Day 33 Page 10

  Evita shed flowing tears. She had completely forgotten these words, but they rang so true, even in the present day. That was the one thing she couldn’t understand about her mother; with all of the beauty she possessed and brought into her surroundings, how could she ever fall for someone so ugly on the inside?

  When Evita was first born, things were calm around the home. Carl had finally become Reverend Thomas at the same church where he currently reigns supreme. The house was a home, not that fancy mini-mansion Evita saw a few days ago. Carl and Vivian were very much still in love, but there was no secret that Carl wanted the upper hand. He had always watched men being “in charge” in some way shape or form and felt threatened by Vivian’s proactivity in decorating and fixing the home, her suggestions for buying furniture, and her persistence in being the main caretaker of Evita.

  The two of them were relentless in their pursuits to live the perfect dream for themselves, in which neither fantasies included the other person. Before Evita was even one year old, the tension in the home had moved in permanently. The Reverend began creating a lot of after-school and adult weeknight programs, keeping himself out of the house. Vivian poured all her love into Evita and baking. Evita remained oblivious.

  Diana rubbed Evita’s back as she continued to recall the painful times her grandmother warned of.

  “Is anything coming back to you?” “Yes”, Evita stated with little emotion.

  “Any memories of your mother and father together?” Evita confirmed. She reminisced.

  “Well… there was one time…” more details filled Evita’s mind almost as if a pixelated television was working to gain clarity. She could remember the willow tree from the picture where she stood next to her grandmother; Evita had just finished climbing it. Her parents were inside the house while she explored the great outdoors. Small Evita jumped down from the branch and skipped toward the house. When she reached the gravel, she decided to go to the strawberry fields on the other side. Evita kicked small rocks up on the backs of her calves and hummed “Twinkle, Twinkle Little

  Star”.

  As she reached the side of the house, Evita’s humming was drowned out by the slamming of glass dishes and heavy metal pans. Evita’s home was kept quiet most times, out of respect for The Reverend and his work for the church, so the banging almost shocked her to the ground. Evita ran up the front porch and into the front door to see her mother lying on the floor unconsciously. The Reverend stood over her with a pan raised above his head in his right hand. His button-up shirt was no longer neatly pressed, as they normally were; it was raddled with tears and splattered with blood spots, which were obviously from the gashes in Vivian’s face.

  Vivian’s dress was ruffled up above her hip line and stained in blood as well. The Reverend turned to Evita and yelled at her to go upstairs to her room. Evita ignored him and was shouting for her mother’s attention to no avail. The Reverend turned his pan’s attention upon his own daughter, startling her enough to stop the sound from her throat. He chased Evita half the way up the stairwell, which was enough for her to continue into hiding.

  Evita stayed in her room until night fall. She cried for the first hour and stared at the wall for the remaining four. Her stomach wouldn’t rumble through the knot that formed, and she couldn’t feel her bladder refilling. When the clock struck 9, she mustered up the courage to peak in the hall. There were no lights, every door was closed, including her parents’. She tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen, almost hoping to find her mother still lying there so she could help her. There was no one. There was no noise.

  Was Vivian okay? Had she ever woken up? Afraid she’d get in trouble, she hurried to get a glass of water and returned to her room until sun rise. The next morning, the master bedroom door was cracked open. Evita slowly took a peak to find that The Reverend was gone. She assumed he was at the church with Georgia, as usual. Evita slowly trekked down the stairs in her flannel pajama set. Vivian stood in the kitchen humming along Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” playing through the speakers. The sun shined through the hand-sewn curtains and casted a lovely pattern on the polished wood floor. The air was filled with the scent of freshly fried bacon, darkened toast, and fresh squeezed orange juice from Vivian’s own hands.

  “Mommy?” Evita said, as she slowly approached her mother.

  Vivian turned around with a large smile, and an even bigger bandage on the left side of her forehead. “Hi Baby”, she sounded so cheerful. She was somewhere in between faking her happiness for Evita, and actually feeling the happiness because of Evita’s presence. What else would keep her in The Reverend’s chokehold other than the product of their once, somewhat normal, love affair?

  “Are you okay?” Evita wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist and placed her head in her thighs.

  “I’m fine honey, I’m fine. Mommy had an accident”. Evita pulled away in pure confusion. Her scrunched brow sent a shockwave through Vivian’s heart. She could feel it; her daughter knew better. Vivian couldn’t remember however, whether or not Evita had actually witnessed the violence herself.

  Vivian picked Evita up, and hugged her tighter than she ever had before. She allowed a few tears to fall while their necks were intertwined because she knew Evita couldn’t see. Evita didn’t need to see it, she could feel her mother’s chest tighten with every deep gasp for air. That was the one and only time The Reverend had this sort of slip up in front of their daughter.

  “Your mother pretended it didn’t happen. You were a child, traumatized; you would’ve most likely blocked out this memory anyway throughout time. But by being so young, your mother’s outlook on the situation became yours; it didn’t exist.” The doctor rubbed Evita’s back as she sobbed incoherently through her guilt of not remembering sooner.

  “None of this is your fault. The wounds we endure as children are the wounds our own parents forgot to heal within themselves. However, in adulthood, it becomes our responsibility to do so. It’s your time.”

  DAY 25

  “BABE”, Brennan greeted Evita with the arbitrary pet name as he sat at the kitchen table early that morning. The sun shined glaringly. Evita was seated in the living room a few feet away, editing her first article for Slam in weeks. She, of course, was struggling to do so.

  “Babe!” Brennan shouted this time.

  “Huh?” Evita replied with obvious frustration.

  “What are we eating?”

  “What do you want?” Evita never looked up from her computer screen. She didn’t have enough energy to even pretend she cared. Feeling inappropriately ignored, Brennan decided to hit what he knew, would be a sore spot, for some attention.

  “This therapy seems to have made you worse.” This statement did exactly what it was intended to do. Evita jumped from her seat bubbling with anger, yelling and shouting, explaining how Brennan could never understand what she was going through. They had barely spent much time together since they returned from the infamous trip and even after all he’d witnessed, Brennan still couldn’t grasp the situation, for some reason. To Brennan it was “just a dream, just a photo, just a letter, just an angry old man”.

  Evita clearly knew better at this point and refused to rest comfortably until her not-so-little situation was resolved. This was no concern to Brennan. All he wanted his girlfriend back, along with her old passive tendencies. He didn’t feel like this was too much to ask.

  “Maybe I should leave” Evita suggested after calming herself down from her justified tantrum.

  Brennan was finally freaked out enough by Evita’s behavior to say what he’d been thinking all along, “No, I want to leave.” He ran upstairs to pack a few bags and called a friend to pick him up. An unexpected calm fell over Evita’s entire body.

  After Brennan left the house without so much as a goodbye, Evita anticipated a breakdown that never occurred. She was perplexed, wondering if maybe she had exuded all of her passion during the argument. Her heart was no l
onger racing and her anxiety plummeted considering her current circumstances. Evita hadn’t felt like this in… forever. She cherished it. She sat still in the living room for two hours, thinking, and thinking, until she finally decided to call Diana.

  “We tend to model our relationships and friendships after the relationships we shared with our parents. Hence, why after your mother’s death, you and Kasha grew so close. You found a way to fill that void. With Brennan, did you ever truly feel like you were in love?” Diana asked.

  A strong pinch grabbed Evita’s heart from top to bottom. She never considered the fact that maybe she and Brennan didn’t spend enough time falling in love in the first place. Evita had always considered him an intricate part of her life in DC, but that was only because she never found out what her life in DC would be without him.

  “You know, another part of this entire thing could be a necessary change in your love life and how and why you value certain people in your life. Maybe it’s time to consider that there are better choices for the company you keep, moving forward. Was Brennan ever abusive to you?” Diana hesitated, but she had to ask, knowing that these patterns are often recreated from generation to generation.

  “No, no. Dismissive? All the time, but he never put his hands on me.” Evita said proudly, assuming she’d never be that weak.

  “Understandable, but we sometimes refer to that as an emotionally abusive relationship”. Evita’s cockiness began to fade away. The doctor reiterated instances where Evita’s feelings were ignored by her father, especially the time she found Vivian lying, nearly dead on the floor. The Reverend never even mentioned what he did, let alone apologize for it. He didn’t try to fake the funk like other abusers Evita had heard about; by buying gifts and showering them in apologies. He dismissed it. He completely dismissed the pain that he caused both his wife and daughter, and so Evita went on to spend years with a man who would do the same.

  “Sometimes, Evita, people have to be removed from our lives for our own mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual growth, no matter how long they’ve been around.”

  Evita ended the phone call and initially thought to call Kasha. She stopped herself and thought of the quality of her and Kasha’s relationship as well. Kasha took good care of her, always having warm tea upon her arrival and clean comfy blankets for her to sleep on the couch. But had they ever had much fun together? Before Evita’s dreams, it had been a couple of years since she even heard from or seen Kasha.

  When Evita needed someone to depend on after her mother’s disappearance, Kasha just happened to be there. She was who Evita leaned on. And after she and Evita grew apart, for whatever reason that people do, Evita still held on for reasons of guilt, feeling as if she owed Kasha friendship for the times she was there as a teenager. Evita contemplated on how different she was now, versus when she was a 13-year-old, being degraded by her father and step-mother, and didn’t consider herself very worthy of people’s quality time.

  Evita was slowly realizing that both Kasha and Brennan shared one thing in common, they were who Evita leaned on in times of loneliness. These two people were associated with eras of Evita’s life where she was lost and felt like she couldn’t stand on her own two feet, entering new territory. They were crutches, they weren’t friends. Quite frankly, Evita couldn’t even recall a time that the two of them were in the same room. Ironically, she began thinking of her co-worker Donald, who was the one person she could confide in, and be herself around. He complimented her, and she joked around with him, comfortably. Yet, Donald was the one person she found ease in keeping at a distance.

  Evita realized she didn’t have much time to think about these two, in addition to what she was already dealing with. She accepted that they were both gone, or at least were for now. The silence of the house was too much to bare, so Evita got in her car to drive to the nearest liquor store. When she reached the parking lot, the store’s fluorescent lights were blazing brightly and pierced her sleepless eyes.

  Her nose led her straight to the aisle of tequila. Evita placed her $20 bill on the counter and grabbed her black bag, leaving her change in a rush. The glass door quickly swung shut behind her and the bell chimed. She opened the bottle and took a swig before proceeding off the curb and into the parking lot. The bottle was carefully placed back in its black bag.

  The liquor tingled downward through her belly as she slowly approached her car. Evita’s shoulders were slumped in her frumpy thrifted black sweater, and her red flannel pajama pants scraped against the tar. A part of her wished she could’ve just sat on the curb next to the homeless man and finished the entire bottle. She placed the tequila carefully on the passenger seat as if it was a newborn baby and faced frontward to adjust the rearview mirror.

  In the backseat, there sat Evita’s grandmother. Her face appeared softer than it usually did and wasn’t as frightening. Still, Evita grew tense and froze in place. The old lady peacefully grabbed Evita’s shoulders and whispered into her ear “the basement.” Evita woke up, seated at her kitchen table, which held a pool of drool where her face lay. Her bottle of liquor was halfway empty, and a black plastic bag lie next to it. Her sweater was drenched and her flannel pants clung to her thighs. Evita frantically looked around the room to make sure she was alone. No one was there.

  The basement. Evita got up from the table and ran downstairs. She turned on the lonely lightbulb and indiscriminately tossed items from the boxes all around the concrete floor. She didn’t know what she was looking for until she found it. One letter, with a return address in Virginia, whose seal had never been broken before. It was at the bottom of the last box in the stack. Evita’s heart and mind raced a mile a minute. Where did this one come from and why hadn’t she ever read it? She stared, long and hard hoping a memory would come back to her; it did.

  Evita could remember this exact day very vividly in fact. The rain poured so loudly against her bedroom window that she couldn’t concentrate on her Geometry homework. A year had passed since Vivian was gone, Clarice had moved in by this point and was downstairs redecorating and tossing Vivian’s things aside. Evita was grateful the rain drowned the noises of Vivian’s items slamming onto the hardwood floor. She closed her books and lie on her back to stare at the ceiling.

  A dim light in the corner shined onto the unopened letter on her nightstand. The Reverend had started complaining about all the letters Evita was receiving from her grandmother, so she made sure to retrieve them herself, from the mailbox before her father or Clarice could see them. Just as Evita got up from her bed to grab her letter, her father stormed through the door.

  “What are you doing?” The Reverend’s voice stopped Evita in her tracks and she stood in shock next to her bed. “Why isn’t your work finished?”

  “I—”, Evita could barely get out the one syllable before The Reverend lost his temper.

  “It doesn’t matter!” The Reverend shouted so loudly the walls seemed to tremble. This became routine to Clarice, who was still downstairs, so she continued minding her own business. “Finish your fucking homework now!” He turned around and slammed the door behind him. Defeated, Evita ran to her books. She had forgotten all about the letter, and it was the last one she’d receive.

  Evita held this letter so tightly in her grip, and stared intensely at the writing, memorizing every number and letter in its return address; 33 Coastal Place, Charlottesville, VA. The lonely light bulb swayed from side to side, flashing light rays back and forth, on and off the envelope. Evita finally snapped out of it enough to go upstairs to the kitchen. She poured another drink and took 3 large gulps, burning her esophagus. She tapped her fingertips frantically on the tabletop, and decided now was a better time than any, to open this letter.

  “Little Miss Evita, I’m saddened to say, your father has asked that I stopped contacting you. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way, and unfortunately there is not much I can do for you right now. But please, save this letter, save my address. When you�
��re a little older, maybe even 16, if you’re allowed to drive, come see me. Things may not make much sense now, but everything will clear up for you, my dear Evita. I promise. Love, your grandma Loraine.”

  Loraine. That was her name. She had never written it before this letter. She had never left a return address, worried The Reverend would come after her. The letter was written sloppily and the postage indicated rush delivery, like this was a last-ditch effort save Evita.

  Loraine. The name sounded so beautiful that Evita couldn’t help but to associate the youthful pictures of her grandmother from the photo albums, rather than the creepy aesthetic that had been following her every night in her sleep. She called Diana again to secure an emergency appointment in the morning.

  DAY 26

  “SO, DO you need me to go with you?” Diana asked as she skimmed the letter for more evidence.

  “No”, Evita said promptly, “this is something I have to do alone, for myself.” Evita was prepared to confront her grandmother and get this over with. It was time for her to return back to Slam, and back to the little bit of normalcy she had left.

  “How are you feeling about it?” Diana had to go back to therapist mode for a second.

  “I… I don’t know. I’m scared, excited; happy to have found her, angry it took so long—”

  “Don’t feel angry, don’t ever guilt trip yourself over a situation that you had no control over”, Diana put the letter down and looked over her glasses, directly into Evita’s eyes, “this is the dirty work of your father and no one else. Your mother is not to blame, neither is your grandmother, not even the mistress Michelle”, Diana explained. Evita had almost forgotten about Michelle. Whatever did happen to her? She hoped her grandmother would have the answers for that as well.