Story Edie (Complete)

Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 1

I thought I knew what I was doing. I had this plan. I called it The Plan. I was going to “do the right thing” and give the baby up for adoption. I mean what happened wasn’t the baby’s fault. Technically she wasn’t my fault either but then again, I was the idiot that played followed the leader and went to a party that I shouldn’t have gone to. So in a way, yes her existence is at least a little bit my fault, or at least my responsibility. I was supposed to be smart. I was supposed to be one of those kids that knew better. But instead, I played the fool and got roofied. By my best friend’s boyfriend no less, the girl that I’d gone to the party with so she wouldn’t do anything stupid or get in trouble.

I woke up in the middle of the fifth guy and panicked. I started screaming, crying until snot bubbles ran down my face, vomiting, the whole nine yards. No one could get near me. They could even hear me next door. Some in on the gag started to panic when I almost went out a second story window, headfirst which would have meant that I suicided … only they would have done a tox screen and realized something was hinky. Yep. I completely destroyed the vibe of the party. Or so I was told by more than a few people that were trying to play it off as a joke. I don’t really remember. Thank God. Because only five guys admitted to “partaking of the free stuff that was just lying there.” The rape kit says there were several more than five.

Even admitting that he’d “partook,” Layton refused to admit that he’s the one that put the pills in my orange juice. See I thought I was being smart. There’s that “I thought” again. The smart thing I thought was that I’d go to the party but I wouldn’t drink. And if I saw anyone else my age at the party drinking then I’d be a good friend and play designated driver. The first glass he’d given me had enough vodka in it to turn the “Screwdriver” into a jackhammer. He kept egging me on to drink it, but I got an attitude and I poured it down the drain right in front of him … and someone caught it on their phone camera. He acted all contrite and let me pour my own glass of OJ after that. What I didn’t know, and couldn’t see because of the low lighting, is that he’d already put crushed up pills in the bottom of the red solo cup before handing it to me. But that had been caught on vids already.

A lot of people made the mistake of documenting what was happening. Big mistake on their part. The cops collected all the phones at the party that night before people thought to delete things; for those that did delete them they forgot to empty the folder of newly deleted items. And for those that wouldn’t give up their passwords, there was enough evidence by that time that they got a court order to break into the phones and boy was there more than just what they did to me on some of those devices.

A few people admitted from the beginning that it was a revenge gag. Not a good enough reason, not that any reason is good enough, but even in a messed up teenager’s head why they did it wasn’t near close to being good enough. So the reason for trying to destroy my life? I’d screwed up the academic curve that kept several of the football players off the team for the remainder of the season. Can you freaking believe that?!

First off, their problem for playing idiots first term and getting into the academic fix to start with. Second? Had someone told me, I might have done one of two things … free tutoring or I would have screwed the curve in their favor. I’m not heartless and I thought some of those people were my friends. I always made it a point of not lording my brains over other people. I worked hard to keep my GPA at the top, but I always knew there was some genetic component to it as well and figured other people might not be able to keep up with me even if they tried hard.

Yeah, talk about arrogance. I’ve had a few uncomfortable conversations with Mr. Belding, the court mandated counselor, over my ego. I didn’t mean anything bad by it but there you go. Sometimes no matter what you do you wind up doing the wrong thing which means sometimes in this life it doesn’t feel like doing anything right is possible. So I try and do things as right as I can, and would have done it then as well. But no one asked me. That part I can’t be blamed for. It’s not like I hadn’t done it a few times before. All someone would have had to do is get a little birdy to whisper to me.

But no matter how the counselor has twisted it - or the cops, or some other people including myself in the beginning - I can be blamed for being an idiot about going to that party. Smart me should have seen the possibilities of things going wrong. But nope. Ego tripping is exactly what I did. I was going to save my friends if they screwed up. Boy did I learn my lesson. Day late, dollar short, but a lesson well-learned nonetheless. If people want to screw around I now get out of the way of their potential personal train wreck.

And then there is the fact that it turned out my BFF … former BFF … was in on it and helped set me up. Oh, she claimed not to have known what was going to happen. Then after it was proven she knew, she claimed that she didn’t think they would really do it. Then when they proved that wasn’t true either, she claimed that she didn’t think it would go as far as it did because she didn’t know that a lot of college guys were going to be at the party. It was supposed to just be people from school, people that were in on the gag. But a few of the kids invited a few outsiders because they didn’t think it would hurt and would cover their backsides. And those few invited a few more. And then the party time and location got advertised on social media and away the flying monkeys flew.

Now it turns out that most people thought that they were just going to get me drunk and take some embarrassing movies they could blackmail me with and put me in my place. People admitted they had planned on uploading the vids to all the social media platforms using fake accounts, both the oldie but goodies and the newer ones that weren’t monitored by the thought police yet. But enough knew what was really going on that by the time the powers that be finished charging people, a lot of families in town were totally shocked at how the future plans for their innocent darlings were going to have to change. Expulsions, being charged as an adult, and jail time just doesn’t look good on the ol’ college application. And even those not charged were named and called as witnesses and with the way schools Google, Duck-Duck, and Bing your reputation scores there were a lot fewer acceptance letters coming to fruition than might have otherwise happened. And some already in college either got expelled on “community standards” rules or lost scholarships, loans, etc. which wound up the same thing as being expelled.

See, plenty of the charges turned out to be felonies and enough of those families had given the police heartburn in recent years that there was no sympathy or cover up. There were yet more people that were happy to point out the hypocrisy of several prominent families that had a bad habit of telling other people how to live right. And the people above the police, even if they sympathized with the politics of those families, had too much at risk. They had to prove that they were on the side of law and order and not the militant anarchists. It was coming up on an election year dontcha know. And it was too easy to get blacklisted by banks, corporations, social media, and whoever else think they have a say.

And above and beyond that? The presiding judge had been caused enough heartburn by political friends of the families of the kids charged that she did everything she could to throw the book at everyone involved. Not to mention she laid claim to being a real live feminist and she just couldn’t look the other way when a group of males used their maleness to beat down a female. Didn’t matter whether those males were minors or of legal age.

That’s right happy campers, there were some adults (of both genders) that helped to set me up by providing the location and the drugs and alcohol though they claim they didn’t know how far it was going to go either.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 2

So like I was saying, I was trying to do the right thing. Or at least trying to do what everyone was telling me was the right thing. Give the baby up for adoption. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have to go through the pregnancy and all the rest. I was even going to sign off my rights so that Layton’s aunt and uncle could adopt the baby. Only during one of the gazillion tests that I went through – because being too young is just as bad as being too old to have a baby – they found some weird blood work. Then I started having sonograms and those caused some funny results too. And then suddenly excuses were made and no one wanted to adopt the baby.

Plus, I started to have second thoughts about “doing the right thing” because those sonograms made the baby a real person in my mind. I was kinda chunky back then so I didn’t show until I was nearly five months along. I didn’t look pregnant, just fat. But seeing that there actually was a live little human creature inside me started to change my thinking. And then I started feeling the live little human creature too. Doing the “right thing” was getting harder. Then it became impossible. I was told that when the baby was born it was going right into an “institutional setting” until it could be determined how bad off the baby was going to be. It was like the baby was going to jail while everyone else was getting off scott free, or so was my thinking at the time.

And that’s when I found my backbone and my smartbone and decided that the baby wasn’t just an it but was a her; and that her-baby was my baby, warts and all. I decided to pay closer attention when I went to the ob/gyn appointments. I decided it was time to start asking questions instead of staying objective and distant. But I also made sure that I was careful because the first hint that I might be backing out of giving the baby up I was going to get dog-piled by social workers.

Mr. Belding said that he’d had suspicions that I was having second thoughts but that it wasn’t unusual for anyone to have second thoughts about such a huge decision. Even if the girls didn’t, the guys involved didn’t always want to sign off of their parental rights, especially if it was a little boy baby. But that wasn’t a problem with Layton. He signed off on them so fast it nearly took even the prosecutor’s breath away. People tried to play it off as being because he thought his aunt and uncle were going to be the adopters but the truth? That freak is a narcissist just like his old man. Talk about your household in dysfunctional meltdown. I was blamed for a divorce, an arrest for domestic violence, and the destruction of Layton’s future … and the embarrassment that caused his old man. Mr. Carter wasn’t embarrassed by his personal asshattery like infidelity and then beating his wife when she found out. Nope. He was embarrassed by his son … in fact he disowned Layton and didn’t go to a single court appearance after the news media got ahold of the real facts of the case and not the spin that was being slung by all the defense attorneys involved.

I’m trying to let all of it go. Mr. Belding is a bit of a goof, but he’s got more than a few things right and one of them is that I’m not doing myself or Teena any good holding on to all the bad things and bad thoughts. I had enough bad things before that party go on to last anyone a lifetime; starting with where my parents were in all of this.

I was still in a car seat when a kid was texting and driving and ran into my mom’s Toyota Sienna. Doesn’t matter that my mother’s car was a big ol’ soccer mom type vehicle. When you are t-boned by a girl driving her brother’s Chevy Avalanche going 60 mph straight through a red light? Not even airbags help. She hit right at the driver’s door. My ten-year-old sister Bobbie’s seat belt broke and she was bounced around inside like the jingle inside a rattle before being ejected through the rear-hatch that had popped open. Mom’s neck was snapped and died immediately after being half-ejected through the shattered front window despite her seat belt. Bobbie died a week later in the PICU from internal injuries and oxygen deprivation to her brain. I suppose it was one of those hard-to-understand blessings that she died; had she lived she would have been brain damaged and paralyzed. Me? A fast-thinking and fast-acting, off-duty cop kept me from burning alive when a fuel line leaked on the Avalanche catching both cars on fire.

Dad and my brother Robbie, who hadn’t been in the car, were messed up but they worked through their grief by making me the center of their universe. But they also raised me to understand that I wasn’t the center of the universe. Sure wish I could say, “And they lived happily thereafter.” Sorry, that only happens in fairytales.

Dad was a building contractor, but he was also hands on and had a bunch of different licenses like for roofing, carpentry, and was a journeyman electrician and was hoping to test out for master electrician after a few years. He was a Jack of All Trades and Master of Quite a Few too. Robbie was going to follow in his footsteps because he didn’t know what else he wanted to do when he grew up. Besides, making a five-figure salary at the age of sixteen was nothing to sneeze at. And dad said it kept him away from the girls, especially the older ones that thought Robbie was too young and dumb not to fall for what they offered in exchange for his paycheck.

But being the boss means that you sometimes gotta do more than just act like you’re the boss. If someone is screwing around on-site you gotta put your boot down and fire them. Only some screw ups don’t just screw up but are screwed up … and they know where to get guns even after their ex-wife had them taken away until you could prove you weren’t crazy. When the guy was done shooting, my dad and brother weren’t the only ones dead and dying. The guy tried to put a bullet in himself too … but only took off most of his jaw. He lived. But he makes you really think of what your definition of life is. He’s a paraplegic with half a face and no real way to communicate how he feels about that. On some days I wonder if Karma is a real thing and on other days I’m scared to death that it is.

I suppose that I was lucky, at least a little bit. My Mom’s Aunt Nita who was only a few years older than she was came to live with me so that I could stay in the house I knew and be “less traumatized.” She’d been the one that had refused to say it was better off if I didn’t remember Mom. Aunt Nita was the one that would talk to me about Mom even when it was still too hard for Dad and Robbie to talk about her much.

One time Aunt Nita told me, “They’ve turned your mother into a saint and enshrined her in a glass case. Bekah was a real person which means she wasn’t perfect. It is that she always tried to overcome her imperfections that made her such a good wife and mother. That’s what you need to learn and understand Edie. That’s what you need to do too.”

Oh yeah. About my name. Edie (pronounced Ed-eee). I was supposed to be a boy. Everything in the nursery was blue and my name was supposed to be Edward George “Eddie” Holtzinger. After my two grandfathers. Boy were they surprised when it came cutting the cord time. Edward George was quickly changed to Edie Georgette and all the blue stuff got died purple. The way Aunt Nita tells it Poppa George, my mother’s father, thought it was a great joke. I’d already been a bit of a whoops so Poppa George just said I was a bigger whoops than anticipated so to expect plenty of surprises from me from there on out. And I was … full of surprises I mean.

I took my first steps at six months, was climbing out of my crib at seven months, was talking in full sentences at fourteen months. And I was reading books by the time I was three years old. It wasn’t War and Peace, but it wasn’t “See Dick and Jane see Spot.” either. One of the ways that Dad and Robbie kept me out of trouble while they were learning how to take care of everything themselves without Mom’s help is they would plunk me down in front of a computer game. Not Halo or Need For Speed. A real computer game. Dad found a bunch of them at yard sales … Carmen Sandiego, Crayon Physics, FutureU, and some really old ones like Math Blaster, Jump Start, Oregon Trail, Amazon Trail, Number Munchers, and my favorite of all time The Castle of Dr. Brain. I played them on this really clunky old computer that still operated on a Windows single digit version.

Now don’t take this the wrong way, I was smart but I was no freak of nature. I didn’t skip kindergarten and walk into high school and a year later from there into college. I probably could have skipped a couple of the early grades, but Aunt Nita convinced Dad that parking me in front of a computer or sticking my nose in a textbook all day might have made me smarter and made it easier on him, but it didn’t necessarily make me better or have more commonsense. So school it was, but on his terms. I went to a small private school until I was ten. When Aunt Nita became my guardian she blew off the private charter school and put me in the local middle school. On the one hand I was miserable because I’d just lost my father and brother and all of the other emotional hooha you’re going through as a ten-year-old girl. On the other hand, I discovered there were other smart kids in the world and a lot of them belonged to clubs that made school a whole lot more interesting than it had been.

Math League, Robotics Club, National Honor Society … they became the things that kept school from driving me nuts because it was too boring to be endured. Aunt Nita only had one rule that was non-negotiable, well three but this one was a biggie. For every academic club I was in I had to be in one non-academic club of her choosing. To be in Math League I had to be in Awanas at church. To get into the Robotics Club I had to stay in Scouts. And to be in National Junior Honor Society (whether my grades got me there or not) I had to join … gasp … Cheer Club. But that’s where I met Emmie. My former BFF. And for a few years my life went from roller coaster to stream-lined bullet train and I was even sitting in the first-class seats.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 3

Does it really seem that ridiculous that I would have an ego? I’m pretty sure I tried not to be a hot mess about it. Most of the adults that were called to the Witness Stand said I could be a little strange on occasion, but I wasn’t arrogant. It just isn’t that often that you meet a kid that acts and talks like a fifty-year-old woman. Sorry, I learned it from Aunt Nita because she didn’t believe in baby-talk or talking to little kids like they were a few fries short of a happy meal or a bomb about to go off. If you were going to be around people you were polite, didn’t speak in slanglish, used the brains God decided to give you at birth, and dressed so that whatever you were wearing on your bottom half rode at your waistline and not below your butt crack.

There were only two other things that were non-negotiable with Aunt Nita. First one was that I wasn’t going to date in high school. I could “group date” or be a fifth-wheel but no one-on-one. She said if she ever caught me breaking that rule that my life as I knew it would be over until I was forty-two. Trust me, if you had ever met Aunt Nita you would have absolutely no doubt that she could make that very thing happen. That’s why she never had a problem with me going with Emmie to parties. She knew some of them were probably a little riskier than she would be happy with but so long as I was the driver and came home on time, and could pass a breathalyzer, she didn’t give me any grief.

The other non-negotiable was that I had to work in her store and restaurant at least one day every weekend and on week days I had to spend another eight hours doing something else … cleaning, helping with the paperwork, ordering supplies for the restaurant, whatever she needed help with. Heck, I was the one that cleaned the bathrooms most of the time and picked up the trash people would leave in the parking lot. During the summer and school breaks I usually worked as much as any of the adults that worked there did. I helped stage vendor booths, made sure the security cameras worked, did odd fix-it jobs because I’d learned a lot just watching Dad and Bobbie and still had all of their tools, and lots of other things that most kids never even thought of but that Aunt Nita considered good training for adulthood. Vintage stores are cool but you couldn’t convince most of my friends of that. They also don’t make a crapton of money. We were always pinching pennies. That’s when we branched out into Estate Sales and online sales. Aunt Nita specialized in estate sales and the online sales were my job. I got to keep 50% of the net profit from those sales. I call that cool beans, Aunt Nita called it motivation.

I keep talking around and around about things but I’m just trying to get things straight in my head. Layton and the others didn’t just destroy their lives, they pretty much destroyed life as I thought it was going to be for me too. I was sixteen, a mixture of kid and grown woman, and I never knew which I was going to be most of each day.

The party and what happened changed me even more than it changed the others. The others just got outed for who they really were. They got caught and had to suffer the consequences. Me? My innocence and what was left of my childhood was stolen because you can’t be a kid and raise a kid at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive and cannot exist in the same dimension at the same time.

Turns out that the “abnormality” they’d spotted on the sonogram is called SUA. There was only one artery and one vein in the umbilical cord when “normal” is supposed to be two arteries and one vein. The most common pregnancy complications that occur in infants with SUA are heart defects, gastrointestinal tract abnormalities and problems with the central nervous system. The respiratory system, urinary tract, and musculoskeletal system may also be affected. One in five babies affected by SUA will be born with multiple malformations. There were a lot of other things that could be wrong with the baby too but those were the most common. I had all those statistics drummed into me and they managed to scare me to death. But then I looked into it myself, original studies and not just being on the receiving end of information doled out in pieces for effect. Yes, there was a 25% chance that SUA was going to cause significant problems, but there was also a 75% chance that nothing was wrong with the baby. Three times the chance that she was going to be okay, especially after they ruled out the trisomy defects and showed she was growing the way she was supposed to with no symptoms that she was struggling to live or her heart beat.

So I decided. I wasn’t going to sign away my baby. Not to anyone. It didn’t matter that she might come with a defect or three. God gave her to me and that’s just the way it was. Then a complication did come up. But it wasn’t with the baby or me. Aunt Nita started getting sick. I eventually read her personal journal and she wrote that she put it down to stress at first, then to menopause. She was still “regular as clockwork” but after all she was a woman of a certain age. It was to be expected. Then came the nausea that at first was controlled by OTC drugs like Pepto-Bismol and then Prilosec, Nexium, and Pepcid that she also put down to stress because she was a Rolaid fan since her own life in high school. Then her period came back … and lasted for three weeks. She felt drained and worried she had anemia. She’d had it before and knew the symptoms. Even if it was menopause she knew she needed help at that point. Unfortunately it was too late.

Aunt Nita was my grandfather’s half-sister and much younger than him. The product of his father’s second marriage that was a disaster from the get-go. Her mom left to go find herself but never came back. As a result Aunt Nita never really knew her or that side of her family. Mom and Aunt Nita had actually been raised as sisters. But when the doctor suggested that Aunt Nita should go looking, she found that most women on that genetic side had endometrial cancer and had eventually died from it. Many of the younger generation opted for therapeutic hysterectomies.

“Edie, it’s … Stage 4b. They say it is already in my stomach and lymph nodes.”

“You’re going to get a second opinion. Right?! They … they could be …”

“Sugar that is the second opinion, third if you count the consultant one of them brought in. I’ll fight this as long as I can but … we need to call Uncle Tinker.”

Uncle Tinker. Aunt Nita’s brother from her mom’s first marriage that got left behind the same way Aunt Nita had. The black sheep that I only knew about because he was the only one left that could go on the guardianship papers as next of kin. The only time I’d ever met the man was at funerals and he’d never said a word to me then. I didn’t want the next time I met him to be at Aunt Nita’s funeral.

I know I sound calm but during that time the only person that really helped me hold it together was Mr. Belding. He might have just been the court appointed counselor, but he took his job seriously. In addition to all the other crap he was helping me work through, he started telling me about the stages of grief. I was working on “bargaining” the day I went into labor. I’d had a counseling session in the morning, gone with Aunt Nita to her chemo session, and then got wheeled to L&D in the same hospital after Aunt Nita had some kind of seizure freaking me out so bad my water broke.

Aunt Nita refused to be kept away from me while I was “bargaining” for a little something to take the edge off. She was sitting in a chair in the hallway and was my cheerleader as I walked up and down the length of the tiled hall trying to not have to have a c-section. She was there when the Pitocin kicked in and Teena went from +3 to -3 right as they were wheeling me out to surgery and made the head nurse listen to me when I said I could feel her coming out.

“Put her back! Put her back! Get the doctor down here immediately!”

I remember Aunt Nita laughing at the nurses despite the fact she was as pale as the sheets on the bed I was in saying, “You always have to do the surprise. Looks like your kid is going to be the same way.”

I swear, Teena nearly flew out into the doctor’s hands. Aunt Nita asked if he’d been a football player in a former life and he said, “Nope. Played catcher in high school though.”

Ha. Ha. I can laugh about it now too, even wrote it in Teena’s baby book, but at the time all I could do was cry. Because Teena was perfect. Small but perfect. No sign of any of the defects they’d warned me about, no reason for the abortion they’d tried to encourage me to have. Then cry because Aunt Nita had stopped breathing.

I was crying when I called Mr. Belding’s emergency number in the middle of that night. I was still crying when he came to the hospital an hour later and got with the hospital social worker and then gave me an impromptu counseling session about depression and acceptance.
 
Lake Lili

Lake Lili

Veteran Member
Kathy in FL said:
Depends on the day you asked me. LOL. Real time is I’ll be 56 next month. Ask me on a bad day and I’ll say feeling like I’m 156.
Click to expand...

I'm not quite a year younger but could not agree more on the feel that I'm a century older... then again it just might be the heat.

You put such a gem of wisdom in this story already "you can’t be a kid and raise a kid at the same time. The two are mutually exclusive and cannot exist in the same dimension at the same time." Sincerely wish more people understood this. About to use it for another chat with my teen. Thanks!
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 4

I battled my way through depression by continuing with The Plan. Mr. Belding helped with some of that, then the court made him cut me loose. He wasn’t happy about it, but he couldn’t deny that he had become a little too involved. He and his wife had been talking with some people about fostering me and Teena until I turned eighteen. Someone blabbed to the defense attorneys for the other side. And then someone complained to the licensing board. The licensing board said he didn’t break the rules but he was treading close on the issue of objectivity. It sucked but I tried to accept that things simply were the way they were for some reason I had yet to figure out. But it definitely sucked.

I had to appear at the courthouse and be deposed multiple times before Teena was even two weeks old. The first time was the day after Aunt Nita’s funeral and they really tried to rattle my cage. And if I hadn’t been so angry and in pain from the episiotomy they might have succeeded. By the fifth time I was being asked the same questions by a different lawyer a man I didn’t know walked into the room and said, “Any and everything you’ve done up to this time is being thrown out. You’ve had a sixteen-year-old girl who has just given birth after being raped, locked in a room with a bunch of adult males. And she’s had no legal representation. You are either sadists or idiots and I’m not sure which at the moment.”

The lawyer of the moment stood up and tried to talk but the other man said, “F*** you. I don’t care what you want. Play time is over. You should have settled when you had the chance. Edie? Out … now. You are not to speak to anyone else without me present and even then I’ll do your talking for you.”

Still having that twilight zone feeling despite the painkillers wearing off before I left the hospital I asked, “Who are you?”

“Nels Gibson. Your Uncle Tinker appointed me to represent your interests.”

I looked out in the hallway and saw a man I knew to be Aunt Nita’s brother give one nod before stalking away.

I was in shock and closer to falling apart than I wanted anyone to know. Teena and I weren’t having a very good time learning to breast feed. Believe it or not Mr. Gibson helped with that too.

For two months I kept living in the house while Mr. Gibson – and presumably Uncle Tinker though I never saw him – shut down Aunt Nita’s business, shut down the house we lived in, got rid of a lot of stuff, and shut down what had been Aunt Nita’s life.

Nearly the first thing that Mr. Gibson did after entering my life, was hire a woman called a Postpartum Doula. Mrs. Finkley helped me a lot more than those classes the hospital had me take did. She hooked me up with people that helped me to settle into breastfeeding more successfully. She hooked me up with the pediatrician for Teena and ob/gyn and regular doctor for me. She helped me to set up a good diet so that I could feed Teena and feed myself at the same time so I could stay healthy. She taught me simple physical exercises that helped me get my female parts back in working order. She helped me get a head around the laundry a baby needs. She also played housekeeper though she had to do less and less of that as the house emptied.

Mrs. Finkley showed me that lots of things might be nice to have for the baby, but the baby really only needs me and the rest are just things, and only some of them are things that help me take care of her easier or better. She didn’t need a gazillion and one cutsie outfits because she was going to grow out of them before she’d get much use of them. She taught me that onesies or footed sleepers were better and easier for both of us rather than a lace-bedecked dress fit for tea with the queen. She taught me how to give the baby a bath and keep her clean in all her spots … and she gave me a few hints for myself as well in that area when the stupid episiotomy kept giving me problems. She walked me through the insane list of things the pediatrician gave me about what Teena should be doing at what age and what I should be doing for Tina and when. She walked me through some personal hygiene issues that I was having as my body tried to figure out what to do since I wasn’t pregnant anymore and about stuff like biotin and callogen that would help my skin and other bits when I realized they wouldn’t go back to where they used to be even with duct tape and drywall screws. She was a lot like Mr. Belding, just more about me and the baby than me and my mental health although there was some coping skills on that part as well.

Mrs. Finkley left to go on to the next person that needed her version of Mary Poppins the same week that I got my driving privileges back from the docs and the week before Mr. Gibson informed me that all the lawyers were going to get one shot at me and then that was it.

For the first time I was completely on my own and I was scared as crap. The only room in the house that still had furniture in it was my bedroom and that was mostly filled up with stuff that Teena needed. There wasn’t even a kitchen table to sit at. There was a dorm frig in the corner of my bedroom with a toaster-sized microwave on top of it and a box of shelf stable meals beside it. That was my kitchen and all the groceries I had. The bathroom had my toothbrush and toothpaste in it, three towels, three wash rags and a bar of soap. There was a stack of cardboard boxes near the front door and I had instructions that I was to fill two boxes every day until my room was packed up. I was to keep out a small backpack for me and a diaper bag for Teena. As the trial loomed, I was informed that I was moving but I had not a clue where and no one had answered that question when I’d asked. Supposedly it was so I couldn’t give the information away accidentally or on purpose and to keep the media from finding my location.

More than a little frustrated I asked, “And who would I tell?! I don’t have any friends. I don’t even have Mr. Belding or Mrs. Finkely.”

“I’ve warned you of this before. Feeling sorry for yourself is useless and destructive.”

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m stating facts as far as I know them. The man that I was taught to call uncle has made himself scarce my entire life. The closest we’ve ever come to speaking is his nod to confirm that you’re … whatever you are. You’re a lawyer, I was able to confirm that much. Oh, and you don’t have any complaints against you. Big, fat, whoop. If you are getting paid to act on my behalf, I have no clue though you didn’t fill out any pro bono paperwork with the court so there’s that. Where the money is coming from I’m clueless about as well. I could wind up owing you tens of thousands of dollars and I have no way to pay it right now. I’m not even sure what the goal is here since every question I ask is ignored or you refer me to my uncle who, once again I’ll explain, I’ve never spoken a word with. I don’t have a phone number for him. An email. Nothing.”

“And?”

“And it isn’t just about me. I have a baby to take care of.”

“You should have thought of that before you decided against adoption.”

“That is none of your business. Aunt Nita understood.”

“She’s not here. She’s dead. And you are a minor.”

“No shock Sherlock,” I told him, being as rude to any adult as I have ever been in my life. “But I’m not a felon and do have some rights in this life.”

“Not as many as you seem to think you are due.”

“And more than you are trying to grant me. I have Constitutional rights and among other things I have the right to be protected from possessory rights over me. And you can forget trying to have Teena taken from me because without her you don’t have a case to work to get paid from.”

Mr. Gibson looked at me like I was suddenly interesting. I wanted to tell him to screw you, but I’d learned a thing or three from my school debate coach and waiting your opponent out was one of them.

He finally said, “Possessory doesn’t come into play here.”

I was ready because I’d finally started using my smartbone. If I was going to go toe to toe for something resembling a life I had to be ready.

“Oh yes it does. The man who claims to be my aunt’s brother has never spoken to me before in my life. I’ve seen a man who claims to be her brother at funerals, but I have no personal knowledge that he is who he claims to be, nor is he a blood relation to me. He has never once acted as family. He was not around after my mother and sister were killed. He wasn’t around after my father and brother were killed. And he isn’t around now barring one brief glimpse two weeks after Aunt Nita died. You tell me that he is around doing x, y, and z on my behalf, but I have yet to see any physical results of that beyond the fact that Aunt Nita’s business has been shut down and emptied, the home I’ve lived in most of my life has been emptied, and I’m left with a dorm frig and a box of freeze dried meals to feed myself with. My own bank account that was mine and mine alone was emptied and shut down without my permission just because I was a minor. The car I drove is gone. So tell me what a judge would have to say to that Mr. Gibson if the question comes up of whether I need to be protected from possessory action?”

He sighed. “I told Tinker that you were too smart. Sit down, we need to talk.”

“And where do you think we should sit?”

“Fine, just drop the attitude,” he snapped. Then he started giving me information. “You young lady, are worth some money. Depending on this trial’s outcome you might be worth more than just some. And contrary to what you might be thinking right now, Tinker doesn’t want any of it. In fact, due to certain other family issues, he wants nothing to do with you but feels some responsibility due to the fact he is too soft hearted where his sister was concerned. In her memory he is going to make sure that you get set up and then he is done with you and doesn’t want to hear from you ever again. His distance is to make sure he doesn’t become attached to you.”

“And?”

“Nita had good intentions but at your age it was a disservice to keep you in the dark. Your father’s estate isn’t huge but once this house sells … and we already have a buyer, only waiting on the closing … you’ll have enough to go to the local college should you so choose.

“I already knew that. Aunt Nita said I inherited my brother’s college fund.”

“That’s certainly one way to explain it without giving you any real facts but even with the proceeds from the house you are going to have to pick between eating and higher education at some point. Getting a job while you have a kid isn’t going to be easy. Anything you could make will go out as soon as it comes it … fuel, uniforms, childcare, and the million and one other things you doubtless haven’t thought of.”

“Okay so I don’t know everything, but I showed you The Plan.”

“Granted, you are at least trying but that plan has too many holes in it to truly be successful.”

“So teach me Obe Won. I’m all ears.”

Not appreciating my snark he said, “You had better help me get this farce of a trial finished or you are going to be SOL with nothing to fall back on. When I say Tinker wants nothing to do with you, he means exactly that. I am to get you through this trial, get you your emancipation, and then my debt to him will be over and done with and you’ll see the back side of me as well.”

Surprising him with how swiftly I responded I said, “I’ve already looked into emancipation. I’m nowhere close to having what I need. I’m not financially independent because you’ve closed Vintiques and because my checking and savings accounts have oh so conveniently disappeared, along with the money that was in them … which I worked for in case you haven’t listened all the other times we’ve been through this. I don’t have my high school diploma yet and the school district considered it in my best interest to only be able to participate in virtual school which also has just so happened to have knocked me out of the running for the scholarship I was hoping to get so I could go to State College without breaking the bank. The for-sale sign in the front yard tells me I don’t have a stable place of residence. I’m sure a judge will ask for a few more nifty details of my life before signing off on something like emancipation. I’ll be lucky not to wind up in foster care and lose Teena on top of that.”

“Now you are thinking with your head. You do what I say, and you will be free, white, and independent before the month is over. And losing the kid will only be a matter of your own skills.”

Ignoring most of what he said I latched on one phrase that seemed to make the rest out to be a fantasy. “The month. Yeah right.”

“The day I agreed to do this I started the petitioning process. Your aunt had a vacation home she rented out that will become your primary residence and …”

“Back up. What vacation home? First I’ve heard of this.”

He was momentarily surprised and then smiled a shark’s smile. “Your aunt must have had some smarts after all. This was your father’s house.”

“Yeah.”

“Your aunt did have a life before you came along.”

“Agreed. She also had a life while I was in hers. Her business and her friends and stuff. She even dated a few times but got tired of it she said because she didn’t want to take on some other woman’s problem.”

“Nita Halsey was a sharp-tongued harpie.”

“Don’t you dare talk about her that way!”

“Settle down,” he snapped. “She may have been different with you, but I knew the woman since we were kids, and she was always that way. It’s why she never married.”

“No it isn’t. She never married because she didn’t want kids and was waiting until she met an older man that didn’t need her to have kids with to fulfill him. Even with Poppa George taking her and her brother in, she always felt that she didn’t want a repeat of her mom’s problems. So shut up about Aunt Nita, what you think you know you obviously don’t. Get back to what I need to do to get Tinker Halsey … and you … out of mine and Teena’s life since you both seem to think it has so little value.”

I was going for broke. I was too scared not to. I wasn’t even sure that I should believe what Mr. Gibson said but it was all I had at that time.

“Very well,” he said coldly and we finally got down to brass tax. “You are going to get on that stand. You are going to answer their questions. If you feel something is out of line you look at me. I will either nod to answer it or will pass an objection along to the prosecutor who I will be sitting with. The baby is going to be there with you. There will be some objections to that, but we’ll inform the court that you nurse the baby and that the postpartum doula instructed you to keep the baby with you at all times.”

“She did.”

“All the better that it is the truth. The questions are going to be unpleasant. Just try and keep the crying to a minimum but don’t look cold or too stoic. If someone remarks on it say that you were told that you have to answer whether you want to think about what happened or not and that crying or hysterics wasn’t good for the baby and would only make everything take longer and you just want it all to be over.”

“I do want it to be over.”

“As I said, even better if it’s the truth. It is going to be a long process, but Judge Vickers has already agreed that breaks can be called when the baby needs to be fed. There’s an antechamber that can be used for diapers and feeding. If they try and ask you about anything other than that night you look at me and I’ll either nod or say it has no bearing on the case. Don’t volunteer anything, don’t exaggerate, don’t give them anything but the facts with no dressing.”

“Okay, so basically just say yes or no or keep it to one- or two-words answers. What if they ask for more detail?”

“Look at me, I’ll either …”

“Nod or object.”

“Exactly. Now let’s get down to how you will be dressed. Let’s see what you have.”

I was not thrilled with his comments about the state of my wardrobe. It was embarrassing to have a grown man say he threw up a little in his mouth at the state of everything. My old clothes didn’t fit right and my new stuff was mostly leftover maternity clothes. There was no money to go shopping with and even if there had been, I couldn’t go out in public without someone tracking me down and making my life hell.

He finally settled on a navy-colored stretchy dress that was put together so that I could pull the top to the side so I could feed the eating machine without having to get undressed to do it. My shoes were going to be some navy-colored slide on shoes. They didn’t match perfectly but I’d get an A for effort. It was still warm enough outside that I didn’t need a sweater but he told me to bring one anyway in case they played with the thermostat to make me uncomfortable.

“What’s that you call with your hair?”

“Braids?”

“No. Maybe. Let me think.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll just squish the mess on top of my head. That’s how I wore it in school. It made it easy to find places to stick my pencils.”

He gave me a look like he thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.

“Make up?”

“No. Aunt Nita said I’d wind up with zits and scars and that I should be glad I didn’t have any major defects since the au natural look was in. For school pictures I wore mascara and lip balm and my gold hoop earrings.”

“Good lord,” he groaned. “You need to dress like you have some pride at least. If you come dressed like Little Orphan Annie you’ll get everyone suspicious and set the wrong tone.”

“I don’t even know what that means. I just want to be me.”

“Well being you is what got yourself into this fix in the first place.”

“Are … are you saying I asked for this?!”

He grinned. “That is exactly what you need to do if they try and say that. Outraged but tempered by hurt feelings and an attempt to be mature about it … but overall revealing you have been traumatized.”

It was my turned to groan, “Good Lord.”
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 5

Why they chose to agree to one trial instead of individual ones so that it could be dragged out I guess I’ll never know. Mr. Gibson theorized that they were probably thinking that if they’d had separate trials there was too great a chance for people to turn on each other. I guess they thought that if they all stood together that it would make it look like I was the bad guy. Well they goofed. Boy did they goof. Like I said earlier, the parents and their friends had created too much ill-will with their politics this and defund the police that’s and you either do it our way or we’ll make your life hells.

I didn’t have to answer nearly as many questions as Mr. Gibson had predicted because the Prosecutor in this case let the pictures and videos from that night do a lot of talking for me. I did have to be there for that and when they started showing the vids of when … well just when … I started puking so hard I nearly passed out and they had to call a break in the proceedings and then the paramedics. When the paramedics said it might not be a bad idea to take me to the ER all heck broke loose. They were filling out the overnight admission paperwork when back at the courthouse the defense attorneys were begging for plea agreements. Mr. Gibson told me the next day that the Judge only agreed to some of the pleas in the interest of my victimhood and so it wouldn’t cost the State anymore money in trial expenses.

By the time and all the fees and fines the Judge deemed appropriate were added together, most of the families involved thought their only hope was bankruptcy. That’s when they found out bankruptcy wouldn’t help protect them against what the courts call un-dischargeable debts, which includes among other things fines and penalties imposed as a punishment, such as criminal restitution.

A few of the perpetrators also got jail time. The adults definitely did. And the dealio was that no probation without paying their un-dischargeable debts. Layton got jail time at a minimum-security adult facility. Some of the others got juvie hall until they turned eighteen. And others got remanded down to family court. Some just had to complete court mandated counseling and follow probation rules. Everyone convicted also got charged victim restitution which they have to pay in monthly installments to the Clerk of the Court who then passes it along to me after taxes and a processing fee are taken out. And if they don’t pay on time, they get further penalized and cited for contempt.

It ain’t cheap to have a kid, especially if it was suspected the kid is going to be special needs. Add in the post-partum doula and bam, ain’t cheap turns into doggone expensive. And more than a few of those prosecuted also have to live with being a sexual predator label for the rest of their lives, even some of the females and that’s all I’m saying on that particular subject.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 6

A week after that I was woken up by the doorbell going ninety to nothing. It had been two days since the last reporter and camera crew had given up after realizing I just wasn’t going to come to the door. I was careful to check through the peep hole just in case they’d come back but I saw some guy in coveralls with a clip board and a moving van and another car in the driveway.

“Miss Holtzinger? Mr. Gibson has some papers for you and then we need to get everything out of the house.”

I opened the door a crack. “Huh?”

“Here,” he said passing a manila envelope to me. “This will explain everything. We need to get going.”

He pushed his way passed me and he and another guy started picking up the boxes lined up at the front door and hauling them out to the truck. I was still three-quarters asleep because Teena had decided that colic was an existence she wanted to experience … but only when I was trying to get some rest … but I sure woke up fast as I read the note taped to the outside of the envelope.

“You got your wish Miss Holtzinger. You are now free and clear of all of us. I’m sure we are both saying good riddance. Judge Vickers assisted in getting your emancipation filed so that’s taken care of. I am officially handing you your adulting card and may you find joy in it.” Mr. Gibson could snark better than most of the kids in school combined.

His note continued, “A checking account has been opened in your name to receive all restitution and probate monies via direct deposit. If you want a savings account, that’s on you to arrange. Here are the keys to the house and the address. One year of insurance and taxes have been paid up front. Electricity, cable, phone, and internet is on in your name. Pay the bill or don’t … but if you don’t, they’ll turn everything off and you’ll lose the deposits which was not insignificant given you have no credit history. Water is by well and cistern. The rest you can figure out for yourself based on the file enclosed. Do not attempt to call upon Tinker from this point forward as it will be useless. There is to be no further contact. He is not heartless, but this was a situation not of his making or choosing and one that he has discharged in your benefit and none to him. Do not attempt to contact me. You were merely a job, a means to an end, and now that the job is complete, I am shutting down my office in this town and returning from whence I came. Good luck Miss H, you’re going to need it.”

Before I could even think of the question the man hauling away the last of my belongings, including Teena’s crib which had taken me forever to figure out how to put together, told me, “The vehicle has a full tank of gas and an envelope in the glove compartment. You might as well go ahead and er … get dressed … and then move the car seat. The new owners will be here in 30 minutes and expect the place to be empty.”

Teena picked that moment to start screaming.

#####

I wouldn’t relive that day for ten times the amount of restitution I get every month from the court. Not for a hundred times that amount. I threw on clothes that I’d worn a few times before but that weren’t so dirty they could stand up by themselves. Then juggled Teena so she could eat while I carried my backpack and her diaper bag to the car. Well, not car. It was a Chevy Tahoe and was bigger than anything I’d ever driven before. Once there I opened the glove compartment and found the other “letter” and tried to read it while Teena gnaws on me like she hasn’t eaten in three days and I’m a chicken bone.

“Here’s a few bucks and a grocery gift card. The cash will need to last until you can get a debit card for your account. To do that you’ll need to go to the post office and rent a box as there is no mail service to the house. There’s no groceries at the house either so you’ll need to take care of that with the card and if you take my advice you’ll do it before you leave familiar territory. Welcome to real life. May you have the joy of it the same as the rest of us do.”

I would have said more than a few rude things aloud except I could already feel people staring at me from the neighborhood – Teena was loud and a tad crabby – and I had to find my shoes and my purse. Good thing that Aunt Nita had helped me to get my regular driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday because my seventeenth birthday was turning into a nightmare.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 7

“Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me …”

Yeah, I was feeling just a little sorry for myself that night as I polished off an entire package of mini cupcakes sitting surrounded by boxes of every size and shape in a house I’d never been in until that night. My mattress was still wedged in what had been one of the last clear floor spaces over by the front door. Teena’s crib was still in pieces leaning against the mattress.

The moving van was halfway down the block and I had just pulled out of my former home as two other cars were pulling in. They barely gave me a curious glance before I saw kids piling out of the car and running up to the front door. The husband and wife looked happy and just as excited as them. The realtor, or whoever the lady was there with them, gave me shooing away motions like I was some unwelcome cat loitering about the place.

I’d done my grieving over the house and had come to accept that I wouldn’t be living there any longer but that doesn’t mean that a couple of tears didn’t fall. I had to wipe them away quickly however because I hadn’t driven much for a couple of months and it was a weird feeling to be behind the wheel of such a big vehicle. Having a baby screaming from the backseat didn’t help out either. She was hungry again and so was I. My plan of the moment was to park in the grocery store lot and take care of her and then head inside and take care of something for me.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been grocery shopping alone. When Aunt Nita got sick, the meds she was on made driving a bad idea, so even pregnant I was getting life lessons. Even before then I’d always helped with the monthly shopping trips. Mrs. Finkley had also taught me a few things. So with my “adulting card” in hand I test drove my new world inside the Piggly Wiggly.

A box of oatmeal, a box of grits, some ramen noodles, a couple cans of beef stew, some fruit cocktail, some chicken noodle soup, some tomato soup, a loaf of bread, some cheap sliced cheese and cheaper mayo, and a Styrofoam container of deli fried chicken with two sides to round it out and hopefully last the rest of the day. I got suckered into a container of banana pudding because it had a discount price tag and I blame those stupid tags and fluctuating hormones for the mini cupcakes too. For drinks I got a gallon of milk because the only quart-size they had were skim milk and that’s nothing but white water. I also picked up a jug of apple juice for in case my sugar dropped which it had done a couple of times. Then I realized my bathroom stuff, specifically my feminine hygiene supplies, had driven away in the moving van. When I got those I realized I might as well pick up a couple rolls of paper towels and called myself being smart and mature.

When I was done paying – with the gift card and being told how much was left – I piled everything in the car, including Teena who needed a diaper change making me bang my head because I had to go back inside to get some of those because I just in time remembered that all of those I had left had driven away in the van with my pads.

It took me over ninety minutes to find the house. One, it was two towns over from where I used to live and two, it was up some winding mountain road you need 4WD or AWD to navigate, which made me glad no one was coming in the opposite direction. From the porch I could see houses dotted here and there on the lower elevations along the road - more cabin that house and some of them looked rough - but no one up where I was. I later learned there were a couple of cabins higher up than me, but they weren’t directly behind or in front of me, and you had to take a different road from the highway to reach them. So yeah, I was alone with my baby and more than a little nervous.

Not only was I nervous but I was ravenous as I had yet to eat. I’d drank two bottles of water though. I’d picked them up from the mini mart that I’d stopped at when I’d gotten turned around and sure that I was lost. Nope, wasn’t lost, just hadn’t gone far enough. The stupid GPS kept trying to jump all over the place depending on how many trees were crowding the highway. I later learned that no one new up that way used GPS but had to use turn-by-turn directions kept on file with the various property management companies that took care of the cabins when the owners or guests weren't in residence. Uncovered an old binder on the entry-way table while trying to find the light switches. It built a hypothesis that was confirmed but later, that the cabin was investment property that my aunt rented out to earn some extra money, but for whatever reason she hadn't been putting in upgrades and stuff ... or the management company she had used ... and neither had most of the other cabins up this road so they weren't getting rented out as much as time went by. I hadn't gotten very far with my hypothesis at that point and it has taken some time and then some to try and get any further with it. Right then I had other priorities.

I still couldn’t eat. One, it looked like rain and the movers had left the boxes and stuff on the front porch. And two … oh my Lord. I found where they’d moved all of Aunt Nita’s stuff and all the stuff from the house. It looked like they’d found some other houses to take stuff from and move there as well though I found out from the papers in the manila envelope that it wasn’t other houses but a large storage bay that held all of the accumulations from family and estate sales that Aunt Nita either couldn’t let go of or hadn’t been able to sell just yet. That was more stuff I hadn’t known about until that time that left me wondering just what else I didn’t know and why she hadn’t told me.

And that’s when I realized I wasn’t near as smart as I thought I was because I forgot to buy TP. I had to use paper towels and I at least knew you didn’t flush those down the john. That’s when I realized I also didn’t think to get trash bags. An avalanche of things I was pretty sure I didn’t have started hitting my brain and all I could do was suck it up and dig through my backpack for some notebook paper that I could dedicate to a running list. Of course that required a writing utensil which seemed to not be on the list of things that I packed. I switched to the note feature on my phone and prayed the curse of postpartum brain wasn’t something I was going to have to live with the rest of my life.

The sign at the drive called the property Paradise Point but I wasn’t seeing it at first glance. The side I was seeing wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t paradise. The roof was metal and green, and the outside walls were clapboard stained a washed out cedar bark color. Essentially the house, or cabin if that’s what you wanted to call it, reminded me of a tree of some type and it blended into the scenery more than a little.

The landscaping was rough to nonexistent and there were leaves piled up from last fall which told me how long it had been since anyone had rented the place. You just walked up and then walked in. Well I didn’t walk exactly. More like I was wiggling through spaces and paths I had to create to get from room to room. When I say the house was completely full of boxes I am not exaggerating. It took me nearly an hour just to shove and restack things so I could pull the boxes, my mattress, and Teena’s crib in off the driveway side porch. Then in the rain I had to go grab everything out of the car and make sure the emergency brake was on because I’d finally gotten a gander at why the place was called what it was.

The Great Room had oak chair rail all around it. There was matching oak planking on the ceiling with wooden crown molding where it met what turned out to be real plaster walls and there were also picture rails in the rooms telling me how old the place really was even if it had been renovated at some point in the past.

A huge stone fireplace dominated the room; you can roast a kid in it it’s that big. And then the windows, when I finally managed to get to that side of the room, and around the boxes, looking out beyond the raindrops sliding down the large glass panes was a view you saw in those expensive vacation magazines. I wondered why Aunt Nita never took us on a vacation here since she owned it. I still don’t know but it is one of those things I’ve come to accept. I mean I wish I knew, but it isn’t a need and that’s all I’ve had time to focus on lately. Needs. I get some wants on occasion but more on accident than on purpose.

That day all I was able to do was crawl through the walls of boxes. I got more bruises that week than I did the entire summer that Aunt Nita insisted I take tumbling class. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a great room. You walked in the driveway side of the house into a sorta kinda dining room that had a table and six chairs on one side of the room and a half wall on the other that separated it from the kitchen. The kitchen was kinda big, but I could hear my father and Bobbie in my head saying, “What a lot of wasted space.” Kitchens and bathrooms were their thing and though I didn’t think about it then, I’ve thought a lot about it since. I watched them and even helped them on some occasions when my nose wasn’t down in a book. I know what I want to do to change the kitchen and make it more appealing … or more appealing to me and for now I’m who counts. It’s just been beyond me to do it.

The house was partially furnished. All three bedrooms … one of them even has a set of bunk beds and a bed with a trundle in it so it could fit four people, or at least four kids. The bedrooms are upstairs. It took me two days but I found there was a finished basement downstairs on the “cabin” as well. That’s where the laundry room is … and yes there is a washer and dryer and I’m happy to say I found them before I had to go to a laundromat. There was a pullout sofa, a pool table, and another fireplace down there too. The weirdest though was a big room that I originally thought must have been a library at one time except the shelves were very strange. It wasn’t until I found an advertising flyer that I found out that space was a pantry and storage room for long term lease holders.

The biggest feature, according to the flyer, is the tri-level deck that looks out over the Smoky Mountains. Top level opens off a playroom type area on the floor where the bedrooms are and was called “casual.” The middle level opens off the great room and was kinda formal. Or formal in that the décor didn’t scream summer camp chic. The bottom level is “rustic” and opens off the finished basement’s mudroom/half-bath. There is a hot tub out there and that entire level is screened in. When I saw that I went back to the other two levels and realized the top level had been screened in too at some point but was no longer. And that there is a sitting area on the more formal main floor that looks like it had been screen off at one time as well.

The cabin itself sits on the edge of a tabletop area. I’m thinking that some of it is natural and some of it is manmade, carved out at some time when the owners wanted more flat space to live on. The closer to the edge you go the more rock is in the ground except for the raised beds that held the remains of the landscaping. The further away from the house you go it is more dirt and in fact some of the old pictures in the advertising flyers show a garden and some trees. A few of the trees are still there on the edge of the encroaching forest but the garden is long gone. But I’m going to figure out a way to have another one. Because I’ve learned a couple of things over this last year about adulting … it’s not just an adjective, it’s a verb.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 8

Things have changed and continue to change. First came the plan. Then came The Plan. Now I have THE PLAN and it fills up several of my old school binders.

I only left the mountain for one day over the next two weeks. That was on the third day – a Monday – to get everything that I had on my list. Or LIST as I’d scrawled on the top of the steno pad after I’d found half a pencil hiding in the bottom of my backpack along with a Sharpie I had left over from school.

First stop was to find out for sure that there was no mail service to the cabin. Uh, yeah there was but actually not at the cabin but at the bottom of the road where it turns off the highway. It was my job to buy a mailbox and install it on the posts that were already there. I just had to label it really well because the boxes weren’t in numerical order. And I was told the mail lady could be a little particular so if I got any notes left in my box, I’d better take care of things sooner rather than later. That is if I wanted my mail delivered.

Second stop was the bank, just down the street from where the post office was located in the small town that serves this area … Dunnville. It’s named that for a reason that becomes obvious later. That’s where the courthouse and city hall are as well. There are some cutesy tourist type store fronts and some restaurants too. You can tell the town lives on the cabin rentals in the area.

I ordered my debit card and set up a savings account and did all the yada yada with the IDs and signature stuff that kept the bankers happy and not so cranky since no one quite knew what to make of an emancipated minor and what they could and could not do. Lucky I had printed off the state statutes that covered those issues and the bank manager knew a little something about it since his wife was a family court attorney and some birdy at the courthouse had warned her, I might be coming around.

Working debit card in hand and trying not to freak out at how much money was already in the checking account it was attached to (another one of my OMG why didn’t I know moments), I headed to my old stomping grounds to drop a thank you card to Mr. Belding, a letter of recommendation at Mrs. Finkely’s agency, a letter of appreciation to Judge Vickers promising not to waste the opportunity that I’d been given to heal from the attack and become a contributing member of society and pay forward the help that others were giving me. Next stop was the worst. It was to get my school records so that I could apply for virtual school in the school district I now lived in. Lastly, I had to hit up ye ol’ wallyworld.

None of the adults in question were there which in hindsight I’m glad of. It kept things from running long and getting emotional. It took forever for the Education Specialist to transfer my records to the new district. She gave me a real hassle, not wanting to believe I was emancipated. In hindsight I should have just done it by phone, pretending I was Mr. Gibson’s secretary or something and then scanned and emailed the paperwork in. Oh well, I learned a lesson and next time, all the next times, I did as much online as possible to save myself some headaches.

Then came wallyworld and the LIST. Before I’d pulled out that morning the list was four pages long with two running columns on each side. Top of the list was TP, more diapers, and a case of fizzy water for me to drink because the water coming out of the tap in the kitchen was a disgusting orange color. Gross. And because of that I bought a water pitcher that had a filter for it … and a couple of extra filter cartridges … and another type of filter and cartridge that I could attach to the washing machine hose (no dishwasher). And several gallons of water just for Teena. And just in case the water goes out I bought some big jugs of water. All that water made me realize that I really needed to figure out what was wrong at the cabin.

A lot of stuff that had originally been on the LIST started showing up in the boxes throughout the house. Laundry and cleaning supplies? Found them in one of the upstairs bedrooms by smell alone … someone had put a mop head in there and it had soured. Gross in the extreme. But it meant that I could scratch through laundry detergent and all those housecleaners you don’t think about needing until you need them. Then I added the laundry stuff back on when I read about a way of doing things that was pretty cool but that didn’t happen until after that initial wallyworld trip and listening to a mother and daughter talking about some scary crap.

So, I brought home my packages and started putting them away. I should have felt good, but I felt scared. What’s more I realized I had reason to be scared after listening to the radio and looking things up online.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 9

I’m coming to the conclusion that it isn’t the planet that is screwed up but the people living on this planet that are screwed up. Everyone is always looking for a reason to argue and fight, always looking for a reason to be on the brink of disaster. I also understand that I’m on the bottom of the crapheap of life … at least for a while. My age, being a single parent, not having any support network, all the stuff that means my life is more difficult than someone else that doesn’t have those things stacked against them. On the other hand, I have some things going for me that other people don’t. Stable … sorta kinda stable … income and a stable home. If victim restitution doesn’t get paid, I’ll at least have some income from where all of the estates got funneled into my bank account and some survivor benefits from social security. And even without that I’m not doing too bad selling off the stuff that was left from Vintiques … and the stuff that I find and fix myself from yard sales and places like that.

I wouldn’t give my Teeny Tiny Teena up for anything – her name sake a ballerina mouse that was a character in one of my early computer games. So complaining about being a single parent is the epitome of stupidity. I made the choice to have her, against medical recommendation. I made the choice to keep her, against lots of recommendations. I’m choosing to be the mom. My choice. My right. So shut up about it already.

Single? Meh. I got too much baggage of my own to waste time looking for a guy who would have to be nearly as messed up as me to want to join forces with the single that I am. I’m not completely oblivious. There’s been some guys that were feeling me out but all but a few accepted the no my vibe was giving off. There’s a guy at the hardware store that is getting annoying but he’s younger than I am for Pete’s sake. And even if I was so inclined, there’s no time for it between Teena, the house, school, and all the rest.

Support network? I guess I do have a few people these days, but no one close enough that if something happened to me I would be sure they’d look after Teena. That’s scary and makes me super careful about everything.

It has taken me months to start really figuring a lot of this stuff out, even start to realize that it needed figuring out. I would blow hot and cold with the direction I thought my life should take. I think at first it was just I was so scared that my brain could only handle so much input at a time, but over time the picture in my head has gotten bigger and I can juggle more pieces of the puzzle at the same time without freaking out. Most days anyway. There was that time that Teena reacted bad to her vaccines and my world felt like it was crashing. She’s fine now but the pediatrician agreed to not do more than one vaccine per well-baby checkup and space them further apart. She didn’t wind up in the PICU but it was close. They almost made me leave the room but her doctor showed up on time and said I was a good mom and it wasn’t a case of neglect or whatever. I could have flipped out on them when I finally figured out they thought it was my fault that Teena was sick. I’m even more careful now about having anything to do with people that might want to get into my business because not all social workers and wanna be social workers are created equal. And some of them are deaf to anything you have to say. It’s all guilty until proven innocent instead of the other way around.

My chance at being “young and dumb” disappeared the night of that party. I can’t afford that kind of damage. I can’t afford to wear those kinds of blinders. There’s not just me that it could kill. Teena and I are all each other have in this life and I’m the adult in that equation

I’d already felt like I was trying to act in a play that I only had a small part of the script for. After wallyworld that day I knew it wasn’t a script so much as a puzzle and I was missing a lot of puzzle pieces. I also knew there was a lot more going on in the world than my little piece of it.

I’d been glancing over the magazines at the check out line when the people with the buggy in front of me caught my eye. Or should I say the two buggies in front of me. Mom was pushing one buggy and teenage daughter was pushing the other one. Basically daughter thought mom was out of her gourd until Mom reminded daughter how hard things were to come by last year and the news was talking about it happening again.

“Again?! Why?!” she whined.

“Too many reasons, mostly because politicians seem to live to make our lives harder. Ask your father when he gets home, he knows all the right terms and phrases for it. Now put things on the conveyor belt in groups of like items so that I can make sure and get the full value for my coupons. Some of these are about to expire.”

“But mom …”

“Tricia I don’t have time for your mouth. Not again and definitely not this time. After here I need to go pick up your grandmother’s prescription, your brother’s asthma meds from the other pharmacy, and then stop at the produce stand and pick up that bushel of apples your aunt wants. Put some hustle in that bustle. If you still have energy after that we can talk family budget and I’ll even listen to you complain about not getting a new dress for Home Coming … which you aren’t getting by the way. The ones you want are too expensive. You can either find one at a thrift store or borrow your cousin’s.”

“But mom you promised after last year that …”

“That was last year. This is this year and your father’s hours are getting cut again. Be glad I still have a job or instead of no dress there will be no food.”

“What’s all of this crap? My imagination?”

“That’s two. Find out what happens if I hit three,” she said. “This is for just in case and will get eaten one way or the other. Now if you can’t load properly come up here and take the bags and put them in the cart.”

It sounded like an old argument because neither one of them was as worked up as they could have been given the words they were using. It was like they were on autopilot and flying a routine flight plan. It made me think about what was on those magazine covers while I waited on them to finish checking out. It isn’t that I didn’t remember what the preceding year had been like. Aunt Nita had complained about it at length. Further back I remember things being rough a couple of times when Dad was still alive, but he always seemed to get stuff from someplace, so I was never scared and never had to do without, not really. We had to take a few things off the menu at Vintiques café and raise a few prices but that was business and people still paid it and we still had our normal walk-in clientele from Main Street.

After the party and finding out I was pregnant and Aunt Nita getting sick … my world sucked so much that I just didn’t see how much it was sucking for other people. I remember Mrs. Finkley talking about it a little bit, reminding me that when Teena started weaning and eating baby food I would need to stay ahead of her needs so I wouldn’t run out. And if I wasn’t going to use cloth diapers I needed to stay ahead with those as well.

I looked at the stuff in my buggy and suddenly I wondered if maybe I should have bought more. The other part of me was a little embarrassed to have three boxes of pads and four cases of diapers. Turning into Research Girl I grabbed a couple of magazines off the rack, trying not to be embarrassed by the ones called Prepper, Survival, Urban Survival, the Backwoodsman, and Mother Earth News. I wish I hadn’t wasted the money because I was able to find more and better resources online. But they got me started and gave me websites and books to look for so I suppose it wasn’t a total waste.

I had already grown use to ignoring people when they tried to get in my business and Mr. Gibson had given me plenty of experience in ignoring the snark some people could sling. So when the checkout girl laughed at me and asked, “A little light reading?” I was prepared.

“A gag gift for my cousin’s boyfriend. He is a few fries short of a Happy Meal lately. One day he dresses in antifa black and snarls all this weird political crap. Next day he acts like there’s drones following him around trying to catch him doing I don’t know what and talking about moving to the woods.”

“I got a sister-in-law that is heading that way too. She acts like the world is about to come to an end. Last week it was Climate Change. This week it is some volcano in Yellowstone messing with the geysers. Next week it will probably be some possible plague. She needs her meds adjusted.”

I gave a perfunctory smile but didn’t encourage any more talk by taking the bags she was filling and fitting them around Teena’s junk. Then I got out of there.

That night while I ate a container of yogurt and a deli salad, praying my guts would start working right because I was constipated and really didn’t want to take those pills leftover from my episiotomy days, I decided to treat my research like a school project. First it was debate team research. Was or was not the world coming to an end? I leaned far into the was-not side of the argument until I started reading. Boy was I surprised how much evidence (and how many potential reasons) was building up that the world was indeed about to blow up in everyone’s faces, both figuratively and literally. Then there was all the political crap. The US wasn’t exactly stable compared to when I was little. Riots in big cities was the norm and you were careful who you talked to or you would get on one of those “see something say something” lists. That was something they reminded the college prep groups of constantly since being on the wrong list could make it difficult to get ye ol’ Acceptance Letter, even for trade schools and apprenticeship programs.

And speaking of lists, lots of government agencies seemed to have them these days. You couldn’t be a member of anything without getting on a list some place. I even found out at the trial that my parents had been on lists … my dad owned guns, he was politically independent and had voted for some guy back in the day that had rocked a lot of boats, he owned his own business, etc etc etc. My mom for some of the same reasons but it was also because she told some woman protestor where to shove her petition one time resulting in a cop getting called. I wasn’t even born then but they still brought it up during the depositions like I was supposed to have had something to do with it. I’m sure I’m on a list now because of the Estate, victim restitution, etc., ad nauseum.

After deciding that the world blowing up one way or another was a legitimate concern, I tried to figure out what I could do about it and why wasn’t everyone talking about it? And of those that were talking about it, what made them smarter (or crazier) than the rest of us? Why wasn’t it all over the news? Why wasn’t the government warning everyone? I figured out that a lot of people were talking about it, just not to people that know them and might tattle and put them on one of those lists. The crazies go on one list, the people that sound reasonable with facts to back them up go on another list that is taken much more seriously.

I still don’t know why I never heard anyone talking about it. I have my suspicions, but I don’t know for sure. Mostly I put it down to fear and the it-can’t-happen-to-me syndrome. A lot of other people are simply in the middle of too much happening-right-now crap to worry about tomorrow’s potential crap and all the low-probability/high impact events. And of those that are, some of them seem to be the type of people that have a little bit too much time on their hands. Part of the problem that I kept running into were people online whose cheese was slipping off their cracker. It made it challenging to separate the hysteria from legitimate concerns.

Reading people talking about a potential EMP event like it was a forgone conclusion that a bomb or a meteor or the sun getting a hiccup in its giddyup was going to destroy all the modern machinery in the world was more than a little tough to take. I was still trying to figure out how to take care of Teena without turning into a basket case and resorting to recreational drug options. The idea that the lights could go off permanently and forever, taking my computer and car with them, kinda came close to pushing me over the edge a few times. Especially when I realized my only source of water was the well and cistern which were both electric.

I could go on and on about the progression of moving from Point A to Point B, but that’s my journey and other people have travelled the road differently. For the first two weeks at Paradise Point I ate, I slept, I took care of Teena, I opened boxes, labeled them, and then organized them in different stacks without actually emptying too many. At night when I needed to calm down so that Teena would start doing the same thing, I worked on my research project and then once I’d registered for classes, started completing school lessons so I could stay ahead of due dates. I was a Junior and I was giving serious consideration to what I was going to do with my life now that my life was over.

I also discovered that virtual school or not, I qualified for dual enrollment – via the online option of course – and started doing what I needed to do to conquer that next step in my adulting world.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 10

The boxes and school were drudgery, but it gave me boundaries and kept me grounded so I wouldn’t fly apart when I would get scared, “traumatized by motherhood,” or just plain fed up with my life. Sometimes my brain wanted to shut down so I would take Teena and sit on the deck and rock. I don’t know whether I was rocking her or me, but it worked to calm me down. Mrs. Finkley said it was endorphins released as she fed. Whatever. The feelings were a natural result of me doing what I was supposed to for Teena and it made me feel like I was at least doing one thing right.

As the days passed the research project kept growing … and getting out of control. There was a lot I was learning about the cabin, but for everything I learned I came up with five more questions. Those questions and solutions went in one binder I labeled “The Cabin.” I started another binder called “Life” which is where I kept questions, solutions, and plans for Teena and I. I had two other binders called “Inventory” and “Bookkeeping” the same way Aunt Nita always had at the store. My inventory binder has subsections. For instance, there was a section for things that I planned on selling online. Then there was the section on stuff that I was keeping like the insurance papers. I had a section just for books and DVDs, and a section for more personal things like family pictures and heirlooms and collectibles though I’ve had to convert some inventory lists to MS Access database files that I print out a new copy of once a week. The bookkeeping binder is where I keep all my receipts and try to be responsible with the money I have at my disposal. Which isn’t always as easy as it should be.

I also have a binder just for copies of important papers. I wound up using Aunt Nita’s fire safe from the business to hold the originals in. It was a big gun safe she’d bought at an estate sale that she’d use to keep the store’s money in until it got deposited and other stuff like that. Now I decided to use it for the papers, jewelry, and stuff that I didn’t want to lose in a disaster or whatever. I nearly killed myself moving that stupid safe down to the basement because the basement was the only floor I could be completely sure could hold the weight of that sucker long term.

You’d think that would be a weird thought for someone like me to have but I learned the hard way via Aunt Nita’s mistake where she originally put the safe on an area of the store’s floor that couldn’t bear the weight and slowly sank and almost went through the floor of her upstairs office. What a mess but a blessing in the long run according to her. She moved her office (and the safe) downstairs that was on a concrete slab and then opened the entire upstairs to increase display and vendor area nearly doubling the store’s public square footage.

I have thought about it since and I wish they hadn’t sold that building. It was a prime location, of historical value, and would have made a way for me to have my own business and income. Sure, I would have spent a lot of gas but … Stupid to go back and wish for might-have-beens. They hold no profit is what Aunt Nita would have said. I remember Dad and Robbie saying things like that too though they didn’t make sense to the kid I was at the time. So instead of might-have-been's, back to how things have turned out.

I tied the safe to the appliance dolly we used to move furniture with at the store. The bottom three risers of the stairs down to the basement are now scuffed and dented because the stupid thing got away from me. I mean really. Looking back God must have been looking out for me because it is the only thing I can think of. I could sand the stairs down but I’m leaving them as-is as a reminder to avoid doing stupid things, or at least doing things stupidly. And now that the monster is in a closet beside the pantry it is just going to stay there even if I wish I had the closet back for my clothes.

Not only does that safe live in the basement, Teena and I live down there now too. That didn’t happen until later, but I might as well mention it now. It gets cold in the mountains in January. Really, really cold. The only heat sources in the cabin are the fireplaces. The gas tank is only hooked to the stove, the hot water tank, and the hot tub. At the time I didn’t know if that means that the cabin wasn’t rented out in really cold weather or what. All I know is that Teena and I were miserable for a while. We were sleeping in a blanket fort that faced the main floor fireplace. It was like being six-years-old all over again after I watched the movie Sixth Sense with Robbie. Dad nearly broke his neck tripping over it in my bedroom and then made Robbie clean it all up and nearly took his keys away for letting me watch it in the first place.

The big fireplace on the main floor works good, but it takes a lot of wood. A … lot … of … wood. Which I had to buy by the bundle or case in town when it turned out a lot of the wood that was stacked beside the cabin was rotten and burned too fast. Can we say expensive boys and girls? When it got so cold upstairs that I had to park Teena close to the big fireplace to keep her from turning blue I knew I had to do something besides spend way too much money on those fake logs at wallyworld.

I decided to move to the basement. I took the pool table apart and leaned it all against the wall with the door going out to the deck. It helped to insulate that wall which kept the room warmer with a smaller fire than it was upstairs. I shoved the sofa against the pool table to keep it from falling over and flattening us. Then I put my bed back together down there which made room upstairs … and kept me from wrapping my foot around the pieces of the metal bed frame. First laugh out of Teena came when I was hopping around trying not to say swear words in front of her after catching my foot on that metal frame for the eleventy dozenth time. I strung up these old fashioned-like bed curtains around my bed and only had it open on the fire side. Teena wound up having to sleep with me. Her bassinet basket is on half the bed and I am on the other half. It’s been fun … not. But at least we were warmer.

So we live down there, or at least sleep down there. During the winter anyway. A couple of times this past summer it got so hot that we slept upstairs so I could open the windows without worrying that someone or something was going to crawl in. Because guess what? Paradise Point doesn’t have air conditioning either. AC was just something I never thought about because the thermostat was off-limits. It was always just there but taken care of by someone else. Sometimes I wonder how I survived as long as I did without a caretaker. I’m not dumb, but I’m not always smart either. And that’s been a big pill to swallow for this Valedictorian wannabe.

I wish I had moved to the basement sooner to be honest. One of the sections I had in the “Cabin” binder was about security and ideas on how to be less scared. I put safety locks on all the windows. I built security bars for every door that opened to the outside following some Instructables I found online, and some old cast iron grill work that I bought out of the junk pile of an estate sale. Aunt Nita hated those things and used to cal them insecurity bars. There was already security film on all the windows. I still have a list as long as my arm to try and turn Paradise Point into my personal castle but not all of them are practical right now and most of them are expensive and I’m just not ready to go there yet because they make me seem paranoid. Which I guess I am but doing some of the stuff I’ve thought about would change “maybe” paranoid to obviously paranoid and then some.

I’m off track again. That seems to be the story of my life. Back to the beginning of the binders ....

I basically have binders for everything you could think of and they are lined up in alphabetical order on a bookcase near my desk area proving that not only am I potentially paranoid, I am definitely OCD or at least anal about something’s. But one of the first binders I started was an inventory of what I would need if I couldn’t go to the grocery store for however long, and how much I already had so I wouldn’t go to the grocery only to buy stuff I already had. I started with a list of basic necessities. Basic. Yeah right. There was no way I was buying everything all at once, so I needed some way to “stock up” over time. I also didn’t want to get tagged by the stores as a “hoarder.” The news reported there were people getting black-balled because they were a hoarder. That meant they were no longer welcome in some stores. Some of those crazy coupon ladies were on those lists and had to get permission from the store before they were allowed to come in and shop and were monitored and limited on what they could buy. I mean seriously? It just made what I was doing the kind of interesting I could have done without.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
_______________
Chapter 11

I started by identifying everything that I actually used during a single day. I wrote it all down, every … last … item. Including things like hair bands, acne wash, astringent, paper clip, box cutter, nail file, peroxide, toe nail clippers, nail polish remover, baby wash, paper, nail trimmer, AA batteries, yada, yada, etc, etc, etc. If I used it, it made it to the list and I gave it a priority. Was it the only one I had? How important was it? How many do I go through in twelve months? How nuts would it make me to have two of something, but then have them both break. A good example of this was hairbrushes and nail clippers.

But I was still wondering just how to fill the pantry and the other stuff without going broke or getting tagged by the authorities as a “hoarder.” Then I found a “create an emergency pantry in 52 weeks” website. And one site led to other. There are a couple different versions of that plan online, so I compared all of them and made some adjustments to suit my own tastes and needs. On a separate list I grouped non-pantry items like my personal hygiene, Teena’s hygiene, laundry and cleaning stuff, clothes for me, clothes for Teena, and the list went on and on and started freaking me out a bit.

The big thing that everyone was always saying was store what you eat and eat what you store. Or in my case expand that a bit to store what you use and use what you store. For instance, just because canned spinach goes on sale, you don’t buy it if you don’t eat it as part of the regular menu in your house. Or, just because everyone on the planet seems to be freaking out about toilet paper and you already have enough packages to TP the White House, you don’t need to go out and freak out with everyone else. Same for things like lightbulbs or perishable items.

Then there were the articles and discussions I followed concerning issues such as short-term storage vs long-term storage, convenience foods vs cooking from scratch, how to store stuff long term so bugs and stuff wouldn’t get into it or so the item wouldn’t spoil or go bad and waste money that way. It almost made the idea of buying a year’s supply of stuff that is supposed to last up to twenty-five years from the online stores worth it, though there’s problems with that too. Too much sodium, you have to store more water to rehydrate the foods with, bad carbs, etcetera ad nauseum. Oh brother, my aching head.

After I managed to create my own personal plan, I still wasn’t exactly sure I was doing things the best way, but I knew I was doing things the best way I knew how at that moment. I also decided to save money by continuing to shop monthly like my family always had. Two weeks went by and I already had another list of things that I needed … including more diapers and diaper wipes, butt cream for diaper rash and Palmer’s cocoa butter for me because Teena could suck like a Hoover. Another problem was that Teena was outgrowing her onesies and needed socks and a warm sleeper and I needed some pants that wouldn’t fall down every time I bent down. As Teena was gaining weight, I was losing it. Looking in the mirror I barely recognized myself. My boobs were bigger, my waist smaller, and my butt was still making up its mind. My hair was long enough that I finally stopped looking like an Irish setter that had stuck its tail in a light socket. I didn’t know what to make of my newly straighter hair, but I was all for it if it meant I got that hour back every morning I’d been wasting ironing my hair and trying to tame the mane. My time is more important than personal vanity, but a girl needs some self-esteem boosters here and there.

In addition to all of the stuff I needed, and replacing what I used, I bought what I was supposed to buy for the first four weeks of the 52-week plan: 4 gallons of water (2 for each of us), a case of canned tomato soup (only I bought two cases because I eat the stuff a lot), enough paper plates and plastic utensils to last a couple of weeks if that’s all I had to use, and two pounds of salt (one for each of us). I was not very happy with how little that seemed but at least it was something. Even better, no one looked at me like I was crazy. I didn’t even have to spend money on gas to find a thrift store because the clearance rack at ye ol’ wallyworld had jeans for five bucks and there was a yard sale sign three blocks from the store that I found enough stuff for Teena to get me through until I could come up with a better plan.

I did go by the post office to mail off some packages for my online store, and finally met the mail lady for my route. She gave me a gruff, “Put another screw in the bottom of your mailbox, it’s too big for the post it is on.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She looked at me and then asked, “Why’d you get such a big one?”

“My dad did it that way. He said it saved both the homeowner and mail person some irritation because most mailboxes are too small for anything but regular envelopes and then the mail person has to leave a ticket in the box to come pick whatever it is up when it could have just been left if the box had been bigger.”

Slightly mollified she said, “Wellll, just make sure you put another screw in it. I don’t want to catch hell because your box gets knocked off.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I took care of it that same day and met one of the neighbors for the first time. Cranky Mr. Godfrey … eventually to become known as Cranky, Nosey, Crazy Mr. Godfrey. He wanted to know what I was doing. Apparently he was suspicious of me before that moment and wanted to know who I worked for.

Not understanding the question and being too stupid to realize it wasn’t his business either way I told him, “Right now no one.”

He looked at me closer and then said, “Why you’re nothing but a kid. What are you doing with that baby? Where are your parents? I have a thing or three to say to them. I won’t have kids running around unsupervised like they do in the god-forsaken city. They act like a bunch of savages, and you better not be cut from the same cloth.”

I was saved from having to lie (or be rude) when the mail lady showed up. She had planned to put a reminder sticker on the mailbox but I surprised her by doing exactly what she’d told me to do in good time.

Mr. Godfrey took off as soon as Mrs. Dunn stepped out of her jeep. “I see you met one of our local nuts.”

“Er … Mr. Godfrey?”

“Yeah. He thinks the government is out to get him, to get everyone for that matter. Let me guess, he thought you were installing a listening device or camera in his mailbox.”

“I don’t know what he thought, he didn’t say. But I didn’t mess with anyone else’s mailbox. I was just putting the extra screw in you said mine needed.”

“Let me check it.” She nodded after giving it a thorough once over. “Not your first time in a toolbox.”

“No ma’am. If this doesn’t work, I have some metal straps I can use. And if that doesn’t work, I can use a couple of metal braces. I’ll keep an eye on it and if it gets wiggly, I’ll try that. I don’t know if I could dig the post up and put a bigger one in since it’s set in concrete.”

“Yeah, that’d be Winn.” At my blank look she explained, “Local handy man. You’ll know him if you see him. Walks with a slight limp and has burns on one arm and on his neck. Tell your people he has a flyer at the hardware store if they need work done.”

“Uh … yes ma’am.” You don’t have to disavow something that never comes out of your mouth. I suspect she was just fishing for gossip, nothing malicious, and I started running into that a lot until I just became part of the local landscape. I ignored it when I could which was most of the time. I also eventually found out that Winn was Winfield Dunn … a “shirt tail cousin” to Mrs. Dunn the Mail Lady. There wound up being a lot of Dunn’s in town which explained why, all jokes aside, it was called Dunnville.

The only one who really irritates me is Smithfield Dunn, the guy at the hardware store. Everyone calls him Smith. He reminds me too much of Layton without the charisma and good looks to back it up. Smith never fails to irritate me in some way. I’m not interested in anything he’s selling; unfortunately he works at the hardware store which is managed by his father’s family and I spend more time and money there than I’m happy with.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 12

I wound up not being able to keep my vow to only go driving once a month because my online business started to heat up. I was a little surprised that it was more the household junk and secondhand clothes than the gift and collectables that I used to make money on. Aunt Nita bought a lot of stuff at yard sales, estate sales, and junk that had gotten left behind at storage facilities. I was pretty good at cleaning and fixing things or bundling them together to make it a more desirable sale. I could have gone to the post office every freaking day – which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself given I was selling stuff and therefore making money – but I was trying to save money, not spend every penny that came in.

I made a trip to the post office every Monday and Friday; and shopped every three weeks. But the first time out I decided to treat it like a monthly shopping trip. First, I could make my menu for the month then create a shopping list from that. It hasn’t been a perfect solution, but it is better than the la-la-land I had been living in before. Mrs. Finkley had recommended it but it took me a while to put it into effect.

My next shopping trip I bought a few things for Teena early like rice cereal and some Level One baby foods like mushed up bananas. I checked the “best by” date on everything like another article suggested. Then after making sure I could pay for everything thing on the shopping list I added the next four weeks of items from the 52-week list. Four pounds of oats (two pounds per person) and four more gallons of water (two each Teena and I), two pounds of peanut butter (one per person, only I doubled it because I eat a lot of PB&J sandwiches), four pounds of sugar, and one case of evaporated milk. My cart was full but not as full as some other people’s were.

Worried that I was missing the picture I finally figured out it was the first of the month and people were cashing their government checks. Trying to get back to being the kind of smart that I used to think I was I decided it was a good time to camouflage some extra items. First I looked at my running inventory I was keeping on a phone app. Then I remembered some of my recent research. I’d read an article on how to get food storage on the international food aisle. I’d never shopped that kind of stuff before so while I was willing, I was a little hesitant.

Eventually I got over myself just like I had the first time I had to dissect something for science class. I bought a big container of NIDO powdered milk as well as a smaller one. I was going to open the smaller one and see if I couldn’t make the fresh milk, I bought go a little further. I remember Dad using Carnation Powdered milk to do that when the gallon he bought at the beginning of the month was half empty. Every time the gallon jug would get half empty, he would add more powdered milk and water to make a full gallon once again. By the end of the month it was just powdered milk but by then we were used to it and didn’t complain. It actually took a little bit to get used to the “real” milk at the beginning of the month. If it worked when I was a little kid, I decided to try it again.

Then there was this stuff called ghee which was clarified butter that didn’t require refrigeration. When I saw the price I almost didn’t do it but I decided to give it a try and see what the difference was between Ghee and the margarine I grew up using. There were these powdered soup mixes and I got an envelope of chicken and rice flavor. I’ve been eating a lot of soup. Favorite is tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich but I try and not eat it too often because too much cheese is not good for my guts it seems.

I got a few cans of beans … black, pinto, pink, garbanzo … and I was going to grab a big bag of dried Pinto beans but I was too worried how it would look. Instead I bought three different dried beans but in smaller bags. I bought a couple cans of refried beans and then skedaddled to the school supply section to see if there was anything on sale that I could use to organize my notes. Sure enough I bought some dividers, my favorite pens, some Sharpies in different colors, then a bunch of 4 x 6 index cards because I was finding recipes online for “food storage” and it was easier to organize them in an index card box than it was to print them off … not to mention printer ink wasn’t cheap and I already had some of that on order because I had to have it to print the mailing labels for my online sales.

I had reached my limit. Not money-wise as I hadn’t even had to touch the restitution money yet, but my buggy was full and I didn’t want to risk drawing any attention.

When I got to the cashier after waiting nearly twenty minutes, she looked at me then sighed before saying, “You have to have the items bundled together so that your WIC items are going to be one sale and the EBT will be …”

I guess I’d started to get faster on my feet by then. “We didn’t qualify,” I told her quietly looking down and away like I was making sure Teena didn’t need anything.

“Oh. So you’re using a debit card?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry. “Management is just starting to get really picky about our tills at the end of our shift.”

“Sure. It’s okay,” I told her pulling my debit card out of my pocket. I never had carried a purse and didn’t plan on starting when I could shove what ever I needed in Teena’s diaper bag or a backpack.

I was beginning to think of the grocery trips as torture but necessary. But to get everything done in one day I had brought a cooler I had found while organizing and cleaning and put all the cool/cold stuff in there and then put the rest of the bags around it in the backend of the Bronco.

I hadn’t meant to be out long that day. I was still opening boxes and trying to get organized. I also had a freak ton of items, what are called “smalls” in the resale business, that I needed to take pictures of so I could get them listed. But then for some reason I just kept driving beyond the turn off.

I was almost to the highway going the opposite direction I normally went when I saw the empty produce stand was no longer empty. There were a lot of cars there so I pulled in as well. Don’t ask me why. It’s not like I was hearing a voice or anything like that. It was just a spur of the moment, I don’t really want to go home yet, I’m feeling nosey, kind of thing.

In addition to the produce stand there was a huge community yard sale going on … which explained the cars better than the produce stand did. I saw lots of lookers but not too many buyers at first. And of course crazy ol’ me just had to get involved. In about ten minutes I had this table rearranged and “staged” and it started getting attention. Feeling better because cluttered and nasty vendor booths at Vintique had made me itch, I started walking through and changing things here and there if I thought no one was looking.

Nobody said anything and then I got caught at a guy kind of booth of all places.

“You OCD or something?”

I looked up and then nearly groaned. It was Smith Dunn. “No.”

I turned to leave when another guy said a quiet curse under his breath. “Smith, I told you if you lost me another sale …”

“Fine. Whatever. This is nothing but junk anyway.”

Smith stomped away and I almost laughed. He made the mistake of going through the dog comfort area and wound up nearly dancing when he walked into some doggy doo.

I looked up and the guy was watching me watching Smith. Then I realized the long sleeved t-shirt he had on wasn’t a one-sleeved shirt but was a compression sleeve on one arm. Then things clunked into place … and fell out of my mouth.

“Oh. You’re Winfield. Thanks. For the mailbox post. Your cousin is my mail lady … Mrs. Dunn. And sorry. Shutting up now. I don’t normally embarrass myself like this until the second or third time I meet someone.”

I sighed and turned to leave and that’s when Teena decided to belch like a sumo wrestler after his fifth meal of the day. “Geez girl, I’d ask what you’ve been eating but since I know …” Like it was even more satisfying the second time around Teena did it again only she urped up more than spit that time. “Great.”

I walked away towards my car to clean up when I heard a loud crash and crunch. “No, no, no, no, no …”

Instead of being able to move forward I run into this arm that has been thrown out in front of me like Dad used to when he had to slam on the breaks. “Not your car.”

“And just how do you know that? I’ve got to check …”

“Rich and Suzie Dunn just took their divorce to a whole new level. They do have you and Mrs. Sizemore blocked in. Give the cops time to get here and clean things up. You don’t want to go over there with a baby in tow.”

I looked at him suspiciously and he said, “Smith talks.”

“Smithfield Dunn could suck the oxygen out of a room plus the rest of the building it is in. But given most of it doesn’t make much sense that still doesn’t tell me how you know who I am.”

For some reason he smiled like he was surprised and said, “You are Mizz Halsey’s girl. Er … guess I should say sorry for your loss.”

“Not if you don’t mean it. You knew Aunt Nita?”

“Aunt? I thought you were her daughter.”

“Then you didn’t know her,” I said starting to back up.

“I did some property management for her. Tinker came by to tell me what happened and that the place was going off the market.”

“So you know Uncle Tinker.”

The look on my face must have given him something to think about. “I know him through other people.”

“Same here so don’t expect me to … er …”

“Yeah, Tinker gives that impression. And the impression he gave was that you were Mizz Halsey’s daughter.”

“She was my aunt and guardian.”

“Well that puts two and two together.”

“Well don’t share that with Smith. More attention from him I don’t need.” I looked passed him and said, “Someone is at your table and is trying to get your attention.”

I was wiping my shirt down with Teena’s spit rag when I heard the guy offer Winn $10 for something on his table. Winn is trying to hide his disappointment when my mouth kicks in again.

“Are you kidding? That’s a vintage Craftsman bench vice.” I move it and look appropriately impressed. “And the swivel still works. Geez. I saw one like this go for $60 bucks on ebay and that didn’t include the shipping. And the paint wasn’t in this good a condition either.”

Another guy walked over and looked and said, “Well I be damned. It is Craftsman. Son, you need to turn this up so’s people can see the brand. I’ll give you $45 for it no questions asked.”

“Done,” I said. “Do you have correct change?”

I started arranging the tools by like and brand and soon enough all the big things had been cleared off. Most expensive thing I sold was an old Reed bench vice that hadn’t been restored.

“No Sir, I’m sorry. Can’t let it go for less than $150. As you can see it hasn’t had the patina sandblasted off it so you can still see the original serial number.” Umph. “And this is a heavy beast too. Forty-five pounds with a 4” jaw. It’ll be a bear to ship but I know a guy in …”

“Fine. $150. You sell yellow snow too?”

“Only to Eskimos,” I told him with a straight face.

The guy rolled his eyes but paid the money and walked away happy after I gave him the name of someone I knew from Vintiques that could likely confirm it was a 1940s piece and worth at least what he paid for it.

I sighed when I looked through the crowd and saw that the cops were still in the parking lot sorting things out. I was wondering what to do next when Winn said, “You just fixed my truck.”

“Huh?” I asked wondering what he was talking about.

“You sold some junk I found while cleaning out an estate sale and now I’ve got the money to fix my truck.”

“Oh. Okay. You’re welcome.” I looked at the mess that still blocked me in and said, “Are they ever going to shut up and call a couple of tow trucks? I have stuff in my cooler that I need to get home.”

“C’mon. I’ll grab you a bag of ice.”

I looked at him suspiciously again.

“’Cause I can. You fixed my truck.”

“No I didn’t. Your customers did. Besides I already owed you for the mail box post.”

“All right. I’ll show you where you can buy a bag of ice. And then I’ll get you a glass of cider.” My face must have revealed my objection to that too because he added, “Relax. It’s just cider. You can even watch them pour it.”

“Who told you?” I said backing up.

“Told me what?”

I looked at for a moment and realized that I was acting kinda paranoid. “Forget it. I …”

His eyes went wide right before I was hit from behind and started going down.
 
Kathy in FL

Kathy in FL

Administrator
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Chapter 13

I landed hard on my knees and one of my hands while holding tight to Teena with the other arm. The gravel bit me hard but not as hard as Winn’s fist hit the two guys that had barreled into me.

The cops ran over and grabbed the two guys and Winn until I reached out and said, “Winn?”

The cop turned him loose and he limped over. “You okay?”

“Help me up? I need to check Teena.”

One of the deputies came over and said, “Do you need medical assistance?”

“No,” I bit out and then winced when my knees started to sing and I looked down and saw they were bloody. And then my wrist squealed. “Geez.”

“You did get run over didn’t you.”

I looked over and saw someone I knew. “A little bit Mrs. Dunn. I need to pull out the diaper wipes and …”

And that’s when I found out that Mrs. Dunn might be a mail lady now, but she used to be a sergeant in the Army for real. Wow.

“Winfield find this girl something to sit on. Rich if you are going to get in a fight with every guy that slut you married spends time with you’ll never get your life straight. Hart Decker … get these two idiots out of here before they do anymore damage. Can’t you see she’s got a baby that’s already tuning up? Inez?! See if you can grab some paper towels – preferably damp ones – from behind the cash register. Sit down girl before you fall down. You’re the color of paste. I didn’t tell Win to bring this cooler to sit on for you to just stand there and look at it. Patricia, you have your son-in-law’s towing service number? I don’t know why no one has called him already. Lord, some people have no sense.”

Thirty minutes later it was escape or be mummified.

“I really appreciate it Mrs. Dunn but I can’t take up your whole day. You look like you have a lot you need to take care of. And I need to get Teena home and my groceries inside.”

“See you do. And go straight there. It’s supposed to sleet and that crazy Gerald Godfrey has been known to run a chain across the road when that happens because he thinks he’s enforcing some kind of safety code.”

At my alarmed look she nodded knowingly.

“I’ll follow her Celeste, just in case.”

“You do that Winn. You need to go that way anyway. And tell Godfrey, if you see him, if he doesn’t get the door fixed on his box he can go to town to pick up his mail.”

She sailed off and I was left trying to figure out how to tell Winn no thank you.

“Take it easy. My drive is one switchback down from yours.”

“Er …” I was backing towards my car.

Winn followed but was giving me space. When I was at my car … which was no longer blocked in due to Mrs. Dunn’s intervention … and looking for a way out Winn asked, “Is it me or guys in general?”

“People in general.”

“Tinker said …”

“I’m not interested in what he had to say. Since he never said a word to me he had no business talking about me to anyone else.”

“Fair enough. Tell you what, I’ll follow you to your drive but I won’t get out. How’s that?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why follow me?”

“To make sure you don’t turn into another statistic. It really is supposed to sleet tonight, at least up on the mountain. So if you plan on coming down, give things time to melt and dry up.”

“Not a problem,” I said which he could take anyway he wanted.

Well, when we got to the cabin … problem. Or should I say PROBLEM!!! No rope or cable blocking the road up but as I pulled in I noticed there was water all over where I park and then I looked to the side of the cabin and what should my wondering eyes behold? Water was shooting up from the well. I knew even to go throw the power switch to the well pump and to figure out that there was a broken pipe but that is as far as I got when I heard, “Dammit, not another one.”

I turned to see Winn grabbing something out of the back of the jeep he was driving.

“Another what?” I asked suspiciously.

“I’ve run into two vandalized pipes this week and I heard from Smith that there have been several others. You’re going to need to secure this some how. Hopefully it hasn’t been running on so long that it damaged the motor.”

“Stop!”

I startled him. Trying not to panic I asked, “Uh … how much is this going to cost?”

“Relax. If it is only a cut pipe I can fix it quick and we’ll just call it even.”

“No. My dad was a contractor so I’m not stupid about this kind of thing. I know this costs even if it is just your time. I … I just … uh …”

He nodded so I wasn’t sure if the info about my dad being a contractor was news to him or not. “Tell you what … give me a hand … er … after you put the kid down or something … and if you have a cup of coffee …”

“Sorry, don’t drink it. Can’t right now anyway,” I said pointing to Teena. “I can fix hot cocoa. I’ve got the good stuff with marshmallows.”

“Deal.”

After a quick diaper change Teena was ready for a nap. The cold that was setting in took it out of her. And me. It had been a long day already. However when I went back out Winn had already finished the job.
 
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