Page 12 of His Four Leaf Clover

“Out where, Trenton?” Trudy knew that she babied her son at times but she was a mother before anything else. He had a bad track record with being in places that he had no business being.

“Does it matter, Ma? I’m a grown ass twenty-eight year old man. I don’t have to check in with my mama every time I leave the house.”

“I know you don’t, baby, but I worry about you.”

“Well, don’t, I’m good.”

“Are you?” his father, Melvin, asked when he walked into the room holding up a small bottle of pills. “Why is this bottle still full?”

“The fuck!” Trent jumped up from his seat.

“You better watch your damn mouth in my house.” His father didn’t pacify him like his mother did.

“Why you going through my shit though?” Trent was furious and so was his father. Melvin advanced towards his son, making Trudy jump in his path to avoid a potentially violent situation. Her husband had no problem knocking their son on his ass and he’d done it many times before.

“Go to your apartment and relax, baby. Your father and I need to talk.” Trudy smiled at her son, hoping to calm him down. Trent stared his father down as he backed away and exited the same door that he’d previously entered.

“That’s the problem now, Trudy. We’re supposed to be on the same page but we can’t even come to a mutual agreement.”

“We are on the same page, Melvin, but we also agreed to give him his personal space.”

“Are you even listening to yourself right now? Trenton needs help, not personal space. Being alone is actually the last thing that he needs.”

“Trent is fine; he’s just spoiled, and I take the blame for that.”

“This is way more than just him being spoiled. Look at this pill bottle. I counted them and they’re all still here. There’s no telling how long ago he stopped taking them. It’s only a matter of time before it starts to show.”

“Nothing is going to show. Trent just does things to get our attention.”

“Damn it, Trudy! This is not a game. I walked on eggshells for years in my mama’s house; I refuse to do it in my own.”

“Fine, I’ll make sure that he takes the pills every day. Will you relax then?”

“Baby, please, just listen to me. Yes, taking his medicine is important, but that’s only a small part of his treatment plan. I spent years watching my mother deny what was right in front of her until it was too late. I’m not gonna let that happen to you.”

“I’m trying, Melvin, but this is hard. That’s my baby.” Trudy held on to the counter as she dropped her head and cried.

Melvin pulled his wife into a comforting hug. He understood her pain but he had to be honest with her. As much as she tried to deny it, their son was different. He’d seen the signs all his life, so he knew how to spot them a mile away. Just like his father and older brother, his last born and only son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Trudy brushed it off the moment it was revealed to her, but Melvin was heartbroken. He vowed to dedicate his life to helping his son but his wife was making it almost impossible. Since he didn’t have the condition himself, Trudy never believed that their son had it either. Their daughters were normal and so were their grandkids. The gene obviously skipped everyone except for Trent. Guilt consumed him more than anything. He was a therapist who was able to help everyone else besides his son.

“He’s my baby too, and I only want the best for him.”

“Sending him to the crazy house is not what’s best for him.”

“It’s not the crazy house. It’s a reputable private facility with some of the best doctors in the world. It’s not like he’s gonna be there forever. They’re just gonna teach him how to manage and cope with his diagnosis.”

“Yeah, right. Y’all said the same thing about your father and you see how that tuned out.”

After being in denial for so long, Melvin’s mother, Hattie, finally agreed to admit his father into a facility, but it was horrible. It was a state run facility who gave less than a damn about their patients. His father was supposed to be on around the clock watch, but the young nurse who was responsible for him on the night shift fell asleep and woke up to him hanging by a sheet that he should have never had. He was always claiming that the voices in his head were telling him to do certain things and he finally listened. His mother sued the facility and won since he wasn’t given the standard suicide resistant bedding that he was supposed to have.

His oldest brother did well for a while and took his medicine faithfully. He had a lot of people fooled with the way he learned to cope with the illness. He had a wife and four beautiful kids wo loved him unconditionally. A few times, he would convince himself that he no longer needed to be medicated and the end result was never good. He would start hallucinating and having paranoid delusions. His wife tried to help him as much as she could until she finally couldn’t take anymore. She packed up their kids and left him in the home that they were supposed to grow old in.

Things hit rock bottom after that and his distrust was at an all-time high. He swore that he was being followed and became suspicious of his own family. It got really bad one year when he showed up to their mother’s house for Sunday dinner. He seemed fine for a while until they all sat around the dinner table. His brother swore that his family was plotting to kill him. He told them that he wasn’t giving them the chance so, right after they said grace over the meal, he pulled out a gun and killed himself instead. Their mother was devastated. She, just like Trudy, didn’t think that anything was wrong with her son, even though she’d seen what happened to her husband.

Things got even worse because his brother’s life insurance didn’t pay out for suicide, forcing his wife and kids into poverty. Trudy vowed to keep her kids away from his side of the family and she kept her word. As a result, Melvin stayed away too. Besides his mother, he rarely spoke to or saw anyone else. If he did, it was only on the rare occasions that he visited his mother.

Trudy hated that she didn’t have any family in New Orleans but she wasn’t from there. Her parents, two sisters and other relatives lived hundreds of miles away. She was born and raised in Virgina and Richmond was home until she got accepted into Loyola University. She met Melvin during her second year of college and never left. She raised her children there and that was the only home they knew. She sometimes wished that she had moved Melvin to her hometown instead.

Sadly, Trenton sometimes displayed the same symptoms as his uncle and grandfather. It got so bad that their daughters refused to even visit anymore. If they wanted to spend time with their grandkids, they had to go to their houses to do so. Trent swore that his nieces and nephews were recording him with their iPad every time they came over. Things really went left when he took their tablets one day and smashed them to pieces with a hammer. Their daughters refused to step foot in their home after that and he didn’t blame them.