This part is about my parents and the very few times that they had visited me.
My mother always thought of me as a know-it-all. I just think she couldn't handle her daughter being smarter than she was and maybe that's a pretty awful thing to say, but it's true. She married my father and got pregnant with me very young. She gave up going to school to become a housewife and she didn't like the fact that I dedicated every second of my life to be the exact opposite of what she had become.
She was against me going to college and if that doesn't say it, then I don't know what does.
She yelled at me. She said that I was going to get knocked up and end up dropping out anyhow so why should she help pay my way? I never told her that I never wanted to have children. Even though I had been angry and disappointed and propelled by teenage angst, I'd never want to break her heart in that way.
My father was silent through all of this. He almost always just let my mother go through her rants and then he'd slip a kind word when she wasn't listening to let me know that he was on my side. He gave me rides to school and to the small card store where I worked part-time to pay for books and he would even slip me some twenties for food and bus rides. Every now and then we would have talks about we were doing in our lives and how we felt about it. I hated small talk, but this was different. This was my dad being truly interested in my life.
I remember when I was younger and him taking me on a late night fast food run when my mother was going through one of her episodes. He stopped at a liquor store once and came out with a bottle wrapped in one of those paper bags and began to drink whole driving with me in the front seat. My mother had banned alcohol from the house so this was his way of hiding it and giving her the giant middle finger. He thought I was too young to realize what he was doing. I was only eight.
A lot of people underestimate my keen attention to some obviousness that people would tried to hide, but he took what I said to heart.
"Gum makes it better," I told him and handed him a piece from my coat pocket. "Just chew gum. All right?"
He hadn't taken a drink since.
Years and years later, he sat in a prison room with cheap beer on his breath and I thought it was my fault because I wasn't there to provide the gum which was his saving grace and then I realized that I had been his rock all along. Not my mother. No. It was me and I was gone. My father. My poor father needed me and I couldn't think of anything, but wish I had a piece of Lena's stupid contraband gum.
The visiting room was a room cut in half by glass and little benches bolted to the cinder-blocked walls. It was tough talking because there wasn't anything separating you from the inmate beside you and vice versa for my father. In some cases, we were allowed to sit at the little fold out tables like had been today. It depends on your behavior and if you've done everything right up until then.
I was happy when he finally came. He looked worn and tired, but my dad all the same. He told me about my mother whom he said was holding up "fantastically" which, to me, meant she was struggling hardcore even when she was pumped full of pills. He asked me if I had been on any and I told him that I hadn't save for the first night in the ward where I suspected they had slipped one to me. He nodded like he was proud of me for not becoming a pill hound. I told him that small victories meant a lot to me and he even laughed a little.
I didn't tell him about what happened between Victoria and Gladey. I thought I would spare him the worry of wondering if I was going to get shanked in the middle of the night for my pillowcase. I told him that everybody was as what you'd expect in a prison full of teenaged girls. He laughed at this and asked if I was able to receive photos and I told him that I couldn't yet. We were allowed to hug when we said our goodbyes. I swear they counted to three each time because it felt so short and incomplete.
YOU ARE READING
The Innocents
Teen FictionSeventeen-year-old Drew wants nothing more than to go to college. But when she's brutally attacked by the son of a wealthy business owner at a club, her dreams come to an abrupt end. She considers reporting it, but it's her word against his and in a...