Arlette's Story Read online

Arlette's Story

  Trish Jackson

  ISBN: 9781310441776

  Copyright © 2014

  Acknowledgments

  All rights reserved. The reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events described herein are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The opinion of the fictional characters is not necessarily the opinion of the author.

  Arlette's Story

  I was born in New Orleans on February 13th. That makes my star sign Aquarius. According to the astrologers, I am a typical Aquarius—inventive, creative, compassionate, intelligent, eccentric, freedom-loving, flirtatious, radical, rebellious, unpredictable and detached. Maybe some of that is me, but I don't admit to all of it. I'm an artist, so that would probably make me creative and inventive. Unpredictable and detached—not so much. Maybe I do exhibit some of the other traits, but doesn't everyone at some stage or the other?

  My life started off pretty normally. I lived with my Mom and Dad in a suburban home outside of New Orleans. That was about the extent of it being anything close to 'normal'.

  My first brother, Claude, was born when I was three. I don't remember much about anything before that. He cried a lot, and Mom used to get mad and blame me, and scream at me and beat me with a belt."Arlette, get over here at once," she would yell.

  I crept into the room.

  "Bend over you little idiot. You need to learn to leave him alone and stop making him cry."

  "But Mommy I didn't…" That's when she would whack me and I would scream. That would make the baby cry more and Mom would hit me again and again. Sometimes she held my shoulders and shook me. Sometimes she threw me across the room.

  I was probably no older than five when I started to know that her anger seemed to get more intense the more of that nasty stuff in those blue bottles she drank. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to drink it. I tried it once and it burned my mouth.

  Dad called it liquor. Sometimes when he got home from work I would hear them argue. "How many drinks did you have today?" he roared. "You have to stop this, Elizabeth. It's getting totally out of hand. You can't take care of a baby in that condition."

  That was the first I had heard about a baby. Did he mean Claude?

  I learned to avoid her most of the time. The only times I can remember her being nice to me was when she was pregnant. I was six when Paul came, and I was filled with awe and excitement. Andrew was born when I was ten, and Richie came two years later. Mom probably gave up drinking for the first three pregnancies, but she drank and was impossible to live with during the entire time she was pregnant with Richie. That's when she and Dad started fighting more and more.

  Dad used to spend time with me and he called me 'Wild Thing', because from the earliest age I loved to slip through our fence and race down the quiet lane to the open farmland beyond. I would come back covered in grass seeds and burrs and dirt. Most parents would have worried, but Dad was away at work during the day, and Mom was—well she was not the kind of mother who cared where her children were. Especially me.

  Dad was supposed to be home to take care of us on weekends, but every time he and Mom had a fight, he would take off in his car and stay away all day. I didn't mind. "Claudie, Paul, come on, let's go," I would say.

  "Where to?" one of them would ask.

  "Anywhere. Everywhere. Come on." We climbed trees, built forts, stole fruit and played crazy games. Whenever any one of us got hurt, the others would sneak into the bathroom, grab the first aid kit and doctor whatever needed doctoring. This task usually fell on me, but sometimes I was the injured one.

  I always loved animals. Our golden labs, Sara and Sandy seemed to know it, too. They followed me around and slept on my bed, and came with us when we took off on our adventures. I don't know if they would have protected us, but I felt safer with them running alongside.

  One day while we were out wandering, I discovered there was a riding stable not too far from our house, and I was smitten. I loved horses. Mom and Dad would never be able to pay for me to take lessons, so I offered to work there on weekends and holidays in exchange for lessons. It worked out well. Mary, the owner, liked me and once I knew how to ride, she let me take her horses out on my own.

  "Sparks needs exercise today, Lettie," she would say. "At least an hour, and you take care, hear?"

  Mary was the first person I knew who made me feel wanted. She made me feel that I was doing something important. Something that meant a lot to her. I often used to wish she could be my mother. Life would be so different.

  Claude and Paul never took to horses, and they got interested in baseball and football and other boy sports, and I saw less of them.

  Mom and Dad kept fighting, and Dad would sometimes disappear for a week at a time.

  Even so, it came a shock when one day at the breakfast table, Dad said he and Mom were getting divorced. I remember it so clearly. I yelled, "No". I was shaking all over. I looked across at Claude, but he avoided my gaze. I found it hard to breathe.

  Dad wouldn't look at me when he said, "There's more. I am going to marry another lady. Her name is Lindsay." I can still feel my nails digging into the palms of my hands. Tears started to well up, but I fought them back. Dad with another woman. That was crazy.

  "So I'm gonna pack my things now and move out of this house permanently. It's going to be sold."

  "Where will we live, Daddy?" my voice sounded strange and shaky.

  He still avoided my eyes. He took a deep breath and said, "You and your mom will stay here until this place is sold. Then it'll be up to your mother to find a new place."

  Me and Mom. What did he mean? "What about the boys?" I said.

  "The boys are coming with me."

  I thought I was going to throw up. This had to be a nightmare. They couldn't do this to us, could they?

  Before I could say anything else, Dad said, "You boys should start cleaning out your bedrooms and packing up the things you want to keep. We'll get boxes for the toys you don't need anymore."

  We all just sat there and stared. "Well go on, get started," Dad said. He left the room, went into his study and closed the door.

  Andy started to cry. I stood up and ran to my bedroom, where I fell onto the bed and sobbed and sobbed. I desperately wanted Dad to come into my room and hug me and tell me he had been joking. But he didn't.

  What he hadn't told us, was that he and Lindsay were emigrating to Australia.

  It took a few months for the divorce to be finalized and the house to be sold. Mom was drunker and more difficult than ever. I spent as much time as I could with Mary, and I also got closer to McKenzie, my best friend. Her mom had agreed to pay for her to take riding lessons, and we spent every free moment around the horses. They helped take away some of the pain and hurt I felt when Dad and the boys said goodbye for the last time.

  I was angry. I refused to kiss him. I hugged the boys, though, and Claude promised he would come back and visit me as soon as he was old enough. The last words I heard from my dad were, "Arlette, this isn't very fair of you."

  Fair. I wanted to scream at him about what was fair and what wasn't, but I ran away instead. At the stables, I hugged my favorite horse, Diamond Star, and cried into his mane. I was thirteen.

  Needless to say, nobody ever gave me "the talk". I was left to figure out the birds and the bees for myself. Thankfully, McKenzie's pa
rents clued her up and she passed on the knowledge to me. The one thing she stressed was: "If you're gonna do it, always use a condom because if you get aids, you'll probably die."

  No one checked what I was looking at online. I went online and researched aids. It scared me a lot.

  It was about a year later when McKenzie and I were walking down the street to the store to buy some candy. It was a gorgeous spring day filled with promise. I had slept over at her house, and we planned to go riding later. We laughed and giggled as we walked.

  Suddenly I got a blinding headache. It hurt so badly, I stopped, bent forward and held my head. Something weird was happening. I saw something, like a dream, but I was awake and standing on the side of the road. I saw a car hitting McKenzie. It picked her up onto the hood and she crashed into the windshield and shattered it.

  I stood up to tell McKenzie, and the terrifying events I had just seen in my head actually happened. A car veered off the road right into her. Tires screeched, dust flew and I remember screaming and the smell of burning rubber. McKenzie flew off the car and landed on the other side of the road. The car kept going. I just stood there with my mouth open for a few seconds before I rushed over to McKenzie. She had blood on her face and dirt and gravel all over. I shook her and that's when I knew she wasn't ever going to wake up.

  They never found the driver.

  That was the first vision I ever had.