"Be Careful Little Eyes What You See" | A Creative Writing Short Story
Content Warning:
I wrote the following story for a creative writing class; however, this story contains depictions of child neglect, drug and alcohol use, and curse words. Reader discretion is advised.
"Be Careful Little Eyes What You See"
By the age of sixteen, she had seen more than most people see in a lifetime. Being the daughter of addicts placed her in a unique position, one that most people her age couldn’t relate to. Her earliest memories were of motorcycles parked in her living room and the oil-stained carpet that lay underneath. Glass ashtrays overflowing with half-smoked joints and ashes were a common sight to her young eyes, so were of windows covered with polyester blankets successfully blocking out every shred of daylight. “Family friends” wandered in and out of her house daily, making her feel as if she was a stranger in her own home. Dingy clothes littered the matted carpets and crusty dishes toppled over sticky kitchen counters. Dirty magazines well within reach of little hands stacked one on top of the other, filled the space beneath the bathroom sink. There was even a time when a pet Rattlesnake was lost in the house, but the adults weren’t worried; their solution was to let a Kingsnake loose.
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Even with all that, it was her parent’s sleeping she remembered most.
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A tiny turn-dial black and white tv sat at the end of a brass framed daybed as she watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood through the static. She tried moving the metal bunny-ears in vain. Plopping back down on that thin twin bed, she looked at her mother's face, asleep beside her.
“Mom… Mom? Mom, will you please wake up? I’ve been watching TV for hours.”
Drowsily her mother, with eyes still shut, replied, “Wake me up when Sesame Street is over.”
“But…Sesame Street IS over. I already watched it, and Reading Rainbow, and The Magic School Bus, and now… Mr. Rogers’...”
“Well then, wake me up when Mr. Rogers’ is over,” her mother ended the conversation as she draped her peaked forearm over her eyes which bore the evidence of many sleepless nights.
It wasn’t only her mother who slept for what seemed like forever when she was coming down.
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“Dad, I’m hungry and I don’t see anything to eat. Dad. Daaaaad.”
Trying to shake him awake didn’t make a difference. His huge frame filled the disheveled bed, musky blankets kicked into a pile on the floor. His freckled body with his green-tinted tattoos felt sweaty under her palms as she gave him a weak shake. He was undaunted by her attempt to rouse him.
Walking into the filthy living room, she found her only lifeline. She reached for the phone after swatting a few houseflies off some remnant of fluid that clung to the receiver. She dialed her grandmother, who had an 800 number especially for her, just in case she found herself in a place without long distance service. This was one of those places.
“Um…Hello? Gram?”
Her grandmother’s soothing voice responded, “Oh, hello honey, are you ok?”
“I’m not sure. I’m hungry and dad won’t wake up. I found a can of beans in the fridge, but it has white stuff on it...should I eat it?”
“Oh no, sweetheart, don’t eat that. Where is your dad?”
“He’s asleep in the bedroom… but I can’t get him to wake up.”
A momentary silence.
“Honey, are there any boxes of macaroni and cheese?”
“I saw a box, but... I dunno how to make it.”
“That’s alright honey, I’m right here, and I’m going to walk you through it.”
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Yet, when her parents were awake, they were even less present than when they were asleep.
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“Has anyone seen my dad?” was one of the most common utterances to leave her lips.
She started referring to her father as “Where’s Waldo” after many quick trips to the gas station resulted in him being gone for days on end.
On one rare occasion she found herself riding with her father in his chocolate brown 1973 Chevy Stepside. After their greasy drive-thru dinner of Taco Bell soft tacos, he pulled into an apartment complex she wasn’t familiar with. The sky was growing dark and that meant that Nick at Nite and the black and white reruns of Dick VanDyke would be starting. It was almost her bedtime. Her father backed the truck up into a cream-colored carport narrowly missing the post.
As he turned off the engine he said, “Honey, I’ll be right back. You stay here, okay?”
She kept her mouth closed tight, but nodded with her sleepy eyes wide, looking from side to side at all the unknown cars parked around her. She felt a rush of panic sweep over her as she watched the sun slip below the horizon. Her father slammed the truck door shut leaving a hollow metallic echo reverberating through her ears.
“It’s ok. I’m ok,” she said aloud to herself as she watched her father slide into an open apartment door and disappear into the darkness. Her heart raced at an uncontrollable speed. “He’ll be back soon,” she assured herself.
Dusk turned to darkness and as her tears ran dry, she could no longer keep her sore and puffy eyes open.
“How could he leave me here alone?” she sobbed and she realized that her father had not returned to claim her by the time sleep overcame her.
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She knew these events weren’t “normal” and so, as a way of self-preservation, she began to grow calloused to it all.
Seeing her mother arrested didn’t phase her. The three young policemen yelled, “Stop resisting!” as she watched from the window. Her mother’s arms were secured behind her back, yet she yanked away as if she were a lizard willing to sacrifice its tail for freedom.
Her mother screamed in the face of an officer, “I probably fucked your dad when you were in diapers!”
The officer cooly responded by shoving her into the back of the police car and slamming the door.
The only thing that shocked her about this situation was the fact that the police didn’t gag her mother too.
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Many times, she held her breath like an ocean free diver during lice checks, praying she her baby hairs would be deemed clean, but she found that was too much work and worry. She knew what the outcome would be, and although she was often branded “Patient Zero” that scarlet letter brand no longer found much significance in her mind.
No more did she notice how the cigarette smoke off-gassed from her clothes, and how that smell drew the sympathetic eyes of other adults in her direction. She knew that a child shouldn’t smell like a wet ashtray, but she did not hold the power to change her situation.
Much of her family silently expected she would turn out the same way as her parents did. No one really thought she would make much of herself considering that she had come from such an unstable background. Truthfully, she didn’t expect much of herself either.
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Then one night when she was sixteen, she saw something that changed her entire outlook on her life.
On a sweltering summer's night, she lay asleep in her homemade bunk bed as her baby sister snoozed on the upper bunk. She heard some deep groan that made her heart start to slam around in her chest. With her eyes suddenly open, she searched the darkened room for the source of the sound from the safety of her bed. Glued between the sheet and blanket she tried to stretch her ear to hear the sound again.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh….. aaaauuuuuuuhhhhh…”
In a split second she knew that sound was coming from her mother. Before she could think of what to do, her feet were on the floor, and she bound to her mother whose room was on the other side of their run-down and sagging single wide trailer. Her mother’s hollow door bounced back off the wall as she flung it open with great force.
“Mom?!” she cried, “Mom?! Are you ok?”
It was hard to see in her mother's room, not only because of the darkness night brings, but because the walls of her mother’s room were painted a royal purple, and the closet doors were removed and what hung in their place were long solid black curtains that absorbed every bit of light. The only shred of light in the room came from the miniature bathroom off the side of her mother’s room. In the bathroom there was a sliver of a window behind a toilet and about two and a half feet away, a single sink. With a flicker of moonlight, she saw her mother wasn’t in her velvet draped bed, but she could hear groans coming from somewhere in the room. She cautiously stepped towards the bathroom afraid of what she may find.
“Honey?” her mother’s voice was strained and raspy.
She blinked, not believing her eyes. What she saw made her gasp and take a step back, bumping into the velvet clad bed and nearly sliding onto the floor. A moment later she was finally able to make out the details of her mother’s distorted shape. There on the floor was her mother's body filling in the small space between the toilet and the sink. Her mother's limbs contorted into unnatural angles. Her mother's misshapen body appeared to mimic a dead black widow, with her arms and legs drawn in tightly. Her mother looked absolutely alien. How could a 5 foot 5-inch-tall woman fit into a space so small and still be living?
“Mom! What’s wrong?! What should I do?”
The smell of alcohol on her mother’s breath burned her nasal membranes as she reached down to grab her mothers’ clammy arms. She tried to lift her mother to her feet, but her mother’s body was rigid with muscles locked into place, unwilling to be straightened.
With a voice raspy from hours of vomiting, her mother strained to say, “I need potassium, get me a banana.”
She rushed quickly to the kitchen where she found a mostly brown banana covered in fruit flies. Grabbing it gently so as not to squeeze out the mushy insides she ran back to her mother’s room and into the tiny bathroom. Kneeling down, once again, she didn’t notice the fleas nipping at the tender legs. Peeling the banana, she fed her mother who remained on the floor. When the banana was gone her mother still lay in that twisted position.
She took one last look at her mother's warped body and ran back to her room. Grabbing her sleeping sister from their shared bunk bed she ran to the neighbor for help. Being taught from a young age never to call 911, all she could think of was to find someone else who could call for help. She didn't think about the embarrassment of knocking on the neighbor's door in the middle of the night, waking them from their slumber, nor did she think about the look of pity the neighbor would give her in exchange for her story.
Images and experiences like these never faded from her memory and it took many years for her to recognize that her mother abused drugs and alcohol in an attempt to numb her own lifelong trauma. When her mother was a young woman, she made a choice that she couldn’t undo no matter how much she wished she could. It was that choice that haunted her mother daily and made her mother’s everyday life unbearable.
Now it was her turn. She had a choice. Would she follow in her mother’s footsteps and try to forget a lifetime of traumatic images and experiences by drinking them away, or would she use her experiences as motivation for a better life? The choice was hers alone.
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