A Poignant Fallacy

Scene 45- Jackson's First Flashback

Jackson's POV

"I was in charge of all of my siblings for a couple hours while my mom was upstairs working. This was a little bit before she ended up having to quit her job."

"I think Juliette was 3. I was definitely only 13 so it was hard to know how to parent her. We had all been chill watching TV and Juliette said she wanted to go get a toy, so I told her to get that toy and then come right back to play with it while I could see her."

"I guess I got distracted by the TV or something my brothers were doing because it had been like 20 minutes since Juliette had left the room. I went to go look for her in her bedroom, the play room, the game room and nothing I couldn't find her. I wondered if she was just bothering our Mom so I went to the kitchen to grab a snack and that's when I saw what she did."

"She was sitting on top of the counter, which I had yelled at her for climbing onto the countertops multiple times that day, and she was covered in baking flour. The entire half of our kitchen floor was covered in flour."

"Oh Jackson that's not even that bad."

"Oh no, it gets worse."

"I grab her and she starts kicking and screaming and pinching my arms. Like, I'm not a pussy, but toddlers pinch hard. And I tell my brothers to clean up the kitchen while I give her a bath. During her bath she was crying because she wanted to keep her clothes on in the bath. So she was crying and screaming and thrashing her body back but that meant she went under the bath water and so she'd be choking and coughing every couple of seconds."

"Somehow we survived that bath and I got her dressed and then she wanted milk."

"My parents were really not great at teaching my sister manners at first. I think they were so excited about having a girl that she was a spoiled princess for the first couple years of her life. So she's yelling at me "MILK!" and pointing to the fridge. I tell her to ask me nicely and she kicks me in the balls."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah that's not even the end of the story."

"So that took me out for a couple of seconds and then I got her a sippy cup and filled it with her milk and gave it to her."

"She looks me dead in the eye, has one sip, and then unscrews the lid and pours it all over the floor. She starts screaming "I wanted Juice!" And she has an hour meltdown of screaming, crying, kicking, throwing, etc before my Mom finally comes downstairs and saves me."

Third Person POV

Silence follows.

"Ok yeah I get what you mean about her being terrible." says Scarlett.

Jackson laughs, "It's okay. A little traumatic, not even going to lie, but she was just a baby."

Scarlett agrees, "Well you were so young. 13? That's pretty young to be in charge of all of those kids."

Jackson says, "It wasn't really that bad, my mom was always upstairs. I think a couple weeks later she stopped working and took care of us full time."

Scarlett says, "That's sad she gave up her career."

Jackson sighs, "She said it was showing her love for us."

Scarlett changes the subject, "Speaking of Mother's, I'm going to visit mine tomorrow, so I'll be back after dinner."

Jackson says, "Alright. You sure you don't want me to come?"

Scarlett is certain, "No, no. She's just someone I have to check up on from time to time. You know she wasn't a Mom to me like yours is."

Jackson says quietly, "Okay."