2She stood under the trees, drenched in rain to the bones, but the chill meant nothing to her. She relished in the falling water, it was a comfort to the girl. She only wished that maybe she could just let go of her inhibitions and frollic in it like she used to when she was a little girl. How hard would it be to just let go this one time and not care about age and maturity. But she didn't want people to see her in the middle of the night, dancing in the puddles. How reckless could one be?
She began to think about her mother. Her mother was reckless, her mother knew how to destroy inhibitions like they were tiny sand castles and she was dinomite. But, the way she did it... She sighed. She would never be like her mother in that respect.
Just last night, her mom had done it again. They had all gone to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant. Her mom sat next to her boyfriend, John, while she sat next to John's son, Mike. They were telling stories to eachother, maybe a little too loud, but who cared if anyone else heard, it was amusing. Her mother and John shared a bottle of wine, no big deal. The dinner was a lot of fun. She thoroughly enjoyed herself.
When they got home, it was time to sit down and play Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit, Mike's new bithrday present. She was owning up the music questions, no surprise there. Mike killed everyone when it came to sports, something in which she did not excell. Poor John could hardly get anywhere, but he did do better than anyone else in old TV shows. And her mother? She was excelling in the thing she knew best, getting drunk.
John's house was equipped with a beer draft, something that she was sure her mother got a kick out of. She kept filling piture after piture, her movements and reaction time becoming slower, her ability to remember any bit of trivia appauling. She started to leave after her turns to smoke ciggarettes, something she only did when she was drinking. She started to get obnoxious, something her daughter was unfortunatly used to, glaring at anyone when they commented on her ability to not answer a question correctly, jokingly, telling Mike to "Fuck off!", and calling everyone a bitch.
Two in the morning rolled around, and the girl finally won the game. Thankfully 'for the win' was a music question her turn, and she knew that Metallica had performed with the Philharmonic. John called for everyone to go to bed since they all had to wake in six hours. Everybody did as they were told, except she stayed up to read. Not long after settling down, she saw her mother coming out to fill a large cup with beer.
She intercepted her mother from walking away from the beer machine. "Give me the cup mom, you've got to go to bed. We need to wake-up in six hours and you need to go to work in the morning."
Her mother sneered at her, holding the beer out of her reach. "No. I'll be fine. Go read."
"No mom, you are allready bound to have a headache in the morning, why do you need any more beer. I'll just put this in the fridge."
"No", her mother said, louder and more menacing this time.
"Give me one good, healthy reason why you need this beer?" She just started going through the motions. She had had this conversation with her drunken mother countless times before.
Her mother gave her a queer look and said, "I need to grow."
She was confused and couldn't help but laugh at her mother's drunken stupor. She always talked such nonsence when she was drunk. These were the only time she hated her mother.
They bickered, back and forth, while she tried to stop her mother from taking sips now and again from the cup of liquid shit. She finally wrestled the thing out of her mother's grip and took it to the fridge. "Now mom, you really ought to go to bed. It's two fifteen, so that gives you five hours and forty-five minutes before we have to get up."
Her mother slipped between her and the refridgerater and opened it to take out her cigarettes. "Okay", she agreed. "Let me have one more cigarette and then I'll go to sleep."
She felt a little guilty about what she did next, but she really didn't understand the point in giving in to anything her mother wanted right that moment. "No, go to bed, now."
"Go read your book."
"No mom, you need to go to bed. It is in the best interests of you and me, okay?"
"Go read your book." Her mother's voice was a mixture of drunkeness and anger now. Her eyes were wide in the dark and she leaned on the open fridge door.
"No mom, I will not, untill you go to bed." Her mother tried to walk by but she blocked her path. her mom lifted her arm in the air.
"I am going to hit you." This was astonishing to her, because both her parents refused to believe in hitting their child. But she would not back down, and if her mother did hit her, it would only be a good excuse to bring up the argument of her alchohol problem when she was sobered up.
She shifted her stance and put one hand down on the counter. "Go ahead. Do it", she dared.
"I want to." Her mother tilted her head the way angry women do when they feel like fighting. "Okay, that was probably one of the worst things I could have said." At least she was thinking like a mother again.
"Well, go to bed now, c'mon. It's getting late."
"You know what?" Her voice was picking up the menacing tone again.
"What." She tried to cover up the insecurities she was feeling. She could tell her mom was going to insult her. She started thinking she was going to call her ugly, fat, something she felt she was and something she didn't want to be called by her own parent.
"You're pretty, I mean, you're kinda cute." Her mother looked down, the sign of a strike to kill. "But not all of us can be gifted." Her mom was bringing up the fact that her daughter missed the 'gifted child' mark by two points in a test she had taken in the second grade. She was about to enter her Junior year where the idea of gifted classes became a thing of the past. This hardly hit home for her. So who cared if her mother had been in gifted and she hadn't?
"Well, I think that hardly counts for anything, because look where you are now." Thinking back on it, she thought it wasn't the best idea to have said that. But if her mother was going to be so low... "Why don't you stop trying to bruise your daughters ego and just get some sleep."
"Why don't I just quite then", her mother yelled.
"What", she asked. "Quite drinking and smoking, because I would have no problem with that."
"No", she shouted even louder. "The whole fucking thing. Why don't you just fuck off and go live with your dad, huh! Go live with your fucking dad then! Get the fuck away from me!"
John entered the kitchen from his room and asked, "What is going on here."
She looked at him and sighed. "I just want her to go to bed."
"Me too." John grabbed one of her wrists and said, "C'mon babe, you've had enough."
"No", she interjected. "Get the fuck away from me! Leave me the hell alone!" She ran out into the driveway, followed by the other two.
"Look", John called. "Do you want to come inside now or should I just call the police and have them come pick you up. Huh? Do you want to spend the night with them? I am not going to put up with this again." He walked off into the house while the girl stayed outside, standing by her mother who was finally getting her smoke.
"Can't I have some fucking privacy", her mother yelled.
"No, not right now."
Her mother began spouting something that she would never remember. All she would remember later was that she had had enough. "Oh, stop with the psuedo-philisophical bullshit and just go to sleep. It's two-thirty in the morning, we all need to get up in five and a half hours. I can go to sleep as soon as we get home tomorrow morning, but you do not have that luxery. You need to go to work, and staying up to have another beer or another cigarette is not going to help that situation at all!"
"You don't understand. You're too young to understand..."
"I'm too young to understand! I bet there are some things I could say to you that you wouldn't understand, but that is too much of a teenager cliche for me to deal with, so I won't even go there." But she couldn't help her mind form remembering her past. She shook it off to focus on her mother again.
"Well, what am I supposed to do about it?"
"Look, you quit before, but what did it take for me to get to you stop that time. I had to slap you. I mean, you have a problem. I remember, one night you left without your liscence and I find you the next morning lieing face down on the floor. My first though was, 'Oh my god, my mom's dead.' Just, tell your friends and family that you are thinking about quiting or at least cutting down on your drinking and I'm sure everybody would be more than happy to help you. I don't care if you drink sometimes, but only two or three drinks at a time. Your problem is that you have no self control and you just keep on drinking once you start."
Her mom started to tear up. "I just want someone to tell me that it isn't my fault."
"Who else's fault is it going to be, mom?"
She looked up with eyes like a doe and said, "I never told you. When I was younger, about your age, I was in the back of a truck with some guys." She paused.
"What, were you raped?"
"No. They hooked me up with some coke and beers and I thought 'This is it. This is what you do to have fun'. I feel like you need to drink to have fun."
"Yeah but mom, you understand that that is not true. I mean, you can't honestly tell me that there are times you regret things you did when you were drunk?"
"Yeah, there are..."
"Well, then." She started to rub her mothers arm up and down. "I just think it's in your best interests, and the interests of those around you if you tried to cut down on the drinking. And the smoking? You only smoke when you drink. That's actually how a lot of people get hooked on it. So, stop drinking now, and that will probably be a lot easier than later on."
"Okay", she sighed. "Well, let me pee, smoke one more cigarette, and then I'll go to bed."
She rolled her eyes and looked down. "No mom, you can pee all you want, but no more smoking tonight."
"But I just need some time to myself to deal", her mother begged with edge in her voice.
"Well, how long have you been drinking? All my life at least, that's sixteen years to deal. You start dealing now."
She shook her head up and down and qietly said, "Yeah."
They walked inside together, her mother went to the bathroom, and then finally went to sleep. She stayed up to finish her chapter at last.
The rain was falling down even harder now. The wind rustled the leaves above her head. She felt a bit bad about how she treated her mother when she was drunk but, she had just reached her wits end about the whole thing. And then that day...
She had been taking a well-needed nap when the phone rang. She answered the phone to hear Josh answer back. She told him all about what had happened the night before and met with the usual response.
"You're so mean to your mom. No obediance what-so-ever."
"Yeah but Josh, you don't live with any drunks, okay? You can't really understand. Even John is fed up with it. He says she's destroying herself." There was a beep on the other line. "Hold on, John in calling."
"Dude, my mom..."
"What is it", Josh asked.
She sighed into the phone. "Apparently my mom was drinking at the bar today at work and decided to go swimming in the pool. John said that somebody supposedly took her home but she's not here and he says she won't answer her cellphone."
"Woah..."
"Yeah, I just. Can I call you back? Maybe she's not answering the phone because it's John who's calling her."
"Yeah sure."
"Thanks love you, bye."
The phone rang and rang, but her mom never picked up. She hung up when the message answered and hit the redial button. It rang, but the only thing she heard was, "Hi, this is Eileen. Leave a message-" She hung up and hit redial. She did it again. She did it again. Finally, her mother's weary voice answered, "Hello."
"Hey mom, where are you." She was worried, but her voice sounded more annoyed when it escaped her lips.
"I'm at John's house." She sounded trashed again.
"Well, he doesn't know where you are, so..."
"I'm here. I was taking a nap and I just woke-up."
"So, if I called his house right now you would pick it up?"
"Go for it." Her voice was dripping with animosity and she hung up the phone.
She searched for John's number on the caller ID, hitting 'talk' when she finally found it.
"Hello", her mother's voice said.
"Okay well, I'm gonna tell him you're over there." She hung up without saying goodbye.
John thanked her when she called but they still didn't know how she had gotten there. Her mother didn't come home that night either way.
The rain was beginning to lighten up as she came out of her memories. The headlights of a passing car seemed to soil the feeling she was getting from standing in the rain she loved so much. She decided to just go in and take a shower. She would go to sleep and, hopefully, her mother would be there when she woke-up.