

The next day we hadn't showed up when Mrs Valarie came to take us to go to school. She marched into our house and said if we didn't leave with her right now she'd call the socials on him for "first of all not feeding your children. Second of all, beating them" My father interrupted and said " good have them, take them, they've been nothing but a waste of money since we had them." She looked at him horrified. Then she looked back at us, we were so ashamed we couldn't even make eye contact with her. Carter's knuckles were white from how hard I was squeezing his hand to stop myself from bursting into tears. " well I'm sure you know it's pretty illegal to have children and not send them to school. You'll go to jail." She said. She was the first and last person to ever stand up to my father. He always did have a short temper.

I cried for weeks after Miss Valarie was killed at the barrel of my fathers gun. i remember the sound of the gunshot, the way it rang in my ears after, it was like it happened in slow motion. my father pulling out his gun, then aiming it, then the sound of the gunshot and Mrs Valarie falling to the floor. I haven't spoken to my father since, It may have been the first time i'd seen a dead body but it wasn't the first time my father made me clean up after he "lost his temper".

I walked around silently when he spoke to me and granted it got me more beatings than I deserved but I had nothing to say to him. I felt sick every time I looked at him. She was the only person in the world that ever cared about us. We were 7. We should've been going into year 3 or as you would call it, 4th grade. I know it wasn't my fault that Mrs Valarie died but I can't help blaming myself. If she hadn't cared she'd still be alive. I hope I can protect you in a way that i failed to do with Mrs Valerie.

Anyway we never went back to school after that and you're probably wondering how the hell did you get into journalism? But all in due time my darling.
-Celia.