Cheers to New Beginnings

Chapter Seven: You can't start over...

Lilibeth:

            When I finally made it to my hometown, I was broke, hungry, bruised, and tired. I stopped by my old home, the one that we lived in with Mom, but someone lived there. A nice family, with a teenage son and daughter. The perfect cheerleader and the star quarterback, a neighbor told me when I asked. They’d bought the place right after my sister and I moved towns. I didn’t linger.

            My aunt Tonya’s yard was grown up, but I could tell the drive was used frequently. I was expecting a trashed house with a drugged out aunt, but what I found, broke my heart even more than my own problems. She looked like crap, with prescription meds and water bottles lying around the living room. With grey hair, she was skin and bones, forced to have a home nurse come out to her house every day. Liver cancer had destroyed her body.

            “Aunt Tonya?” I asked quietly moving in front of the television. I noticed then that she was asleep. Hoping to escape my own problems, I focused on cleaning up the house and making furniture-arrangement plans. I couldn’t leave her like that. I guess it was really my hope that made me start putting the home together again, hope that maybe, just maybe, Tonya was one person who wasn’t better off without me.

            “Lili?” a confused but frail voice said from behind me where I was organizing the TV stand. I didn’t recognize it as my aunt’s, but I knew it was.

            “Hey, Auntty T,” I said with a soft smile. It was already around seven o’clock on Saturday night.

            “What are you doing here? I thought for sure that you and Tammy had left forever. Where is she?” she gasped out searching frantically about. I was hesitant to tell her, but I knew the truth wouldn’t bite me in the ass later.

            “Not here. I left. I guess you can consider it running away, but I really don’t feel like talking about it.” She nodded, with a look of understanding in her eyes.

            “Those bruises, someone choked you?” she asked slowly, as if I were a wounded animal and might attack at any moment. I gave a small nod. “And your wrists and shoulders?” I cursed myself for having changed into a tank top to clean in. “Did someone just beat you or what? Sweetheart, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I need to know why you are here.” Sweetheart… That was what my mother had called me. Never before except for really somber and sober moments had Tonya ever called me that. My heart cracked, and every repressed memory and emotion from the previous night came pouring out. I fell to my knees in tears.

            “I fucked up, T. I’m nothing. I’m worth nothing, and I do nothing but cause people trouble. But I didn’t deserve it, or maybe I did. I don’t know,” I whispered between sobs.

            “What Sweetheart? Deserved what?” she slowly moved to her knees in front of me.

            “He, he r..raped me.” She hugged me close, crying with me, but I couldn’t hug her like I wanted to, like I needed too. It would hurt her fragile frame, but she hugged me like she was going to squeeze every bit of hurt from my body. What had happened to my aunt? When had she become so… motherly?

            About a month after Tammy and I left, Tonya had been diagnosed with liver cancer. Her choices were quit everything cold turkey or die. She was arrested the next night for public intoxication. A new police officer in town befriended her. Carol helped her through rehab. Radiation had ruined her already nasty hair, but she couldn’t stay with the treatment long. Her body was too weak. Her short hair was grey beyond her time after that. Apparently, Carol paid for my aunt a phone in case she ever had an emergency. Before having me help her to her bedroom a little after midnight, she told me where it was at.

            “Call your sister, Lili. I know she’s worried sick about you. Don’t misunderstand, I am so glad that you’re here, that we had this time to catch up.” She sniffled as a lone tear ran down her cheek. “I can’t apologize enough for what I caused you girls.” I shook my head and reassured her for the millionth time that night, which it was completely okay. We’d all made it out; granted I was still straddling the line, but Tammy had a great life apart from raising me. I ate a small bowl of cereal before grabbing the cell phone and sprawling my exhausted self across the couch. I had been awake over twenty-four hours straight. I passed out before my finger could hit the send button.

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. I'm not really happy with it, so if you have any ideas or constructive criticism I'd love to hear it! -Vanessa