Catching Rainbows

25

tw/ talk of death

A few days later it was my mom's birthday, which was almost as bad as the anniversary of the day she died.

Hailie was having a good day, which was good as her bad days were so emotionally draining, and I had nothing left after I woke up and cried for an hour. I'd always used to bring my mom breakfast in bed while hoping my stepfather wouldn't somehow fuck the day up for us.

He usually had anyway.

My real dad had died right after I turned seven, when he was hit by a train. He often walked to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks away, had a few beers with his burrito, and stopped at the library next door. That day he had eaten, got our takeout orders, picked up our books, and headed home with his headphones on. Bopping along to Red Hot Chili Peppers, his attention fully on Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, he had failed to notice the warnings of the train approaching.

I remembered the phone call. A witness found his phone and called his "Home" contact, saying only that he had been in an accident. My cousin Jared and I were playing outside on the swing set, and my mom yelled for us to come in in a voice so shrill I didn't recognize it. We drove there in less than two minutes, and I was so shaken by the emergency that I didn't even remember to put my seat belt on. My mom was still in her bathrobe with no makeup on, and a woman stopped her, turning her away from the blue blanketed lump surrounded by books on the sidewalk.

The stranger hugged my mother, whispering to her as she patted her back, and then my blood went icy as the screaming filled my ears. My mom jerked away from the other woman and tried to run to the blue blanket just as the police arrived, followed by the completely unnecessary ambulance.

My attention was torn between my mother and the train sitting right there with all the faces pressed to the windows. I stood holding hands with Jared and tried to figure out what I should do and felt very small.

No one noticed us until the police arrived and my mom returned, hugging us too hard, having gotten a tenuous hold on herself for our sake.

And I still hadn't understood.

When the conductor was finished talking with the police, he came over to us, where he apologized over and over. The man stood and twisted his cap in his hands as if trying to wring water from it. He had salt and pepper hair and hound dog eyes. "I tried to stop, I applied the brakes as fast as I could, it's just not meant to stop so quickly, I'm so very sorry and I would give anything to go back and somehow see him earlier, or, or leave a minute later, or--"

"That's enough!" my mom finally said, probably seeing the stricken look on my face as I absorbed each word. "Please. Please, it wasn't your fault, just--please stop talking."

Then I knew, and the rest of that day was thankfully a blur of crying.

The months afterward had been grim. My parents were one of those rare couples who not only didn't hate each other, but enjoyed each other's presence very much. My dad had been a happy guy, and my memories were only good of my early childhood. When he died it broke my mom's heart and she never recovered.

She was five months pregnant when it happened and she lost the baby a month later, which only served to throw her further into a depressive spiral. I'd spent many nights at my aunt's before my mom had finally moved in with us because she couldn't work and couldn't pay rent on our apartment.

She met my stepfather when I was ten, and it all went even further downhill from there. The first thing he did when we moved into his little farmhouse was make a bonfire and burn all my dad's things.