Having someone pass that you’re close to really opens your eyes and makes you realize how short life really is. How each individual person is special and precious, and each life is as well. How do you know you’ve lived your life to your full extent?
That’s why I moved back to Georgia.
I wanted to be with my dad now, because I know he will always catch me when I fall. I haven’t been back in Weston County since I was four, and hadn’t seen my dad since I was thirteen. I was seventeen now, and a new senior in High School.
I’d been raised well and learned from my momma’s mistakes, that a man should go to any lengths possible to prove he is worthy of calling me his. We’d struggled for a long time. Men would come and go at a young age, sometimes there would be six men a day, maybe eight.
I remember she would walk into the living room, barely able to walk or speak, but managing to hold me in her arms and making a solemn vow to me every day that always remained the same.
“I’m gonna be a lady someday, don’t know when or how, but then baby girl, we’re gonna move uptown. Don’t let anybody tell you your born plain white trash!” She would whisper to me.
Eventually I had caught on to what was happening. She had been sleeping with men to provide food on the table for us.
She had died of HIV.
She had to drop out of high school because she was pregnant with me, and she had promised me her biggest regret was not finishing high school. But I was her biggest blessing.
I sat in front of the shabby apartment steps in Panama City, my bags and suit cases packed and on the sidewalk. I paused and stared at an approaching taxi that slowed and stopped at the curb. The man got out and yelled at me and I sighed, standing.
I brushed my bangs out of my face, looked at the gorgeous Florida sun, one last time, before I shunned my back to it, and walked to the taxi, my head hung in shame.
The taxi cab ferried me to the airport. My phone was blowing up with messages from my friends and grandparents, begging me to respond. I stopped responding when my grandmother sent me one that said ‘Don’t turn into your mother’.
My mother was a smart woman, she didn’t always make the wisest choices but she was smart, beautiful, and talented. We had started to finally get money, momma had got a job at the hospital as a nurse, also with her side job, and we had gotten money. She was really stock piling our money. Only spending half of our pay check and saving the other half.
Everything was looking up for us, but then she started to get sick, And the doctor told us she had HIV, and there was nothing left he could do for her.
She was strong, independent, and most of all she was a mother, one of the best. You can look down on us as white trash, but she knew how to be a parent.
She believed in discipline, rewards, and always made time for her daughter. I would watch her in the mornings as a young child, put on her makeup, and her friends come over and dilly dally around with their makeup and hair products.
I couldn’t ever wait to put on makeup.
But now I wanted to use it as a mask, to hide my pain and misery that the #1 person in my life was gone, and left me all the money and her solemn vow.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Justin Marks POV*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I cursed under my breath as I plowed the shovel into the ground once more. I sighed and wiped the sweat from my brow, and pulled off my sweat-drenched shirt throwing on the last finished fence peg.
