Where the Skies are Blue

Chapter One:

Sometimes, it's hard to love my mother.

Her decisions in life, and her inability to care for others, she claims is because she got the shitstick in life. Using all our money on cheap booze and cigarettes, leaving for nights on end, bringing strange men in and out of our rundown trailer, isn't because of her decision making, no, it's because of the shitty life God gave her.

Katherine Rhodes is incapable of wrongdoing, it's the people around her. It's the universe forever cursing her, beating her down, stripping her of any happiness she was meant to have.

I've heard all the excuses. Listened to all her rants as she paced back and forth in the living room of the trailer, a cigarette dangling from her fingers, lipstick smeared on her face.

When I was younger, I felt sorry for her. I held her hair as she vomited in the toilet after being gone for days on a drinking bender. I would run my fingers through her hair as she fell asleep on the cold tile floor. I really thought the world was out to get her. She couldn't catch a break and that's why she could never be a mother to me. I took care of her, tried to be there for her.

Yet, as I got older and got tired of her excuses, and realized very quickly she never tried to better herself or our living situation, I lost any sort of sympathy I once felt for her. It wasn't my job to care for her. To tell her everything was going to be alright. That's supposed to be her job.

So, any sort of relationship we once had quickly turned to resentment. I'm spoiled, a brat, unappreciative. I'm out to get her just like the rest of the world. And any interaction we shared with one another ended in a screaming match.

My life became about surviving. Taking care of myself. Getting a job so I could get the hell out of here. Doing everything possible to make sure I don't end up like her. Our home in Arizona is all I've ever known. I'm used to being called trash. Getting dirty looks in the hallways and being  whispered about is nothing new. And in a way, they aren't wrong. We are trash.

I've been alone my whole life. I didn't need people to like me, to feel sorry for me. I need to focus on school, on working. I understand why they whisper about my mom and I. Why the nurse would offer me clothes from the lost and found. Why the mothers at school never let their husbands anywhere near her.

She is a homewrecker. A walking catastrophe. Everything she touches turns to ash. Including me. She has forever tarnished my reputation here. Everyone assuming I'm going to end up just like her.

Except, they're wrong. I won't. I refuse. I'm going to break the cycle in our family.

And just as I began developing a routine of school and work, Katherine sprung on me that she had met a man online, and we're moving to go live with him. Without ever meeting him. Without him ever meeting her. For all I know, he probably thinks she's this perfect housewife who will fold his laundry and pour him and his friends drinks while they sit around smoking their cigars. My mother is a liar. That is for certain. She's deceptive. Not much that comes out of her mouth is the truth.

So, as I angrily sit beside her in her beat-up Pinto that is about to crumble into a million pieces, I chew absentmindedly on the inside of my mouth, trying to work my brain hard enough to teleport me back to Arizona. This isn't a good idea. This isn't going to end well.

My mother gave me all but one day to inform me of this rash decision. She very suddenly sprung it on me as I arrived home from work to see her throwing random clothes into a worn-down suitcase.

"Baby, good news," She said, "I met someone, someone I've been looking for my whole life, and baby, he's rich. So rich, and he's offering to let us live with him." She stopped shoving clothes into the overflowing suitcase and in one quick stride brought herself over to me, making my entire body stiffen. "This is our chance, baby. We're getting out of here. No more busting our asses to keep afloat. No more stinky, old trailer. We're going to be rich! God is on my side for once. I can't pass up this opportunity. If I don't jump on this now, God's going to punish me."