Dancing With the Devil: How I Came to Be in My Current State of Existence pt. 2
I was ten years old when Lady got t boned by an asshole running a red light.
This is really the only picture I have from this time frame
I was at my father's at the time I belive and had no idea what had happened until after… I don’t recall going to see her in the hospital or understanding the gravity of the situation until later. I was a kid, all I knew was that Mom got hurt and had to go to the doctors a lot, and that doctors made people better so everything would be fine. I have a couple of fleeting memories of her in a hospital bed with her stuffed Elmo, but generally they did a really good job of sheltering us from it all. I do remember her arm being in a huge weird brace thing for a while, and my step-dad having to drop us off at practices. Summarized; her shoulder had been dislocated and torn, discs were ruptured in her neck, and her lower back. There was something else wrong with her back too, she had a few surgeries on it, she had to have a mesh cage thing in there and screws and shit that in the long run did far more damage than good. It messed her up pretty bad, but as I said I didn’t know that then.
Over the next year that was pretty much what it was with her, healing enough to become active again. Through that year as well my father began to gradually pick us up less and less. He was still somewhat involved in our lives, but by the end of that year it took some serious head hunting to make it happen. I had mentioned in part one that I had been severely disappointed on my eleventh birthday, half of that was the fact that I did not receive my Hogwarts letter and I was going to be eternally stuck going to Muggle school where I was incredibly bored and didn’t fit in, the other half was that it was the first year he forgot to call me on my birthday.
I know I’m so dramatic, oh he forgot to call woe is me disney princess flop and cry maneuver. It hurt though, with my Mom pretty down and out and my Step-Dad stressed from it all I really needed my Dad, but, he didn’t catch me. He did take me to the midnight release of the first two Harry Potter movies and incessantly asked questions until he fell asleep halfway through so points for that. For the next couple of years if he did show for visits he would usually take us shopping, or send us shopping with a pair of his friends (whom we affectionately referred to as our bodyguards, very large men). He certainly spoiled us financially, at this point in our lives cost was not an issue for him and while I certainly see things more clearly now, at the time it really just felt like he was buying our complacency.
Now we’ve gotten through sixth grade, and on our summer trip to visit Nana and Papa it really hit me for the first time that she might not get better. We all went to Bush Gardens, and not even an hour into it my Mom claimed she had a headache and was going to go lay down in the truck. I didn’t like the way her face looked, and I insisted on going with her. We layed in the car together quietly for hours, and I could feel it the entire time… an impending sense of doom. I was little and all the grown ups always told me my intuition was just my overactive imagination, so I brushed it off as best as I could and enjoyed the rest of our trip.
When we got back home that summer is when the building tension between both sets of parents began to surface. They began fighting in front of us, something they had never really done too much before… and Lady started to occasionally take me places, just the two of us. I liked having just us time, and we all knew I was always, as my sisters said, “her favorite”. Really we were just exceptionally compatible. We would take drives to the city, I could rant freely about things like “I wonder sometimes if I’m in a coma and none of you are real, what if I’m just asleep and you’re just a figment of my imagination, what if in reality I have a completely different life? A different mom? What if I’m a mom?” or “Look at my hand, isn’t it weird, why do I have this hand, why am I in this body…” without my sisters teasing me, or we would turn up the music and jam, sometimes we would stop at bookstores and we would usually stop at one of her friends houses for a minute to say hi… I thought nothing of it.
The fights at home continued to escalate. I was in my closet more and more, the first time the cops were called I remember them super nicely coaxing me out of my closet and trying to get me to talk to them. I wouldn’t. Not that time or any time after. I would turn up my music so that I couldn’t hear the screaming as clearly, or the glasses breaking, or the bumps and bangs. I drifted much further into my own reality, where I would wander for hours in forests of leafless silver trees speckled with blood red flowers and fascinating creatures… Haunted by demons seven feet tall with sickly gray skin stretched over protruding bones, jagged fangs, sunken empty sockets where eyes should be, and long scythe like arms (likely inspired by the praying mantis’ my step mom kept when I was younger). I imagined a man in a hooded cloak would come and save me from these creatures, I called him my protector and he taught me that the only thing that could make these creatures go away was recalling good memories. I remember wishing with everything inside of me that my protector was real and I would run into him someday.
If I did go to my Dads the situation was similar. He and my step mom were not getting along well, most of my few visits at that point involved me bringing Sammy down to my room in the basement and turning Disney’s Tarzan up loud so she couldn’t hear the fighting, and singing ‘You’ll be in my heart’ to her. I hated the fighting and she was so little… god she probably doesn’t even remember. The one day I remember being in the bathroom and hearing the fight get physical, Jester (my mutt, my first dog lived until we were both 16) involving himself, the door slam and my step mom frantically rushing us up stairs to stay with Gram and our great Aunts for the day. They had heard the commotion too and didn’t question it for a second when she said to bolt the door and not let him near us… they did so dutifully, even when it seemed like he was going to pound the door right down.
By the time I hit eighth grade I knew a fairly decent portion of the Amherst PD on a first name basis. I still wonder how my step-dad threw a cup hard enough to leave a coffee stain on the ceiling. Despite all of this eighth grade was a good year for me; Lady started dropping me off at school every day, we would stop at the gas station and she would get me airheads and a jolt soda just about every morning, she would let me play hooky with her to go to the ‘Getty in the Ghetto’ to cash her checks, the little old Indian man would comment on how big I was getting every single time, she would pull me out of school early to take our rides to the city. I just thought it was our thing, I didn’t question it, even when overhearing my step-dad inquire about ‘why the fuck you driving only her back and forth to school every day, huh?’ she told him I was special and I needed more attention than my sisters… I didn’t even fully comprehend what an alibi was at that age, what was I supposed to think of it?
Kate, Me, Lace age 18, can't find a picture with Raina, but don't worry she is real... I think...
I met the rest of my tribe that year too, ^those crazy bitches. At this point I was very isolated for the most part, everyone thought I was weird and creepy… I thought they were weird and creepy, so when they teased me I would just threaten to curse them or give them an evil look and start speaking in gibberish. I was wearing purple mascara, black lipstick and black on black at this point so the ‘pretending to summon the devil’ thing was an effective way to get people to leave me alone. I had just quit cheerleading as well, because I couldn’t stand to be around the girls. There were a couple of them I’d been with for the past seven years that I could tolerate for the most part, but the rest of them set my teeth on edge and made my skin crawl. Raina was still my only friend, and with everything going on I had isolated myself heavily and didn’t even really see her anymore. One day at lunch though I caught a glimpse of something that peaked my interest out of the corner of my eye, I marched bodly up to the table where two girls were sitting with a book open between them. “Is that Harry Potter?” I asked, pulling up a chair…
“Yeah it’s my favorite book!”
“I just started reading it and I can’t stop!”
“Do you guys want to come to my house tonight?”
They did, and kind of didn’t leave for ten years. I felt really liberated, and they were already friends with Rai, they all had a class together... the four of us we’re inseparable after that. We did everything together including Harry Potter midnight releases and watching the movies on loop, we read the books together when they came out. Seriously, we would take turns reading out loud in Rai’s bedroom… I always got yelled at for cheating and reading ahead. Lady would even pick them up with me for our drives. Fire, Air, Earth, and Water… we completed each other and yet remained completely distinct and separate… picture if you will, four girls; one earthy and comfortable and just so real and cozy, but also deceptively sassy, one painted with Hollister and Abercrombie, not a single hair out of place with shoes that match the bag match the hair clips with the ‘OH MY GAAAWD’ thing going, one who looked like she just crawled out of Hott Topic hell in tripp bondage pants, fishnets shirts, facial piercings and black lipstick who you were never reeeeally sure wouldn't murder you, and one flighty free spirit who decided who she was going to be in the middle of any given moment and got a long with well, everyone like a lil’ chameleon, (I was the Hott Topic Hell girl in case you hadn’t figured it out) no one understood our friendship except for us and we liked it that way. I don’t know how I would have survived without them.
It even helped the fighting at home because I had them over so often… I really think my step-dad and Mom were so glad at thirteen years old I was finally making friends that they just kept quiet when I had the girls over, and when they weren’t at my house we were at one of theirs… couldn’t hear the bullshit if I wasn't there right? It worked for most of the year, but right at the start of the last quarter things exploded heavily. To the point where the one day my Dad picked me up for a visit and I refused to go back. He would drop me off and pick me up from school for the last month, but that was really the only time I saw him… which was kind of good considering the tension in that house too, and when I did see him I usually got to laugh at our Macaw being an asshole to him.
Eighth grade wrapped up, I was now fourteen… I still lived almost entirely in my internal world but I had an epic group of friends who liked it there… and Papa brought the kids up for a visit. A few days before they were set to go home my Dad comes out of the blue with “Do you want to move to Florida with me? Stay and Nana and Papas for a while, then get our own place.” I was floored. Escape from my crumbling life and get to be with my Dad again?! Sign me up! He fought with Lady for a couple of days, and then boom, we were on the road headed towards a new life across the country.
I wonder sometimes; If I had known the devil was in my home... if I had seen him slinking through the shadows, casting a storm over all of our souls, could I have done something to change our fate? If I had recognized the feel of his icy fingers brushing my throat as I climbed into my Papas van ready to embark on my adventure would I have been able to escape?