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A young girl struggling to get by living with her alcoholic mother. |
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The sickeningly strong aroma of vodka swirled with cigarette smoke arose as I opened the door to my family’s second floor apartment. I looked away in disgust as my mother gave me a drunken smile, sprawled out across the couch as she was everyday when I came home from school. As I dropped my things and walked passed her she didn’t even bother to ask me how my day went as she usually did, finally I think she realizes I’m not going to justify her pointless questions with answers. As I brush some stray hair out of my face and venture towards my room I wonder if this madness will ever end. As I swing the door opened I have to fight back the urge to strangle my own mother to death as I come standing face to face with another stranger. “Hello….” He murmurs awkwardly as he fumbles with the cigarette in his hand. “I don’t even want to know who you are, but if you want to keep your limbs in tact you’ll get your ass out of my room with that damn thing.” I exclaimed snatching the dreaded cancerous item right out of his mouth and dropping it out the window. “Hey!” He addressed me, nearly falling when he turned around to face me, “Thossse don’t come cheappp!” He continued to rant, slurring his speech drunkenly. “I don’t care, it’s my room, and that filth is not staying in it, I don’t care how many times you’ve been here doing whatever with my mother, this is my space, and you better stay as far away from it as humanly possible.” I growled, and he looked at me, the most pathetic of looks plastered across his face as if he was trying to convince me he was more innocent than a four year old child eating cookies from a jar. I persisted in shoving him towards the door, my gaze enough to send shivers down his spine drove him away at last, and I slammed my door shut behind him, trying not to think about what may have caused my bedspread to have gone askew. I opened my door with caution to make sure the idiot was gone. As I crossed the room my mother still lay sprawled across the couch just as she was when I came home. My backpack was exactly where it had been laid, my drawing pencils sticking ever so slightly out of the top. “I’ve got some homework to do then I’ll make dinner,” I announced to my mother who only half heard me. The smell of tobacco was still strong it was as if the whole room was an ashtray swarming around with the smell of nicotine, and acetone. My sketchbook was old, it had been a gift from my Nanny. There was a soothing feeling about it from the red thread cover slightly torn from only god knows what, to the sweet peppermint smell that still lingered despite the creeping tobacco. I opened up to a crisp clean page and all of a sudden my emotions ran wild. Every thing I had been feeling at that moment came rushing out as my pencil seemed to move without my making it. It was my escape. My escape that was all too short lived, I only understood this when I felt a vibration through the floor. No doubt my mother had fallen off the couch into another deep sleep. I tossed my sketchbook onto my bed and headed out of my room into the kitchen. The white china tiles held my reflection captive, I felt like an animal encaged by my life. I wanted to go! I had tried but slowly the guilt took over. I couldn’t just leave my mother. Right now I had four more years to try and set my mother straight and help her out to the best of my ability, everything overwhelmed me at once as I opened the fridge to see that all we had was a variety of steak sauce and some cheap alcohol. Without a job this wasn’t going to work for very long, I knew my mother was in too deep now to try and stop drinking abruptly enough to get back on her feet and put herself out there to even apply for a job. I was only a few months away from the legal age, I could get a job soon, but the only thing that I worried about, would soon be soon enough? When I got a job would my mother drink away the money when I wasn’t there to stop her? It’s now that I realize that though I hate to do it to her, I’ll have to hide half of the money somewhere safe. Guilt rises in my chest, but I shake my head and force the feelings away, after all, the woman who slumped over a dozen broken bottles isn’t the same one I grew to love. As I opened the pantry I found it was also bare. I sighed and walked into my room pulling out a ten spot, part of the stash I kept hidden under my bed for emergencies. Though the circumstances weren’t dire we were bad off enough for me to just use ten. Picking up the phone I kept in my room on the charger under my bedside table I figured there was no other option, pizza would work for tonight. A small would feed the two of us for eight dollars and I couldn’t even be sure my mother would be interested in eating anything but I ordered it anyway. I figured she might at least want to try and soak up some of the alcohol in her stomach, I was sure she’d drowned herself in it because that louse was in my bedroom. That’s another reason I hide the money, anyone she lets in here could take it, and it sort of pisses me off to know that I’ll probably be paying to feed someone I barely know but despise all the same. I would have to deal with the fact since I didn’t have the power to do anything else. As I put the phone back in its rightful place with trembling hands I slowly realized how distraught I was. I picked up my sketchbook, figuring I had a good fifteen minutes before I’d have to go pick up the pizza that would be enough time. I could never stay in my utopian world long anyway. I wouldn’t allow my self to, for I feared I would lose touch with reality, sometimes though, that was all I found my heart desired. I flipped back to my drawing and began the next saga of my incredible drama called life, wishing now more than ever that I was in charge of casting that drama. |
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