Before the accident, I was a typical 12 year old girl who played with makeup and enjoyed bossing around my little brother. I was a budding artist and I loved my mom, even more when she surprised me with my first easel complete with canvas, paint and new brushes. My only concerns in life were what to wear to school, learning the latest dance moves, and trying to convince mom to let me perm my hair. I had no idea that in less than 6 months, life as I knew it was going to end.
My younger brother Brian was 10 years old, he was sloppy and I found him extremely annoying. He was a curious kid; he enjoyed taking things apart, checking them out and trying to put them back together. Oftentimes he wasn’t successful in getting things to work properly after reassembling them.
The home we lived in was a big, grey shingled trailer with a split level addition. It was on a large piece of land with lots of trails through the woods to explore and a small pond in the front yard great for swimming in the summer and ice skating in the winter. During the warmer months there were catfish in the pond, but not large enough to eat, and goldfish the length of your hand. There were geese too, big and loud, they would chase you up a tree if you wandered too close.
In the spring of 1991 Mom got divorced from my first step-father, found a new boyfriend, and moved us from our friends, all in one season. We were taken from the nice home that we owned in a great neighborhood, to a tiny trailer filled nightly with stumbling drunks. Being patted on the head, by men and women we barely knew and who smelled sour, became a daily annoyance. Besides the strangers partying in our new home asking where the beer or the bathroom was, no one paid much attention to us anymore. No one was very interested in looking at my last sketch and it didn’t matter if Brian put things back together the right way or not. We had all the freedom in the world to start smoking cigarettes and walk off with as many cans of Budweiser as we wanted, if we wanted. We were learning to swear with flair, and could sleep through endless parties. Our innocent life was over.
Party central was our two car garage well equipped with a not-so-level pool table, an old stereo receiver with no casing and bad sounding speakers, there was a beat up refrigerator usually stuffed with Budweiser. Oil stained the floor from working on various engines; cars, three wheelers, dirt bikes and boats. Of course there were tool boxes everywhere, those big ones with more than a dozen drawers that slid in and out almost silently.
The man who caught my mother’s attention was a greasy, cruel kind of guy; I still don’t know what she ever saw in him. He was a mechanic, a damned good one. Fixing engines, drinking and dishing out insults are the things he did best. Because of his job he was always dirty, even when he was clean he was dirty.
Mom was so taken with her new relationship that she wasn’t giving much thought to what we were up to, or how we felt about our new life. If we asked, “Mom why do you drink so much beer now?” she responded as if we told her there was a unicorn in the back yard, it simply wasn’t true.
Looking out the open garage doors of party central, you could see directly across Route 4 into the main office of J & J Auto Salvage. That’s where my future step-father was employed; he had already been there for many years; and still works there to this day.
We were growing familiar with our new life. Far from happy, but we were settling in. I don’t remember any specific events of the days and weeks before the accident, and the next few months and years are a fog. It was a ‘normal’ day at home, another day another party. There were about a dozen people gathered that night. Most everyone was in the garage, but a few people spilled out onto the driveway to investigate under the hood of a car, pointing to the engine going on and on, trying to out-do each other with their mechanical knowledge. That night was about as good as it got, there were no ‘angry drunks’, the garage was filled with loud laughter and thick smoke. I’d had my fill of beating people three times my age at billiards; they couldn’t even hold their cue.
I decided to walk over to the vending machines in the main office of J & J, Brian and I had been given the code to the security system so we could get candy bars and soda after hours. Alcohol was running low so Mom was going to drive less than 1/2 mile to J & S Grocery and Deli, the corner store, to buy more beer. She had made the trip before, so I didn’t think much of it; I asked her to pick me up some hair spray. She drove off with two other women from the party in our light blue t-top Mustang. I left, crossing the street to the garage, where the machines full of sugar called my name.
That night I was craving a 100GRAND candy bar and a can of PEPSI. It was dim and quiet in the office, the only light was coming from the large Pepsi logo that covered the front of the soda machine; the room smelled like engine oil. I can still hear the change dropping into the machine; one coin after the other, making their way through the tracks and landing with all the other previously deposited coins. I made my selection and the candy bar dropped, as I reached for it through the small swinging door something outside caught my attention. When I looked up and saw some of the guys leaving on three wheelers and dirt bikes, I became very confused. They were in a serious hurry; Brian was even on his bicycle, peddling hard to catch up with everyone; there was something terribly wrong. I had just left the house moments before. These people were not the laughing drunks I just walked away from; they were pale and concerned-looking, tearing up the road in a serious rush. I don’t remember my feet taking me outside, or back across the street.
I can’t recall anyone saying anything to me except to get in the car. For what seemed like hours I stared at the dirty floor of someone’s Volkswagen. The stale smell of Mc Donald’s French fries, ketchup smeared burger wrappers and empty cigarette boxes made my already tense stomach turn. I couldn’t move, think, or look away. Something was wrong with my mother, there had been an accident. It took forever to go the 1.7 miles from the house to the H.D. Goodall Hospital. I felt like I was underwater; time slowed, voices distorted, colors blended and I just floated along. I don’t know if Brian was with me in the car or in the waiting room. I was drowning, and I was alone. I don’t know how long I sat there waiting, or who walked us to a small room to talk to a nurse. They asked us where our dad lived and what his phone number was. Neither of us could tell them anything and that surprises me looking back. I knew his number, it’s been many years since that phone number has been changed, and I still remember it. If we had been able to give them dad’s number, they would have called him and he would have come, I know this. But that didn’t happen. Dad didn’t come.
When the nurse was finished questioning us we were helped to a busy room with a broken stranger on the bed. My heart realized what I was looking at before my brain did, and the air didn’t just leave my lungs, it left the whole room and I swear my heart stopped beating. Lying on that bed, with nurses and doctors surrounding her, was a woman covered in blood. Her head was split and her hair was wet and looked dark and sticky, fresh blood ran over drying blood onto her clothes from where her mouth and nose were cut open. Time froze, it did for me anyway. I was blind to everything and everyone except that woman, she was screaming something, but I couldn’t hear her. I don’t recall any movement in the room, no sound, I don‘t hear the nurses saying “poor babies”. I know Brian was there with me, but I can’t see him, or hear him crying out. Her torn face was distorted and her eyes were wildly pleading. There on the bed, our mother was bleeding, screaming, “Get my children out of here! Don’t let them see me like this!” I don’t remember turning to leave the room or winding through the hospital hallways. I don’t know where Brian is; did he turn and run before I did? I run through the waiting room to get out and I see a flash of the now sober, worried faces sitting in the waiting room as I escape from the hospital. I run across the hospital yard as fast and as hard as I can. Someone is following me and calling my name, but I don’t care, I need to get away and forget. As the distance between me and the hospital grows, I can still see her and I realize this isn’t something I can run from. One of the men from the party got me to my feet at the tree where I had collapsed and we walked back to the hospital in silence. That’s the last thing I remember of that day, watching my feet walk through the grass in the dark.
My mother survived the car accident, but she didn’t change her ways for many years. I discovered that day that I was essentially on my own, Brian was too. September 9th, 1991 was the beginning of the end of my childhood.
