My mom will never be perfect. She’ll never be the mom I want her to be, but she’ll always be the mom I’ve got. We’ll never have a perfect relationship, and she might not ever fully understand me, but sometimes you gotta work with what you have.
“I wanted you here, too,” I tell her.
She turns so that I can’t see her face, but I can hear the tears in her voice. “You look real nice in your prom outfit. Did you and Freddie go together?”
“Ruth was my date. The girl in the blue dress.”
She nods, facing me. “She’s real pretty. I hope you girls had fun.”
It might be a small first step or maybe the most acceptance I’ll ever get from her. I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to see.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you girls at the baby shower,” she adds. “I was upset about not being a part of it. But I understand why I wasn’t.”
I don’t say I’m sorry or that I understand why she got drunk, because neither of those things are true. “I’m just glad you’re here now,” I tell her.
“Me too,” she says. “Me too.”
After another hour or so, we decide to let Hattie and Sara rest and get better acquainted with each other. I hate to leave my sister at the hospital by herself, but she’s not alone. Tyler is staying, too. Besides, how bad can he screw things up with all those nurses around?
FORTY-FOUR
Dad and I drive home, and I sit in the middle seat right beside him as if Hattie were in the truck with us. I know that whatever waits for us is all we have left. My stomach clenches into a fist, and I say a silent prayer that my chocolate box under my bed is intact.
Police officers are set up outside the trailer park, admitting emergency officials and residents only. We are instructed that no matter the state of our home, we must gather necessities and take a Red Cross voucher for a place to stay for the night, as the area has not yet been deemed safe.
There is no electricity in the trailer park, so Dad turns on his brights, lighting the road ahead as our neighbors roam through rubble in their nightgowns.
Some houses are completely untouched, while others look like they’ve been shredded in a blender. Emergency crews are slowly working their way through the trailer park as they set up huge generator-powered lights to illuminate the damage.
When we finally make it to our house, it’s too dark to see at first. Then my dad positions the truck with the headlights showcasing our home.
He gasps, and I hold a shaking hand to my lips.
It’s not the worst we’ve seen, but the roof has been peeled back like a can of tuna, and the half of the trailer containing my dad’s little closet of a room and the living room has collapsed.
I know it was a shitty little place to call home, but that’s what it was: home. My heart breaks piece by piece as I realize that now we have no place to call ours.
“Okay, let’s gather what we can into the back of the truck. Maybe we can get a room at the hotel, so we don’t need to stay in the shelter.” He says it in a determined yet downtrodden way that reminds me this is not the first time my father has been in this position. “Watch your step,” he adds. “Make sure the ground below you feels steady.”
As I walk up the steps to our crumbling home, my dad is called across the street to help cut down a tree that’s leaning on someone’s house. He tells me to go on and collect as much stuff as I can.
Using the huge industrial-strength flashlight my dad keeps in the back of his truck, I begin to fill laundry baskets, backpacks, trash bags, and whatever else can be filled with my and Hattie’s belongings. I’m careful to separate all of Sara’s diapers and clothing that can be salvaged, and I say a quiet prayer to whoever is listening for sparing the crib, which hasn’t even been delivered yet.
Lots of our stuff is soaked, but it can be washed, and mostof Sara’s stuff from the shower is still in Agnes’s garage. I find one of my boots in the tub and the other in my closet. The mattress was torn off my bed and must be in someone’s yard somewhere, but tucked away in the far corner of my room under the frame and box spring is my chocolate box, containing every family photo and my meager life savings.
I clutch the box to my chest. It’s not even the money that I’m most concerned about. But the family photos, the notes, and all those childhood games of MASH. Those are things I can never replace no matter how many hours I work.
I search for my Wheaties box with Missy Franklin’s head on Michael Phelps’s body, but it’s destroyed. Pieces of it are scattered everywhere. I can’t believe that this is the thing that sends me over the edge, but I begin to cry. I sob and sob. No one rushes to my side, because everyone is crying. I can hear it all around me. So it’s just me, crying in my room with no roof because my stupid Wheaties box has been destroyed.
My goggles are gone, too, and the only swimsuit I can find is definitely not suitable for workouts.
I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth. I do it over and over again, reminding myself that I am alive. No one I love was injured, and I have a niece. I will survive, because I have survived.
I’m unable to reach my dad’s room, but he had a laundry basket full of dirty clothes in the bathroom and a few work shirts that he’d hung to dry in the hallway.
With the help of my dad, we pile what’s left of our livesinto the back of the truck. I don’t know how we’re going to break this to Hattie and explain to her that the stability she’d counted on is no more and that there is no home to bring Sara back to.
With only a few hours until dawn, I text Charlie to let him know I won’t be able to run my paper route in the morning since my bike is currently missing. We head to the hotel where my dad works, and while I wait in the car, he speaks with his manager, who agrees to let us stay for a few nights to avoid whatever temporary housing situation the Red Cross is organizing.
