The return
The first few weeks of school I kept to myself as I knew if I stayed low noone would recognize me at least that was what I hoped would happen. Whispers erupted not too long after I arrived as I was alone as my sister Paula was in Middle school and my sister mia was in highschool.
So I was utterly alone with facing people who knew I disappeared for four years . The suburbs have a way of keeping up with the most relevant gossip and who's families were getting a divorce and who parents were single parents. Parents in this school were good at separating your marital status like a social status. Only the Rich and normal families were accepted in this school.
My mom was not rich nor normal as she was like an teenager on her approach to parenting. She wanted to be the cool mom and the best friend and when she was left to parenting she was a bit misguided. The first week was awkward as I didn't have a room and Paula took the room and mia and I was forced to share one bed where most nights I ended up in the floor or in my mom's bed .
I felt misplaced and invisible as my mom wasn't giving out hugs and embracing parenthood in face she was doing all she could to avoid it. We were assigned a spot check social worker where she would come visit us once a week to see the progress of the adjustments to returning back home. Basically someone to document my mother struggling as a parent. Her name was Connie and she had a son named Andrew she brought with her every weekend.
That was our weekends . We would hang out with our social worker and her son. Her son looked upset and depressed a lot and he would sit in the car while his mom talked to my mom and sisters. Since she deemed them the problem areas in my mom's ability to parent as I was asked a few questions and left to go play outside and that when I saw him sitting in a car alone looking sad. I knew everyone needed a friend and he didn't look happy his mom drug him to supervise our broken little family every Saturday.
I waved at him and he nodded and he got out of the car as he sat down with me at the top of the stairs and we talked. This was our routine he stayed in the car and I wave at him when I was released from questioning. When the Connie would go home mia would take off down the road to her friend's house and paula was right behind her. It was like night and day . We all show up for our weekly evaluation and smile and answer questions then go do our own thing as my mother didn't care where we was as long as she still had three heads to count at night.
This went on for a while until Connie and Andrew stared mixing up the spot checks and coming during the week days at random days and that was when all the slacking was being seen. Mia would walk out of sessions and swear up and down our mom who she called by the first name let her do what she wants . Which wasn't a lie. We offer walked to the gas station crossing roads to buy cigarettes for my mom then for mia when she started smoking and then Paula when she followed behind mia.
I remembered when we were all together and my dad and mom used to hide their cigarettes from the kids saying they were quitting . I was around four years old and Paula and mia found them and smoked all of them and put the buds in the box. When our dad found out he took us to the nearest convenient store and bought us a packet to teach us a lesson about stealing his cigarettes and made us sit all four of us on the store curb and made us smoke the cigarettes convinced we would grow sick of it. Paula and mia pretended like they hated it as the smoked them like it was the best day of their lives. He grew mad and got us all cigars instead and told us to make sure we inhaled .
We all got sick off of those cigars not knowing you were supposed to inhale. I bet he felt like he deserved a parent of the year award for that life lesson that tricked down to where we are today. Where mia and paula buying cigarettes at age eleven and fourteen and running all over the city knowing our mother didn't care as long as we brought her a box of cigarettes back for her.
When Connie learned this she warned my mother mia was going to be a problem and Everytime since then mia was missing from our sessions and it was just me and Paula and Paula resented Connie for making mia go to our grandparents house . Connie tried taking us to Christian concerts and parks and me and Andrew were good. But soon Paula started jumping on my mother that she also called by her first name and my mother being the friend allowed it like the disrespect wasn't apparent.
When Paula decided to jump on me in front of Connie and she tried to help her off of me and she jumped on Connie . I knew this was not good and I ran to say goodbye to Andrew because I knew when Paula did this it was a matter of time before we got taken away from our home again. This was a normal for me seeing Paula losing her temper and me waiting for them to tell me it was time for us to leave.
My mother had no control over teenage girls. And it showed . She couldn't control is no more than she could her own self. This was the beginning of the spiraling motion of my life as I knew it. When Connie left I took off to the woods near my house as I just wanted to lay down and die. I didn't understand why Paula ruined anything normal for us. Then I heard it a shifting of the grass and the rustling of the leaves as my skin prickles as I looked around the woods for the familiar sensation . There was a hunter around and I could feel it.