The truth as I know it

"We're at God's Mercy now." She says. "We just got to pray." I'm not satisfied. "What reason does God have for doing this?" I wonder aloud. Her reply was the same one she always gives in the face of disaster. "God works in mysterious ways; wonders to preform."

I have heard this line a thousand times and it always makes me laugh. She doesn't realize that she is contradicting herself when she talks about God. He's loving and merciful and yet he wrecks havoc on a whim with no concern for the innocent. And she believes that by doing this he is preforming some kind of wonder. Well, I wonder what fantastic outcome there will be for the people who have lost their homes in the storm. In my opinion, the God she speaks of is no God at all.
She paces back and forth, looking out windows and fretting over my father not being home yet. I try to reassure her but it's useless. "Where is your father Lisa? He should have been home by now. Call him again and make sure he's not at the damn bar again. Tell him to get home." I dial my father's cell phone for the third time and get no answer. "Voicemail." I tell her. She comes over and begins yelling into the phone as she has already done three times in the past hour. I pity my father for having to put up with her. It's too bad he doesn't pity me.
"I'm sure he'll be home soon, mom. He probably waited out the storm." I cringe every time I call her mom. It literally makes my skin crawl. She is more undeserving of the title than anyone I had ever met. Just as I think she's about to boil over, my father's truck pulls into the drive and she heads out to meet him at the door, followed by a trail of cigarette smoke.

My father's eyes are bloodshot and he smells of alcohol; a smell that will remind me of him for the rest of my life. When he leans in for a kiss I can smell the marijuana on him and wish I could sneak out for a smoke myself. "Hey Lisa!" he says as he kisses me on the mouth. She is already glaring at me from across the room so I slip away, wiping my mouth as I go. "We're going to the bar for dinner so you need to make something for the kids." she says as she attempts to smooth her hair. It's a futile attempt; she looks terrible. Her hair lays flat and thin on her head; short on top and long in the back with copper highlights from an at-home kit. I think of how ridiculous she looked with the cap on, sections of hair sticking out all over, and I laugh to myself. Her skin is like a paper lantern. Her eyes are sunken into her fat face and surrounded by dark circles and unflattering brown eyeshadow. She has exaggerated the sunken look with thick lines of eyeliner and chunky mascara. Her thin frown is painted with a depressing shade of mauve and her ears droop with the weight of gold hoops. Everywhere she goes she is followed by a cloud of smoke. The very thought of her makes me sick to my stomach and as she speaks, I feel my stomach roll. "What were you supposed to do when you got home from school?" I tell her I had not forgotten and I disappear into the shadows of the stairwell and head to my room.

For reasons I don't understand, my step-mother Berta hates me. She enjoys devising new ways to humiliate me and this week she has ordered me to save all of my dirty underpants from the previous days. I am to present them to her for inspection so that she can make sure I am changing them every day. She is never at a loss for degrading and humiliating treatment and I suppose I should be thankful it isn't worse.

Upon my return I am relieved to find that my parents have left already. It is much easier to have the inspection of my intimates done when my father isn't around. It was just too hard to handle the embarrassment of having them on display for her twisted pleasure. Her oldest daughter Missy did the inspecting in her place. Missy is always the stand-in when Berta isn't around to enforce the rules. She is like a robot and will do whatever Berta tells her to, no matter how wrong it is. She is short and chubby with dark hair that creeps down her neck and sideburns. The dark hair also makes a prominent appearance on her arms which have often been referred to as "gorilla arms". Missy's cheeks are round and her face has little structure. Her chin is very small and sunk in and she has a small puckered mouth. Her nose is far too small and when she talks it moves up and down as if being pulled. She never has a nice look on her face and has been blessed with neither looks nor brains. I often feel bad for Missy because sometimes I see the humanity in her; I can tell there is a person in there that wants to come out. She has always lived for Berta, even dropping out of school in the 10th grade to stay at home with her mother. Later she got a job as a waitress and every dime she has ever made has gone to her mother. I always swore I wouldn't be that kind of slave to Berta.

The storm has died down and I see a rainbow in the distance. I think of my real mother and how she would have rushed outside to take pictures of it. Her death has been called tragic. I was almost eight when it happened. My two little sisters were two and three years old and my brother was a newborn. My mother had just had Jack but he had to stay in the hospital due to jaundice. My mother visited him every chance she got. One night when she went to visit him they told her that if she had a car seat, she could take him home. This was what she had been waiting for; she could finally bring home her only son. We were poor and our car was frequently breaking down so my mother was borrowing my grandparent's car and didn't have a car seat in it. She had to drive the 45 minutes to our house to get one but it didn't matter to her, she was eager to have Jack home. My aunt waited at the hospital with my baby brother while my mother headed home. She was less than a mile from our house when she was hit by a drunk driver and she returned to the hospital in a body bag.

The next morning when I rushed into my parents bedroom, after having been up all night waiting for my mom to come home, I found my father breathless and crying on the bed. My two little sisters stood, like little angels, next to the bed. At first I thought my father was dying but after a while he looked up and said, "Your mother was in a car accident. She's dead." and that was the last time he talked about it. At eight years old this was a serious blow and nobody ever helped me to understand what was going on. From that moment on, I was the mother to my three younger siblings. Five months after my mother's death, my father married Berta and things only got worse.