Generation WItch

Chapter one Draft

Chapter one

         Edward Simkins sits quietly at his cluttered desk. His elbows pressed into a scattered of city maps marked with blue lines and red flags. Both hands holding a disappointed face. Unlike the busy days before, this time he was just staring at the pink slip with Friday’s date boldly printed across it. How could he tell his wife that he lost the job? He had been employed in this position since college graduation? How could he supply the needs for his two sons and his unborn daughter? She will have even greater needs than the boys.


         “Hey, Edward.”


         He looked at the door that he had forgotten to shut. He locked eyes with his secretary who looked as if she had been crying. He had forgotten the employees that worked under his supervision. They had less than he. Did they have any money saved to help them until something else opened up for them after his department on Friday?


         “Meggie, may I help you?” Edward tried to cover his own pain.


         “I wanted if you were ok?” She asked.


         “Yes I am fine.” He looks down at the desk drawer where he had the petty cash stored. “Do you have a job lined up?’


         “No, not yet.” She replied. “I have not had time to look. My daughter just got out of the hospital.“


         Edward opened up the drawer, looked past the bottle of rum, and grabbed the bank bag. He reached it to her. “I cannot do much, but I want you to take this to help you until you find something.”


         “Sir, this is too much.”


         “I wish I could do more.” Edward motions toward the door. “You can leave now. You can come back Friday to get your check.”


         “Thank you.” She said walking toward the door. Her voice nearly inaudible because of her emotions.


         “Please close the door behind you.”


         When the door was closed, he reached into the drawer for the bottle of rum. He drinks a shot from the dirty glass. Then decides that he didn’t need the glass. He felt better by just turning up the bottle much like a toddler nursing milk from his bottle.


         The next morning Edward opened his eyes. His neck was sore. He wiped the drool from his face. This was when, he knew that he had to get his family away before he takes them down a slippery slope. He knew that the big city help way too much alcohol.





Emma and Edward moved to the area to find peace from the noise of New York. Edward had lost his job as a transportation specialist, and could not make ends meet in the city any longer for his family. Unable to purchase the things needed to keep a house going, he started to drink spending what money he could make on alcohol. It seemed as though moving away from the bars would be the best solution to save a man, a marriage, and a family. With dreams of living off the land, Emma, Edward, Lee 6, and Jake 3 moved to “Nowhere”.


Emma, being eight months pregnant with Sara, wobbled holding tight to the unpainted-splintery rails as she climbed the squeaky steps up the rickety old steps to the uneven wooden door. When they first moved into the shabby little three bedroom house that had some of the windows covered up with boards, the family had dreams of a happier life together. Their two sons would grow up and be farmers, and their only daughter would be the happy home-maker.


Sara is a thirteen year old girl with red hair and freckles. She weighed 86 pounds, and she was only 4’ 11” tall. Her slender body showed little signs of becoming a woman. She was seen more dressed in dirty-torn jeans than clean dresses because she loved to play and run with her brothers. Miles of old forsaken roads and hill sides were their playground. Her family lived in a little township with the population of 350 people. She and her bothers played from sun up until sun down every day. They were happy and unaware of the pain that their mother felt from being isolated.


Emma woke up at five in the mornings. She made sure that the children were fed and off to school. The boys now worked on the farm with their father. Being twenty and seventeen, Lee and Jake worked the fields. After Sara left for school, Emma was alone with only her house work to keep her company. Day after day she longed to have friends to go out to dinner with. She only had memories of her wealthy family in New York. She was slipping deeper and deeper into a depression without anyone having time to notice.


Emma watches Sarah stroll down the dirt road to her bus stop. She was so proud of how the children have been growing strong, moral independent people. She had tears running down her eyes. In her heart, she knew that this would be the last time she would see her little red head again.


Emma looked over the back yard toward the barn. She dreaded to do the laundry in the heat. She was feeling alone as she does every day for the past thirteen years. She began her wash. One item after another, she rubbed on the washboard, shake, and hang on the line. Memories of when she would sit around the tables in the local laundry mats with other house wives, filled her mind. Even simple things like chores, were social to Emma. She would attend quilting parties. You could find her at community kitchens. Yea all those days were gone. No family. No friends. Only day in and day out cleaning and cooking all alone.


First she hands a load of under-ware on the line. Next the kids’ jeans went up. Then she reached into the basket, pulling out a blue dress. “How did that get in there?” She asked herself. When she saw the dress hanging by its shoulders, memories came flooding back of all the experiences that she took away from her children by moving into this small community. Without thinking Emma reaches for the next line to continue hanging shirts. She pulls it taunt, tippy toes to reach it, and pulls slack in the line. Then she makes a small loop in the stretchy material and pushes her head through it. There is no way Emma would know that this one act would ruin her family. Emma’s eyes turning back into her face, would never see the damage that she began in the life of her children. While she was gasping for air that could not be received, she was turning her functional family into angry people who victimize her young daughter. As her feet twitched body searching for oxygen, she could not have known what her suicide would lead to.


One day when Sara came home from school, there were no cookies on the table. There wasn’t the order of dinner in the stove. The house was as clean as it usually was, but her mother was not to be seen.


“Mom,” Sara calls as she walks from room to room in search of her mother. Not finding her, she opens the back door to walk to the bard where she hoped to find her mother grooming a horse or talking with her father.


“Oh, my God!” Sarah screamed. She ran to the clothes line where her mother had wrapped the cotton string around her neck and feel to her knees. Her eyes were open staring right toward Sarah. Struggle and pull as she might, Sarah could not save her mother. From that day forth, her father blamed himself for driving Emma to kill herself, but he blamed Sarah more for not saving her.


Things had changed. Her father was no longer her “Daddy”. He was her capture. Her brothers were no longer her playmates playing the games that they had once enjoyed. They had become her torturers. They played different kinds of games since the grief of losing the only woman they had learned to love. She tried to protect heart from becoming rigid with the many skeletons forming in her closet. Some were trials that could never be expressed. She had kept hidden away in her tattered heart. Since her mother died everyday was filled with guilt, but day after day she became deeper into a world of slavery and incest. She had been beaten by her dad and older brother’s. Her father lay drunk since her mother committed hanging from the same place that she once hung his clothing out to dry; her brothers exploited her as they pleased. She was their slave at times working doing all the chores or any job that they wanted completed. Late at night, she had to fulfill their needs and those of their friends in ways sister should never have any knowledge of.


         A year had passed since Emma took her own life, Sarah found someone who she felt love from. Sara was only fourteen when she married Jimmy Johnson. J.J. was a friend of her oldest brother Lee. He was the only male that treated her as if she was a young woman. He would slip into her room late at night, but not to forcefully take her as the other boys did. J.J. would wait until all the family would go to sleep. He crawled into her bed. He would kiss away her tears, and hold her so she could go peaceful to sleep. He was the only male who ever considered her as human.


         When J.J. told his parents of his young white girlfriend, James Sr and Martha Johnson was shocked. The pastor and his wife believed strongly that marrying outside their race was an unforgivable sin. This left the two young lovers only one option. J.J. would take his precious love into the next county where they could be married with no questions.


         After the long ride, Sarah loved hearing those magic words, “You may kiss the ride.” It didn’t matter that she had no dress, no cake, or even family. It wasn’t important that the only people to witness was the elderly preacher, his wife, their little Jack Russell, and of course God.


         All the couple had in cash was $35. “It won’t be much of a honeymoon.” He stood on the porch of the little white church. He points to the ratty hotel a block away. The sign read Vac_nc_ due to the fact the neon lights were not all shinning.


J.J. carried Sarah into room 33. The smell of musk filled their noses, the spread on the bed was worn, and the air conditioner didn’t work. Sarah knew that she had J.J. who loved her, and this was all that was important to her.


Sarah opens her eyes in response to the sound of pounding on the door. Who could be knocking? No one knew where she had J.J. had spent their wedding night. Then she heard a loud masculine voice, “Junior!”


         The voice woke her new groom. His face was white with fear. The face that she could only surmise was because the man behind the door was his father, the Pastor.


         The two hurried to find their clothes. “Just a minute, Dad.” J.J. replied. He whispers to his bride, “don’t worry. You are my wife and there isn’t anything he can do to change that.”


         J.J. opens the door expecting to see only his angry father with his stable mother to smooth the fire that undoubtedly burned in James eyes for his son’s betrayal. However, there stood James, but he wasn’t alone. Beside him stood Sarah’s father Edward, powered the many drinks that he consumed throughout the night. Sarah’s brother’s Lee and Jake had tagged along. Both her brothers were over six and a half feet tall. They stood over her five foot six inch husband, like mountains.


         Lee slaps Sarah knocking her to the floor. J.J. ran over to her side. With one quick kick from the strong farmer’s leg, Lee had thrown the groom against his wife. The couple lay motionless against each other until Edward grabs Sarah by the hair and pulls her to the other side of the room. He held her back to watch her brothers beat the one she loved. She screams, “James, that’s your son.” She looks at James. “They are killing him. STOP!”


         James yells to the brothers, “Stop, this is my son. I will take him far away.”


         “Daddy, Daddy!” Sarah begs her father. “Please let him go. Make them stop, and I will never see him again.”


         Lee and Jake throw him out the door. James follows after him. He helps his son back in the truck. Sarah tail lights dim as they drove off through swollen eyes. She knew that she would never see him again.


         She never saw J.J. again, but she refused to go home. When she left the room, she was dropped at the hospital. She didn’t tell anyone what had really happen, but she signed herself out to journey into the unknown.

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My words are ways to leave peices of myself behind for my children