We had been driving for two hours. I remember being in Kansas City. I loved Kansas City. Sue and Chuck had brought me there for my birthday that year, and we had gone to this huge toy store shaped like a castle, Children’s Place. They told me I could pick out anything in the store I wanted. Donnie, Della, and I must have spent three hours hunting through every part of that store. We had so much fun. I finally decided on a Lego set and a My Little Pony unicorn. I asked Sue if I could pick two things. Chuck told me yes, but I would have to leave the unicorn at their house. Della had several My Little Ponies of her own in the car. The three of us played with them in the back of their van the whole way home.
The entire time Adam drove, Mom constantly looked over her shoulder out the rear window and told him to go faster.
I kept asking what we were doing. I was hoping we were going back to Children’s Place, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be anything so fun. Every time I asked, Mom would growl for me to shut up. After a few times of this, she and Adam got in a fight because he thought she was being mean to me and she should tell me where we were going.
She told him to mind his own fucking business.
Finally, somewhere just outside Kansas City, she put me between her and Adam on the truck seat. She had held me tightly in her lap the entire drive until then. Adam never stopped driving, except for somewhere on the highway to get gas and for us to use thebathroom.
She finally told me that we were leaving, moving away. We were never going to go back to El Dorado, and we were going to build a new life with Adam, a better life. I didn’t quite understand until I asked about Roscoe and when I could see Donnie. She told me the dog wasn’t ours and I would never see Donnie again, at least until I was a lot older.
It was then I threw my first fit. I screamed and cried and bellowed at the top of my lungs. Mom smacked my face several times, but even that didn’t stop me. In my memory, the entire ride was chaos. I was crying and pleading to go home, and Mom and Adam were screaming at each other.
We drove most of the day. After dark, we pulled into a trailer park. We unloaded and moved in. To this day, I am not sure if Adam owned the trailer or if it belonged to friends or if Mom bought it. The trailer was in Ransom, Kansas—just a little south of I-70 off of Highway 283. There were fewer than five hundred people in the town. When I moved to Colorado, I took a small detour and drove back through it. It looked even smaller than when I had been a kid.
Not a day passed in our couple of months in Ransom that I didn’t beg to move back to El Dorado. There was rarely a day I wouldn’t fight with Mom, at least at the beginning. That wouldn’t happen again until I was in high school. I really did like Adam, though. He was a lot of fun; he would always play with me. We would make ice cream sundaes together, and he never got mad at me for being too loud. He never even got upset when I begged to move back home. He was also good to Mom. I had never seen her so happy, before or since. After a couple of weeks, she started to treat me differently as well. She started to follow Adam’sexample and didn’t even yell at me when I would slip into one of my tantrums about moving back.
This time period, although hated because I was away from Donnie, is my favorite time with Mom. She was so beautiful. She took better care of herself than she had in the past. Adam told her constantly how gorgeous she was. I don’t think I had ever really thought about how my mom looked. Most little kids don’t, I suppose.
For the most part, those few precious weeks were the best of my life. I felt like I had a family, a real family, for the first time. It would have been perfect if the Durkes had been there as well. I even quit missing Roscoe after a while. Plus, Adam kept hinting that maybe he and Mom would get me a puppy for my next birthday or Christmas or something.
I’m sure I won’t get all the details of what follows completely correct, but much of it is seared in my mind. There are nights I still wake up screaming, scaring Jed to death. He learned quickly what they were about and figured out how to calm me down.
It was the night we had gone to the school to enroll me in classes and to meet my new teacher. It was starting to sink in that we weren’t moving back to Missouri, and I wasn’t going to be with Donnie and Della any longer, but I was excited about meeting the other kids when school started in a few days.
My mom’s screams were what finally woke me up. I didn’t hear the bang or whatever sound it made. I didn’t hear a door kicked through. I didn’t hear the cursing and startled cries. It was my mom’s screams of rage that woke me.
For a second, I wasn’t startled. This wasn’t unusual; she and Vic often woke me up in the middle of thenight with their fights. I suddenly remembered we weren’t in El Dorado any longer. Vic wasn’t there for Mom to fight with.
Fear washed through me. It took me a few moments to crawl out from under the covers. It was my need to be with Mom that finally won out. No matter what was going on, I was sure I was safer if I was with Mom.
I quietly snuck out of my bedroom and tiptoed down the narrow hall. Mom was still screaming and crying now. I didn’t need to see it to know that Mom’s face had just gotten backhanded. I knew that sound implicitly. It was then that I realized it was Vic’s voice yelling at Mom. I was beyond scared.
The scene I saw when I stepped into the main room of the trailer is one that is permanently painted in my mind. It is probably more vivid than any other. Sadly, I can see it even clearer than I can recall my own wedding.
Vic had Mom forced to her knees in the kitchen. One hand tangled tightly in her mass of hair, the other pulled back and then began to pummel her face again and again. Her lips were already bleeding. Her shirt was soaked in blood.
It was a few seconds before I was able to take anything else in. I think it was the thoughtI need to go get Adamthat finally forced me to look away. When I did, I found him.
Adam was on the floor, the cheap wooden end table crushed beneath him. Half of his face was missing. Blood had slowed to an ooze out of the hole. The pool beneath him covered a fourth of the carpet. Chunky blood covered the sofa and the wall behind it. Adam didn’t have a shirt on, only a pair of thin white boxers, which had begun to soak up the blood that was pooling on the carpet.
In a blur I heard, rather than saw, Vic rushing at me and then curses as he crashed to the ground, landing on Adam’s legs, causing Adam’s head to flop to his left, showing more of the cavernous mass in his head. Mom had managed to tackle Vic before he got me.
I don’tknow how much time passed. I don’t remember anything else from that night. Nothing. The next thing I knew, it was daylight. I was huddled in Mom’s lap, her arms around me so tightly it was hard to breathe. We were cramped in the corner of the kitchen, Mom’s back against the oven and small refrigerator. Vic sat in the recliner in the living room, his gun casually pointed at us. Adam lay on the floor between.
We sat there forever; I have no idea how long. It felt like forever. I needed to use the bathroom. I didn’t say anything. I made no noise. We sat there, Mom’s arms wrapped around me. She didn’t say anything either. She only cried the first part of that day. She stopped when Vic told her he’d shoot us both if she didn’t quiet down. I’ve never heard her cry since.
After a time, maybe five or six hours, maybe not even an hour, I wet my pants. Mom’s arms tightened. I didn’t say anything, nor did she. I assume Vic didn’t notice. I am sure he wouldn’t have let such a thing go by without some reaction.
We sat there the entire day, no one saying anything. Finally, after the sun went down, Vic stood and walked closer to Adam. I could feel Mom stiffen and her breathing catch. He pushed on Adam’s shoulder with his foot. Adam’s body didn’t respond, didn’t even jiggle. Vic bent closer and poked the tip of the gun’s muzzle into the hole in Adam’s head. He looked up at Mom, the gunstill in Adam, and told her to make him dinner. When she didn’t respond, he screamed it at her. She got up and made dinner.
Instant mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.
She kept me between her and the wall or stove, constantly moving me with her as she moved around the kitchen, always staying between me and Vic.
Vic made us sit on the bloody couch as he ate his bowl of potatoes and macaroni in the recliner, his gun balanced on his knees, pointed at us.
I don’t remember ever thinking about anything. I only looked at Adam and tried to remember what his pretty face had looked like. I couldn’t. Still can’t. We never had any pictures. I didn’t think about Roscoe and wonder where he was, although I have since. I didn’t even think about Donnie and Della. They were in a different world. They didn’t exist here. Sue and Chuck didn’t exist here either. Neither did Grandma and Grandpa. We were all alone in this universe. Just me, Mom, Vic, and Adam. I stared at Adam and felt Mom’s hand in mine.
