Jen Kallis never forgot the night her father vanished into a strange, white light from inside her closet. Even though no one believed her, Jen knew what she'd seen and refused to accept that her dad had abandoned her and mom.
Ten years later, Jen, n...
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Twenty minutes later, a clean Jen sat at the kitchen table, entertained by her mother as she washed the dishes and danced to Michael Jackson's Thriller.
When Jen was little, she and her mother would dance around the house, knowing every single move to the song, as her father sat back on the couch and watched with a content expression.
Jen admired the amount of love her parents had for each other, despite the hateful stares they received whenever out in public for being an interracial couple. Her parents taught her it wasn't the color of the skin, but the depth of heart that mattered. Jen remembered how they used to slow dance at night and how her father would gaze deeply into her mother's eyes and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. It didn't make sense that he would just leave them both without a moment's notice.
Jen grew used to the sound of her mother crying at night, truly believing her husband had left her. Her mom became depressed, and she stopped working and doing things for Jen that a mother normally would like cooking dinner for a seven-year-old and remembering school events. Her mother's depression had been very hard for Jen, and she tried hard to forget it whenever the memories resurfaced. Who wants to remember that kind of pain? Who wants to remember a mother who forgot her own child in the midst of her own sorrow?
Jen had even lost her friends. They'd all laughed at her and called her crazy for thinking her father was taken by a mysterious white light. She became the weirdo, the loner, a zombie. A group of kids even came up with a game that they'd play at recess where whoever touched Jen would become a zombie. That kid would have to chase the other children until another one of them was caught. The child who had been caught would also turn into a zombie and start chasing the other children. The game would continue until all of the kids were like Jen: zombies. Jen felt she'd deserved to be called a zombie. She'd walked around with her head low and shoulders slumped, with lifeless eyes and a mouth that didn't open much to speak. The kids around her hadn't understood what had made her seem that way.
They'd had their fathers and loving mothers. They'd had secure homes and good holidays. Jen had spent her holidays alone, watching TV reruns and classic movies while her mother slept her holidays away. Jen's mom eventually started coming around again when Jen was twelve. Her mom had been lying in bed as she always did, when it occurred to her that her husband had been dead for five years and that Jen was almost a teenager.
Juanita's eyes had drifted around her room as she relived the past five years. When was the last time she cooked Jen dinner? Did her hair? Made sure she bathed? Sure, Juanita had been there at times, but not as much as she should have been. While she had been overly concerned about the husband she'd lost, she hadn't considered the daughter she still had by her side.
On that day, Juanita promised herself she would spend the rest of her life giving Jen what she needed most—a mother.
At first, it was difficult for Jen to adjust to a caring mother, one who made her breakfast in the morning while singing to old school music as she had done before her dad had disappeared. She had to get used to a mother who smiled again and looked at her with affectionate eyes. Jen had been afraid that her mother's newfound drive for life would be temporary, so she kept herself at a distance. Eventually, her mother's love won her over, and Jen had forgiven her for the past five years she'd spent alone.
However, those years had hardened her and made her wary of other people. She didn't trust a soul anymore. She knew too much for her age, things her peers didn't even think about.
Jen had been able to cook a full course meal since she was eight. She'd been writing checks in her mother's name to pay bills since the age of ten. Once, when she was eleven, she'd even had to drive her mother's car to the grocery store because the rain had been too bad to walk and the cabinets had been bare once again. This happened often during times when her mother entered into phases of deep depression and couldn't get out of bed. The phases would last a few weeks, and then her mother would snap out of it, partially, long enough to handle whatever Jen had been forced to deal with while her mom had been locked up in her room.
"Eat quickly, baby," her mother said while they sat at the table eating breakfast that morning, snapping Jen back into the moment.
"I know," Jen said, stuffing her mouth with a piece of French toast drizzled in syrup.
"And you better tell that little boyfriend of yours that if he comes back to my house, staring at my baby girl, who barely had any clothes on by the way, he's gonna meet the end of his days." Jen dropped her fork. "Mmm-hmm, didn't think I knew, did you? I could hear yall's conversation from clear down the hallway. Let it happen again? Not in my house you won't."
With that, her mom walked out of the kitchen, leaving Jen surprised. She absentmindedly dangled her fork in the air, which still had a piece of French toast stuck on the end, long forgotten.
Eric was waiting for Jen by her locker and smiled his deadly, sexy smile as soon as she emerged through a crowd of students. Jen sighed, barely glancing at him as she opened her locker. Eric frowned, confused by her change of mood. Jen hadn't even sat with him on the bus, choosing instead to sit next to a girl she barely knew and pretending to be deep in a conversation.
"What's wrong?" he asked, rubbing her back. Jen grabbed a few books from her locker and shut it, finally meeting Eric's curious stare. "My mom knew you were in my room this morning. Thanks." Jen began walking to her next class as Eric followed closely behind, feeling amused. "So what did she say?"
"Pretty much that she's going to kill you if you ever step foot in my bedroom again," Jen said, rounding a corner. She cut through a couple who were holding hands while whispering to each other and quickly entered her classroom before Eric could say anything else. He laughed it off and headed to his own classroom.
